Waking up was getting harder and harder. The emotions that burst out of her in the mirror still felt so heavy and raw. She didn't cry, but she felt everything. It was so uncomfortable and unpleasant. Looking around she saw that the dragon was closer to her instead of being in the back where it was when she fell asleep.

She was still internally conflicted. She wanted to bring peace to Anvilleria, but she also didn't like that this dragon captured her. If she was being honest with herself. She still liked the dragon more than the majority of people she knew. He was treating her with respect, which was more than she ever received at home.

How was it even possible she was thinking like this? this dragon had kidnapped her. She needed some more information, but first she needed to make amends. She sighed.

“My name is Zara, what’s your name?” She said. It came out a little aggressive and emotionless, but earnest.

"Gilgamar with emerald Scales but just Gilgamar is fine." he finally said. He opened his eyes but still remained in his restful position. Zara’s face dropped. The letter was from him. She had no idea how the hell the dragon could have written a letter, but it made sense that the letter was from him. Ughh, she was starting to feel bad.

"For the record Gilgamar, I'm still pissed off at you for kidnapping me, but I will hear you out." This whole interaction was beyond surreal. "But first you will answer my annoying questions" Smiling at that last statement. She thought she could see the slightest change in Gilgamar as if he was happy, or pleased, but it probably was just her imagination.

"At least interacting with you won't be boring," Gilgamar said. "Ask away”

"What was that mirror back there? it glowed bright white and pulled me into this weird other place." Zara said. The Dragon's eyes looked more alert after she said that.

"That was the mirror of introspection, a magical device that helps people self-reflect by creating a convincing copy of themselves that throws their flaws into their face. An effective tool but it can backfire. Many can't handle it or refuse to face the facts. It always spits you back out in the end though." Gilgamar said. It definitely worked on her, if anything she needed it.

"If it was all an illusion did I actually go anywhere?" She didn't really need to know it was just a question on her mind.

"It created a small magical room that held an illusion, the actual mechanics of it are pretty complex, but basically you went inside the mirror." Gilgamar said in response. With that out of the way, she had a vitally important question to ask.

"How did you put my wedding dress on?" he made a snort as if surprised by the question.

"It's best if I just show you." He moved from the resting position it was into to a much more mobile position and opened his mouth. Fire started to form from his mouth into a small orb with the same glassy surface she remembered. After a moment two tendrils appeared out of the sides but instead of ending with a round tip they ended with hands. The hands moved around and were able to act independently of each other. They came over to her blanket and lifted it up before proceeding to throw it on her.

As the blanket hit her she scrambled with it only furthering her entanglement, eventually she got free and was exasperated afterwards.

"What was that for?" she said with faux annoyance.

"A little bit of payback, and a demonstration” Gilgamar said. "I removed your wet clothes so you wouldn't freeze. After you dried off I put you back in the clothes, and the only ones I knew fit you was that dress." Zara blushed at the thought. He had obviously seen her red expression.

“You humans are so strange, I believe your cheeks turn red when you are embarrassed. Why you would be embarrassed eludes me.” It was so weird that Gilgamar knows so much about humans.

"How do you know so much about humans?" Zara asked.

"I've been watching humans for a very long time, I've also read a lot about humans." Gilgmar said. Wait, the dragon could read? She shouldn’t be surprised since she knew he could write, but she was still surprised.

"Why have you been watching humans? Also how can you read?" Every question asked led to many more. Gilgamar stared out to space for one moment and then reconnected eye contact.

"I'm going to explain something that should clear up a lot about how I do things. Then I will tell you why." Gilgamar paused to collect his thoughts and then continued "before I begin how much do you know about magic?" Zara thought about all her exposure to magic. Realizing that all of it came from either her parents or others near the royal throne that always spoke of how magic was bad, useless, or both.

"Basically nothing." Zara said. The dragon sighed.

