Are You Messing With My Children?
Are you messing with my children right now.
"I hear someone saw a dragon."
The words cut straight through the tavern noise.
Lakia stopped mid-step beneath her Agnotu robe.
Carnepisara, polymorphed into an orc warrior, stood at her side with a massive axe hanging at his waist.
Night in Krafcheten was loud.
Inside the windows, cups clashed and the smell of roasted meat drifted out. Mercenaries' laughter spilled all the way into the freezing street.
"A witness from Rusty Harpoon said so. Said a dragon burned the village."
"Ha. How much did that guy drink."
"If it was a dragon, one flap of those mountain-sized wings would send three walls flying, wouldn't it?"
Lakia's brow twitched.
Carnepisara asked quietly,
"Shall we go in?"
Instead of answering, Lakia pushed the door open.
Hot air and the reek of alcohol hit her face. Old shields, broken swords, and monster horns hung along the walls. Dead center on the most visible wall, a large bone fragment was nailed up with a plaque that read "Dragon Claw."
The moment Lakia saw it, her mood soured.
The curve was wrong. The root shape was wrong. The grain was soft and split. More than anything — if that had been a real dragon claw, the nail would have broken the second anyone tried to pin it to the wall.
Carnepisara took a seat at an empty table. When the orc's bulk settled into the chair, the wood gave a small, pained shriek. A few nearby glances slid over him, then quietly looked away. Wise of them.
The three mercenaries by the window were still going.
"They say a dragon can smell gold from thirty leagues off."
"And they snatch maidens, right."
"I heard if you lock eyes with one, you turn to stone."
"…That's a basilisk."
It was a small voice. But taverns had a strange talent for picking up exactly that kind of remark.
The three mercenaries turned their heads. A dwarf pricked up his ears without setting down his beer. The tip of a beastkin adventurer's tail flicked upward.
Whether because of the Agnotu or not, people's eyes never stayed on Lakia for long. Her voice still carried, though. The words remained.
"Turning to stone when you lock eyes is a basilisk trait," Lakia said. "Dragons don't turn people to stone just by looking at them. Some people freeze from sheer terror, sure — but that's survival instinct, not petrification."
The three mercenaries looked at each other.
Lakia should have stopped there. But the thirty-league gold smell and the maiden locked in a tower lined up neatly in her head. The fake claw on the wall joined the queue.
"And the gold-smell thing is wrong, too."
Lakia held up one finger.
"Gold barely has a scent. Even if a dragon likes gold, that's individual preference. Some of them do like shiny things — fine. But you can't generalize that into a species instinct."
Carnepisara quietly closed his eyes behind the orc's face.
Lakia raised a second finger.
"The maiden-snatching story is weird, too. Dragons have no reason to lock people in towers, and any tower big enough for an adult dragon to sit in isn't a tower anymore — it's a fortress."
She took a breath.
"And if they want to hear singing, they can just roar themselves. A dragon's cry is a lot louder."
"Hey, robe lady."
A red-nosed mercenary grinned.
"You a dragon expert?"
"I'm not a doctor."
"Scholar, then?"
"Not that either."
"Then how do you know all this so well?"
Lakia shut her mouth for a moment.
Alduin. Masor. Gargantua. Those names had no business becoming tavern snacks.
She answered as seriously as she could.
"It's common sense."
The tavern went quiet for a beat. Then laughter exploded.
"Dragons are common sense!"
"Krafcheten really does attract every kind of lunatic!"
Lakia ignored the laughter and pointed at the wall.
"That thing isn't a dragon claw, either. It's swamp crocodile. The root is too broad, the curve is too shallow, and the grain is soft."
She glared at the fake claw.
"If it were a real dragon claw, that nail wouldn't hold. The wall wouldn't hold. The tavern wouldn't hold."
The tavern keeper's face went stiff. A dwarf studied the bone carefully, then set down his beer.
"Now that you mention it, it does look like crocodile."
"Hey."
The keeper's voice dropped low. The dwarf shrugged.
"Don't blame me for having good eyes."
Lakia raised a third finger.
"And the thing about stabbing the reverse scale and a dragon dropping dead on the spot is wrong, too."
"We didn't say that."
"You were going to, so I'm saying it first."
Laughter broke out around them. This time it was more the fun of watching a show than pure mockery.
"Reverse scales exist. But it's not the structure tavern loudmouths describe, where you poke one and the dragon goes urk and collapses."
Lakia tapped the table with her fingertip.
"The second you get close enough, your arm is the first thing likely to disappear. Even if you get lucky and reach it, your sword gets jammed between the scales and you become a dragon's ornament."
"Ornament?"
"Stuck in the scales. Swinging around. Decoration."
A beastkin adventurer laughed while hugging his own arm.
Lakia did not stop.
"And the claim that calling a dragon's name three times makes it submit is nonsense. If calling a name was enough to make someone listen, why would every parent in the world suffer?"
That one came out with real feeling.
Alduin sometimes pretended not to hear even when she called him. Masor heard her fine and answered with nothing but the rustle of his scales. The white hatchling came running whenever it felt like it, name or no name.
Parenting was not solved by names. That was a truth Lakia had learned with her body.
