She had it bad and she new it. Haladoria was falling in love. With a dragon. Not just any dragon, but the one of legends, the destroyer, the eldest ancient, the king of the dragons. She knew all of the legends. They were part of the elven lore and dated back thousands of years. But yet… She sighed. He was charming without meaning to be, polite and modest. He didn’t even realize when he had just given away more gold than most kingdoms had ever seen. He supported the people and let them lived the way they pleased, not setting laws but by suggesting things and guiding them.

Then there was the incident with the gold dragon. Viennarinia. The she devil. Micky had come back with a tale… Michael had faced down Viennarinia. No… he sent her away like a whipped pup. She apparently had thrown a fireball at him and… he caught it. He caught a fireball. Then tossed it back like it was an acorn. They had words and she blew fire at him. Micky said that he didn’t even seem to notice. Gods… The word spread like… she chuckled, dragon fire. The people felt safe. All of the little complaints that the races had, had dried up. Talk against Michael had stopped overnight and it was a fool that spoke anything against him.

The patrols had made short work after that, of all the criminals in the town. Word spread and people poured into town. He started coming into town and drinking at the pub. People would stop in and he would talk to them all… as equals. He never commanded. He often helped them work through problems. There was a meeting about the town name. We had asked him and he had no clue for names. So it was proposed as Dragonhaven. The people were falling in love as well. Dragons became the subject of just about every work of art in town. At that time we had no clue how prophetic the towns name was to be.

It was late summer when Michael suddenly flew overhead. He was in a hurry and the people stopped and watched. He came back a short time later with two adult dragons. What followed was a tour of the town. They stopped at the carvings. Michael hadn’t even noticed until that point. It was strange how he could lose what was going on around him at times. He had a talk with Cornal and Dorvus and suddenly, we had two new dragons in residence. And they loved it here. We were shocked when they started giving the children rides and carrying things for labor crews… They loved to talk to the people.

The council was the ones to suggest it. They wanted Michael as king. I suggested emperor and proposed that we send out delegations to the surrounding lands to invite them into the empire. If we could make Michael a rallying point and bring in others, we could give Michael his dream about unifying the races. The trick would be to make him take the job. I cornered a young bard and we set down and schemed.