"I don't have time for a lesson on magic but I'll give you some basics, Magic is the process harnessing some energy to do something. In my case, I use the heat in my body to generate the aesir, or fire would be a more familiar concept for you. The exact process by which I do this is not relevant. What I have practiced is being able to manipulate aesir to do things for me. I can manifest all manner of things. For example, to read I can make an eye out of aesir and look through it. That does require extreme focus though." That sounded incredibly useful, she would love to make extra hands or eyes to do her bidding.

"Can I use magic?" she asked. She knew that humans couldn’t innately use magic, but maybe this dragon would know something that would counter that. Gilgamar looked at her.

"Conventionally, no, humans have no natural means of harnessing magic on their own, they require tools made by other magical races to perform magic." That was disappointing. "We can discuss magic later, first let me explain why you’re here."

"First, I'm sorry for kidnapping you, I didn't want to do it, but I really had no choice." The Dragon sat down to a more relaxed position.

"Dragons were driven from their home a long time ago. Humans were the main perpetrators of this. They drove us from our homeland to hunt us. We ended up migrating to The Far North, where the majority of us now reside." This was definitely contradictory to the history she was taught. Supposedly there was a dragon invasion, and the humans hunted them down to stop them from invading.

"I don't mean to accuse you of lying, but how am I supposed to believe you?" Zara said.

"This castle was made with the help of humans." Gilgamar said. which made her give the dragon a quizzical look. "This castle, known as Castle Anachro, was supposed to be a center for diversity and for collaboration between the races, however some years ago, many humans ambushed and looted the place, causing those who resided here to flee. The map that was on you, when I found you, was an unbiased map of the world. it’s different then those in your kingdom. It shows the other nations to be more advanced and populated then you otherwise saw. Also, I am a dragon that is talking to you in peaceful conversation when every story you've ever been told has told that was impossible." She hated to admit but Gilgamar was speaking the truth. Her reluctance to accept what was right in front of her would not get her out of here and would not allow her to help those who needed her. She realized her ignorance and tried to accept all she could.

"The current royal family is trying to convince the humans that the non-human races are savages and need assimilation, or in some extreme cases purging." the words shook her to her core. While she had never heard anything so explicit she suspected that if she ever pushed her parents at these issues they wouldn't disagree with that.

"That is where I come in, I want to start a deal with the humans, to help pave the wave to rekindle some semblance of civility. However, my clan has given up on the humans, saying they tried and it's not worth the trouble. Every dragon lost is a huge tragedy, we reproduce very slowly" He looked at the ground solemnly. "I just want the fighting to stop." There was a silence that hung in the air that was almost choking her.

"And that's why I need you, most humans would attack me on sight if I approached them, even if I did nothing and asked them to stop. The brainwashing has gone too far. Everyone who would listen to me, would not hold much influence in the Human Kingdom and would probably just be shunned into silence. You on the other hand are a young princess. Someone who has been known to dislike the status quo and someone who could not be fully silenced without consequence. It was my hope that I could convince you, to talk on my behalf and convince the humans to at least speak with me and vouch for me." Zara let those words stew in her mind, everything he was saying, she agreed with much of it. Also a lot of what he had said felt like it had come from personal experience.

"I'll do it."

"You'll help me?”

"You may piss me off, but yes I will help you" Zara said, this was going to be a long battle, not just physically, but also internally. That mirror helped jumpstart her improvement as a person but she had to fight with the ingrained prejudices of her upbringing. She wouldn't let her family manipulate her anymore.

"We need to come up with a plan"

That day an alliance was born.

***

It's been a few days since they forged their alliance, and they've been busy. When they weren't planning and discussing how to negotiate with the humans, they were doing their own prep. Gilgamar was setting up precautions and scouting the area checking for the progress of the search party.

Zara on the other hand has been exploring Castle Anarcho, seeing what it had to offer and what she could learn. Studying maps, and reading books. She at first found it odd how all the books were in a language she understood, but now understood that the races were at one point unified and while language has evolved since then it has still maintained enough similarity that it was readable. The old books were akin to reading old screenplays. She learned about the recent history of Anvileria, and the fascinating study of magic.

