“See?” Zir asked, tossing his knife and catching it by the point as they walked down the street outside the palace. “I told you that we should have just stabbed the guards.”

            “Not now, Zir,” Leo said between clenched teeth.

            Lily frowned. “I assume you won’t be upholding the deal?”

            “Of course not.” Leo sighed. “And trust me, he’ll regret that action for a great deal of time to come. King Damien the Tyrant will fall, sooner or later—I hope sooner. But we need to be away from Chester Adamant before we start to show the king the error of his ways. And now, more than ever, I need to make more levels myself.”

            Lily nodded and fidgeted with the hems of her sleeves. “How will you proceed?”

            “First ship that comes down I’m demanding a five percent toll from, and if they try to fight it, I’m going to seize the ship. I’ll keep charging the Havi Imperium five percent. I’ll charge two percent for every other nation.”

            “I have a feeling that, one way or another, you’ll have an interesting reign, Your Mighty Majesty,” Hugh said with a snort.

            “Damnit, Hugh.” Leo clenched teeth, his normal humor hard-pressed to rise to the occasion.

            “I think that title will either be less ironic than you think, or applied posthumously,” Lily said with a shudder. “We have few allies… I’ll not deny that you have a knack for tactics, Leo, but the Havi Imperium has hundreds of thousands of people… I don’t think we can win this.”

            “The Blood Tribes have millions,” Leo said.

“Yeah, but they’ve splintered into hundreds or thousands of little tribes. And I was worried about them before King Ass pulled this little stunt. We’re tiny and we’ve no friends.”

Leo had already given this some thought. “We’ll need to grow fast, and grow well. I hope we can get a bit of a breather to do so… but I can’t let this kind of treatment go on. It’ll never end.”

“I like angry Leo!” Hugh flashed his fangs in a primal smile. “Down with tyrants!”

            “Yeah, knife the uppy king,” Zir shouted. He pumped his fist in the air and jumped around the dragon.

            Lily swung a slap at Zir’s head, but missed as he danced by her. “Shut your mouth! We’re in the middle of the capital of the Havi Imperium. Don’t give the king a justification to hang us all! We’re leaving now, but don’t give him that justification before then, by all the gods!” She whirled on Hugh. “And you—”

            Hugh rolled to his side, exposing his scaled belly. Then he kicked his feet through the air, like a dog swimming. “Yeah, okay, sorry, my bad. You’re right. Please don’t yell at me anymore.” His pupils grew large and his tail curled up over him.

            “You’re the worst big sister ever,” Zir groused, and for some reason, that made Lily calm just a bit.

            “Best big sister ever.” She crossed her arms. “I’m giving you the gift of life. Now let’s get out of this city, by Merdrek’s Tainted Whatever, as Hugh would more pungently say.”

            As they rounded a corner and found themselves facing the harbor, Leo pointed to where the River Darter waited. “We’re here.”

            But even as he watched, he saw the fat man waiting at the edge of the pier—the one who had taken the use fee.

            Leo had a bad feeling as he walked toward the boat.

***

            “By all the gods of this insane world, I’ll make him pay,” Leo suddenly burst out as he stared at the willow-tree-analogs all along the side of the river they were traveling up.

            Captain Whitewater, who was staring up at the gathering clouds with a frown on her face, briefly glanced to where Leo and Lily were at the side of her boat, and rolled her eyes.

            “It’s been two days.” Lily squeezed Leo’s shoulder before dropping her hand. “Let it rest.”

            “The audacity of changing my use fee to five percent of my goods… including the magic items I was wearing. I don’t think anyone we’ve dealt with this entire trip has aggravated me as much as this little shit of a king…”

            “Leo…” Lily sighed. “Look, we’re on an adventure to gather a bunch of allies, right? Powerful allies who’ll lead to us being able to fight back against this kind of petty abuse in the future.”

            “Right.” Leo tried to shake the two-day rage that had gripped him. “Head in the game, Leo. Head in the game.”

            “That’s the spirit.”

