The words coming from the voice, and the voice itself, were very much at odds with the image before them. If any member of [Sunrise] had the capacity to think straight at the moment, they would realize how familiar the voice sounded and that it was actually cautioning them for their own good.

  Instead, all four members instinctively needed to flee.

  Before such a beast, such a monster, there could be no resistance. No survival. No hope.

  “Holy shit we’re gonna die and we’re gonna get eaten and we gotta run!”

  Jessica started word vomiting as her survival instinct took over. Her arms moved on their own accord and she drew her bow, activated her three strongest and most expensive abilities, and launched 5 arrows directly into the eye.

  “[Power Shot]! [Piercing Shot]! [Multi Shot]!”

  The words were out of her mouth a fraction of a second before the twang of the bow, and her feet were already forcing her body to turn so she could flee.

  But the giant eye was only a handful of paces away and her arrows impacted before she could even turn at the waist.

  All 5 arrows, enhanced and strengthened with power…shattered on impact.

  The gigantic eye did not even blink.

  All will to move drained from Jessica as she slumped to the ground like a puppet cut from its strings. She began to weep uncontrollably.

  Slowly, as if making sure the four former-adventurers and soon-to-be-snacks could see it coming, the eye closed under a heavy lid and reopened.

  A tired voice sounded out.

  “Can’t you wait to kill me until after breakfast? Maybe you’ll be less hangry.”

  The four sat there, stunned, as their brains warred with their instincts. The familiarity in the voice rose to the top.

  “Sleep,” Meliastraza commanded, and she gently shut her eye once more. Her mouth opened, a gigantic, gaping hole in the void of darkness, a tiny pinprick of light building. Larger than a cavern, with jagged, razor-sharp teeth taller than stalagmites and longer than stalactites, and a gigantic forked tongue like the carpet leading straight to the depths of hell. From the chasm of her throat, a tiny ball of fire formed, though it was already larger than some small boulders.

  But the expected inferno was not unleashed upon them. No gigantic gout of flame, no massive wall of fire to reduce them beyond ash.

  The ball of flame grew until it filled the back of her throat, but instead of unleashing hell, she breathed around it. Hot, dry air baked the clearing, steaming away any errant snow and sending a fresh wave of drowsiness over the companions. Too tired to make it back to their tents, they slumped down, right where they stood, and went back to sleep.

  ?

  Jessica woke up. Her sleep was not restful, filled with nightmares where she was hounded by some giant, cosmic entity. A mouth the size of a mountain covered in eyes opened up and devoured the stars and the heavens, and no matter how fast she ran or how far she fled, it was always behind her, licking at her heels.

  No matter what she did, the devouring maw found her, swallowed her whole, and digested her, alive. Eventually, her body dissolved into nothing, at which point she would jolt “awake”, but it would only be to find herself locked into the same nightmare, running again.

  This last time was somehow, blessedly, different. When her eyes burst open, instead of the darkest black of the deadest night, sunlight burned her eyes.

  The clouds, grey and dim and depressing, seemed brighter than the most radiant light. To her left, a small fire burned. To her right, Alastair, Ellesea, and Y’cennia lay sprawled across the unforgiving ground, just like she was. Their tents, unused, sat several paces away.

  Was it really a dream? Did Armageddon not come and destroy the world?

  The sounds of natural wildlife had mostly returned, with birds chirping and insects scuttling, and the blizzard that suddenly surrounded them yesterday was reduced in fury to something closer to few errant flurries of snowflakes carried on a gentle breeze.

  And then reality caught up with her.

  Across the clearing, behind their tents, remained a gigantic, immutable presence. The white wall, which seemed so imposing during the middle of the night, was revealed to be nothing more than the soft, delicate underbelly of a terrifying dragon.

  In the light of day, Jessica could see further, and she could see how massive the creature was.

  It curled up on itself like a cat snuggling down for a nap, its tail circling around all the way to touch its head.

  A head larger than the home she grew up in. With horns larger than most adult trees, thicker than an ogre’s chest and sturdier than any set of forged armor.

