Tribulations of a Dragon

Raya keeps pushing me to talk, and I know I have to at some point, but I just don’t want to right now. I’ll have to explain that I have no problem with the killing, but I feel so bad for scaring her.

Her friendship and Joras’ support are huge parts of why I’ve been able to stay sane throughout this whole thing. If I scare them away, I don’t know what I would do.

“You have to talk to someone, Kira. You can’t carry everything yourself. No one can. So please, just talk to me.” I feel trapped between my pride and my wanting to rely on her.

I’m struggling with myself to do something here, but instead of continuing to demand I talk, she just hugs my face again, a familiar comfort by now. At least I’m not so scary that she feels like she has to stay away.

“I know the world is tough, Kira, and sometimes you have to do bad things, but you don’t have to become a bad thing just because some dumb blessed people out there think you are.”

Basking in her friendship, I ask if she really doesn’t think I’m scary, which for some reason makes her giggle.

“I mean, sort of. You’re many times larger than me, and you kill things that could easily kill me, it’s hard not to be intimidated, but we’re friends. And besides, have you seen you? Your teeth could rip me apart before I realize what’s going on, your talons are longer than my body’s width. You have like a dozen ways to kill me accidentally. I’d be dumb to not think you’re a little scary.” Gee, thanks for summing that up…

“And your scales are so hard, I couldn’t hope to fight back. And you might not know this, but in our culture, darkness is seen as bad because that’s where stealthy humans and predators hide, and your body is very dark and you can cast quite the shadow.” I interject and point out that my scales are very pretty.

“They are, but they add to making you scary.”

Can we go back to talking about emotions? Geez…

“And the fire? You can cook a guard in his armor before he reaches you, how is that not scary?” Enough, I get it, I’m big and scary.

“On top of that, you can fly. We have no chance against that.” Yeah, I’m just gonna push her down and lay my head on top of her. That’ll shut her up…

I squish her and begin my relentless assault of purrs, she has challenged the wrong foe!

“I give up, I give up! Please release me, mighty dragon!” Well, if she puts it like that, I kinda have to release her. Once she gets up, I lower my head so she climb up on her perch again.

With that successfully pushed to the side, we continue on our journey through the streets.

My thoughts start to wander back to me being scary, so thinking quickly, I divert my attention away from that by asking Raya how she’s doing regarding her financial situation. I haven’t seen her out gathering much recently.

“Turo set up a small job for me to do, but I don’t really have to do anything. Mostly people just started calling me the Dragonbringer, and my job is to keep an eye on you.” Hah, you’re doing a great job there, Raya. I’ve only ruined a bunch of buildings.

Speaking of Turo, I haven’t heard from him for some time. He seemed like a decent enough guy, but Joras is currently busy, so I don’t have a decoy for any political stuff he might bring up. Yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and not find out where Turo is.

I wonder if we should get some more money for the heroic Dragonbringer, so I suggest we go hunting for herbs like we once did.

“It’s more about looking for them than hunting, but yeah, I wouldn’t mind doing that. We can even go look in the southeastern mountains.” She ends up listing off a bunch of herbs that grow around the mountain, but then she goes and suggests a very interesting idea.

“Since you can smell coin, can you also just smell the metal in the mountains?” Well, now I definitely want to find out. On the other hand, what if I can’t resist munching on any precious metals we find? That'd be weird.

Raya then suggests another idea; going to the blacksmith to see if I can sniff out other metals, but I don’t think I can, otherwise the guards’ armor should’ve smelled more than they did.

As we continue our journey through the streets, it occurs to me that I should ask Raya where the blacksmith is.

“You should be able to find it, it’s located in the northwestern section of town, and it has a very distinct smell.” She has a point, and I am starting to figure out my way around, so I’m willing to give it a go!

Using my keen dragon senses, I ask a local where the Blacksmith is. Raya bonks me on the head and yells at me while giggling. “Hey! That’s cheating!” I disagree, using the resources available to you only makes sense in a survival situation. And now I’ve got a lead!

Turns out I would have found it pretty fast if I had put in more effort. I did try to smell it out, but all I could smell was smoke coming from the houses

Once I stop focusing so much on my sense of smell, I realize that I can hear the clang of metal in the distance. It takes a few tries before I find a path I can actually use.

