Narene shut the cage door in front of Calista and locked the latch.

“Look, I’m not really sure what to do about the two of you yet, so I’m just going to leave you here while my daughter and I cook Severin to a crisp and take this place over. Outside of the fact that you turned me into goblin, you’ve both been fairly polite and useful so far. So keep that up and I might let you live for a little while.”

The little goblin woman then threw all of Calista’s gear onto the dragon’s back and then climbed atop the beast’s shoulders.

Things were not going well. Narene had completely turned the tables on them by sliding down the rope first, finding her dragon, and taking the both of them prisoner. After ushering them across the cavern, the goblin had, with the help of her dragon, liberated them from their gear and forced them into separate cages. She put Calista in the one with the skeleton.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back for you as soon as we’re done. Then again, that psychopath Nylvani might still be loose, so we might have to hunt her down first. We’ll have to see where things stand after we take over. Who knows.” Narene then stroked her mount’s spines. “What do you think Vevic?”

The dragon craned her neck around to face Narene, “I think that sounds like a wonderful plan mother, but how are we going to get you turned back to normal?”

Narene stroked Vevic beneath her chin, “There should be a restoration potion down in the lab somewhere. I figured we could stop there before we go kill your father.”

“And just why do I need to burn him alive?” Vevic asked.

“Because he’s a rotten man who decided he could hide another girlfriend behind my back,” Narene said.

“Oh,” The dragon looked taken aback. “And just how did you find that out, mother?”

Narene pointed to Calista’s cage, “Because that’s the other girlfriend.”

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Purple smoke pouring from her nostrils, the black dragon lowered her head and let out a low, guttural growl.

“For the record,” Calista interrupted, “I had no idea either of you even existed before tonight. So from my perspective, your mother is the other woman.”

The dragon sniffed as Narene glared in a way that only goblin women with murder on their mind could glare, “Well, this other woman is probably going to leave you in that cage for a few days while she thinks about whether or not to feed you or to feed you to her dragon. So there.”

“If I may cut in for just a moment,” Lefty said from the other cage beside Calista’s. “Could you explain to me just how this dragon here is your daughter?”

Narene ran her hand along Vevic’s neck as she admired her shining black scales. “In this game, Vevic is the product of our … role playing, if you will.”

Calista held back a bit of bile that threatened to escape her throat, but across from her, Lefty hardly reacted at all. “So … you … gave birth to this dragon?”

Narene scratched Vevic beneath the chin, “I gave birth to the egg, yes. Then the dragon hatched a year later.”

“A year?” Calista asked. “I thought you’d only known him for a few months.”

Narene smiled, “I lied.”

Her mouth agape, Calista froze in shock and anger. After a moment, Narene shrugged, “It was all a joke, you know? We were just screwing around. Friends with benefits and all that.”

“You ruined my life!” Calista shouted.

Narene shook her head, “I didn’t ruin your life. I’m not a homewrecker. I was just hooking up. Don’t blame me if you can’t keep a man. I mean, you weren’t even living with the guy. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have an appointment with a very unsuspecting wizard.”

Narene then gave the dragon a soft kick. In response, Vevic sent a puff of flame at Lefty’s cage and the mage jumped back in alarm. Then the dragon turned around and with a leap, took off and soared across the cavern. Calista watched as dragon and goblin disappeared around a bend. A few minutes later, she heard rusted hinges turning, followed by a door slam, and then quiet.

The quiet continued until Lefty looked to Calista. “Do you have any idea just how they might have given birth to a dragon?”

“Honestly, I’m a little too angry right now to be talking about game lore,” she said.

“Oh,” he nodded. “Sorry, I was just focused more on our survival than on your personal drama. Not that your boyfriend cheating on you isn’t important …”

“Can you just shut up?” She snapped.

“Sure … uhm … I’d really like to but I think we need to focus on the immediate situation.”

“Yeah,” she said, “and I’m kinda not ready to talk about that yet, so if you could just screw off with all the planning for a minute, I’d really like to not do this right now.”

“I’m just saying that, drama aside, the next few minutes of us being alone and locked in these cages might present our best opportunity to escape for quite some time.”

Calista glared. She was having a very difficult time keeping herself from reaching through the cage and strangling the mage, or, failing that, at least giving him a good tongue lashing. However, she managed to a couple deep breathes before she said, “And just what makes you say that?”

Lefty reached beneath his robes, pulled something leather, and waved it gently in the air. “Because I have your tool kit.”

She jumped up against the bars. “What? How did you get my tool kit?”

“Minor telekinesis. It’s such a low level spell that it’s almost free. Trick is, I only have a few minutes left on it and so we need to figure this out before I give them to you.”

She gripped the bars and glared, “Just what, exactly, do we need to figure out?”

“Whether or not we need to murder Severin.”