22: On The Dilemma Of Horns

on July 20, 2011 in Volume 2 Book 2: The Trouble With Twyla

In Which Mackenzie Gets Circumspection Mixed In With Her Introspection

Twyla jumped so much at the sound of the door opening that I half expected her to bolt. Instead, she composed herself as quickly as she could and kept walking. I guess in that half second her mind had convinced her that it was not within the realm of reason that I might have coincidentally been coming out of my room mere moments after she’d stood in front of the door, not quite banging it down.

My impression of Twyla had always been that she was shy, but that level of awkwardness kind of broke my heart. It was like looking into a mirror… if I were a little bit more broadly set, blonde, and had a pair of horns jutting out of my forehead.

The horns weren’t too obtrusive. Over the summer break they’d shrunk away in my mind to tiny little pointed knobs, but they were in fact crescents a couple inches long. Even at half that size, though, they would have been pretty obvious as they’re horns and otherwise human-looking people don’t tend to have any of those.

“Were you looking for me?” I asked, trying to sound as open and non-threatening and non-sarcastic as I could manage. It didn’t help that “Looking for someone?” is one of those things that people almost never say in a fully sincere, non-ironic way. It’s one of nature’s great rhetorical questions, asked primarily by people who already know the answer. I think it’s a natural developmental feature of language that it loses its sincerity over time, as euphemisms and sarcasm creeps in.

Of course, I did know the answer, but there were even fewer socially viable options for saying something like, “Hi, I totally just saw you knocking on my door and I was a little hesitant to answer but then I changed my mind.”

“Uh, yeah,” Twyla said. “You… I was… I mean, if you’re busy, I could…”

“I’m not busy,” I said. “And you came all the way up here… what’s up?”

“Well, I was just wondering… you’re a fire demon, right?” she said. “I mean, half?”

Demons are one of those subjects that everyone… every human, or in Twyla’s case, every member of human society… knows of about, but that few people really know any actual information about. Depending on the teller and the angle, demons might be the horrible things skulking about in the darkness at the edges of civilization or the hidden enemies infiltrating society to strike from within. Either way, rumor and story had more contact with the popular consciousness than actual information.

“Uh… yeah, on my father’s side… but also no,” I said. “Every demon is a fire demon, there aren’t different kinds. The fire is because of…”

“The route ancient demonkind took when Lord Khersis cast them out of this plane and into hell,” Twyla said, nodding. “He bound them to the lower plane so that even in death they could not escape it, and so they passed through the fire and did not die, but were changed.”

I was kind of surprised that she knew that… I knew she was a Khersian, but Twyla had never shown any particular antipathy to me based on my heritage or for any other reason so I’d figured she hadn’t paid much attention to the more demon-oriented parts of the Librum.

She’d never shown much of anything to me, though. She hadn’t participated in the fuckery of her roommates and their friends during our freshman year, but she hadn’t done much to rein them in. Not that I blamed her. I’d been in similar enough positions to know that II probably would have managed to do little more than keep my own head down.

“Uh, right,” I said.

“I just… I wasn’t sure if every demon had the fire stuff in them,” she said. “But then I guess the answer is yes.”

“Yes, I have fire in me,” I said. I took a step forward out of my room and into the hall and lit a small flame on the tip of one of my fingers. Fire magic was technically forbidden in the dorms, but the curving hallways of Gilcrease Tower meant I didn’t exactly feel exposed, and there were fewer things to set on fire in the hallway than in our crowded little room that Amaranth had extensively furnished at her own expense.

“When you do that… is that like, a spell, or are you just doing it?” Twyla asked.

“Well… yeah,” I said. “I mean, I can just do it without much difficulty, but I can also use that ability in spells.”

I demonstrated by snapping my fingers and making a little spiraling column of fire. Twyla stared at the flame and then the space it had occupied blankly. It wasn’t the response I’d expected to that trick… or from Twyla. She’d never struck me as particularly interesting, but she’d never struck me as dull.

“You didn’t cast anything,” she said, and I realized she wasn’t a spell-user… or rather, she probably had learned only the most ritualized of ritual magic in her divination classes. The mundane public tends to think of magic that doesn’t come from an item as something you get by reciting formulas and wiggling your fingers… they don’t realize a spell formula is just a shortcut to an end.

