Chapter Text
Seriously, Cale is innocent.
All he’d been doing all morning was rolling around in bed, taking care of the children, and watching them play. Really, it was heavenly bliss. Why would he go out at all if his day-off was this enjoyable?
The flash of white light coming from right behind the Black Castle makes him sit up in alert.
The children also seem to have noticed, seeing as they immediately stopped trying to fuse the different colored flowers together with the help of the great and mighty Raon, and looked toward the direction of the flash while simultaneously moving closer to Cale.
“Human,” Raon starts in surprise, moving slowly at first. Then he zooms towards Cale with speed he had only seen during the war, mana already summoned and at his command. “Human! Something strong appeared in the forest!”
“Strong?” Cale asks back. He distantly wonders if it has something to do with the war, but quickly reminds himself that it’s been dealt with already.
Thank god that damned white thing is already dead.
But if it’s not them, then who is it?
More importantly, are they enemies or allies?
“Yes!” Raon’s gaze moves towards the cats who have just arrived next to them. “They’re familiar too! Like, um, like a dragon and my two older siblings!”
Crap. Cale thinks. A dragon and two Cat tribe members?
They’ve already dealt with the Fog Cat tribe during the war though, and while a dragon could be possible, there’s absolutely no reason for one to appear right now.
“Cale-nim!” The familiar call-out, as well as the smooth scales under his fingers that he unconsciously started patting, pulls him out of his thoughts and helps him relax.
Right, he has a legendary swordmaster by his side, as well as a dragon, multiple dragons at that. Whoever came to see them and whatever they want, they’ll have to go through a lot before they get it.
“I just came back after helping Lark train,” Choi Han explains. His hand is already on the hilt of his sword, hidden inside the scabbard. “Cale-nim, I feel very strong presences. But, they feel familiar too.”
“Right, strong Choi Han? This great and mighty dragon feels the same! They feel like a mixture of the Lemonade Gramps and strong Vicross, as well as my older siblings!”
The new input doesn’t help Cale’s thoughts. In fact, it only makes it worse. No matter what assumptions you make, does it make sense that there are existences as strong as a combination of that vicious duo and these talented children?
“We have to protect our home!” Hong exclaims. On nods in agreement.
“Right, right. We should investigate the newly arrived people and figure out what to do then.”
Cale huffs in amusement. On is growing up to be an extremely smart and calculated person. It makes Cale proud.
The way all of them are growing up makes him very proud.
He nods in response to On’s judgement. “Mn. As you said. Let’s go, then.”
The team consisting of Cale, Choi Han and the children, a team they haven’t used in a while, moves out towards where the bright light originated from. They leave through the gates of the Black Castle, circling around to the back and a clearing appeared as soon as they cut through most of the shrubbery.
There, they meet familiar blue eyes, as well as hear a familiar voice. One that sounds much, much older than it does now.
“Human!”
Standing next to— him? Are two familiar looking people as well, but this time with golden, feline eyes.
The strangers consist of two men and one woman. The woman, though shorter than the men, has an air of superiority around her. It makes her look brave and fearless, as though she could carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and unite an army of uncontrollably beings. Yet her stance, and the way her arms are covering both the men beside her, gives off a vibe that says she's willing to sacrifice the world if it means keeping her companions safe.
Her golden eyes flash with recognition and warmth as they meet Cale's reddish-brown ones. “..Ah, hello.”
The calm voice coming from the silver haired woman makes Cale glance at On.
The red haired man on the woman's left bounces on his heels, giving all of them a toothy grin. He gives off a fresh and bright aura, though both Choi Han and Raon can sense that he smells of poison and death. He dwarfs both his companions in both height and build.
Finally, to the man whose appearance resembles the night sky itself.
He's only slightly taller than the woman, and definitely isn't as muscular nor as masculine as the red haired man, but his glare alone makes it feel like he could send you to another galaxy and trap you in an eternal time loop of suffering. The aura of dominance he exhibits transcends normal human standards.
It's similar to that of a dragon lord.
More importantly,
“H, Human,” Raon curls around his shoulders, voice only a touch louder than a whisper. “They.. Look like me and my siblings?”
Exactly.
Cale is flabbergasted.
Sitting in the living room of the Black Castle, one of them currently being coddled by the younger physical illusion of Lord Sheritt, are three almost identical looking people to the children in Cale’s arms.
The look they have in their eyes as they stare at him is the same as the one the children give him as well.
A sound that can only be called one of amusement comes from the old butler standing behind the one person couch Cale is seated on. Choi Han is also pretty much shellshocked, his hand frozen on the hilt of his sword.
He can hear the wolf children shushing each other as they try to peek at the situation happening in the living room. The lack of scolding from Vicross tells him that the chef is also trying to see what happened and why there’s suddenly grown up versions of On, Hong and Raon sitting on their sofa.
Cale finally opens his mouth after a long minute of staring at each of them. “Explain.”
“Yes,” On— the person who looks similar to On— immediately answers. “Uh, you see.. We’re the older versions of,” She awkwardly gestures to the children in his arms. “Them, from the future. To be precise, exactly 11 years into the future. We came back here because we made a deal with the God of Time.”
