Greg tapped his hand patiently against his arcanist pad, and Fiona knew he was irritated. “So, you decided to go chase a tiny kobold thief, and scared many of our customers–”

“They were not scared, they were cheering! Did you not hear the cheering? ‘Yeah, go get him, Fiona!’ I don’t think you misheard that,” Darla interjected.

The five of them, and Doug, were now sitting in the break room. Bonnie was taking no chances and had the kobold restrained with a pair of magical manacles, to keep him from running off again. He took this in resignation, while Fiona glared at him, ever so incensed that this guy had decided to show up and throw things awry, again.

“Doug, you had the dumbest plan ever. You were going to, what, steal all the items in the store? Like we weren’t going to notice?”

“I had him flagged the second he walked to the display cases, with his body behavior,” Kali shrugged, arms folded and holding a relaxed stance. “A teeny tiny hole was in the glass case. Clever, but not clever enough for me. Though, would it have triggered the wards when he walked out?"

"Actually...no." Bonnie frowned as she gave it a thought. "I only added the ward to items above a certain value. it's onerous to flag every item with enchantments for tracking. So, why this one, Douglas?"

The red-scaled kobold let out a huff. “That ring is my mother’s. When you were cleaning me out at threat of violence, I was in fear for my life. You took everything, Miss Swiftheart, in every sense of the term.” He had all the ferocity of a plushie doll, and he stretched out his taloned legs while rubbing his wrists gently.

“Okay. Let me see if I have this straight. You claim you had a land deal. You talked to a shady witch who promised to clear the red tape. Your brother rolls in, and, while you’re busy, he’s giving orders like he owns the place to your kobolds, who then run rampant. Then, when you realize what he’s up to, you try to stop him, but he locks you up–honestly, how does one lock up a dragon?” Fiona scoffed, recounting the events. It was absurd on every level.

“Karlin bound me to my chambers magically. I had limited contact, and he told me if I told anyone, he’d go destroy mom’s lair, and not leave a single stone standing.” His entire face recoiled like he’d swallowed the world’s most bitter pill.

“That’s dragon crap. We never saw any sign of your brother.”

“That’s what he does! Every couple of decades, he rolls in and ruins my life! He may not be bigger, but he’s stronger and meaner!” Doug protested. “He’s done this my entire life because he can get away with it, because it's fun for him. The only person who knew he was rotten from the egg was my mother. And she’s dead, thanks,” he added sourly.

“Hey, I didn’t slay any other dragons in this life, pint-sized,” Fiona shot back. “Let’s keep this going. So, Karlin is working for the witch. She steals only the gold–which does explain why we found a severe lack of gold in your hoard–then she takes off, poof. Then, Karlin realizes he’s been done dirty, too, and quits the field, and then what?”

“He leaves me holding the mess, which was about a few days before you showed up,” he snapped. His teeth would have been intimidating if he wasn’t so plushie-sized. “And with everyone really, really upset at me, there was not any incentive by anyone to go on a fact-finding mission and speak to my cause.”

“But the dragons ditched you, too. C’mon Doug, we’re not dumb. You can’t take responsibility for a land grab that went badly,” Darla accused, leering at him with a glare as intense as a dragon. “Then, you’re trying to shore up the defense of your place, and telling your kobolds to high tail it and run–get it, high-tail it?” she added with a chuckle.

“Har, har.” Doug was in no mood for the continued roast and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I told them to quit the field, which caused confusion, because I–or rather, my brother–had told them to fight to the last. Kobolds tend to get confused if their leadership does an about-face. Meanwhile, Miss Swiftheart steamrolls into my lair, steals my hard-earned historical collection, blows up my lair, and as if that wasn’t insulting enough, yeeted me into the landscape!” His voice was almost shrill by the end of that statement, and Fiona folded over, laughing.

“Hahaha. You said ‘yeeted’ like it’s an actual word. That’s exactly what it was, Doug! I used you like a therapy punching bag!”

“Fiona, I think one round of utter humiliation is enough, thank you.” Greg pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed softly. “Then we come to the end. You signed papers for the terms of your surrender, you got to stay in exile in the swamp, and then, the witch came back, to further add insult to injury. Why didn’t she just kill you?”