  Jessica sat, still as stone and feeling smaller than a mouse, watching as the monster…breathed.

  Its chest rose, very slowly, and fell. Rhythmic and natural. As if it were peaceful, or, laughably, harmless.

  Because she couldn’t stop herself, Jessica cast [Inspect].

  The moment she did, the monster stirred.

  “Oh, are you awake?”

  ?

  Several things hit Jessica all at once.

  First, the “monster” wasn’t a monster.

  ?

  [Meliastraza Obsidianheart]

  ?

  Level: ???

  ?

  She’d heard that name before, in a carriage ride not so long ago, though in the moment it felt like a lifetime. It belonged to a gnome, supposedly, which she had regrettably thought to be a silly, slightly delusional little creature.

  And she was no monster. Next to her name, the system bestowed upon her the marker of all Humanity, human or not. Gnome or not. And, apparently, dragon or not.

  Melia’s eye, thankfully, did not open. In fact, when she spoke, her mouth remained mercifully closed. The very edges of her mouth curled into a smile as the words oozed forth, once again filling the entirety of their clearing.

  Just then, Jessica realized the dragon was trying to whisper, and it still came out like the fury of a dying god.

  “I’m curious,” Meliastraza said. “What did your [Inspect] say?”

  Because of course a dragon would know when something cast a spell on it. As harmless as appraisal spells were, they were still spells. And dragons, for all that they were known for their immense strength, were magical.

  “N-not much,” Jessica found herself stammering. Strangely, she didn’t have the same knee-jerk reaction to run away and hide as she did yesterday. Maybe it was because it was day and huge creatures weren’t as scary during the day.

  …bullshit.

  “Did it tell you my level?” the dragon asked.

  “N-no.”

  “My class?”

  Jessica couldn’t find her voice, so she remained silent. Melia took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Do…you want to know?”

  What a bizarre question.

  But what a bizarre conversation.

  Jessica never imagined she’d be talking with a dragon. Not of any level, and certainly not in such a trivial, offhand way.

  She was saved from having to answer by her teammates waking up. Now that she wasn’t quite as mindlessly terrified, she got to enjoy watching everyone else make fools of themselves.

  ?

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ?

  Melia purposefully did not open her eyes.

  For one thing, her eyes were on the side of her head. Even if she opened both of them, only one eye would actually see her friends.

  For another, she had seen last night how terrified they were. Jessica actually shot her, point-blank, in the eye. Melia would be lying if she said she wasn’t a tiny bit startled by the action, even more so that the arrows shattered on impact and she didn’t get so much as a scratch. It really served to drive home her new body’s impervious nature, if the softest, most vulnerable part of her body could stare down an incoming attack without needing to blink.

  Saying she could still see despite her eyes being closed wasn’t quite true either. All of her senses were magnified in her true form, or more accurately, they were no longer muted or stifled. All of them worked together to paint a picture in her mind of her exact surroundings: the smells, how the air moved subtly around various objects, tiny little heartbeats running a million miles an hour, and distinct magical traces, creating an image more vibrant than a television screen.

  It broke her heart a little to see Y’cennia shivering uncontrollably, and not because she was cold.

  No, her eyes needed to stay closed. She tried to make herself as small, harmless, and docile as possible. It was useless.

  Though maybe not, since, again, nobody was trying to run away or kill her.

  Jessica had mostly worked through her earlier fears and was now hiding them extremely well, as she managed to stand on shaky feet and drag the other girls closer to the fire. Alastair, gentleman and fool, got up and subtly placed himself in front of his teammates, as if he could protect them from her.

  It was a good thing she loved them too much to ever hurt them, even subconsciously.

  …which, if Melia was being honest, was yet another reason she kept her eyes firmly shut.

  From her new vantage point, her friends looked positively tiny. She was approximately 16 to 20 times larger than they were. To put it in perspective, they looked like they were about three and a half inches tall. Tiny, adorable, precious, and- perhaps alarmingly -collectible.

  Like her newest, most favorite figurines.

