The cold was starting to get to Geebo.

It wasn't so bad in Fimble, or in the cave with Master there. The houses in Fimble were tightly sealed against the chill, had to be or the people there would never have survived. Tinty had been happy to show him all the generations of work that had gone into making each house a bastion against the mountain's wrath. They were even reinforced against landslides, built to bounce if they fell off the mountain. And that had evidently taken a lot of work and planning.

Geebo was pretty sure anyone inside would be paste and dinner for something that found a fallen house, but the house itself would survive. And that was clever, he had to admit.

The cave was comfy too, but only when Master was there. Master radiated a heat he was entirely unaware of. Like a rock left in the fire to warm.

Sometimes Geebo curled up next to him while he was sleeping. It was difficult, because every instinct in his new body told him that he should be fighting Master, trying to drive Master off. That he was competition. That he was a rival.

Geebo had absolutely no idea why this was so, or why the gods had cursed him with such a useless quirk.

He had been so proud, when he unlocked the rank up! Even if the description had told him it would take a years-long nap to handle all the changes.

It was only after he woke up, that he found out the true cost.

Half his jobs were gone. He had gained great physical power, true, but at the cost of all of so many of his hard-earned skills.

And with the loss of those jobs, went the attribute points he had spent his lifetime accumulating. True, most of them were crafting jobs, and the losses were small, but it still hurt. Thinking was harder now, and the various tricks he had taken to suck up to his Master were suffering for the sudden drops in his charisma and wisdom.

But on the other hand, it gave him a chance of surviving his current errand.

Geebo's feet crunched on the snow, as he loped northward, down the slope of the mountain. Richard was busy. Rotgoriel was busy. That left Geebo as the best choice for a simple delivery mission.

And oh, it was cold, especially when the wind howled and wisps of snow whispered free from the packs and made trails across the mountainside. But he had enough constitution to handle it now... mostly.

The warm coat that Mister Bortiz had sewn for him helped, too.

It was pink and poofy and had belonged to Mister Bortiz' sister, before she ran away with damnbard. That was a strange name, to be sure, but if the man had another, Geebo knew he would never find out. To Mister Bortiz he was damnbard, and that was that.

Mister Bortiz was a good friend. Geebo didn't have that many friends. It made the ones that were there that much more important.

A noise came to him on the wind.

Geebo slowed, glancing around. His spectacles were in his pocket. Not that he needed them, there was nothing wrong with his perception now, he mainly wore them because Master seemed to like him more when he did. They were a bit small for his new muzzle shape, and not fit for a long journey— too much chance of them falling off and breaking.

The noise wasn't repeated, but at the base of the slope a haze had risen, a fog rolling out of the snow.

Geebo huddled in his coat, sinking his head down into the warm pink poof of the ruff. He waved, spreading long fingers, claws shining in the weak sunlight.

The sound came again, and this time he made it out. A long, thin wail, that could have been mistaken for a wolf's howl in the far distance. But it wasn't in the distance. And it wasn't from the haze, but to his side.

Geebo glanced that way, saw nothing.

The wail was answered a few seconds later. This time from his other side.

And the haze was advancing now, creeping slowly along the ground and puffing up into meter-high rolls of vapor.

Geebo sighed. Then he peeled off his coat, shivering as the cold air hit his scales. He tied it around his neck by the sleeves, threw it over his back like a cape. Pausing a second he transferred his pouch of holding from his harness to one of the coat pockets, and buttoned it up.

The vapor paused.

A shape passed through it, dark against the light, a pair of antlers cutting through the mist like the fins of some oceanic predator.

“Geebo comes to talk!” Geebo called. “Please be Livingdeadgrrl!”

The antlers paused.

“Shit on toast, it is you! You've gotten bigger, little guy.”

