Chapter 36: Chapter Thirty-Four: Dragon Quest, Poorly Performed Quicktime Events Included

            Leo ambled the thousand or so feet to the southern end of Elgin Isle. Hugh had been constructing a lair on the coast, and most days, if he wasn’t drinking, that was where he could be found.

Hugh’s home design project was taking place on one of the beaches, a cave he’d been digging into solid rock, very slowly, with his claws. Leo had offered Felix to help, but Hugh had refused.

            Leo walked to the southern beach, which had cliffs like those on the northern side, but they weren’t sheer, they were sloped, and some parts had small beaches.

            Last time Leo had been here, Hugh’s cave had been tiny, and his treasure crammed into it like a badly packed U-Haul moving truck. Most of the treasure had been furniture as well—though he’d also gotten quite a bit of art and statues.

            Leo made his way down the slightly flattened portion of the beach, small boulders sticking up around him despite the sand. As he rounded the corner, he saw that Hugh’s cave was a real cave now—it went back farther than Leo could see, its new depths a mystery. It had also expanded, so it was partially below water—the entire entrance was now beneath the waves.

            “Hugh, buddy?” Leo called into the darkness of the seaside tunnel.

            “Leo?” came Hugh’s voice, followed by a splashing and pounding of scales on stone.

            “Yeah?”

“Leo!” Hugh shouted as he came bursting out of his entrance. “Check it out, Leo. I got a new power!”

Hugh ran up the sand and then braced himself, managing to spray some of it at Leo in an almost comical manner as he left claw skids up the beach.

Hugh had been taking nothing but armor, Toughness, and Health powers so far, and putting his stats into Strength… and it showed. He was now almost ten feet long, which was about twenty-five percent longer than he had been—and he was thicker and taller as well. Leo was pretty sure he was almost twice as big, in total, as he had been when they’d first met.

As Leo sized up Hugh, the dragon reached down to one of the boulders sticking up out of the sand. Leo felt magic, somehow stable and simple, wrap itself around Hugh. Then Hugh reached into the rock and pulled it apart like taffy.

“I can use the power like that Felix mortal guy! I can build awesome caves now!”

“Nice!” Leo said. “Why did you take that power?”

“Well, I can only take Rocklike Skin, Rank II once I’m actually Level Six… same for Earthen Resilience and Sturdy—I’ve got as much armor, Toughness, and Health as I can get till next level. And everyone is building and making… I wanted something to do as well! Now I can carve caves and statues and make my lair awesome. To impress, um, lady dragons… you know.”
            “Polly.”a

Hugh gave a deep sigh, his scaled jowls flapping as he did. “Yeah, Polly. I hope she thinks I’m cool. I mean, I’m Level Five, which is way stronger than most dragons my age… and I’ve got a cool lair, and a hoard… Well, I’ll have cool lair soon, anyway.”

“I hope it’ll work, buddy,” Leo said. “And honestly, if Polly can’t see how amazing you are, perhaps she isn’t right for you anyway.”

“Polly’s right for any dragon, let me tell you. She’s naturally bigger, stronger, and faster than almost all the other dragons, and her scales shine so bright…” Hugh coughed, then tilted his head and stared at Leo. “Why’d you come down here, anyway? I didn’t even wait for you to tell me what’s up.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of what I need to do in order to advance the city and protect it. To be a great lord for my people. Truth is, Star Port and the Kingdom of Averia are small, poor, and sitting on some extremely prime real estate. I just came to see you to stop thinking for a bit and hopefully my hindbrain can come up with stuff if I don’t think about it.”

Hugh rolled his eyes. “Hindbrain, huh? More like no brain. Thinking up plans while you’re not thinking about plans… That’s just straight-up bird logic.”

Then Hugh scuffed the sand and lowered his head to look at Leo, almost like a dog that didn’t want to do something.

Hugh opened his eyes extra wide. “But now that you mention it… I’ve been thinking, and I wanted to ask you a favor.”

“Yeah?” Leo said, only paying about fifty percent attention.