  Melia had to fight to resist the urge to shake her head. Sudden movements in this form were not advisable.

  She observed as Jessica pulled one of those self-confidence boosting maneuvers: where she straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and flicked at the armpits of her jacket to get it to sit better. The [Hunter] seemed to want to approach, but didn’t actually know how to do so. She took a few steps toward Melia’s belly, faltered, and turned to face her head. Melia heard Jessica’s heart rate spike as she came to a stop only an arm’s reach away.

  “You can- ah. Still too loud?” Melia asked. Jessica flinched at her voice, which she knew was loud and needed to be regulated. She lowered it to something closer to a whisper, though after a few words, it felt natural.

  “What’s on your mind, Jessica?”

  “So,” Jessica said with much more bravado than she actually felt. “You really are a dragon, huh?”

  Melia snorted, causing Ellesea to jump and Y’cennia’s tail to stick out like a rigid pole. Jessica and Al remained composed, which was heartening.

  “I did tell you so,” Melia mused. “If seeing still isn’t believing, you can touch my scales. They won’t vanish…though, technically, I suppose the first one I gave you already did.”

  Jessica’s outstretched arm was halfway to reaching Melia when she froze.

  “That was your scale?!”

  “Who else would it belong to?” Melia chuckled. “That other [Obsidian Dragon]? I told you it was small.”

  “Talk about an understatement…,” Jessica muttered, planting her hand firmly on the white wall in front of her.

  Part of her secretly wished it did disappear.

  But it didn’t, and now that Jessica had a better idea of what the wall actually was, she could see the lines creating the grid were actually the tiny gap between each individual scale, which turned out to be Melia’s chest.

  “They” said that a dragon’s underbelly was its softest spot, and now Jessica, and [Sunrise] as a whole, joined that enigmatic group. Though it was also a matter of perspective: Melia was so huge, so strong, each scale was itself like a fortress wall. But touching it? It had give, like Jessica was poking her own belly.

  …which, of course, was ripped with abs and chiseled with definition. She could totally grate cheese on that washboard.

  Jessica moved her poking and prodding along, examining the various scales as they transitioned from snow-white to bright pink, to pitch black.

  The pink scales were just like the white ones, but the black ones were incredibly dense and tough. They had no initial give, like slapping her hand onto a boulder or sheet of metal.

  Just like that other scale Melia gave them. Which now more than ever really did seem like it had to have come from this one and only gigantic dragon. Jessica turned to investigate, curious where the scale might have come from, and froze. She found herself inches from the enormous eye.

  Now that Jessica was standing so close, even the eyelid itself looked scaly, though it was probably some flexible form of indestructible dragon leather, like everything else.

  Jessica’s “think first, receive consequence later” brain got the better of her, and she reached out and touched the eyelid.

  Before Melia could stop herself, her eye shot open.

  Jessica stood, mouth agape, with the most hilarious “oh shit” look on her face. Melia couldn’t stop herself and her whole body rumbled with jovial laughter.

  “Fu fu fu fu.”

  “Ahhhh,” Jessica wilted, but a small smile started to grow and she stepped closer.

  “You’re really Melia, right? Or Meliastraza? I guess?”

  “Indeed, I am,” Melia said pompously, grinning and letting a few fangs gleam forth.

  Ellesea, Y’cennia, and Alastair, all emboldened by the fact that their idiotic [Hunter] didn’t get herself eaten, stepped forward.

  Ellesea, a true scholar at heart, peered into Melia’s eye carefully.

  “How can you be so big? How do you even exist? I mean, I know dragons are very magical, but aren’t you a bit too ridiculous? How do you feel?”

  “Tired,” Melia sighed, letting her eye fall closed. It was strange staring at Alastair and knowing her eye was taller than he was. “And hungry. I’m soooo hungry.”

  Jessica instantly thought back to all the times she thought the gnome might actually be an arcane black hole in disguise. An epiphany struck her.

  “Holy shit, it makes so much more sense!”

