World in My Claws: Mating Flight Concluded: Mating Flight, #2

By Bard Bloom

Jyothky and her fellow dragons were supposed to have a nice simple mating flight on Hove. Instead they got tangled up in everything — accidentally conquering a sophisticated, unwilling country, unleashing an undead god upon an innocent city, discovering horrible mind-controlling parasites, enduring an invasion by some of their older and more powerful friends, and committing massive violations of draconic etiquette. How can they possibly get out of this with their honor or even their hides intact?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bard Bloom
• Release date: May 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533738189

Book preview

World in My Claws

Mating Flight Concluded

By Bard Bloom Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.

Table of Contents

World in My Claws

Table of Contents

View of a Rebellion (Day 126)

Rituals of Conquest (Day 144)

The Best Food On Hove (reprise) (Day 148)

Back To The Mating Flight (Day 150)

Surgical Arena (Day 152)

Twelve Dooms (Day 158)

Wheel of Iron (Day 162)

Language of Serpents (Day 167)

Patthakadu (Day 169)

I Win The Sex Contest! (Day 188)

Fury! (Day 274)

(Day 277)

Nrararn Idyll (Day 345)

Etiquette of Arilash (Day 394)

Camp Magistrate Beanfeld (Day 586)

False Negatives (Day 650 and 651)

Etiquette of Jyothky (Day 683)

Death to the Cunyas (Day 710)

A Judgment of Ghosts (Day 711)

The Invaders Plot (Day 810)

The Conquest of Vlechinse (Day 944)

Terror Hospital (Day 948)

Undercover (Day 1126)

RARU (Day 1128)

Seditious Chocolaterie (Day 1129)

Persuasions (Day 1130)

Night Visit (Day 1131 or 1132 depending on how one counts)

Rescue (Day 1132)

Defeat (Day 1133)

The Restoration of Trest (Day 1140)

Etiquette of Csirnis (Day 1241)

Acting Married (Day 1337)

Damma and Katayay (Day 1474)

Conquest of Damma (Year 4, Day 1477)

Offending Ythac (Day 2742)

Returning to Perstra (Day 2745)

On the Elimination of Cyoziworms from Perstra and her Environs by Hovens with Extremely Limited Draconic Assistance (Preliminary Report) (Day 2749)

Prelude to a Coup (Day 4383)

The Democracy of Dragons (Day 4402)

Home Again (Day 4564)

Tricking Rankotherium (Day 4566)

Glossary

Other Works By Bard Bloom

View of a Rebellion (Day 126)

Your homes, your jobs, your families, to them you must return while you still live! The flames, they are ready to harm you! Llredh circled the rioters so low that his wingtips furrowed the crowd. He kept his hukuchô curled up high in the astral plane, so that they would disperse intentionally or not at all.

Monsters of evil! Spawn of the anti-gods! Go back to Garchune! Lady of Peppers prepares a woeful soup for your punishment! yelled Dr. Sband. He had been delivering an incendiary sermon proclaiming that our conquest of Trest was illegal, illegitimate, and evil. (He was wrong. I’m pretty sure it was actually legal.) Grands upon grands of hovens packed Marmelane Square to hear him, and a half-dozen other speakers: brave loyalists to the former regime, or firebrands and rabblerousers, depending on your point of view.

Llredh laughed, a deep booming laugh from his throat and his wings that must have rattled every window in Churry City. Threats of imaginary spirits, these do not impress me! Threats of riots, these do not impress me either. Burn your city down if you like! You shall not get another!

I was circling far over Llredh’s head. This conquest is his idea. He can do all the work — and if there are any rewards from it, those are his too, to share with his husband if he wants. But Ythac had asked me to go with Llredh and keep him and Churry City safe. The hovens still had some weapons that could kill a dragon, here and there, and Llredh’s dangersense isn’t much better than my sense of touch.

The crowd didn’t seem to have any serious weapons, or not the martial kind at any rate. They weren’t there to fight us, anyway. They weren’t even expecting us to be there; after all, we’d been in Perstra the capital three hours ago.

The crowd’s weapons were the different kind, and they wore them as their clothes. By the stage two dozen judges listened to Sband, the balance-emblems on their flat-caps damp with the drizzle. Beyond them, a half-grand of hovens who were wearing the striped teal uniform of Churry City’s civil service, with abacus pendants for the accountants, wire circles for the gendarmes, black bottles for the secretaries, and so on. Behind them was a squad of ritual musicians, a company of refuse-takers, a brigade of shopkeepers, a legion of students. Without their labors, Churry City would be ungovernable and all but unliveable.

