Author Archives: patricktadge

Bruce beat on the door with the flat of his palm, with wanton disregard for the disturbances being caused in the middle of the night. His normally unruffled appearance was, in a word, ruffled. He seemed to have thrown a randomly selected coat over the top of a pair of battered jeans, a slightly stretched out t-shirt, and a pair of untied boots.

Directly behind him, Charles shrugged awkwardly, looking up and down the street. “He might not be here.”

Bruce stopped hammering for a moment to turn and look at Charles. “Would that be good for you or bad for me?”

Charles seemed to ponder this for a moment before the door opened.

“Apparently not that bad for you,” Charles offered.

Alistair fixed Bruce in place with a gimlet eye. He wore his typical getup, the subdued but colored suit and barely buttoned shirt. Bruce had occasionally wondered if Alistair slept in it, and it seemed quite likely given the current situation.

“Bruce.” Alistair began with leaden precision. “You aren’t unpleasant company on the regular but is there a reason you’re trying to beat my door in in the middle of the night?”

Bruce swallowed hard, a solid attempt to control his own breathing. “We need to make Charles less lucky.”

Alistair’s only movement was to slide his gaze over Bruce’s shoulder. Charles waved from below the steps – an average man in almost every conceivable way, he would have been impossible to describe. His most distinguishing feature was his utter lack of anything outside the absolute center of the bell curve. “Charles?”

“That’s me.” Charles ducked his head.

Alistair went back to Bruce. “Are either of you going to elaborate any further?”

“Is luck real, Alistair?” Bruce said.

“I believe the idea that some people are more lucky than others and rectifying that is the core concept behind most revolutions. What exactly is your issue?”

A gust of wind shuffled through the trees, an embarrassed little attempt to break the silence that followed.

“May we come in?” Bruce asked.

“I haven’t decided. What’s happening?”

Bruce took another moment. “Charles is, he’s extremely lucky. I didn’t completely believe him but he always lands on his feet.”

Alistair nodded. “I can see how that would be hard for you.”

“No, but it’s true.”

“Clearly my main objection to whatever this is.” Alistair waved his hand. “I’m in the middle of something, if you could hurry it along.”

“He sucks the luck out of other people, or something. People who know him have bad luck.” Bruce jabbed a thumb at him. “Again, I didn’t believe him, but then it started happening to me. My nice pen broke, completely ruined my shirt.”

“Tragic.”

Bruce threw his hands up. “That’s not it, that was just one thing. Charles got dropped off his company’s HR roster right before they started a round of firings, right?” Bruce looked to Charles.

Charles gestured over his own head. “Completely forgot about me, fired everyone around me, I walked out like an action guy in front of an explosion.” He mimed the noise and used his fingers to make a little impromptu prop.

“I’m frankly pleased for you.” Alistair started to close the door. “Good night.”

Bruce slapped the door back open. “Natasha is sick. It got very bad, very fast. I can’t afford to guess anymore. I think it might be true.”

“Natasha is a hale, hearty woman. She’ll be fine.”

“The baby might not be.”

Alistair looked blankly at Bruce.

“Baby?” Bruce ventured. “Mine? Natasha’s?”

“You have a baby?”

“She’s pregnant.”

Alistair frowned. “How long has this been a thing?”

“Six months!” Bruce slapped the door again. “Goddammit, Alistair, what the hell is going on?”

Alistair sighed. “It might just be coincidence.”

“Would I be here in the middle of the night if this was the only coincidence to happen? It got bad. This has to stop.”

Alistair stared back for a long, still moment. There was a searching moment. Then, he looked over at Charles. “How long has this been happening?”

Charles shrugged. “All my life, I reckon.”

“And you’re tired of it?”

Charles nodded.

“Parents make a deal with a fae? Favored by some gods?”

Bruce shook his head at the same time Charles did. “We already looked into that. He’s been grabbing iron and praising the wrong deities for a week now.”

Alistair gave Charles a critical glance, then cocked his finger. Charles stepped up beside Bruce, and Alistair gave him an appraising glance.

After a moment of shuffling, Charles said. “You’re shorter than I expected.”

Alistair sniffed hard. “Nobody asked.”

Charles cleared his throat and avoided eye contact. He glanced over Alistair’s shoulder before starting suddenly. “Oh, my god, is your house on fire?”

“A little bit.” Alistair poked Charles in the sternum. “It’s supposed to be right now.”

“It’s supposed to be on fire?”

“I said I was in the middle of something.”

Bruce tapped Charles on the shoulder. “Come on, man, focus up.”

“Right, sorry. I guess. Distracted. I guess.”

Alistair started to close the door. “Straightforward. Charles here isn’t a void attracting the luck of others; otherwise something unfortunate would have already happened.”

“More than the house on fire?” Charles put in.

“Again, nobody asked you. The point is, your personal good luck is overwriting the fortune of others. It isn’t necessary that others suffer, except insofar as the tapestry of fate is a complicated thing with great interactions.”

Charles goggled.

“What do we do?” Bruce asked.

“Charles, have you played the lottery before?”

Charles shook his head.

“Why not?” Alistair pointed down the street. “Go a very long way away, find a gas station, and buy something that has the numbers come up tomorrow.” He looked at the sky. “Later today.”

“Will that help?” Bruce said.

“If it doesn’t, you’ll at least have some pocket money to split.” Alistair waved Bruce in. “I’ll need you here.”