“She bound me to a kobold, technically. There’s an ancestral link to kobolds,” he explained. “I think she just enjoyed humiliating me. Like I could prove she existed, anyway? There’s no trace. I don’t have proof, just what she looked like, and smelled like.”

“Sheesh. The laws of evolution are so funky in this world,” Fiona grunted. Doug’s ear crest perked up at this.

“You're summoned?!”

Fiona grinned at that. “What, you didn’t pick up on that already? My last dying act in my world was to drop a building on an oversized dragon! I did it with nothing but unwavering bravery, a pre-planned demolition job, and a shitload of explosives! I didn’t count on a piece of rebar piercing me through the torso, though. That’s what killed me, even if the truck he flung at me had missed, I would have been dead from blood loss or organ damage.”

“This explains the irrational hatred of me,” he grumbled.

“No, Doug, you were kicking people out of their homes. People got hurt, because of your actions. That’s why I don’t like you much. I’m doing this because Bonnie thinks you’ve got a story to tell, and I trust her. So spill it. All the details. And why you remained silent. If I don’t like what I hear, I can hand you over to Barry. I just realized my threat of giving you back all your treasure is now utterly kaput, given your current status as a children's stuffed toy.”

“I’m not a stuffed toy!” he exclaimed, with a spark of fire emerging from his jaw. He covered his mouth out of embarrassment, but a thin wisp of smoke emerged from his nostrils. “Sorry. Can’t light stuff aflame anymore, but that sure is awkward when that happens.”

“Doug, you’re utterly adorkable,” Darla said with a flash of teeth. “So let’s hear it. If we thought you were full of crap, you would’ve been handed to the town guard already.”

“Fine. Alright, so about seven months ago, I was minding my business in my swamp, making a decent sale on peat moss. It’s a great fertilizer, and I had the market cornered. I had a decent treasure hoard that wasn’t…terribly sized, and all of it gained by legal methods. I'm not like some of my peers of ill repute, who bully people into serving them," he added with a huff. "But, I also wanted to move. My mother–who was killed by dragon hunters some years ago, in violation of the Folk Treaties of the Unified Kingdoms, had left me a cavern in her will. The problem was, the land deal was stuck in Fiefdala’s courts for an eternity.”

Greg cleared his throat gently, before opening his arcanist datapad. “I checked, and that court case was settled. You should have had a title to the land. But there are no listings of a title being recorded. Which is a bit odd, but sometimes paperwork gets lost.”

“I never received a notification on this one, and then, all bets were off when the witch riled up the kobolds about stolen lands, and my brother crept in to add fuel to the fire. Then, after things went predictably awful and my brother satiated his love of ruining my life yet again, I got stuck with nothing.”

“Come to think of it, is it weird they kinda just folded the second the adventurer’s guild showed up? They did a lot more fleeing and hiding in the swamps than fighting,” Fiona commented, her curiosity perked. “Your buddies absolutely sucked at fighting, once they faced resistance. But seriously, the evil twin thing is getting old–”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Karlin is an absolute bully! Mom always favored me because I worked hard for everything I earned, while he just took, and gave nothing back. That’s why her lair went to me, and she never told him about it–but I think Dolsag did. I wonder if Karlin knew that, and stirred the pot with the raids because he’d rather see neither of us getting it.”

“Greg? Is there a Karlin Fierkraag out there?” Fiona pinched the bridge of her nose–if this was all true, there was yet another bunch of weirdness going on that preceded her arrival on Cepalune.

“Yes. And, they are twins,” he added with a shrug. “He has a…questionable reputation. And Douglas’s track record, as you can imagine, has been sullied. The dragons up at their enclave to the north recently offered a retraction of a rebuke they gave Douglas years ago, regarding stolen treasure. Said treasure showed up being sold by another dragon matching his description…while he had clients vouching for his whereabouts at another location, at the exact same time. A bit ill-timed, considering recent events.”

“Back up. You buy this?” Fiona rolled her eyes at this. Greg, of all people, taking the lying dragon’s side?! “What proof do you have of this, dare I ask?”

