“So, go over everything again, please?” Leo asked, holding his head in his hands. He really had heard and understood everything from the discussion, but he needed a recap.

El chuckled a bit from where he sat next to Leo at a long table made of almost white-colored wood—it appeared as a flat, soft board the same color and pattern as paper birch bark. Two stained glass windows sparkled occasionally in the light from the candles in the stone room they were in, and the shelves were filled with numerous scrolls, all with detailed metalwork holders they were wrapped around.

A bowl of water with pink petals floated on the table near them—what purpose or symbology that had, Leo had no idea.

El—Liu Vellen, Golden Scroll of the Dragon Claw Tower—steepled his hands in front of his mouth and stared at Leo, a slight indulgent smile on his face. “After all the weird, odd rules, references to the treatises, and historical examples, it’s very simple, really. In order to hold a golden rank under the government in any profession, you must gift the emperor in ritual ceremony. A gift of not less than one thousand gold value taken from the lands of the dragons, or a dragon’s head of not less than Level Thirty.”

“And why can’t I just go get a thousand gold from my realm?” Leo asked.

“We seek to weaken the dragons. They will rise in dragonflight relatively soon, and rampage across our land, slaying our people and taking our things. Our greatest mystical diviner, my predecessor at the Dragon Claw Tower, Ju Wiliu the Thirteenth Eye, calculated that the dragonflight will come in fifty years—and it will be far fiercer than usual, a rising of the magic that will propel the dragons to heights unseen in thousand of years. A dead dragon now is one less beast of unimaginable power later. A mere five decades from now.”

El’s eyes had become hooded, and the perpetual slight humor he seemed to regard the world with was absent from his face now.

“This is really worrying you?” Leo asked.

El nodded. “Indeed it is. The last time a dragonflight surge was this intense, the dragons destroyed civilization in all seven vales, casting the emperor’s before low and ending every single line—if they even existed back then, we’re not sure. Only when the dragonflight ended, years later, did the dependence on magic by the greatest dragons force them back to the Eighth Vale. And only then did we slowly recover. Anything before that time is basically lost—relics and artifacts of immense power, historical records and treatises, bloodlines of magic… everything from then is now dead or in dragon hoards. This was near ten-thousand years ago.”

Leo did some quick math and figured that was about two-thousand to twenty0five hundred years in human generations terms, since elves bred slower. A long time.

El continued. “It’s been almost a thousand years since the last dragonflight, and that was a weak one. Normally, our world get’s a weak one every couple hundred years, but this time… I dread the future, frankly. For many reasons.”

Leo waited.

El sighed. “We’re decadent. I know it. Before, the dragonflights kept us on our toes. But we’ve gone twelve generations without any real conflict. We have the people that personally trained until they were high level, but we’ve never truly been in conflict as a society. Most people think the heights we have risen to will be enough to stand against the dragons, but I seriously doubt it.”

Leo thought back to a discussion he’d had with the Crone—who was over Level Eighty. In which she had thought she would be able to defeat Chow, the dragon that had carved the heart from the Averian Empire during the last dragonflight on Toth. But she hadn’t been sure.

Even if the Emperor successfully integrates all forty-seven levels of his predecessor, wherever a Chow style dragon wants to sit, its going to. And everyone around it will die.

Leo had flashbacks to his fight with the Ash Dragon, and tried to imagine something that was to that what he had been to it. His mind failed beyond vague existential horror.

El turned to him. “Please never admit this to anyone… but I might, one day, ask about your refugee policy. The ‘intriguing possibility’ I mentioned when we first met, that your gate opened for as a possible path, wasn’t trade—it was an escape hole, where we could store the necessary people and knowledge to come back and rebuild our realm quickly after the dragonflight ends.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

This escalated quickly. “Well, that makes sense. But it’s in fifty years—so for now, I just need to steal a great treasure, or best a wyrm, and come back, right?”

El nodded, his smile coming back as he did—although Leo could see it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. Get the loot and get back.”

“For my second question—why can I only take one companion? Wouldn’t it be best to just mob the place?”

El shook his head, the smile more real now. “No. Two reasons. One, if fifty people can go, protecting some Level One lordling that has never earned anything is his life would be easy in comparison, and the meritocratic system would fall. We do—very occasionally—launch raids, but those never grant rank.”

“That’s irritating… but fair, I suppose,” Leo groused.