The loom beat incessantly, sliding across a weft that was both small enough to be delicately threaded by a set of smooth but aged hands and large enough to span the cosmos. That was the entirety of this reality: the loom, the threads, and the three figures weaving a pattern of impossible complexity. What these four stood on was nothingness itself, solidified into an edgeless surface. They bobbed at slightly different heights, as though they’d come to a loose agreement on where the floor should be but had failed to knock out the fine details before starting. Where there would be black, or space, or featureless plane – there was void. An overwhelming sense prevailed that nothing that happened here counted, in the same way that a memory didn’t count. An even more overwhelming sense said that what happened here counted more than anything else in the entire universe.

“Hello,” Bruce said.

The loom didn’t stop, but the three figures looked up at him.

“Hi. I’m Bruce. Um. I was sent here to talk to you about a little business with luck. A friend of mine is getting a little too much of it, I’m given to understand. And I was told that you might have something to do with it?”

The figures stared at Bruce, all three ancient crones. Their hands did not stop working the weave for a moment even as they studied him. Bruce studied them back, noting that while they were old, they were not aged. It was as though they had been created old seconds ago, or as if they existed before time but did not flow with time.

“You are outside your world,” the crone working the shuttle said, tying off a knot.

“You were sent by someone who cares not about you,” added one of the others as she beat the loom twice.

“Right.” Bruce cut off the third one. “I’m here because my wife and future child are ill and I’d like that to be knocked off. So if you could just get Charles Fogg to stop messing with everyone else’s fortune that would be lovely. Thank you.”

The shuttler spoke. “You do not understand the import of what you ask.”

“You ask to alter the pattern.”

“You demand that fate bends for you.”

Bruce laughed awkwardly. “See, yes, I’ve been told that it’s actually that I’m asking to stop bending fate for the other fellow. Just let it fall where it might.”

“Who asks you this?”

“Why come they not themselves?”

“What keeps them from here?”

Bruce shrugged, his eyes drifting towards the threads. One of the crones snipped a thread and, with blinding skill, tucked the loose end away into the pattern. “Long story, he can’t come places like this. Anyway, any objections?”

“He is such a beautiful shade of blue.”

Bruce cocked his head to the side. After a moment, he leaned forward. Then, “Elaborate on that?”

One of the crones ceased their work on the tapestry, reaching out for a thread and holding it out. It glimmered in the void, achingly blue, sparkling.

“He is such a lovely shade of blue,” she repeated.

“It would be a shame to hide it,” the shuttler added.

“If other threads must be hidden, so be it.”

Bruce took a step forward. “Wait, is this a convoluted metaphor? It’s literally just a nice shade of blue?”

The thread dove back into the weave.

“Seriously?” Bruce fished into his pocket and retrieved a plastic bag filled with ink, a snapped pen barely visible inside. “You broke my pen for his thread to be more visible? Does the blue mean anything? What if it was red?”

“The blue is pretty.”

“The red is passe.”

“Beauty is its own reward.”

Bruce opened the bag and looked inside. The broken pen lay like a shattered soldier, having fought valiantly to the last, a burgundy tube in a small sea of blue-black.

“So that’s it, then. His thread goes on top of all the others.”

Again, no answer. The loom beat.

“Well. Bugger this.” Bruce made a single quick movement, punching the bag inside out. The pen itself flew off into the void. At some point, it vanished in an event horizon, unnoticed by all.

Unnoticed because Bruce, in the same movement, flung himself onto the tapestry, smearing the ink up and across. An enormous blot shot across the tapestry, and then he scrabbled for the blue thread. The crones grabbed for him, and Bruce discovered to his surprise that even ancient beings of anthropomorphic concepts suffer the effects of a lack of exercise and sunlight. He bullied through the thread, then stood up, panting slightly.

“Have I just caused World War Two or something?” Bruce stared at the blot.

“You’ve ruined the color!” One of the crones shrieked.

“Destroyed the thread!” 

“It is hideous!”

“I swear I was only aiming for one thread.” Bruce held his hands up. “I apologize.”

A moment later, Bruce vanished.

“I could have really used that lottery win.” Charles took a slow sip of his coffee.

“Right. I’m sorry.” Bruce copied the sip and stared out across the duck pond. He was much more put together now, his typical tweed jacket in place. Charles, meanwhile, had the unshaven look of a man who HR just realized was supposed to be let go.

“What did your boss do?”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Not much, personally.”

“Sucks is all. I guess everyone’s luck runs out eventually.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s run out,” Bruce ventured. “Just normalized. You’ll be back on your feet again. Come over for dinner tonight.”

Charles nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Um. It’s nothing.”

Charles stood up and stretched. “Lady Luck’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

“Them. Yes. I mean, petty, really, that’s the word.” Bruce stood up with Charles. “At least you’ll have friends who aren’t down so you can be up.”

Charles frowned. “What?”

Bruce took a hasty follow-on drink. “Metaphorically speaking. Let’s get dinner.”

Note: Harsher content than usual on this website

Nik had pissed himself once in the last thirty-two hours. This probably meant he was dehydrated. The air around him was bone dry, and it made the heavy layer of snow around the little village almost unbearably bright. Fortunately he still had his snow goggles on, and he was able to keep his gaze fixed on the other tower in the village. He could tell that his breath was getting less and less moisture caught under the scarf he’d bundled up to the very edge of the goggles. The snow was falling very lightly, still dusting over. A shelled hole in the roof meant Nik could see the little flakes dancing inside the tower as well, though he had ceased to feel them. He didn’t dare move from the small slit he peered through with his rifle – he had named the rifle Irina, as a joke, but he took it more seriously than he could ever bring himself to admit. It was his only friend, and he wished ardently that he’d taken a mistress and been given a radio. Who he would call, he wasn’t sure; the Soviets had pulled back, and the Finns had pursued. As far as he knew, there were only two living souls for miles.