Dr. Sband didn’t quite seem to understand the powers at his command, though. So he invoked some powers which weren’t his to command, and, as far as I could tell, didn’t exist at all. You are arrogant, you are foolish, you overreach yourself! Bmern and Drukah will bring destructions to you!

Llredh didn’t understand what opposed him, either. He roared, My might, you doubt her? My ruthlessness, you doubt her? Your country, she is the present for my wife Ythac! I do not tolerate disobedience towards Ythac! Dispersal and obedience, these are your protections from me! Silly gods, fake gods, not so much so!

They are serious gods, real gods! You will discover this soon, to your harm!

Llredh arched his head back, as one does when one is about to breathe powerfully. I squealed at him, Stop! Don’t do that! He ignored me, of course. His flames covered the stage and splashed further, scorching judges, singing accountants and gendarmes and secretaries, heating the face-fur of musicians and refuse-takers and shopkeepers. He wasn’t trying to kill them very much though. He uses tighter, hotter fire on his friends.

The stage burned, where it was wood. Hoven clothes and fur burned. Trestean flags set around the stage burned. (We hadn’t yet replaced the Trestean flag, but the hovens were using it as a symbol of opposition to us.) The hovens on the stage fled if they could, but a dozen of them couldn’t. The hovens in the audience mostly fled too. Of course, Marmelane Square doesn’t have very good exits, so some of them fled and some of them fell and got trampled by the others’ hooves.

Llredh boomed, Who can stand against me? There is no hoven, there is no dragon, there is no god on Hove who can! Peaceful submission to me, she alone is your hope and your survival! This was a bit of a boast past truth. Csirnis and Llredh are fairly evenly matched.

Rather more practically, I swooped down and landed on the stage. Or tried to; my left hindleg was on the wooden part, the burning wooden part, and fell through. No great matter, really. I swept the fallen hovens off the burning part of the stage, and started putting the Arcane Anodyne into them.

Jyothky! Your chore, what is she, why is she? These people, they opposed me, they are dying! What could be simpler? There is nothing, there can be nothing! he said in Grand Draconic. (Actually he talks normally in Grand Draconic, I’ve just made it sound like the way he usually talks.)

Ythac asked me to keep you from destroying Churry City too much. That includes not killing all the people.

My breath, I rendered her moderate! Those who die, they are few in number and circumscribed! The rest, they learn!

You’re better off letting them accept your rulership and live. Says Ythac, not just me.

Will they live? Llredh landed nearby, on the stone pavement of the square.

"I’m not that bad with healing spells, on hovens. I’ve had lots of practice, fixing Tarcuna after I killed her cyoziworm," I reminded him.

He roared and struck the pavement with his tail, so that it crazed and shattered. The worm, the worm, the vile worm! I do not forget the worm! Soon, soon must I pacify Trest! For my wife, yes, but for my revenge too!

I scooped up another struggling hoven. A minister or something, it’s hard to tell after their clothes are burned off. Why are you calling Ythac your wife, Llredh? He’s a boy. You’re both boys. They’re on the perverts side of the mating flight. I’m on the cripples side, myself.

Hah! Last night we have the mount-fight, only without the fighting. The love, that is easy with Ythac. But the sex, there are many choices, some nights we want to not be so careful. The quick game of cards, we play her, that is our mount-fight! Ythac loses. So he is my wife again. So often he is!

I don’t see how you can pretend to have the least bit of honor, if that’s how you carry on.

The gambling debt, what is more honorable than keeping her?

"You picked the stakes, though. It wasn’t like an open-ended gamble with a small person, where you didn’t expect to lose and you get surprised by the result."

No, it was not that, said Llredh. "Zṥràsḫiọ źó Hrašśiǒ" Politeness is lightness.

Right. Well, the next time I ask a question like that, just look mysterious and superior and don’t tell me the nasty little answer.

Ythac’s the Horizonal Quill wrote words in my mind. «Llredh broke up the demonstration already, didn’t he?»

«Yes. One cloud of fire, and they all ran off. I’m healing the ringleaders now. You did want them healed, didn’t you?»

«Oh, thank you! Could you make sure they don’t run off before I get them arrested? I’d ask Llredh, but he’d probably sit on them.»

