Rotgoriel lay back, and lay still. That was what the words flashing across his vision had told him to do, when he found himself pulled into his brother's world. That and a few other things.

STAY STILL

PRETEND YOU ARE SLEEPING

THE MAN IN THE ROOM IS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE

WATCH THE FOOTAGE

He had twisted around and taken a look at the man, who had stared back impassively at him from behind reflective eye-coverings. He looked threatening, but his posture showed only patient deference.

Rotgoriel debated asking questions, then decided, again, to trust his brother. He had left hand-written instructions, and Rich was supposed to read them, so it only seemed fair he should return the favor.

And an underline meant a link, and Rotgoriel liked clicking on links. It took him a few seconds to sift his brother's memory, and figure out how to do that. His skills with Rich's echo were still rusty, but this particular body had instincts, and letting those take the lead got him through the rough spots.

The video that came up showed much of Mayhew and Cole, talking with Rich in a fairly impressive cave. Much of it made little sense to Rotgoriel, but one thing stood out, and almost made him jump out of bed with alarm.

His foes were marching an army to Fimble!

No wonder he'd ended up dead. This answered his most burning question. He hoped he'd at least taken a few of them with him, but that was a moot point. An army coming for him... and another coming to his aid. Those were what he took away from the footage.

Well, that and his guardians were servants who got brainwiped over and over again because Mayhew and his ilk worried too much about secrets.

“Weak,” he muttered. “Become strong and mighty, and let your foes despair. Secrets are for those with too many weaknesses.”

“Sir?” The guardian asked.

Rotgoriel tried to fake a snore—

—and found he was a dragon again. He choked, wheezed, desperately tried to avoid spitting up all over Geebo.

Just when he'd gotten himself under control, a raging roar echoed through the cave and he jumped back, staring around in alarm.

“YOU! OUT HERE! NOW!”

“Agnezsharron,” he gasped, and stared at Geebo. “What did we do?”

“Geebo does not know! Please, listen master, we must—”

“NOW! COWARD!”

That tore it.

Even if nobody else here could speak the tongue of dragons, that insult could not be borne. There were only two ways to respond to that. And he didn't feel like fleeing today.

Rotgoriel narrowed his eyes, and put one finger on Geebo's snout. “Save it until afterward.”

He stalked toward the mouth of the cave, gathered himself, and growled “Scaly Wings.”

And then he threw himself off the mountain, snapping his wings open wide as he dove... then rose, rose and turned, until he found the flash of green in the distance.

“I come, Agnezsharron!” he roared. “Now strike me down or fall yourself!”

To her credit, she was fast. Faster than he, as she dove aside.

But Rotgoriel had momentum on his side, and perhaps he caught her by surprise as he closed the distance and adjusted at the last second to crash into her.

AGL+1

Your Fly skill is now level 23!

He scrabbled for a hold, but she twisted away, barely managing to escape his claws. Her antlers gouged his flank as she went, but he barely felt it.

Then she was away, twisting through the air like a fish through water.

“Burninate!” he roared, as he sent a cone of flame her way. It caught her tail, and he heard her shriek of pain above the wind. A red '33' drifted away on the wind.

He chased her, growling with frustration as she dove ever closer to the slopes and cliffs of the mountain, tail lashing, sending snow and chunks of stone and ice back at him. He couldn't dodge all of them, but they were inconsequential. More distracting than anything else. But in that they were effective, and the gap between them grew and grew.

I have a trick for that, don't I? Rotgoriel remembered.

“Bless my agility fifty!”

Abruptly he sped up, flapping frantically to compensate, and the world spun around him as he pulled back to an even keel.

Do a barrel roll! A memory not his own urged, and he stifled the urge to laugh.

The distraction cost him.

“Vines!” he heard from directly ahead.

They leaped from the stone itself, green and living and with plump grapes bursting as they slapped into him. He put on a burst of speed and flew over the patch, but it raced along, a patch of green against the white and black of the ground, like a zipper closing up. They kept bursting up ahead of him regardless of how he turned and dodged, clawing at him, trying to wrap and entrap and clutch him.

They might as well have tried to pull the moon from the sky. He was too strong; all they did was slow him down for a second.

And Rotgoriel realized, too late, that was what she was trying to do.

Agnezsharron slammed into him from the side, claws scrabbling for a hold...

