The more Tamara talked, the more the surroundings faded. The less Amaranthe could see around her, the harder it got to hear her voice. A peculiar sensation where Amaranthe slowly became Ruth. Incapable of doing anything or changing things, but nevertheless along for the ride.

Soon there was only the dragon, and Amaranthe almost started to forget who she was as the memory swept over her mind.

Ruth opened his eyes and inhaled. The bouquet of scents hit his nostrils and his impossibly large lungs inflated to full capacity. He held that long breath in as if sampling it for the various flavors.

Everything seemed to be in order. There was the metallic sting of cold and precious metal that was slightly damp, the tang of the oil that the pet beetles produced from their wings, the impression that the trees that bloomed up and down the sheer side of his mountain were in full force.

Today was going to be another good day.

Ruth rolled to his side, sending a small and delightful cascade of colored string and coins tumbling down from underneath the ‘nest’ he had pushed together as bedding a few days earlier. He gave a slow vertical slitted wink to the marble statue of the courageous pegasus he had rescued from a terribly horrid little man on the road last year.

It had been bouncing around dangerously in the back of his uncovered carriage with very few ropes to tie it down appropriately. Despite Ruth flying low and trying to warn the man to slow down, less he displace the magnificent work of art into the road. The human must have been in some kind of manic state, possibly ill. As Ruth drew closer he started whipping his horses into a frenzy, torturing the poor creatures in a way that made Ruth get angrier and angrier the closer he flew.

In the end, he had, in his opinion, very little choice but to flick his wrist and send the man flying into the underbrush. The horses had to be eaten swiftly because they were having literal heart attacks from the abuse they had received on the road and his presence certainly hadn’t helped.

Mad respect to those horses for trying to aid the man in the transferring of an effigy of one of their flying cousins despite the well-earned reputation of humans and their propensity for random and spontaneous insanity. He finished them quickly and ate them, giving silent thanks because they were spared the pain of agonizing death and because they were freaking delicious.

He briefly toyed with the idea of going after the man who had fled into the trees but decided against it. Humans, he had come to realize at the time, weren’t worth the trouble. They were like angry little bees or wasps but with longer memory.

He had been about to fly off when he was once again struck by the beauty of the sculpture of the pegasus. The loving detail and rendering were incredible. Whichever horse had crafted the thing deserved respect. Whichever pegasus it had been modeled after must have been a great hero to his or her people. A protagonist of pegasus. A protagasus.

Naturally, Ruth had taken the statue to his lair and developed a fond and silent relationship with it. It had been a sad affair that such a work of art was unnamed so he had named her Peggy because he felt that she deserved a name.

“Good morning, Peggy,” Ruth nodded again and yawned, crawling slowly to his feet. He was always a little groggy after a few days of comfortable napping. It was time to step out and take in the breeze and see if he could scent something tasty. It was warm out. Perhaps, he thought, he should freeze a part of the river and have fish-cubes for breakfast.

Ruth yawned again, eyes casually surveying the area that he lorded over. It was fantastically huge. The landscape that he controlled spanning in every direction that probably covered the entire world. The world was a big place! It would probably take him a week or so of flying in order to cover it all. There was no need to discover just how long it would take. Not yet. He was still a young dragon and the land he ruled now had need of his attention.

For instance.

There seemed to be something shiny on the hill overlooking the human settlement. This was cause for alarm. Humans, when left alone, could be just as dangerous as humans that were meddled with. The trick was to rule them with a pretended air of indifference while paying close, close attention to them.

Ruth shook his huge frame to get the old juices flowing and launched himself in the air with his powerful hindquarters. Mana distributed itself freely below his wings assisting with the updraft that would keep him in the air. Mana made everything better and he had the best mana.

Why? Because dragons were the best.

He was feeling pretty pleased about the wind on his face and his mind was sort of wandering when the glint on the hill changed slightly. It was pretty far away so he wasn’t immediately concerned. Sometimes the light could play tricks from this angle. He was very high up after all and he couldn’t be bothered to account for every change on the ground while he was thinking about how great he was.

Despite his lack of care or any real give a damn about the change, the fact the shiny thing moved had caught his attention. Ruth loved shiny things, and he was gliding lower now trying to get a good look at whatever it was that was on top of the hill. Normally, he wouldn’t have gone to that hill because it overlooked a human-hive. There were some things you just stayed away from so the swarm didn’t buzz after you. The humans knew where he lived and he was pretty sure they knew better than to do anything other than leave horses, sheep, and cattle out for him.