"And the idea that you have to roast a dragon egg over fire to hatch it is wrong, too."
Lakia raised a fourth finger.
Carnepisara said, low,
"Lady Lakia."
"Just a little more."
"This is already past a little."
"We're not even at the important part yet."
"There's more important material left?"
"Plenty."
Shit.
Carnepisara muttered a curse under his breath and ordered a drink.
Lakia pressed on.
"Egg care differs by species. Some prefer heat. Some need shade and moisture. Some need a place with stable mana flow."
She added, perfectly serious,
"If you just throw one on a fire, that's not hatching. That's cooking."
"Dragon-egg cuisine!"
Someone shouted. Lakia's eyes went cold. The shouter shut his mouth on pure instinct.
But the mercenaries didn't stop.
"Lady, have you actually met a dragon?"
"Take classes on them or something?"
"Nah. At this level, it's family."
"Don't tell me dragons call you Mom?"
In that instant, Lakia's hand stopped.
The tavern noise receded by a layer. A tiny ripple crossed the surface of the cup on the table. The hearth flame leaned, just slightly, toward Lakia.
Carnepisara's eyes locked on her at once.
Lakia knew. This was not the valley. She must not lose her temper here. She must not use Dragon Speech here.
And yet an old sound caught at the tip of her tongue.
"Fra…"
The first syllable was rising from the back of her throat when—
CRASH!
The table exploded.
More precisely, Carnepisara's fist went through the table and buried itself in the red-nosed mercenary's chest. The man flew backward with his chair and slammed into the wall. The swamp-crocodile bone labeled "Dragon Claw" fell and stuck in the floor beside his head.
The second mercenary shot to his feet.
"What the hell, you pig—"
The words never finished. Carnepisara's backhand took him across the jaw. The mercenary spun one and a half times through the air and crashed into a basket of roasted potatoes. Potatoes flew in every direction. A beastkin adventurer caught one on pure reflex and ate it.
The third mercenary put a hand on his sword. His judgment was fast. His choice of opponent was not.
Carnepisara caught his wrist.
Crack.
The sound of bone breaking arrived before the scream. Carnepisara grabbed him by the collar and laid him on the floor with exquisite politeness.
Thud.
Lakia stared at him with her mouth half open.
"Teacher."
"Yes."
"What was that just now."
"I hit them."
"I saw that."
"Having me hit them was safer than letting you finish speaking."
She couldn't argue. That made it even more absurd.
Carnepisara punching three mercenaries was a minor incident by Krafcheten tavern standards. Lakia using Dragon Speech was not something you could call a minor incident. She was angry, and she also understood. That was the worst part.
What broke the silence were the orcs.
One of them at a corner table laughed low in his throat.
"Kheh."
The orc beside him raised his cup.
"Good fist."
Another slammed the table.
Thud.
"One more!"
In a heartbeat, orc laughter rolled through the room. They were delighted. Partly because a fight had broken out — but more than that, they clearly loved the shape of it: a human mercenary running his mouth and getting launched by an orc's fist.
"That's how you fold a human who fights with his mouth!"
"They still haven't learned a thing since Zik!"
"He should be grateful his neck's still attached!"
Lakia looked around, dazed.
The humans were surprisingly indifferent. A few watched for a moment. Someone pulled their cup closer to their body. The tavern keeper surveyed the shattered table, the scattered potatoes, and the fallen fake claw, then held up three fingers at Carnepisara.
"Three tables."
Carnepisara said,
"Two."
The keeper pointed at a side table one of the downed mercenaries had kicked apart with his feet.
"Three."
Carnepisara tossed him the coins.
"Three it is."
That was the end of it. To the humans, it was a tavern brawl. Three tables. Some potatoes. Three mercenaries. The kind of nuisance that cropped up over drinks all the time.
But the non-human races were different.
The orcs were laughing openly. A dwarf hid the curl of his mouth behind his beer. The beastkin adventurer was swishing the tip of his tail. A hooded elf smiled quietly into his cup.
They were enjoying it. Enjoying the sight of human mercenaries getting beaten. Enjoying the way a superiority built out of words had been flattened by a single fist.
That was when Lakia understood.
Krafcheten was said to be a city that did not discriminate by race. The gates opened for orcs. Dwarven names were carved into monuments. Beastkin drank at the same tables as humans. That much was true.
But it did not mean everyone liked each other.
Every race that was not human carried sediment in its heart. The sediment of those who had always had to explain themselves. The sediment of those who had always had to laugh off insults. The sediment of those called monsters because they were strong. The sediment of those who, for being different, had been turned into ridiculous legends.
Until a moment ago, Lakia had been angry because dragons were being insulted. She had nearly drawn on Dragon Speech because her children's names were becoming a joke. She had thought that anger was hers alone.
But the tavern held similar fires in many chests. In orcs. In dwarves. In beastkin. In elves. Everyone carried a small valley inside themselves — a place where someone else's careless names, someone else's careless legends, someone else's careless mockery had piled up year after year.
There might be no dragons in those valleys. But there was fire.
…If someday great power is needed—
And if there were a race that could fan that fire, that could rule it—
Could they gather together…?
They would burn with ferocious heat.