“Huh. That’s neat.”

Vaile looked up at the stronghold in front of him, and he did, indeed, find it neat. He had to give Monarkea credit, as she certainly knew how to make an impact.

The stronghold had formerly been under the control of one of the Races, which was the more generic type of Dwarves. Or at least it looked that way, as while there had been rumors that, long ago, this fortress had held not merely Dwarves but other members of the Races as well, that time was so long in the past that it didn’t matter.

The bastion that once held a sizable garrison of dwarves (among other things) now belonged solely to the dragons, and was staffed by those of draconic nature, or at least reptilian nature. And, while the hints of its former occupants yet remained, they had, for the most part, been torn down or defaced and replaced with monuments to the arrogance and narcissism of the true dragons.

While he had marveled at the architecture of other places he had seen, this place was a clear message to any who saw anything else in the Dragon’s Domain. Whatever traces of the past forces that remained existed solely as a show of dominance and mockery, as this place made it perfectly clear that those echoes of the past could and would be removed should it suit the mood of the current rulers.

“I am a potato.”

Vaile patted Axis on his dumb little head and then boot him forward with a rough kick to the butt.

“Sure you are.” Vaile replied dismissively. “Go break a leg. Preferably yours. Preferably both.” Vaile then looked at the back of his unlikable companion and added yet more insult to injury. “Hell, break every bone in your body. That’ll be fun to watch.”

Axis, ever oblivious, walked forward, and passed between the massive gates that would have given many armies a run for their money had they tried to break through them. Of course, the gates were wide open, as Monarkea had ordered the garrison to keep them that way ahead of Vaile and the dumb shit’s arrival.

As Axis moved ever deeper into the place that would seal his doom, Vaile followed behind and kept his head on a swivel. He had seen many a dwarf fortress before, even before he was taken by unknown means to the New World, and he had even seen many that were obviously taken over by other groups and factions, but one thing that almost always remained a constant for all of them were the gates and gatehouse.

Dwarf-made gates and gatehouses were nearly always left intact and unaltered due to how damn sturdy they were, and as a result, any attempt to alter them almost always resulted in the defenses being weakened substantially. These gates, and this gatehouse, though, looked to not merely be of Dwarven make, but also highly customized for their current residents’ tastes.

Normally you would see a pair of giant dwarves in full armor as metal reliefs on each of the massive doors, but these doors were decorated not with the Races, but with a single relief of a dragon’s head, with each door having half of the total image. Likewise, the gatehouse and the whole damn complex were decorated not with any dwarven iconography, but instead that of a more draconic type.

Obviously, one of two things had occurred; either the dragons managed to convince or, more likely ‘convince’ some dwarves to do a bit of ‘redecorating’ or the dragons had employed the talents of the more… monstrous types of dwarves that could be found out there, such as the Metal Dwarves, or the Molten Dwarves. Maybe they had employed a mix of the two options, but that outcome was far less likely than the previous two.

Still, the gatehouse wasn’t the only thing to gawk at, and Vaile had to keep on Axis’ tail so as to keep the moron from getting into too much trouble. So, with that little bit of tourism out of the way, Vaile caught up with the doddering young kid and nudged him in the right direction through judicious application of physical impacts.

…

“Like herding cats!” Vaile yelled in exasperation as he narrowly avoided letting Axis tumble off the side of a walkway and down a deep chasm that ended in a flowing river of lava. “This is why everyone hates escort missions!”

Another slap was delivered and sent Axis into a new direction, and Vaile was getting rather sick and tired of the seeming randomness of that. He could hit the bastard from nearly any and all conceivable directions, and yet the odds that he would travel in any of the other directions were just as likely as him ignoring the physical violence and going off the proper path.

“Seriously!” Vaile screamed into Axis’ oblivious ear. “What kind of bullshit random number generator are you using to determine where you are headed at any given time?! What is your major malfunction?!”

Axis said nothing and just kept that empty, dopey smile on his reddened face. The redness was, as you might have expected, due to Vaile’s open, and sometimes closed, slaps that occasionally would get him to change direction correctly. Other times the idiot would start wandering off in an even more dangerous direction, which would result in Vaile slapping him even more until he eventually took a safer route.

Vaile sighed audibly and wondered if he should simply bite the bullet and pick the useless waste of space up and transport him to his execution grounds by hand, but then he remembered how, despite the annoyance it was causing, he did enjoy giving the dumb teen a few good smacks here and there.

“A pity that I won’t be able to beat you to death myself after all the pain you’ve caused me.” Vaile grumbled, having fully given up on the Races, or at least having fully given up on them for the immediate future. “Let’s just see how many times I need to hit you until you finally decide to parse a decent pathing algorithm in that flea-sized brain of yours.”

And with that, Vaile delivered a harder, yet still nowhere near full-power backhand to the teen’s face, which caused Axis to wheel about and walk the way they both had come from, causing Vaile to need to smack Axis another two times to get him going in the correct direction.

“Goddamn piece of shit…” Vaile spat. He would be overjoyed when this charlatan was finally dealt with.