            He stared at Lily, grinning ferally. “You know what I want? I mean, I don’t normally say this, but I want a fight. I want to find some corrupted magical beast and put the hurt on it.”

            As he spoke, Leo pantomimed a fierce elbow strike, which, after the shin kick to the side, was probably his favorite striking attack from when he’d been an amateur MMA fighter.

            Lily stepped back. “You’re normally so… phlegmatic. Where’s this hostility coming from?”

            Leo stopped and gave it some serious thought. “Helplessness. They were utterly in the wrong, and assholes to boot. But they had power… so they got to do what they wanted. The only times this entire new life I’ve wished more that I was stronger were right before we killed that golem, and when you were almost killed by the wargs. And those situations ended all right—we won, you’re alive. But with the king… His injustice still stands, and it rankles.”

            Lily smiled, her eyes shining. “You’ve told me of your world, and its freedoms. I’m not saying I’m not angry at the king as well, but abuse from those in power is just… normal here. I mean, I was furious about what happened to my mother, and about King Damien throwing his weight around. But I guess, to me, it just feels like more to avoid, or more reason for me to be the one with power. But it isn’t staying with me like it is with you.”

            Leo sighed. “I suppose I should get over it… for a time. But seriously, Lily, I’m gonna make the little tyrant regret his actions, I swear to you on all I hold holy. That kind of tyranny should be opposed everywhere for its own sake.”

            “Great. A project for later. We can dethrone the jerk’s grandkids in a hundred years.”

            For a moment, Leo thought Lily was screwing with him, but he could tell she truly meant it to placate him. The difference in lifespans, right. She means we’ll win, eventually, when we’re far older and stronger and he’s died. 

            But I don’t think that way. I’ll make this right, soon and directly. None of this ‘best served cold’ nonsense.

            She reached up and put her hand back on him, over the leather armor on his chest. “You and Hugh had a good idea, Leo. Let’s get some dragon allies. Each one, even if just one of Hugh’s friends, is a mobile, Level Five combatant. That’s a very heavy hitter, worth a whole bunch of soldiers, I’m sure.”

            Leo nodded, although his heart wasn’t into it. “I guess that’s true… Okay, I’ll try to let this go.”

            Lily stepped up next to him and after a moment’s hesitation, she leaned herself against him. “So you lost a round, kinda-sorta, to a jackass you didn’t even know you’d be in a fight with. It’s okay.”

Leo enjoyed the feel of Lily, soft and feminine. “Is it?”

Lily stared up at him through her eyelashes, her eyes shining. “You’ve already been the leader who found the way to make my dreams come true, and to make Hugh’s come true as well. You saved Hugh’s life after he tried to eat you. You saved my life—twice now. You saved Val’s brother. You saved Zir’s mother. You saved twelve hundred slaves from their captivity, near enough. You’re doing amazingly, Leo. Dwell on that, not the one guy who sucker-punched you before you even knew you were in a fight.”

Leo smiled, still too angry to muster more of his usual cheer. “Yeah, that’s a better way of looking at it than what I’m doing.”

            “To the future. The weird dragon future I would never have imagined before I met you or our flightless wonder-dragon.”

            “Yeah, that’s a good future.”

***

            Leo watched as sailors, stripped to just their breechclouts, pulled the galley up onto the riverside beach. They were hundreds of miles north and west of the riverside beaches Leo was used to on the Blue River, and it was colder and rainier here. This beach was mud, covered in weeds and dang near a carpet of mosquitos.

            The village a few hundred feet up the shore wasn’t much better. It was a collection of twenty houses on stilts, surrounded by sad fields of grain that he suspected would require rationing every winter.

            Still, being the paying customer had its perks, and Leo got to take the gangplank down to a merely moderately muddy portion of the beach while the sailors squelched through the deeper mud. Leo’s shoes also squelched a bit, and gnats flew around, but he didn’t get his black breeches or his leather armor dirty as he walked up to firmer ground.