“Uh, no, not that you could see,” I said. “But I’ve got that one down to the point that I don’t need any kind of focusing incantation… or even much focusing… to do it. And part of why I’m able to do that is because of the fire in my nature. If I wasn’t wizardly-inclined, I could pretty much just make fire, but I wouldn’t be able to control it in as interesting ways.”

“But you can control it?” she said. “I mean, you could? Or did you have to learn elementalism to do that?”

“Let’s take a step back,” I said. “What are you asking about, when you say ‘control’… are we talking about making it get up and dance, or are we talking about keeping it from leaping up and killing everyone?”

That rocked her back on her feet, and I kicked myself on the inside. The idea that I or one of my more frightening and obvious and frighteningly obvious demonic powers might be inches away from killing everyone around me was not something I wanted to encourage.

“Of course, either way I did learn to keep it in check when I was growing up,” I said.

“How?” she asked.

“Necessity,” I said. “And my grandmother.”

“What?”

“She had her own ways of, uh, teaching me self-control,” I said.

“I… do you think you could put me in touch with her?”

“You’re not having demon problems, are you?” I asked. I quickly rephrased it when I realized how that might sound. “Problems with a demon, I mean.”

One side effect of the whole people-knowing-nothing-about-demons thing is that they end up being assigned every visual signifier for “evil” in the public consciousness, even those that actually just meant “different”. Twyla looked perfectly human, except for her horns… and she was left-handed. Demons didn’t have horns, and there was no proclivity for “sinister” handedness among them, but these things would have been enough to mark her as tainted in many people’s eyes during less enlightened times.

For example, the times that we and all immediately foreseeable future generations would live in.

“No!” she said quickly. It was hard to say if it was “a little too” quickly or not. The idea of a demon skulking around someone on campus was unsettling, because the odds of it having nothing to do with me were so low that nobody would believe it had nothing to do with me.

“I’m not really close to my grandmother,” I said. It was a colossal understatement, but there was no reason to get into that with a near-stranger. “And I’m not sure you’d… well, she’s a pretty strict Universal. I’m not sure you’d see eye-to-eye on anything theological.”

“Oh, I didn’t want to discuss theology with her,” Twyla said. “I just… how did she teach you to control your flame?”

“Well, that was theology,” I said. “Sort of. Applied theology. She had three buckets set up by the bed. If I caught fire twice, she’d put it out with the first two buckets. The third one, she told me was full of holy water.”

There had actually been more to it than that… she’d also given me an approximation of what I could expect, by sticking her own hand into hot oil. I didn’t see any point in horrifying Twyla any further than necessary to dissuade her from wanting to contact my grandmother.

“Oh. Um… paladins can do that?”

“Well, they don’t usually carry around holy water to bless things,” I said.

“Oh. Well, anyway, I don’t really think that would work,” she said.

“Right? Because holy water doesn’t stay holy in an open or unconsecrated vessel,” I said. “But the threat seemed real, so… well…” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t really recommend it, anyway.”

“What would you recommend?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Meditation? Positive reinforcement? There isn’t exactly a guidebook out there… though my grandmother can’t be the only person who’s ever raised up a half-demon after they turned, so maybe there is.”

“Oh, I wasn’t asking about a half-demon… um, specifically, I mean,” Twyla said.

“Weren’t you asking about me?” I asked.

“Yeah, just as an example,” she said.

“What are we talking about, then?” I asked.

“No one… it’s hypothetical,” she said. “I just… it seemed… like an interesting topic?”

She stood there, practically radiating her desperation for me to believe… whatever it was she wanted me to believe. Possibly it was the sheer weight of her wanting me not to put two and two together that put me in mind of what I’d seen in the cafeteria the other day: Twyla’s tray catching fire.

I’d missed the “before”, only caught a glimpse of the “during” and “after”… if Twyla had been in the same sort of programs as I was, I could believe it to have been an incantation practiced at an unwise time, or a misfire of an improperly charged item. It could have been an extremely malicious and dangerous prank from someone playing off her “demonic” looks. It could have been any number of things… but here was Twyla on my doorstep, asking questions about how I controlled my fire.

The first thought that went through my head was an absurd one: maybe she’s part-demon… separately from whatever had given her the horns. It was an absurd thought because it was impossible. Whatever branch of Khersianism Twyla practiced, they weren’t as big on the showy icons as the Universal Temple, but she had to pray. Maybe there was some fraction of demon blood that was small enough that she wouldn’t get more than an uncomfortable tingling feeling from that, but I doubted it was high enough that she’d be spontaneously manifesting fire.