...and he twisted, grabbing his claws with hers, whirling around as they fell.

“Chomp!” he roared, and for a second he thought there was an echo to his words.

But then she sunk her teeth into the base of his neck just as he latched onto the place where her wing met her body, and he realized that she'd done the same thing. The exact same thing.

They plummeted like a meteor, hitting the cliffside and Rotgoriel lost his grip on her in the tumble. Her teeth wrenched a gobbet of meat and scales from his hide as she tore loose, and he howled in rage and pain, missing his opportunity to rip her wing open. Blood spatttered, hissed on the snow, melting the ice as he rolled.

“Lesser Healing!” he snarled.

You have healed yourself for 18 points!

It took a few more before the pain in his neck eased, and the blood ceased flowing. Time he regretted, as he saw Agnezsharron shake her head, then stagger to her feet.

And to his shock, he saw that her wounds were closing as well. Not like his, with a flash of light and a sudden erasure. They were slowly but surely sealing together, pulling in on themselves and closing.

“We're going to be at this for a while,” Rotgoriel laughed.

“Shut up!” she screamed. “This is a game to you? Molderate!”

And then she spewed some sort of curling vapor at him. Rotgoriel snapped his wings, hurled himself back, thanking Konol that he had buffed his agility. He got a whiff of rot, and damp things, and mushrooms, but he was at the edge of it and away as the gray, swirling cloud settled on the ground where he'd been standing. The blood he'd painted the snow with turned black, and sick, grotesque fungi bubbled up from it, releasing green clouds of spores that coated the rocks around them.

Rotgoriel didn't bother taking the sky again, charging around to her flank and roaring his answer. “Sandblast!”

And as he roared out the black, scouring sand to rip across the ice, he realized that he'd made a big, big mistake.

She was moving, already leaping into the air fast as the wind, and then the cloud of grit obscured his sight of her. He'd lost her for a few precious seconds...

...and she did not waste the opportunity.

Pain in his wing, and the crunching of bones as teeth grabbed and tore.

You have gained the condition: Broken Wing!

From there it went downhill. His sanity frayed as he healed, but she stayed airborne, strafing him with those spores that sapped his strength, and made mushrooms grow from his wounds. They were itchy, and nothing his curative skill couldn't handle, but the more time he spent healing and curing, the more time she had to use her speed to her advantage, darting in to strike again and again at his wounded wing, keeping him from healing the bones.

She tired as she went, but he was weakening as well. Putting buffs up helped a bit, but the fact remained that she was flight-capable and he was not.

Still... he watched her turn in midair, and wondered how much stamina she had left. Dragons weren't built for long fights. He could wear her down, if he waited and endured. He still had over half his hit points left, and his constitution had weathered the worst of the spores.

The problem was that she was pretty much unhurt, by this point, thanks to her odd way of healing. This might not end in his favor.

“Yield. Your hoard is mine. Your servants are mine. Yield and return that which you stole from me, and live,” she called down. “I have won this.”

“Come closer and say that,” he said, flexing his claws. “And I've stolen nothing from you.”

“First a thief, and now a liar!” she screamed, diving toward him, then away at the last second, as his claws swiped the air, just missing his tail.

“Wrong on both accounts,” he shouted into the wind of her passage. “And no coward either! Thrice-wrong you are, Agnezsharron! If you can kill me then do so, and have done with your bleating!”

CHA+1

She circled above him, once, twice. In the distance he could hear feet scrambling, the inhabitants of the village returning. He could hear a loping gait that had to be Geebo, and the frightened panting of Tinty, failing to be stealthy and peering over a rock downslope with wide eyes that Rotgoriel could only note in his peripheral vision. He knew that looking away from Agnezsharron would be a sign of weakness, an invitation to strike.

She circled once more, and landed a ways off, wings high, body moving as she circled on the slope, gaze fixed on him and neck sliding to compensate for her turn.

He circled right back, eyes locked on hers. Saw the rage and the betrayal in there. And the slightest hint of confusion.

“You have two eyes now,” she said, growling, voice low in her throat. “Who gave you back what you lost?”

“Nobody. I died and returned, remade.”

“Liar!”

She was on him before he could react...

...and he forced himself to ignore it. To stand still, as her claws buried themselves in his throat.

He grunted, felt the pain, rode it and stood as still as the stone that made up his scales. Stared into her eyes from mere feet away, as she roared in his face.

