“The game’s not over, little bird. The Labyrinth handed out the prize. I’m here to see if you get to keep it.”

  Su spat the Rosette carefully onto the ground behind her foot, shielding it. “Who are you? The Labyrinth’s pissed-off gardener?”

  “Name’s Fernando.” One frond tipped the sunglasses down. Beneath them, two pinpricks of emerald light glowed. “I’m the… independent contractor. The final audit. You played with their minds. Now you play with me.”

  “I don’t want to play,” Su said, her sparking resuming with her irritation. “I want to deliver my package and get on with my life of being a magical environmental hazard.”

  “Too bad.” Fernando’s pot skidded forward three feet on the stone floor with a screech, putting itself squarely between Su and the door. “See, the Labyrinth deals in rules, logic, semantics. Boring. I deal in stakes, delicious stakes.”

  A frond whipped out, at the scattered treasure around them. It snatched up a handful of gold coins, a small ruby, and a tarnished silver spoon. With impossible dexterity, the frond began to manipulate them. The coins became chips. The ruby became a central token. The spoon bent into a dealer’s shoe.

  “Here’s the game,” Fernando purred. “Simple. No logic. No arguments. We play cards. Five-card draw. One hand. Winner takes the Rosette. Loser…” The emerald pinpricks glinted. “…becomes the other’s permanent, sentient accessory. A slave to will and whim. You lose, you get repotted next to my window. I lose… well, I become your problem.”

  A system prompt burned in the air.

  FINAL WAGER: THE FERNANDO GAMBIT

  A GAME OF CHANCE AND PSYCHOLOGY. NO SKILLS APPLY. NO LOGIC SAVES YOU.

  STAKES: OWNERSHIP OF THE ADAMANT ROSSETE / PERMANENT SERVITUDE.

  ACCEPT? (Y/N)

  Su’s mind raced. Cards? She hadn’t held a card in… two lifetimes. She’d played Go Fish in the orphanage. That was it. This was insane. This fern, this ridiculous, sunglasses-wearing plant, wanted to gamble everything on a card game?

  She could try to fight. But Fernando oozed a different kind of power that made you doubt your own cards before they were even dealt.

  But to run? To give up the Rosette after all that?

  No.

  “You’re on, Fern-face,” Su said, her voice dropping into a low tone she didn’t know she could make. “But we play by my rules at my table.”

  She stomped over to a large, flat-topped gemstone the size of a coffee table—a slumped, giant emerald. She kicked away loose coins, clearing a space. “Here. The Emerald Table. Seems fitting.”

  Fernando’s pot skidded over, coming to rest opposite her. A frond laid out the makeshift chips. Another frond produced a deck of cards from… somewhere within its soil. The cards were old, worn, and backed with a pattern of swirling, hypnotic green.

  “Dealer’s choice,” Fernando said, a frond shuffling the cards with a blurring, professional thwip-thwip-thwip sound. “But since I’m the house… Five-card draw. No wilds. Ante up.”

  A frond pushed a single gold-coin chip into the center. Su, lacking chips, nudged a small, pearl-like gem forward with her foot.

  The cards were dealt with a snap. Five cards slid across the emerald surface towards her. She awkwardly pinned them down with one foot, craning her neck to look.

  Her heart sank.

  It was quite possibly the worst poker hand in the history of games. A two of clubs, a seven of hearts, a nine of spades, a jack of diamonds, and a three of hearts. No pairs. No straight or flush potential. Just… garbage.

  She kept her face, or beak, perfectly neutral. It’s not about the cards. It’s about the story.

  She looked at Fernando. The fern had gathered its cards close, its fronds forming a leafy wall. It gave nothing away.

  “Betting round,” Fernando said. It pushed two chips forward. “Let’s see some conviction.”

  Su looked at her rubbish hand. Then she looked at the Rosette, glowing behind her and thought of the dragon.

  She kicked four of her pearl-gems into the pot, a huge overbet. “Let’s raise the stakes,” she clacked, her voice steady. “Conviction enough for you?”

  Fernando’s fronds rustled, intrigued. “Confidence. I like it. Call.” It matched the bet.

  “The draw.” Fernando’s voice was a lazy drawl. “How many?”