He knew somewhere in the other tower, the other sniper must be cradling his own rifle, looking towards the hiding spot. Nik had seen the glint and a little bit of movement the day before, and had known it had to be a sniper, left so far away from the main body. Eventually, one of them would get exhausted and move, adjust position. Then, death would come and the other man would be able to shake out his bones with the ache of almost a day-and-a-half of sleepless freezing.

Nik suddenly wondered if he had, in fact, stayed awake the entire night. Perhaps he had dozed for a moment. No, that cannot be; if he’d fallen asleep in this temperature, he’d never have woken up. He could feel the urine in his trousers crystallize slightly in the cold, and he had stopped feeling his toes before the moon rose. This was tenable. It had to be; he would wait until the end of the war if it came to it.

For the first time, his cold-addled brain came to a realization. The other sniper hadn’t so much as breathed in the entire time. Had Nik imagined the movement in the cold? Or had he left? Nik ventured half an inch of movement to look around the tower and see if there were footprints in the snow. He knew that the only exit from the tower had been the door, but forgot to consider the night before that a shell could have carved the back of the tower open. He silently cursed himself for failing to check before he’d begun looking in his own tower. Looking for footprints, however, was useless. Though the snow wasn’t heavy, any prints would have been gone within fifteen minutes. Had Nik fallen asleep the night before? He rested his cheek back on the buttstock.

He’d fallen asleep.

Again.

He did not jerk awake, but a moment seemed to have passed and the sun was moving towards the horizon. He cursed aloud, once, softly. So much for the iron will of the northerners. He was crumbling under this. He would die here, in a tower, surrounded by a ghostly village. He’d never make it to the main body, just starve and freeze alone in the Finnish snow. It was a good death.

Nik pushed himself up, barely managing to drag himself to his feet. His legs staggered beneath him, unable to so much as bear his weight without folding him. He placed one hand on the wall and the other on the stock of his rifle to stay hunched over, his legs in agony.
He felt something push his head back, hard and fast, like he’d been punched in the eye. He spun and saw matter sprayed across the snow; it was red and visceral, and Nik immediately placed it as fresh offal, like a slaughterhouse.

That was as far as his thoughts went before he began to freeze in the snow.

Thank you all for playing for so long, and for joining us on this incredible adventure. It’s been an exciting process moving from beta versions, especially adding and removing tech trees and developmental updates, but once we released the story mode, the response was simply overwhelming.

Granted, everything wasn’t always great. The community has had its fair share of bad actors and griefers, and as devs we did a lot of work to crack down on this. We were particularly interested in handling it via in-game events, as the bans shattered immersion; using the syphilis virus to remove bad actors in addition to the random spawns was, we think, a move that allowed the players to stay invested in the world. In retrospect, we probably should have used a smite event, as there became a marked tendency to think that any virus was a deliberate ban for bad behavior – we assure you that these were merely random in-game events in almost all cases.

We appreciate you staying with us for the incredibly ambitious Great War arc, and its sequel World War 2, which allowed us to introduce the nuclear tech tree in a very dramatic unveiling. It’s a long way from the Imperial storylines of earlier launches!

However, we have begun to run out of material for this world. The repeating event of Middle East Invasion is beginning to become a predictable drag for the factions involved, and there is a marked lack of interest in new tech developments. Further, as designers, we have other exciting projects we’re interested in working on and have to prioritize these new projects over maintaining the current ones.

We will not be shutting the servers down immediately, to be clear. We still believe there is a measure of entertainment and we have no interest in cutting anyone’s fun short prematurely. We do want to be perfectly transparent: A number of bugs and potential exploits will occur. We will no longer have the resources to address these issues. Again, while not ideal, we must focus on these future projects in order to ensure a high standard of production. We will, however, stop active maintenance in December of 2012. Please enjoy using Earth while it remains functional. We wish we’d implemented a legacy system for enjoyers of the classic experience, but unfortunately that data is long gone. Perhaps one day we will be able to revisit this with a Classic Experience, but for now we have to move on to the future.

Again, thank you all so much for your support, and we hope to see you all on our next project!

They call me the Centurion, but I don’t think I’m Roman. Most likely, I think, I’m from Northern Africa. That was a very long time ago.

I remember a woman. She may have been my mother, or my sister, or an aunt, or even just someone from my village. It must have been a village, because I don’t remember cities. She seemed old at the time, but she could have been any age at all. I was quite young and everyone seemed older.

My first lucid memory, the first memory I have start to finish of anything happening, was in a city. I don’t remember what city, but there were tapestries and people. It bustled, people shoved me past. The buildings had pointed arches and pale stone. Perhaps it was Constantinople. I must have been four or five hundred years old. A man tried to stab me and take my purse. The blade was old, and broke on my chest. I took the knife from him and beat him. Someone gave me a melon. He must have been a nuisance for anyone to be grateful. I left that city soon after.

Men can only remember so much. A single lifetime is full of thousands of forgotten moments, even stressful and poignant moments can vanish given enough time. I have lived more lifetimes than I can imagine.

I wonder, sometimes, if that’s affected me. If my father was distant as a child, but I cannot remember him in any case, will it change how I act? Perhaps he was an important part of my upbringing. Perhaps I never knew him. Either way, I remember a man, bald and tall. He cut me, once. As I recall, it was ritualistic. I have never bled since then.