But demons weren’t the only creatures of elemental fire. There were whole classes of beings who came by a fire association naturally. One of my favorite professors, Elizabeth Bohd, had traces of both djinn and demon in her heritage…

And with that thought, I knew how to help Twyla. Even without knowing what was going on with her… which was none of my business if she didn’t feel like volunteering it… I knew what she needed if she was having elemental problems.

“Hey, you know who knows a lot about controlling fire and other elements?” I said. “Professor Bohd. I had her for elemental evocation last year.”

“Isn’t evocation bringing stuff out?” Twyla asked.

“Yeah, but it takes a level of control to do that,” I said. “And she doesn’t just teach evocation. She could probably h… tell you everything there is to know about controlling an element.”

I was trying to be circumspect and probably being about as subtle as Twyla was. Bohd had outed herself to the class last year but I didn’t know how far the news had traveled or how long it had stuck, and I didn’t think it was my place to tell strangers the minute bits of her racial background. And since Twyla hadn’t disclosed that she had a problem, it would have seemed weird to offer her help. But she had expressed that this was a topic of interest, and so I’d pointed her towards a relevant authority.

It was no wonder I had a hard time sounding sincere. There I was honestly trying to be helpful, and I felt the need to cloud my words in a double layer of deceit. Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to socialize.

“Oh… thanks,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll… well, I guess I’ll be going then.”

“Bye,” I said. I felt that was slightly inadequate, and wanted something to add… something that suggested her visit hadn’t been an unwelcome intrusion and she was welcome to come back even when she didn’t have any hypothetically interesting topics to talk around.

But if you’ve never in your life said something like “Hey, don’t be a stranger.” or “Come back and see us sometime.” it’s hard to do so on the spot.

So I just watched her go, and did my best to get through the remaining pages for spellbinding. Unbidden, a question kept coming forward from the back of my mind, rising up from the depths of my subconscious like some shapeshifting monster that can take the form of a child’s riddle:

What makes fire and has horns?

I couldn’t think of any answers. The most obvious creatures of elemental fire were… well, creatures of elemental fire. I told myself that it was none of my business, but while that was sufficient to keep me from prying it wasn’t enough to stop my mind from wondering.


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65 Responses to “22: On The Dilemma Of Horns”

  1. Frelance says:

    Hm. No glaring typos or unclosed html. “It’s quiet… TOO quiet…”

    Current score: 0
  2. Tigger says:

    “Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to socialize.” Best.line.ever.

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  3. Alyxe Barron says:

    Heyla

    Awww, Mack and Twyla, so awkward together.

    One note… -sheep- “to know that II probably would have managed to do little more than keep my own head down.” Looks like the pronoun got doubled.

    -r

    Current score: 0
  4. DaManRando says:

    One typo, you put an “II” instead of just one I up there….

    “I’d been in similar enough positions to know that II probably would have managed to do little more than keep my own head down. ”

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    • Lunaroki says:

      Typo Report

      Well, there goes the one real typo I was going to report on. There was one odd sentence I wanted to mention though.

      She hadn’t participated in the fuckery of her roommates and their friends during our freshman year, but she hadn’t done much to rein them in.

      There’s nothing technically wrong with the sentence but still the latter portion of it just feels like it needs either an “also” before “hadn’t done” or an “either” right at the end.

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  5. Sindyr says:

    Excellent chapters, as always! Thank you for sharing your stories with us.

    I did catch a typo: “I’d been in similar enough positions to know that II probably would have managed to do little more than keep my own head down.” There’s a double “I” in there.

    Also: “Demons are one of those subjects that everyone… every human, or in Twyla’s case, every member of human society… knows of about,”–should be “knows of” or “knows about” or “knows of or about.”

    Keep up the good work, AE! *cheers*

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  6. Addie says:

    I’d been in similar enough positions to know that II probably would have managed to do little more than keep my own head down.

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  7. zeel says:

    Come on Mackenzie, be more direct, ask her what is really going on. The mystery has gone on much to long (since welcoming weekend!)

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    • Lunaroki says:

      I believe you mean “much too long”.