            Hugh, who was far heavier than Leo, sank damn near to his knees in the mud, but being a magically armored dragon seemed to include immunity to bugs for the most part—Hugh hadn’t complained about them but had mocked Leo, Lily, and Zir continuously for being bothered by insects.

            “So, from this tiny village, it’s how far till we reach your home?” Leo asked Hugh as the dragon tromped up next to him, kicking mud from between his claws.

            “A good forty miles, give or take, through the mountains.”

            “And it’ll be rainy and bug-filled the whole time? While we do an alpine cross-country hike?”

            “I am a storm dragon. Kinda comes with the territory.” Hugh paused, then smiled his tooth-filled grin. “Literally comes with the territory. It comes with our territory. I crack myself up.”

            Leo chuckled, briefly brought out of his dour state by Hugh’s word antics. “Nice.”

            “Man, I can’t wait!” Hugh walked with high steps, his head held up in the air. “This adventure is gonna be great. I’ll tell Polly about my hoard, and our adventures… and the other dragons will be super stoked as well. It’s going to be hard holding my excitement in the whole time till we get there. I’ll see my other friends as well, and I can help them out. Most of them probably wouldn’t have made it much longer, honestly. They’re getting older, and some dragon or another would have taken offense to them being in their territory and chased them off. Then it’d just be mortal champions hunting them all day, for armor and stuff.”

            “Or because they stole a cow,” Lily muttered as she daintily stepped up next to them. “We frown on that, you know. Mortals, collectively, I mean.”

            “Tomato, tomahto,” Hugh said with a dismissive wave of his claw. “Point is, those guys could really use some of the patented Leo good-card punching. But the guys I wanna get—I’ll just impress them. And having them on your team won’t be good deeds, it’ll be the best decision you ever made, trust me.”

            Leo smiled as he scratched Hugh’s eye ridge. “Best decision I ever made was helping you on that cliff, buddy.”

            “I’d puke if I’d eaten anything recently,” Zir said as he hurried to catch up with their pace. “Let’s go. Sappy hour is giving me a fatal case of eye sprain.”

            When no one said anything or laughed, Zir furrowed his brow. “From rolling my eyes at you. Get it?”

            “We got it, buddy,” Leo said. “It just wasn’t that funny.”

            “W-Well…” Zir struggled for a moment before giving up. He stared at his feet as they walked.   

A drop of rain fell on Leo, and he looked up at the gathering clouds and then pulled his cloak around him tightly. I hope this cloak is enough.

            “Not again!” Zir said as a raindrop fell on him, too. He shielded his head with both arms.

            Then the water fell in earnest.

            It didn’t seem to be affecting Lily. Magic ring of temperature control plus her illusions, right.

            “Well, break out your cloaks, boys,” Lily said.

            “What’re you talking about?” Hugh snorted. “This is great weather.”

            “Does this village have an inn?” Leo asked.

            “It has a lady who can cook with a spare room and a couple of beds,” Captain Whitewater said as she came up beside him, her soft, white fur and bunny ears already looking far worse for the weather. “This place only gets trade ships two to four times a year. And the dragons just take what they want if a mortal tries to make an inn that caters to them. So ask ol’ Retty to feed you and house you because it won’t get much better.”

            “We don’t have time,” Lily yelled through the intensifying rain and now wind. “Like I said, bust out your cloaks. We need to be walking until the light fades and then doing it again all day tomorrow. We need to get in, get allies, and get back to Star Port before something goes wrong. It’s just a matter of time, given our situation.”

            “Is this magical?” Leo shouted back as the storm continued to pick up implausibly quickly.

            “Of course! It’s all the Water nodes, remember? Summoning the moisture here at high rates, making rain and storms! But it won’t change—it’ll just happen again and again. That’s one of the main reasons these are the dragons’ realms. It’s hard for anyone else to settle these storm-plagued lands.”

            “Fun.” Leo pulled his cloak tighter around him. Zir shivered, but Hugh was at home in this weather and Lily had magical protection. Just need to make sure Zir’s okay. Everyone else will be fine.