After several detours due to the lack of dragon-accessible streets, we finally arrive at the blacksmith, who has apparently already heard we were coming. Somebody snitched on me!

There's no way I'll find out who the snitch is, so it's ore-smelling time. But I don’t particularly feel like talking, so I let Raya down and she makes short work of requesting samples of whatever ores the blacksmith has available.

A few quick glances my way, and he shuffles into his workshop and, judging by the sounds, rummages through a bunch of crates.

I realize it’s taking quite a while for the blacksmith to return when Raya stops me from wandering off. There’s definitely something in the blacksmith's workshop that smells nice.

I wanna find out what that smell is, but before I can get to it, the blacksmith returns with a bunch of rocks in his arms.

Since we need to figure out which ones I might be able to track, I give the most fragrant one a lick, to which the blacksmith reacts by carelessly dropping the rocks on the ground.

Giving the rocks a quick look, I feel confident that I’m gonna have to be more thorough than just licking them, so I pop the wet one in my mouth and it has a very nice taste.

Now onto the next one, there’s one more that smells quite good. “Did the dragon just eat my ore?!” Oh, I guess I did. That’s probably not something I should do. Ores tend to contain all sorts of weird stuff. So I try to regurgitate the ore and, weirdly enough, I find that it’s very easy to do.

“Did the dragon just spit out a bunch of coins?!” Those are mine! He can have the ore back, but the coins are definitely mine.

Raya seems to be content just watching us, so I ask the blacksmith what the ore I ate is, but he’s not being overly useful. “Did the dragon just fucking talk?!” Okay, my name really isn’t ‘the dragon,’ buddy.

A quick glare and a growl later, he finally pulls himself together, he finally starts talking about the ores. Turns out the one I ate is quite valuable, and according to him, it was tin. Sweet, delicious tin.

I find myself curious as to what determines whether it’s valuable and tasty, but I’m not gonna linger on that, I need to memorize some scents. So we start with tin, then copper, the one I was going to eat next. And finally iron. Apparently I just really like metals.

There are a few other rocks as well, but they smell weird, so I’m not gonna taste them. We thank him for letting us see his rocks, and he grumbles something about them being metals while he’s picking them up from the ground.

As he walks through the doorway to his workshop, he lets out another loud noise. I'll look into that after collecting my money again.

“My fucking forge is dead!”

That’s a shame, and I kinda wanna help him out, so I nudge my head inside and see what’s going on. Yep, that’s a dead forge, alright. Naturally, since I’m very helpful, I suggest that I can help light it again, but he just turns and looks at me.

He hasn’t actually answered me yet, but he’s filling up the forge with coal, so I assume he does want some help. Once there’s a decent bit of coal in the forge, he steps back and I release a very controlled torrent of flame.

I even managed to not burn the place down, so I’m feeling very proud. For some reason, the blacksmith is just standing there in silence. “A goblin like me, forging in dragonflame…” You’re welcome, buddy.

Since I didn’t wanna get stuck, I made sure to not force my horns inside, so pulling my head back out is very easy. Would be even easier with bigger doors, though.

I turn around to face Raya and for some reason, she’s managed to find snacks. “Wanna try one?” Yeah, I wanna try one, gimme.

She throws a chunk of some sort of pink candy into the air and I snatch it up like an expert. It is delicious, I want more. “No, these are mine, Kira. Buy your own.” Rude… I don’t even know where she got the candy.

I suggest we postpone the metal scouting until tomorrow and instead go find Joras to see if he has concluded his diplomacy. We’d have gone out for a trip today, but it’s getting quite late, since this blacksmith business ended up taking longer than expected. Far too many detours for my liking.

As we’re making our way toward the western gate, I nudge Raya a few times, and she uses one of her treats to distract me. Just like I planned.

As soon as we’re outside the gates, Raya gets on me and we fly across town to the eastern gate, so we can see if Joras and Old Man Wreyn are still there, but they aren’t.

I’m guessing the talks have concluded. We fly up to the northern gate and enter through there, since it’s closer to Joras’ place. Three gates passed today, and none of the guards attacked me, that feels really nice.

