I need to buy some sunglasses. My fists clenched at the thought. Why the hell should I part with some of my hoard to appease these mammals? I fought back the draconic parts of my mind and struggled for calm. Glancing away from Johnson, I pushed myself to shift my eyes back to their normal human form.

  “Did you get hit on the head as well?” I asked, risking meeting his gaze again. I needed a mirror. I wasn’t going to leave the Mirror of Endless Insight with Kat anymore.

  “They were… You had…” he stuttered.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” I said with a shrug. “Your troops were fine, I think. The civvies and the prisoners should be on their way back, and I reckon we dealt with enough of the Chipolatas that the rest will bugger off, yes?”

  “I need to get to Sevris. She can fix this.” He pointed to his shoulder. “ Damn, Portalo is going to give me so much shit.” He nudged the ruined armour with a foot and carefully lowered himself to the floor next to it. “Quartermasters. Count everything out, and they count everything back in, or they make your life hell.” He staggered slightly, and I reached out to steady him with one hand.

  “What do I owe you?” I asked Mordechai as the barber-surgeon shuffled away from me.

  “Nothing, Sir. I’m a loyal servant of Lord Pratnip.”

  “Here.” I flicked him a silver. I fought for control again, and he winced as he caught it. I needed to get a handle on my saurian impulses, and that meant I’d have to practice, as disgusting as the process would be. Three deep breaths later, I started helping the woozy captain back towards his barracks.

  The cavalry charging out of town must have thrown the locals into a panic. The sound of boards being nailed up over windows had reached a frenetic volume, and anyone not reinforcing their home was scurrying back and forth like demons were hounding them.

  “Bob?”

  “Johnson?”

  “What happened to your boots?”

  I glanced down and realised I’d been running around barefoot since I transformed back into a human. The rough cobbles didn’t bother me, nor the occasional stone that would have hurt a normal foot, and running back across the fields outside of town had not been a problem at all. Now, though, I looked rather odd, padding along the street with my toe-beards on display. Fucking hobbits. I forced the hair on my big toes to disappear.

  “They got wrecked in the fight with the guys who knocked everyone out. I didn’t get the jump on them, so it wasn’t as easy as the rest.”

  “And yet you don’t have a mark on you.”

  “Spit it out, Johnson. Just speak your mind.”

  “What’s your real body look like? You changed your eyes, but they’re still not like they were. They’re more purple than blue.” I stopped and he followed suit, then turned to fix me with a firm look, his right hand cradling his left arm across his chest. “What are you?”

  “Does it matter? I’m not from around here. I got stuck in a different body, but I’m here to help. And you, Captain Longfellow, need all the help you can get.” I growled. He grimaced at my words, then looked me up and down.

  “You ever heard of the Dumple?” he asked as we resumed our journey through the busy streets.

  “No. New here, remember?” I ground out.

  “It was an amorphous monster, like a blob, and it was a master at shapeshifting.” He flicked me a glance without turning his head. “There was a war, oh, about four hundred years back, the Empire was tangling with the Dwarves, like usual. Gingerbeard’s militia had come down out of the Mounds and were pushing towards Potkrak. The Dwarves hired the thing to infiltrate our army.”

  “What’s your point, Longfellow? A monster wearing a human-mask did some bad shit a long time ago?”

  “It ate fifty thousand men before it turned on the Dwarves and wrecked their army as well! The Dumple Peace came about because both the Empire and the Clans lost half their bloody soldiers! Your sort have lived in hiding since then. I need to know I can trust you won’t be another Dumple, Bob.” We stopped outside of the barracks, a squat building, almost as heavily built as the bank. He squared off opposite me, still cradling his left arm, and glared at me once more.

  “Trust is easy to earn, easy to keep, easy to lose, and almost impossible to win back. This is fucking profiling, dude. What exactly have I done to lose your trust? I saved your life. I saved a bunch of civilians, dealt with a load of the enemy without killing them, took the bastards alive for god’s sake!” I matched his glare with one of my own, carefully refraining from using Gaze.

  “I know tha-”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “No, you don’t! You’re accusing me of shit I haven’t done. Shit, I don’t want to do!” I snarled. “I’ve turned my industrial floor into a medical laboratory, which is going to really screw up my karma, to make soldiers to help the townsfolk. If push comes to shove, you’ll see what I look like when I slaughter the Sausage-twats and the Orlics in the night and send whoever's left alive scurrying for the hills.” I took a breath and held it for five seconds before exhaling slowly. “I don’t want to do that.” I ground out. “But I will if I have to. This is my town.”

  “Bob-”

  “Fuck you, tourist. You won’t even hang around to fight when the Orlics turn up. I’m going to the dungeon. I’ll be back later with the first set of soldiers.” I spun on my heel and stalked back towards the wall. I ignored the passersby, and thankfully, they ignored me. The couple of them that did get in my way bounced off, opened their mouths to cuss me out, then thought better of it when I gave them a level three glare.

  I jumped onto the wall, punched Reg in his left kidney for the fun of it, and then took off towards Larney’s Wood. I stopped in the meadow deep in the heart of the forest and sat down to take stock. My arse plonked down on the grass, and I let the buzzing of insects and the cooing of the birds wash over me. Out here in the woods, my slow-boil anger and frustration began to ebb.