            Leo continued. “Okay, but we stop for twenty minutes, she cooks something, we give her some copper, and we’re on our way. I feel like I’m going to lose any memory of warmth before we reach Hugh’s people—let’s enjoy a tiny bit now.”

            Lily nodded.

            “My people will wait for you, Lord,” Captain Whitewater said. “But only two weeks—our food stores will run low. So don’t take too long on your trek.”

            Again, fun.

***

            The Blue Lands, or the Storm Vale, depending on who was doing the talking, was fascinating thanks to all of its bizarre flora and fauna. If it hadn’t been trying to murder him with weather and sharp rocks, Leo would really have appreciated it.

            According to Hugh and Lily both, the center was a huge, flat river basin with numerous lakes and rivers flowing together. Every large ‘island’ formed by the rivers, or set of small ones, was owned by a Storm Dragon. But Hugh’s great, extended clan—about five very large families, but with most of the members dead, as near as Leo could figure—had made their lairs in the mountains around the southeastern edge. Which was relatively close to mortal civilization for a dragon clan.

            “Relatively” being the key term. Leo had nearly died to two flash floods, only his insane stats and the constant presence of unique trees saving him. The tree was visually a weeping willow, but it was even more flexible and aerodynamic, blowing with the wind no matter the direction, and it had a crazy root system that burrowed into even rock to gather purchase and curled around them as well.

            No one could tell Leo if the plant was magical, made with magic, or just a result of crazy evolution. But he could grab it to save himself practically everywhere in the storm dragon’s lands.

            Leo was also beginning to understand why ‘bird’ was a synonym for ‘crazy’ in storm dragon culture. He saw quite a few obviously magical ones. A glowing bird of paradise if it’d been done in only blues, greens, and purples with unusually shimmery feathers. Leo had stared until he’d been shaken from his stupor by Hugh, who told him the birds had an effect that caused ‘weak minds’ to become fascinated, even to the point of not considering self-preservation.

            Then there was the bird that puked magical acid as its hunting method, and the one that slashed with steel feathers. Leo’s personal ‘favorite’ was the one that could ‘shadowshift’ like Zir did. It would start a dive-bomb toward Leo’s head when they broke for food and then shift through the shadows mid-flight to snatch his meal when Leo tried to defend against the attack to his noggin.

            Hugh, Zir, and even Lily had laughed themselves silly at that incident, which had at least provided some much-needed levity.

            It was certainly a fascinating trip. But climbing a mountain path, in the rain, while the cool magical fauna screwed with you was not how Leo had wanted to learn about these new things. He was leaning rather heavily toward the Discovery Channel method—Watch from afar what cool things the specialists had taken pictures of while eating crackers and drinking a beer.

***

            “So, are we there yet?” Leo asked Hugh during a brief break in the rain noonish on the third day. They were climbing a mildly sloped section of the mountain, heading toward what Hugh claimed would be a tiny valley.

            “Well, we’re about to the first place I thought we’d maybe stop at,” Hugh said. “Then we can go farther.”

            “Your old friend group?” Leo asked.

            Hugh nodded. “Yeah… I don’t like talking about it, or even thinking about it, but most of them got kinda kicked out earlier than normal for dragons… No one wanted them around. So they built a communal lair down here, at my suggestion. My friend Zun was the impetus. I helped them build it.”

            “A communal lair similar to what you’re already making, then?” Leo asked.

            Hugh thumped his tail once. “Yeah, it’s where I got the idea. It was a fun place, but in a, like, sad way, you know? I want to make the awesome version of it.”

            Zir called out, “Ware, sky sunward!”

            Leo glanced up, squinting, and spotted a dragon descending toward them out of the sky, the sun behind it. Leo couldn’t get a good grasp of the size or distance in the glare.

            Leo whipped out his glowing sword and rapidly tried to shift his shield to his arm, dropping it to clatter a few feet down the gentle slope before it wedged itself between two rocks.

            Before any violence could ensue, Hugh called out happily. “Tea!”