The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 524: Abandoned Paperwork

While Dominic and Amie were preparing the Manor to wait out the day while Alexis calmed down, things were getting more hectic by the second in Wistover Manor.

“Highness, we have word of an entire army coming our way. They have assembled at the southern edge of the flooding near Kinewen, and they appear to be following the main road straight for Lympsbury.

First reports say that it might be a group of survivors, but the airships report that the force is nearly half uniformed Dagos soldiers, and there are suspiciously few children with them.” Julio reported as Alexis sat at her desk, looking at a mountain of paperwork.

“This is distinctly not my problem. Bring it to my brother. Or better yet, find Dominic, and bring it to him.”

Julio gave her a sympathetic smile. “Highness, your brother is currently recovering from Mana Exhaustion, and after Miss Amie passed through the portal looking for Lord Dominic, we have been unable to get another portal opened in the area.

There is a severe magical fluctuation in the region, though we did intercept their radio report.

Both are alive, and appear to be luring survivors to their location.”

“Is he trying to save civilians, or just kill everything that moves?”

“That is unclear. However, reports are that the entire region is flooded, after the storm drove a thirty-metre wall of water inland, and then proceeded to dump nearly three metres of rain on them in under three days.” Julio explained, reading from his notes.

“But he still found a dry spot, and presumably captured it, if Amie is sending radio messages from their high-powered equipment.”

“How did you know that it was Miss Amie?”

“Do you think that Dominic would have come up with that plan on his own? He is many things, including fearsome in combat. But if he didn’t send a message in the first twelve hours, he completely forgot that anyone was looking for him.”

She didn’t sound as mad about that as Julio had expected, but that could be largely because of her anger at the paperwork that had built up.

They had been receiving constant airships, which the infrastructure team were building new warehouses for in the most efficient way possible. It was all very slipshod, in his estimation, and there were no roads or any utilities such as plumbing being run to them.

But they were solid and dry, and that was the only part that anyone seemed to care about at the moment.

Once the event was over, they could decide what to do with all those buildings, and how to build the industrial section of the budding new city. Perhaps they would get lucky and find someone who wanted to turn them into productive factories, instead of having them mostly sit empty waiting to be surge crop storage.

“Is there anything that we can do to get Dominic back here to take care of his share of the work?” Alexis asked after a moment of silent contemplation.

“Not at the moment. However, The Second Prince should be up soon, and I can refer all the military and security matters to him as representative of the Crown.” Julio offered.

“Wonderful, do that. But don’t bring them to his room, or he will pretend to be asleep.”

Julio laughed. “I am well aware of the most common tricks, Highness. Don’t worry, I am doing as much as I can to offload the work, but much of this simply needs review and signature from a Noble. There is no legal way around it.”

Alexis knew that she could just sign off on things without reading them, and trust her staff to have it all right. However, that was not only highly risky, it also tended to breed corruption.

Not a good precedent to set.

In the sleeping quarters, Ingrid was tending to the two heavily injured Daves. Trolls could not recover properly from fire damage, so the healing process from a major fire attack was both brutal and extreme.

What she had to do was bring in healers, then cut away a portion of the burnt flesh to let Dave recover the affected section.

Then, he would need time to heal and regain strength before he could regenerate a new part.

The damage to the torso and head were both minimal, thanks to the thick helmets and protection of their shields. However, they were too injured to just cut away entire limbs and let them regenerate from nothing.

So, they had started with the face and torso, which would let his vital organs heal first.

Then, once that was done, they could increase the cuts.

Dave’s healing would keep the burnt flesh from festering, but as it was fire damage, the natural healing was slow, and left alone, it really would take the full year that they had quoted.

It wasn’t uncommon for heavily injured trolls to go into virtual hibernation after a wound like this, with their Clan coming daily to feed them.

But Dave was determined to get back to work. So, they were accelerating the process, with the goal of getting him back to work before the second full moon. That was fast enough to keep Dave happy, and realistic for what their healers could do.

Unaware of any of what was happening at home, Dominic sat on top of the newly built wall and watched the horizon.

There were boats coming their way.

Nothing large enough to be called a ship, but steam powered riverboats, and what he suspected was a magically propelled sailboat, given how well it was tracking upwind.

Their calls had been received, and now they were getting their first victims.

Guests. Definitely guests.

Unless they were really Dagos Nobles who had sided with Prince Kaizon. In which case he would simply sink the vessels in the flood water and watch them be washed away.

“Amie, are you ready for the fun part?”

“Always.

You really should cover your horns before they get close enough to see us, or the whole bit will be ruined. It’s just a shame that we don’t have one more loyal person who can send out a jamming signal to prevent them from warning others what is about to happen to them.”