With the final urn claimed, we walked out of the catacombs hand in hand.

As Kliss prepped dinner in the bar’s large hearth she hummed a song under her breath. It took my mind a few seconds to recognize the tune. The song that was becoming louder and clearer with each stanza escaping from her lips was “There is nothing better in the world”.

It was a song sung by Oleg Anofriyev in the 1969 animated film The Bremen Town Musicians.

“Woo-ooo-ooo, yep, yep,” Kliss concluded as I simply stared at her in bewilderment.

“What?” She turned to me with a smile, the setting sun dancing on her orange-red-violet crystalline mane.

“You’re singing… in Russian,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she grinned back.

“How do you know these words?” I demanded.

“You’re thinking of the exact words for me as I sing them,” she replied. “I’m just voicing out your thoughts.”

“That’s… unexpected,” I commented.

“Thanks,” she blushed ever so slightly. “Ever since the moment I saw you and your sister sing this exact tune together in the ruins of the Alanian tower a year ago… I’ve been daydreaming about doing it too. And now I can actually sing these words!”

“Oh?” I arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” her blush deepened into radial patterns of red crystalline shimmers. “The old me, Overseer Kliss, thought that a friendship between myself and the two odd Ishikarian teenagers I met would be impossible… that such a thing could never happen!”

Her fingers tapped against the grill’s edge nervously.

“It did though,” I smiled. “I made sure of it.”

“Yeah,” Kliss brushed her mane, making the crystals ripple with dancing rainbow edges. “You did. You gave me everything I lost to the Inquisitor of Equality… and so much more, filled the gnawing emptiness in my soul with the firestorm of a dragon’s dreams and then padded it with your friendship and support. Every day I wake up and don’t understand why I deserve all of this happiness, this bond between us.”

“I already told you why I’ve done it,” I said.

“Well, say it again,” Kliss insisted. “Slay my self-doubt with your shiny words.”

“I saved you because I manufactured self-replicating death,” I said. “My virus got out from Aralsk, infected a female captain, got her and her two girls killed. I got there far too late with the vaccine. I could have saved her and her family, but the slowness of our bureaucracy didn’t get the information out to me in time. Her husband, Vasili had this… look that I’ll never forget, one of despair and utter hopelessness as the doc under my command injected the antiviral solution into his vein.”

“Oh no,” Kliss noticed my somber expression and slid to my side, wrapping me in a tight hug. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you of that, Slava.”

“It’s in the past and it’s something that I cannot change,” I said. “But it’s the foundation of what I’m doing in Skyisle, creating life, bringing hope to you, Delta, Leemy… and everyone else. I swore to myself to do as much good as possible in my second life and you were a big part of that equation. I saw someone suffering from the Vows to Equality and I couldn’t just idly sit by.”

“Thank you,” Kliss rubbed her cheeks against mine and then returned to making us dinner, humming another tune from the repertoire of The Bremen Town Musicians.

“You’ve got a lovely voice,” I commented. “Have you ever sang before?”

“No,” Kliss replied. “This is my first time singing.”

“You’ve got a talent for it,” I said.

“Nah,” Kliss shook her crystal mane. “I think that I’m simply pulling the talent to do so from you, leaning on my kobolds. It’s kind of similar to breaking iron doors with the strength of the hoard multiplied through me.”

“Hang on, you’re capable of instantaneously extrapolating the talents of your kobolds?” I asked.

“Apparently,” Kliss said.

Her words were ripe for exploitation.

“How could quantum entanglement affect computational speed?” I asked in Russian.

"Quantum entanglement occurs when the quantum states of multiple particles are interconnected, regardless of their spatial separation. Quantum theory, which emerged in the 1920s, clarified the observed wave-particle duality at atomic levels,” Kliss responded in Russian without a pause. “In 1980, Paul Benioff introduced the concept of the quantum Turing machine, utilizing quantum theory to outline a basic computer model. Later, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard utilized quantum theory to develop cryptographic protocols. While these algorithms weren't geared towards solving practical problems, they mathematically demonstrated that querying a black box with a quantum state in superposition—often called quantum parallelism—could extract more information."