  “That’s not why you’ve stuck around us?” Y’cennia meeped timidly. Everybody turned to stare at her. “Why you’re leveling us up? Do higher levels taste better? Are you fattening us up to eat us?”

  “No.”

  Melia’s denial was sharp and instant. The others jumped to attention even as goosebumps rippled across their skin.

  “No,” Melia repeated more calmly. “But I do need something in my belly. Would one of you be so kind as to toss this in my mouth?”

  Powerful magic started forming behind them, so the group turned away from the eye…only to find a single claw attached to a hand-foot-thing (whatever dragon appendages ended in).

  The sheer size and scale of everything was simply astounding. Nobody had even realized the long black ridge running around the clearing wasn’t a low hill, but a dragon’s arm. The claw raised up slowly, lazily, and poked a hole in reality. The claw lowered toward the ground and left a purple-black tear behind it…out of which fell not, thank the high gods, an eldritch horror, but a dead [Young Forest Wolf].

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  When Melia was done rooting through her inventory, the rift sealed, healed and whole.

  Alastair picked up the wolf, studied it for a few long seconds as if to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, and decided he didn’t care. He threw the thing over his shoulder as the cavernous maw yawned open, and feeling slightly detached from reality, he walked right up to it. Not into it. He was not yet that far gone to forget what it was he was feeding, despite everything he thought he knew possibly crumbling around him. With a heave of his shoulder, the dead wolf fell onto the tongue, waiting like some sort of welcome carpet for the damned.

  The forked tongue quickly rolled up and around the wolf, and the mouth waited to close until Alastair was far enough away to not get caught inside before slowly falling shut. With a single crunch, the dragon’s jaws fully locked closed, swallowed, and the group stood and watched as a small lump traveled down the throat.

  “You eat it whole?” Y’cennia asked, fascinated. The giant eye completely forgotten, she traveled up to the dragon’s neck and placed her hand on it, feeling it expand and contract. The whole thing started vibrating powerfully as Melia spoke.

  “Yes. It’s not…ideal, but I don’t have a way to prepare it at this size. It’s not like these claws are good for cooking, and even if I could, I’m not sure it would be worth it. I’d lose too much meat. I’d need to spend hours simply preparing enough food for a single meal…or get somebody else to do it for me.”

  “Maybe that’s why dragons are said to have so many servants,” Ellesea pondered. She glanced at the one lying in front of her. “Do you have servants?”

  “No, I…wait. I guess I did, though I didn’t call them servants. I had [Retainers]. Yes, thinking about it clearly, they were obviously servants, but they felt like family to me.”

  The air in the clearing grew tangibly heavy as Melia sighed.

  “More lost family…,” she muttered bitterly. Her thoughts were meant for herself, but she was so large, it was impossible for her party members not to hear them. Jessica found her arm stretched out and wondered when she started patting the dragon on the cheek.

  Like some sort of overly large dog.

  “Don’t worry,” the words flowed automatically out of her mouth, “We’re here for you now.”

  She must have meant to say them because she never would have otherwise, and after her brain caught up, she realized she was glad she did. The others muttered words of encouragement beside her, and she began to question this world she found herself in, where she was trying to comfort an ancient dragon.

  But leave it to Y’cennia to shatter the illusion and stomp out the moment completely.

  “Be careful, Y’cennia,” Melia chuckled, but it came out closer to a growl due to her clenched teeth. The catgirl found that her hands and feet fit nicely into the grooves between the scales, and she was worming her way up the dragon’s neck.

  “Y’cennia!” Ellesea hissed. “You can’t climb Meliastraza! She’s a dragon, not a tree!”

  “I think you’ll find she can.” Alastair chuckled. “Look. She’s halfway to the top.”

  “The top of what?”

  “My neck,” Melia said. “Don’t slip, Cennie. My scales might be slippery after the storm.”

  As if on cue, Y’cennia’s foot missed the groove she was aiming for and she lurched dangerously to the right. Thankfully, her foot caught a different hold and she stabilized herself, but she went rigid and now appeared frozen in place, suspended roughly 15 feet in the air.

