An Arsonist and a Necromancer Walk into a Bar

Interlude XXI – It's Starting to Drag On

In the heavens high above the Pumilios Mountains a dragon flew far and fast. Red of scale with ten legs and two sets of wings, yet with a size that marked her as little more than an infant compared to the behemoths which scoured the skies. Those Lords of the volcanic mountains which painted the center of the continent in molten rock, the remnants of a remnant who clung tight to sins long forgotten.

This dragon was not like her kin though. Too young to remember yet too old to follow her elders blindly. This one instead flew south, following instinct more than conscious thought as she left behind what others might call her birthright. But she knew where she wished to head, and she knew where she had come from. Everything else was… unimportant.

Or at least she hoped.

There was a small chance Giulia the Young Red Dragon was very lost.

Well, okay, lost was a strong word. She'd just been… distracted, yes. She was on an adventure, after all, and in times like this it was more about the journey than the destination.

Besides, flight meant she could backtrack easily enough, and following the roads from the sky was only a little harder than following them from the land. Not that she'd spent much time on land, not when everything was so beautiful from up here! As they were well into winter at this point the trees were deep shades of blue and purple, the Everbleus native to the region painting the mountainsides like a second sea. And the wildlife was even more amazing! Just yesterday she'd seen a flock of griffons migrating south, and they'd only tried to eat her a little! Being a dragon was incredible!

…Even if it was a bit lonely. She missed her friends. They weren't gone, just… somewhere else.

Wait, that made them sound like they were dead.

She was pretty sure they weren't dead!

…Probably.

But that was why she was going to see them! First she'd make sure they were safe and happy, and then they'd hang out by the canals and eat all the foods she never was able to while she was sick and then she'd take them on rides on her back and it would be so cool. Giulia was going to grab Palmira and Lenna and make up for all the time they'd lost over the years she'd been stuck in that egg.

…Once she figured out where they were, at least.

Okay, maybe she was a little lost.

But she couldn't help herself, the world was incredible as a dragon! Flying in the sky was like a dream come true! She could spit fire now, just like Palmira! She even had a bunch of spare arms which was… well, okay, it was more weird than cool and she didn't know what to do with most of them, but still.

More than anything else though, now that she was a dragon she could properly breathe and it was amazing!

Her nostrils flared as she opened her mouth wide, taking in the cold morning air in such a way that would have had her hacking her ruined lungs out back when she'd been Human. Instead she simply inhaled and exhaled, delighting in the common act which had so long been denied her.

Doing a quick loopty-loop in celebration (and nearly falling out of the sky as the vertigo she still wasn't used to dealing with reared its ugly head once again) Giulia noticed a small farming village nestled in the valley of two mountains as she hung upside down in the air.

It looked like a little toy set from up here. Like the dollhouses she'd had when she was younger, the little blocks of wood her father had painstakingly carved for her from the branches they collected while gathering firewood. Little hovels to house the little dolls her mother had given her for her birthday—the dolls which had belonged to her grandmother, who had played with them herself as a child.

The dolls which didn't exist anymore, burned and buried along with everything else.

…Ah, she'd made herself sad again.

Giulia turned away from the earth, looking up into the endless blue heavens. She didn't like thinking of home. She didn't like thinking of Mama and Papa, of all her oldest friends from the Before. They were gone, and unlike her they weren't coming back. It all just made her so sad to think about so she just… she tried not to. It wasn't like she'd never see them again, because one day she'd join them in Heaven and—

…No, she wouldn't anymore, would she?

Giulia let out a roar of flame, muscles twisting and twitching as her whole body spasmed in the sky. Guilt, regret, fear, self-loathing, a dozen emotions she hated rearing their ugly heads as they always did. Suddenly and without warning, the littlest of things setting them off.

It was awful.

She landed against a cliffside, grinding her face into a rock as she forced herself not to think, not to feel until all those thoughts which made her feel sick were sanded off of her brain and left behind a far more cheerful apathy.

Raising her head she took a deep breath, letting it all flow away. Focusing only on the inhale, the exhale, and the crisp air filling her lungs.

'You cannot change the past,' her Papa had always told her. 'It's best to live in the present, and focus on the future.'

It was good advice, and the kind she had tried to follow ever since she'd lost him.

So she pushed the past out of her mind, ground herself against the dirt and air of the present, and focused only on the future she wanted to see.

Giulia would find her friends, and they'd reunite and have fun and it would be amazing. Nothing else mattered.