«He’s not very happy with them, or with me.»

«He likes you just fine,» Ythac wrote.

«Right. I was his third-favorite girl in the mating flight.» Which is, of course, calling Ythac a girl, just like Llredh did. I was annoyed at both of them though.

«I really am trying to get you to be friends with each other.»

«I’d be a lot happier being his friend if he weren’t fireblasting crowds of hovens. Or torturing hovens. Or conquering hovens.»

«That’s just an excuse. You’ve killed nearly as many hovens as he has. Your moral superiority over my husband is pretty scanty.» Ythac wrote.

«I don’t torture people or steal their countries,» I answered. If you are ever in an ethical discussion and that’s your best response, you’ve pretty much lost. So I healed the last couple of hovens on the stage. They weren’t exactly very scorched; they’d run up to see if they could help the speakers, and sort of gotten trapped between Llredh and me.

« And neither of you reanimates dead mhelvul paingods and doesn’t take proper care of them and lets them take over major cities, like your fiancé Osoth,» wrote Ythac. «I don’t think any of us are in a particularly strong moral position at this point. I think we’ve got to stay around here for a gross-year or two. Long enough to give the hovens all the benefits of proper draconic rule. By way of apology for all the chaos and devastation we’ve given them so far, even if you’re not much of an Uplifter.»

«We’ve certainly got plenty to apologize for, and I think I’m getting to be an Uplifter.» I agreed. «I’m not sure that Llredh’s style of enforcing rule is going to give us less to apologize for, though.» Dangersense mumbled of a minor threat off from a corner of the square. «Sorry, Ythac, I’ve got to go. Someone’s shooting at us.»

«Thanks, Jyothky!» Ythac wrote.

A purple-furred hoven woman was running across the mostly-empty plaza towards us, holding a big ray gun. When I turned to look at her, she stopped running and pointed it at me. I swatted it out of her hands with a wingtip. She raced after it, shouting, You killed my husband!

I did? I asked, and breathed lightning on the ray gun before she could get to it. She hadn’t been lying, but I hadn’t killed anyone in a while. At least three or four weeks.

He’s in the street over there! He fell while everyone was running, and nobody stopped to help him up, they just ran all over him, and you killed him!

The error, she comes here with a ray gun! said Llredh. "The dragons, they did not kill your husband. The hovens, they killed him."

So I bit his tail.

What is that for, Jyothky?

I waddled towards the edge of the square. A dozen or so hovens were lying trampled and bloody by each street out of the plaza, with a few less-injured ones trying to tend them here and there. Which one is your husband?

She pointed. Her husband was quite mangled, marked with the prints of many hooves. His right eye was smashed, and many bones broken here and there. He’s not quite dead though. I put the Arcane Anodyne into him. Twice, because the first one didn’t fill him.

He moaned, and tried to sit up. Which wasn’t a very good idea. A few barely-healed bones broke again, from the sound of it. So I got his wife to make him lie down again, and put another the Arcane Anodyne into him, and some of the slow healing spells. And then did the other injured hovens, because that seemed fair.

And then the gendarmes came. They weren’t particularly racing to the square all full of obedience to their beloved draconic overlords. But Ythac had been intimidating the gendarmes chief, rather more gently than Llredh had been intimidating the crowd, and had persuaded him of the obvious truism that the citizens of Churry City would be better off if they enforced the dragons’ decrees rather than making the dragons do it themselves.

The hovens at my corner were quiet and subdued. Maybe I was mollifying them by healing their wounded, or maybe they remembered that I had destroyed the Peace Everywhere Array more or less single-handedly. The gendarmes put the husband and a few others of the injured on stretchers, and arrested the wife and some of the other helpers.

Why are you arresting them? I asked of the lieutenant or whatever in charge.

The lieutenant looked away from me. Gendarme chief said to arrest the people in the square.

Probably mostly the ones on the stage, I said.

The lieutenant looked over to where Llredh was towering over some previously-grilled speakers. Um…Chief said everyone. We gotta do everyone. Starting with these, I guess. He and his men started asking many, many questions to the people they had captured. We gotta be thorough. Chief said so.

On the other side of the square, matters weren’t so peaceful. The uninjured audience members were yelling at the gendarmes who were trying to arrest them. The argument had a few salient and intellectually substantial points:

The audience members were assisting some injured people. (Quiet gendarme answer: their medics will take care of them.)

