Li watched as Al yelled red faced, the hidden Jack spring like and ready to pounce

“And what the fuck does that mean?” The enby shrieked gesticulating wildly at the poised spider as it attempted to appeal to the transfixed Li.

“…It means you have to sleep!” Jack roared as he lunged towards the confounded Al.

It was not often that Li had no idea what to do, in general ey considered emself quite sensible. For years people, Charlie especially had told Li that they considered em a pillar of calm in dangerous situations. Typically, Li felt that this was fairly accurate, usually ey had an idea of how to act. A mental or physical checklist of how to act, but not now this was a completely new situation A situation in which Li, the pillar of calm, stood confused and watching as Jack pounced on Al, his fangs flashing as he bit into the panicked enby.

In less than a second Al was left twitching on the floor beneath Jack. Li looked at the gigantic spider as eir mind finally managed to process the violent scene. As far as ey could see, ey had three options: Option one – Assume Jack wants to kill everyone and try to fight him off. Option two - Assume Jack wants to kill everyone and run for the door. Option three – Hope that Jack has a reasonable explanation and ask him politely what was going on.

Ey looked at the agile force of predation before em, it was not much of a choice really.

“So…Jack…Would I be correct in assuming that you errr….That this course of action was …Reasonable?” Li trailed off as the huge spider swept its myriad of blinking eyes towards em.

Li’s words dissolved into the air without comment, slipping into the tense silence that hung between them. The two locked gaze, each unsure of the other.

The moment was promptly shattered as Li’s phone vibrated loudly in eir pocket, the familiar mundane sound breaking the tension as the pair relaxed, and Jack seemed to regain the power of speech.

“Yes… regrettable but needed. I have Injected it with venom, it’s a simple paralytic. It is the only way to slow things down short of cutting Al’s hand off.”

Li shuddered and looked at eir sleeping friend, fight and flight fading away as ey tried to understand.

“Slow what down? What’s going to happen?”

The spider paused and spoke carefully, his voice straining as he took great care to enunciate each word correctly.

“These robes are suffused with necromantic energies, designed to channel the native forces of death into the bonded individual. As Al is not a necromancer instead these energies would fill it, corrupting Al’s body and mind. After that….Death or Worse.”

Li flinched and backed away from the dangerous clothing. “Surely it is just a case of training Al in necromancy so it can be rid of these energies?”

Jack let out a deep crackling hiss at the suggestion and glowered at Li.

Still painfully aware of the danger Jack posed to eir fragile body, Li took a breath and attempted to take control of the situation.

“Ah yes, necromancy bad - understood! In which case, our top priority should be breaking Al’s bond to these!” Li gestured at the nearby robes.

“I assume it is as simple as burning them to cure Al, you can’t be bonded to robes that do not exist!”

Jack shook his head, and a dispassionate, distracted part of Li noted that Jack’s communication skills had progressed significantly since his first interaction with the other people of the street.

“It would be unwise to burn the robes now they have bonded with it. I have seen that process used before; the end result is always that the soul is ripped from its body. Fire will not do no, we will need ground dragon scale to break the bond, tt is fortunate that you have already encountered dragonlings, though I’ll admit even then, it will be a dangerous ingredient to acquire.”

Li stood as straight as eir bad leg allowed as Jack gave em a frank appraisal with his multitude of squinting eyes, paused and then gave a kind of sad head shake as he concluded his assessment.

“No, this won’t do. Sending you alone would be absurd, unless….Wait here for a moment fleshy one.”

Li bristled and debated making an issue of Jack’s rude behaviour later as the spider skittered out of the room. The thought stopped dead as eir eyes caught on Al lying prone on the floor, if anyone had the right to complain it was the stunned enby not Li. Curious, ey leaned over to check on it, placing eir fingers against Al’s neck in the way ey’d seen movie doctors do. Unsure if ey felt a pulse Li chided emself, why had ey never taken so much as a first aid course when ey had the chance?

More than a little frustrated by the situation Li took eir phone out of eir pocket and checked to see what message that had saved em. It was from Biz, and though the message itself was garbled nonsense, there was a picture. It seemed that rather than being a balancing factor to Sai’s drunken chaos Biz seemed to have taken it upon xemself to kidnap a wolf. Li groaned, this would normally be the time that ey’d swoop in and stop the duo before something truly stupid occurred, but unfortunatly ey were occupied. Li grimaced and forward the message and a note to eir husband and hoped for the best.

Jack reappeared a little while later from a previously hidden hatch on the celling. His body was strewn with web wrapped packages which rattled softly as he dropped to the floor and shrugged them off.

The webbed bundle was opened without ceremony and Li raised an eyebrow as the sticky threads melting away leaving the object to rest carefully unwrapped in Jack's claws. The device he held was strange, a complex contraction of wire and plastic quite out of place in the candle lit room.

Li gave Jack a look, and the spider made a strange movement ey had never seen before, perhaps the equivalent of a blush? Perhaps to distract he hurriedly placed a section of the device across Als forehead, the myriad wires moving of their own accord flowing and weaving through the epidermis as the ends branched into fine threads each a microscopic needle plugging into Als nervous system.

When the wires stopped moving a second section lit up, a tiny hidden hole projecting a stream of light that coalesced into the shimmering ethereal form of Al. The projection hung limply in the air for a second before it abruptly snapped into life and spoke.