She emerged from the fog like a queen, her own fur coat layered with bone and leather and scraps of metal, a pair of wooden snow goggles covering her eyes, and the jawbone of some sort of predator over her lower face. But teeth flashed in there, and if they were brown with old blood, the smile still seemed friendly.

Geebo smiled back...

...and suddenly his brain felt numb. “Hello Livingdeadgrrl! I am pleased to see you!”

“Sounds like faction level friendly. Cool cool. Hey, back off assholes!” She turned and waved the spear to either side. There were groans and wails of disappointment, and a flash of a bare and bloody skull as things best left unseen slunk back away from her. And from Geebo.

But Geebo barely noticed. The haze was on him now, and his thoughts were slow. He had to wait until he was spoken to, he knew that.

How do I know that?

It bubbled away from him, as Livingdeadgrrl turned back. “Looks like you got an upgrade, same as your boss. You a class feature or something?”

“Geebo does not understand the question.” The air was thin. The world itself was thin. It was as if the fog was spreading all around him, but it had not moved. Only Livingdeadgrrl was solid, full of color and life.

“Right, right. Okay, so what do you have for me, little... no, not so little anymore. Shit, you look like a velociraptor and a xenomorph got it on. Kinda works, though. Except for the coat. Why did you tie it around your neck?”

“Geebo did not want to get blood on it. It is a gift from a friend!”

“Ha! Yeah, no, I got you boo. But seriously, Rutger said you'd be bringing me something.”

Wordlessly Geebo pulled out the wooden tube, and handed it over. She popped it open, pulled out the sheepskin inside, and read it. “Huh. Battle plans? He couldn't discuss this over the !#%#!%#!%#!?”

Geebo blinked. “Geebo does not understand what you mean, Livingdeadgrrl.”

“Right, right, your AI can't handle that. Gotta keep immersion going. No worries. Okay. Let me just...” She pulled out a bone, jabbed herself, and wrote in blood on the sheepskin. “Few changes to the plan, there. Tell him if he doesn't like it he can tell me to my face. Or send you again. All good either way.”

“Geebo will deliver your message!” he smiled. “You are a good ally!”

“Rock on. Hey, got any quests for me?”

“Geebo has no quests for you at this faction level,” Geebo said, wondering what the hell he was talking about. But the haze made it hard to think, hard to do anything except take the tube and smile, before loping off.

Only when she was a few hundred yards away did the haze start to clear. He shook his head, then slipped his coat back on.

There was perhaps a minute there, where he could recall her words with perfect clarity. A minute where he could almost make sense of those nonsense words she'd spoken when they were talking about the plans. But then it wisped away, like fog, like the ghosts of a dream. The entire encounter was boiled down to the bare bones of its structure.

Geebo sighed, and loped back home. There was no sense dwelling upon it; It was simply what happened when one dealt with players. The villagers in Fimble were likewise affected, Aunarox was affected, Aunarox's new djinn servant was affected, everybody save for Agnezsharron and Master was affected.

Which just went to prove that dragons were the most powerful creatures in Generica.

Only the natural order of things, really.

But...

It seemed to Geebo that lately, as his willpower grew, he was remembering more from each interaction. Small things, snippets of sentences at the most. But still more than he had from when he had been just a draggit. Which was odd, because his mental attributes were still below what they had been when he had all of his jobs.

Thinking about it gave him a headache, and the cold was freezing his feet, so he sped upslope and back to the village.

A glance at the cave showed that Master was out doing something... when he was in residence, vapor poured out of the hole in the cliff periodically. Geebo weighed his options, and headed toward Mister Bortiz' house.

Perhaps he'd have some more of that sweet beer. The one that tasted more like grapes than armpits.

The door swung open when he knocked. Bortiz looked up from where he was sewing a patch of green cloth, and gave him a smile. “Hey, Scrawny.”

“Geebo is taller than you are.”

“And much scrawnier. Sit down, I've got to get this done before noon.”

“The training exercise?”