While humans couldn't innately use magic that didn't mean they couldn't use things that used magic. Hundreds of years ago, The Lizardmen of Reptilia, one of the 3 large nations of Anvileria, had developed a system for storing magic in glass/crystal structures. This revolutionized magic and meant non-magical races like humans could use magic. The trade of resources for magic was very prevalent, until one day they both got greedy. A group Lizardmen took some humans and used them for some unsavory experiments. Whereas Humans ambushed and raided many Lizardmen caravans to loot and raid magical artifacts. This led to the War of Mana. The long brutal war had many casualties. Many races at the time living in the wildlands got caught up and attacked. Which led to the creation of the modern day URM (United Republic of Monsters). A Huge series of states led by Ragnarok, a golem who managed to unify and stave off much tensions through valiant leadership.

The Humans grew bitter and hateful to other races as a result of the war, the Lizardmen acknowledged their faults and tried to move on, but much prejudice exists. Even with the help of Ragnarok, the URM are very against outsiders only allowing a strict set of people inside their borders.

While the history of the world was fascinating, and it helped her understand the context of historical events. It was not very stimulating to read, whoever previously wrote these texts was some stuffy academic, who didn't believe in things, like being concise, or being engaging. Instead going for the dry, verbose academic style. Her least favorite. She was reading a slightly more engaging book on the wildlands when she heard a bell chime. There were bells throughout the castle, it was a way for races who couldn't fit in the smaller rooms to call those who did, which meant Gilgamar wanted to talk to her.

Walking through the castle was always an interesting experience, since every room looked like it was crafted not only by a different person but a different culture. In all her time reading she hadn't found anything that described the origins of this particular castle, and she was curious why her family never spoke of it. She finally arrived at the long hall of the treasure room which she walked down to reach Gilgamar's chamber. Almost all of the artifacts fit into the same category. They were either useless as they had stopped working, or never worked in the first place, or they had such a hyper specific use that using them outside of particular situations was a fool's errand. There was one artifact she really did take a liking too. That was a golden ring along the band was a dot and an x, they were connected by a series of dashes. If she pinched the outside of her ring. the markings would glow and she could use gestures with the hand with the ring to manipulate a conjuring of a map of the world. It was detailed and she could add personal notes. This was going to be very useful in the future. Gilgamar told her that there was some more functionality if she could use magic, but since she couldn't this was all she could get for now. All of the artifacts in her were very sophisticated magic and added functionality was either going to be too difficult, too time consuming, or too expensive. However in its current state it was still very valuable.

Eventually she reached the treasure room where Gilgamar was using his Aesir to map out some ideas, as if he was painting on the air. When he noticed her walk in he shifted so that his head was facing her but the fire still hung in the air.

"You rang?" She said

“The search party should be very close.” he began. “Last I checked, there were 15 members in the party and one of them was carrying a large banner with a black bird flying over a rose." Oh god, she recognized that crest. She should've seen that coming.

"That's the house of Fallengrad,” said Zara.

"Hmm I don't pay all that much attention to the specific members of the houses, is this important?”

"Not only was he the one that I was set to marry at the wedding you crashed, his family is one of the most ruthless." Zara said. It made sense, it was a noble thing for the future prince to go out and save the princess from the dragon. Which was rich since when she Gilgamar crashed the wedding he did nothing to help her

"Hmm" Gilgamar made a noise as if he was thinking. "I realized I was interrupting a human ceremony but the courtship of humans was never something I was interested in. I am sorry that I invaded that important time in your life." Gilgamar was an enigma, she wasn’t sure, if he would ever make sense to her.

“Look, I’m annoyed that you kidnapped me. I’m not annoyed that you interrupted the wedding, actually I like the second part.” Zara said, amused by her own words. “Why, is a long story but uhh…” she lost her train of thought. “Oh what, I’m trying to say is that we have to be careful around them. I expect that they have something up their sleeves" Zara said.

Gilgamar jerked his head and his ears shot up.

"They're almost here.”