"You don't seem too concerned that your youngling is out of your sight." The Matriarch pointed out.
"It's not like she's outside of my sensory range, and she is relatively safe here. Everyone is on edge right now, and attacking a stranger would be very suspicious and draw attention that nobody wants when a Divine Dragon is looking for someone who would do something as low as stealing an egg." Cain replied.
"Not a bad analysis, but Dragons are carnivores."
"So are Lamia Progenitors. Even if she's in a human form, she's not quite as helpless as she looks. Maybe as naive, but not as helpless."
"You are an odd one. Hopefully, that is enough to find my missing daughter. I wasn't even gone for long, I only went hunting for a few hours, and I came back to a missing egg." She explained.
"So they didn't need to sneak past your senses, only the Dragons who guarded your nest. I wish I could check for traces of Magic, but with you being in the nest for so long, I don't think I would be able to pick out anything. Your magic has soaked into everything." Cain sighed.
"I can see the flows and traces of magic as well, and I didn't detect anything in the nest. I think they took it out before they did anything, but the question is how they did it without any of the other dragons noticing.
They might not come too close to the nest, but sneaking past them should be nearly impossible." The Matriarch insisted.
Not only that, but she had the power to turn half the world upside down while she searched for her missing daughter. Whoever would take something like that had to have some sort of a plan. The Matriarch would have sensed if the hatchling inside the egg was dead, so it probably hadn't been harmed yet, or she was too far away from it to sense the danger.
Cain could only assume that Dragons put some serious wards on their eggs since they had the power to spare, and they defended their homes so stringently. If it was taken away anyhow, then whoever did it wasn't weak. Unless it was an oversight or a loophole, and the egg was only guarded against creatures that could logically pose a threat to it.
"Do any other creatures live here? Any pets, livestock, or pests?" Cain asked.
"We wouldn't allow pests into our den except for the rare human who offered enough to intrigue us. But we do have some pets on the lower levels. Lava cats love the heat, and they feel good on the scales."
"I will send a Summoned creature down there to check it out while we sign up the rest of the Dragons in the mountain," Cain suggested.
"Just keep in mind where you are."
Cain focused for a second and summoned Kone, then instructed her to call for Su in her natural form. The Spirit Folk girl happily hopped on the Forest Dragon before they both activated a series of searching spells to detect everything resembling an egg within the mountain.
"How many eggs are supposed to be in the nest right now, Divine One?" Su asked, speaking Draconic.
"Seven. One is missing, and when it is returned, there should be eight." The Matriarch replied.
"Yes, that is what my spells detected as well. I just had to make sure that your wards weren't hiding too much from me, given the power difference. My partner is very good at tracking as well, so if it is here, we will find it. If not, we will bring you back a count of every other clutch we find, so you can check them against the records to see if it is disguised as someone else's hatchling." Su informed her.
The Forest Dragon took off toward the lower levels, hoping that the Egg would be found somewhere safe, and not eaten by the Lava Cats.
They probably couldn't even if they tried, but Cain had heard of stranger things in his time, and it was possible that something was disguised as one of the Dragons' pets. Su and Kone would be able to see if that was the case by checking everything's status with their interface, the same way that Cain was doing right now.
Cain was intently searching the room when Luna came running over with the Opal Prismatic Dragon right behind her. His first thought was that there was an emergency, but the happy look on her face said that it was not a dangerous sort of urgent matter.
"Can I have a pet? Just one? I swear it is cute and nearly as cuddly as Penny." She begged as she ran up to him.
"A pet what?" Cain asked suspiciously.
"I don't know, but it's like twice my length and shaggy, and it glows a little bit, and it is warm and likes to cuddle," She replied.
"Does it have really big pleading eyes, wings, and four legs?"
"Yes, exactly like that. It is adorable, and I love it, and I will treat it really well." She insisted while her follower wiped tears of mirth from her eyes.
"Why is everyone laughing?" Luna asked, looking around the room, where all the dragons were in the same state, with only a few managing to hide their amusement.
"That is a baby Swamp Dragon. You can't keep it, it lives here, and it is intelligent. It just can't speak human languages yet, and you don't speak Dragon." Cain explained.
"I can't keep it?" Luna verified.
"You can't. But if you talk to its parents, you might be able to play with it for a while during our visit."
"Not a bad idea. Thanks, Dad. See you in a bit. There are cookies in the oven."
With that, she was gone again, and the young Dragon with a sweet tooth followed her back to wherever they had been baking cookies.
"You are raising a very strange daughter, Ancient Cain. But she seems well-liked here. The Dragons don't see much excitement in their long lives, but everything is so new to her." The next man in line, a Green Dragon of Legendary Quality, laughed.
"She has a very easy time making friends. The problem is convincing her that they can't all come with us and that we can't spend our whole lives making snacks somewhere. If she had her choice, she would just sit in a kitchen and eat all day, every day."
"Lamia and Dragons are both like that when they are young. All they think about is food and friendship so that they aren't alone and they grow up as fast as possible. The only difference is that the Lamia only usually keep friends of other species since they view their own kind as competition." The dragon agreed.
"You seem quite familiar with them," Cain asked.
"I spent some time in the Demon Realms as a botanist. The Lamia are very friendly sorts, as I'm sure you know." He replied with a wink.
Oh yes, Cain knew that very well.
"If you gentlemen of culture are finished, you are holding up the line." The next dragon complained while the Green Dragon stepped to the side, making way for others to mark the scroll.
"Sorry about that. Please, step forward, and we will get everyone marked down so that the Matriarch can be assured that her neighbors don't harbor ill intentions." Cain replied, holding out the scroll for the Dragon.
The line started to move smoothly again, and every Dragon that came up seemed to be exactly what they claimed to be, and the Black Dragon didn't sense any presence of her egg on them, and the detection spells that Penny was using didn't show anything out of the ordinary at all.
Late that evening, the line drew short, but the rune still indicated that there were quite a few Dragons yet to be scanned.
"Are some of the others sleeping? The ones who are here don't seem to be enough to complete the count." Cain informed the Black Dragon.
"Likely. Getting everyone together on the same day is very difficult, especially with the older Dragons, since they like to sleep for years at a time to wait for interesting things to happen or enough changes to occur that it is worth going out into the outside world again." The Ancient Dragon explained.
That could pose a problem for their count, but if Cain went to the ones who didn't come on their own, he could record them even while they were sleeping. He would just have to rely on his own group's spells to detect any signs of the egg.
"It looks like my Disciples are getting sleepy. Is there somewhere that we can stay for the evening? An empty room or even a clear spot to set up our tent is fine." Cain asked.
"We have space for visitors. It is over to your right, by the building where your Disciple is training with the Golden Dragon. Humans might want something softer though since dragons prefer to sleep on much harder surfaces." She offered.
"That won't be a problem. I have a fine collection of sleeping cushions with me. Penny, will you pick up Luna and bring her with us? We can complete the work in the morning."
"Just leave the scroll with me. I will record any who still want to get their names down tonight." The Matriarch offered, but the Dragons were quickly backing away, unwilling to face her scrutiny directly. Dealing with Cain while she watched in the background was much less stressful, and without him as a buffer, the full weight of her aura and anger would fall on the ones coming to sign their names.
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