“Arcanist images of the two of them. At the dragon academy.” Fiona snorted, but quickly fell to silence when Greg showed them the arcanist page, with the stenciled images of Douglas, and his presumptive brother. “They do look almost identical, yes?”

“Wouldn’t this have been the first thing people noticed?” She couldn’t imagine that everyone could be this dumb. "Sheesh Doug, you could have just--"

“Karlin knew how to hurt me. Losing the last thing my mom ever left me? Yeah, I lied to protect it, for a chance to get it later.” Doug hung his head in shame. “Doesn’t really matter, since I’ll never get to live there or use it, as utterly powerless as I am. Now, I'm nobody, unless I get Dolsag, or a powerful arcanist, to undo what she did to me.”

Fiona was fuming internally. This was just too much this time. “You know what? I’m done with this.” Fiona got up to leave before she started smashing something. “I’m done with drama, I’m done with scummy kings, I’m done with thieving dragons. I’m tossing you to the town guard for shoplifting, and then you’re not my problem anymore.”

“Fiona–” Bonnie started to protest, but she whirled around and glared at her.

“No! Every single time I do a service for this kingdom, I’m the one who gets stuck holding the bill! I’m not helping him! Forget it!”

Her teeth were on edge, and even stoic Greg was taken aback. “This whole circus started because of you, you puntable plushie reject! You could have taken a stand with your brother, and told us about the witch, but no! I ended up taking a dunking because of that jackass on the throne. Who is currently gambling, spending money he doesn’t have while the adventurer’s guild risked their lives, keeping that sleazy blonde bitch Glados around, who probably put a spell on him! Or, he’s a useful idiot, either way…”

“Fiona, please stop,” Greg sighed.

“No, this venting has been earned! Barry is doing the same stupid shit that landed me in a mess in my prior life! Because he’s self-destructive, insulated by other people who turn a blind eye, and never got the love he needed when it mattered! Now look at him, tearing down a whole kingdom in the process!” she was venting and felt fury coursing through her veins–not even Wingding was going to slow her on this one.

Not a single person in the room dared to speak. She pointed at Doug, who was trying unsuccessfully to slink lower in his seat. “And then you have the nerve to show up in my shop. Way to screw up everything again, Doug.”

“No, let’s rewind to the earlier part of the rant. You care about Barry?” Doug narrowed his eyes, he should have been in tears. He wasn’t. He was livid. “That sack of meaty waste of Rikkard’s couldn’t run a treasury without trying to rip me off! That kid needs to fall, and hard–apparently, me tipping off his father wasn’t enough of a warning that the kid was rotten! He is not worthy of anyone’s empathy!”

“That was you?” Whether Doug was lying, or this was an extremely strange coincidence, she couldn’t tell. Rikkard had mentioned his son had gotten his wrist slapped for stealing. Maybe this was that event?

Doug nodded, wings going slightly less tense. “Yeah, Barry got shuffled to a less relevant position to handle taxes when he made some numbers ‘appear’ on my business income. He thought he could get away with it, because ‘dragons are greedy.’ We make better accountants than anyone because we are good at finding true worth!” he snapped.

“Oy,” Greg interjected with a dark glare aimed at the kobold.

“Wait. Dragons pay taxes? I thought it goes in the other direction, stealing livestock when it’s convenient,” Bonnie mused.

“Nono, this is my rant! I don’t have empathy for Barry! I hate Barry!” Fiona hissed. “You hate Barry! Stop hating the things I hate, because it makes me want to like you, even though I despise you.”

“This got weird,” Kali muttered, preening one of his wings as if this wasn’t worth the overtime pay he was earning by being in the shop after-hours. “Nah seriously Fiona, the miniature dragon has a point. If you hated Barry enough for what he did, there wouldn’t have been a brick left standing in the palace. I doubt anyone could have stopped you. Jake would be throwing a celebration in your honor, well, probably. You also sound like you have some deep-seated issues from your past life, like you don’t want other people to screw up their lives as you did.”

She narrowed her eyes at Kali. “I’m gonna let my cat loose on you.”