“Well… you said you need defenders, and again, I was thinking… I wonder if you wanted to maybe, um, go with me and invite some dragons to come live here, and you can pay them like you pay me, to defend the town and help build it and stuff. What do you think? I mean, I know the dragons are, like, elven enemies and stuff, but you and I get along okay, right?”

Leo just stared at Hugh.

“And I could build all the dragons lairs along the beach here, and then they’d all think I’m cool…”

Leo’s own eyes went wide. “Hugh, you’re a genius! That would be perfect! A group of dragons, even just a few, would add a huge military edge to the town, and we could absorb them easily. I mean, you guys eat fish, and this area is filled with them. And they fly, so it wouldn’t be hard to get them here.”

“So, yes?” Hugh asked, his voice raw with desire. “After the dragon flight, a lot of eggs were laid, and there are a bunch of dragons in my age range throughout the Blue Lands we could ask. Most’ll probably die once they get old enough that the bigger, older dragons consider them enemies. We could punch good-deed cards.”

“Did you have friends?” Leo asked.

Hugh squirmed. “Well, I mean, yeah, kinda. There were a couple of dragons who were kinda, um, defective like me and we, um, formed a group for, like, mutual protection and stuff. It kinda started when I sorta, halfway saved one. But I was gonna just, you know, maybe put those guys on the other side of the island or something. I don’t want to see them get eaten, but… I wanted to ask all the really badass dragons who are up there! They’re sure to like me now!”

“Look, Hugh.” Leo scratching Hugh’s eye ridge. “You aren’t defective. If you were, I wouldn’t hide it from you, I’d just try to work through it with you. I don’t believe in hiding hard truths; I believe in overcoming them. But you aren’t defective.”

“Thanks, Leo.”

“No problem.”

Hugh smiled, showing off his fangs. “We and the other defective dragons were made fun of all the time—”

“You’re not defective,” Leo quietly interjected. “You don’t need to say that.”

“—well, all the other dragons called us that. What I’m trying to say is, I know you won’t make fun of them. And that will mean a lot.”

Leo shook his head. “You’re a very powerful dragon whose supposed defect is a perk. I’m sure these other dragons don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, my perk doesn’t help my cool factor. Like, what if your butt was always on fire and you could shoot fireballs from it? Powerful, yeah, but you’d still look like a doofus.”

Leo laughed. “All right, I’m not gonna try to keep convincing you. Just… trust me, you’re a really badass dragon.”

“Hmph.”

“But I love this plan. We can for sure go recruit some of the dragons of the Blue Lands. Especially your Polly.”

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“Thanks, Leo. That time I didn’t eat you was the best decision I’ve ever made.”

“’Cuz that’s how it happened.”

“I’ll be alive for thousands of years after you and that’s gonna be my story the whole time.”

Leo chuckled. “Touché. Let’s go see if Lily will join us—I really like adventuring with a healer, and I need at least one person to wax nerd with as well.”

“Well, fair’s fair—bring Zir. The little kid has, as you keep saying, moxie, and I need someone who isn’t a doofus with his head in the clouds.”

Leo grimaced. “Zir’s… kinda young.”

“So am I. Zir’s thirteenth birthday’s coming up, he has multiple levels… more than his father had. And he’s gonna follow us no matter what, so you might as well have some control over the situation.”

Leo grimaced. “Fine, I’ll ask the little ball of anger if he wants to go adventuring. Theoretically, this should be a pretty calm trip.”

“Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself,” Hugh said.

“Dammit, Hugh.”

***

            “You’re not fucking with me, right?” Zir asked as he leaned back against the stone wall of the training hall they were in, one leg half-crossed over the other. He was flipping a knife into the air and catching it.

            Leo tried to hide his concern. You don’t have to freak out, Leo. Lily is right here to heal him if he slices himself.

            And no one else seemed in the least concerned—Zir’s mother was downright enthusiastic and his sister jealous. Although perhaps their approval was because a shadow covered Zir, now solid enough to mildly obscure his figure.

            “No, and please watch your language,” Lily said.