I was married three times. Once, she was a young woman who I believe was from my hometown. She is a vague impression in my mind, a shape and a color. Her face and her name are long gone. I don’t even know why I married her. My next wife was from the Middle East. She spoke fluently and was well-educated. She was killed in a battle next to me – I was pressed into service during one of the Crusades. By that point, I had seen enough people die that it made little difference to me if I took a few more lives (I am sure that that thought will be edited out if this journaling is ever made public. A flagship hero should not have had a period in which life was a pittance). I do not recall if I cried over her. My last wife was an old woman, in Europe. I married her in order to take possession of her property when she died, so that I could turn it over to her children without it being seized by whatever they were calling the local officials. She was a lovely woman, in spite of being abundantly foolish.

I came to America twenty years ago, landing in Ellis Island. The humanity stank from the ship. I don’t know exactly why I came here. Possibly I was afraid that I would be pressed into service in the war brewing in Europe. There is irony, there, given that I partook in that war with more intensity than if I had been on the front lines murdering every Axis or Ally – however the cards may have fallen – with my own two hands.

An Australian named Oliphant found me in New York. He’d followed a legend, tracked me down. He said that the Axis had been conducting research in every direction. In fact, there are rumors they even had a darkly superstitious branch that conducted research into the field of Nuclear Physics. What exactly they hoped to uncover is unguessable. But many of their most skilled researchers were defecting. It is known now what atrocities they were committing, even hoping that their camps of mass murder could fuel rituals giving them more power. Such senseless death – The Power is not a bloodthirsty god, who will return more if his thirst is slaked. The Power simply is. But they believed that I was the key, and they took me to Rochester to study me. I believe that they were considering, if the destructive capabilities took them by surprise, to transport the research to another facility located somewhere in the western states. That, though, is another world and not this one.

I briefly met Doctor Oppenheimer in my time. Many people ask about him, though I do not fully understand the fascination. He seemed pleasant enough, though shaken by the idea of the undertaking.

The research produced a number of humans who could exhibit a powerful array of abilities. Men who could tear through a stone wall in seconds, women who could burn down a building in a moment. In a way, they beat me out. I have no such ability on my own – they offered to grant me a measure of superhuman strength, or of speed, or any number of other spells. I turned them down. I had no desire for my one enchantment, and adding more for an eternity of living could prove a disappointment that I could not outwait.

Or so I told them. I don’t believe they know that I kept a few of the spells for myself. Just in case.

You have already heard of the assault on Japan. The fearsome power that rocked the world, horrifying with absolute destruction even as it captured the eye of the nations. The USSR has their own mages now, stocking them up with an eye towards the Western world. I do not much care for the conflict. But I am the symbol of Salvation Incorporated, held up as the premier hero: The Centurion. It’s a joke to them, really.

I must go buy groceries now. I shall pen again soon.

There were, at first, three siblings. The first was the God of Iron, who valued strength and ambition above all else. The Second was the Goddess of the Hearth, who believed that love was the greatest of all forces. Last was the God of Wood, who prized even ignorance and lies as founders of chaos.

The three took it into their heads to create something together and leave a living mark on the world. The Iron God spoke first – what they created must be, first and foremost, strong. Its virtue would be might and commitment, force of will. What they deemed to be possible would be possible, and naught would stop them.

The Hearth Goddess spoke next. No, the strength of the creation would not be in personal might, but in the group. They would bond together, speak as brothers and sisters. They would not have to conquer the world, for they would live as one with the world.

The Wooden God spoke last. Neither of them would live in the world as it was. Virtue was not in might, for the day will come when age robs strength and a mightier opponent sees them. There was only one path to success, and it was a winding, twisting way. These creations would be clever above all, reliant on the strength not of their arms, but of their minds. They would work with the world, but only so those of cunning could climb up upon those of feebler mind.

They argued this for a time, until they fell to violence. The fury washed out in a terrible storm, until one of them was struck dead. Where the god died, the great Sea of Cerenaria broke open.

When the survivors saw what they had done, they were filled with horror. To cover the body, they filled the sea with the water of the oceans. This done, they decided to create a monument for the fallen sibling. Together, they wove the world. While they worked with diligence to create a being living to the ideals of the fallen sibling, they had nothing to work with save their own essence, and Humanity’s strain was purely their own, bent into a shape like that of their sibling. This done, the two hid themselves from all knowledge, becoming the Hidden Gods.

There exists, then, a schism. Which of the siblings was slain, and which of the siblings lived. Within that question lies the center of creation.

Bruce sat up out of his recently vacated corpse. Or rather, the portion of his corpse that was most Bruce-shaped.

He was, to his mild consternation, completely nude. It didn’t seem profoundly important anymore, hence the mildness. He looked around. The world itself was fast disappearing into a vague white haze, the shapes around him drifting away. Holes around him showed gaps in reality, and a moment later it occurred to him that these blank gaps were occupied by the living creatures whose world he was no longer native to.

Adjusting?

Bruce turned around. He knew before he’d entirely faced the voice what he’d be looking at, but it was nice to get a verification.

It was, in point of fact, a skeleton in a black robe. It stood roughly six and a half feet tall and held an enormous scythe. In fact, the scythe appeared to be much larger than Bruce had envisioned. He’d seen large things, for many different values of large, but this was truly a large device. It made sense, he simply hadn’t thought about it.

Are you ready?

Bruce took a deep breath. Or something like a breath. He supposed he wasn’t breathing anymore. He spread his arms, closed his eyes, and awaited the reaping.

The reaping was not forthcoming.

What’s this?

Bruce opened his eyes.

