It was a peaceful day in the town of Stonebrick until approximately noon. Everyone, if asked, would have said they were having a very pleasant day, except the mayor. Though the day was fairly mild, he was sweating as if it were high noon on the longest day of the hottest summer.

 

Today was the day of his annual charity feast. It began at noon and stretched into the night. Months of planning had gone into making it a pleasant time for all involved. Attending, however, were two of the most dangerous people in Stonebrick. Lady Astrabella Quintella, a minor noblewoman, sat on one one side of the table arrayed in her best finery. She insisted that she was “definitely not an assassin”, and those who said otherwise quickly wound up dead. Second was Rusky Tamal, a ‘simple tailor’ who knew more about poisons than anyone had any business knowing. Some trick of Fate had made them neighbors. It had been worrisome at first, but had gone well for a time. They were so paranoid about each other that they had precious little time for causing trouble. However, it just so happened that the treasure chest belonging to the infamous Dread Captain of the Twenty-Nine Seas, Talbrick, was discovered buried right on the property line. Both had claimed it, and they expected him to hand down a decision today. The mayor had already delayed as long as he could, and he feared that any longer would make them both decide to just eliminate him and fight it out. Still, whoever did not receive the chest would surely kill him, so he knew he was dead no matter what he did.

 

His hand shook as he sipped his wine. Would a dagger in the back or poison in his food be more painful?

The town bell tolled noon, the signal for him to rise and address the crowd. Lady Astrabella and Rusky were seated at the table for lunch, their eyes fixed on him with very threatening looks. The mayor gulped. Poison seemed the way to go. Less messy and you got to enjoy the taste of a good steak while you were at it.

 

He rose and tapped his spoon against his goblet. “Ladies and—” His voice cracked and gave out. He cleared his throat and started again. “Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. You have done me a great honor.”

 

The guests fell silent. They stared at him, at Lady Astrabella, and at Rusky Tamal, expectant. News spread fast, it seemed. “I wanted to take this opportunity to—”

 

“Who gets the chest?” someone shouted from the back.

 

The mayor’s pasted-on smile faltered. “Ah. Yes, the chest. Straight to the point, I suppose.” On second thought, the mayor had experienced indigestion before and was not fond of the idea of dying to a particularly aggressive form of it. Daggers were the way to go. “I suppose, keeping all the relevant facts in mind--” Daggers were sharp. Poison! “—It seems right and proper to—” Poison? No! Daggers! “—And this is after a full, thorough review of the situation, mind you—” Poison! Daggers! Poison! Daggers!

 

What the mayor did not know is that his salvation was already on its way. The beat of wings and sound of something displacing air at an incredibly fast rate disturbed the market business, interrupted the noonday gossip, and eventually reached the ears of the mayor and his guests. He paused in his speech, confused. This didn’t sound like poison or daggers. Outside, the townsfolk craned their necks upwards to see a slender, gold dragon plummeting towards the mayor’s house.

 

Aurelia whooped as she crashed through the roof. She slammed into the top of the mayor’s feast-table, and it shattered beneath her. The guests had only enough time to gasp in preparation for a scream before she reared up and let out a deep, echoing roar that obliterated any potential thoughts for resistance.

 

Now the screams came. The guests and servants stumbled over themselves to get away, all fighting each other to be the first out the door. The mayor, however, sank to the ground from sheer relief. Death by dragonfire was said to be instant.

Aurelia chuckled and reared up on her hind legs. She beat her wings and let out a roar that, either from terror or some quirk of magic, sent them all sprawling to the ground. The room fell into silence. She came back down to all four legs and cleared her throat.

 

“Where is your leader?” she demanded.

 

All eyes looked to the mayor. He stood up slowly, dusted off his jacket, and spread his arms wide, ready to embrace the inevitable. “I am,” he said.

 

Aurelia’s eyes narrowed and she examined him. He did not seem a great warrior, and he was too fat for a wizard. Everyone knew wizards were skinny old men with long beards that smelled of prunes and fish. Why was he the leader? Nothing for it but to play along, she supposed. She stepped forward, towering over him. “Then, sir mayor,” she said, “This may come as a shock, but I’m conquering your town.”

 

The mayor stood up straighter. “Is…is that so?” he stammered.

 

She leaned down until they were nose-to-snout, teeth bared. “Yes,” she said, voice almost a whisper, “And you, I’m afraid, are out of a job. I will be running things personally.”

 

Slowly, a wide grin spread across the mayor’s face. It grew wider and wider, almost manic. “Oh dear, oh dear. Well, I suppose I have no choice.” He stepped back and bowed. “I surrender! I abdicate my position! I am no longer the mayor. All hail…” He paused. “What was your name?”