A short knock from Raya, and Lily opens the door. We ask if Joras is available, but Lily informs us that he never returned. I don’t like that one bit. I tell Raya to look for him around town, and I head back to the northern gate.

I take to the air and start flying around to spot him, but I don’t see him on the streets, at least. I’m beginning to worry that Wreyn abducted him, so I fly out to check the roads, but I don’t see either of them anywhere.

Get a hold of yourself, Kira. You don’t know that anything has happened.

So instead of jumping to conclusions, I'm gonna fly back to Tuiran and search for Raya, maybe she has found either of them. But now I can’t find her. That might just be because she’s in a building somewhere. So I return to Lily to ask again.

Finally, someone is where I expect them to be. She mentions that Raya did stop by and the three of them are down at the tavern. She also says something about me supposedly having damaged the building, so it would be easy to recognize, but that doesn’t sound like something I would do.

It’s getting annoying to have to go outside the gates to take off, so I might have to see if they can reinforce some buildings for me to climb.

Nevertheless, I make it to the tavern in a short time and do a hover-drop, simply flying above the buildings and tucking in my wings. A quick peek inside, and the barkeep immediately starts shouting.

“No booze for the Dragon! Anyone who breaks this rule will be buying me a new building!” I call discrimination…

“Ah, Kira, I hear you were worried about me.” Pfft, no... Maybe a little. “I appreciate it. Wreyn and I just felt like a drink and a talk, is all. Don’t you worry your jagged little head about it.”

I’m not sure I like drunk Joras, but they seem to be having a good time, though.

“You’re a lucky one, Wreyn. If I had to guess, Kira here would’ve burned down Oakhold looking for me. Best friend you could ever have. Just ask Raya.” Raya is looking mighty uncomfortable with the attention Joras is forcing on her.

Joras is quick to swing his arm around Raya’s shoulders, pulling her to him as he continues talking.

“Speaking of Raya, who just goes out to pick herbs and brings back a dragon? Nobody, except Raya, that’s who. Saved my beloved Lily, too. Can you believe it? This little weirdo has been helping me with herbs for years. And then she just goes out and finds what I need to create a cure for my dear Lily’s ailment.”

Joras is leaning on Wreyn, who looks like he’s having a great time, they both are.

“Joras, Joras, listen. Raya even brought the dragon to Oakhold, and we were doing fine, but I needed something to hold over those damn adventurers. They’re always causing trouble and thinking they’re better than everyone, but you and I, my friend, we know they’re just assholes.”

I can see why she’s uncomfortable, she’s getting all the credit. I think I’ll just leave and let them enjoy an evening of bad decisions.

“Now speaking of dragons, Wreyn, my friend. This one is terrifying, but also not.” Okay, maybe I’ll stay a bit more. “She’s got all this power, she could break this town in a couple of hours easy, but what does she do? Block roads and empty out food stalls while playing with the kids. It doesn’t make sense, Wreyn! That’s not a dragon!”

I am a dragon! Wait, I’m not scary! I glance at Raya and she’s looking at me with pleading eyes. I think she wants to leave, so I pull my head back out of the doorway and she quickly untangles herself from Joras and joins me.

“No, no. Listen, Joras, the adventurers, right? Two of the meanest assholes you’ve ever met were in my town. And they picked a fight with a fucking Dragon, can you believe it? Dumbfucks. From what I hear, the assholes even got themselves eaten.”

I’m not gonna dwell on him only mentioning two of them as assholes, I’m just gonna leave with Raya.

As we walk down the street, I ask Raya if she’s okay, but she just shivers a bit. “That was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever experienced, Kira.”

Yeah, I get you. So I suggest we go fetch some warmer clothes for her and go for a night flight, which makes her perk right up.

It’s been a while since I’ve been by Raya’s place, so she gives me directions as we go, and to my surprise, I haven’t been here before. She has moved into a new house. When did that happen?!

Obviously, I just ask her. “Oh, uhm… It turns out that Turo meant it when he said he wanted to help, so he’s just guaranteeing that I have what I need. I didn’t really need a bigger place, but he said it was necessary to show that the town valued me.”