The audience members committed no crime. (Morose gendarme answer: Chief said to arrest you.)

The audience members are loyal Tresteans; the gendarmes are collaborators. (Miserable gendarme answer: Archons say the dragons are in charge. What’re we gonna do?)

So I waddled over and healed their injured people as best as I could, which helped on point 1 a lot. I didn’t really have much of an answer for points 2 or 3. The dragons in charge are Ythac and Llredh. It’s their territory, I’m just a guest trying to be helpful.

To my best friend, his horrible husband, and his vast empire of exceedingly unhappy subjects. This is getting to be a problem.

Rituals of Conquest (Day 144)

Some days, we seem to be drowning Trest in a sea of blood and flame. That’s perfectly normal. Other days, like today, we’re trying to drown it in a sea of dramaturgy. I suppose I should worry more about the blood and flame.

Tarcuna woke me up in her customary manner of these days. Specifically, by picking her Dragon-Taming Staff — which is a length of steel drain pipe to which she has attached some heavy hand-sized bells and cloth streamers — and thumping my eye with it until the noise or the danger woke me up. (If the staff isn’t at hand, she’ll use a chair or something, which works just as well.) She has realized that I am not going to kill her for any but the gravest of reasons, and exploits that mercilessly.

I’m not asleep, I’m awake, I said, in tediously non-rhyming Trestean.

It’s humiliate-the-Tresteans day. Ceremony’s in a little over an hour, she said.

I twisted my head around and glared at my body, which was still small and tubby and flat black. Oh, that’s right. I’d better get ready then.

I don’t suppose you’ll let me out of it? she asked.

"You might be part of the Diplomatic Brigate of old Trest, in which case you belong there for one reason. Otherwise, you’re part of my retinue. Actually you’re all of my retinue, and I certainly want you there."

Everyone watching will think I’ve sold my country, she said.

Which isn’t so far off, I said. At least you got a good price.

"You are unbearably comforting sometimes, she said. At least I had the foresight to attach myself to you by unbreakable bonds before the conquest."

I slithered out of my tent — Ythac had acquired some big tents for the dragons to sleep in — and started shapeshifting a row of curved spikes down my back. You can leave any time you like, as far as I’m concerned. I’d be sorry to see you go of course. But I don’t really need a hoven prostitute very much, much less a retired one.

Only if you send me away again, she said. "It’s not just the side effects of getting freed. You’ve conveniently made me the enemy of honest and loyal people everywhere."

I’m honest! I’m loyal! I noted, while I gave myself a triple rack of black lyre-shaped horns. Impractical as anything, but they ought to be pretty.

"‘People’ means the sort of people you call ‘hovens’. We don’t even like that name, said Tarcuna. She got out a cosmetic kit, and started tinting her ears blue. She muttered, If I’m a political whore, I might as well dress the part."

Beg pardon?

Decent people do not wear bright blue ear-dye to formal events, as my parents were very careful to tell me several dozen times, said Tarcuna. But I am doing it anyway. In case anyone might possibly wonder whether I consider myself decent.

I don’t know what to do about her when she’s in that sort of mood. So I made her do something useful instead. "Well, I want to look proper. Do I?"

She stared up at me. Tilt your head right…turn a bit…No, your horns on the left are a lot closer than on the right.

I fixed them, and checked with a scrying spell. Ah. Thank you.

The Stone of Merraro

Behind the great cathedral of Merraro is a glorified and very sacred shed. It’s decorated like a chapel itself, with carved illustrations of the benevolent suns and some mythical angels and whatnots. It’s lit by (as of yesterday) thirty-eight big oil lamps with the flags of the nations that merged into Trest. But it’s still a big shed, for storing a big rock.

And it is, indeed, rather a big rock. It is almost rectangular except for a long spike on the top right, making it about the length of my neck total, and half that wide, and a nice solid two or three feet thick. It’s a pretty grey color, with faint swirly spirals of darker grey shot through with golden sparkles of pyrite. And, according to the guidebooks, in days that Trest thought more glorious, Archconsul Nespers — who was a stonemason in her youth — carved the first treaty establishing Trest. For amity, for loyalty, — for glory, for peace, for civilization, we do freely and gloriously unite together and form the country of Trest. Pleovar, Ventelia, Greater Naspen,… Thirty-eight names are carved in the stone, seven of them by Nespers’ hand. (I don’t know why the guidebook says that; hoven hands don’t have claws to speak of. I’m sure she used tools.) The rest came later, as other countries joined Trest. I don’t know who carved them though.

