I sat in the library and read for about two hours, giving Tear time to calm down, then headed up to the kitchen and started preparing a simple lunch with bread, cheeses, ham, and a salad. I rang a bell and shouted “lunch!” up the tower.

I gave her ten minutes to get down the stairs, she only took five but arrived by face-planting onto the landing.

“You ok?” I asked, though not too concerned. She was immune to fall damage now.

She raised her head, groaned, then realised that she didn't in-fact hurt anywhere, and stood up. “I said this yesterday, but your tower is too tall!” she exclaimed.

“Which explains what about your method of arrival?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

She looked away, embarrassed. “I was running down the stairs and slipped on the landing above,” she muttered quietly. I continued looking at her with a level gaze. “and thank you for the necklace,” she continued, so quietly that I could barely hear it, “it probably saved my life just now.”

“You're welcome,” I replied, making a mental note to add some cross-hatching to the stairs, “and I'm sorry about how I tested it with you, but you should know I jumped off the tower twice yesterday with it, so I was fairly certain you would be fine. Anyway, come, sit and eat, we're going to go to the town this afternoon.”

As I was cutting some slices of cheese, I suddenly remembered something I wanted to ask, so I did. “Did you want anything from your old clothes? You'd left them in the bath... pool... er… thing, so when I was renovating I picked them up. They're rather unsalvageable, so I was going to destroy them unless you wanted otherwise.”

She shook her head immediately and I nodded. I would incinerate them later then, that was probably the most hygienic option. I was glad I didn't need to clean them, though it would be made easier by the fact that the tower seemed to clean itself, and everything inside itself, which was ridiculously convenient. Any laundry or dishes would clean themselves overnight, and food took seemed to take longer to go off. I once again praised my past self for deciding to build my base over a mana spring.

After lunch, I stacked the dishes behind the bar for the tower to clean, then walked over to the central shaft. I hopped up on the wall. “You coming?” I grinned over my shoulder at Tear.

She looked at me in confusion for a moment before realisation dawned “I'll take the stairs thanks,” she said, backing away.

“Suit yourself,” I said, then fell backwards off the ledge.

I flipped twice, then landed with crossed and slightly bowed legs and my arms raised, as if waiting for an audience's applause. Immediately feeling silly, I adopted a more sensible pose and settled down to wait, though I didn’t have to wait long, Tear emerging from the stairs only two minutes later. “I thought you'd pull me with you,” she said.

“Do you really see me that way?” I asked, in a lugubrious voice.

“Yes,” she replied bluntly, and I mimed clutching at an arrow in my heart and collapsing dramatically.

“You do have to admit it's the fastest way down the tower,” I said, raising an arm, finger extended, from my position in the floor. “If you do it enough, you'll get used to it.”

The catgirl snorted, walked round my prone form with barely a glance, and opened the door. She yelped and recoiled sharply as the Stardust Dragon stuck its head through the opening to look at her, partially phasing through the still-solid obsidian, then, satisfied there wasn’t a threat, the dragon retreated back outside. She breathed hard, clutching her chest, while I lay on the floor laughing.

“Serves you right,” I managed to get out between laughs. “Let it never be said karma never balances.”

“You told it to do that,” she said accusatorially, glaring at me.

“Not at all,” I replied, raising myself to my feet by extending my wings and pivoting round my heels. “That was just coincidence, but still 'Good job Karma!'” I called out through the obsidian mist door.

Tear stared at me for a moment. “Please don't tell me you're calling it that.”

“Why not?” I asked defensively. “'Karma the Stardust Dragon' sounds cool.”

“To you maybe,” she said.

I stepped though the ethereal wall of obsidian and addressed the now forty-meter-long dragon. “Your name will be 'Karma', and you will now respond to instructions given using that name.”

It flicked its tail against the ground with a loud crash, which I understood to mean simultaneously 'I didn't need a name to do my duty' and 'woohoo~! I got a name!'

“Well I'm glad you like it,” I said, rubbing the newly christened Karma’s head.

Tear stuck her head cautiously out of the wall, closed the door with the not-actually-very-well-hidden switch, and approached me slowly. “Go on,” I urged, “give the dragon a pat. It won’t bite.”

She shook her head wildly, ears down and hidden in her scruffy ginger hair, but relented when Karma started butting her gently with its head. It was quite an amusing sight; a catgirl timidly patting a dragon which was nuzzling her with a head the size of her whole body. Karma had to phase half its body below ground level for Tear to even reach properly. He really was getting quite big.

“See, it's a nice dragon really,” I said, the statement immediately and completely ruined as Karma casually flattened a monster that had been approaching the tower with its tail, not halting in its rubbing up against Tear for a moment. The catgirl’s hand froze mid-pat.

“Well, nice to some people,” I amended.