“Holy shit,” I murmured, my eyes growing wide. “Did you even understand what you just said?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m mostly giving your own thoughts form with my mouth.”

“I didn’t think that exact answer though,” I said.

“You didn’t but… some parallel part of your soul certainly did,” Kliss replied with a smug look.

“A parallel part of my soul?” I pursed my lips. The answer became obvious to me in another second.Stolen story; please report.

“Sasha,” Kliss nodded. “I am piggybacking on her thoughts about your thoughts.”

“So you can voice out her thoughts because she's your kobold?” I asked.

“So it seems,” Kliss said. “Even if I have no idea what any of that means. It’s mostly… this, beautiful alien music to me, a chorus that my mouth can apparently mindlessly sound out, sing because I’m a dragon.”

“Innate talent without the understanding of the specifics,” I muttered. “That could be incredibly useful to our dangerous enterprise of obliterating the two imperial legions and destroying Skyisle records.”

“We shouldn’t use dragonfire to do it,” Kliss said suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“Now that I gave it some thought - top imperial Scrutimancers will absolutely sniff things in the Astral and be able to track me down to wherever I am,” Kliss said. “We can’t use magic for this mission at all. Shit.”

“Right,” I nodded. “That’s fine.”

“That’s… fine?” Kliss looked at me.

“We’ll buy the necessary supplies to create mundane weapons in Agamemnon,” I said. “I’ve been asking around via voicast calls from the Overseers office about such things already.”

“What, you can make an electromagnet that quickly?” Kliss asked.

“Nah,” I said. “I can make a gun and dynamite.”

“Which is what?”

“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Let's get back to the talent lean testing. Does it help if I’m running a spell for you to be able to cast it or replicate it innately?”

“Slava, we can’t use magic,” Kliss repeated.

“We can’t use reality-influencing magic,” I said. “Personal magic focused inward doesn’t leave a very deep imprint in the Astral since the spell doesn't radiate mana over the place. NeuroVista allows me to accelerate the speed of my soul-operated thought to disassemble spells on the fly. I want to see if your mind can be accelerated along with mine, improving your reaction time.”

“Would that really work?” Kliss asked.

“I think it would,” I said. “Whatever is happening between us seems like quantum entanglement.”

“Uhh,” Kliss looked at me.

“In quantum physics, entanglement allows particles to simultaneously affect each other, no matter the distance. It’s as if information between entangled states is transferred instantaneously,” I explained. “From what I’m seeing with my Infoscopes, the dragon-kobold data tether has no information delay whatsoever.”

“Meaning what?”

“Between you and Sasha—and even with me—the information, or in our case, talents and thoughts, transfer seamlessly. This tether that connects you to your kobolds... it's a living network of entangled states. You are pulling skills from your kobolds, and even accessing our thoughts—it’s like observing quantum mechanics at play in a biological framework,” I said. “The only delay in such a system would be biological, limited by the speed of thought and the speed of signals running down a kobold's nervous system. A human’s nervous system is ineffective, slow.”

“Really?” Kliss asked.

“In a human, A-delta fibers transmit pain at around 12 to 30 meters per second and C fibers transmit pain at about 0.5 to 2 meters per second,” I explained. “A meter is this much by the way.” I stretched out my hands. “An Earth second is this much… tik-tok.”

“Huh,” Kliss said. “I didn’t know that pain in people travels so slowly. How long does it take a person to move a finger?”

“The time it takes for the brain to send a signal to move a finger typically ranges from 0.15 to 0.20 seconds,” I explained. “This includes the time needed for the brain to process the decision to move the finger and send the appropriate signals through the motor neurons to the muscles of the finger.”

