“Hi, Grimmy,” Vur said and nodded at the black dragon. His gaze shifted onto the two little heads poking out from near the bottom of the cavern entrance. “Hello, Ramon. Hello, Gloria.” He gestured towards the two rocky hands. “We caught a kirlopion.”

Grimmy blinked. “You caught a kirlopion?” he asked. “Where’d you even learn about those things?” His head swiveled as he scanned the room, and he narrowed his eyes at the Recordkeeper. “Why do you look familiar?”

“You probably know my predecessor,” the Recordkeeper said. “I’m this generation’s Recordkeeper. I would prefer it if you didn’t squish me.”

“Why would he squish you?” Tafel asked. She rolled her eyes. “Would it happen to do anything with the fact you’re infuriating?”

The Recordkeeper shrugged. “He squished the last Recordkeeper, so a precedent’s already been established. Perhaps he did it on accident. He does look chubbier in person. Then again, it has been a few hundred years since the ravens last recorded his image.” She scanned Grimmy from head to talon. “Did you gain weight?”

Grimmy took a few steps forward into the cavern and raised his foot over the Recordkeeper. He stepped down, but Vur appeared by the Recordkeeper’s side and held up the black dragon’s foot. “This is my tour guide,” Vur said. “You can’t squish her.”

“You weren’t really going to step on her, were you?” Gloria asked, staring at her father with wide eyes.

“He wasn’t,” Leila said and pushed past her children, winding up by Grimmy’s side. She looked around the cavern before her gaze finally settled on the rocky hands in the center. “What did you say this was?” she asked Vur. “You caught a kirlopion?”

Vur nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Leila’s eyes narrowed at Grimmy. “You said your traps wouldn’t be dangerous. A kirlopion? Really?”

“It’s not an actual kirlopion,” Grimmy said, emphasizing the second to last word. “It’s just something I cobbled together that’s based off of one. I know I’m amazing and all, but even I can’t bring an extinct creature like the kirlopion back to life; if they left behind a corpse instead of disintegrating upon death, then perhaps I could.”

“Your traps?” Tafel asked. “You made this?” Her face paled. “Did we barge into your secret lair?” Vur had broken two of the barriers inside, and Grimmy could’ve easily pinpointed her as the reason why. She had even freed those people Grimmy had trapped. “S-sorry.”

Grimmy chuckled and patted Tafel’s head with his claw, nearly squishing her. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You didn’t get very far, and it’s not really my lair. It’s my parents’. I just made some modifications to it to help them sleep better.”

“Sleeping parents,” Emile mumbled and turned his head towards the river of dragon drool flowing through the cavern near the wall. Then, he turned his head towards Grimmy’s mouth. He gulped and stared, then stared some more.

Susan noticed her brother’s actions and slapped him with her wing. “What are you doing?” she whispered. “You’re being rude!”

Emile leaned over and whispered back, “Do you think Grimmy’s drool tastes just as good? Do you think different dragons have different tasting drool? What if Vur’s drool tastes good too but differently?” He gulped again, and his gaze shifted onto Leila’s face, then Gloria’s and Ramon’s. He took in a deep breath and looked at his sister. “I have a new goal. I’m going to taste the drool of every dragon in existence.”

Susan stared at her brother. After a long moment, the only words she could come up with were, “You’re a moron.”

Vur gestured towards the rocky hands. “Should I let it go?”

“Yeah,” Grimmy said. “I want to see how well it’s grown.”

Vur nodded, and the rocky hands dispersed. The invisible creature dropped to the ground with a thud, and Grimmy extended his claw, letting it hover over where the fake kirlopion had fallen. He wiggled his claws together, and the air beneath his paw shimmered. A moment later, a giant praying mantis with a lustrous black shell came into view.

“It doesn’t look like it’s changed much,” Grimmy said and scratched his chin. He nodded. “That means it hasn’t eaten anything strong. Like a kirlopion, it has the ability to absorb part of what it eats to use for itself.”

“Ooh, that’s a little like the chef, right?” Stella asked, glancing up to look at Vur.

Grimmy glanced at Vur’s chest where Stella was sticking her head out of. “You know a chef that grows stronger the more he eats?”

“Not really eats,” Stella said. “But he grows stronger when he kills something. Apparently, he can obtain their skills.”

Grimmy raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a hero,” he said. “Every so often, someone like that will pop up. You have to squash them before they can grow, or they become a huge nuisance to the balance of the world. Where is he?”

“He’s somewhere on the eastern continent,” Stella said after realizing Vur had no intentions of answering. “We can capture him for you.”

Grimmy nodded. “Do that,” he said. He picked up the praying mantis and turned it around, inspecting it from all angles. “It doesn’t seem too badly hurt. It’ll be fine if left to heal on its own.” He turned around and chucked the creature out of the cavern before wiping his two front paws together. Then, he stared at the two phoenixes and pointed at the frozen bones scattered on the ground. “Did you guys try to melt the ice covering these bones?”

“Y-yes,” Susan said. “Did we do something wrong?”

“Not really,” Grimmy said. He grabbed Ramon’s tail and yanked the holy dragon away before he could bite down on one of the bones. “These aren’t real phoenix bones. If you managed to melt the ice on a single bone, all of them would’ve exploded and collapsed the cavern.”

Susan shuddered and pressed herself closer to Vur’s neck. It was a good thing the praying mantis had interrupted them, or someone could’ve been seriously hurt. She glared at Emile. “Your idea almost got us killed.”

Emile snorted. “It was your idea that brought us here in the first place!”