"This can't possibly get any worse," Sophie said as the the wall behind them exploded. Shards of ice and wood flew past them. She really thought that she was outside of the blast radius, but she could feel dozens of small cuts over her arms.

Only the barest magical shielding that she was able to put up kept them from being steam rolled.

Of course things were going to be a little bit different than what one thought, no one expected sea monsters to arrive on cue. It was almost like the worst thing that could happen had met Murphy in the in the darkest alleyway of the city and paid him off. Sophie brushed the blood off of her arms, and checked her horse, spurring it onward.

As the walls began to break, small rifts opened up in them where a body could reach through and move out. Sophie expected zombies to begin flooding through the open walls. What she did not expect was a cadre of goats, deciding that now was the best time to leave town and oh yes you look like a shepherd.

"Sophie?" Bob yelled from ahead of her. "Did you or your god have anything to do with this? There sure is a nonstandard amount of goats right now."

"I don't recall doing this but-" Sophie wrung her hands, realizing that she had activated the goat card. That probably has something to do with it. "Maybe?"

"Well the next time you're going to have a party, let us know in advance so we can bring favors. Because I think that we've got another uninvited guest arriving."

A screech loud enough to deafen, hit the scouts all at once. Sophie put what she had into healing, cursing that she had used half of her mana to summon enough goats to fill an inner city quinciera or bat mitzvah. True, they were fast goats, seemingly willing to follow her. But Sonya had made that decision by instinct. Had she known the consequences, she probably wouldn't have chosen that option.

"Dragon!" Stella yelled. "Fuck! Bad dragon!"

Sophie turned briefly stealing a glance at the thing. It looked like someone's ideal image of a dragon, green, flying and fleshy. It was only a few dozen meters off ground but she was already not liking it.

The green that she had identified earlier when they were in Heirisburg was present. The dark black eyes of the dragon looked diseased, compounding like they were insect eyes. One of its arms was pure bone white.

Sophie was not a dragon expert but she didn't think that green dragons were supposed to have pure white arms.

She was grateful to the Goat Lord for giving her all the power that she needed to see this through. She was definitely having a moment where she wondered why her patrons weakest warriors got sent the most difficult cats to skin.

"Undead dragon!" Sophie yelled.

"What the fuck," Brianna said from beside her as their horses lined up. "Look out, Sophie!"

Sophie returned her intention to what was in front of her, pausing only long enough to get her horse in the right path. A large boulder that hadn't been there previously had decided that today was it's day in infamy. The pain from her bleeding subsided as the shock of her horse wrenching her rodeo style twice in quick succession made her think that she had a concussion.

The one thing that would have made Sophie feel so much better would be if she had a direct power that could counter the dragon. So much of her time had been spent devising new ways to kill old zombies. She was a quick study if nothing else.

But she didn't have anything for the dragon. That was about the time that she had to think long and hard about how much time she had left to live. There were not that many options. Across open ground, the dragon would clearly beat them.

"Spread out!" Stella yelled from somewhere behind on her side. "We can't give the dragon an easy target!"

Bob whooped as he sped up, making it clear that he would ride along the side of the city.

Sophie had another idea. If the dragon was going to threaten her new way of life, it had just signed its last end user license agreement.

Sophie reached out, finding that her animal handling skill felt a lot more vivid that the time before.

She could feel every goat around her and for the first time, felt ready to rock the party.

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"So now one of them's going to have some bullshit power that saves the day or something like that just because they're chosen and they never considered what that looks like to the rest of us mere mortals," Borgan said, pointing to the warlock druid down on the plains.

"Oh look there it is!" Finley said. "It's Sophie and it looks like she has a small army of goats with her. I wonder what's going to happen with that? The Goat Lord has never seen fit to give me an army or even a squad of goats. Oh of course, they are shooting things at the dragon."

"Of course. Because as we all know goats have very special powers to shoot...are those rocks?"

"Those are rocks. Those are rocks covered in something maybe they're a bit too small," Finley said crossing his arms.

"It figures. We can sing songs to enhance the caravan on the battlefield and she can summon goats that fire rocks accurately at dragons."

The fire spread further as a line of goats formed to attack the dragon. The dragon, had decided to hover and rain down black flame.

Finley didn't like black flame.

It seemed too inelegant for such a moment. The orcs agreed. It was a rare thing for elves and orcs to agree on something so momentous, but when humans, especially chosen were considered, it could happen.

"Do you think that the sea monster is going to..." Finley said.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The large neck of the sea monster appeared to suck in ambient energy before leveling a blast at the undead dragon.

"Damn chosen and their antics," Borgan said, having a seat and dangling his legs over the side of the wall.

"I'm just glad that they're over there, and that the territorial sea beast just dislikes the undead nearly as much as I do. I mean maybe he's an asshole to everyone, but he is our asshole right now."

Song signed something complicated with several circles involved.

"The sea monster must think that this town is like a snack or something," Borgan said. "It's going to have to ear something. I imagine without a lot of ships going across the sea, there isn't much chance to get a little dwarven snack."

"Hey!"

The voice of the dwarven teenager made them all turn.

"I'm not saying that I agree with it," Borgan said. "But that thing has to eat something, right? Look at how big it is!"

Valerie sighed from a short distance down the wall.

The dragon had fully turned it's attention onto the sea monster. The magical goats kept flinging rocks at the dragon, every so often hitting it. A lucky one went through a wing, but it kept hovering.

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The urban planner in charge of designing any major city would have had a heart attack if they saw the slums that had built up on the western edge of town. Layer upon layer of hovels were built using wood that had been razed for span after span around the port city. The main thing that it had going for it initially was the natural beauty of the promontory as well as how it broke the waves that would have otherwise been a burden upon the ports. That natural beauty was despoiled by the profit seeking dwarves. All trees were free to use to build, zoning regulations be damned.