“Soooo… are dragons faster or something?” Kliss asked with a hopeful look of emerald-citrine eyes.

“Dragons are faster,” I nodded. “You don’t have nerve fibres like a human does.”

“Uhh, what do I have then?” She asked, turning the steak over in on the pub’s grill.

“Dragons utilize a crystalline-based neurotransmission system, I said. “It’s fundamentally different from human biology. In humans, nerve impulses are transmitted by ion exchanges along axons, which, despite being fast, have inherent delays. Your crystalline-organic structures, however, operate through quantum effects, allowing for instantaneous communication across any part of your body. Your reaction time is seamless, not just between your mind and fingers, but in transfer of information from your kobolds to you.”

“Wowza,” Kliss’s eyes lit up.

“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “The crystalline structures of the kobold-dragon network not only provide instantaneous communication but likely also contribute to your ability to rapidly process multiple sensory inputs and responses.”

The dragon girl’s eyes lit up with possibilities.

“So during a battle, could I maybe... innately use more than just my own eyes and mind?” She asked. “If I can tap into the perception of my kobolds I’ll make better decisions during a fight, yeah?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Your kobolds are an extension of your own crystalline net. It’s like having a distributed sensor network. You gain real-time feedback and situational awareness from multiple locations. The more kobolds you have around as extra pairs of eyes, the better your reaction should get... theoretically.”

“By Equality, Slava,” Kliss uttered. “Aradria’s never taken her kobolds with her to a fight… they didn’t even have wings!”

“Right, they couldn’t fly,” I nodded. “But bees can. After dinner, you should claim all of the bees that are under our control to test how having a kobold swarm will affect your observational abilities.”

“Wait, can bees even see far? Aren’t their eyes tiny?” Kliss asked me.

“Hrmmm… The eyes of bees are tailored to their needs as pollen foragers and navigators,” I recalled. “They can see colors well and their vision extends into the ultraviolet range, which is invisible to humans, but they have trouble with the red spectrum. In terms of distance, bees are best at seeing things within 1 to 2 meters. Their vision was evolutionarily optimised for identifying flowers and avoiding obstacles.”

“Aw,” Kliss made a cute pout. “So then what type of kobold would be more optimal for visual observation in a fight?”

I pursed my lips, mentally going over various Skyisle insects.

“Dragonflies,” I said. “Skyisle dragonflies have the best vision among insects when it comes to distance and overall visual acuity. Their eyes are remarkably sophisticated, composed of up to 30,000 individual lenses, which provide them with a nearly 360-degree field of vision. The innate magic of local dragonflies amplifies their sight further as they grow. A high-level dragonfly is an unbeatable bug hunter because of its vision and response time.”

“Really?” Kliss asked. “How far can dragonflies fly anyway?”

“Dragonflies navigate thousands of kilometres during migration. The local dragonfly species migrate from Skyisle down to the ocean, for example. Because of this, they're the most visually and physically adept of all flying insects,” I added.

“What about dragonettes?” Kliss asked.

“Dragonettes are flying reptiles, the adult species of which are ¾ the size of a human. Due to that and their marked autonomy, they would take too long to catch and to dominate,” I shook my head. “It would require far too many soul-shards to overpower a dragonette’s soul. I can get the bee swarm to bring down a few dragonflies, slice up my soul and inject it into the dragonflies, turning them into phylacteries without issues tonight.”

“Can’t I just bite a dragonfly and kobold it up?” Kliss asked.

“Sure, but it won’t obey you as well as a phylactery-dragonfly,” I explained.

“Wait, can’t I just get information from your Infoscopes?”

“It won’t work as well as dragonflies,” I said. “Infoscopes are negatively-charged magic. Dragon syntropic magic works best with physical anchors. Dragonflies could be coated in dragonglass powder without slowing them down.”

“Got it,” Kliss nodded, sliding a plate with cooked steak towards me. “Let's eat and then catch me some dragonflies then!”