Two cloaked figures strode into the tavern. At this early hour, the tavern sat empty, save a few devoted drunks and a single table in the corner where a rowdy game of cards continued. Worn walls and busted tables spoke to the quality of the tavern’s clientele. Unlit lamps sat here and there on the tables. Instead, daylight streamed through the unglazed windows, lighting the tavern in warm yellow sunlight.

A few flies buzzed about, alighting on small, half-congealed puddles on the floor. In the dim light, the flies might have supped on ale, or on blood.

One of the figures approached the bar and handed over a few coins, whispering instructions to the bartender. The other glanced around curiously, then made a beeline for a table in the corner where a few gritty-looking men gathered around a game of cards.

“And that’s to keep your mouth shut,” Jet murmured, short-cropped chestnut hair peeking out from under his hood as he passed another coin over the scarred bartop. Pure black eyes gazed into the tavernkeeper’s. No longer in his dress uniform, he wore a simple white shirt, a dark vest, and worn trousers, the oiled-leather cloak dirty from travel to match the rest.

The tavernkeeper paused for a moment in cleaning a glass, then nodded behind Jet. “Your companion’s getting away from you.”

Jet whirled. Gideon stood over the table, peering over one of the men to watch the game. Exasperated, he stomped over and grabbed Gideon by the arm, dragging him to a table in the opposite corner. He seated Gideon forcibly, then sat opposite him.

“What part of ‘don’t draw attention’ did you misunderstand?” Jet hissed.

“A little gambling isn’t going to catch anyone’s eye,” Gideon said, waving his hand.

Jet crossed his arms. “You know you’re still a prisoner, right? You’re free to walk around for now, but the second you cross the line…” He drew his thumb across his throat. “I’m your executioner as much as your guardian. Your life rests in my hands.”

“Then what’s the collar for?” Gideon asked, yanking at it.

“It’s to keep me and the people around us safe. That collar was made by the most powerful enchantress in the country. If you intentionally attempt to kill a human, the collar will activate on its own. If you merely step out of line…” Jet held up the pendant he wore with the magic circle on it. He gave it a light tap.

“Ow!” Gideon complained, jolting.

“That’s the lowest level. It can get much worse,” Jet threatened.

“What if someone else steals that pendant?” Gideon asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I suppose you’d better hope that doesn’t happen,” Jet said, glancing down at the pendant. In truth, only I can activate the pendant, but I don’t want this murderer to get any ideas.

“I don’t like that. Not much of a guarantee, is it? ‘We slapped a murder collar around your neck, you’d better hope no one grabs the control spell.’ Would you be happy about that?” Gideon pointed out.

Jet tucked the pendant back into his collar and leaned forward over the well-worn table. “You massacred hundreds. Do you think I’m happy about that?”

“Hundreds of dragons disguised as humans. How many times do I have to say it to get it through your skull? They were dragons!” Gideon argued, frustrated. He sighed and shook his head.

“Dragons cannot disguise themselves as humans. How many times do I have to say it to get it through your skull?” Jet returned. He rested his head on his fist, already exhausted.

“Ooh, copying me, what is this, kindergarten?” Gideon mocked. He twisted his lips unwillingly, then sighed. “Anyways, what’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for you?” Jet repeated, confused.

“There you go with the repeating again! Yes. What am I getting out of this?”

“A… stay of execution. Your life.”

Gideon shook his finger. “A stay of execution is not my life. A stay of execution is putting off my death for a short time. Besides, it’s hard to get motivated to do the job when my life is the only thing I’m getting out of it. I mean, if I never kill that dragon, I can go ahead and die of old age, right?”

Jet spluttered. “You… openly admit you intend to defraud me, and never kill the dragon?”

“I didn’t say that. I was merely pointing out a flaw in your reasoning,” Gideon returned. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together. “Listen. I want to kill dragons. When it comes to killing dragons, I don’t know that you’ll find anyone more motivated than me. But you’ve got to make it profitable for me, too. If I go and singlehandedly free the kingdom from the threat of the True Dragon, are you really going to reward me with… my life? I mean, that’s a shit deal if I ever heard one.”

“You don’t want your life?” Jet asked, lost.

“I want my life. But I want to live a good life,” Gideon emphasized.

“Huh?”

Gideon sighed. “These military types, I swear. All muscle, no brain.”

Jet held up the pendant. “Might I encourage you to remember who holds the leash?”

“All muscle, no brain! He can’t even hold an ordinary conversation without resorting to violence!”