  “Darn it, girl,” Jessica grumbled. “Just hold on! I’m coming!” she yelled as she placed her foot into the first groove.

  Jessica was a much better climber. Within moments she reached Y’cennia, whom she gave a wide berth as she passed, not wanting to be in reach of terrified arms that might reach out to latch onto her. Then they’d both go tumbling down. After several more moments, Jessica stood on top of Melia’s neck, breathing hard but otherwise unharmed. She reached into her inventory for a rope and, after several slightly panicking moments, had Y’cennia standing shakily next to her.

  The view from above the unexpected hill they found themselves on was striking.

  White, as far as the eye could see, blanketed all the normally sharp, hard edges. The world looked soft and innocent, not a monster to be seen.

  No people could be seen either, which normally wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary, so far off the beaten path. But with the sudden blizzard in the middle of the summer and how unprepared [Sunrise] was caught out in the wilderness…they’d been very fortunate. Others would not be. Monsters would respawn…people would not.

  Far away, several miles and even more hours of walking, they could just make out the glinting silver of a large, still body of water. Idylwylde. Both serene and deadly. The largest body of fresh water inside the kingdom, a rough, circular lake nearly 30 miles in diameter. The defining trait of the Sienna Mountain zone, home to the floating city of Lakeridge.

  Looking closer to a sheet of ice than a pane of glass.

  ?

  Subtle movement out of the corner of their eyes caused the girls to freeze. Something huge rustled, reminding them that they weren’t standing atop a hilltop vista, but a living, breathing thing. Y’cennia squinted.

  “Is that a wing?”

  Jessica glared in scrutiny at the offending object. At first, she had taken it for a series of ridges cresting the top of the hill, but they weren’t on a hill. And despite how fearsome the dragon was on which they stood, everything she had seen so far of Meliastraza’s real body had been soft, though strong, curves, sparsely accented by sharp angles, but they weren’t the main focus.

  Then she thought of a tarp.

  A huge, leathery tarp fit for a circus tent that would turn the Grand Carnival green with envy.

  Tracing the tarp with her eyes, following the rigid skeletal structure and subtly veiny webbing, she could see that this thing was no mere sheet of canvas.

  But something was very wrong about it, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  “Wouldn’t this be uncomfortable?” Y’cennia mused beside her, and Jessica snapped her fingers. That was it! Leave it to a catkin, who had a lifetime of trying not to sit on her own tail, to point out the obvious.

  Meliastraza was lying on her side.

  It should have been the first thing Jessica noticed, since the “white wall” they climbed to reach the lofty heights was, in fact, Melia’s belly.

  Which was her underside.

  Dragon wings were supposed to be on top. And slightly to the side, one covering her left flank and one her right when they were folded.

  With this one nestled closely to her body, on top, that meant the other would have to be underneath this mountainous bulk. Or worse, as Jessica’s eyes traveled over the ridge on which they stood and looked down on the ground further away from their camp, set apart by Melia’s body. The wing was sprawled open, covering the ground, looking very awkward and bent at what she immediately concluded was a painful angle.

  As if in answer, the wing fidgeted in aggravation.

  “Oh, most definitely,” Meliastraza’s voice reached them. Of course she heard.

  “Then why are you doing it?” Y’cennia asked, bewildered. Now that she knew what she was looking at, she could identify the telltale silhouette of a dragon. They stood upon what could only be a shoulder, the upper leg or arm carefully pinned to the main body’s side and hidden under the wing. As previously noted, the other wing was bent at an odd angle instead of being pinned underneath the body’s bulk, which was where the other arm or foreleg was, which curved forward under Melia’s head and formed a protective wall encircling their camp. From up high, it was very obvious to see that Melia had circled around their tents, drawing them close, protectively, to a place of great security.

  Like a dragon guarding their precious hoard.

  “I couldn’t very well lie on top of the camp,” Melia explained patiently, as if reading their minds. As if it should have been extremely obvious. “That would have crushed everything. This was much more practical.”