“I assume that there’s a reaping?”

After a fashion.

“So. Are you reaping now, or do you wait a bit?”

You’ll have to walk.

Bruce raised an eyebrow.

Walk. Locomote yourself. The other side doesn’t come to you, you know.

“What’s the scythe for?”

The skeletal fingers adjusted on the handle. There was something unsettling about the way the fingers moved without any visible tendons or musculature. Protection. After a moment, the skeleton reluctantly added And style.

“Oh.”

I thought you’d understand. The skeleton shrugged patiently. I have to explain this a lot these days.

“Do you?” Bruce tried to sound polite.

I do. What, Bruce Idle, do you believe my role in the cosmos to be?

“Er. The ultimate harvest, I suppose. The end of all things. Sort of.”

And in your opinion, the ultimate harvest of existence would look like a human skeleton in a robe?

“It sounds a bit vapid when you put it like that, of course.” Bruce slowly felt more self-conscious about his nudity and tried to subtly adjust his hands. The skeleton took no notice.

I am no more Death than you are Life. Or were, to make the metaphor more apt. You had an intimate relationship with Life, knew something about it, experienced it firsthand. But you were not the end and be all of Life.

I am, the skeleton turned and began to walk into the void. More of a psychopomp. You know the term?

Bruce followed at a mild jog. “Sort of an escort for the dead? Gets souls to the resting place and judgement.”

That much you do know. I am but a psychopomp. I have a task to conduct. I am your orientation to the afterlife.

“Is this something you’ve always done?”

No.

“Ah.” Bruce stuttered. Not exactly the response he’d expected. “Just a hobby now?”

No. It is my purpose now.

Bruce nodded sagely.

I suppose you wonder why.

“Well.”

Charon works for money. Just a living, he says. I believe he thinks it is a joke. A few angels have it as their exclusive mission for existence. Some do it out of boredom.

Bruce waited an appropriate amount of time. “And you?”

Karma, I suppose.

“So. You sort of broke a soul or something and now you safeguard them?”

Of course not. Do you believe in the inevitability of justice, Bruce? I do not. But there are things that believe in justice. Well, not justice. But irony. And when my time comes, I would rather they find irony in my safe passage.

“‘And in strange aeons, even death may die,” Bruce muttered.

What in bloody hell does that mean?

“Well. You just said that you would. . . It seemed very apropos.”

I won’t die. One has to be alive in order to die. And many things that live will never die. Mortals keep showing up, though, so it seems that in no sense will Death die. Nonsense.

“But your time?”

Everyone has to go sometime.

“Go?”

The skeleton paused in his steps and nodded. His expressionless skull turned on Bruce.

“Go where?” Bruce managed.

If I knew that, I wouldn’t be doing this, now would I?

Bruce shook his head.

Now come along. I expect you’ll have a reward of some kind to get to.

Once, there was a dragon.

There are many kinds of dragons: Great dragons, terrible dragons, ancient dragons.

But this was just a dragon.

He slept on a pile of trinkets (as shiny objects feel warm to dragons, and make excellent beds) and was, if not precisely content with his lot in life, was happy to collect more trinkets and sleep in a larger bed and slowly get a little bigger and older and more dragon-like every day. And then, he met a maiden. All wise men can tell you that this is where the trouble began.

The dragon fell in love with the maiden. But the dragon also knew that in a kingdom like the one he dwelt in, a powerful reptile was far from the ideal mate. He couldn’t help himself, however, couldn’t ignore the maiden, and sometimes he lay on his warm bed and stared at his cave and thought how large and empty it was without a maiden, and how if there was a maiden, it would still be large and empty, but it wouldn’t seem quite so.

And so he spent more and more time lurking on rooftops that happened to be near where the maiden was going about her business, happened to be just across the street when she left her home for the day, and then happened to always be looking for trinkets close enough that – even if no-one else knew, or would have said so – he knew that she was nearby.

There is only so much that a dragon can do, however, before he attracts attention. A Prince rode down, his armor shining in the sun like a polished mirror, with fine silks tastefully draped here and there.

“Ho, dragon!” The Prince hailed. It wasn’t a friendly sort of hail, either.

The dragon tried to creep back into what he thought was a shadow, but was actually a dark patch in the tiles over the blacksmith’s shop.

“Dragon.” The Prince put a hand on his hip.

“Eh?” The dragon shook his head.

“I can see you, dragon.”

The dragon hesitated. “You can?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Damn.” And then the dragon pulled himself up and shook his head as if he had merely been stretching himself.

The Prince, for his part, watched the dragon stretch himself out across the rooftop and flex his wings. In that instant, he realized just how small a thing a prince was, and how large a thing a dragon could be. He laid a hand on his sword and cleared his throat.

“Dragon. The time has come for you to cease threatening this humble village.”

The dragon looked about for help.

The Prince, meanwhile, watched the monstrous beast lift his head back and eye the village and the little man before him.

The Prince drew his sword as little as he could and tried to look menacing. “I’ll have you know, dragon, that this is a vorpal blade.”

The dragon scratched his tummy and tried to remember if he’d ever heard this before. “What’s ‘vorpal?'”

The Prince watched the dragon rasp his claws over his hide and slyly whisper at him. He drew his vorpal blade entirely – and he felt a little bit pleased that it glimmered in the sun like a proper vorpal blade should – and prepared to opine that it meant ‘especially deadly,’ or at least, that this was the impression he got.

“Prince!” The maiden cried. “Dragon!”

Both of them froze in place at the call. Then, together, both cried, “You know him?”