      In any event, Mackenzie did the right thing by not prying into Twyla’s personal business uninvited. As awkward as that was she could have seriously offended Twyla by being too nosy. Still, I look forward to the day when Mack finally learns how to make friends with people who aren’t throwing themselves at her to be her friend.

      Current score: 1
      • Dwight says:

        I agree. It is nice to see Mack slowly working her way towards social competence. A year of college, some therapy, supportive friends…

        …and kudos on the meta-level. Stories of progression of the main character, even if slow and halting, are always some of the most interesting.

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      • Null Set says:

        Trying to get that typo-correcting fix wherever you can find it, I see.

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      • fka_luddite says:

        While I can understand Mack not thinking of it, she could have offered to introduce Twyla to Professor Bohd. After all, an unfamiliar student coming in with questions is somewhat awkward.

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  8. HiEv says:

    Wow. Talk about not putting two and two together.

    A long class discussion about humans with dragon ancestry having aspects of dragon in them, not to mention actually meeting a dragon, and yet the answer to Twyla “making fire and having horns” doesn’t pop out at her?

    If she’s still pondering that question when she’s in history class again, she’s probably going to fall out of her desk when the answer hits her. 😛

    Current score: 2
    • Holydragoon says:

      To be fair, not all dragons are shown with horns. Or even if horns are really a draconic trait. Of course i might have forgotten something, or a description, that happened in the past. I would say its about 50/50 really if the dragon has horns or not depending on the artist. But I admit… Twyla is probably part dragon :P.

      Current score: 1
      • Zergonapal says:

        Its not clear what dragons in the MUniverse look like, I’ve always assumed it was the classic image. But aren’t dragons supposed to breath fire? Or is using it as a breath weapon just the way they they manifest it?

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        • Sailorleo says:

          Which classic image? European dragons and Oriental dragons are very different in terms of appearance, and there are a few other ‘classical’ mythologies with other ideas of what dracoformes are.

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          • Zergonapal says:

            your just being difficult for the sake of being difficult, I’m positive that anyone reading my post would have automatically associated the term classic dragon with the common fantasy dragon with horns, wings and a lizard like body. If anyone wants to contest that, well here is your douche hat and latte, go stand in that corner with Sailorleo.

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            • bramble says:

              Could I have a herbal tea, instead? Not fond of lattes.

              Because Sailorleo has a point – even if we’re accepting that MUniverse dragons are on the western European model with four legs and two wings (as opposed to any of several other western European draconic models; wyverns, lindorms, and even the original tarrasque are often considered to be dragons), there’s still a good deal of variety on that theme, not all of which are horned – frills, crests, and fins are also fairly common, with or without horns.

              Current score: 1
            • Amelia says:

              To be fair when I think classic dragon I don’t think of horns.

              Current score: 1
        • Tegid says:

          But they DO have horns. In book one, Mackenzie said something along the lines of ‘at least a great dragon, judging by the horns/number of horns in its head’, when she was in Embries office.

          Current score: 1
    • Chris says:

      Maybe the draconic parent is imposing his will on the world to prevent anybody from finding out that Twyla has a draconic ancestry.

      Current score: 1
      • Potatohead says:

        That sounds like something it’d take a full-on deity to do. Embries can impose his will on one person effortlessly, but I can’t see even a greater dragon, as they’ve been depicted, being able to influence the entire world to that degree. One might be imposing their will on Twyla to keep her from revealing it, though.

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    • roma says:

      wow,it actualy took a whole pge of coments before someone mentioned dragons. I figured that would be everybodies first thought

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      • Brenda says:

        The likeliness that she’s part dragon has been discussed in the comments of previous chapters, to the point where I think we’re mostly taking it for granted and are just watching so we can see Mack fall out of her chair or whatever when she realizes.

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    • Apollo says:

      …It would be rather embarrassing if you could have seen how hard I facepalmed, HiEv. Dragons – of course! Duh! We’ve got no proof that dragons (common or less common) had/have horns more often than not, but there’s no reason to assume that some, somewhere, had/have.

      Of course, that begs the question – why has Twyla’s draconic blood shown itself now? (Or, specifically, her fire episode in the caf.)

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  9. John says:

    Efreeti heritage doesn’t seem unlikely either, depending on whether Twyla will end up expanding on existing ideas or introducing new ones.

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    • Aerfe says:

      Yeah, that was something that jumped out at me too. While traditional ifrít does not posses horn AFAIK. The ones in DnD do. Especially with the mention of the jinni it seems rather good guess.