  Once again, if Jessica didn’t think about how she was the contents of the dragon’s treasure, it made a surprising amount of sense. Stories always told of what great lengths a dragon would go to, to protect their treasures…even, apparently, to extreme discomfort and possible bodily harm.

  She’d seen enough and didn’t want Meliastraza to actually hurt herself.

  A thought that made her freeze. Just moments ago, minutes really, no longer than half an hour, she had been petrified, nearly scared out of her mind at the sight of a terrifying monster that defied all logic and reason.

  She had shot it in the eye.

  Now she was climbing it like a small hill, calling it her friend.

  What had her life become?

  She glanced over at Y’cennia, the catkin likely thinking the same thing. Only Y’cennia seemed to be having second doubts as to how she was actually getting down. Once again, Melia proved to be acutely aware of their dilemmas as she offered an escape.

  “Allow me,” she said with a hint of amusement. The wing closest to them shifted. It did not rise up or stretch, but she moved it in such a way that it now angled down, pointing toward the ground. The girls could climb onto it, rest against one of the large, rib-like support bones, and slide safely down. Despite looking like incredibly tough leather, the material had a smooth, almost glossy look and feel. Jessica helped Y’cennia over the closest hump, sat her down…and pushed.

  Perhaps, in hindsight, she should have warned the poor girl. The screams piercing the air during her relatively short slide were not purely ones of excitement.

  Jessica moved herself into position, and before she could second-guess herself, she too went sliding down. The wing was smooth, not a single bump to be found, and she felt a smile quickly growing as her heart leapt into her throat, the thrill of adrenaline kicking in.

  All too soon, she was standing at the bottom, glancing back up to the small mountain, wondering if it would be worth climbing to do it again.

  And then she remembered the hill was her party member.

  Alastair and Ellesea were sitting next to the campfire, having lost all fear of the terrifying dragon, and were cooking some pork over the fire.

  “Cooking”.

  More like “blackening some previously edible material into charcoal.”

  It seemed like a waste, and Jessica had to remind herself that Ellesea was not a [Chef], and none of them had any levels in [Cooking].

  And something told Jessica that not all of the failed dishes they were making were accidents. From time to time, something would come off the fire charred and ruined, but then Meliastraza would crack open her massive jaws, worm her tongue toward the fire, and anything they wanted to disappear would simply retreat into the bottomless void of the dragon’s stomach…gone.

  Judging from the blissful smile cracking the fierce draconic visage, Melia was all too eager to act as garbage disposal.

  Yet another strange thought: being able to recognize the facial expressions of a dragon.

  What was, just hours ago, a creature relegated to myth, fantasy, or at the very least, the other side of the world…was now acting like a giant dog lapping up the scraps from their table.

  But Jessica was not allowed to remain befuddled for too long. Eventually, Melia sighed and closed her eye.

  “I suppose it’s time to do something about this pesky storm.”

  ?

  What was one supposed to do about a storm? Conventional wisdom recommended taking shelter somewhere warm, dry, and safe. Preferably indoors. Generally, it did not involve heading to the thick of it.

  Either way, Melia couldn’t do anything about it while lying down, so she stood up.

  “Do you feel that?” Y’cennia asked. She was still feeling slightly shaky after her climb and subsequent slide down the dragon.

  “Some sort of earthquake?!” Ellesea panicked. Sudden blizzards were bad enough; more natural disasters would have to wait!

  Alastair crouched low and readied his shield, not that there were many things nearby that could fall on them, and Jessica nearly stumbled as she widened her stance.

  “Wait, what is that?!”

  The hill, which was easy to forget was a living being, began to slowly rise. A wing stretched up, up, and over them, blocking out the sky and plunging them into shadow. The hill began to tremble, bulging upward as a single, colossal leg crooked at the joint and straightened upward into a rigid support. A massive clawed foot slammed down into the ground next to their tents, dwarfing both tents (which could easily fit between the claws), sinking deep into the snow-soaked mud and rocks.