“He’d lick me to death before he’d ever eat me,” Kali retorted. She didn’t want to agree he was probably right, on that last point, before Kali continued. “Admit it, you secretly want to fix Barry. Or at least get to the bottom of why the whole royal family is so dysfunctional. Minus Lucy. And you don’t want Doug to be right, because if he is, there’s bigger cogs in play.”

“You buy this?!” she shrilled in disbelief.

“I buy it.” She looked on in dismay at Greg, composed and soft spoken. “There are irregularities that warrant investigation. Douglas' past dealings with the kingdom were business friendly before this.”

“I can’t believe you all think he’s telling the truth!” She glared at every one of them.

“He took one ring worth fifty gold, that looks like a personal item with no notable magical value, Fiona,” Greg continued. He showed them the ring–a simple garnet adorned the silver band, with a small stenciling on the underside. “Why this one, Douglas? No one seems interested in it.”

“Why do you think? Mom gave it to me. She made it.” Douglas’ snout quivered lightly before gazing at Fiona. “And you took that, too. If you won’t help, fine. I’ve got ten gold to my name. I’m broke, friendless, and cursed by Dolsag.”

“I’ve got bigger issues than you, Doug. I’m not lacking empathy, but you’re wrong. Barry is a schemer who isn’t gonna be fixed, even if I wanted to, or Glados is–”

A thought clicked in place. Her eyes widened. “Greg, give me your pen and pad.”

“These are intimate effects of mine. I don’t just ‘give them’ to anyone,” he huffed. Not even the Fiona glare of death moved him, when she pressed it.

“Here.” Bonnie offered her a pen and paper from her workstation. Fiona wrote out a name, then started crossing off letters, and started to rearrange them.

She stared at her deduction, and the pen rolled lazily across the table, while everyone peered in, including Doug, whose eyes widened.

“Um…so…” For once, she couldn’t hate Doug, who tapped a claw anxiously on the paper.

“You have got to be kidding me.” She pointed at the paper, with the work showing the substitution.

Dolsag was an anagram for Glados. She tapped her finger on the table and glanced at their current detainee.

“Bonnie, break the shackles off of him.” She let out a frustrated sigh, and glared at Doug. “You’re still paying for the spectacle you caused in my shop.”

“With what?! Woman, I'm a newly broke dragon!”

“Are you a licensed appraiser? You said you know the value of things.” Gears started turning in her head. She hated Doug, but maybe that hatred was misplaced…for once.

“Yes–well, on paper, yes. I did run a few careers before settling on a subtly lucrative peat moss fertilizer industry, and I think my license is still valid–” He groaned audibly when he saw where this was leading. “You’re gonna make me work for you?! Selling my own stuff?!”

Kali broke out in a cawing laughter, folding over and pointing at Doug. “Haha, she got you, too!”

“Shut it, chicken wing,” Doug snapped, but Kali laughed harder, and Douglas groaned louder. Fiona stood there, wondering if she was making a terrible choice.

But, when she glanced at Wingding, who was flapping enthusiastically, she sighed internally. So far, Wingding hadn’t been wrong. Am I going to regret this, Wingding?

Two flaps later, she had the answer she didn’t want to hear, and she gestured to the kobold, amber eyes filled with anxiety. “Well Doug, you and I have two things in common: We’re both functionally broke, and we both think Barry either needs fixing or a good thrashing. Do you want my help? It has a price tag.”

“You are the most transactional dragon in all of Fiefdala,” Douglas accused, and she nodded enthusiastically.

“I’ve been called worse. Now, was that a ‘yes’ I heard from you?”

"Never!" he screamed.

"Well, consider this: if we do prove this whole thing is crooked, you'll have standing to stick it to Barry for the theft of your treasure. And probably some compensation for the immense hit to your reputation and financial well-being. I'm sure we can dig up more proof if you're telling the truth. Much as it pains me to say that."

Doug looked like he wanted to strangle her, and gritted his teeth. "How much have you sold so far? There were only a few things that meant something to me, the rest were historical curios I acquired."

"Eh, we still got a vault of it left. Work for me, and if this pans out, you get to keep the things you value! But don't be greedy!" she warned him, tapping him on the snout for emphasis. "So, what's it going to be?"

He let out a resigned sigh. "I need a minute to think on this one."