Kotta was back in town too. He had gone to see his parents, but waylaid Vonn while he was sitting quietly by the river and practicing magic. "You look especially fuzzy."

"Winter coat's growing in. You'll be glad for another free pillow's worth of shed fur, come spring." Vonn spun particles of Mana around in his hands. "As amazing as magic is, I'd forfeit a skill point for the chance to play video games again."

As if to taunt him, the System gave him a minor breakthrough in spell manipulation due to his recent practice. [Skill gain: Elemental Magic (Learning)].

Kotta said, "Ha. Those games sound like their own kind of magic. Fun illusions."

"Pretty much. I forgot to ask whether you and Polestar and Tazo got your new levels yet."

The Kobold sat beside him. "We did. Second level Fighter for me, from thinking about how we fought. Polestar raised Agent. You really didn't ask Tazo?"

"I was too caught up in what she actually did to pay attention to how much the System cared. She helped tame an unholy death pit and fix a huge trade problem. The shop was at a standstill, and we're just one iron-buyer."

"I don't believe you were idle," said Kotta.

"Ha, not quite. How did your part of the trip go?"

Kotta stared off into the river. "I told the people out there what I know. We didn't trespass into Scaled Nation land, but one of the border towns had been theirs until late in the war. So I got to hear how they teach Draconism."

"And?"

"It's horrible! The way the Nation tells it, my kind aren't just the Dragons' favorites. They're practically the only real people. Did you know, Kobolds were the first race to be given magic?"

"Brightstep the other day bragged that Centaurs invented it. Something about the thunder of hooves inspiring a sonic spell."

Kotta hissed as though razzing the young nobleman. "It's a story they tell themselves. But the Kobold version has gotten out of hand, in some places. Like how I leaped into battle, trying to land the mightiest blow and ignoring my teammates, I met people who were taught that the world is Kobolds versus everyone else. They're missing humility, the idea that there are things to discover beyond what we know." He looked over at Vonn. "So among other things, I told them about you."

"I'm not a Dragon, sadly."

"But your existence is proof that the ways of the Fifth Dragon have been right all along, or at least close. We were missing a piece of the puzzle. Now, you and the others have brought at least strong clues to what that piece is, from three perspectives. And evidence that your world's beliefs work in some sense."

Vonn felt the chilly wind through his fur, and pictured the mighty river of his homeland sweeping away downstream to places he'd never seen. He answered slowly. "My world didn't all agree on those beliefs. On what we call Christianity."

"How much of it?"

"Maybe a third. Divided between different sects."

The Kobold nodded vigorously. "But that's the whole other world. What about your lands?"

"Most people there claim to be believers."

"Then if I ever meet people from those other kingdoms, I'll listen to them. Until then, I have you three."

Vonn sighed. "Kotta, I wonder if you're reading too much into what we know."

"I understand that you were a skeptic, but now you've lived through a miracle. And you've come here, where you can be enormously useful."

"I have no desire to take over, or become a high priest!"

Kotta kept calm. "That's fine. But will you tell me these tales aren't valuable? There's a whole group of Kobolds currently oppressing people, and sharing these otherworld secrets could change them for the good. Isn't that worth just as much as bringing them a flying machine or some new toy?"

He had started bringing machines and learning to this world. Here his friend was talking about a religious reformation, maybe on the scale of a whole society. It was none of his business interfering in people's religion when his own sense of cosmic truth had been rocked so much since a year and a half ago.

"I know too little of this world," Vonn said. "What do the System or the gods or the Dragons actually want?"

The Triad faith common to this kingdom was a state religion but seemed not to be enforced by the classic methods. He knew no proof of its gods being real, nor of the Dragons. The System had some reality but wasn't exactly worshiped. Of course, he was coming at this judgment in terms of logic and proof, natural to him but hardly for everyone.

Vonn blinked at a minor realization. "The way we pronounce and write the word 'gods' is different from the words 'System' and 'Dragons'. Are the gods considered somehow lesser than the System?"

Kotta's brow furrowed. "I hadn't thought of it that way. I suppose the Dragons are more like people, and the gods more like basic forces of reality. Selen consistently talks about her God as a person. I'm told that non-Kobolds out west aren't always shown the same courtesy."

There weren't capital and lowercase letters in Vonn's new language, but there was a similar "honorific" mark. You could pronounce a name like 'Kobold' in a way equivalent to lowercase, if you wanted to pick a fight, because that made it grammatically sub-Human. Vonn said, "Just that little grammar difference has big implications I don't understand."

Kotta finally laughed, saying, "See? The details of this stuff interest you! It's the biggest mystery of them all. Why don't we see if I can get people to listen, so we can figure it all out together?"

It was a puzzle. Vonn had tried to stay out of the religion business, but he and his friends had a unique chance to get a bit closer to the truth than any scientist of his homeworld. "You know it's dangerous, right? And that we might never find a good answer to how gods and Dragons and the System really work?"

"I know. Flying a plane is dangerous too."

Vonn chuckled. "Yeah. Guess it's worth trying. Seeing how far we can go."

Kotta nodded definitively and changed the subject. "Then I'd like to hear more of the stories sometime, of course. How's your music practice?"

"I actually took a point in Charm this season. And I think I didn't show you my first prototype xylophone. It's junk."

"Progress, though!"

Vonn got him to tell a little story about the early days of the kingdom, when a dynasty of Centaurs ruled and the people believed in prophecies from the movement of the stars. Kotta attached deep meaning to a part about a lost messenger in a marsh. Vonn didn't get it, and had to have two or three other related tales and expressions explained to him. He said, "I didn't grow up learning this stuff, so I'm missing some context."

"To be fair, nobody knows it all. Hey, maybe you can translate something I overheard Polestar singing. He wouldn't talk about it."

Kotta tried humming the mournful melody. From his muzzle it was a little alien, but Vonn recognized the song. Vonn couldn't sing it well either, and didn't know all the words, but he tried adding what fragment he had to the puzzle. "Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong...!"