Lots of people — both kinds of people — had been collected to observe the fate of the big rock. Lawmakers and treasurers and generals, wearing their greatest finery, with silken cords binding their hands to their necks. Reporters for newspapers and television stations. Hated and hateful the event would surely be, but a thoroughly-documented hatefulness. Dozens of gendarmes, wearing new blue and orange spiked caps. And of course the seven former consuls of former Trest were there. They didn’t get to wear their finery though. They wore leather yokes, with heavy chains trailing behind.

And us, of course: the seven remaining dragons, all looking as glorious as possible. «Ythac, why aren’t you making a point of having seven dragons and seven consuls?» I asked him.

«Couldn’t think of anything sensible to do with it. If you five had asked to rule Trest under us, I might have done something with it. Since you’re not planning to help us, or even stay past the end of the mating flight, I didn’t want to make you seem like crucial symbolic elements to the dracarchy.» Ythac’s mental letters were jerky, the points on the i and f tall and spiky. But I couldn’t tell that he was nervous just to look at him. He was a sculpture of delicate blues and greens, his natural spikes augmented by secondary ruffs, staring monumentally at the hovens. Llredh, next to Ythac, grinned a huge predatory grin, and curled his tail over Ythac’s.

The chief of gendarmes gestured at the lawmakers with her baton. Most of the lawmakers dropped to their knees and recited in a loud ragged unison, We are gathered today to surrender our empire to Llredh and Ythac our conquerors. Two of them, more battered than most, refused to kneel and chant. The chief gestured. Two frozen-faced gendarmes picked their way through the surrenderers. They tied cords of catgut around the arms of the resisters, and twisted them slowly. The others finished their recitation, and then started it again, quietly, as a background obbligato to the rest of the ritual.

Llredh roared. Let Archconsul Shuvanne bring forth the ancient symbols of Trestean unity, so that we may revise it to show the reality that is now, and evermore shall be! He had obviously been rehearsing too, or that would have come out in his usual twisty speech.

Gendarmes unrolled the chains that trailed off the backs of the consuls’ harnesses, and carried them into the shed, and hooked them into seven hooks in the front of a cart. Someone surreptitiously started a little motor, too: the Stone of Merraro was far too heavy for seven unathletic hovens to drag. But the consuls had to do a good deal of the work.

The leaders of Trest wept when the Stone of Merraro rolled out of the shed. One of the two who had resisted fell to his knees then, and the catgut was untied from his arms, and he joined the chant.

Ythac reared on his hind legs, and spread his glorious blue wings. "Hovens of Trest! Your former rulers were fonts of wickedness! They stole from you the admiration that all of Hove once had, and replaced it by universal fear and resentment! They took your money and your peace and your children, and built weapons and tried to impose their will upon the whole of the world. You poured forth your blood and your labor, and all that came to you was hatred and strife! At last, in their arrogance and blindness, the consuls challenged the world-travellers, the world-conquerors, the dragons. Such a thing could not endure, and has not endured.

And today the supremacy of the consuls is over. Today my husband and I shall rule you. Today is the beginning of peace, of harmony, of prosperity and joy.

Ythac and Llredh reared their heads back and breathed together upon the Stone of Merraro, darkness and flame. I wasn’t entirely sure that darkness and flame were the best symbols of peace, harmony, prosperity, and joy. Speaking as a fire-breather myself.

Llredh’s fire neatly melted the top spike off the top of the Stone. That sort of evened it out, which will do for a symbol of harmony, I suppose. The crunch of the spike falling back and breaking the wall of the shed sure won’t.

I don’t think the hovens noticed the result of Ythac’s darkness at first. A few seconds later Tarcuna wailed, The words! The words!

The Stone now read, For agony, for legality, for humiliation, for passivity, for submission, we are compelled to deliver the unity of Trest into the claws of Ythac and Llredh.

«I didn’t know you could pervert meanings with that,» I wrote to him.

«It’s like causing grammatical errors, only semantic. I did cheat a bit with a language spell though,» he wrote back.

And then the ritual got exceedingly dull. Ythac had composed a Charter for the Dracarchy of Trest. It was generally based on the Charter of the Consularchy of Trest, except that Ythac and Llredh, each, have absolute authority to do whatever they want. Mostly, though, the hovens are expected to govern themselves, as long as they do so wisely in Ythac’s opinion. Not the sort of ûj you might expect.