It’s really nice that she’s being helped, but I want free stuff too! I don’t even get time to mope about that, because Raya is apparently very quick to fetch warmer clothes and her satchel. “I’m ready!” You’re adorable is what you are.

For a moment, I contemplate just climbing a building so I can fly from here, but I don’t think that would leave the best impression of Raya among the neighbors.

Off to the gate it is again… Well, I at least wanna see where we are, so I get up and stand as straight as I can, which is not very.

I’m lucky this is a goblin town because all the buildings are quite small, allowing me to just barely look over them if I stretch my neck and use my tail for balance. "Whoa! I’m so high up! This is amazing!”

I can't help but chuckle at her. Raya, we’ve been flying, that’s much higher. “I know, but… Shut up…” That earned me another bonk, it turns out. I ask her how tall the buildings are, and she informs me that they’re about a meter and a half (5 ft) per floor.

Geez, her house is three stories. Geez! I’m huge! At least I haven’t grown much lately, but if I do, it won’t be long until I don’t fit on the streets anymore.

Well, now I'm curious, so I ask how tall she thinks I am. She looks to be thinking for a moment. "If I had to guess, I'd say about two murak (6.5 ft) at your shoulders, but you're like nine long (29.5 ft)." Nine meters long?! That's crazy! No wonder I bump into things; I'm not huge, I'm massive! Geez...

That's gonna take some getting used to and I definitely don't want to get larger.

And how tall is she? She's so tiny. "I'll have you know that I'm eighty cimurak (2.6 ft), and that's a perfectly reasonable height for my species!" She is SO tiny! Not even a meter tall.

Yeah, I’m just gonna not focus on that and instead start moving towards the gate I saw. Once we’re outside, I ask tiny Raya if she wants to go somewhere in particular, but she doesn’t want to give any suggestions, so we’re off on an ocean trip!

As we’re flying, I come to the conclusion that the ocean is freakin’ big. You hear it’s big, but being out on the ocean is an entirely different thing, it's making me feel small, which makes Raya even tinier.

We’ve been flying southwest, and it doesn’t take long before I spot some small islands. We’re definitely visiting those.

They’re just big enough that something could be hiding on them, but I can also immediately see there aren’t any settlements, which is a relief because that means people likely won't attack me.

As we land on the sandy beach, Raya immediately jumps down and starts picking through the debris. Leaving her to that, I walk toward the trees to see if there are any edible plants around. It could be fun to have Raya try something new.

And something new she will try… I ask her to come over here and point out a red, wrinkly fruit, I tell her it’s edible and quite delicious. “You sure? I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Naturally, I reassure her and encourage her to give it a go.

She hesitates a bit, but then takes a small bite. “It is good! I could eat this for days!” Okay, I wanted to prank her, but letting her eat too much would be too much, so I stop her before she takes another bite, and then the heat kicks in.

“You ass! Why did you set me on fire?!” She quickly grabs her water skin and downs the contents. “How can something so delicious be so evil...?"

She’s pretty quick to call them evil, but she still grabs a few and stuffs them in her satchel. I wonder whether that’s because she sees the appeal or wants to sell them.

We continue exploring the island, and we find some more herbs that catch Raya's attention. I have no idea how she’s picking them out, but she certainly seems to be looking for something.

Unfortunately, we don’t find any delicious creatures for me to snack on, so I suggest we just head back.

“Okay, but we've got to return here soon, I want to collect some more things.” I feel like I have had thoughts conflicting with parts of that, but who knows what the future holds.

We’re not in a rush to return, so we just enjoy the beautiful night sky while soaring. It really is beautiful without light pollution. I have no idea what sort of constellations they have here, but the stars look sort of familiar.

As Raya begins to comment on it being cold, I speed up and we head home. I drop Raya off at her place and tonight, I think I’ll sleep in the square. On purpose this time.

————————

As I wake up, I come to the conclusion that I really need to find a den or something. The sun in my eyes is starting to get very annoying. The obvious chore today is finding out what the heck Joras and Wreyn got up to with their scheming, so I head directly to Joras’ shop again.