With only that thought in mind she took to the skies once again, determined all over again to chase that future with all her might.

-<X>-

It was a little after noon the following day when she finally arrived at her destination. She knew because on the horizon she could see the familiar ash clouds of smoking volcanoes, smell the sulfur and smoke of which she had nearly forgotten. And as she broke through the ashen smog she finally laid eyes on the city she had once so long ago called home.

Iscrimo looked like an anthill from all the way up here, a plateau of black and red which spiraled around the pit of lava at its heart. The City of Fire still burned as it always had, the ancient citadel acting as a beacon to contrast against the dreary skies above. An edifice of Man's conquest, yet from here so small she could hide the whole of it behind the palm of one of her many hands.

Outside of the city however, the countryside looked battered. Beyond the pristine obsidian walls entire chunks of the mountain had been carved into sheer cliffs, trenches torn through the earth like a cat's claws over an old quilt. Something had clearly happened here, and recently. She just wasn't sure what.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She wasn't given much time to dwell on that though. Suddenly she froze as she heard a deep and bellowing roar.

From the center of the city a dragon rose. Scales as red as her own and with a long, snake-like body, it looked as though someone had attempted to create a copy of Fthora only to fail in capturing something fundamental. What that was she couldn't say, but it was as clear to her as every other instinct she'd felt since her transformation.

This all was secondary to the fact that it was flying straight towards her.

"Wait!" she shouted, waving her many arms around frantically as if that would do anything to stop it. "Wait wait wait! I'm like you—I think! I'm a dragon too! Please don't eat me, I taste awful! Stop, please!"

It did not stop, but thankfully it didn't eat her either. Instead it shot past her, circling her body thrice until she was surrounded on all sides by red scales and sharp talons.

Only then did it turn to her, letting her for the first time see a dragon besides Fthora face to face.

The first thing she noticed was that the dragon was big. Not as unreasonably titanic as the one who rebirthed her—though she doubted there was anything in the world which could match the ancient Dragon's sheer scale—but still larger than her by a factor of ten. With a single snap of his jaws he could devour her in an instant, a fact she was unfortunately very aware of.

"I am the Great Ticino, Minister of the Canton of Le Colline, Ambassador of the Obsidian City of Iscrimo," the dragon thundered at her, the temperature of the air racketing to a height even her new body found uncomfortable. "Who are you, little child, to trespass upon my territory? Speak quickly, lest you suffer the consequences."

She flinched back, curling around on herself in a way that if her flight had been any less magical would have seen her plumet from the sky like a rock. As it was, it just made her look a bit pathetic.

"I'm, um, I'm Giulia," she stumbled over her words, trying to be polite and more importantly not get killed by the big angry dragon. "And I'm, um, I'm here to visit my friends?"

The Great Ticino stared at her for a long moment. Judging her words and her worth, the presence of his pertinence impossible to ignore. For in her bones she knew that a single wrong move would see her dead in an instant.

And then the dragon sighed, a great billow of hot air blasting across her whole body. It was kind of gross, not that she'd say so out loud. Then he untangled himself from around her body, leaving her free in the open sky once again.

"Why should I have expected anything different…" he grumbled to himself. Giulia considered apologizing considering how let down he seemed, but he'd also terrified her so she decided he deserved it. "Fine. Fine, little child. So long as you do not cause any trouble, my city shall be open to you for the foreseeable future. Do not make me regret this."

"Um, thank you, Signor Ticino?" she gave a confused bow, not sure who he was to call Iscrimo his city.

Unless he was the new Duke?

Wait, was the Duke of Iscrimo always a dragon? Did Palmira burn a dragon alive back then!?

Giulia was suddenly both much more impressed by and much more terrified of her old friend.

"That is Minister Ticino," he growled at her. "Mind your manners while in this city, brat. Lest I mind them for you."

Brat!? That's even worse than being called a child! Duke or no Duke, that was just rude.

As the dragon flew off to wherever it was he came from Giulia blew a silent raspberry at his retreating back, before descending down into Iscrimo herself.

Then—because she was a polite dragon—she got in line behind a group of startled farmers outside the city gates, waiting her turn to be let in.

The farmers were very clearly uncomfortable with this arrangement, but she made sure to smile reassuringly at them and keep a respectful distance between herself and them.

For some reason this didn't seem to calm them down.

But the line moved quickly, and after the farmers bolted through the gates she was standing before the gatehouse guards. Squatting until she was basically flat on the ground she smiled politely at the frazzled guardsman, keeping her head as level as she could with the very tiny man.