The problem didn't lie with all those people that said that you couldn't build these things. This way, the problem way with the way that the fire inspectors turn the other way with a small wink and a nod from a bribe. It was the fire inspector who gave the urban planners a heart attack. It might be that they had been dating at one point in time and the fire inspector was turning it back at his ex. But who knows you see? The actual reason was probably lost to time.

There were only so many ways that a dwarven writer could lay out a Lord Romance between an urban planner and a fire marshal. There was a whole series on it that Valerie had been reading and had gotten really into. She imagined herself as the urban planner, who would one day find her fire inspector.

Of course she would pretend that he might listen to her, but in the end it was all about how much give and take. There was between the two of them and whether or not they were going to have a happy ending in a cottage that similarly burned down due to zoning problems with the neighbors next door.

So when Valerie saw the distinct black flames edging through the city, she got chills. Not the kind of chills that someone gets when they're delighted to see something. She had remembered a lesson from her academy days. Something about dragons, breathing, black flame that would never go out until what it was scorching was starting to Ash had stirred up in your mind.

"Andrew?" She said.

"Yes, Valerie," the older boy dwarf said, twirl like his beard like a hot fire inspector would.

"I think that that flame is going to be a problem," she said, biting her lip.

"The black one or the wildfire?"

"The black flame."

The two of them looked at the fire spreading from hopefully safe vantage point.

"You're probably right about that. What do you propose we do, adjutant?"

Valerie pushed away the image of being tied up with a fire hose and tried to think about the present situation. They needed to suppress the flames in some way.

Fire needed three things, air, a source like fuel and a spark. She couldn't do much about the source. The entire city was covered in dry wood. She could see about doing something with the air.

"Do you have any way of removing air from a place? We need to figure out a way to suppress this fire. At the very least we can just stop it from the spreading to the boats we want to acquire."

Andrew scratched his beard, looking thoughtful As if he was about to find a reason to shut her down due to a fire code.

"We're going to have to tap into our warlock skills here. If we smother the flames then they won't spread," Andrew said. "Get Sonya. I have a plan."

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The dragon raged in the background as Andrew brought Sonya up to speed.

"You realize that we're going to have to get the zombie dragon to stop spewing black flames before we secure the flames inside of the city?" Sonya said.

"Yes, we've thought about that, right Valerie?" Andrew said.

"Alright. And you do realize that we're not here to raze the city to the ground, correct?"

Both dwarves nodded. Sonya didn't know if it was more disconcerting that they were agreeing to something or that they were working together, or that Valerie had deemed it field expedient to finally open up to her. She did notice the book in Valerie's hands, a nondescript one that had to contain some secrets the way that she was holding it.

"Alright. I guess I can give it a go. I've never caused an earthquake before, and oh yeah another level," She said checking that indeed her warlock spellcasting ability was getting up there.

"Get the flags ready then?" Valerie said. Her other hand clutched the box of flags that they used to signal things fro a distance. The scouts had alternatively fired upon and scattered from the dragons black flame until the sea monster had taken its attention.

"Signal a retreat?" Sonya said to Anthony.

"They're already retreating!" Anthony said. "I see four horses, wait no I see five horses and where is Bob?"

---

Bob, Mork's sling load hook, was on a mission. The quest he had been given had some sort of time limit on it as well as a reward that he needed.

Mork's quest told him that there was an undead dwarf inside of the city that, if killed, would have exactly the card that he would need to start the second part of the quest. He had ordered his horse to break off and return to the caravan, weaved around a line of mage goats, and then ran into the city.

The god of death, taxes and fertility had directed him to the center of town. He could turn his head away from the purple silhouette, but he couldn't ignore it. He dodged past groups of zombies as he got closer to the center of town. What would have taken old Bob more than twenty minutes to run through, new Bob did in five minutes.

Then he was upon a large two story open market and the dark purple was getting even more bright. A zombie lurched towards him and connected with his short sword. He removed it and then summoned Ca'at.

"Hey there little best friend, I have a mission for you," He said, drawing his crossbow.

He was only going to get one shot as the zombie in question was in the middle of a crowd. But he had everything going for him as he took aim at it.

The zombie fell. Bob looked around for someplace he could climb up as zombies circled around him, threatening to cut him off wholly.

"That's about as good as it gets," he said, drawing two small daggers and putting the crossbow over his shoulder. He jumped onto a nearby table, thrusting both daggers into the side of the two story tavern. Below him, his summon did the necessary dirty work. Foot by foot, he climbed up, pegboard style.

He wasn't surprised to see Ca'at up there. It was how fast the eldritch bestie had been, arriving before him that ticked him off.

"Alright, let me see what we got here," he said.

Rare Skill: Grappling Hook

The wielder is able to summon a grappling hook at will and has an increased ability to climb it. Grappling hooks and lines are unbreakable and will last for up to two hours at a time. Connections established by this hook are not unbreakable provided enough force is used.

"Well shit, Mork, all you had to do was ask," He said as the dragon swooped overhead.

He cleaned the card off and shoved it into his soul deck, then activated it.

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"Hey Anthony!" Borgan said. "I think I found Bob, but you're not going to like this. No, not there. Higher."

Anthony was happy for the dirge of farsightedness. He just wish that he wasn't looking at the mess in front of him.

"Well, shit Bob," Anthony said, looking down to the city. "Is that asshole trying to climb on top of a dragon?"What's wrong with him? He's so weird about around women.

He hasn't read the terms and conditions and signed off on one before. That's why he is so odd.

Anthony, who had signed the terms and conditions for his girlfriend continued onward.