No.

“Listen, Dungeon Man,” the woman in front of him who looked moved like Marie and sounded like Marie and had the same eyes as Marie started to say, but stopped when Sam flung up a hand.

No.

“You’re dead,” his voice came out a graveyard rasp. “We buried you. We mourned. Some of us never stopped.”

She flinched like she’d been slapped. “Yeah, I, uh...”

Pain raged naked and raw in his chest. Hate seared his nerves and wrapped around his heart like a barbed chain. Love scorched the insides of his eyes, anger stabbed into his mind like ice, and confusion roared through him like a hurricane. He felt himself fly apart and reform a thousand times each heartbeat, felt the world spin around him, felt himself falling into the abyss for eternity and a day.

Marie.

Someone was saying his name. He turned, numb, to see his parents saying something to him. But his ears couldn’t parse their words, his eyes didn’t understand their movements. Numb, he turned back. She still stood there, glowing, hands akimbo, looking unsure and unsettled.

Marie.

No.

He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t face this. Not now. He would disintegrate from the inside if he tried. He inhaled, and with that single breath he wrapped up all the chaos roaring inside of him, all the hurt and anger and pain and confusion and pure terror and shoved it inside a box, shut the lid, and locked it. And if he locked in all the emotions he was capable of feeling right now, so much the better. He could function numb. He’d done it before.

“Thanks for saving my family,” he said to her, his voice wooden in his own ears. “I’ve got things I’ve got to take care of.”

“Wait, Sam,” the woman who sounded like Marie said, stepping forward and raising a hand. “I need to—“

Again he stopped her with a raised hand and a shake of his head.

“No. Thank you for saving my family. That’s all I have for you right now. Later, maybe, something else. But nothing right now. Maybe,” he indicated his parents, who stared wide-eyed at the scene, “they have something to say. I don’t.”

He turned his back on her, and heard her gasp of breath as he did. He had surprised her. Good. Had he hurt her? Didn’t care. He needed to be away from here. Needed to finish the job he’d started.

Sam: Quentin. I’m back. We have business to finish.

Quentin: Truly? Thou wish to continue our interrupted conversation?

Sam: Yes. I’ll meet you at the outskirts of town.

Quentin: Very well. I shall meet thee.

“I’m going to talk to a dragon,” Sam said, not looking at anything. “Then I’m going back to the dungeon.”

“Sam,” Ma said, and he recognized but was untouched by the worry in her tone. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, not looking at her. “I am.”

He walked off from the Square without another word. He heard voices behind him; Ma and Pop, and the woman who had Marie’s eyes. And others. But he didn’t care. Work. He had work to do.

Quentin stood just outside Melloram’s southern gate, waiting patiently as Sam came up to him. A piece of Sam that had avoided getting locked in the chest noted with bemusement how he had trembled just a short time ago approaching this same dragon. Now it felt like he was delivering a stack of paperwork to Pearl; plain business and possibly annoying.

“Hi,” he said as he stepped through the gate. “Thanks for waiting for me.”

“I confess, I was surprised by thine ask. I would have imagined thou would have taken advantage of the confusion to allow our deal to slip thy mind.”

“Nope,” Sam shrugged. “It needs to finish. Otherwise we get a tsunami of high-level assholes coming at us in the next couple of days, right?”

The dragon blinked at him, and that great head bent lower to examine him. “Thou seem in a strange mood. Art thou well?”

“Not even close,” Sam admitted freely. “But that doesn’t concern this meeting. I’ve laid my cards on the table, Quentin. Whoever you’re working for wants me dead, but I can’t die. You’ve seen proof of that now. So what’s it going to be? Do we go to war with each other?”

Because why not. I’ve already got a lich king, an unknown entity, and fucking god coming up against me. Might as well add a dragon to the set. Maybe if I piss off a couple Demons I can complete the collection and win a set of free steak knives.

The dragon’s head tilted to the side, eyes narrowing in thought. “Perhaps,” he rumbled, echoing his last word before the skeletal monarch had crashed the party. “And yet perhaps not.”

“How wonderfully cryptic.”

“Indeed. Tell me, young Tolliver. Doest thou know what a dragon prizes above gold and jewels, even above honor itself?”

It was Sam’s turn to blink. “Should I?”

“It may have made thy negotiations simpler if thous had. However, thou managed—either by guile or by fortune—to stumble into it anyways.”

He just felt tired. And this conversation wasn’t helping in the slightest. “Alright, I’ll bite. What do you guys prize above honor?”

The great head swung down close, and Quentin smiled wide enough to show off every tooth in his head.

“Lawyering,” he hissed in almost sensual pleasure.

Sam blinked again. “What?”

“My mistress bid me come here and see thee dead. And verily, I have done just that. Thou didst die when thou flung thyself between the lich and thy friend. Thou would have died by my talons anyway. And now, it seems, I have fulfilled my oath to my mistress, and can return to her with both honor and obligation satisfied.”

“But…” Sam groped for sanity. “But I didn’t stay dead.”

“The fault is not mine that my mistress did not foresee that condition,” Quentin said, tossing his head in what Sam realized must be a draconian shrug. “Had thou been of a different mettle, doubtless I would have made an issue of it and pursued the matter to its fullest. But thou art a man of courage and fortitude, Samuel James Tolliver. And of honor. Thou took the death intended for thy friend without hesitation nor thought. Truly, that is not a thing done by one who is conniving, nor who holds a darkened heart within his breast.”

“So… What, that’s it? We’re quits?”

“Just so. I shall return to my mistress and declare her demands met and justice satisfied. And I shall swear such to all mine kin. Know this, though,” the smile faded and the dragon’s face became serious. “My mistress’s eyes shall fall upon thee again, and it is without doubt that she shall send her armies after thee once more. I and my kin shall not come for thee again, for reasons embedded in ancient dealings thy mind is far too young to comprehend. But that shall not stop her from sending others in my stead, nor in wishing thy death permanent.”

The lid to the box in Sam’s mind cracked open for just a second, and pure white-hot rage swirled up, scouring his mind clear and sharp before being shoved back. He drew in a deep breath and met Quentin’s eyes.

“Good,” he said.

“Good?” Quentin blinked.

“Yeah.” A picture of Araxesendenak flashed through his mind, resplendent in his ugly crown and chitinous armour and blazing robes. “We’re gonna need the essence.”

“Ah?” The dragon reared its head up to look about at the town gates, then back over its shoulder at the dungeon. “Ah. I see. Retreat is not in thy intentions, then.”

“Not right this second. Right now, my intentions are to secure this place against any more teleportation attacks, beef up the air defenses, then get a goddamn drink. Probably in that order.”

“Then I shall leave thee to thy efforts. Fare well, Samuel James Tolliver.” Quentin dipped his head in a bow and coiled, preparing to spring into the air. Then he paused and glanced down at Sam. “And convey my thanks to thy elfen friend for his aid. He showed great courage, striking out against the lich, and in aiding me in evacuating the innocent from the area. If thou wouldst allow, I would return time to time to converse with he and thee about trivial matters.”

“Nat? Uh, sure. I guess that would be fine.”

“Well and done, then. Long life to thee and thine, and confusion to thy enemies, Samuel James Tolliver.”

The great wyrm leaped into the air on that last syllable, and beat his wings against the air until he was high enough to soar up and away. Soon, he was little more than a speck against the sunset-red sky.

Sam felt the box rattle inside his brain, threatening to open. He closed his eyes and wrapped more chains around it. Later. He had work to do first.

Later.