 

Aurelia’s eyes narrowed, and she searched his face for some sign of a trick. “Aurelia.”

 

“All hail Aurelia!” the mayor said. He smiled at the crowd, reserving a sly smirk for Astrabella and Rusky. He began backing away, towards the nearest door. “Now, I would hardly presume to tell a dragon how to run her show, so I will show myself out, pack a few bags, and be out of your new mansion by morning.”

 

He made a mad dash for the exit, and Aurelia was far too bewildered to stop him. She turned towards her new subjects and cleared her throat. “As you can see, I—” She paused, searching for the right word. “--defeated your leader fair and square. I believe that means I’m in charge now, right?”

 

She paused, waiting for some sign of assent. The crowd met her gaze with wide, frightened eyes, but none trusted themselves to speak. She huffed in annoyance. “Let me put that a different way,” she growled, “I’m in charge. Would anyone like to dispute that?”

 

One man nervously raised a hand. “Strictly speaking, no, you’re not.”

 

The dragon’s head swiveled, her full attention coming to bear on the man. “No?” she said, disbelief in her voice, “He surrendered. I’m in charge now. That’s how this works.”

 

The man fidgeted. “See, we have a set system, a protocol, in case the mayor dies or is otherwise indisposed. The next person in line is now the mayor, you see.”

 

The dragon raised what passed for an eyebrow. “Oh is that how you think this works?” She gestured toward him with a claw. “And who would that be, hmm?”

 

The man brightened. “Oh. Me, of course. I am the secretary of vice-mayoral affairs, after all.” He drew himself up and puffed out his chest, pride trumping fear for the moment. “A very important job, you see. Lots of duties and responsibilities.”

 

The dragon nodded sagely. “I do see.” Quick as a whip, her head came down, jaws wide, and she roared right in his face. His very expensive haircut smoldered, and his mouth opened wide in a scream that came out as more of a squeak. Then, his eyes rolled upwards and he fainted.

 

 Aurelia turned to the others. “So! Who’s next in succession?”

 

An old man shakily raised his hand. “I…think that is me.”

 

A single glower from her was enough to make him put his hand back down. She looked back to the crowd and spoke with false sweetness. “Let me ask again. Who is next in line?”

 

“You are!” the assistant to the secretary of vice-mayoral affairs said hurriedly.

 

The dragon nodded. “That’s right.” She reached down with a golden claw and patted him on the head. “You’re promoted to the esteemed position of ‘Not on the Dinner Menu’.” With an air of smug superiority, she lay down on the ruins of the table and let out a languid yawn. “Now, go inform the town that Aurelia, the great dragon, is here. Oh, and get me all your gold.”

 

The assembled men and woman glanced at each other, expressions nervous. “All of it?” one of the local ladies said, aghast.

“All of it,” Aurelia repeated, “Pile it up. I want a nice bed to stretch out on.”

​

“But we need it,” the woman protested, “Without it, we’re—” She swallowed. “We’ll rejoin the ranks of the peasantry!”

 

“Quite right!” the local banker chimed in, “You can conquer our town. You can humiliate our mayor.. But you can’t steal our gold! That’s a step too far.” The others murmured in assent.

 

Aurelia snorted. “You know what? Let me put this a different way.” She lowered her head, maw spewing smoke and letting the scent of brimstone wash over the crowd. She sucked in a large breath and, in the loudest bellow she could manage, shouted, “Pile all your gold right here, in front of me, or I will burn this entire town to the ground and sift through the ashes for it!” She had no intention of doing so, of course. For one, it would be very wasteful. For two, it would be incredibly dirty and might tarnish her scales.

 

“On second thought…” the woman said brightly.

 

“You make a compelling argument!” the banker added with several nods.

 

“All the gold, coming right up!”

 

“You sit tight. We’ll be back.”

 

By the end of the day, Aurelia sat upon a pile of gold. It was completely pathetic by her father’s standards, and even by the wealth of her own treasure, but it was the spoils of her conquest. That made it valuable, more than its actual worth would say. At the very least, it was large enough for her to stretch out. And so she did.

 

She glanced suspiciously around, looking for any spies. Then, she pretended to sleep, only to leap to her feet and glare at every dark corner and silent doorway. However, none dared disturb her. Satisfied, she allowed the grin she had been fighting off to spread across her face. That grin turned into a chuckle, then a soft laugh, then a very un-dragonlike squeal of delight. Her claws dug into the pile and threw some gold into the air as she trumpeted her triumph. Off to a good start! A very good start indeed. She slept very well that night.

 

In the morning, the former mayor was found dead, stabbed in the back by a poisoned dagger.

