“Bob’s a good egg. He's a bit rough around the edges, but he’s been invaluable around town! Who the hells are you to question him, stranger?” Mrs. Hatrik snapped. In the end, I never found her missing pussy, but she was going to bat for me, and I was grateful.

  There was a snipping sound as glowing blue scissors clicked in Mordechai’s hands.

  “Gerout! He’s one of us!” grumbled a farmer, and several others took up words to the same effect. Despite the old reptile brain numbing the worst of my mammalian responses, I was touched.

  “I’m not here to impose myself in your warm-blooded squabbles. I’m a little disappointed that my kinsman has chosen to involve himself in the way he has, but he is just a baby in this world. Robert, this will give you admission. Come find us when you think you are ready.” She was a petite woman, compact and slim, but with an air of quiet power. Her grey hair swirled around her shoulders as she pushed back her hood. She flicked something small and shiny at me that I snatched from the air.

  “The name’s Bob, lady.”

  “Come find us when you’re ready, Bob.” Her snake-like tongue flicked out to taste the air, and her eyes were a bright pink with vertical slits for pupils. A wave of power washed out, pushing the humans away and driving me back a step, and making me blink. Before I could open my eyes again, she was gone.

  “Anyone else? Any other weirdos hiding in the background with mysterious invitations and… weird snake coins?” I asked as I examined my latest token, glaring around the room at people now shaking their heads. “Right. This is my town. If there is one thing I cannot abide, it’s people stealing my shit. So I’ll deal with the Sausage Manglers, and then Captain Longfellow will be politely asked to leave town. Does anyone have a problem with this?” I asked. More head shaking occurred. Fairly frantic shaking, in fact, as my tone of voice left no room to doubt my intentions.

  “Esme, a round of drinks for everyone, please!” Her warm smile locked my greed-goblin back in its cage, where it gibbered and howled as I explained to it that I already owned the beer, so it wasn’t really costing me anything. I didn’t believe the lie either, but I comforted myself with the thought of the tax revenue I could make from the town.

  It hit me just how evil dragons truly are. Thinking that taxation could be a good thing showed how far I had fallen down the karmic ladder. I refrained from thinking mean things about the Woo and the system, but only just. I needed a distraction. I needed a plan. I needed other people to organise all the shit that I didn’t want to handle. I looked around and picked out a few familiar faces.

  “We need a town council. Mordechai, Mrs. Hatrik, Kel, Benton, Mr. Papitol, Esme. Please, would you join me in the kitchen? The rest of you drink up!”

  “I’ll just watch the bar, right?” Jenny grumbled. “I’ve got some Crumbly Petit Levres due to come out of the oven in twenty minutes, keep an eye on them, please, lovely?” She asked Esme as the people I’d named filed through, and my lady nodded happily as she sashayed through the curtain.

  “The mayor won’t be happy about this! And our Kael will likely suffer; he’ll need something in the new administration, or I may be forced to withdraw my support!” Mrs. Hatrik said as soon as she was seated at the head of the table. I call this meeting of the New Council of Fidler’s Mill to order! Quiet down, you lot!”

  “The mayor won’t argue with a dragon! Besides, he’s been busy with his new ventures recently.” There was a pa-TING as Benton nailed the strategically placed spittoon from fifteen feet away before he continued. “Won't matter anyway if Foreverknot’s troops get here and we don’t have the Rompers to fight with us.”

  “That isn’t an issue. I’m going to deal with one horseman while solving another at the same time,” I replied as I paced back and forth at the end of the room. The hubbub from the bar was upbeat, and people were optimistic, judging from their comments and general chatter. “It’s the Hunters and whatever forces the nobles send next time that are worrying me. Does the Mill have any allies? Nearby towns that you’ve got good relations with?”

  “We have an annual Faire that we share with Shearers Pluck, the next town to the south. But those shifty bastards won’t fight with us,” grumbled Mr. Papitol. “They might steal a few sheep, if’n they reckon they can get away with it.” He pulled out a long-stemmed pipe and a pouch, the contents of which he stuffed into the bowl and lit with a silvery rod that produced a flame when he squeezed it. I watched the mana flow from the crystal in the thing's base to the tiny sigil at the top.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Fumus Levius

  Great. I was now a sentient cigarette lighter. Fucking magic.

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  “So we can’t rely on anyone else. Shit. Hang on.” I called over one end of the portal and left the other in the lair. “Kat, can you come through, please?” I shouted.

  “Are they gonna try and cut my feet off?” Her voice came back from the lair. I’d positioned the portal so none of these strangers could see my beautiful mattress of shinies.

  “Are any of you going to try to cut my dungeon sprite's feet off? Personally, I’d advise against it.” My growl echoed around the room, and everyone except for Esme flinched. “Come on through, Kat!” She stepped through and fluttered her tiny wings to fly up and land on the table. I produced a small pile of coins for her to sit on, and she crossed her legs.