  Su looked at her hand. What did she need? Everything. But drawing five new cards was a scream of desperation. She needed to project a story. She had one face card—the Jack. A high card. A potential pair.

  “One,” Su said, her tone implying she was reluctantly parting with a single, troublesome card. She pushed the three of hearts, her lowest card, face down towards Fernando.

  A frond snatched it away and a new card slid back. She didn’t look at it. Not yet.

  “And for the house…” Fernando discarded two cards. It drew two.

  “Final bet.” Fernando studied its new hand. The emerald lights behind the sunglasses glowed a little brighter. It pushed a massive stack of chips into the center. “The big leagues, little bird. Let’s see what you’re really made of.”

  The pot was now a small hill of treasure. And the real stake—freedom or slavery—hung over it.

  Su finally looked at her new card.

  It was the five of clubs.

  Her hand was now: Two of clubs, Seven of hearts, Nine of spades, Jack of diamonds, Five of clubs.

  It was, if possible, worse. She’d traded a three for a five. She still had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  This was it. She was going to lose everything to a potted plant because she couldn’t get a pair of twos.

  Then, she remembered. Not logic. Nerve. The game wasn’t in the cards. It was in the tell.

  She looked at Fernando. It was perfectly still, a picture of leafy calm. Too calm. It had bet big after drawing only two cards. It was either incredibly strong… or it was bluffing. And ferns, she reasoned, probably had great poker faces. But they also loved the sun. They were, at their core, drama queens who thrived on attention.

  She leaned forward, her void-shimmered feathers catching the light.

  “You know,” she said, her voice conversational, “for a plant that deals in stakes, you’ve got no roots in this game. You’re just a hired sprout. The Labyrinth couldn’t beat me, so they sent a decorative office plant to try its luck. Must be embarrassing.”

  Fernando’s fronds stiffened, just a millimeter. “Insults won’t change your cards.”

  “I’m not looking at my cards,” Su lied smoothly. “I’m looking at you. You drew two. You didn’t improve much, did you? Maybe you paired up. Maybe you’re sitting on two sad little queens. But you don’t have the stones—or the rhizomes—to really go for it. This big bet?” She gestured at the pile with a wing. “It’s a fern’s pathetic attempt to look like a redwood.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She took a deep, dramatic breath, puffing out her chest. “You think I’m scared of chlorophyll and confidence?”

  She kicked every remaining gem she had into the pot, a towering, all-in bet. Then, she did one more thing. She reached behind her with her beak, not for a gem, but for the Key of Paradoxical Intent. She dropped the key on top of the pile with a final clunk.

  “I raise you,” she said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “I raise you a paradox. The very key that broke your boss’s game. That’s my bet. Now, Fern-and-go. What do you have that can possibly beat nothing?”

  The cavern was silent. The dragon had stopped breathing. The only sound was the faint hum of the cracked Rosette.

  Fernando was utterly still. The story Su was selling about being a force of nature that luck itself bent around her. She was betting that Fernando’s confidence was a facade, that it was, deep down, just a plant facing a hurricane.

  Slowly, with a sound like rustling silk, Fernando’s fronds relaxed. It let its cards fall face-down onto the emerald table.

  “Fold,” it said, the velvet gone from its voice, replaced by a tone of grudging, stunned respect.well

  The system blared in victory.

  THE FERNANDO GAMBIT: VICTORY!

  YOU HAVE WON THE ADAMANT ROSSETE FREE AND CLEAR.

  FERNANDO IS BOUND BY THE WAGER. STATUS: ‘ACQUIRED’.

  Su didn’t cheer. She let out a slow breath she didn’t know she was holding. Her legs trembled. She carefully scraped the Rosette and the Key back towards herself with her foot.

  Fernando’s pot skidded meekly to her side. The sunglasses were still on, but the emerald lights were dim. “Well,” it muttered. “You’ve got a better poker face than any bird has a right to.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice pretending I know what I’m doing,” Su said hoarsely. She picked up the Rosette. “Now, come on, accessory. We’ve got a dragon to patch up. And you,” she added, looking at the defeated fern, “can be in charge of the light. You’re a plant. Do photosynthesis or something useful.”