  The tremors paused briefly as the leg stabilized, but Meliastraza was a four-legged creature. She pushed her hind legs up, raising the hill that was her body far, far above the group’s heads. With each step, the surrounding boulders shook, the hills trembled and the ground cracked. With slow, deliberate movements, she adjusted her feet so she wouldn't harm her delicate teammates beneath her.

  Standing fully, she yawned, stretched forward, flexing and tensing her muscles, and gave herself a good shakeout.

  She felt a little bit like a shaggy dog, but they had the right idea when it came to getting rid of unwanted water!

  Jessica stood, stunned and lightheaded, her mouth fully open, and stared. Never had she ever felt so small. Her legs felt weak and she leaned against the nearby pillar to steady herself.

  And then her brain caught up.

  The “pillar”, both larger and taller than any tree she had ever seen, which would have taken a dozen people linking arms together to encircle, was actually a leg.

  And following up that leg was no archway or road like the underside of a great bridge spanning some body of water, but the powerful muscles and glistening scales of a dragon’s underbelly.

  The legs remained perfectly stationary, but suddenly a massive horned head and scaly snout bent down and peeked between them.

  “Are you well?” Meliastraza asked. Jessica instinctively shook her head. How could she be? But she heard her voice, like it belonged to someone else, answer differently.

  “Yeah.”

  Not only did she feel small, she sounded small. Small and weak. And pitiful.

  No wonder her arrows shattered on that gigantic eye, and the dragon didn’t even blink!

  Melia let out a hot puff of breath, which blew the girls’ hair back like a gust of wind.

  “I should go see what’s causing this storm,” the dragon said…and if Jessica had ever guessed that a living thing could change the weather, this thing talking to her would be it.

  “Do you want to come along?”

  “No!” Jessica blurted out, and she wasn’t surprised to hear her own words echoed by the others. Melia gave a rueful laugh.

  “That’s fine. I’ll be back shortly. Will you be staying here?”

  Al glanced past the tents, which were still set up, at the bank of snow that remained piled up outside of their safety bubble. Even if they wanted to leave, it would take time to break down camp.

  “We, ah, yes. We’ll be here.”

  Melia gave them all a speculative glance and nodded. She brought up her status screen and did something she really wanted to do, but was too afraid to do before, and didn’t want fear to stop her again. She sent out a party invitation.

  And then promptly crouched down, tensed her body, and rocketed into the sky.

  ?

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ?

  Jessica watched the mountain fly away. Mountains couldn’t fly…just like living creatures couldn’t possibly be that big. She had heard of large animals before, like elephants and whales, and that dragon they’d seen a week ago had seemed like the biggest anything could naturally get.

  Had it really only been a week?

  How had her life changed so drastically in such a short amount of time?

  She watched as the dragon became little more than a speck on the horizon. If she blinked, she’d missed it.

  “Al…,” she asked hesitantly, “…those mountains. Those are like, what? 50 miles away? 60?”

  “Closer to 75 if we’re using rough numbers.”

  What would take them hours of travel, days if walking, that dragon had just covered in seconds. Jessica was left without words. Especially as she watched, in real time, as the three funnels of storms vanished. One by one, poof poof poof, whatever was tethering the raging tempests to the tops of the mountains was cut off, destroyed. The lingering clouds, no longer fueled by malevolent powers, dissipated. The heat of the midsummer sun started burning off the fog and Jessica watched as a ray of golden sunlight cut a ring inside the dark mass and began spreading. Soon, in a matter of hours, everything would be back to how it was. How it was supposed to be.

  And they knew the creature responsible for it. Controlling the currents. Manipulating the weather. Shaping the heavens?

  Jessica didn't think that was out of the realm of possibility. She didn’t know what to think. Once again, her life was flipped upside down.

  “Ahh,” came Y’cennia’s voice, small and timid, breaking Jessica out of her thoughts. “Guys, what am I supposed to do?”

  Alastair, Ellesea, and Jessica all looked at her curiously. Nothing seemed wrong with her, so they wondered what she was supposed to do with what…until they noticed how much her hair was sticking on end.