            Leo couldn’t help but wonder about the linguistic similarities—two, really—between English and Middle Averian.

            “You’re doing it again, buddy.” Hugh slapped his tail on the floor of the training center. “Snap out of it.”

            “Right, sorry,” Leo said, rubbing the back of his head.

            “Feel like sparring?” Hugh asked.

            Leo groaned internally. He was pretty sure that in the long run, his build would be far stronger than Hugh’s, but he’d taken mostly utility powers at this point—and part of his build was Wolten, besides. But since they sparred directly, Hugh usually won. Leo had been convinced he needed to train against beings other than humanoid mortals, but that had translated mostly into a lot of Hugh kicking his ass.

            And with Lily here to keep them alive, it had resulted in a lot of pain as well.

            But Leo hadn’t been backing down, and he’d been improving from that training as well.

            Today, however, they needed to prep.

            “Sorry, Hugh, no kicking my rear today. We need to prepare for the trip. Captain Whitewater’s in town, and she agreed to take us through to Lakusi. We’ll stop there for some official government business, and then we’ll head to the Blue Lands and the caves of your people. No time for combat training this morning.”

            Hugh looked slightly skeptical, but he nodded. Lily nodded as well, and Zir whooped, leaping in the air fist-forward, and then his shadow stretched out the door. He dropped into the shadow, and a half-second later, Leo heard him running down the hall, shouting, “I’m going on an adventure, Mom!”

            “Just the four of us?” Lily asked, an eyebrow raised. “No official panoply, no guards, not even a servant?”

            Leo shrugged. “This trip will only start as a state visit—it’s mainly an expedition into the lands of the Storm Dragons. I didn’t want to take non-combatants.”

            “How about we just take Kemi, that lady who was the slave back at the Dragon’s Rest Inn in Steelport?” Lily asked. “She practically worships you, and she was a lady-in-waiting before the fall. She knows how to act the part.”

            Leo scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Um, yeah… about that. She’s been trying to get into my pants, with quite a bit of fervor, since she got to the isle.”

            “You don’t want to?” Lily asked, nonchalantly glancing away from Leo.

            “Well, I mean, um, of course I do.” Leo was now scratching so hard, he might lose hair. He coughed to give himself a moment to think of the right words. “Between Audrey, who was distant for the last couple of months of our time together, and this time on Toth, I’m feeling like I could use a partner… But I didn’t want the complications, or, as you said, to have a bastard to the throne. And as sappy as this may sound, I’m the kind of guy who likes for it to mean more than just physical pleasure—I’d rather be with someone emotionally, not just be with someone physically, if I’m making sense.”

            Lily turned and beamed up at him. “You’re making complete sense, Leo. I couldn’t agree more!”

            “By Merdrek’s Now-Limp Prick, you’re not making complete sense, you’re a complete wet blanket!” Hugh exclaimed. “Males should be actively seeking partners to lay eggs. That’s the dragon way.”

            “This from the guy carrying a torch for Polly,” Leo said with a roll of his eyes. “I mean, I want to build a family and a life as well. Not just get my rocks off.”

            “Get your rocks off?” Lily asked, laughing. “I don’t think that one translated. But I guess I understand the meaning in context.”

            “Look, can we leave off on my sex life?” Leo started.

            “Or lack thereof.” Hugh straight-up winked at Leo, then did the ‘rimshot’ visual with his tail and made the “bump, sshh,” noise.

            Leo had to laugh. “I really shouldn’t have taught you so many of Earth’s weird mannerisms. All I’m saying is I’d rather we take someone else besides Kemi. I know that if I spend weeks effectively camping with a hot, willing chick who’s constantly throwing herself at me, I’m going to have a weak night and let her into my bedroll. I’d rather pass on that life complication at this point, no matter how good it sounds.”

            Hugh snorted. “Eh. Not the dragon way at all.”

            Leo walked out of the training room, following Zir. “Yeah, okay. Anyway, I think this’ll be an easy trip, but bring the weapons, just in case.”

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