“Kill me and find... out...” he growled, as the blood welled and slicked down her arm.

“Yield,” she hissed. Her breath was hot and smelled like mushrooms and herbs and growing things.

“No,” he whispered back. His lifeblood was running down her arm, and his vision was shrinking. And he didn't care. “You can kill me. But I will be back. And I will not stop fighting. I will never yield. Not to... you. Not... to... anyone.”

Suddenly there was no pressure against his neck. He stumbled, lurched forward, and blood sprayed on the snow, smoking, carving red runes into hard ice.

He tried to heal himself, but the air whistled from his throat, mingled with the blood, burbling and spilling.

“Regenerate,” Agnezsharron told him.

Rotgoriel held his wound shut, as it knitted. But his gaze never left hers.

“You called me a coward,” he rasped. “Am I that?”

“No,” she said, simply. “But if you cannot die, you risk nothing here.”

“I can die. I merely do not stay dead.”

“How?”

He shook his head, even though it twisted the wound. “My turn. You called me a thief. What do you think I stole?”

Agnezsharron lowered her voice. “My sister's egg. It is gone. I checked this morning, as I do every month. It is gone, and I found your scale there.”

“The dungeon.” Rotgoriel blinked. “I did not return there, after I met the man who set me up to fight you. It sounds like he had a fallback plan.” He frowned. “I am surprised you fell for so simple a ruse.”

Faster than he could think, with a strength and a speed he neither expected nor had a chance of countering, she lashed out.

Rotgoriel found himself pinned to the ground like a kitten held down by a much larger cat, looking up at her and gasping as she leaned in, her muzzle inches from his.

“I am twice your level,” she told him sweetly. “If I had fallen for it I would not have held back.”

Rotgoriel blinked. His jaw was open and digging into the bloody mush of the snow and mud. He tried to ask the question anyway, and gurgled, but she seemed to get the gist of it.

“I was suspicious. I did not think you were that stupid, but could not rule it out. You are three days woke, young one, you COULD be that stupid. I had to be sure.”

She released him, and he rose, unsteadily, spitting out mud.

“You were holding back this whole time,” he said, mouth running before his mind. “Wait, no, that is not a question. Will you mate with me?”

Now it was her turn for her jaw to drop.

And for a second, for a horrible cringing second, he thought she would laugh.

But instead she simply said “No,” and shook her head.

“Why?” he whispered, some part of him stubborn and refusing to give up the dream. He had thought her beautiful before, and her now-revealed might made her more so.

“I will tell you if you wish, but you shall owe me three answers.” Her eyes flicked to the side. “No, wait, four. I am one ahead of you, question-wise.”

“Yes,” he said simply, making a mental note to pass on this agreement to Richard the next time he swapped bodies.

“Firstly, you are very, very ugly. I thought this at first seeing you, but could not figure out why my revulsion was so deep. Then I consulted the dreaming. You are cursed with unattractiveness.”

“That didn't reset when I died? No, no, I did not ask you that,” Rotgoriel corrected, hurriedly. “I am disappointed, but relieved.”

“Secondly, your hoard is pathetic. Save for that mirror, but one treasure does not befit a suitor of mine.”

“That is true,” Rotgoriel nodded.

“Thirdly, I do not wish to mate right now. I have enough troubles looking after one egg. I do not want another. And you have no domain and I will not share mine in the long term so I could not make you mind the egg.”

“That is fair,” Rotgoriel agreed, feeling much better about the whole thing.

“I do not care if you think it fair or not,” Agnezsharron's tone hardened. “I have spoken, and this is my answer.”

“Very well,” Rotgoriel nodded again.

She scrutinized him carefully, then folded her wings. “In a few centuries, after you have had time to fix your issues... you might be a suitable mate. Check then.”

“I look forward to asking again. When I am ready,” Rotgoriel dipped his head.

Agnezsharron gave him a magnanimous nod, and turned away. “Come along, Tinty. We have much work to do before those players come back to life.”

Rotgoriel smiled at the vision of loveliness, as she walked away. Level ups darted past his eyes, but he ignored them, too much adrenaline in his system to focus and read even if he cared to move his eyes away from Agnezsharron. He lay there, covered in mud and blood and shards of stone, and smiled to himself. “That went well, I think.”