The Evil Emperor's Fragile Heart

"Yes, of course," King Jaren said jovially. "I'd like to see how our baby Alya would look when she's all decked up with jewels and all! In fact, we can dress up both Azar and Alya and make sure that their outfits are nicely coordinated and well matched, can't we?"

Mana frowned. "Big Brother Jules and Big Sister Bella were planning to wear their mauve and purple outfits today, weren't they?" she asked. "Raven and Azar and I are going with emerald green with gold trimmings today."

Bella beamed at her. "No, we actually decided to change last night, because we felt Alya would look better in colours that match her eyes. So we opted for the sapphire blue and emerald green set with silver trimmings," she told Mana.

Mana's brow cleared immediately. "Papa has Azar's outfit already – if you can add a bit of sapphire blue in it to match Alya's, so that Azar has gold trimmings and Alya has silver trimmings – it'll be a perfectly matched set for the two of them as well!" she suggested.

"That sounds good," Bella agreed immediately. "Jules, we can do that, right?"

Jules grinned. "Yes, of course we can," he said cheerfully. "We'll have the two best looking dragon babies ever!"

Azar beamed at Jules and Bella. "Azar wants to match with Alya and Azar also wants to match with Mommy and Daddy!" the little dragon declared.

Jules chuckled and rubbed his little dragon nephew's head. Azar nuzzled his palm affectionately.

Bella, on the other hand, reached out and tickled the chin of her new dragon daughter. "And you, my dear? What would you like, Alya?" she asked softly, her voice filled with affection and indulgence.

Alya looked at her human Mama with her eyes sparkling like gemstones in the early morning sun. "Alya wants to match with Azar and Alya also wants to match with Mama and Dad," the little girl dragon said shyly. "Can Alya do that?"

"Of course you can," Bella said immediately. "Your Dad and I will make sure that our little baby Alya gets what she wants!"

"Thank you, Mama," Alya said sweetly.

Everyone could see Bella melting away at the cuteness overload.

King Jaren laughed happily, seeing how easily the two baby dragons had everyone wrapped around their little claws. But then again, King Jaren himself was the one dancing to their tune most often, wasn't he, he thought wryly to himself. Not that he had any regrets – after all, who else in the world could boast of having not one, but two such utterly adorable (and powerful, too, presumably, even if Alya had only a tenth of Azar's power) little dragon grandbabies?

"Come on, then, let's finalise the outfits for our little Alya and Azar," King Jaren said. "And then, Jules and Bella – you two are going to sleep until lunch and get rid of the dark bags under your eyes."

And thus, King Jaren went away with two excited little dragon babies almost bouncing on his shoulders, and his son and soon to be daughter in law.

General Aquila eyed Mana, Raven and Rook. "Looks like I'll have more time to pay personal attention to the three of you today," he said cheerfully.

Rook and Raven were delighted to hear that – after all, General Aquila was not only their father (or stepfather, in Raven's case) but also the legendary hero of the Obsidian Kingdom that every child of their generation in the Obsidian Kingdom had grown up hearing many, many tales of. It was definitely a rare privilege to learn from him – even for his two sons!

Mana, on the other hand, suppressed a groan. She had somehow managed to convinced herself that this daily exercise and combat training for necessary for her in light of the immense (and immediate) benefits it had gotten her yesterday – and, of course, a good part of the convincing lay in the fact that Raven had made her an extra delicious coffee milkshake today as well, and the caffeine kick had gotten Mana up and running and much more functional than her usual half-dead self in the mornings. But that didn't mean that she wanted to be personally trained by General Aquila with extra attention! In fact, one of the things that she had used to convince herself about this whole thing was that General Aquila's attention would be divided because there were so many of them, and for today, she had actually counted on the new and super cute Alya to take away some of the heat off her own shoulders.

But now, both the cute little dragon babies – who were probably the only creatures in existence that could possibly make the great General Aquila go soft on the training of other people – had gone off to decide on their outfits (and Mana had no doubt that this so called discussion would end up being a fashion parade of the two little dragon babies) – General Aquila would fully focus his attention on the three of them.

And even among the three of them, Raven and Rook were already exceptionally talented, so General Aquila would have to show them something just once, and then both of them would pick it up right away, and after a couple of swings – both the boys would have perfected it! Unbelievably unfair talent, Mana thought crossly.

On the other hand, Mana was the slow one when it came to combat skills – she didn't like it at all, that was one reason, and then there was also a matter of aptitude. Mana knew that she didn't really have much of an aptitude for combat – especially close range combat. Long range combat – shooting, archery and so on – those Mana could manage quite easily, but basically anything which made her move around vigorously and sweat it out was quite reprehensible for her. She didn't want to get down and jump around and get her hands dirty – it was as simple as that. Mana knew this weakness of hers very well, but she wasn't too tempted to do anything much about it – even with the combat training, she tried to do as little as possible, and move as little as possible and touch other people as little as possible as well.

However, what Mana didn't know was that General Aquila had already observed this particular trait of hers and taken note of it on the very first day he had tested her for combat skills. And ever since then, General Aquila had started developing a completely different kind of combat training regime for her – he taught her the clean, minimal, no frills fighting style of fighting which would require barely any contact and would not require too many movements on Mana's part, either. It was an extremely clean fighting style – and if Mana had been a combat fanatic from the modern world, she would have been worshipping General Aquila by now for the sheer genius of this battle hero who could so easily develop a completely new fighting style in a matter of days – this would be an unachievable feat for even great, learned masters!

But Mana wasn't enough of an expert to appreciate all this – but, perhaps, some day in the future, she would get to know and understand the greatness of her dear Father Aqi and how much this new fighting style that he had developed especially for her was worth.

Raven, on the other hand, knew exactly what his beloved and much admired Father Aqi was doing for Mana, and so did King Jaren, and so did Jules. And these three people, who dearly loved Mana, were very, very grateful for General Aquila for making so much effort to teach Mana proper combat skills and to make sure that she was capable of defending herself, and also that she would be healthy and powerful enough for other people to stay clear of her instead of trying to bother her – and also, in the event Mana was unable to rely on her magic for some reason at a certain point in time, she would still be able to hold her ground without any issues whatsoever.

For now, however, Mana was extremely reluctantly, following the instructions of General Aquila and learning the movements from him – she wasn't a natural battle genius like Raven and Rook, so General Aquila had to show her the movements several times, of course. And while that frustrated Mana to some extent, it also boosted her natural competitive tendencies that had made her an ace lawyer at a very young age even in the modern world – and thus, despite Mana's unwillingness to get dirty and sweat it out, her desire to just do it and feeling challenged by Raven and Rook's exceptional performance, she ended up learning faster and faster until General Aquila flashed her a proud smile and announced that they were done for the day.

Mana stopped and looked up at General Aquila in surprise. "We are already done?" she asked.

General Aquila laughed happily and patted her head. "Yes, my dear girl, we are done for today.. Run along now."