  I could cope without the neckerchief. I didn’t need it. All I needed was some self-control. You’ve got this, Bob. I repeated the thought like a mantra until my mood stabilised.

  My clothes vanished, and I resumed my true form. Hiding in mammal-flesh felt wrong. Like I was betraying myself. Once I was suitably scaly and terrifying, my mind settled even more. I was still angry at Johnson, but it started to fade as soon as I stretched my wings.

  I stayed low until I reached Mount Bob, then I circled around it as I hopped from thermal to thermal. I made a note to see about updating the local maps; Mount Dangleberry, or whatever the locals called it, was not acceptable.

  That would likely require that I reveal the location of my dungeon, though. I shrugged without thinking, an extremely ill-advised action when the wings holding you aloft are attached to your shoulders. I still managed to thread the needle of the lair entrance, avoiding slamming face-first into a mountain a kilometre above the ground and falling to my death, but my landing was less than graceful.

  I skidded to a stop with my chin leaving a groove in the stone and shook myself out.

  “Where is it?” Kat demanded as she looked up from the Mirror of Endless Insight. A tiny stick of whatever the hell women call the stuff they use to line their eyes disappeared behind her.

  “It’s called eyeliner, Bob.”

  “You’re psychic now?” She stood up and gave me a look that would have frozen my soul had a pretty woman looked at me that way back on Earth.

  “No, you’re just painfully obvious.” She blinked a few times in the mirror and pulled a series of odd faces before nodding in satisfaction. “Where the hell is your ascot?”

  “Hopefully it’s passing through my large intestine and I’ll get it back in a few days.”

  “Why the hell-”

  “I ate the dude who stole it. I think. Maybe he just yoinked it out of the universe, and it’s gone forever. I don’t know!” Kat pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

  “Run me through what happened, please?” she said slowly without opening her eyes. I filled her in on the events surrounding the disappearing cavalrymen.

  “No one saw you in, you know, this?” She waved a hand up and down at my Reptilian Glory.

  “No. Sleep spell, remember? But the captain figured out I’m not human. I didn’t get the eyes right when I turned back. Think I freaked Mordechai out, as well.”

  “Dammit, Bob.” She thought for a moment. “It’s not the end of the world. It was bound to come out sooner or later. You were barely keeping it together when you had the ascot.”

  “I’m fine!” I hissed. My neck pulled back as she shied away from me. “Technically, I’ve still got the ascot, I think. It’s just internal now. Holy… Do you think I’m just–”

  “Suffering from a spot of draconic PTSD? Maybe. Did you eat Johnson?”

  “I have not and will not eat Johnson.”

  “Even though he now knows what you are? At least vaguely. What if he slips it to Esme? That doesn’t work on me, Bob, remember?” I switched off Hunter's Gaze.

  “That was a crass choice of words,” I grumbled.

  “I know. It was a shit-test, you scaly, loveably dim reptile. We can work around this. Shopping, buying, spending, stealing. These are the things that are going to get you into trouble, right?” I winced at the words.

  “I really want to eat Reg as well. And Angtirm.”

  “Who the fuck is Reg? Nevermind. Some lowly mammal unworthy of your energy, right?” When she put it like that… “So we just need to develop coping mechanisms. What makes you happy?”

  “Shinies. Esme.” My response was subconscious and immediate.

  “So have a bit of gold on hand. Keep a coin in your pocket that you can play with whenever anything triggers you!”

  “I can’t stand around with a hand fumbling about in my pocket! People will think I’m weirder than Reginald. Reg! The good Reg, the one I don’t want to eat! Has he got the stuff he needs for some portals?”

  “I think so?”

  “Right. We need to get a portal set up to dump us in the meadow, or just outside town, anyway. Then I’ll take the functional robo-bunnies through, and we can prepare for the siege.”

  “You’re going to be stuck in the town for a while? Where are you going to, you know, sleep?” She pointed at the hoard.

  “I’ll take a room at the Cod. Not like that!” I snapped as she chortled and made suggestive hip movements. “Look, Pervy Pixie, it’s not like that.”

  “It’s so totally ‘like that’, you idiot. She seems nice enough. My advice, Bob, would be to let her know what you are sooner rather than later. Best that it came from the dragon’s mouth, so to speak.”

  “She’ll freak!” I snapped, moving over to my hoard and settling down atop it. The feeling of precious metal under my body sapped away what was left of my angst.

  “Will she? Some girls are into some freaky stuff,” Kat said with a shrug.

  “How’s the book that I got you?” I asked with a chuckle, and her tiny cheeks flushed bright pink.

  “It’s outrageous!” She very obviously lied. “I couldn’t get past the first chapter!”

  “Oh, well, I can take it back and find you something else if you like?”

  “No need for that!” She sighed and sat down cross-legged. “Bob, you need to be stronger for what’s coming. Can you evolve again?” I nodded. “Now is the time, lizard. Then stock up on biomass, sieges aren’t famous for their fine dining, unless you like rat or dog.” She sounded surprisingly bitter, but I had no wish to pry into her past life. I checked my storage for food.

  “I’ve got… ah, crap. I’ve got half a dozen dead people in storage I should have dropped off in town!”