Alban was on his way to the prison where George was waiting for his orders. He was advancing at a determined pace.

His heart was beating for Marise, and it was not a Demon Lord who would come between them.

No, but!

Meanwhile, I was with Cyril.

The gates of the castle were raised and the drawbridge lowered, letting in a back and forth movement in the surrounding area, thus giving access to the inner city and all its infrastructures.

The city extended outside the castle, of course, and was surrounded by a wall but not the height of the castle.

Cyril showed his hunter's ring and I carried the game while he filled out the forms:

Name, place of birth and time of entry, reason and companions.

Otherwise a silly guild card on a gem was enough to record the data.

The first thing that struck me was the stench. It smelled like sewage and an advanced dryness, did not help to evacuate the defilement.

That's why the inhabitants wore masks and perfumed cloths or cloths filled with flower petals, or simply choked on smoking to mask the smell of rotten eggs and badly scraped sewers.

Flies were a real plague and were bent on laying eggs on exposed heads outside butcher shops.

"It's so that they lay outside and not inside," they justified.

Idiots, there will be more but they say that stupidity is human and now I believe it.

Cyril: "You're coming, it's done... I'm going to introduce you to Perin, the chef of the kitchens.

Other hunters brought game, but our booty was very big and had nothing to envy the others.

"Ah, Cyril... what have you brought me today? Ah, hares, and a deer!!!! And he looked at me:

"Your apprentice looks like a strong man to carry alone, without a horse or cart, a deer like that... MMMM it will be one of the main courses... we have dragon as a guest tonight..."

Cyril : " Dragons???? They are bloody monsters!!!!"

Perin: "I guess not... those who come are ultra powerful, they lead the Zergian army and are much smarter than you and I combined... They are powerful Mages too... Our prince does everything so that one avoids a war with them... Some rumors say that he is terrified and that he keeps another dragon in his cellar to protect himself..."

Cyril: "Yes, normal a dragon to protect himself from another dragon... well found Altus..."

Me : "Hello Mr. Perin, I'm currently looking for work, at least temporarily, with the wars, we came to take refuge here...".

Mmm you, you're right... you don't have the accent from here... come in..."

Cyril followed Perin into a back kitchen room, where the spices were stored, neatly arranged in beautiful wooden cupboards with blue ceramic lettering on a white background to indicate the contents.

It was very strong for me, almost like sneezing, but it was nice too.

I took a stool and we sat down by the stove. There was no hearth except at the rotisserie, in another room.

Those kitchen smells were driving me crazy. I was dying to eat all those good dishes.

"What's your name, young man?"

"Marcus..."

"And where are you from?"

"From the north, but the war drove us to emigrate and few of us survived the terrible journey."

"You seem very strong to me... so I'm going to give you a chance..."

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Your role will be to bring logs to the stoves and empty the leftovers from the pigs' meals... Make sure that they don't have sharp bones... They would choke...

Cyril : "We'll meet here in the afternoon and we'll go to the adventurers guild to register you and find you a room, ok? I owe it to you! "

I found him nice, this little hunter but if he knew....

I was shown the pile of logs, but it was not just a question of picking them up, but of cutting them.... There was a log.

Perin: "hahahaha, what did you think???? Executioner's training..."

I'm smiling, because there was no malice, the man was overwhelmed and he had to relieve his stress.

There were trunks, a saw and a knockout.

I saw no one around me and I swirled the saw around like a chainsaw and the logs were cut into rounds in a matter of moments.

Then 10 cubic meters of logs were swallowed in my inventory and I went to the stove storage.

The whole thing was almost unloaded and some of it remained in my inventory... Ideal to plug a passage.

I took the appearance of a clerk carrying dishes and I took one of the dishes and followed the staff to get closer to the guarded area.

In an alcove where the table linen was stored, I cast a divination spell to get an idea of the structure of the castle and, of course, the secret passages.

I touched my ring while looking at a guard and, out of sight, I took on his appearance.

And, after having followed some corridors, I saw a tapestry and, behind a staircase.

At the end of the staircase which had to go down in the rock and the mountain, to join probably a network of caverns and or underground, there was a long corridor lit by magic gems and enchanted torches.

A guard ordered to the servants: "Bring the dragon's share of the buffet...".

I threw invisibly and followed the two servants pushing the four-wheeled cart.

Then, we arrived at a corridor whose 2 sides were cells with bars making almost the entire wall. The bars were rusty with time but from time to time, a new one.