“You made a what with who.” Cale’s disbelieving statement comes right after. From her left, the grown up version of Hong winces at the blunt answer. The grown up version of— is that seriously Raon?— simply stays silent, accepting the soft pats of his mother.
“I,” The grown up version of On clears her throat. “It’s for a mission you assigned to us. We needed something that no longer exists in the present we live in. So, we decided to go back in time to get it.”
Cale stares at her incredulously. “Something tells me this isn’t the first time you three have gone time traveling.”
The grown up version of On laughs both nervously and exasperatedly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I explained all the adventures we had thus far.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Let’s just ignore it, help the children (they’re no longer children, but Cale doesn’t want to dwell on that), and make sure they leave unharmed. “What do you need?”
“The Arvesilleus flower,” This time, the grown up version of Raon is the one that speaks up. “A type of flower that the smart mage Rosalyn made with the help of me and Goldie Gramps, I think,” He trails off slightly. “Has she made it yet?”
Hearing a teenage Raon call Eruhaben “Goldie Gramps” shouldn’t be as amusing as it is, but Cale can’t help the slight upwards quirk of his lips.
“No, as far as I’m concerned, she hasn’t made a flower like that,” He squashes down whatever curiosity he has for why they need the flower in the first place. If it involves gods, it’s bound to be a headache. “If you’d like, I can contact her about it now.”
“Thank you, Father.” On smiles at him in all her grown up, mature glory. “We would like that very much.”
Unfortunately for her, Cale’s brain short circuited the moment the endearing term left her lips.
Father.
Father.
It’s very unusual for Cale to be distracted. Whatever’s bothering him in his mind is always organized into a list of priority so he can quickly deal with it and rest his head peacefully.
He doesn’t know what order of priority this should go into.
He looks back towards the children and their grown up versions. Right now, they’ve moved to the underground Super Villa. Rosalyn said she had to take care of something regarding the Magic Tower first before heading back, so they said they’d wait at the villa.
The children are currently talking to their grown up versions and asking them questions. He can hear some of their conversations from where he called Rosalyn in the kitchen (he didn’t want to leave the children unattended with their grown up versions), so he could hear every one of their answers.
He could also hear when one of them called him father.
“Cale is our father?” The mature On asked her more mature counterpart. The older On just smiled.
“Wouldn’t you say he is?” She unconsciously runs her hand through her messed up hair, grabbing a black ribbon similar to the one Cale uses. She then ties her shoulder length hair into a half ponytail. Once again, similar to how Cale usually styles his hair. “He’s guided us a lot in our childhood. I mean, he’s still guiding you now, isn’t he? It’s the only reason why we grew up so well and were able to take over the Molran household with little to no trouble.”
“We took over the Molran household?” On chances a glance towards the quiet, but grinning Ron at the sidelines as Hong popped into the conversation.
“Woah! So we really do get to take over, just like Grandpa Ron said!”
The older Hong nods vigorously. “Yeah, yeah. Father taught us that all promises within the family are meant to be kept, that includes everyone in the family, you know? Ah, which reminds me,” His head whips around to face the older version of Raon so fast that his shaggy, short red hair, reminiscent to how Cale’s hair looked when he first took over his body, bounced with the movement. “You! You still haven’t given me my coins, dongsaeng!”
The older version of Raon, with straight black hair as long as Eruhaben’s, tied into a half ponytail like On, and tan skin that reminds Cale of Litana, frowns. His hand waves in the air dismissively and his voice comes out somewhat cocky and arrogant, but filled with the affection Cale recognizes he gives only to him and the cat children.
“That bet doesn’t count, that stupid god messed everything up by interfering!”
Stupid god?
Cale quickly leaves the kitchen, pocketing the video communication device that he almost forgot along the way. He sits next to the oddly quiet Raon, who quickly uses that chance to lay down on his lap.
“What the hell have you three been betting on?”
From the sidelines, he hears Choi Han mutter something about how betting shouldn’t have even been introduced to the children, but he ignores it.
Hong’s counterpart responds enthusiastically. “We made a bet including some of the gods we met!”
“Hong.” On warns, knowing how uninclined their father is about being involved with gods.
Cale raises an eyebrow. “Did you win?”
“Yeah!”
“Good.”
As Cale nods his head approvingly, multiple sighs could be heard in the room.
“Hey, future me,” Raon speaks up for the first time in a while. “You better win next time.”
Future Raon scoffs. “Hey, little me, I win all the time! I win everything! Besides, Hong hyung is my brother, so his wins are my wins too,” He meets Cale’s eyes. “Right, human?”
Cale nods again as he pets the Raon still in his dragon form, but stops as he notices something.
“Hey, you call Hong ‘hyung’, and I heard you call On ‘noona’ a while ago. Why do you still call me ‘human’?”
“Because you’re our human.”
The answer coming from both the tiny dragon and teenage dragon renders him speechless.
Remind him again, why did he even try?
The amused snickers coming from the sidelines makes him sigh heavier. He should just quietly wait for Rosalyn with the rest of them.