You could never know for certain, however. His eyes narrowed slightly, lids closing tighter as he increased his speed a bit. They immediately widened as a flash of light alerted him to the object that was traveling directly toward him. Despite every instinct crying out for him to put out his wings and come to a screeching halt, he decided instead to pull his wings in close to his body and increase the flow of mana to buy him a few moments without flapping.

He turned his head, his eyes focusing momentarily as the shiny thing hurtled past him through the air. Ruth let it go without trying to grab it and started flapping casually again as he considered this phenomenon. It had been some sort of stake or log with a metal point. He had seen humans carrying smaller versions but had never seen one flying through the air like that. It was possible that the humans had made a bigger one and thrown it?

Ruth disregarded the thought immediately. Humans were tiny and incapable of throwing something that large at Ruth.

He circled closer to the hill, wary now as he watched another shiny thing start to turn toward him on top of what looked like a great brown woodland creature. The ass of the creature appeared to be turning the shiny thing to point at him, like a spitting snake or one of those quilled creatures that could shoot their spines lining up a shot. It almost looked like the ass of the creature was a human wearing that shiny carapace they sometimes did, but the rest of the scene made no sense to his brain if that were true.

It was far more likely he was looking at some sort of new deadly species. His gaze sharpened as he got closer, only a few moments from passing overhead in fact, and once again tucked his wings to his body and rolled slightly to avoid the second barbed thing that was fired at him. He hissed slightly and pulled up, putting his wings out and maxing his mana output for a moment to stabilize before climbing into the air.

He flew further away back toward his mountain and finally landed near his lair. He sat looking at the hill from his lair vantage point, concluded that the creature couldn’t shoot its barb from there, and thought long and hard about what to do.

Merciless and worried eyes watched that hill.

He looked briefly back at Peggy, hoping for inspiration. Peggy was calm and collected as always. She was the best of them. He puffed his chest out with pride at the memory of how they had come to be friends. Sure, she didn’t talk much, but they never argued.

Peggy was right. He had to go kill that thing. It was too close to the human settlement and the heavens knew where those creatures would move to if the creature on the hill decided to destroy their nest.

Humans were so stupid and useless. He was about to get angry when a look back at Peggy confirmed what he already knew. Her deep eyes imparted the message she wanted him to hear. This was so like her!

“Why do you have to be so compassionate, Peggy?!” Ruth snarled in draconic. “Humans aren’t even smart, you know?”

Ruth sighed.

Ruth wasn’t a hero like Peggy but he supposed he would save them anyway.

↢↦

A horrifying lurch and suddenly Amaranthe was no longer Ruth. She was Dalton.

Dalton watched the dragon cruise away after the second bolt had missed. It was a shame because the poison was quite deadly and expensive. He pushed the rim of his steel helmet, more of a steel shell with a strap than helmet really, up so he could watch the retreating form. Dalton put his hands on his waist as he let out a long sigh.

“Can’t always get’em on the first day,” he said quietly. There was a hint of irritation causing his pencil-thin mustache to twist on his face. He had already told the duchess that there was no guarantee in dragon hunting and that it might take longer than a day.

It didn’t, however, help that he’d gotten into his cups the night before and boasted to the rather dubious backwater peasants that their impressive ‘dragon’ would probably end up attracting flies by the end of the day.

Not only that but the dragon was a beautiful specimen. Not less than 60 feet long if Dalton didn’t miss his guess. Beautiful blue and black midnight scales all up and down its body. The eyes had been almost entirely black with a gorgeous and intelligent strip of gold. It sent shivers down his spine as it had sped by overhead. They weren’t smart, he reminded himself. The shine of the metal alone had brought it out to take a look. Only really lucky acrobatics had saved it from the deadly poison.

Dalton was confident that he could just wiggle the bolt and the shiny metal would attract the creature back in a bit. He wiggled the bolt-thrower back and forth, moving it slowly on its wheels. He pretended that he was a fisherman and he was simply wiggling the bait. Tried not to think about the fact that he was closer to the end of the fishing pole where the bait sat than he was where the fisherman usually sat.

Dalton just had to be careful. He reassured himself of this many times and thought about the holes he had dug within easy diving distance. If the creature tried to breathe from the sky he would just dive into the holes he’d made for that and pull in the dirt piled up nearby. If the creature descended it would hit at least one of the spikes he had planted all around the bolt thrower that was coated with the poison that would paralyze and put it down in a matter of seconds.