  She strode past Fernando, who grumpily followed, its pot scraping along behind her like a disgraced sidekick, back to the waiting, dying Wyrm.

  ?????? ? ??????

  The dragon’s eye followed Su’s approach, its gaze lingering on the slightly-cracked, humming Rosette in her beak. Then it drifted to the sulking, sunglasses-wearing fern pottering along behind her, scraping its terracotta pot on the gold coins with a sound like grinding teeth.

  “You return… with the geometry… and a pet.” The voice was a dry whisper, but the amusement was back.

  “Won him in a card game,” Su said, dropping the Rosette carefully at the base of the Wyrm’s massive jaw. “He’s decorative and mildly judgmental. His name’s Fernando. Don’t water him after midnight.”

  She nudged the Rosette forward. “Okay, big guy. How does this work? Do I… tape it to your chest? Feed it to you? Do I need to file a metaphysical installation permit?”

  A faint tremor, like a mountain trying not to laugh, went through the dragon. “Place it… against a crack. The largest one. It will seek… equilibrium on its own.”

  Su looked up at the dragon’s chest, a landscape of peeling, pus-gold scales and jagged, weeping fissures. The largest was a horrific split near where a heart might be.

  “Right. Cosmological band-aid. Got it.”

  She was a bird. He was a mountain. There was a significant reach problem.

  “Uh, little help?” She gestured with a wing at the fissure, miles above her.

  With care, the dragon lowered its head. Not all the way, but enough that its lower jaw rested on the hoard, creating a ramp of titanic scales leading up towards its chest. Each scale was the size of a dinner table.

  “Great. Stairmaster from hell,” Su muttered. She picked up the Rosette, clutched it tight, and began the awkward, scrabbling climb up the dragon’s face. Fernando watched from below, a single frond shielding its sunglasses as if from secondhand embarrassment.

  After several minutes of ungainly hopping and sliding, she reached the base of the great crack. The edges of the fissure glowed like infected neon.

  “Alright, you temperamental paperweight,” she said to the Rosette. “Do your thing.”

  She pressed the warm, grey geometry against the center of the crack.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the hairline fracture on the Rosette glowed.

  Fine, hair-thin filaments of steady, neutral grey light spooled out from the Rosette’s crack, threading into the dragon’s corrupted fissure. Where they touched the oozing gold rot and the spitting black void-energy. The gold dimmed to a dull brass. The black static smoothed into a deep, stable indigo. The painful hum softened to a manageable thrum.

  The dragon let out a shuddering sigh that nearly blew Su off her perch. The tension that had held its massive frame rigid for centuries seemed to ease, just a fraction. The desperate, ragged edge of its breathing evened out.

  “The pressure… recedes.” The voice in her mind was clearer, stronger but still tired. “It is… a reprieve. Not an end… but a cessation of the end.”

  Su slid back down the scale-ramp, landing in a heap next to Fernando. She looked up. The dragon was still a mess.

  “So,” she said, brushing gold dust off her feathers. “We’re roommates. You’re the crumbling mansion. I’m the weird fungal growth in the basement that’s somehow holding up the east wing. Let’s establish some ground rules. No sudden movements. Try not to leak on my stuff. And we need to talk about the smell.”

  The dragon’s great amber eye focused on her. The intelligence there was no longer clouded with agony.

  “You are… the most peculiar creature.”

  “You’re a walking ecological disaster who hoards shiny things. Pot, meet extremely scaly kettle.” Su paced, thinking. “I can’t keep calling you ‘the dragon’ or ‘Wyrm’ or ‘Landlord’. It’s impersonal. I need a name. Something with… gravitas. But also a hint of ‘I-made-a-terrible-deal-with-a-bird’.”

  She tapped her beak. “Griselda? Too feminine. Borlock? Sounds like a plumbing supply store. Dave? Absolutely not.”

  The dragon watched her, a faint smoke curling from a nostril.

  “I’ve got it,” Su announced. “Yvan.”

  The dragon went preternaturally still. Not the stillness of pain, but of shock. Even the clinking of settling treasure paused.

  “…What did you say?” The mental voice was barely a whisper.