El’s voice went dark again. “The second reason is why the raids are very occasional. The borderline god-level dragons didn’t die. They still exist, deep in the twisting caverns of the Eighth Vale. Whenever we try a true sweep, to do genuine and lasting damage to the dragons—well, we never succeed, because the great ones leave their layers and fall upon us like a mountain from the heavens. No force, no matter its size or composition or what glorious name we ascribe to it, has ever survived one of them taking the field against us. But that won’t happen when we send only a few. The great dragons seem to think nothing of a few lesser ones dying. Of late, Wyrm Lungsiwan, The Wyrm of Death, has become unusually active, so the last great treatise limited the number of raiders to two.”

“So… if you never kill the big ones, isn’t raiding them pointless?” Leo asked.

El shook his head. “No. Each dragon of roughly the Level thirty that we kill is one more town saved. The only weakness the great dragons have is that they are few in number. Each is a great natural disaster, but they are few.”

“I… guess that makes sense,” Leo said, staring at his fist in frustration. “Very well. So I have to pick one companion only?”

El nodded. “For their safety and to prove only you and they are worthy of rank.”

Leo’s head came up. “Wait, my companion can hold rank as well? If we succeed, I mean?”

“Yes.”

I wonder if I should take into account who would make a good minister? Although, I don’t really want my core team working for this new empire… And Rez is a duke and Lily isn’t here… who else even has the skillset?

“I’ll go talk to my team then if you don’t mind.”

“By all means,” El said, pushing his chair back from the table. He stood, gave Leo a complicated bow-and-arm-gesture, and then walked from the room.

Leo followed him. El led him through numerous hallways, all decorated with fine rugs, statues, paintings, and stained-glass windows. He was led to a massive door with two ornately dressed and beautiful elven women, who pulled the doors open.

Leo entered the new room—a huge, oversized spa. The middle of the room as occupied by a huge, heated lounging pool with steam rising from it—fully occupied by Hugh at the moment. Their were smaller pools around, as well as low tables covered in down and a few tables piled high with food.

There were servants everywhere. Leo was thankful that even in this room, filled with steam and wet, they didn’t go ‘Hywyl Pools’ and instead kept at least a technically modest silk top and bottom on. Good-looking elves of both genders tended the guests, with Res and Neha receiving an all male crew that was massaging them, and Andul—lounging in his own pool—an all male one.

The one working at Neha was failing, and Neha was giggling.

But if those were personal assistants, Zun and even more Hugh were receiving industrial efforts. Teams were working—with ladders and long tools—to both feed and scrub them both, something that Zun was sitting still for and Hugh was reveling in.

And they had a barrel of alcohol next to Hugh.

As Leo walked in, everyone turned to face him, and Neha teleported to just in front of him. “So, what’s happening, Dad?”

“Well… I have to raid the treasure from the dragon lands.”

“They have dragon lands?” Hugh asked, turning over suddenly. One of the people on a ladder and washing his hide gave a yell and then fell four feet into the water of the pool. Hugh fished the poor elf from the water and set her on the ground outside the pool he was in, her wings splayed out as water ran from them. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

Then he stared at Leo. “Dragon lands?”

Leo laughed. “Not in a good way. Lands like your old haunt, Hugh. Only with far, far stronger dragons—a lot of them like your sire, Chow, but even older and eviler.

“We’re going to fight dragons?” Neha asked.

“Well… about that. I can only take one person with me. A single companion to help on the quest, Frodo and Samwise style.”

“You know we don’t know who those people are,” Zun said testily.

“Take me!” Neha said, jumping up and holding her hand in the air.

Hugh narrowed his eyes and stared at Leo.

I know what’s he thinking.

“Actually… I’m taking Hugh, Neha, I’m sorry. We’ve been together from the very beginning. We complement each other very, very well and have nearly built out entire builds complematarily. I know that you are probably a touch stronger with all three familiars, but I have a record with Hugh.”

Hugh grinned a fierce grin, half-smile, half that-last-thing-dinner-sees.

Neha frowned. “You have one with me.”

Leo glance sideways at El, the shrugged. Fuck it. He has to know we have contingency plans. I know they can see magic, easily, so they also know she’s the only Travel mage.

“I… have another reason to leave you, Neha. You’re the only one of us that can currently carry others when you teleport. If our friends and potential allies prove not to be. You’re needed here.”

Neha nodded slowly. “I guess that’s true.”

El smiled and motioned to the door again. “With that piece of aggressive but wholly expected news, shall we?”

Hugh grabbed the barrel. “Let me just finish this. I’ve never had wine this good, and apparently I’m doing without for a bit.”