Dalton smiled at that thought, ignoring the drops of perspiration that were starting to run uncomfortably down his arms under his heavy shirt and heavy steel cuirass. He would smell bad for a while, so what?

“I hope that dragon does land. It’d be great for me if I could introduce it to a little swordplay. The story alone would keep me in business with the ladies for years…” Dalton tried to cheer himself up. He had even started to chuckle, moving that bolt-thrower back and forth, when the shadow that flashed over him like a cloud was passing over caused him to look up.

The dragon… had just flown by and was wheeling slowly back toward his mountain again.

Dalton wasn’t exactly sure what the reason was. Did it want to get another look at him?

A rush of air and a weird whistling noise alerted him to the fact that there was still something above that was plummeting down. A boulder the size of Dalton crushed into the dirt of the hill, miraculously not embedding itself in the softened dirt or spoiling any of the spikes he had placed. It bounced once, twice, and then started a slow roll down the hill.

Shouts of outrage came from below a minute later as the stone had caught speed and actually crashed through the wall of a house below.

Dalton’s mind blanked. The dragon had tried to drop a rock on him.

His expression became grim as the dragon had dropped out of sight behind his mountain and appeared to be slowly wheeling himself back into the air. It was hard to make out from this distance, but Dalton’s imagination already filled in the blanks of what his vision couldn’t perceive.

That damn dragon was wheeling upward with another rock.

↢↦

“N-no, wait… I’m going to be sick if you keep doing thi--”

Rodney was wiping his neck with a handkerchief. The air was hot and stifling this time of night, especially with everyone packed in tighter than a church procession during sin forgivin’ day. It might have looked like a church sermon was about to take place. The whole village and many of the farmers who tended the land had all filed in quietly as darkness fell.

Everyone had watched the spectacle of the dragon dropping rocks on that damned fool Dalton. The worst part, Rodney quietly thought, was that the dragon hadn’t managed to hit him. Fifteen rocks, and then a statue of a pegasus, of all things, had rained down like the judgment of the gods on that poor hill. Every single rock, but not the statue, had then proceeded to roll down off the hill and smash into houses, into the duck pond, and, and--

Rodney took a deep breath and tried to find his patience.

The other villagers in the small cellar were not being so understanding.

“My pond… it’s shallow now and most of the fish are dead. I think most’ve’em died from the shock of the thing…” Muttering met this admission.

Everyone liked the fish and the frog legs the pond provided. It froze over and the fish and the frogs all popped out in the thaw like nothing happened. Low maintenance food and it was just a mess now.

“I feel bad for your pond Early, I do, but my house has a rock in it. I’m gonna need to borrow your boys and the workhorses just to drag that thing out. I don’t even know how the durned dragon managed to lift it.”

“Your pond, your house, my irrigation ditch has a giant plug in it I can’t move. We’re gonna have floodin’ if I don’t move it first thing.”

“Why the hell he trying to kill that old fool thing anyway?” Wise old McDermott, usually the one to keep a cooler head was spitting mad as a hornet. Most days even he forgot that the dragon even existed, now there was some fool above his house provoking the damned thing.

“Oh, you know how the Duchess gets…” Samantha sighed. It would be more correct to say that Samantha knew how the Duchess got. She was the one that went up to the hill castle and mended the dresses and the fancy curtains once a month.

“The Duke hired such a fool.”

“No, it were the Duchess!”

“No one cares who did it or who hired ‘em. Someone just needs to roll that idjit Dalton out of town before he drinks us dry. Says the mansion is covering it and we all know full well that ar’ Lords ain’t gonna cover his tab. He’s gettin’ into the medicinal victuals…”

“Worse. We all know that the dragon is being ‘delicate’ by monster standards. It carries off horses, eats cattle, headbutts ogres -- the fact it’s throwing rocks is almost a blessing…” Old Norma was usually the one that nobody wanted to agree with because she was ugly and smelled bad.

She was also always talking about how her god, Saturday, was always going to swoop down and rescue them all from their impoverished life and give them a bunch of virgins. For years. So it was a little disconcerting that heads were nodding in agreement.

At this point, Rodney wasn’t even sure where Saturday would get enough virgins let alone do the rest.

