“He can’t have just disappeared! He was in the water with us. Zev already checked the pool for and tunnels at the bottom,” said Tib.

“We’re sure he didn’t just sneak off to meet Patience somewhere? Between the two of them they could likely get around all of us without us noticing,” said Tristus.

“They wouldn’t be able to get past without me noticing,” said Nica, her voice almost too quiet to make out.

“Besides that Patience is right behind us, she just has a harder time getting dressed. It takes time to hide all those knives again,” said Millicent.

“I will search from the sky,” said Zevrack, and I could hear him pulling himself out of the water and metal being moved as we got closer.

“The rest of us should divide into teams and begin looking in a gridded search patte-,” started Tib.

“It would be more efficient for me to look for them alone,” interrupted Nica. “Wait… something’s coming.”

Just as she finished announcing our arrival, Ran and myself, walked into the clearing ceasing the conversation.

Everyone, but Patience, was standing around the water in various states of undress and confusion.

“Cor! You’re alright,” said Tiberius, a touching amount of concern in his voice, before he noticed the giant woman I was walking with.

Anticipating everyone’s question I spoke first. “This is Ran. A powerful sorceress that summoned me from the pool by accident when she was attempting to divert some hot water to her own bath. She’s agreed to take us to an audience with the dragon.”

“That’s uh, convenient,” said Millicent, whose eyes were bulging a bit from her head as she looked at Ran and quickly came to the same conclusion I had.

“It is always good to have an intermediary involved when meeting something with the might of a nation like a dragon,” added Tristus with a slight bow. As usual he was quick on the uptake and smooth on the delivery.

“You know the dragon!? The honor of being in the presence of a god such as her must be incredible!” Zevrack was similarly smooth, though I had the impression he wasn’t quite as quick on the uptake, at least not with this. That was probably for the best, as if he had realized that she was a dragon he may have gone into a kind of religious excess that may be distinctly outside of our best interests. Or he’d just start asking her about the mechanics of her wings. He could be difficult to predict.

Ran gave a little smile to Zevrack. “It is incredible indeed.”

I moved over to my clothes and pack, belted my weapons, regents, and assorted accouterments to my new outfit, while Tristus guided a quick, pleasant conversation with Ran, and everyone else continued dressing. As I did so, Tiberius approached me, tying the belted section of his toga off as he did.

He leaned in close to me. “I do not trust this woman. I don’t believe she’s what she says she is.”

I smiled. “Good instinct. I’m one-hundred-percent sure she’s the dragon.”

His eyes bulged and he started to move his head toward her.

“Don’t. Just keep your eyes on me.”

“But-”

“Listen. Tristus and Millicent already figured it out. There’s a possibility that she may even know that we know.”

“Then why are we all doing this?”

“It’s a game.”

“A game?”

“Yes. Dragons are creatures of whim and this one likes to build mazes. Seemed like the best approach.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He looked confused. “I suppose that makes sense. I’ll just have to trust you and Tristus.”

I gave him a pat on the shoulder and walked back over to Ran, who was listening to Zev wax poetic about her without realizing who she was.

She surprised me by walking over to me and looping her arm through mine. “I shall take you to the dragon now.”

She began dragging me back toward the forest and it was then that Patience emerged into our side of the clearing. She looked at Ran, exchanged a quick glance with Millicent, then looked at how Ran’s arm was looped through mine and raised an eyebrow in my direction. “What is it with you and giant women? First it was Krush, now you happen to run into a beautiful giant woman in a strange valley?”

I shrugged and smiled. “Just lucky I guess.” I gestured at the woman on my arm. “This is Ran, she’s a sorceress that’s offered to lead us to the dragon.”

Patience raised her eyebrows in recognition. “Ah, how kind of her.”

“Feel free to lead the way, Ran.”

She nodded, and started dragging me along again. The rest of the party fell into line behind us, struggling, as I was, to keep up with our guide’s long strides. In spite of that, Tristus, freshly bathed and energized by the game we were playing and the opportunity to utilize his own skills, was keeping pace directly next to us.

“So, do you have any particular impression of the dragon? Seeing as you live in this valley with her?” he asked.

“We don’t really speak,” she responded deadpan.

I stifled a laugh.

“Well, do you perhaps have any insight as to why she burned down that village?” he asked.

I shot him a look, but it was too late for me to ward him off such a potentially precarious question, and he was the professional.

Ran paused her walking for a moment, allowing me to recover a bit of breath and rest a sore arm. “She was probably just hungry, and felt a need to test her flame. Traveling from another world can result in some strange cravings, and losing one’s memories can lead to a bit of disorientation. She is likely just grateful she had the forethought to at least have the villagers leave.” She stood still for a few seconds. “At least…that’s my assumption.” She started to walk again.

We reached a particularly large clearing, and Ran paused in the middle of it, unwrapped my arm, and walked a short way away from us back towards the forest. Her eye color shifted to green, and she said in an incredibly overdramatic voice. “Oh no! Goblins!”

The moment she said that, around twenty goblins seemed to manifest at the edge of the forest she was near and began to rush her. I exchanged quick confused glances with everyone else before managing to spit out, “Protect her!”

Nica was the first to act. She drew her bow and started loosing arrows, rapidly firing at the advancing green line. Several of the attackers were felled instantly, but the bodies would only seem to exist for a moment before fading, and then suddenly another goblin would appear at the back of the group.

I drew my sword and sighed. If this was how she wanted to play, we could certainly indulge her. I moved to place myself between her and the nearest goblins. She hadn’t moved to react to them at all, aside from striking some dramatic poses, and the short goblins didn’t even quite reach her knee, making their charge toward her one of the most unintentionally funny things I’d ever seen, even without the context that she was a dragon, and had almost certainly been the one to summon the goblins in the first place. I kicked a few of the goblins back, making wide slashes with my shortsword and cutting them down as soon as they came into my reach.

Suddenly the goblin’s numbers seemed to drastically increase. Tiberius let out a roar and charged into them with his shield, slamming into and killing them by the sheer force of his charge. I was almost certain that was one of the Combat Powers he’d gained in the most recent system change.

Patience began making great leaps through the center groups of the goblins. She’d jump almost ten feet into the air, crush a goblin and slash at a couple others with her daggers, then immediately jump back up to repeat the action. The tactic wouldn’t have worked too long on an actual group of goblins, but these replications seemed unable to change their tactics beyond charge, charge, charge.

Millicent was casting spells with abandon. Impaling a few goblins on spikes here and there, throwing out bolts of flames, opening holes beneath their feet before slamming them closed. I wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed to me that she was quite enjoying the changes to the magic system.

Tristus was holding a dagger and covering Zevrack’s rear while he let out great bursts of white hot flame from the mouth of his gear. He hadn’t had time before the attack to make it into the air, but seemed to be doing just fine in spite of that. I noticed that the only time Ran seemed to lose focus was when he first began to breathe fire.

The goblins doubled again, suddenly and abruptly, and in the midst of the combat I lost sight of Ran for a moment. When I found her, she was being carried by around a dozen goblins as if she were a piece of cereal and they were ants. She had her hand across her face in a dramatic fashion.

“Oh no! I’ve been captured! Please save me!”

I started to push myself to get closer to her, activating my Adrenaline, and Focus powers, but before I could get through the goblins gave one more push that kept me back, then stopped replicating. Once we finished clearing the one in the valley out, they were finally gone. I sheathed my sword and slid my hands across my face.

Tiberius approached me. “I guess she has a game of her own she wants to play.”

I let out a heavy sigh. “It seems so.” I may have approached this in a bit more roundabout way then I should’ve.