The Maiden clutched onto the Prince’s arm. “Prince, this is The dragon. He’s quite a nice dragon.”

The dragon, for his part, had never before been glad that he could not blush.

“And this, Dragon, is the prince, my love.” And she planted a kiss on the Prince’s cheek.

The dragon realized, then, that she was not so much clutching the Prince’s arm as holding it. And when she looked up at the blond locks of curling hair and the neatly trimmed beard, it was with a wide-eyed wonder.

Dragon snorted, once. He was feeling a great many things at once, which is never good for a Dragon.

The Prince flinched at the snort, then put himself forward, thrust his vorpal blade towards the dragon, and cried something challenging.

When a Dragon feels a great many things, they try to grab one that will help them, something that they understand to get their feet beneath them once again. This dragon was bewildered at the array of thoughts, and when a simple sword-thrust (something all dragons are used to) came at him, the Dragon seized on the one thing he understood. Dragons, you see, quite understand anger.

The Dragon snapped at the Prince. It was, to another dragon, an irritable sort of snap, like someone who wouldn’t stop bothering you when you were trying to read a very good book. But to someone the size of the Prince, it was a terrifying snap indeed.

The Prince threw the Maiden one direction, his vorpal blade another, and he himself fell back into the dirt. The Dragon snorted, once, great loud snorts that ruffle the Prince’s golden locks.

The Maiden shrieked, and suddenly the village came rushing out to the streets to see what was going on.

Once the Maiden had shrieked, the Dragon froze in place with his eyes opened wide (or would, if a dragon could open his eyes very wide). The townsfolk, then, stopped and took in the sight before them. On the one hand, the Dragon was terrorizing a Maiden and a Prince, and the steps that any good village should take were fairly clear. On the other hand, they had all seen the Dragon creeping about and carefully not destroying any of the buildings, settling on rooftops as gently as possible, and generally being quite thoughtful for a dragon; besides which, he didn’t seem to be taking any particular interest in hurting either the Maiden or the Prince at the moment. In fact, he seemed to be quite still and not at all threatening.

Except, everyone reminded themselves, that he was still a large dragon, and possibly a large, fire breathing dragon, and his teeth were quite sharp, and his eyes were particularly glittery. It was all threatening, but not to other people.

The Dragon, meanwhile, had a sudden hold of himself. He knew better than to snap at people. They didn’t like it, and the Dragon never wanted to hurt anyone. There was no point, when such little and squishy things tended to hurt themselves easily enough. Most of all, though, the Maiden sounded distressed, and he knew that it was all because of him.

Someone in the crowd immediately realized that there was an answer that would leave everyone happy. Or rather, wouldn’t cause a fight, and for most people, that’s simply all that’s needed to smile and say that everything’s OK.

“The Prince was trying to show off, and he fell.”

And within a single whisper, a guess became a fact, and everyone knew that the Prince had fallen trying to show that he was braver and stronger and more skilled than a great dragon, which everyone knew was very silly, and only seemed more silly when you knew that he couldn’t even stand upright long enough to do that properly.

“I didn’t,” The Prince said hotly, his face quite red, just as soon as he realized what everyone was saying. “The Dragon bit at me.”

Which everyone knew couldn’t be true, because if a dragon bit at you, you weren’t able to tell people later that a dragon bit at you.

“He did!” The Prince picked up his vorpal sword, which went a long way towards calming the population. “He bit at me for no reason!” And he looked to the Maiden for help.

The Maiden was very quiet, and only lay in the dust for a moment before the Prince thought to help her up.

Meanwhile, the Dragon swallowed a few times – a deep and rumbling sound somewhere in his chest. He thought that perhaps he should say something, but knew that immediately after trying to take someone’s head off (not meanly, only angrily) was not the time to try and smooth things over. Instead, he spread his wings out and beat them a few times, hovered for a moment (kicking up billows of dust that nearly blinded many of the people in the square), and then swooped off with a snaky swoop that only a dragon can really manage.

Inside the shop, the blacksmith began doing battle (metaphorical battle, though, you see) against an enormous billow of sparks that a breeze coming down the chimney flung out of the forge, choking on smoke. Actions, you see, sometimes have consequences you don’t foresee.

After the square, the Dragon decided to become a hermit. It wouldn’t be hard, he thought to himself, as most dragons are already hermits of one sort or another. He would creep about at night and collect his bedding and food, and sometimes a villager would see him and tell stories, and the wizened old man would nod and stroke his beard and say that yes, there were stories about a dragon that lived in the area, that had had his heart broken and so he pined every day since, still strong and fierce but somehow, inside, being something kind hearted and really deserving of love.

And so for a week, the Dragon stayed inside, sleeping on his pile of trinkets (which no longer felt quite so warm as they used to) and growling at his shadow and thinking about the Maiden and the Prince, wondering what they were doing now. Then, he would snort and go back to counting his money.

Soon, though, the Dragon encountered the banes of everyone who has sworn that they would become a hermit and only creep out at dusk. His cave was large, but not so large for a dragon, and he grew very restless. He didn’t speak with the villagers (for he was, after all, still a great and terrible dragon) but he did miss seeing the goatherd on the side of the hill, and the old blind woman who never seemed to know that he was a dragon and not a very large dog, and the sun had felt so good on his wings, and would feel especially good after a week of nothing but darkness. And besides, if he was too good at creeping about, no-one would ever see him, and if no-one ever saw the dragon, how would they know he was being a hermit?

With this reasoning, the Dragon ventured out one day, minding that he looked as unapproachable and angry as possible.

“Oh. Dragon.”

