"The key attributes to winning any battle between minds are: a honed acumen, a wide range of relative knowledge, and above all, being the one who decided the rules to said battle."

- Veigus Witsbane

“Let’s begin,” Silvaroth declared smoothly. “I’ll start with an easy one. Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The dragon nodded, bringing his head down as low to the ground as he could to meet Percy’s gaze evenly. His voice shook the boy’s bones. “My heart beats steady until it breaks; a natural gap closed by a single handshake. A tremor within, unmakes my skin. My name rhymes with the first clue given.”

Percy frowned. A heartbeat… A gap… A handshake… Something tremoring, unmaking skin, and a name that rhymes with… brake?

“Would you like me to repeat it?”

He shook his head. “No, I just need a moment to think.”

“By all means,” the dragon said, pulling his head back up and adjusting his posture to something more comfortable. “I’m a patient beast.”

Percy scratched his head, rethinking the riddle. Then he began running through words that rhymed with brake.

Ache, bake, cake, make, rake…

He snapped his fingers. “Got it! Earthquake! It’s an earthquake.”

Silvaroth nodded. “Very good. Even with that little hint at the end, I fully expected you’d disappoint me. Your turn.”

Percy grinned. “Well, you gave me an easy one, so I’ll return the favor.” He took a breath. “A wave over a wave, where water becomes bone.”

It was Silvaroth’s turn to frown. “A riddle without a rhyme? That’s like fire without a dragon. There’s no flair!”

The boy rolled his eyes. “It’s a game of brains, not musical talent.”

The dragon’s lips curled up. “You’d do well not to insult me, boy.”

Now Percy smirked. “Need me to repeat it?” he asked sardonically.

“That one was far too simple. Water becomes bone is clearly referencing ice. And a wave over a wave can only be an iceberg.”

The boy shrugged. “I did say it was easy.”

“You did. My turn. An open maw with no eyes. A deep throat where light dies.”

“Well that’s a cave,” Percy said without hesitation. “Or a tunnel, if you were being picky.”

“Very good. And I’d even limited the amount of words that time.”

Silvaroth passed the game to Percy with a waving gesture.

“I’ll step it up for you,” Percy said. “And I’ll make it rhyme this time.”

The dragon nodded. “Good.”

“The part of the dragon which is not in the sky, that can swim in the ocean and always stay dry. What am I?”

Silvaroth snorted. “A fool, if you thought mentioning a dragon would throw me off. The answer is clearly my shadow.”

“Yep.” Percy cracked his fingers. “Your go.”

“I’ll never step outside, but when it rains, I grow. If I face down, I’ll cry, a slow and steady flow. While for some, a big part of us is our might, the others are mostly tight.”

Percy’s eyes went wide. With absolutely no idea of where to even start, he asked the dragon to repeat it. Silvaroth nodded, slowly saying the rhyme again.

“A big part of us is our might…” Percy muttered, pacing back and forth on the small obsidian bridge. “Might… might… mighty? What’s mighty?”

Percy knew the trick to dissecting riddles. He’d often practiced deciphering them with the boys from the orphanage. The real trouble with a riddle was when the person being asked didn’t actually know anything about the answer. For instance, he’d been asked a riddle relating to college once, which another of the boys had dreamed of attending and had so researched. None of the others could guess the answer, though, so the boy asking the riddle had come to the conclusion that he was simply too smart.

The trick of crafting a riddle, though, came from knowing how to give just the right amount of hints, without actually giving the answer away. Plus, you had to know your audience. If you asked a riddle they couldn’t answer, then the fault lay with you.

But the trick to solving them, Percy had figured out, came from instinctively knowing which information to ignore. Sure, all of the information in the riddle should be relevant to the answer, but a good asker could word things in such a way that you’d distract yourself by going down the wrong path. Once you heard the answer, it all became too obvious and clear.

And though the asker should know his audience, the answerer should know his asker. Silvaroth mentioned he’d spent a hundred years asleep in this cave. That was a significant chunk of time. Maybe not for a dragon, depending on the life spans of the ones in this world, but Percy was willing to bet his riddles were relevant to his home and himself.

Facing down and crying didn’t seem like the answer would be the dragon himself. Percy doubted Silvaroth as an individual did a lot of crying, and he just couldn’t fathom a way that could relate to a dragon’s body parts.

So, it had to be related to the environment. He looked around again, surveying the room with a new perspective.

What cries? Obsidian? Maybe the flow of lava? It can’t be. The answer has to be something that can be quantified. He said “the others”...

His eyes flitted around the room, seeing the pillars, the bridge and the kobold, shrouded in shadow. But nothing stood out to him. The small creature he’d followed in chuckled, as though it knew Percy wouldn’t find the answer. It chewed on black-tipped fingernails, leaning against… Percy slapped his face into his palm.

