The large round table finally finds proper usage as a total of nine dragons sit side-by-side around it, filling out its circumference with little room to spare. If my knowledge of dragon politicians isn’t failing me, it would seem that they’re arranged by type, going from one to nine clockwise.

The other people in attendance—me, Goss and Fr. Moonlight—are all sat to the side, outside of the discussion but present enough to hear it. Since I want to be able to see things too, I’m sitting on top of Goss’ head. It’s comfortable.

“Looks like everyone has arrived,” Hart says, drawing himself up until his head is the tiniest bit above everyone else. I think Ymir is technically taller, but since his back is slouched and his neck is sagging, Hart is able to look down at him as well. “To begin with, I want to nominate myself as word-tender and Lif of the Metaist party to act as scribe. Is this accepted by all?”

“”“Aye,””” the other members say as one.

Not wanting to be left out, I go to say ‘Aye’ as well, only to notice Fr. Moonlight looking at me funnily. Ah. Alright, then. I hold my tongue.

“The council has accepted me as word-tender and Lif as scribe, so it shall be,” Hart finalizes, slamming the end of his tail onto the table as Lif—a slim, brown old-shoe-type dragon—begins to carve words into the table using his claw. “Aside from the party leaders, we also have the current Priest of Dragons, Father Moonlight; Goss Fletchling the whelp; and a human named ‘Kitty’ in attendance. They hold no voting power nor say in the decisions and their outcomes.” The council honestly looks more bored than anything else. “The first matter on the agenda relates to the complaints of the nearby city of Volk, brought to our attention by Father Moonlight, in regards to the overhunting of nearby wildlife…”

The meeting begins on a note that encourages napping above all else. Still seated on Goss’s head, I allow myself to zone out as they discuss the inane, unimportant affairs of the month. Before this, I was honestly a little bit curious to know what dragon politicians could have to discuss, but now that I’m here… Oh, God. I’ll be lucky if the attempt doesn’t end before they bring up our subject.

With nothing else to do, I count the seconds until they mention something that isn’t to do with archives, whelp supplies, tithes and inane squabbling. One, two, three, four, five…

…Seven-thousand three-hundred and seventy-two, seven-thousand three-hundred and seventy-three, seven-thousand three-hundred and seventy—

“...This brings us to our most recent topic, namely Ymir Attechilde’s killing rite.” I bound upright where I sit, almost falling off of Goss’ head in the process. Hart, unaware of my plight, continues. “As you have most likely already been made aware, we have received a petition in regard to who will execute Ymir. At Kitty the human’s request, Goss Fletchling has been nominated for the role. To specify, this role will include none of the pre-killing duties, and only those pertaining to the actual killing of Ymir. This would be in the place of Father Moonlight. Are all in agreement?”

Much as they had with almost every other decision, they share a brief look before each, in turn, giving their opinion.

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

The word moves around the table, from type one to eight, repeated with equal indifference. The leader of the religist party is filing his nails. The leader of the aliusist party is preening her feathers. The leader of the metaist party, despite being the secretary, is drawing tiny scribbles in the stone before melting it with his breath and repeating the process.

The word finally moves to Ymir. His tired eyes turn to Hart, the only one who cares enough to look him in the eye. Ymir heaves a sigh. “Ay—”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“STOP!” someone shouts.

Huh? What is—

I turn to where the voice came from, only to find Fr. Moonlight standing up, his chest rising and falling and his wings partially splayed out. The gathered dragons all turn to him as well. Speaking for everyone else, Hart asks, “Is there something you would like to say, Father?”

“Th—this is…” In a rare show of actual turmoil, Fr. Moonlight looks between us, his confused, betrayed eyes falling on Goss, myself, and all of the other dragons in turn, including Ymir, before finally returning to Goss and I. “What have you done?”

I can feel Goss begin to tremble beneath me. “I—I was just…”

I put a hand on his forehead, affixing Fr. Moonlight with a calm gaze. “I’m doing what I came here to do, and he’s doing what’ll get him where he wants to be.” My voice is even, measured, and above all: certain. I’m not upset, and I really don’t think he should be either. “Or are you that excited to kill Ymir yourself?”