The Dragon tried not to look surprised, or – he noted with a sort of odd twinge – pleased. He tried to pretend as though he was thinking hard about who was talking to him before he answered. “Maiden?”

He turned to look at her, wishing that he knew more about the kind of expression dragons who have exiled themselves tend to wear. He imagined that it was quite a stern expression, something that would take away the breath of anyone who saw it and make them think “My, what a grave and stern dragon that is.”

Seeing the Maiden, though, removed any thought in his head about his expression.

Her long golden hair was mussed, her cheeks had marked blotches, and her ordinarily clear features had little rings below her eyes.

“Maiden?” The Dragon said again.

“I found you,” The Maiden repeated.

The Dragon shuffled in place a little bit, which, because of his great size, put large furrows in the soft earth. “Maiden,” The Dragon finally said. “Are you well?”

The Maiden made a listless little move that was probably a shrug. “Everyone is making fun of him.”

The Dragon frowned. “Making fun of who?”

“Of the Prince.”

And all at once the Dragon remembered why he was a hermit, and that he didn’t want to see anyone ever again, and that maybe he should have just waited to creep about in the night – after all, someone would have seen him eventually.

He didn’t leave, though.

“Why? He’s brave and strong and has a vorpal sword. Why make fun of him?”

“Because they say he couldn’t even show off to a dragon.”

The Dragon mentally objected to the word ‘even’ for several reasons.

“They think he’s a fool, and a clumsy ox, and even the butcher pretends to swing his knives like swords and drop them every time I walk by.” The Maiden sniffed and gathered herself up taller. “Dragon, he’s so kind and brave, they shouldn’t make fun of him.”

“He shouldn’t have been showing off, then,” The Dragon grumbled.

The Maiden looked so hurt that the Dragon instantly regretted having said anything. He tried to look away – so as not to stare – and to look directly at her at the same time.

“I mean, he was showing quite well,” The Dragon added, then scuffed at the ground again. A farmer somewhere was going to be pleased with how well his field was plowed. Or would be, if it wasn’t a meadow.

“He wasn’t,” The Maiden whispered. “He was trying to confront a big, scary dragon who tried to bite him.”

The Dragon froze in place. “I’m not scary.”

“You’re very scary when you try to bite off someone’s head.”

“I didn’t!” The Dragon cried, louder than he intended. A flock of birds burst from a copse of trees.

“You certainly looked like you did.” The Maiden stuck out her chin, which only made her lower lip quiver more strongly. “And he can’t be blamed. He tried to save me.”

“I wasn’t even. . . But he. . . It was vorpal.” The Dragon felt a little desperate, which was a feeling that he absolutely did not understand. Dragons do not, as rule, feel desperate. They make other people feel desperate. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

The Maiden looked up at the great dragon, his head bowed nearly to the ground, his eyes fixed upon the ground, and she reached up one of her small hands and laid it on the Dragon’s muzzle. “You didn’t mean to?”

The Dragon shook his head, miserably.

“Not at all?”

“Not at all.”

The Maiden fell silent. “You are a nice dragon.”

The Dragon shook his head. “No.” And then he was quiet again. There are two different kinds of quiet thinking. There is brooding – which is when someone is thinking about what has happened – and there is thinking – which is when someone is thinking about what they’re going to do next.

The Dragon, at first, seemed to be brooding, and then he reached out one of his clawed back feet, clutched the Maiden around the waist, and with a pair of wing beats lifted straight up, then swooped forward.

The Maiden shrieked the whole time.

+ + +

“Dragon!” The Prince cried. He had a shiny helmet, now, one that matched his gleaming armor. His sword was out of its belt, glimmering impressively in the sun. On his horse, he cut a very fine figure indeed.

The Dragon growled from inside his cave. It echoed and came out much louder than he’d intended, and the Prince shook in place, just a little bit.

Then, the Prince got off his horse and walked inside, his chin up and his sword ready.

“Feeble Prince,” The Dragon hissed. “Why have you come to my cave?”

“I’ve come to save the Maiden,” The Prince said. His voice shook a little bit, but he stood with a manly determination.

“You cannot save the Maiden, feeble Prince. Not from a great dragon.”

The Prince could hear the Dragon moving about, shuffling rocks and slithering from shadow to shadow.

“I am still here to save her.”

“Noble, prince, noble.” He huffed and several sparks shot out. In the light, the Prince could see the Maiden tied to a standing stone.

“Maiden!” The Prince cried, then started towards her. He then stopped as he remembered the Dragon who was quietly putting out sparks. “Dragon. I will slay you!”

“Well, get on with it.” The Dragon charged from the shadows, a loping trot that barreled at the slim Prince. He took in a great breath and spewed flame in a circle about the Prince’s ears.

The Prince ducked down from the heat of the blast, his armor beginning to glow, and he stabbed up at the Dragon’s vulnerable stomach.

The vorpal blade scratched off of the hide and nearly fell out of the Prince’s hand.

The Dragon paused for a moment, then circled around the Prince and snapped at him. The Prince swung, and the blade bounced away again.

“Ow,” The Dragon said, his eyes crossing.

The Prince swallowed. “Oh, dear.”

“I thought you had a vorpal blade,” The Dragon said, rubbing the miniature cut on his snout.

“I do.” The Prince wavered.

“What’s the point of that, then?”

“It’s. . . It’s especially deadly.”

The Dragon stopped rubbing his nose. “Not a special dragon-slaying sword?”

The Prince shook his head.

“What’s ‘vorpal’?” The Dragon asked

“Especially deadly?”