The only part that was the least bit interesting was when the last remaining resister needed to get his arm amputated. I broke the script a bit and put a healing spell into him afterwards.

Coda: Conquest Party

Afterwards, of course, there was a big reception in the huge public square in front of the cathedral. Everyone at the ritual had to attend the reception too, of course. Only a handful of Merrarovians came, and they mostly didn’t eat very much and didn’t look very happy.

But Ythac and Llredh did pick up a gaggle of hovens, eager to chatter with them, to flatter them, to offer their services. I only recognized the chief of gendarmes. So I asked Tarcuna, Who are those people?

I don’t know many of them. The one with the red stripes and the red cape is named Uborst. His picture’s in the paper sometimes, he does a lot with politics. The one next to him is Larella Spargee. She’s very rich, she gave a great deal to Archconsul Shuvanne. I don’t know the others…oh, that one with the green and pink globes is Reverend Dreyrey.. He’s in some strange sect or other, he’s on television a lot. We always changed the channel when he started talking.

"Well, I’m glad that some important people look like they want to cooperate with Ythac and Llredh. They’re going to have an awful time trying to govern a huge nation by force, just the two of them," I said.

People who attach themselves to the dragons aren’t going to be people you’d want to rely on. Anyone with any principles or moral integrity is going to oppose you. Even if you cut their arms off, said Tarcuna. She flopped her useless arm.

I’m sure Ythac can get them to behave decently, I said. "They can’t really keep secrets from Ythac, and people like that are surely going to be particularly cowardly and susceptable to threats of violence."

Have I been paraded around in public enough yet? I’m the only Trestean citizen lucky enough not to be surrendering to Llredh and Ythac today. Even if that’s because you already got me.

Well, since I do have her, I have to take care of her. You can go home if you want. I’m going to stay here ‘til the end of the reception though.

The Best Food On Hove (reprise) (Day 148)

We — the mating flight, plus Tarcuna — have been staying in Perspeckle, by the Quenjo Wastes. The hovens here are not terribly happy with us. They are mostly soldiers, or the families and friends of soldiers. They hate the drakes quite reasonably and (uninvolved) Arilash and me quite unreasonably for killing so many of their comrades in our abortive war. They hate all of us (quite unreasonably) for the dragons who are not us conquering their country. Oh, and they hate me (quite reasonably) for destroying the Peace Everywhere Array, with which they could have won the war.

I am beginning to understand my parents a bit more. When they first conquered Mhel, all the mhelvul hated them too. I can smell the hatred when I fly low over Perspeckle. I have taken to flying with my mouth closed, which helps some.

They don’t dare disobey us, though. Not when they remember how easily the drakes destroyed their best-prepared army.

Darrir came to my barn this morning. Darrir is a former Social Warfare specialist of the former Army of former Trest. He regularly tries to make some of those less ‘former’. So I greeted him with, Good morning, Darrir. What’s the sedition of the day?

He looked a bit pained. Today, you have a phone call.

"I do? Not Tarcuna?" Tarcuna spends time on the phone each day with friends in Dorday. I have at most seven friends on Hove, five of whom are close at hand, the sixth can write messages on my mind whenever he likes, and the seventh is Llredh, who isn’t much of a friend and could get Ythac to write to me if he wanted to. So I’ve never gotten a phone call.

He held out a sophisticated technological telephone thing to me. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, since I’d probably poke a hole through it when I pushed the ‘talk’ button, so I made Darrir work it. It was awkward.

Hallo? Which is the traditional way you talk on the phone, I think.

Hallo, Joffee. I’m Churdle, you ate a vask on the farm, then we gave you some chili and troublecakes, said a scratchy little voice missing all the high and low tones.

Yes, you had something wrong with your polysthegides and Fralian nodes. I put the Arcane Anodyne into you…did it work?

"Well, it worked, I don’t have Moray-Lagrozo Syndrome any more, thanks for that," he said scratchily.

You sound rather miserable, I said, because he did. What’s biting your tail? But of course he doesn’t have a tail.

Well, you see, mister dragon, we’d taken some pictures of you and showed them all ‘round. And we spoke well of you, telling everyone all around what you’d done with the healing and all. We were grateful, me ‘specially, he said. Which was mostly true, I think, though it’s harder to alethiocept over