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      • Matthias says:

        I think it is pretty clear she is an efreet. If for no other reason than I have played a final fantasy game before. Ifrit is another spelling of efreet. Fire dude with horns.

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  10. MegaBuster says:

    As I recall from Jamie’s tatoo, only male dragons have horns, at least of that type.

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  11. Burner says:

    What makes fire and has horns?

    Every single vehicle at Burning Man, of course. It’s obvious! Twyla is an art car!

    Current score: 1
    • bramble says:

      I have a sudden ridiculous urge to write up a half-art car template of some sort, but I suspect that even my incredibly permissive DM would shoot that down.

      Current score: 0
  12. Iain of Rockhold, Salushen says:

    Efreet?
    Dragon?
    Oni?
    Salamander!

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  13. jdw says:

    Gosh, folks! The answer is obvious! Twyla is part….

    Fire-cow!

    😉

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    • fman0801 says:

      I’ll secound the motion to make Twyla a Fire-Cow… and add of DOOoooom! because it’ll make her five levels stronger. 😉

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  14. Aelfgar says:

    Dragons you say? Hmph! The answer to “What makes fire and has horns” is elementary my dears… Devils (or possibly Imps)!

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    • OhPun says:

      Teenage boys. Many are obsessed with fire and all are horny.

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      • Helen Rees says:

        having been, and raised, teenage girls – why are you leaving us out…?

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    • Jinzo says:

      Devils should (if they exist in this universe) also have some issues with praying and holiness. Something Twyla has no problems with.

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      • bramble says:

        IIRC, the Q&A indicated that there’s not a lot known about the original inhabitants, if any, of the plane to which Khersis banished the demons. It’s possible that they’re not particularly effected one way or the other by divinity or deities – beyond, perhaps, some quite reasonable anger that their home plane is now full of demons.

        Current score: 0
  15. Killydd says:

    Of course, by Mack’s father’s definition, greater dragons certainly count as full on deities. Of course it might be a war of wills at the moment, with her draconic aspect pushing to be heard and expressing itself with her horns and now fire, compared to whatever is trying to keep her off of the radar. I could certainly see a supernatural tendency to not notice her causing her to be timid about getting people’s attention.

    Current score: 0
  16. Dan says:

    Horned toads do. Well, if you teach them to use matches.

    Current score: 0
  17. wilde says:

    Embries unintentionally draws attention, though, and exerts his will- remember the press conference situation? And he said he could block parts of Mack’s memory from any probes, AND be aware if she tried to spill the beans. Blocking internal/genetic memory doesn’t seem impossible, if the draconic parent wanted their involvement to be masked.

    Current score: 0
  18. Erm says:

    “What makes fire and has horns?”

    And what makes fire, has horns, wings, eats people, and occasionally administrates universities?

    (Ooh, a fire-breathing winged bureaucratic cannibal with a Viking helmet. 😀 )

    Current score: 0
    • erianaiel says:

      Funny thing is, though, that viking helmets did not have horns. Not sure where that image came from.
      Of course Vikings had horns, but they drank from them, not fix them to their helmets which would create a weak spot on the helmet AND waste a perfectly good opportunity to drink more mead and beer.

      Current score: 0
  19. Cernael says:

    “knows of about, but that few people really know any actual information about.”
    knows of, but that

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  20. Major says:

    In a dragon, anthropophagy is no more cannibalism than our eating omelettes or KFC justifies the same accusation from a chicken. By definition, cannibalism is eating one’s own species.

    Spinning off the “What has horns and makes fire?” line, how about a bison with a blowtorch?

    Current score: 0
    • arsenic says:

      This is true, but Erm only mentioned the cannibal bit referring to the Viking, which would be a human, in which case anthropophagy would be cannibalism.

      Current score: 0
  21. ylistra says:

    Poor Mack. It seems like yesterday she took a class on the history and lore of half-dragons, and today she’s obliviously part of it.

    Current score: 0
    • Erm says:

      True – though narrative causality dictates that she wouldn’t have taken the class if it didn’t come up.
      Like in Harry Potter, you know that the spell or interesting fact they learn on their first day is going to become pivotal to the plot before the year is out. 😀

      Current score: 0
      • cnic says:

        That might have had weight but we only learned what we did due to a reader poll saying we wanted to hear about dragons. But then who’s to say our vote didn’t influence it. Maybe if we voted for the skinchangers she would be a weregoat or something.