 

Aurelia expected many of them to flee, and some did. However, most of them just hid in their homes for the first few days. After they discovered that Aurelia was not, in fact, out to kill them and eat their entrails with a nice gravy, they hesitantly resumed business as usual. Aurelia allowed this, busy making plans and organizing her new hoard. However, her relative solitude did not last.

 

One morning, she lay upon her hoard, frowning down at the two humans kneeling before her. “So,” she said, “You both are after this…” She gestured vaguely. “…chest.”

 

“Correct,” the man said softly, too softly.

 

“Which is buried on the border of your properties.” Of course, all their properties were hers now. She just didn’t see the point in directly managing them all.

 

“Yes,” the woman said. The pair exchanged glowers.

 

Aurelia pressed a claw against her forehead. “Alright, ‘Lady’ Astro--”

 

“Astrabella.” The woman pouted in a way that would melt a man’s heart. Unfortunately, her air of carefully cultivated refinement and poise was completely lost on Aurelia.

 

Aurelia growled, which made the woman recoil. The man, Rusky, smirked and revealed a mouth full of perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth.

 

“Great dragon,” he said soothingly, “The chest clearly does not belong to her.”

 

“Liar!” Lady Astrabella snapped, “And it doesn’t belong to you.” The two of them began shouting at each other, almost screaming in each other’s faces. Aurelia put up with it until they drew daggers (though she couldn’t tell if they were poisoned or not) and began waving them about at each other.

 

“Enough!” she bellowed. Her voice was far more impressive than either of theirs. They fell silent and stared at her, alarmed. She glowered at them, but it quickly turned into a smirk. “I am happy to report that you are both right! It does not belong to either of you.” She leaned in close and wrapped her large foreclaws around both their shoulders. “It belongs to me now.”

 

The two of them considered this. Aurelia could see them sizing up her and taking stock of their current options. They quickly discovered that list to be laughably short.

 

Rusky pursed his lips. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s alright. So long as she doesn’t get it.”

 

“I concur,” Lady Astrabella agreed and threw a glare at her rival. The glare was returned in kind and they both seemed to draw some satisfaction from seeing each other deprived of the prize, which was almost as good as having it for themselves.

Aurelia grinned. “Glad that’s settled then.” She patted them both on the back and quickly shooed them out the door. “If you have any more problems,” she said pleasantly, “Feel free to swing by.”

 

She watched them leave with a smug feeling in her heart. A dragon would never have been satisfied unless they personally possessed the treasure. For a human, though, it was enough to see it taken from a rival. Amusing.

 

Well, maybe not quite enough. Her next meal did taste a little funny, but poisons are not nearly as effective on dragons as they are on humans. After a solid week of attempts, her would-be assassins gave up in despair.

 

Unfortunately for her and her vaguely-formed plans of making an army of humans that she could use to smash Arnum’s face into the ground with, Rusky and Lady Astrabella were only the first of many. Her invitation for the two of them to swing by was intended as a threat. However, they and the rest of the town took it as an invitation.

 

Once the humans realized that she was much less likely to burn them alive and eat their corpses for lunch as they had thought, they began flooding into her commandeered mansion with a never-ending list of requests, pleas for justice, and any manner of what she considered trivial and unimportant matters. Even after telling them that she would only hear from those with an actual problem, Farmer Brown still came in, frothing at the mouth, about how the local “hooligans” had “done stole some of his apples”.

 

The thought of burning him, the “hooligans”, and the apple trees to a crisp grew deliciously attractive, but she resisted the urge. Such actions were both dramatic and wasteful: in other words, exactly what Arnum would have done.

 

When she grew tired of being questioned and petitioned and bothered, she left her lair and lounged on the rooftops above the marketplace to glare down at the crowd below. During her time in town, she had discovered that the only time humans avoided her was when they thought she was watching them and waiting for them to displease her. Thus, when she sat glaring down at the market, they universally avoided her gaze and pretended she did not exist. It was glorious.

 

However, not every human seemed to get the message. A little girl would stare back at her every time she lounged on the rooftops. Aurelia’s best glowers did nothing to discourage her, but had the opposite effect. The girl stared more boldly, in awe of the golden dragon. It was gratifying in its own way. After several times, Aurelia gave in and granted the small human the slightest nod of acknowledgement.

 

It was all the encouragement the girl needed. She scampered across the market and craned her neck upwards. “Hello!” she called up.

 

Aurelia sighed heavily. There went her hopes of having a peaceful lounge. “Yes, tiny human? What is it?”

 

The girl reached into her pockets and drew out a crude approximation of a rabbit made of cloth and straw. “I wanted to give this to you,” she said, face guileless and smiling.

