When you’re first transported to a fantasy world, there are a few things that you immediately set in your mind as things to do, fight bandits, learn magic, have a tryst with an elven maiden, et cetera. I had so far been successful in all of these, aside from the elven maiden, though I would rate an orcish gladiator more highly on my own personal list anyway. One thing I was particularly excited to cross off the list though, was riding on the back of a dragon.
The wind was buffeting me, sending my now lengthy orange hair whipping behind me. I stood on a single lavender scale, dwarfed by the sheer size of my conveyance. My companions were all standing or sitting near me. Zevrack, for once, wasn’t buried in diagrams and equipment and was instead standing just a few yards ahead of me, toward the dragon’s neck, with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, feeling the wind hitting him and absorbing everything about the experience.
Tiberius was pale and clutching the edge of his shield with white knuckles. I hadn’t realized it before, but he was terrified of heights, though he bore it with his usual stoic demeanor. Nica was sitting next to him, speaking to him softly about routine things like visiting her family when they returned to Itlan, or maintaining his equipment, doing her best to relax him in her own way.
Millicent was sitting and having a drink and sharing some gossip with Tristus. Tristus had apparently posed as a student of Heracleum’s magical academy on dozens of occasions when he was younger to meet with whatever particular paramour he’d chosen at the time, and Millicent was very interested to hear the ways he’d subverted the magical wards on the academy grounds. He managed it not through spellcraft, but rather by simply convincing other people that they needed to be dropped for some reason for another. Showing that wards are only as useful as those in charge of them.
Patience was laying down taking a nap. She and I had lost a lot of sleep the previous night and I had inadvertently, due to my recent boost in constitution, worn her out. She’d made a cursory effort to try and locate the dragon’s hoard before we’d left, but was too tired to make a real effort of it, which was almost certainly for the best.
I stretched and walked further up until I was standing on Ran’s neck. She’d explained before we took off that we’d be magically protected from falling off or being so buffeted by wind that it would be uncomfortable or painful.
“Hey Ran!” I yelled.
“No need to yell,” she said, in a voice I could hear with perfect clarity.
“Ah, sorry.” I should’ve realized that she wouldn’t need me to scream to know what I was saying considering all the other magic afoot. “I just wanted to ask why we can feel the wind hitting us at this speed if you’ve magically shielded us from it?”
“What’s the fun of flying if you can’t feel the wind fighting against you? I let a bit through for you to enjoy.”
I nodded, that attitude made perfect sense given what we’d learned about Ran so far. We’d basically convinced her to help us using improv. Not much else one can bargain with when the other party can seemingly remake aspects of the world at will, keeping them entertained seems like the best route one could take. I moved toward the edge of her back and looked down. I could see multicolored squares on the ground, that I guessed were likely farmland.
“Dear gods Cor, how can you possibly look straight down like that?” asked Tiberius.
I looked back to see him a bit greener with barely contained terror in his eyes. Nica was shooting me a look from behind him, and I took the hint and slowly walked back toward the center of Ran’s back.
“Sorry about that, Tiberius. I flew like this a few times on my own world. Looking at the ground when I was this close was always my favorite part.”
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“I thought you said you didn’t have dragons on your world? Was it some kind of Roc? Or a flying creature we would not have heard of?” asked Millicent.
I shook my head. “No, we had machines called planes that allowed us to fly through the air.”
Zev moved for the first time, dropping his arms to turn and look at me directly. “You had flying machines?”
I nodded. “Yes, we used them all the time.”
He dropped to all fours and skittered over to me. “Why did you never tell me?”
“I guess I never thought of it.”
His tail twitched. “How did they move? What propelled them? How large were they? How fast could they go? What was their shape? How were they driven?”
I took a breath. “They built speed on a runway with wheels then the wings tilted, I think, to allow them to take to the air. They had engines that used either propellers or jets, kind of like your pack. The fastest went mach four I think? This really wasn’t my specialty Zev, that’s the main reason I didn’t think to tell you about it.”
He gave an exasperated sigh, went over to his pack, and pulled out a sharpened piece of charcoal and some paper. “Draw it.”
I shrugged, and took the paper and charcoal from him. It was the least I could do to help him out. I wasn’t much of an artist, but I took the time to sketch out a passenger plane, jet, and an old school bi-plane from memory. I also did a general approximation of a cockpit, but that was definitely more an impression than anything.
When I was done, Zev took them, looked for a moment then tilted his head. “The wings do not move?”
“Parts of them do, I think, but not the entire wing, no.”
His eyes had gained a glimmer to them that I recognized, and he walked back to a portion of Ran’s back with a raised spinal ridge and laid paper out on it to sketch. Based on the furious energy he was attacking it with, I estimated that he’d basically be out of commission for the rest of the day.
I left him to his work, and went to lay down next to Patience. It had been a very successful trip for everyone, and we were on our way to our reward. Fifty thousand gold pieces between us, the restored honor of Tristus and Tiberius’ family, what I presumed would be an incredibly sizable XP reward, and a much boosted reputation that would be even further boosted when we arrived on dragonback. I wasn’t sure what everyone else was planning on doing with their gold, but my own plans were already beginning to settle in my mind. Adventurers across all the human cities were in high demand, but completely unorganized, often to the financial benefit of other entities. In Itlan adventures were given out in taverns using boards to post them, and in Heracleum they relied on receiving jobs from a byzantine bureaucratic system. Those adventurers with wealthy benefactors receive the best, most profitable jobs thanks to the exchange of bribes and favors.
I planned on offering an alternative. A guild, which was admittedly an idea I’d stolen from the media back on Earth, but that didn’t mean it was a bad one, as both Chaos and Tiberius, had attested. I couldn’t think of two more different entities, and they both agreed it was a solid plan which meant, in my mind, that it had a real shot. I was originally going to start in Itlan, but considering all the goodwill and money I was about to have in Heracleum, not to mention the contacts I’d made through Tiberius, it was starting to make more sense to start there.
I sighed and looked over at Patience. Her blanket had fallen off her shoulders, so I took a moment to adjust it for her. There was a lot I needed to do, and it didn’t seem like it was going to slow down any time soon, if ever. In spite of my recently boosted constitution, that thought wore me down almost immediately. I was invigorated by everything that had happened to me so far, but even that could give way to exhaustion after enough time. I laid there next to Patience, listening to the whistling of the wind as we were flown through the air on the back of a rainbow dragon, and eventually, I was lulled to sleep.