“Oh.” The Dragon slumped. “I thought it meant ‘Dragon-slaying.'”

The Prince shook his head. “It doesn’t.”

“Just a regular sword.”

“An especially deadly sword.”

“It’s a sword,” The Dragon said, a bit crossly now that his nose was itching. “If it wasn’t especially deadly, it’d be a a rubbish sword, wouldn’t it?”

The two of them fell silent, each feeling especially silly.

“Now what?” The Maiden said.

“I suppose I let you go.” The Dragon clomped over to the stone.

“That’s it?” The Maiden and the Prince said together. “That’s all?”

The Dragon harrumphed. “That’s it.”

“You’re not a very good dragon, are you?” The Prince asked.

“He’s a lovely dragon,” The Maiden said. “He’s just not very good at being a dragon.”

“Aren’t you going to kill me and leave my bones and armor as a warning to others?” The Prince said.

The Dragon gave him a look. Unfortunately, Dragons do not have eyebrows, otherwise he would have raised one of his.

“Well, what was the point of all this, then?” The Prince started to walk towards the stone where the Dragon was fumbling with the knots.

“So that you could slay a dragon and be a hero.” The Dragon very carefully studied the ropes, not looking up.

“But. . .” The Prince cut the ropes with his sword, without even seeming to think about it. Then, he swept the Maiden up in one arm. “But why?”

“So that you could be a hero,” The Dragon repeated. He sounded even crosser than he had when he was rubbing his nose. “Just tell everyone you slew the dragon, and I’ll go away.”

“Why would I say that?” The Prince said. He seemed, all in all, somewhat in wonder at the situation. He’d heard many stories growing up, and he couldn’t quite recall paying attention to any of the ones that would have helped him in this particular situation.

“Because then nobody will think about you falling down trying to show off. They’d just think about you slaying the dragon, like a very brave man.” The Dragon slunk a little ways away and began scraping his trinkets back together.

“Dragon,” The Maiden said. “What we want to know is, Why would you want that?”

The Dragon was very quiet, then, as he’d found several trinkets that needed a good deal of attention paid to them.

“Dragon?”

He dropped one of the pieces on the top of his bed. “Because you’d both be happy, then.” Which was only a sort of a lie.

“Dragon, you are not very good at being a dragon.” The Maiden left the Prince to give the Dragon a hug around one leg. “But you are a very lovely dragon, though you are a bit stupid.” And she said it so nicely that the Dragon didn’t even think to agree.

“Well, Dragon.” The Prince came up beside the Dragon. “We started wrong, didn’t we?”

“Did we?”

“You’re a bit stupid–“

It didn’t sound nearly so nice from the Prince.

“–but you mean well, don’t you? I think you’re Alright.”

The Dragon snorted and looked away. Perhaps he did like being told he was Alright, but being told by the Prince, it was somehow a little bit more shallow, and the Dragon just wanted to explain all the reasons he wasn’t Alright. To begin with, he’d stolen some of the trinkets he slept on, and he wasn’t even sorry about that.

“Dragon, if you ever need a friend, we’ll be here.” The Maiden said.

The Prince shifted, a little uncomfortably. The Dragon was perfectly content with that. “Or, perhaps, just a good word. I understand: it’s really a very complicated thing. Feelings, I mean.” And the Prince sounded so compassionate and understanding that the Dragon almost took another snap at him.

+ + +

The sun was going down early, now, around the frost and the snow all around these days. It was exactly the sort of night to spend with a warm drink and a cozy fire. Everyone was doing that by their own fires in a very pointed way; everyone but two.

The Prince sat amidst a pile of mugs serving as a little fort, some of them stacked up, but not very well. His head bobbed like it was on string as he sloshed drink across the table, very wastefully.

Next to him, the Dragon’s head lay on the floor, the rest of him not being quite able to fit into the tavern. Most dragon’s eyes can’t manage to look glassy, but the Dragon gave a very good impression of someone who would have glassy eyes, and he licked his lips, very slowly. Beside him were fewer containers, though they were much larger, usually the sort one could use to drown several mules at a time.

“Damn women,” The Prince said. Or tried to say, as he fell off his seat.

“Damn them,” The Dragon agreed, a bone-rattling agreement that knocked pictures from the wall on nearby houses.

“And damn blacksmiths.” The Prince managed to fall off the floor, now, and fell on his back.

“And double damn women blacksmiths,” The Dragon muttered, as one fellow to another. Though he wasn’t aware, his aside could be heard across the street.

The Prince began laughing until he couldn’t breath, then he wiped his eyes, and cried just a little bit (which did not make him less of a man. Just a very drunk one). “It doesn’t make sense, does it?” He said.

“No.” The Dragon agreed. “Was she even a character?”

The Prince stopped and thought. “Dragon, Maiden, Prince. . . No. No, she wasn’t.” He laughed again.

“Well, then, why does she get the girl?”

The Prince shrugged, then tried to make a rude sound with his lips.

“Damn women.”

“Damn them.”

The Dragon idly scraped a few coins together and rested his head on them. “This is cozy.”

“Hm?”

“You know, smaller than my cave. But it’s cozy.”

“That’s the beer, and the, the. . . angry.” The Prince said with authority.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

And they must have fallen asleep, then, because the pictures stopped falling off the walls then, and the innkeeper had to politely ask the Dragon to take his head out so he could cut out the draft, but that’s all that can be told.

Because sometimes, the story isn’t quite right, and sometimes, it isn’t entirely wrong, either; sometimes, it just happens about your ears and you have to put it together after.

And that’s the end.