  “Yvan,” Su repeated, oblivious. “Spelled Y-V-A-N. Sounds like it belongs to someone who wears a lot of scales and owes a life-debt to a pigeon. Do you like it? Too bad, it’s yours now. Yvan the Wyrm. Has a ring to it.”

  The dragon—Yvan—was silent for a long, long time. Its gaze was locked on her, unblinking. Centuries, millennia of memory seemed to swirl in that molten amber eye. Finally, it spoke, its voice thick with an emotion she couldn’t place.

  “That name… has not been spoken… since the mountains were young. It was given… by a being of starlight and laughter. A being long gone to dust.”

  Su blinked. “Oh. Uh. Sorry? I can pick another one. How about… Steve?”

  “No.” The word was firm, final. “Yvan… is acceptable.” It shifted, a mountain rearranging itself. “The one who named me before… would have liked you. She, too, had a tongue… like a shard of obsidian.”

  He lowered his head again, until his snout was mere feet from her. With a deliberate slowness, he exhaled. The coalesced energy formed into a intricate object that floated down to land softly in the gold before her.

  It was a locket, made of a dark, smoky crystal.

  “A token,” Yvan said. “For the one who named the Nameless… and brought a season of stillness. It is bound to you. To others, it is invisible but to you… it is a door.”

  Su gingerly picked it up. The chain was cool and weightless. The locket itself was smooth, featureless.

  “A door to what?”

  “To here.” Yvan’s massive lips did something that might have been the draconic equivalent of a teasy, knowing smile. “Call… and I will listen. I may… even answer. But.” The smile widened, showing teeth like shards of a glacier. “There is always… a price. A dragon’s aid… is never free. The terms… will be negotiated… at the time.”

  “Of course there’s a price,” Su sighed, slipping the shadow-chain over her head. The locket vanished against her feathers. She could feel it, a cool spot on her chest, but when she looked down, she saw nothing. “Why would anything be simple? Fine. Invisible dragon-sized IOU. Got it.”

  She turned to leave, Fernando shuffling grumpily beside her.

  “Where do you go, little Wrench?” Yvan asked.

  Su paused at the cavern entrance. She looked back at the dragon.

  “There’s a war on,” she said, her voice losing its sarcastic edge and adjusted her spectacles. “I figure it’s time to pick a side. And by ‘pick a side,’ I mean show up in the middle of the warzone and confuse everyone so badly they forget what they’re fighting about.”

  Yvan’s rumbling laugh filled the cavern, a sound of genuine, if pained, amusement. “Then go. Be the chaos. Be the… grease fire.”

  He settled his head back onto the hoard, the Adamant Rosette glowing softly on his chest like a pacemaker. “And Su Ian Hoo…”

  She glanced back.

  “Try not to die. Your tenancy agreement… is remarkably entertaining.”

  Su gave a final, sharp nod. Then she walked out of the dragon’s canyon, a peacock with a pair of smart spectacles, followed by a disgruntled potted fern in sunglasses.

  They walked in silence for a while, the metallic air of the canyon gradually giving way to the normal, boring scent of pine and dirt.

  “So,” Fernando’s velvet voice broke the quiet. “A warzone as a training montage. Charming. Do you have a specific faction you plan to… complicate? Or is it more of a free-for-all approach?”

  “First rule of being an unwanted variable,” Su said, “is never let them see you picking a side. Also needs XP, useful junk, and maybe to find out if a certain backstabbing village girl is still on the Chancellor’s payroll.”

  “Ah, personal stakes. The best kind of messy.” Fernando adjusted its sunglasses with a frond. “And what is my role in this suicidal pedagogy? Camouflage? I am, admittedly, very green.”

  “You’re my advisor,” Su said. “You’ve got that lazy, seen-it-all vibe. You can look at a battle and say ‘inefficient’ or ‘uninspired’. Plus, you lost to me. That means you’re smart enough to play the game, but not smart enough to win. That’s the perfect level of useful.”

  “I feel so valued,” Fernando deadpanned.

  “You should! You’re the only one here who appreciates my brilliant, largely improvised strategy of ‘walk towards the screaming and see what happens’.”

  They crested a ridge. In the valley below, the evidence of war was clear. Smoke rose from a burnt patch of forest.

  --- ? ---