 

Aurelia raised a scaly eyebrow. “And why,” she drawled, “Would I need that?”

 

“Because you always look sad and angry whenever I see you,” the girl said. She held it up insistently. “And this will make you feel better.”

 

Aurelia’s confusion was visible on her face. No one ever gave a dragon anything. Dragons had to take what they wanted. Yet here was a human giving something freely. Aurelia sensed no ulterior motive. After all, what danger lay in a human child? She reached down carefully and took the stuffed rabbit. “Thank you?” she said, “I will be to put it with my hoard.”

 

The girl frowned. “You’re supposed to sleep with it.”

 

“Sleep with it?”

 

“So he can keep you safe at night.”

 

A woman let out a shriek from across the market. In a flurry of skirts, she scampered across the square and swept the girl up, babbling apologies and pleading with Aurelia not to be mad. Before the dragon could get a word in edgewise, the girl and her mother were gone. However, the stuffed rabbit remained. Aurelia did not cast it aside. Worthless as it was, it was freely given, and dragons are loath to give even the smallest thing away.

 

However, a gift from a single child did not signal a change in the general attitude of the town. Some of the humans seemed to think that hiding in underground cellars and ranting about how she was a tyrant would somehow remove her from her position. Posters went up all over the town (most of the townsfolk couldn’t read, but the illustrations got the point across anyway). She ignored them. They could hardly do anything to her, and woe to anyone that invaded her lair. The humans, she decided, were very quick to speak, but slow to take action. If anything came of their plotting, she had at least half a year to do something about it.

 

She told herself over and over again that all these annoyances would be worth the time and effort. Once she whipped the city guard into shape and put the town on a war footing, she would have an army. From there, she would take over the next town, and the next, until she ruled the whole kingdom. Any dragon could burn down a city and kidnap a princess, but she would be better. She would rule, and none would resist her might. Not even Arnum.

 

Unfortunately, the city guard was filled with fat, middle-aged men whose idea of hard fighting was pulling two drunks apart in a tavern. Of course, that did not include the times that they themselves were the drunks, throwing wild swings and insults at each other. Their captain was an enormous man whose uniform barely fit and who always nodded off at the earliest opportunity. Aurelia put him on “The List of Despised Persons” alongside Farmer Brown and the Young Hooligans.

The humans, however, were not her primary concern. She spent every day looking over her shoulder and watching the skies, determined to catch sight of Arnum or the others if they tried to sneak up on her. She would not be caught off-guard again.

 

Fortunately, she saw neither claw nor scale of them, but one evening as she was flying low over the town, she overheard a conversation. Two peasants, both pleasantly drunk and very unobservant, chatted in the alley. They had a poster and were fumbling to put it up. Aurelia landed on a nearby roof and peered down at them, curious.

 

“Did ya hear?” the first said.

 

“Ya hear lotsa things,” the second said, “What’s this, then?” He patted at his pockets for a tack or two so that he could pin the poster.

 

 “Here. Use mine,” the first offered and pulled out two of his own. Unfortunately, he dropped the poster in the process and frowned down at it, confused. Aurelia snorted in mild amusement. “Right,” he muttered, “So. It sounds like we’ll be rid of that dragon soon.”

 

Aurelia sat up a little straighter.

 

“About time,” the second scoffed, “Near wore out my fingers copying all those letters. Figured adventurers would be knocking down the door for a chance to slay a dragon.”

 

“Don’t make ‘em like they used to,” the first agreed, “Why in my day, an adventurer would charge a whole horde of orcs, bare-chested with naught but a broken club for a few coppers.”

 

“Might be why there aren’t any more of that kind of adventurer.”

 

“Can’t argue with ya there, mate. But anyways, they say they got not just any adventurer coming, but a real, genuine knight!” The first chuckled and finally tacked the poster to the wall. “I tell ya what, I would not want to be her when he arrives.”

Aurelia leaned down over the edge and let the acrid smell of her breath wash over them. “And I would not want to be you two right now,” she hissed.

 

They both jumped up and looked wildly around. She grinned down at them. The color drained from their face, and they stumbled over each other as they ran away.

 

Nimbly, she reached down and tore the poster off the wall. Carefully, she spread it out before her eyes and read it with an expression of rapt attention. “Salvation is on its way! Sir Nestor is riding to our salvation! Join the Resistance today!” A whiff of her breath scorched it to cinders. She scoffed at the idea. No human, knight or otherwise, could pierce the scales of Nal-Arzul’s children. A lesser dragon, perhaps, but not her. Still, this could be an opportunity. She would meet this knight in battle, though, and show everyone that her power could not be questioned. Then they would fall in line. She took to the air once more and chuckled. Oh yes, they would all fall in line.