“Tell me about the Conjuror job,” Rich said, kneeling down so the gnome could clamber up on his neck. “Sum it up for me, please.”

“Um...” Bittybop thought, as she worked her way up his spine, to the spot between his wings. “We summon copies of things. Like you start with manabeasts, which are copies of animals made from magic, and then you can learn elementals, and then darkbeasts. But you have to have seen the actual creatures you're summoning, first. You can't call up greater daemons until you run into a greater daemon. And stuff of that power level, sometimes you have to beat it before you can call up a copy of it. It's kind of like Jabbymon, you know?”

“I have no idea what that is. No, wait. It got here like a decade ago? Cartoon and video game combo? I think our pastors declared it satanic, so I didn't get to watch it. My father called it Japanese pedo stuff.”

“What? That's not what it's about at all! It's CUTE!”

“To be fair my father called every cartoon that was deeper than Bugs Bunny japanese pedo stuff. He was kind of an ignorant dick. Listen, you impressed Rotgoriel. He said you could call up earth elementals?” Flapping his wings as he spoke, Rich took to the sky.

“Oh yeah! Those guys are easy.”

“How about water?”

“I can do that. And air, too, and fire.”

“Fire's the one thing we don't have to worry about. Trust me, our foes will bring the fire. Which is why I don't want you anywhere near them until it's too late for them to fry you.”

“My armband gives me fire resistance.”

“Yeah, and my species gives me one hundred and twenty-five percent fire resistance. And they still burned me to death twice. Their class is all about fire, nothing else. They have stuff that burns straight through fire resistance or reduces it, or something.”

“Oh.”

“But don't be afraid because if this works out then you'll be the one burning them.”

“I'm not. Why would I be afraid?”

“You're not? Good.”

“Just because I'm fifteen doesn't mean I'm a kid.”

“Believe it or not I understand that,” Rich said, feeling the truth of his words. He hadn't been a kid for a very long time. He never would be one again, even if things went his way, even if they won hands-down, here. Even if Project Utopia succeeded. Even if everything that he and Rotgoriel needed to do got done, he would be stuck doing the work of an adult... hell, two adults, until the end of his days. “I wasn't looking down on you. Just saying that these people are scary, and we need to step carefully.”

“Yeah if they burned a dragon to death I get it.”

“Twice.”

“Twice, yeah.”

It was strange, wearing Rotgoriel's skin. With draconic form came draconic perception, and the awareness of a million little cues that a human could never catch. He'd tried to put his finger on it before, tried to focus on HOW he could interpret this, and the sensation had followed him back into his own world after he logged off. He'd spent the day worrying that he would go mad, hearing every creak and shuffle, hearing his own body moving beneath his skin, and afraid it wouldn't turn off. Afraid that he'd never go back to normal.

But it had. One good sleep had seen him right. And he'd learned his lesson; since that time he didn't try to pick apart just why his human mind could interpret a dragon's sense's, he just did it, and trusted his instincts.

And his instincts right now were telling him that Bittybop was putting on a brave front, but actually scared shitless about the whole affair.

He opened his mouth to reassure her, then stopped. Was there a way to do that without being condescending?

“I'm scared too,” he confessed. “We'll get one shot at this, and if they don't follow me then it's blown.”

Oh, that was the wrong thing to say. He could tell from her breathing that she was more afraid now.

“I just... yeah. It'll be fine,” she said. “Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry.”

Rich took the next minute in silence, thinking furiously. This was a leadership thing, this required people skills. He didn't have much in the way of those. Pat was the face. Rich had never had to interact much with people, beyond coordinating with the guild officers who generally knew what they were doing already, and now he thought he might be paying the price for that.

He tried to think back to what he'd felt like when he was her age, and recall would have helped him back then. And after a few seconds, he thought he might have a good approach.

INT+1

Surprised, he watched the letters float by. Then he shook his head, just a bit. This game made a lot more sense now that he knew it wasn't a game.

So he pitched his voice low and tried to make it as warm as possible. “What's troubling you?”

“I... it's nothing.”

“It's not nothing if you're worried. And right now you're really worried.”

“I—I take anxiety medication. I missed my dose tonight because of... all this.”

“All right.” Rich glanced down. They were south of the city now, out in the barrens that few people went to. Few save for the criminals that the city pressed into hard labor, hauling in the raw oils that gave the city its name. “I'll land. Log off and go med up.”

“What? No, this is important!”

“Your meds are important.”

“They always take an hour to kick in anyway! I'll be... I'm fine, I'll manage.”

“This isn't an argument. You're going to go do it,” Rich said, heading down and flaring his wings to brake. “I don't want you screwing up your system because of a game.”

