After leaving the tavern, Ume did not linger for long with her chivalrous avian escort. A bad premonition was gnawing away at Ume's stomach, and she couldn't help but feel as if she needed to get away as soon as possible. Of course, Ume was young, so her sense of future foresight was extremely poor, but many dragons were well-known for their mystic and truth-seeing divination abilities.

If a dragon had a bad feeling about a planet exploding, it was 100% certain to happen.

The problem was that Ume had no idea about the details of her premonition, and she only knew that it was very bad and imminently on the horizon. For this reason, she wordlessly slipped away from Gargan like a ghost when he was distracted in the crowds of Aerelieth's nightlife. Incidentally, they had wandered into the red light district, and they passed by multiple brothels and cheap love hotels.

Interestingly, the elvish city of Aerelieth had a very impressive night scene. Hundreds of magical red lanterns floated along the street corridors, illuminating the dark alleys well past midnight, and the streets were packed with scantily clad prostitutes, laughing patrons, and drunk customers. Ume had no idea that elves were such hardcore partiers, but then again the elves of Aerelieth hardly seemed like ordinary elves since they didn't live in trees.

The 53-year-old dragon walked quickly, weaving in between the sea of colors and lascivious ambient music.

She swerved left, ducking into a smaller alleyway that had much less traffic than the main avenue. Ume found herself in front of the entrance of what seemed to be the medieval fantasy equivalent of a dance club, with a thumping beat and loud music blasting from the walls. Ume couldn't quite pinpoint the instrumentation and style of music, but she could vaguely sense that the rhythmic sounds were amplified by powerful magic. Since dragons were a magic-sensitive species, Ume could feel her bones vibrating from the magically coated sounds.

The young dragon had never felt anything like it before, and it was mesmerizing. Of course, she couldn't allow herself to be distracted by the music, but Ume needed to find a sufficiently secluded place to transform back into her compact dragon form. Night clubs surely had bathrooms that she could use, and she pleaded with the bouncer at the door to let her inside.

"You're underage." The security guard told her dryly.

"Just to use the bathroom... Please?" Ume pleaded.

"No."

"Fuck you."

It was an emergency (Ume could feel that she was running out of time), so she conveniently disposed of the guard using a more direct method.

Ume nonchalantly walked through the entrance and glanced around the nightclub. At first glance, it looked rather like the cantina from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and there were a variety of diverse species dancing with their hair flying wildly to hypnotic elvish rock music. The basement flashed with a laser show of magical lights, pink mist, and special effects. Interestingly, there were also near-naked stripper women in chains, cages, and bikinis, as well as an ugly giant slug who appeared to be the proprietor of the establishment.

None of that stuff was particularly important, and Ume focused her energies on locating the bathroom.

Frustratingly, this nightclub did not seem to have a very logical layout.

Ume opened several doors and none of them led to the bathroom.

She did, however, encounter several private rooms full of lower species engaging in weird and bizarre reproductive acts involving whips and hot wax, but it wasn't particularly interesting to her. Why would a dragon enjoy watching flies having sex? It was as dull and boring as watching videos in biology class from the 1980's, and they were going to die in a few years anyways.

Eventually, after interrupting an innumerable number of naked and embarrassed patrons, Ume eventually found the women's restroom tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of the building. During the daytime, this nightclub was actually an ordinary tailor's shop that opened up to the main street. The basement and the boutique was linked by a hidden staircase (that apparently all the club members knew about), and the bathroom was located in the employee stockroom of the tailor shop.

Ume walked through a dark and spooky corridor full of mannequins, patchwork dolls, and clothes hangers.

She opened the bathroom door and closed it behind her.

The young dragon sighed in relief.

+ + +

Ume turned around and immediately found herself face to face with a large suit of armor in the bathroom stall.

"E-Eee—?!"

She nearly screamed in fright, but the tall armored knight moved faster than a blur of wind. His movements were terrifyingly efficient, and before Ume could make a peep of noise, he slammed the young purple-haired girl up against the bathroom wall and shoved a sharp knife against Ume's throat.

It was Sir Gawrgaru.

The man's eyes were murderous and filled with bloodlust. It was the complete opposite of the soft-spoken and dignified man that Ume had met earlier in the bar. His teeth were sharp — almost like a predatory beast — and for a moment Ume even imagined that his jaws would open and snap her up like a Great White Shark.

"You aren't my Luna." The silver-haired knight growled dangerously.

"...!!!"

"Who are you and what did you do to my fiancée?"

He shoved Ume against the wall again and pinned her shoulders in place with his monstrous strength. In her current form, Ume was like a limp rag doll in the hands of an armored giant, and she was utterly tiny in comparison. The bathroom wall creaked and groaned under the hero's superhuman strength, and it was plainly apparent by this point that that Ume's indestructible body was not human. Any ordinary person's bones would have been crushed underneath the pressure.

Ume's green slime — her best friend — slipped out of her arms and dropped to the floor. It hopped away silently, completely ignored by both parties in the tension of the moment.

"Answer me now." Sir Gawrgaru warned, his eyes narrow and dark.

+ + +

Five seconds later, the night club and neighboring tailor shop burst into a column of flames.

The inferno lit up the night sky like an incendiary tornado — a blazing beacon in the night sky for all of Aerelieth to see.

Pedestrians in the red light district went screaming as they fled scrambling into the midnight darkness.

∎