“Yeah. All of the townsfolk are wearing something green. It's so the newcomers don't kill us.”

“And what will the newcomers be wearing?”

“Black.” Bortiz frowned. “We're allowed to kill them, though. Agnez says they'll come back. It sounds weird, but... I believe her.”

“It is the truth,” Geebo said, hanging his coat on a nearby hook. Then he settled himself onto the chair that Bortiz kept for guests. He'd boasted proudly that five generations of the Bortiz line had died in that chair, all of old age. Anywhere else that would be a curse, but as he explained it, anyone who managed to die of something as hard to achieve as old age in Fimble was a lucky, lucky man.

It was a comfy chair. There were worse places to die, Geebo supposed.

“You want some salted meat?” Bortiz asked, glancing up from his needlework.

“No thank you. The salt chafes Geebo's mouth.”

“Well it's about all we've got for a bit, until this is done and we can get to hunting. Since Bhob killed the Tallyman there's no food from the trade road, not ever again.”

“Geebo will hunt later. He will bring you what he can.”

Bortiz smiled. “You're all right, Scrawny. Oop, hang on.” He rose, and pushed through the beaded curtain in the back, with a stoppered gourd. “We've got plenty of this, anyway. Maybe no food from the trade road, but Agnez can call her grapevines anywhere.”

Geebo took the gourd happily, hooked the cork out with one long claw, and drank. Bortiz pulled out his own flask and they shared some quiet consideration while the fire crackled in the background.

“Bhob bought us a load of trouble. I mean, he never got along with the Tallyman. He was dumb to try to give him the coin so early, we'd all agreed to wait until we were ready to go as one.” Bortiz sighed.

“You want to leave so badly?” Geebo tilted his head from one side to the other, letting his frills soak up the heat from the fire.

“Yep. Don't get me wrong, dying in that chair is a tradition, for the Bortiz men. But I'd like a few more options. And maybe to live somewhere where my pee doesn't freeze mid-stream on cold nights. So I mean I can't blame Bhob. But it was stupid of him to claim that the Tallyman drew first.”

“Did he?” Geebo asked, after a long pull of beer.

“That's what Bhob says. Swears up and down that the man drew a big, curvy knife on him. Swears that it was him or the Tallyman. But we couldn't find no knife on him, or anywhere around.”

“This is the first Geebo has heard of it.”

“Well you can ask your blue genie friend, she was there.” Bortiz shuddered. “Took... bits... from the corpse after. Right turned me off on her. She's cute and all, but... yug. Treated his body like he weren't nothin' but a thing.”

“To her that's what it was. Djinn are still dark creatures, after all, even if they are friendly and fair to look at,” Geebo shrugged. “But she has been absent for some time. Master says the players have been harassing her.”

“Ah. Yeah. I hear'em talk... I think. Can't recall exact stuff, but it's a thing. And that Benedict guy is always pushing them to go after'er. Smug little bastard.”

“The halven? Master calls him Cole.”

“Yeah, him. Never tries for her himself, always eggs on the others.”

“Hm...” Geebo looked into the gourd, considering the sloshing liquid inside. “That one bears watching. Perhaps—”

The hut creaked as leathery wingbeats filled the air. “Agnez or Master?” Geebo asked, jumping up and carefully putting the gourd down, holding it steady as the small home shook.

Bortiz frowned. “Shouldn't be either. They're both down the mountain, setting up the training.” He rose as well and cranked a handle until a wooden window ground upwards. “Black. So it's your guy. Heading back to your cave, looks like.”

“Strange,” Geebo considered. “Ah, Richard might have come in for something.”

“Richard?”

“Never to mind,” Geebo said hastily. The beer had loosened his tongue, just a bit. “Geebo must go and see what he needs. Pardon, Mister Bortiz.”

Two minutes later, Geebo was loping up the slope, angling for the cave.