And yeah, it wasn't a game, but this was a kid. A young kid who didn't know what the stakes were, and would have a bad time if she messed up her meds. Rich had enough on his conscience, he didn't need any more bad karma.

She protested more, until he folded his wings and pointed out that she was wasting more time by arguing, and that he wasn't going anywhere until she did the right thing. With a grumpy “Fine!” she faded from view.

VictorVector: So those two Cindermancers just took out LongTom and Bryson.

Rutger: LongTom's back?

VictorVector: Briefly. He's messaging me and yelling about a month's rent gone in under a minute.

Rutger: Tokens are that expensive where he's at?

VictorVector: I don't know his circumstances. Don't think he's got an expensive place. Still...

Rutger: Still. Go yell up the chain to Pat, tell him I'm authorizing a transfer from the piggybank. Tom's been awesome these last few days, he deserves better.

The resistance kept a rainy-day fund for tokens and other emergencies. It wasn't widely known, to prevent abuse and theft. But moments like this were why it existed.

Rutger: The Cindermancers. How close are they to the city?

VictorVector: Half a mile. They're sticking back with the troops. We put pressure on the lines north and south of them, so they're guarding the biggest cluster. In about ten minutes it's gonna get bad.

Rich ground his teeth, and waited.

He didn't have long. Thirty seconds later Bittybop faded back in, and she did seem more relaxed. Wasting no time he plucked her from the ground, planted her on his back, and sped over to the destination: a black, brackish pool that reeked of oil.

“Okay,” she said, hopping down and wrinkling her nose. “Ick! I can't get close to that.”

“You won't need to,” Rich said. “Here's the plan...”

Two minutes later he was aloft. Muttering a blessing for his agility, he sped northeast, hoping like hell that he could pull this off.

He found the enemy lines distressingly near to Turpentine, and the Cindermancers darting overhead, shelling down at the nearest walls. Archers screamed and immolated, and Rich could see that the guardposts were all either abandoned or in the process of evacuating. He couldn't blame them, the two flying mages were too much for the low-leveled guards of this formerly peaceful city.

Rich roared in, let loose with a Sandblast, and turned in a fluid motion, as Charmandy whirled to meet him with a scream of her own.

Oh, this is personal, all right. Good, this'll make it easier. Rich fled then. There was no need to look behind him to see what was going on. The fire spewing over and around him told him that the two were literally hot on his heels.

Well, that and a few other cues.

You have resisted Elfwaygo's Curse of Combustion!

It took most of his sanity to survive, healing himself whenever his back started going numb, the nerves boiling in their flesh. If he hadn't been a high-level Cleric he would have been shit out of luck, but all of his adventures, all of his work over the last year paid off. And in short order he found himself approaching the pool of oil. The now-white pool of oil, that moved and glistened oddly to his draconic eyes.

Rich dove down, flew directly over the pool... then dipped upward, in what he'd been told was an Immelman Turn, a quick dip up, a quick wheel around, and then he was going the other way, directly over the staring, flaming Cindermancers, now a scant twenty feet above the pool.

“NOW!” Rich bellowed.

And with the sound of a thousand screaming banshees, the water elementals holding the surface of the oil pool in place dissipated, and the oil, brought to obscene temperatures by the fire elementals below it, geysered upward and showered both Rich and the two Cindermancers in boiling turpentine.

Rich sped away, gasping, the discomfort on his underside growing, the scales sloughing off of him as he crashed to the ground, and rolled. And though it hurt, he raised his head and stared back to see if it had worked.

And to his despair, there came the two Cindermancers, flying slowly through the falling oil, their own fire resistance protecting them from injury. Charmandy sneered, lifted her hands, forming a point of roiling flame so bright it hurt to look at—

—and stumbled, as the carpet she was on tilted.

Rich watched as a slurry of liquid ran off the edge of the carpet. And then it lost its rigidity, and Charmandy screamed as she fell.

Elfwaygo realized it before she did, and tried to flee, but his carpet wasn't tilting, it was diving, diving hard toward the ground, and both of them hit the oil at the same time.

Rich sagged back in relief, and deactivated his recording software. Then he dragged himself away, letting the software edit.

It had worked.

The Cindermancers and their carpets were immune to fire, yes.

But the runes on the carpets? The painted runes, and the magical dye in the carpets themselves?

They sure didn't like being soaked by hot turpentine.

With a sigh, Rich dragged himself off to heal, picking up a gleeful Bittybop on the way before lifting off into the night. He was done, exhausted mentally and emotionally. He titled the video “Deepfryer,” uploaded it to the more popular forums, dropped off the kid at the Lonely Tower, and submitted to the healing of the field medics.

This was enough, for now. He would leave the rest to Rotgoriel.