“Can’t believe that all happened…” mumbled a Dragonborn as he helped a few of his fellow lesser draconic brethren lift a statue made of solid, perfectly flawless diamond into a wagon.

“Ain’t that the truth….” answered another. “Never thought that the Old Lord would be turned into a puppet and made to do that….”

“Those damn monsters.” hissed a third as she picked up some coins and stuffed them into a sack. “I don’t know who or what they were and are, but I, for one, will never forgive them for making the Old Lord commit such a heinous act.”

“Preaching to the choir, there.” added the leader of this little band. “But it isn’t a good idea to talk openly about that stuff. Hurts morale.”

“Oh, come off it.” grumbled another member, a Kobold. “If we aren’t allowed to gripe about how close we came to extinction, then what can we talk about?”

“Him, maybe?” answered the leader as he pointed to a rather odd sight.

“Huh…” a Draconewt tilted his head at the utterly bizarre sight. Just a short few meters away, there was a member of the Races, a Human to be precise, clad in ‘armor’ made of random trash and junk with an old branch from a long-dead tree hanging at his hip as if it were a sword.

“Does he…. Does he know that he’s talking to something that can’t talk back?”

The Human continued as if nothing was wrong, engaged in an active, yet utterly moronic, one-sided conversation with a statue that formerly was a rather animated female elf holding a small dog, but was now nothing more than a solid statue made entirely of flawless obsidian glass.

He seemingly was utterly unaware of the fact that he had walked right into a scene out of a war movie, surrounded on all sides by the ravaged remains of what once was a massive sprawling town, yet now was nothing more than a still-smoldering husk that had been drowned in enough multi-element dragonfire to reduce even the most durable of structures to dust and ruins.

While they normally would have done something about this sole survivor of one of Her Highness, Dragon-God Monarkea’s ‘Great Purges’, they were utterly overcome by the sheer idiocy of this teenager and, as a result, let him continue to dick around. After all, this guy was dumb. No, not merely dumb as a normal dumb person would be, no, he was the Platonic Ideal of the word Dumb.

Hell, even that might not have actually come close to describing how utterly moronic that person was, nor did it come even remotely close to describing how utterly oblivious he was. He was so strange, in fact, that those around him, all true servants of the new Dragon-God, simply found him entertaining to watch.

His antics today were rather amusing, and more and more people were beginning to find him rather, well, charming would not be the right word, but maybe it would be best to say they viewed him similar to a small, obviously near-brain-dead animal that everyone and everything hated trying desperately to act ‘normal’ despite being a hideous and insane little freak.

Maybe you could even say they were watching him for the reason that they all wanted dearly to see if and when he would fuck up horrifically and get himself killed. A bit of cruel enjoyment at the expense of a mere lesser being, but he was a mere lesser being, so why would they even concern themselves with caring for him in a positive manner?

Watching him walk down a road, only to trip over something that a normal person would see, then end up falling flat on his face and end up harming himself was, to them, the absolute shit. It was like watching a comedy of errors, it was slapstick humor you would expect from a Three-Stooges video, but in real life, and right in front of them!

Plus, it kept their minds off of the fact that they had all dodged a fucking massive bullet thanks to the ever-magnanimous and merciful Lord Vaile. And wasn’t that what really mattered?

…

“Thank you very much for the help, m’lady!” Axis said with a tip of the hat that he was wearing. Yes, he was wearing a fedora. Yes, that fedora was placed on top of the pot that he was wearing as a helmet. Yes, that did cause the pot to fall off of his head and land directly on his toes.

No, he did not notice that happen, and no, while he did pick the pot and hat up and put them back on his head, he did not actually notice or know that he did such things. And while he was tipping a fedora, he wasn’t a ‘nice guy’. No, he was a Hero, which made him better than a Nice Guy. He was a Good Guy. The Best Good Guy, in fact, though that was his own view on things, at least.

He had liked being in the town of Nameplace, and he had enjoyed his trip over the wonderfully and creatively named Bridge Bridge. It had such a majestic view of the towering spires and many amazing venues that made this town a massive metropolis.

In truth, he had barely managed to avoid falling to a watery grave in a fast-moving river as he had crossed a nearly destroyed bridge while looking at a ruined, wrecked, and utterly destroyed town. Those ‘spires’ that he had seen were the smoke from the still-burning sections of the town that were on fire due to magic that refused to go out until its maker, Monarkea, gave the order.

Monarkea, for her part, forgot those fires were even still lit, so they would likely keep burning for a few centuries more until she eventually got around to turning them off.

Axis, though, was still a dumb, dense little fool, and his delusions and tiny, tiny, tiny brain had long since left him trapped in a dream world that his ‘girlfriend’ had done wonders to make impossible for him to escape. But, while he was now done with this place, he did have a new destination in mind.

It was time to begin the final approach, and to take on the evil Dragon-Lord Monarkea, who was, in no way, shape, or form, in any way related to the girlfriend of his whose name sounded exactly the same but was spelled differently.