“Well. The last thing the dragon dropped, that pegasus statue?” Rodney finally opened his mouth and everyone quieted. He knew it was because he’d had some work as an adventurer when he was a young man that they all paid attention when he decided to speak. “It broke the ballista and the dragon stopped dropping things for the day. Dalton is going out in the morning and I’ll be hanged if he won’t have that dumb ass contraption fixed before the afternoon is over. We’ll be back to being in the center of this dumb.”

“What’re ya thinking?” McDermott asked quietly. Silence descended on the cellar.

“I’m just worried about Dalton’s health,” Rodney closed his eyes. “I think maybe he got hit by that pegasus statue. Maybe that’s why he’s drinking so much. He’s hurt and he’s not telling us.”

No one spoke, and as awful as it was, Rodney took that for permission. “Folks. Ya’ll have a goodnight. I’ll check in on Mr. Dalton and see if he needs anything. Maybe, if he’s feeling right, we’ll head on up and have a look-see at his contraption.”

A series of goodnights and well wishes sounded out toward his back as he left the cellar. No one moved to follow him. In fact, most of them would stay there chatting quietly of other things until daybreak.

It was a sad affair when they found Mr. Dalton in the morning. The pegasus statue was tipped over him on the hill and his eyes were bulging, his face and skin purple and bloating in the morning sun.

McDermott and the mayor, a man named Early, took their hats off and put them over their chests.

“Damn shame. Looks like he got up in the middle of the night and the dragon dropped it on him in the dark.”

“Sure looks that way.”

↢↦

W-wait--

Ruth flew low toward the hill, stealthy and silent, landing near the edge of the hilltop as he looked down on the crushed creature. The humans were starting to gather and head to their daily routines. Little bees that were always working hard for their nectar.

Ruth drew himself up to his full standing height and looked proudly at Peggy. Her head had fallen off and was rolled to the side, facial expression in an equine and heroic snarl of defiance.

He had tried to talk her out of it yesterday when he couldn’t find any more boulders to throw, but there was no dissuading her when she got that way.

Moment of silence for Peggy.

The dragon flew off lazily toward his lair, already forgetting about the wreckage and the strange dead human on top of the hill wearing the shiny metal.

On his way back a spot of gold caught his eyes near the river.

He circled once, twice, but failed to see it again. He went lower, curiosity and vigor from his recent victory making him a little less cautious than he might have otherwise been. He flapped low and splashed into the stream so he didn’t have to deal with the trees, going up to his hips.

Ruth looked around for the beautiful color and found it immediately. It was a treasure, but he was uncertain what to do with it. The gold color spilled like a cascade of the finest thread from her shoulders. Her eyes sent chills down his spine that the sun in all its morning glory couldn’t seem to dispel. They were golden but blazing in a way that couldn't be described save by comparing it to the most brilliant of fire opals. She smelled of dusk, and gemstones, of blood, and danger. Despite the allure of the pure white shirt, the high-quality gloves and boots, and the absolute temptation that the color of her hair and eyes provided Ruth froze. The eyes stared at him blankly and he stared back. It was the first time in his life Ruth had ever felt resigned.

“I am going to die now?” Ruth asked her.

To his surprise, she responded in draconic. “Yes, and no.”

“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Ruth looked at her and despite her beauty, he only felt death encroaching toward him. A sword half-again her size appeared in her hand as if by magic. “Why?”

“Because I need a rock to throw at something dangerous.”

Ah. See you soon, Peggy.

It was the last thought Ruth had before he wasn’t a dragon anymore. He didn’t see the end with his great visual acuity, let alone feel the separation that occurred as his great head slid from his shoulders. Nor did he feel the separation as, her curiosity piqued, Tamara started to extract his soul...

Amaranthe, however, felt it all.

↢↦

Amaranthe was finally freed from the back to back full immersion illusions or memories, whatever you wished to call them. The taste of overwhelming and inescapable death was still on her lips and she scrambled away from Tamara in a panic, sliding on her ass and pushing her palms against the stone as she tried to put distance between them. She was stopped a moment later when rolling in her stomach caused her to flip over and vomit wretchedly over the side of the wall.

She felt cold fingers grasping her hair and lifting it up, assisting her as she puked over the wall. Her skin crawled in terror and if she hadn’t been heaving she knew she wouldn’t have been able to help herself and would have probably flailed at Tamara until Tamara simpled wished her dead.

Tamara leaned in close to her ear, her warm breath sending new spirals of terror down her spine.

“Let’s talk about your wish.”