“..ohmygod I can move again! Oh, what the shit Jack, you BIT ME, YOU ACTUALLY BIT ME!” Li flinched as Al’s voice pitched and crackled as the device struggled to process Al’s rising voice.

Li watched with wonder as Jack tapped a spot on the other half of the device and Al froze for a split second before returning to a much less agitated state.

“Right, so I’m here but also here and you want us to steal from a dragon? And also, much more concerningly you can use that thing to put data directly into my brain?” Al poked its projected hand into its physical form and shrugged apologetically at Li who just nodded.

“So it would seem, Al…” Li turned back to Jack with an accusatory glance.

“I assume you had a plan, since you so happen to have a weird brain projector?”

Jack raised six of his legs in mock outrage.

“Why of course, its quite simple really, just three steps….”

After a few questions on dragons and a brief argument about how many steps the six-part plan actually had, Li lead the intangible Al back through the corridors of the castle. Despite Jack’s mysterious refusal to come with and Al’s incorporeal form Li was determined if nothing else to make eir way to the library and the monster within.

The door back to the street was open when ey arrived, the faint echo of Jack’s magic answering both the how and the why of the situation. Li flinched as eir eyes caught sight of the street beyond the threshold, backlit by the flickering red-blue of the sky was a building ey had made a point of being very familiar with, the cracked Edwardian architecture of the library which had almost killed eir beloved.

“There it is Al, any advice for me before we go in there?” Ey tapped on the projector to get the attention of the silent Al, causing it’s ghostly projection to flicker.

"Sorry, sorry I’m with you, just zoned out!" The translucent figure seemed to ponder for a moment before speaking again.

“Now, this might be the weird thing hooked into my brain, but I think I remember it crashing into a table or desk when it was trying to kill me? Also don’t do that again, this is weird enough without my torso going wavey!”

Li mumbled a half-hearted apology as ey considered the rough plan Jack had given em.

1) Have Al distract the "dragonling"

2) Look around for shed scales

4) Sneak out whilst the dragon was trying to eat holo Al

5) Hurry back to Jack

6) Save Al

But first, the door.

It opened stiffly, the battered wooden door bent and marred from Al and Charlies daring escape days earlier. Li swept eir cane through the debris by the door, not a loose scale to be found. Of course, that would have been far too easy.

Li moved on, creeping through the toppled bookcases, repeating the steps of eir plan like a matra whilst Al trailed behind, each step stopping just shy of the floor soundless. Eventually, inevitably, Li’s footsteps made noise, eir crunching footsteps echoing through the beast's lair.

Something Li saw it clambering lazily through the darkened supports above em. The giant bat thing. The Husband Maimer. The Dragon.

The disc spun from Li's hands, the shadowy visage of Al becoming a kaleidoscope of fighting colours as the device struggled to process the airborne tumbles and landed with a clatter still moving as it rolled into distant halls accompanied by Al’s mocking sing-song voice.

“Drag-on? More like Lame-on”

Li shook eir head, Al was in no danger here, but it was still a strange thing to do. If, ey begrudgingly accepted, quite effective. Crucially it gave Li time, time to check through the broken tables and loose books, time to check the sawdust strewn floor, and finally time to check under a broken slab of stone wedged not quite upright against an ancient desk.

Success: A scale, glimmering and brown. Li tapped it once with a fingernail, weird, hard and shiny just as Jack had described. Li pocketed it without further investigation, Al was doing a good job distracting the dragon but ey knew better than to push eir luck when the husband maimer was about.

It was only as ey began to retrace eir steps that ey noticed ey were not alone. Ey were being stalked. Stalked by something quick and small.

The tiny darting thing followed, swooping from shadow to shadow as it followed Li, oblivious to the faint sounds of chaos from behind, and carefully staying back, out of the reach of Li’s prodding cane.

Li allowed emself a grin, the little lizard was too timid to attack, and the door was just within reach with no dragon in sight. All ey had to do was push open the door and then…

The fresh air flooded past em as ey stepped out onto the street and slammed the door closed behind em, the tall Edwardian library moving to its new place the moment the handle clicked shut.

Safe at last, ey pulled the scale from eir pocket. The dull brown shimmered as it caught the light, such a strange thing to need. A strange thing to save a life with, and an even stranger thing to represent the salvation and safety of a friend.

Satisfied in eir victory, Li took stock of the skyline and began to move towards Jacks Castle only to freeze. A chill ran down eir spine. Something was tugging at eir trouser leg.

Slowly, so not to startle whatever beast had followed, Li lowered eir gaze to see the same curious creature from before chewing on eir trouser leg.

It was cat sized, emerald green, with friendly curiosity and a long wagging tail.

As though aware of the attention It turned its big emerald eyes towards em and Li sighed. The tiny dragon was lethally cute.

“I think you will have to come with me little dragonling. You are too cute to be left alone. Let’s go save my friend eh?”

The dragonling showed no sign of understanding but flapped its tiny wings enthusiastically when Li lifted it onto eir shoulder, and once settled happily began to chew on eir shirt collar instead.

Satisfied the dragonling was settled, Li began to walk eir thoughts dominated by one muttered thought.

“How does one explain to eir husband that ey have adopted a baby dragon?”