A pale-skinned gnome with shaggy black hair, bare feet, and wearing an apron sat cross-legged in a corner of the dining room, next to a toolbox and a knee-high mechanical contraption, a panel open in its side. Busy tinkering, the gnome didn’t acknowledge Rylana's entrance. Nobody did, certainly not the giggling couple.
Since the gnome looked like he worked in the diner, Rylana started toward him, but the kitchen door swung open first. A handsome man as tidy as the dining room walked out in black trousers, an apron, and a crisp cream-colored shirt with the sleeves evenly rolled up to reveal muscled forearms. He had short silver hair, emerald-green eyes, bronze skin, and radiated power even though he was carrying a tray, not unlike the dwarf baker across the street. Instead of cupcakes, his held a plate of sliced meat under a precise dollop of gravy and surrounded by cubes of beautifully colored vegetables.
It had been a long time since breakfast, and Rylana's mouthwould have watered, but she was promptly struck by there being something familiar about the man. No, that was undoubtedly adragonshape-shifted into human form. There was a scar beside his right eye that stretched back into his hairline, and when his emerald eyes locked onto her, Rylana rocked back. She’d met him before. She was sure of it.
The dragon in human form roared and lifted the tray, as if he might hurl it at her—or against the wall in a fit of rage—but he caught himself and instead set it on the bar before springing toward her.
Rylana slung her pack and her weapons off her shoulder as she rushed back outside where she would have more room to maneuver. But the cursed tranquility ribbon kept her from drawing an arrow. The presumptuous magic evenzappedher when she tried to pull one from her quiver. Furious, she threw her bow and quiver to the ground and pulled out her utility knife, the only blade the peacekeepers hadn’t tied.
“Problem?” Sylin, who’d waited in the street, asked calmly.
“I’ve met that dragon before.” Rylana backed farther, surprised he hadn’t yet charged out after her.
A roar sounded again, not the vocalization that might come from a man’s throat but the thunderous heart-rattling roar of a real dragon. It came not from the front room of the diner but the alley behind it.
“Youmet him?” Sylin asked. “Or one of yourarrowsmet him?”
“I think he got a real personal introduction to the contents of my quiver, yes.”
As Rylana crouched with her knife, a shadow fell over them. Scrapes came from the rooftop of the diner—talons gripping the gutters. A huge silver dragon with great muscles bunching under sleek scales glared down at her, and his fang-filled maw opened, saliva glistening on teeth like daggers. No, likeswords.
Rylana looked down at the ridiculously small weapon she held. Her knife wouldn’t even scratch one of the dragon’s scales.
“I’m dead.”
2
Alarms gongedas the dragon leaped from the rooftop and onto the street, roaring again as his emerald eyes locked onto Rylana. She had no trouble reading the intent to kill in them. He crouched, not able to spread his wings fully because of the storefronts on either side of the street, but nothing impeded his legs, the powerful muscles that would let him spring at her.
Before the man had changed into a dragon, he’d seemed familiar, but now that he stood before Rylana in his natural form, she remembered seeing him before. She rememberedshootinghim before. It had been from a high perch above a mountain valley while human, orc, and dwarven soldiers had battled against elves and dragons on the battlefield below.
Eyes ablaze, the dragon roared again, drowning out the gongs coming from a pillar in a nearby intersection, and she knew he remembered her too. He opened his maw wider, and all the passersby that had been in the street scattered. Drivers of wagons abandoned them, rushing into doorways or alleys.
Rylana backed farther away, glancing around a corner and toward one of those alleys. She turned and sprinted toward it, andnone too soon. Flames roiled from the back of the dragon’s throat, spraying the cobblestones where she’d stood. The brilliant light and intense heat followed her into the alley.
She would have sprinted for the end, hoping to lose the dragon in the city, but an authoritative call of, “Halt, dragon!” came from the other side of the diner.
More alarms gonged from pillars in other intersections throughout the area. Soon, the entire city would know about this.
The order to stop didn’t keep the dragon from stomping to the entrance of the alley. His long silver neck snaked around the corner, his eyes focusing again on Rylana as he once more opened his maw.
She threw her knife at one of those emerald eyes, then sprinted toward the end of the alley. The dragon turned his head to avoid what would have been a precise strike at her target, and the blade glanced off his scaled cheek. As she’d feared, unlike the mithril-headed arrows she’d loosed on the battlefield, the simple steel blade didn’t even scratch him. All it did was piss him off. Further.
The dragon roared again. He was too large to rush into the alley, but he crouched, probably to springoverit and land on the street one block over.
But a magical net flew at him from the side, the strands sizzling as they touched his flank and stuck to him. Two twelve-foot-tall golems strode into the alley from the opposite end, their brownish-gray bodies appearing to be made from stone, but magic making them far more impervious. Three-foot-tall gnomes in gray peacekeeper uniforms and armed with stun sticks and net hurlers gathered behind the golems, commanding them to stride past Rylana and toward the dragon. He’d paused in his attack to snarl to the side at whoever had hurled the net. More peacekeepers, presumably.
In most of the world, nobody would consider the diminutivegnomes, no taller than a goblin and less muscular, suitable for law enforcement, but here, in this city that they’d made with the help of the new god, everyone knew they had the magical wherewithal—and the divine blessing—to ensure people obeyed the laws.
“Halt, dragon!” someone called from the street again.
More golems appeared on either side of his netted flanks.
“You are in violation of the laws of Tranquility. If you do not immediately change into a benign form, we will force you out of the city and close your establishment.”
The dragon seethed, tail rigid and muscles taut. Would he have the power or be able to use his fire to destroy the net that covered him?
Perhaps, but, at the gnomes’ threat, he looked toward the diner, and he didn’t try. Smoke wafted from his nostrils when he glowered back into the alley at Rylana, showing his fangs again before closing his maw. But in the end, surrounded by peacekeepers and their golems, the dragon shifted forms, the air rippling around him like a mirage in the desert.