(And to think, she'd once thought herself short.)

"Uh…" the man gave his partner on the other side a confused glance, but the other guy pretended he didn't see it, clearly deciding that this was Not His Problem. "Are you… trying to enter the city, Signor…?"

"It's Signorina Giulia, actually," she huffed, trying not to feel too offended. She probably would have made the same mistake. "And I'm here to visit my friend who I heard was living in the city. I don't know if you've heard of a Lenna di Vittoria, per chance?"

The guard—clearly overwhelmed by a great many things—blinked slowly, before nodding. "Uh, right. Signorina Giulia, on personal business to visit Signorina di Vittoria, for… how many days…?"

"Oh, I'm not sure," she blushed bashfully. Or she would have, if not for the scales. "Probably a couple days? It depends really. I have someone else I want to go see as well so I'm not sure how long I'll be. Maybe a week, or thereabouts?"

"…Right. Well, everything seems in order, I suppose. Have a nice visit to Iscrimo Signorina, and remember to stay safe. As a young…? Uh, you know what, you can just head in."

"Thank you, Signor!" she chirped, glad things had gone smoother than the last time she tried to enter. That gate guard had deserved Palmira setting his pants on fire.

Giving the man a cheerful wave she took off, flying over rather than through the walls to enter the city proper.

The gate was too small for her to fit through, after all.

As she flew off, she faintly heard the guardsman mutter to himself, "Huh, I didn't know dragons liked modern art."

How silly. She wasn't here for the paintings, she was here for Lenna.

Unfortunately, she realized very quickly that despite knowing her old friend was in Iscrimo, she did not actually know where said friend currently lived.

At first she'd tried the old smithy, though that was… no longer there.

She wondered what happened to Margarita. She hoped the old blacksmith was still alive, but she had already been so old…

Giulia decided to put that off for another time. This was supposed to be a happy day after all. Instead, she very carefully landed on the roof of a bakery further into the city, asking one of the gawping guards for directions.

Honestly, with a dragon for a Duke you'd think these people would be a lot more used to people like her flying around!

Eventually though she managed to figure out where to go. Fluttering down before a workshop under the banner of the Loretti household in the richer part of the city, the dragon who had once been a girl knocked a single claw politely against the wooden door.

(She also might have scratched it a little bit, but nobody saw so nobody could prove it was her!)

A woman who was very clearly not Lenna—due to being an Elf and not a Human (wait could Humans turn into Elves like they could into Dragons?)—opened the door. Then she looked up. And up. And up.

"Hello," Giulia smiled politely down at her. "Is Lenna in today? Can you tell her Giulia is here to visit?"

The Elf blinked slowly, her neck craned so far it looked like she might topple over any second now.

Then she slammed the door shut without a word, bolting back inside.

Rude.

But before she could knock the second time the door was thrown open again, and suddenly there was a familiar woman standing beneath the doorframe.

For the first time in so very many years Giulia had finally reunited with one of her friends. A very angry looking friend.

"Who the hell is using my dead friend's—!" Lenna trailed off, eyes narrowed in confusion. Then realization, which caused her mouth to twist in a way that just kind of made her look constipated. "…Wait. Wait. There's no way…"

Lenna had grown, Giulia realized with some shock. She was no longer a scrawny little girl with pasty skin and a perpetual sneer. Now she was… well, she was a much taller scrawny girl with pasty skin and a perpetual sneer.

What an improvement!

Hm. She wondered if Palmira was any taller? It was difficult to imagine, she assumed the other girl would be tiny for the rest of her life.

Well, she was a dragon now, so she supposed she'd always be taller. She could live with that.

"…Giulia?" the young woman rasped, eyes going wide and teary. "Is… Is that really you?"

"Hey Lenna!" she smiled back, coming as close as she dared to nuzzle her shout against her old friend's shoulder. "I know I look different now, and I'm sorry it took so long, but look! I fixed my lungs! I'm not sick anymore, and now we can finally be together again!"

Lenna leaned against her in turn, and Giulia grinned in delight at how easily her friend accepted her new body. Ah, it truly had been far too long!

"Holy shit," Lenna muttered to herself, still in shock. "Holy shit. Palmira wasn't lying. You actually turned into a dragon. Goddess above. My childhood friend is a dragon now. Holy…"

…Maybe she should give her a bit more time to come to terms with it. Lenna had always been of a more delicate disposition, after all.

But that was fine. She could wait. For the first time in her life, she could wait.