A thin blue light glowed around the cracks. Scritch poked the individual pieces of the glass with her sharp little nail, emanating a tiny ‘tink’ with each poke. Another sharp crack sounded and with perfect precision, the orb healed.

“SMOKE TAMER!,” Blast said with a triumphant spark of fire in her jaw.

“Smoke tamer?” Leoric asked as Blast chirped and danced with happiness.

She looked into the orb with the blue light gleaming from her fiery gaze.

“H’uh… It fixed,” Scritch said as she held up the glowing blue ball. Numbers and sigils scrolled in the depths of the ball.

Leoric took the ball in his hands and stared with an open mouth, eyes wide and glistening.

“Scritch…What the ever loving gods graces did you do!?” He asked as he pointed the orb towards her and watched it scroll through with numbers and skills in a rolling display.

Leoric read through the scrolling messages. He compared it to the sheet that she had in her hands.

Child of Chance

Soldier of Fortune

In for A Penny

Maternal Instincts

Guardian’s Grace

Blessed by the gods

Watched by the gods

Crunchy and Delicious

The boons and titled scrolled on.

“Official name, Scritch, former Servant of QueQua, keeper of the eggs, crunchiest kobold of the esteemed crimson scale dragons, Guardian of Blast the first of her name,” Leoric read aloud.

“That sounds pretentious,” Blast said with a huff.

“What does it say for you?” Leoric said with a curious grin as he pointed the orb.

“It’s in draconic…” Leoric said as he squinted at the text. Scritch scampered over and squinted into the orb.

“Blast, First of her name,” Scritch read aloud.

“Huh…” Leoric said as he rummaged the stats.

“I am powerful, no doubt,” Blast said proudly.

“Is this one strength?” He asked scritch as he pointed to a bar.

“This one is fire,” She squeaked excitedly, “She doesn’t have much yet.

Blast stamped with surly huffs of smoke as they went over one stat and the other.

Blast, First of her name

Level: 0

Species: Red Dragon Whelp

Strength: 4/999

Instinct: 53/100

Fire: 2/9,999

Magic: 1/999

Diplomacy: 14/999

Charisma: 25/999

Intelligence: 47/100

Wisdom: 745/999

Class:

Supreme Overlord: Tier 1/999

FireStarter: 2/999

Blast grumbled and turned her back on them angrily. She was a baby! She was still growing!

“My stats will be far superior to yours once I’m big,” Blast grumbled.

Scritch walked over to her perch and gave her a conciliatory pat on her back.

“It’s okay. Your slaves are what counts. You just have to be a good dragon,” Scritch said.

Leoric pointed it to scritch to compare with her sheet.

Scritch, First of her name

Level: 4

Species: Crimson banded Kobold youngling

Strength: 22/999

Instinct: 80/100

Magic: 357/999

Diplomacy: 267/999

Charisma: 800/999

Intelligence: 98/100

Wisdom: 2/999

Class:

Slave/ Potential food source: Tier 650/999

Artificer: 31/999

The artificer class was blinking, and Scritch grabbed her hands up for it. She pawed her hands over the ball and the blinking status melted away to reveal more information about her skills and displayed a scroll of numbers.

“+3 to artificer skill,” It said.

“H’uh. I fixed the word ball and it gave me numbers to that,” Scritch laughed.

Leoric poked all her statuses and was able to see her numbers more clearly. It was a crying shame that the men in the temples didn’t do this. They paid a whole gold for them to not even poke their statuses, and for that matter, a whole gold to not even tell them their boons. People were supposed to keep track of those by writing them down, but Leoric had lived so long he’d forgotten more boons than he’d ever been given.

He had Scritch point it at himself and read off his boons.

Leoric ‘Grandpa’ Hanali

Bad Influence

Grandfather of Dragons

Thoroughly Baked

Touched by Luck

Cultist

-

The list went on as Leoric reached over and scrolled for some time.

“Woah… I had to smoke THAT much dragon weed to get that one? Seems about right,” He mumbled to himself.

“What’s a ‘body count,’” Scritch asked.

Leoric raised a brow.

“What’s the number?” Leoric asked cautiously.

“IT IS THE NUMBER OF THOSE WHO HE HAS SLAIN!” Blast said rapidly.

“Yeah…that,” Leoric said hastily.

“But what’s the number?” He asked.

Blast gave him a dirty look.

The cart came to a stop as Baldir climbed over the seat to look at the orb in their hands.

“We get caught with that thing… We’re dead,” Baldir said gravely.

“Into the pack of storage this goes!” Leoric said.

Scritch handed it up to him and helped him to slide it into the sack. Nobody had a stat reader. Only the temples and they were guarded with extreme prejudice.

“How in the world did you fix it?” Leoric asked as Baldir resumed his seat up front to urge their mule forward.

“Iunno. I stucked the pieces together and then they worked. Then I saw the numbers and letters. It said it wanted something called a ‘password’ and I just poked it until it gave me more numbers and letters,’ Scritch said, blinking one eye then the other.

“SMOKE TAMER!” Blast said again, dancing around excitedly.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Leoric asked as the cart jostled on.

“She can build complex mechanisms of magic and death! She can take from the ores of the earth, the fires of her dragon and bring forth DEATH AND DESTRUCTION,” Blast said with excited huffs of breath.

“Yeah, but that skillset is long dead. We’ve got no idea,” said Leoric.

“We don’t have to! She has good instinct. We can boost her instinct more and she’ll figure it out on her own. That’s how she fixed the lying ball!,” Blast said with an excited spark.

Scritch looked up at the two with glassine eyes, a little out of focus. Her tongue snaked its way from her mouth and licked at the corner of her eye.

Blast curled her maw a little. Leoric looked to blast.

Leoric leaned out of the cart and looked up that the sky.

“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANTED THIS ONE!?” He shouted up at it.

The cart hit a bump. He tumbled free and onto the road below, ass first. Dust kicked up into his face and he coughed before running to catch up with it.

A message from the gods appeared.

YOU HAVE EARNED THE AFFLICTION OF:

DOUBTER OF THE GODS

This gives you a -20 to your health stat for 3 days.

“What… What the? SERIOUSLY?” Leoric said as he shouted up at the sky.

A bird flying by shat. It landed right atop his glistening bald head with a surreptitious splat.

One word hovered over his screen: ‘Karma.’

Leoric grumbled and ran to catch up with his strange new party.