As it turns out, once you got past the whole life and death battle thing, the Draegblood, (their preferred name, calling them dragon kin is apparently rude,) were a very amicable bunch. Apparently having heard the local gossip about The Princess, they had decided to ask for her help with a rather unusual situation.

Their leader Spiketail, was very nice and quickly explained to them what the hell they were getting themselves into. (Though after hearing what it was, Mibbet sincerely wished that particular genie would go back into the bottle.)

“I’ll be frank Princess, we desperately need all the help we can get. Particularly if that help is in the form of water magic.”

Mibbet knew she was going to regret asking this, from the very moment she opened her mouth. But sometimes in life even though you know that prodding around is going to screw you over, you can’t help but do it anyway. (A lot like when you have a toothache, and can’t resist wobbling the tooth, or poking around the root anyway, despite knowing full well you are going to want to scream the roof off as soon as you do. That morbid curiosity, and perhaps a little lizard brain, or amphibian brain in Mibbet’s case makes you bloody well do it anyway.)

So showing a complete lack of foresight, common sense, and self preservation Mibbet opened her big froggy gob. “So what exactly is the problem? I’ll help if I can.” She asked, tactfully suppressing her wince at having being so bloody stupid.

“Well technically it’s two big problems, leading to a whole mess of little problems down the line.” Spike admitted, oh oh, this was bad. Bad enough he was stalling on telling her, despite knowing of her reputation.

“Well let’s talk through them one by one, we’ll work out the big ones first, since from there the little ones tend to fall into line.”

Spiketail hesitated a moment longer, then realising if he kept stalling he would never get through it finally started to talk. “Well I hail from the town of Daveejons, it’s just a way down the road, and as you probably know it’s a harbour.”

“Uh-huh, and?”

“Well as you probably worked out from that little detail we kinda need access to the sea, especially given that we have Mer citizens too.”

“I think I see where this is going, but go on.”

“Then as you most likely heard, there’s a deity throwing a big tantrum out there in the middle of the ocean right now.”

“Oh nonononono, I’ve had enough of gods in the last few months to last me a lifetime, and that’s just from my own patron deity. I don’t need to go around picking fights with other gods, thank you very much.”

“Oh that mostly hits the deep sea between continents, that isn’t the problem, and we’re sailors we know better than to get in the way of Briony Deyp. It isn’t her we’re struggling with, it’s just a couple of side effects.”

Mibbet would have relaxed upon hearing that, but figured out pretty quickly, that when gods are involved you don’t let your guard down. “Mind listing these side effects? I am kinda curious what made you feel the need to call me in. Usually my solutions piss off the kind of people who call in guards, so you can understand why I’m cautious here.”

That elicited a sympathetic chuckle from Spiketail, and a few of his crew who were in earshot. “I can understand that, but this is definitely out of our league. See, when Briony started thrashing about it wasn’t just the surface that got stirred up, some of the things deep down woke up, and they’re a little pissed.”

“Well there is The Don, we kinda thought he was a legend until all this started off.”

“OK, who are WHAT is The Don? (She couldn’t help but picture the capital letters falling into place in her mind. That meant trouble, self capitalising enemies were usually no end of grief, you could almost say they were Trouble with a capital T.) Because I doubt you’re calling me in to deal with the local mob here, so can we please stop beating around the bush and tell me what the hell it is you want me to fight, outwit, miracle to death, or otherwise deal with. Because I need to know what it is I’m supposed to be hitting, so when it bites me on the ass later I at least can figure out what’s going on.”

“The Don,” said Spiketail with a gulp, “is a really really big shark.”

Being a fresh water creature, Mibbet was unfamiliar with the concept of sharks, so she went for a rummage in Rosalind’s memories, eventually coming up with something that looked like a massive Pike. (The fish not the stabby stick, with or without googly eyes,) that looked like it had a mouth full of more teeth than any creature had any business having.

Mibbet gave a sigh of relief, it was a big scary fish, but she wasn’t bit sized anymore. She was human sized now, and couldn’t figure out why the humans, being the size they were and all, would be freaked out by a slightly more toothy fish. I mean they eat EELS, compared to that a slightly toothy carp wasn’t a problem, was it?

“Ummm Mibbet,” Rosalind tried, putting on her most tactful tone of voice. “A typical shark in this region is between ten and fifteen feet long, and they said The Don was large.”

Mibbet very carefully suppressed the urge to scream every swearword known to frogkind (which if you included the ones Rosalind, and worse, Elvira had taught her was a hell of a lot.) Putting on a slightly wilty smile, she turned to Spiketail, and asked another question she would regret later. “You said The Don was an unusual size? How big are we talking here?”

“According to survivor accounts, twenty five to thirty feet long.”

Mibbet’s brain rebelled at this thought, there just wasn’t enough nope in the world for the data she had just been given.

“Soo, you said there were two problems?” Mibbet tried, desperately hoping against hope the other problem was easier to solve. If not she’d have been better off feeding herself to the Fluftens.

“Ah,”

“Ah?”

“Ah, the second problem we have, that would be The Quacken.