There were 2-3 prisoners for short sentences, bandits and deserters...or both at the same time...

He said nothing, the terror of the dragon....

We arrived at a strangely luminous area.

Everything was covered in white, from floor to ceiling, and a heavy door opened, letting the servants through and closing just afterwards.

Of course, I entered behind him but my invisibility quickly dissipated and I saw at the top, a gem. No, an anti-magic sphere.

The room was like an oblivion, a kind of swimming pool with a staircase that went around the inside diameter.

A door sealed at the bottom allowed to enter or leave by another way.

At the bottom, a huge black and blue dragon was resting in a ball.

I recognized it immediately... Georges... my little one.

Immediately, he felt my presence... and hummed the air. His white eyes on a black background added to the terror that emanated from him...

I went down the stairs... As a human, he didn't recognize me, I had never been used to being human in the old world. I was only doing it for mom and my old parents at the very end...

Me : "Georges....you are alive... you can't imagine how much I missed you..."

The dragon was astonished... but we all thought we were dead... and didn't make the connection.

Before he asked any questions... I got out of my inventory, a dragon toy that he had received at St. Nicholas's...

From anxiety, he passed to surprise, thinking that I was a Zergian assassin... then he opened his eyes....

"Grandpa???? It's you????"

I smiled and opened my arms...

The dragon pounced on me. I kept my mass and strength and I could take in the raw strength of the embrace that was offered to me.

"Grandpa... Pappppyyyyyy, Snifff You came to save me???? ... grandpappyyyyyy, it's you????"

I held his jaw between my arms and covered him with kisses... and I stroked him.

My little.... my tiny..... You don't know how much we cried after you... you have no idea...

Georges: "Mommy??"

Me: "I don't know... Grandma and Grandma and Grandpa Ori are with me.... We've come to save you... you risk a huge danger by staying here...."

George: "Kraa, Karrrine and Ori are here, alive!"

Oh... my God... Goddess Tiamat... thank you...

Me: "By the way... Goddess Tiamat is your aunt now..."

George: "How??, she is no longer in hell or darkness?"

"Tatie, is White now... only the white head has passed... The others are either in the past, in the real world but the white head has survived here and is with me... She is now my wife..."

Georges:" Hahaha.... grandpa, still the same.... But how are you here? We lost hope without you... We're angry with you..."

Me: "You can hate us, you can blame us, but we love you and we'll always love you... when we saw that we were in a destroyed world, I acted like an idiot and I wanted to kill myself. It was Blanche(White) and Ori who supported us... We did a normal hibernation and they came to wake us up but we must have been crushed under the mountain and we were teleported here, 10000 years later. There was amber resin everywhere..."

Georges: "I understand now..."

Me: "We have to go now. We'll explain later... every moment counts... we risk our lives to come and get you".

Georges: "If it's Tania, I can handle it, I already beat her up... and I swore loyalty to Altus to repair the evil I did... I was the Demon Lord..."

You don't understand, George... It is not a question of dying, but of having one's soul destroyed, You know who is coming...

Georges: "But... grandpa..."

Me: "We need you for Glaurung..."

George was torn between his grandfather and his loyalty to Altus.

Me: "You don't want Kraa or Karrrine to die because of you????"

George was happy and angry at the same time.

"Grandpa, how do you get out?"

I kicked down the white door and a cave opened in front of us.

"Dive with me into the darkness."

But Alban had arrived and heard the conversation and he followed us into the darkness hanging on George's tail.

We hadn't even paid attention to him. We ran through the labyrinth and saw the room where Karrrin and Ori were in a crack in the rock.

An extraordinary storm was raging and the castle was in panic.

The peasants rushed to the shelter of the castle, saturating the magi and the alarms.

Alban was brave but terrified of what he saw and felt that we dragons had far more power than we claimed, in fact we were a thousand times more powerful than they thought.

We took Kraa, KArrrine and Ori into the darkness and rushed south, putting the most distance between us and the Zerg base.

We arrived then in a room where Blanche Tiamat waited for us.

Alban could not any more. One had thus traversed in acceleration and at an infernal speed nearly thousand kilometers, far from the kingdom of Altus and Baltes.

We were in what we could call Texas. Then we blew and Blanche pointed Alban's paw...

I saw him, clinging to George. We were all out of breath...

I said "Shiiiiiit...."