Chapter 877: Strict Mother
Kaiden stepped out of the command tent with Vespera at his side, and the staging plain opened before them under a sky still hazy with residual mana.
Fifty meters out, Pebble lay where he’d planted himself before the meeting began, six burning eyes fixed on the tent flap since the moment Kaiden walked through it.
The awakened fighters standing perimeter between him and the tent had the rigid posture of people doing their duty while wishing very badly it was literally anything else.
Camera crews from four different networks had lenses trained on the Guardian from behind every available piece of cover.
Pebble’s tail twitched when the flap moved, then those eyes found Kaiden and the twitch became a full wag that sent a tremor through the air hard enough to rattle camera tripods off their legs.
Pebble rose.
The ground groaned under the redistribution of mass, and the Guardian crossed the fifty meters in three leisurely strides that ignored the perimeter entirely, clearing the awakened fighters without breaking pace.
He lowered his crown to Kaiden with a rumble so deep it vibrated in his sternum.
"Yeah, yeah." Kaiden reached up and dug both hands into the armored plate behind the crown, scratching hard enough that his gauntleted fingers rang like steel on stone. "I missed you too, you giant goofball."
The tail went ballistic, each wag punching shockwaves through the air.
A field producer grabbed his walkie-talkie, sweating through his collar, and began screaming orders.
"BACK THE BIRD UP! DOUBLE YOUR ALTITUDE AND KEEP ROLLING! THE APOCALYPSE PUPPY IS WAGGING ITS TAIL AND IF WE LOSE THIS FOOTAGE I WILL PERSONALLY END EVERY CAREER ON THAT HELICOPTER!"
The rumble climbed into a register that sounded like a mountain purring.
Then Pebble’s front legs buckled in the unmistakable lean of a dog preparing to show his belly to his master, begging for rubs.
Shadows caught him mid-lean.
Vespera’s darkness laced around all four legs and held him upright with the casual efficiency of someone grabbing a toddler by the back of his shirt before he walked off a curb.
Her expression hadn’t changed one bit.
Pebble’s gaze swung to her, pleading.
"No." Vespera wasn’t one to budge that easily. "If you don’t want me to lock you inside the dungeon and never let you outside, you will learn to behave."
All six irises snapped wide. The tail stopped dead as Vespera explained, "You must remember your size. If you roll over, you will flatten your surroundings. Your master will be greatly troubled by your reckless behavior. Is that understood?"
Pebble’s head began frantically bobbing up and down with such furious earnestness that his crown blurred, the tremors from the nodding alone rattling windows on the nearest command vehicles.
Vespera held his gaze for one more second, then she nodded, ready to move on.
The staging plain stopped breathing.
Then the cameras fired like artillery and the shouting from the press cordon sounded less like journalism and more like a sporting event.
The awakened fighters holding the perimeter wore the expressions of people who’d woken up in someone else’s dream.
The terrible Vespera Ashborn, the Shadow Monarch...
Was educating her dog?
And it was fervently listening?
A correspondent who’d been positioned behind a camera truck to cover the Chairman meeting abandoned her prepared script and started narrating the scene live, her voice steady and professional while her eyes begged the universe for an explanation.
In her earpiece, her producer was screaming that these were the best ratings they’d had all year and she’d better not shut up if she wanted her bonus.
"I didn’t know you were a dog person," Kaiden said, grinning at her. "You said more words to Pebble than you said to us all in the entire Dungeon Master Duel."
Vespera turned to look her son in the eyes, and she was not amused by his words. "That’s false. I spoke more words during the event."
"Not by much." Kaiden’s eyes danced with amusement.
An awakened fighter on the perimeter watched the Shadow Monarch speak to her son and their... dog? As he did so, it felt as if something important in his understanding of the world shattered permanently.
"...I spoke as much as was needed. You are experienced awakened fighters, while Pebble is a newborn who lives off his instincts and now finds himself in a strange environment. He needs more direction."
"Mother, you really are a dog person." Kaiden’s smile widened. "You’re speaking using multiple full sentences just to justify yourself instead of shrugging and moving on as you normally would. If I knew, I would’ve bought you a dog before."
Vespera’s red eyes narrowed as she examined her son. "I don’t want one. They’re useless."
Pebble turned the full force of his arsenal on Vespera. The fissure-mouth curled into a pout so devastating that the nearest reporter forgot he was on air, and the tail drooped against the earth like a flag in dead wind.
Vespera stared back with a poker face that could have survived a nuclear audit.
A whine started building in his chest, and the fissure-mouth began to tremble.
"You’re not a dog."
The tail hit the ground with a thud that bounced dust into the air, and the light behind those irises flickered like someone had pulled the plug.
"Referring to you as a mere dog is an insult." Vespera’s voice carried no hurry. "You’re the Guardian of my child. Are you not?"
Pebble blinked once, the light stuttering back like a heartbeat restarting, and then the rest of her words caught up and every iris went supernova.
The tail erupted off the ground, wagging with such violent joy that the displaced air flattened press badges against chests and blew a correspondent’s notes clean out of his hands.
Pebble’s front legs buckled again, whole existence in desperate need of belly rubs.
Vespera’s eyes went cold.
His legs snapped straight so fast he locked mid-motion, rigid, tail frozen at the apex of a wag, gaze wide, the exact posture of a dog who had just remembered the furniture rule.
Kaiden shook his head, grinning madly, then hooked an arm around Vespera’s waist and steered her toward the far side of the plain. "Come on, you two. Let’s go find the girls."
The Shadow Monarch allowed herself to be pulled against her son’s side without protest, and the staging plain collectively decided that nothing it had witnessed today was ever going to be toppled in their professional career.
Truth be told, Kaiden grabbing Vespera in a familial gesture wasn’t new to anyone because every network had aired the famous footage of Kaiden hugging Vespera from behind when they revealed Magnus Morvane’s deplorable actions.
It moved the world. But that was shot on a screen with clear motives behind it.
This was taking place a couple meters away from them, with no video of theirs rolling and no brand image to maintain.
They couldn’t care less about the journalists screeching around them and the non-stop snapping of pictures.
They weren’t performing for anyone, weren’t trying to gain anything.
This was nothing but a cheeky son teasing his mother about dogs and the most dangerous woman alive letting him, replying with strangely adorable denial to his ’accusations’.
The wholesome warmth between them was so ordinary it made everything else on the plain feel like the act.
Just a mother and son duo having a fun interaction.
"Kaiden! Any comment on the meeting with the Chairman?" A reporter shoved a microphone forward, his voice cracking on the second syllable.
"What’s in store for Eclipse next?"
"You are the Ashborn heir now, why are you still called Grey?"
"Should we expect more Kaiju-like apocalypse events to occur?!"
"Who cares about that! Those are old news! Can you tell us more stories about your interactions with your mother?!"
More questions followed, but Kaiden didn’t even hear them.
He looked at Pebble, whose gaze had gone flat and watchful in a way the reporters would revisit later in their sleep.
"I’m still going to refer to you as my dog, though. Is that okay?"
The head bobbed so fast it blurred, cracking the earth beneath his forepaws, and the tail answered the question before his head finished moving.
The trio then began walking across the plain, and behind the man and his mother, upper body positioned protectively above both of them, Pebble fell into step.
The playfulness drained from his body in a single motion, his stride lengthening into a measured, ground-whispering gait. Six burning eyes swept the field in rapid arcs, tracking every uniform, every camera, every hand that wandered too close.
Only the tail, swinging in long, slow arcs behind him, said that the Guardian was still the happiest creature on the plain.