My thoughts drift back to my size, and I hope I don’t outgrow Tuiran’s streets, I’d miss wandering around town…

As soon as I arrive at Joras’ place, I knock. Nobody to stop me this time! It doesn't take long before I hear some shuffling behind the door and then Joras opens it.

“You could just make some noise, you know…” I guess that’s fair, there are other ways to get his attention.

“Actually, don’t do that. I don’t know what sort of racket you’d think up…” What?! Where did that sass come from?

Eh, I’m gonna cut him some slack because he does not look well. He picks up a bottle from the floor and uncorks it, chugging the contents quickly. Almost immediately, he looks significantly better, which is definitely interesting.

A quick question later and I learn that it’s a general antidote, and it just lessens the impact of poisons. That’s cool.

“Now then, we should probably talk about my meeting with Grand Mage Wreyn of Immarderen.” That sounds weirdly familiar, but I can’t quite place it. I’ll have to look into what Immarderen is at some point.

Joras went on to explain how Wreyn agreed to send a couple of traders to Tuiran, and stop by himself to teach magic to a few people of the town. Which seems very generous to me.

And I just have to keep hunting predators like I already do while also being open to requests if they have trouble with a particularly troublesome beast: Kira, the bounty-hunting Dragon!

That seems remarkably easy, and I don’t get how that’s so great for the old man. He doesn’t even want to penalize me for the killing and stuff. It turns out the general consensus was that they would have targeted something they couldn’t handle at some point. It still feels like I’m being let off a little too easily.

I’m still gonna stay away from Wreyn’s town for a while, though.

Since I’m curious, I also ask Joras how they ended up drinking together, which makes the guy blush.

“Ahem, well… We had a mutual befuddling situation and decided to share experiences over drinks. The drinking just happened to get a bit out of hand.”

I want more information on this befuddling situation of his, it seems weird that they’d both have something like that. Especially since, as far as I know, they weren’t introduced until Wreyn showed up here.

…Dang it, I’m the befuddlement! He’s gonna have to explain more about how I’m so confusing to them. I demand explanations!

“Well, it’s quite simple. According to our lore, dragons will take whatever they want, and they want most things. While you clearly possess greedy tendencies, they appear muted. Dragons have also historically been known as Nation Breakers because of their destructive tendencies. You walk through Tuiran’s streets with extraordinary caution to avoid causing damage. And most of all, dragons are tremendously prideful, but you allow people to tease you and Raya to ride you. You appear to be a dragon, but I’d wager you’re something else, either entirely or at least in part. Exactly what, I couldn’t tell you.”

Apparently Wreyn agrees with him about me being something else. That seems like a bunch of gibberish. Of course I’m a dragon, I’ve always been a dragon, I’m just my own person. Can’t fault someone for their individuality.

For reasons I can’t place, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, so I’m gonna have to think about another subject to change to. As it turns out, that's kinda difficult sometimes…

“I can see that you’re getting bored, Kira, so how about we change the subject to something that might interest you: coin.” That does interest me, and I appreciate him saying bored instead of upset.

“Turo stopped by yesterday and handed Lily your tribute. I’ll go fetch it now.” I wonder how much it is. I hope it’s a lot; I have no idea what they’re paying me for this gig. And all of a sudden I’m reminded that someone ran off with my cat! I didn’t even get to eat it.

Joras is back, carrying a pouch, a jingling pouch!

“Now, this is more than the tribute, so it won’t necessarily be as much next time, but you’ve also been compensated for what the panther was worth. Well, the parts that could be salvaged, you did quite a bit of damage to it.” Yeah, I’d better have, the sneaky bastard did some damage to me too.

He’s still talking, but I find my attention drawn to the pouch instead. I really want it, and he’s just holding it out whi- I ate it…

“I can see why Raya dislikes this part… Remember not to chew; I quite like my hand.” Juuust gonna let him go and pretend that didn’t happen.

“I’m gonna go ahead and forget about that happening. There’s something else I’ve been wondering about; have you decided where to build your hoard?” I have not, but now that he mentions it, it feels really important and makes me want a cave to live in.

Totally unrelated, I subtly ask him how one would go about killing an icy bear.