        Current score: 0
        • jagroq says:

          Well seeing that she is obviously a half dragon that was bit by a were-goat, AE was covered either way.

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  22. Readaholic says:

    Looove today’s update, not least because of the wildly funny mass guessing in the comments 🙂 I think the Art Car wins, with the bison with a blow torch second, and the adolescent boys suggestion third. Me, I’m going to go world of warcraft, with a Tauren who has eaten dragonbreath chilli.

    And the touching awkwardness with Twyla and Mackenzie – “Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to socialize.” So very true. @Tigger, I would have hearted your post twice if I could. I managed to skip that sentence on my first reading through.

    Current score: 0
  23. Zathras IX says:

    It would seem that both
    Mack and Twyla contend with
    The fire down below

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  24. Mix*G says:

    Fantastic chapter. The sheer amount of awkwardness makes me smile and think back to college :).

    @erianaiel,
    Thank you for pointing that out so I didn’t have to. It irks me when that particular subject comes up.

    Current score: 0
  25. Trystia Indraea Olyphis Farrower says:

    I find the conjecturing about devils to be strange, as we already know that devils exist, and have an affinity for water, not fire, as well as that they possess no horns. Mackenzie even had to watch a devil dined upon by the closest being to a deity she’ll likely ever survive an encounter with. I admit that I also have been questioning ‘half-dragon’ as too obvious, and had been considering efreeti or similar heritage, but something I really wonder is this: why can’t spells provide an answer? Spells can detect demonbloods easily enough, why shouldn’t a spell be able to tell you a being’s ancestry?

    Current score: 0
    • bramble says:

      We know that sea devils exist (but have no confirmation one way or the other on whether there are other sorts of devils), and that they have fairly variable appearances (with the difference between Feejee’s deep-sea monster appearance and Iona’s bird/fish siren form, it’s not out of the question that there may be other varieties, some of which may have horns or horn-like features).

      And I think the general assumption is that spells can’t provide an answer for similar reasons to why Mack can’t communicate about witnessing said sea-devil sashimi dinner – a dragon of sufficient power decided that spells wouldn’t provide an answer, in order to protect and/or conceal Twyla.

      Current score: 0
  26. Karr says:

    Nitpicking, but there needs to be a chapter in front of the 22: heading… At least to keep it even with the rest of the chapters…

    Current score: 0
  27. Anthony says:

    Is it pronouncef twai-la or twee-la, BTW?

    Current score: 0
  28. Michalis says:

    the anniversary of the dead of moreMU…:(

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  29. Elaine says:

    Chimera, maybe? I do feel like we’re being lead in the direction of dragons, but horns aren’t essential to dragons (like scales and wings are), and when I think horns, I think a cloven-footed beastie. Of course, a Chimera is also part lion and snake, but you’ve got the goat bit…
    Plus you’d think someone dragon ancestry would be less timid…. Though dragon would be a reason for her mental block/wall.

    Current score: 0
  30. pedestrian says:

    The Chimera reminds me of an old Playboy Magazine cartoon.

    There is this little cherub talking to a woman, with a gorgons head, with a unicorn horn in the middle of her forehead. Her forearms are lion paws, her body is like a dragon. Her rear legs are like a cloven-hoofed satyr, her tail is like a scorpion, etc.

    The caption has her replying to the evidently puzzled cherub;

    “Well…Mother never would talk about THAT particular orgy…..”

    Current score: 0
    • Ryzndmon says:

      Also, for the musically inclined, look for “Mis-Conceptions” by Mercedes Lackey. Funny as hex, and includes, several times, the line “My mother never talks about that orgy…”

      Current score: 0
  31. Sleet says:

    Mack has grown up with the possibility of fire bursting out of her skin, which is probably what she automatically assumes is happening with Twyla. If that’s the case (as it also likely is with Djinni), that would explain why she hasn’t considered dragons, which are generally perceived as breathing fire (or acid, or whatever.) She probably hasn’t thought that maybe Twyla is having explosive hiccups.

    Current score: 0
  32. Khazidhea says:

    “to know that II probably would have managed”

    ‘II’ to ‘I’

    Current score: 0
  33. Sher says:

    Twla is obviously a dragon!

    Current score: 0