Jet pushed the pendant.

Gideon jolted. “Dammit, ouch. You didn’t need to do that.”

Silently, Jet arched a brow at him.

“Alright, alright. My point is, I’m going to go out and kill the True Dragon. We all agree about that. But in return, I want riches. Women. A big castle high on a hill. Don’t act all high and mighty with that whole ‘if you kill the dragon, we won’t kill you’ nonsense. I see through your bullshit. You wouldn’t have come to me if you had another option.

“After all, from your perspective, I’m a notorious murderer and marauder, sentenced to death. If the news of what I’m accused of escaped this little town of Blotting, and it became widely known that such a horrible criminal—that is, accused criminal—had been pressed into service by the king instead of executed, I’m sure there’d be scandal left and right among the nobles. Hell, they might even revolt against the king. You didn’t come to me because I’m your best option… you came to me because I’m your only option,” Gideon declared, narrowing his eyes at Jet.

“And…?” Jet asked.

Gideon nodded. “And, that gives me leverage. So. If you want that True Dragon killed, give me riches, a castle, and women! It’s not that hard, is it?”

Jet sat back, putting his hands in his lap. He gave Gideon a good hard stare. “Or, I beat you up until you cry like a small child, and you follow along quietly and kill the True Dragon like a good boy, then thank the king for his kindness in sparing your life. I hold your tome. You’re powerless without it. Your bluster doesn’t scare me in the least.”

Gideon stared at Jet for a long moment. Jet’s black eyes met Gideon’s pale eyes. Tension built in the air between them.

At last, Gideon sighed dramatically. “This is what I’m saying about military men! All muscle, no brain.”

“Say that one more time,” Jet warned him.

Gideon rolled his eyes. “I’ll say it as many times as I like. You don’t scare me, collar boy. Oh no, a little pain! What am I going to do—”

Jet hauled back and punched him in the face.

Startled, Gideon reeled in his chair. The chair tipped back, onto its rear two legs. He flailed, off-balance.

Before he could fall, Jet grabbed his robes. He held Gideon there, balanced between falling and upright. “Disrespect me one more time and see where it gets you.”

Gideon cleared his throat. He smiled. “Is it… the floor?”

Jet dropped him. He fell backward and slammed into the tavern’s plank floor.

The tavernkeeper stood on his tiptoes, peering over at them with a scowl.

Jet raised his hand. “It’s fine. My friend tripped, that’s all.”

Narrowing his eyes, the tavernkeeper muttered curses under his breath and turned back to his cups.

“Ha! I knew it,” Gideon muttered. He climbed back to his feet and set the chair upright, then sat in it again. Blood trickled down from his nose. He wiped it with the back of his hand and frowned at Jet. “That was completely unnecessary.”

Jet narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. He arced his brows at Gideon.

“Alright. So maybe not a castle, and the women are debatable, but at least riches. I mean, I’ve got to get something out of this, right?” Gideon tried.

“Your life,” Jet said flatly.

Gideon opened his mouth, then sighed. He waved his hand. “Alright, fine. We’ll table the discussion for later.”

Jet sighed. He looked at Gideon and shook his head. “I don’t want to be your enemy, Gideon. I, too, want the True Dragon slain. If you cooperate, I can make your life much easier.”

“See, I hate it when people hold things over my head like that,” Gideon returned. “How about this. Take this collar off, hand me back my tome, and I’ll cooperate like the good little boy you want me to be.”

“No,” Jet said, point-blank. Do you think I’m stupid? You’ll run away, or go murder more people. It’s only because the situation is so extraordinary that you were given a stay of execution in the first place. Otherwise, you’d be headless right now, as you ought to be.

Gideon sighed. “Dammit. Oh well, it was worth a try.”

“Anything else you want to try?” Jet asked, his voice dangerous.

“Actually, now that you mention it…”

Jet narrowed his eyes.

“Hey! Not everything I suggest is bad. I was thinking… before we leave this city, we should stop by the library. There aren’t any more big cities for a while ahead of us, so this is the place to stop,” Gideon suggested.

Jet hesitated. He frowned. “Why?”

“A True Dragon isn’t the same as a lesser dragon. If it was, your lightning mages would’ve been able to take it down, no problem, right? We don’t know enough about True Dragons in this age. But the library… past historians, past scientists, may have written books that hold clues that the present has forgotten,” Gideon explained.