And, lo and behold—even a former can grow pale.

Recognizing that the two of us are fully decided on this, he turns back to the other dragons. More than that, though, he turns to Ymir. “Is this really what you want?”

Ymir meets his gaze with the composure of a man already dead. “This isn’t about what I want,” he says simply. His heavy eyes roll to take in Goss. “It’s about what he needs.”

I can see Fr. Moonlight’s wings shudder. His hands ball into fists at his side, he draws a deep trembling breath, and when he lets it out, his hands fall back into palms, and his splayed wings carefully fold themselves across his back, neat and tidy. “Very well, my old friend. I shall not take from you your choice of executioner. However, should it become too much…”

“You will do what you must,” Ymir acknowledges, closing his eyes and waving for Hart to continue.

Hart, meanwhile, looks to Fr. Moonlight for confirmation to continue. After a second or so, Fr. Moonlight nods, though I’d be blind not to notice the hesitance in his face. Hart nods back at him. “Very well, then. In that case, we agree unanimously to temporarily grant Goss Fletchling the role of Ymir’s executioner. So say we all.”

He uses his tail like a gavel.

I slide down a little across Goss’ face, grinning as I do. “Hey, we did it! Nice work, Go—”

Eyes wide, pupils small and trembling, he stares straight ahead and… And I think I can hear his teeth chattering. Uh…

“Hey, Goss, are you—”

You will now be returned to the lobby.>

…Wait a minute, I wasn’t finished with—

I disappear. And, just like that, I’m back in the lobby.

…But I did succeed in getting Goss his one-time gig as a hangman! That has to count for something, right? At least, I think so. Sure, Goss didn’t look too hyped about it, but that was only a temporary bit of resistance. Once he’s up and at it, he’ll realize that once someone’s dead, there’s no need to feel bad anymore. Dead is dead, after all.

Yeah. That makes sense.

And now, I have to make do in the lobby until the floor opens again. Let’s see, which resistances should I train, now…?

I finally decided to keep doing bleeding, just for the sake of it.

Do you want to enter?>

The time passed quickly, and now that the floor is open, I press the ‘yes’ button without any hesitation.

With that, I return to the mountain range. Or, more specifically, to a random point far away from the actual place I want to go. Ah. That’s problematic.

Well, I’ll get there eventually, I guess.

With that in mind, I get back to trekking. I don’t have to trek for too long, though, as after a few hours I start noticing massive shadows circling high above. Good. This means Goss was listening when I told him about how I’d probably disappear during the meeting and reappear a day later, out and about. Very nice.

From my noticing them, it only takes them a little while to notice me in turn, after which I’m swiftly rescued and brought back home. And just like that, my casual, easy-going life continues. There are only two weeks left until the killing rite, and I’m excited to continue attempting to tan leather and explore the nearby countries with Goss.

Except, after the council meeting, both Goss and Fr. Moonlight have been acting a bit weird. Fr. Moonlight I can understand—he’s almost definitely upset that we didn’t tell him ahead of time about all of this. I feel like the right thing to do might be to apologize, but apologies are supposed to be genuine, and I don’t feel any bad about doing it, so… yeah. But Goss? Yeah, no, I have no idea what’s eating him. I can only assume that he’s nervous about the whole killing rite thing, but when I asked him about it, it didn’t seem to be the usual stuff. It wasn’t fear that he might not turn into a four-winged dragon, and it wasn’t fear that he might turn into a four-winged dragon, so I really don’t know what else it could be.

Nevertheless, aside from that small bit of awkwardness, life continued as it had for the past two weeks. We sparred, we hunted—though, now, we could only hunt a max of five creatures each—and we fished, we lived, we laughed, we… We had it pretty good. Since it might come in use, I even taught him all I’d learned about killing dragons. Weirdly enough, that got him apprehensive. Tweens… incomprehensible creatures, they are.

During our time, I was even able to raise my bleeding immunity to level two, which very clearly slowed the rate at which my heart beat and made me bleed less. Also, the blood I did bleed was darker than usual and strangely thick. Very odd.

Either way, after two brief weeks, the time had come.

The killing rite was at hand.