  Mrs. Hatrik glared at her costume, while the chaps shifted uncomfortably and began to pay a lot of attention to the stucco work on the ceiling.

  “You want to know how many combat minions you can hire?” Kat asked me in a too-sweet voice. She knew how much this would hurt me and was enjoying it a little bit more than was polite. Hopefully, the next roll for her costume would be even worse.

  “Yes.” Shut up, greed-demon! Shut up! I am Dragon. Fire and death and in control! I’ll spend my gold if I want to!

  “Won’t help. The kind of fighters you’d need to make a difference are out of your price range. The Bonkers and the Jangletaks are all you’ve got coming from the dungeon.” Another eloquent shrug sent the men in the room's eyes to the ceiling once more.

  “I can gather the Ladies Association?” offered Mrs. Hatrik.

  “You’ve got my scissors!” added Mordechai. Mana flowed down his glasses, and the lenses on flicked in and out.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Speculator Visus

  Well, at least that was a useful spell. I now had something akin to the scoot devices the soldiers used.

  “And my spittoon!” said Benton.

  “And my love!” whispered Esme in my ear as her breasts brushed my shoulder and she put a cup of tea down in front of me. I had been about to make a wise crack about having a Fellowship of Fucking Useless Mammals, but the simple contact and quiet words stilled my snark.

  They were bloody useless, though. The Chippolatas had been tough, compared to the locals and Johnson’s fighters, and that was just the cavalry element. This one would have to be all Bob—and psychotic robo-bunnies.

  “We can deal with Johnson and the mayor once I’ve sorted out the invaders. Kat, can you liaise with these good people while I go and unleash a shower of shit on the Sausage Suckers?”

  “You! Missus Flower Arranger! What have you got?” Kat snapped and pointed to Mrs. Hatrik. This was acceptable. I pecked Esme on the cheek, grinned at the squeeze my behind received in return, and headed back into the bar. A chorus of cheers rang out.

  “No more free beer!” I snapped, and the cheers became grumbles. Fickle mammals.

  I walked slowly through town to the wall. The people seemed calmer. The sense of urgency and tension had faded slightly. Whatever had caused it, and I found it hard to believe it was my fault, something had settled the locals' nerves.

  I hopped up onto the barricade at the edge of town and punched Edible Reg in the side of the head. He collapsed in a heap, and I smirked.

  “Sir, no one is allowed to leave town. Especially not a traitor to–”

  “What precisely are you going to do, sarge?” My teeth were already shifting back into fangs as I smiled at him. I jumped down and faced south, pulling my clothes into storage and transforming back into the perfect being I had been reborn as. I curled my head back and could still look down on the soldiers atop their defences. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take that one with me.”

  A suckered tail slapped down on Reg, and I hoisted him into the air.

  “He should have been less of a twat!” My wings beat powerfully, and I took to the sky. Reg must have come round almost as soon as we left the ground. His screams and sprinkling of liquid fertilizer marked our passage across the sky until I introduced him to my esophagus. As promised, I did not chew. Rapists get the stomach acid.

  Biomass stored:

  456.3 KG

  Biomass required for evolution: 180 KG

  As far as airplane food went, he wasn’t too bad. A bit tart, in all honesty. He could have used a creamy sauce, preferably with some garlic in there, to enhance the flavour profile. Six out of ten; would eat again, but not the best.

  I strived for height, flapping frantically to heave my bulk towards the clouds. There must be some magic bullshit going on that lets me actually fly. Did I have some anti-grav organs hidden in my lymph nodes or something? I must have weighed close to four tons, and while my wingspan and flight muscles were impressive, there was no chance that there wasn’t some system fuckery involved in getting that mass of scaly glory off the ground.

  A column of dust by day, a fireside glow by night. I located the invaders biblically as Reg chased after my ascot and monocle. The three groups had come together since the last time I checked on them and now marched in formation. The infantry was behind the archers and crossbowmen, the cavalry out on the flanks, and a small group of assholes brought up the rear, who were already flinging magic at me.

  I tucked my wings and rolled into a dive, snapping them open and flaring to a stop just ahead of the foot-sloggers. It had been slightly worrying when the Rompers on their wall had trained half a dozen gleaming projectiles in my direction. This was a couple of orders of magnitude worse. A sea of the bad kind of shinies was aimed in my direction.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I began, then rolled to the side using Dog-Finds-Fox-Poo, as a column of fire shot through the space where I’d been. “As I was saying. Shit, where was I? Look, this doesn’t have to go badly. You guys can just fuck off out of my territory. No hard feelings, no fire and acid raining from the sky as you run away. We can part as friends. What do you say?”

  They stood frozen for a moment, and I felt my scales tighten up on my back. Some time soon, some duymbass was going to do something dumb and ass-ish, and then I’d have to–

  “Charge!” The owner of this voice was very comfortably back in the ranks. I couldn’t help but feel that if he were a little closer to me, he might have taken a more considered approach. Well, they asked for it.