There was no vapor coming from it, and Geebo frowned... but then the clink of metal against stone echoed from inside. Brushing aside some nameless misgiving, Geebo walked in. “Master? Is something amiss?”

At the sight of the black scaled bulk, Geebo felt his love for his Master swell. His skill was kicking in, and the fear, the trepidation at addressing Rotgoriel was washed away by a wave of joy.

But... the feeling wasn't as intense. It had been fading, ever since they moved into this new place. The joy was less sharp.

It was concerning. There was a proper balance of fear that had to be maintained, for peak efficiency. If it wasn't there, then Geebo couldn't properly serve him. Fortunately the anger and irritation that he constantly felt around his Master would kick in soon, and that would help. The joy would surge once more.

Rotgoriel was in the back of the cave, holding the mirror up between two claws, squinting at it and angling it to the light. “Ah. Geebo. Good. I will need the mirror now.”

“Of course Master.” Geebo said, fumbling for his pouch... and finding his harness empty. “Oh no!”

“Oh no?” Black scales with white flecks glinted, as the massive body shifted, and Rotgoriel loomed over Geebo. “What have you done with my mirror?”

“Geebo has misplaced the bag... one second, Master. He must think...” Geebo closed his eyes. He focused on that feeling he got, when he saw Rotgoriel. That itch that told him rivals must die.

But the itch was not there.

It hadn't kicked in once, since he entered the cave. And that was unusual.

Ater a second he opened his eyes again. “Master, are you the human right now?”

“No. Do not change the subject. Have you failed me, Geebo?”

It was meant to be threatening, but there was no surge of joy. Just fear.

And Geebo realized what was happening.

INT+1

“No,” Geebo said, staring up at the dragon, and feeling no instinct to attack him. No twinge in the back of his mind that told him this was a rival. “No, Geebo has not failed my master. But you are not him!”

Geebo bolted for the cave entrance.

He almost made it.

“Manipulate Air,” Aunarox said behind him.

The winds hurled him back. Geebo hissed and turned in a fluid motion. “Rend!” he snarled as the black bulk faded away, revealing a blue woman behind the illusion...

...and then the winds caught him from both sides, pressing him like a bug as he screeched and thrashed and twisted, trying to escape.

“You are a good and faithful servant to your master,” Aunarox said. “It would be ill to kill you. Where is the mirror?”

“Not here!” he snarled. “Hidden.”

Dark blue lips pressed into a thin line. “And if I told you this was as much for his sake as yours?”

“Then you can tell Master, and see what he says!” Geebo wriggled, trying to slip free. It was as if two great hands made of air were squeezing him, and it was getting harder to breathe. But he was nimble and strong now, and he twisted, wriggling his legs free, scrabbling against the stone for leverage.

“Tcha! I have no time for this!” Aunarox huffed. “Very well then. Binding of the Ring!”

Geebo had a split second to wonder what the hell that was, before lights flashed around him. And as everything turned green, words appeared.

Aunarox has bound you within a Gem!

Geebo stopped flailing.

The cave was gone.

He was in a big room, with green crystalline walls. Light filtered in from outside, through the crystal, rendering everything in a literal lime light.

There were a few cushions about, a fountain burbling merrily in the center, and a table laden with food. A water pipe sat near the cushions, with a pile of fragrant herbs next to them. But beyond the fountain, the floor was green-tinted tiled stone.

Then the light darkened, and he looked up to see a vast blue face, and a pair of enormous eyes peering down at him. “There,” her voice echoed and resounded, just a touch too loud for comfort.

“What have you done?” Geebo shrieked.

“You may leave when you tell me where the mirror may be, oh sensible servant,” Aunarox said. Her teeth were the size of tombstones, from this perspective, and her smile a threat.

“Geebo will not!”

“Then stay, for now,” she said, and sighed. “I advise you to change your mind, but if you do not, then what follows is not my responsibility. You have a week to decide, effendi. After that, I do not think your master will be a factor in this any more...”