“That’s… a good idea,” Jet admitted, somewhat reluctantly. True, the scholars scoured the Grand Library in the capitol for clues, but it’s not as if it holds every book in existence. We overlooked small, local libraries. Although it’s unlikely, it’s always possible that the smaller libraries will hold a book that doesn’t exist in the Grand Library.

Gideon smiled and clasped his hands together. “So… can I have my tome back?”

Jet glanced down at the book bound to his hip, opposite his sword. Bound in black cloth with gold decorations at its spine and corners, it bore a stylized thunderbolt blazed prominently in gold in the center of its cover. A gold clasp held black pages tightly shut. If he opened them, each page would hold a magic circle inscribed painstakingly in silver aether ink. Mages poured mana through the black mana-sensitive paper to activate the aether ink. The magic circle shaped the spell, and the mage’s intent aimed it.

Unlike an enchantment, a single circle inscribed into precious or semiprecious metal that could be used over and over again until the caster ran out of mana or the metal was destroyed, each page in a mage’s tome could only be used once. In return, each page in a tome could hold a different spell circle, each of which could shape the magic differently. For example, in a fire mage’s tome, one page might cast a fireball, and the next, a ray of fire. In addition, multiple pages could be burned at a time, either to power up a single spell or to shape it with a finer-grained touch, for example, combining the fire ray and the fireball to create a blazing straight-line fire attack that exploded in a fireball at its end.

The most powerful of mages could burn an extra page to pour fourfold power into their spell, instead of simply doubling it. Known as critical-casting, the technique was considered secret, and only shared amongst the most powerful mages and their direct apprentices. Even then, most lesser mages lacked the raw mana reserves to cast such a powerful technique.

Due to the greater finesse they exerted over their attacks, tome-mages spent more time to cast magic, but with devastating effect. Enchantment-mages, or paladins, could cast in a pinch, but only the same spell, over and over again. Similarly, although tomes could be bought, almost all tome-mages drew their own spells. Enchantment-mages almost always bought theirs from enchanters and enchantresses.

Other kinds of magic-users existed as well, healing priests and priestesses, the supposed singers and dancers, but only magic users who wielded magic to attack earned the title of mage.

Jet touched his sword. Even the ice wall he’d cast in his attempt to save Figaro had only been five bursts of ice, layered on top of one another. If I could use a tome instead, could I have…

With a shake of his head, he dismissed the purposeless thoughts. He lacked the mana to control a tome. Enchantments cost much less mana to cast than tomes, and the more complex the tomework, the more expensive the spell. It’s pointless. I’m no mage. At the end of the day, I’m a soldier with a little skill at using enchantments. A paladin.

“So… my tome?” Gideon prompted.

Jet wrinkled his nose and dropped his hand. “Prove I can trust you, first.”

“You’re no fun,” Gideon complained.

Screams echoed from the streets. Horses whinnied in terror. Horrible crashes and splintering noises echoed from outside, followed by a roar. Jet jumped to his feet. Bored, Gideon yawned.

The tavern door slammed open. A red lesser dragon lowered its head and glared inside, slitted eyes gleaming with brutal light. Creamy underbelly low to the floor, wings folded against its body, its slender tail lifted off the ground, it turned left and right, scanning the interior of the building.

The tavernkeeper’s eyes bugged out of his head. He dropped the mug he was polishing and vanished into the back room, out of sight. The mug crashed behind him, shattering to splinters. The grimy-looking men in the back corner abandoned their game and fled after him, fighting one another in their urge to flee over the counter. Too muddle-minded to properly react, the drunks slunk under their tables, as if the wooden structures could hold against the dragon’s flame.

“A dragon? Here?” Jet murmured, taken aback. Lesser dragons are rare, dangerous creatures. They’re generally reclusive, and avoid humans as much as we avoid them. Unless we deliberately headed into an untamed part of the wilds, we would never encounter one.

But here one is, in the middle of the town in broad daylight. What’s happening? He looked at Gideon subconsciously. Is it because of him, somehow?

Gold eyes found Gideon, and it growled. Putting a claw on the tavern’s doorframe, it heaved. Wood cracked, then shattered, and a piece of doorframe and the wall behind it flew away. It sucked in a breath, and heat gathered around it, shimmering around its chest and mouth.

“Watch out!” Jet shouted, drawing his sword. Cold white-blue light shone along its length, and the air grew icy around him.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Gideon closed his eyes and lifted his hand, calling out to the page of the tome in his stomach. Sparks danced around him, alighting on his hair and clothes, then darted toward his palm. Lightning shot from his hand toward the dragon.