“I’m so dumb,” he said, breathing heavily through his fingers before he looked up into his opponent’s yellow eyes. “It’s stalagmites and stalagtites, isn’t it?”

The kobold leaped forward, looking back and forth between Percy and the dragon, as though checking to see if his answer could’ve been right. Silvaroth grinned.

“It is.” He tilted his head downwards, a sign of respect. “Clever human. Perhaps you don’t fancy yourself a knight, but a Wiseman?”

Percy smiled. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“Mmm,” the dragon acknowledged. “Your turn. I look forward to what you have next.”

---

The game continued for a while, the riddles becoming increasingly difficult. Percy was running out of ones he remembered, and had began crafting them on the fly, looking around the room for inspiration. He’d even asked the riddle of the Sphinx, praying it wasn’t as well-known here as it was back home. That had managed to stump the dragon for a time, but Silvaroth was proving to possess a formidable mind.

“I can eat, but cannot drink. If you feed me too fast, I will shrink.”

“Fire,” the dragon answered immediately before tilting his head. “These are getting easier and easier, now. You’re not running out, are you? Because I have plenty more.”

“I bet. If there’s one thing I know about dragons, it’s that they can have an absurd obsession with riddles.”

“True enough, though you speak of dragons as if you know us well. Every time you open your mouth, I become only more enticed to win this game and have my answers.”

“Just ask your next one.”

Then the dragon truly stumped him.

“Very well. The greatest magic that I have seen is given without permission. It does not exist until you receive it, and is immediately in decomposition.”

Percy spent twenty minutes staring up into the darkness after that one, pondering. He rubbed the sweat off of his forehead, the heat just warm enough to be uncomfortable. The parchment stuck to his hand tickled his face, and he wondered again if he should just madly dash toward the dragon and slap him with it. The kobold had disappeared long ago, so it was all up to Silvaroth if Percy made it near him.

But there was also the issue of the lava that still dripped from the dragon’s body. Percy really didn’t want to dance between the seemingly random splashes. He’d likely burn to death. And the fun of the game had long since dissipated.

Out of all the new lives I could’ve experienced, it had to be this uncomfortable.

“I didn’t ask for this!” he yelled. “What kind of life is this supposed to be?”

He’d been shouting things like that occasionally, but Silvaroth didn’t seem to mind. He merely chuckled each time. It reminded Percy of the bigger boys in the orphanage who knew something he didn’t. They’d laugh as he walked by, and it would only be later that Percy discovered he’d missed out on the pizza that had been purchased that day. And those days were rare, too.

Percy started replaying the things he’d said in his mind. Each time he’d made Silvaroth laugh, what had he been complaining about? This last time… well, the dragon definitely didn’t know Percy was from another world. So he couldn’t know that Percy meant he hadn’t asked for this new life…

He shook his head, his body shaking as he started laughing, too.

“Immediately in decomposition. That’s good,” he said. “Ohh, that was a good one. It should’ve been so obvious, too.”

The dragon smiled, a savage toothy grin. “You’ve figured it out then?”

“Yeah, it’s life. It’s given without permission, doesn’t exist until you receive it, and—if you’re a pessimist—as soon as you’re born, you begin to die.”

“Indeed,” Silvaroth replied sagely. “It is a bit of a negative outlook. Yet, not untrue. Now, what will you ask to me?”

Percy let his hands fall to his sides, slapping against the smooth black ground. He sighed. “I don’t know. I’m running out of ideas.”

“Well,” his opponent said, “if you run out of riddles, then you forfeit. Do you forfeit, Percy? You’ve been a rather entertaining opponent. I won’t forget what you’ve brought to this battle. In fact, I may even use some of them again, as a tribute to your wit.” He chuckled, licking his lips as he prepared to consume his first snack in almost a century.

“Why was six afraid of seven?”

The dragon paused. That hadn’t sounded like a riddle. “Pardon?” he asked.

Percy rolled over, looking up into the yellow eyes above him with a tired gaze. “Why… was six afraid of seven?”

“Is that your riddle?”

“Do you know the answer?”

Silvaroth furrowed his scaly brow, irritated by the question. He pondered for a moment, knowing that his opponent’s mind was limited by his biology. He’d run out of ideas.

“Six was afraid of seven because seven is a larger number,” he declared. “Now, since you’ve clearly begun to waste my time—”

“Because seven ate nine,” Percy said quietly, before rolling onto his back again and sighing. “Wow, I wish I started with that.”

Silvaroth fumbled. “Wh-what did you just say? Seven, eight, nine? That doesn’t even make any sense!”

The boy chuckled tiredly. He was mentally exhausted. “Seven ate nine. As in, nine was eaten by seven. Ate, like the verb, sounds like eight, the number.”

The dragon sputtered, unable to finish a sentence.

“So can I leave?” Percy asked.

And just then, an explosion rocked the room, and Percy screamed, covering his ears.