  “Y’cennia, calm down,” Al soothed. “You’re trembling. What’s wrong?”

  “I, ah, left the party,” she explained, and the others finally noticed that she wasn’t in their group. Before they had a chance to ask, they found out why. Each one of them had a notification, most likely the one Y’cennia had already seen.

  [You have 1 outstanding party invitation.]

  [You cannot join a party while already in one. You must leave your current party or decline the invite.]

  That was strange. Normally, party invitations could only be sent out to people not in a party. Though none of them had ever tried, they understood that sending an invitation to somebody already in a party would simply return with an error: [Target is already in a party.]

  Ever curious, Y’cennia was the first to drop out of their old party and investigate the oddity. What she found, what they all found as the old party dissolved, was incredibly ominous.

  “What the hell?” Jessica muttered.

  A normal party invite screen was straightforward. It was a small, semi-translucent box that the system offered, which simply stated:

  ?

  [(X Person) wants to invite you to a party. Do you want to join?]

  [Yes] [No]

  ?

  The person who sent the invite would obviously be displayed in the box. The person receiving the invite could either accept the invite and join the party, or decline the invite and go about their day.

  It was meant to be unobtrusive; the system gently called a person’s awareness to it and eased it into their line of sight when they were ready to view it. Easily dismissed.

  A stark contrast to the bold and damning obstruction dominating Jessica’s entire field of vision the second she left her party. The box was not see-through. It was not an easily overlooked color that blended into whatever background was behind it.

  It was pitch black with blood-red letters, ensnared by a golden dragon, which at first was gripping and clawing all along the border, until it seemed to notice Jessica looking, at which point it reared back, opened its jaws wide, and lunged. It froze, the “invitation” sat squarely in its mouth, sharp fangs and countless teeth tearing into the black frame. As if one small mistake and the dragon would swallow it, and her, whole.

  ?

  [Meliastraza Obsidianheart summons you to a party. Do you dare decline?]

  [Yes] [No]

  ?

  …

  “What the hell do I do?” Jessica asked. Her voice was high and shaky, but she forced herself to remain calm. If she panicked, Y’cennia would certainly panic, and the others might panic, and then they’d have serious trouble.

  Her hand raised slowly, as if she needed to see it and use it to push one of the two buttons, despite the system always responding to mental commands. This was a trap. It had to be a trap. It screamed trap and all her [Hunter] senses were tingling.

  Only, she had no idea what the trap actually was!

  “This is insane!” she cried. “Do I pick yes? You always pick yes when you want to join a party. But this wording is dumb! Who the hell has power over the system to make it summon you to a party?”

  “Read it carefully,” Ellesea cautioned, her hand also floating in the air, wavering to make a decision. “I think we say no. We don’t want to decline.”

  “But the yes is where it always is!” Jessica panicked. Oh, she was panicking now. She did not want to get eaten by a dragon…real or imagined by the system! “It’s in the same place the yes is at when Al sends out the invitation! I don’t even look at those anymore, I practically auto-accept!”

  “Well then don’t auto decline this one!” Ellesea hissed, struggling not to raise her voice. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to hit no-“

  “Oh….”

  Y’cennia went white as a sheet and slumped to the ground. She pulled her knees close to her chest, hugging them, and began rocking gently.

  “Cennie?” Al asked, quickly walking over. He cast a quick [Heal], but when that did nothing to help the poor catkin, he bent down in front of her, handing her his canteen.

  “Drink some water. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  Y’cennia did as she was told, draining the entirety of Alastair’s canteen. She stared at it wistfully, as if she wondered if she could crawl inside it to hide.

  “Ellesea is right,” she eventually said. “If you want to join the party, you hit no.” She closed her eyes. “I did.” She said nothing else.

  The [Mage] was about to ask if that was a good or a bad thing, but Jessica wasn’t waiting to find out. She, too, joined the party. And she immediately saw what made Y’cennia go so white.

  ?

  [Meliastraza Obsidianheart]

  ?

  Level: 3700

  Class: Destroyer of Worlds

  ?

  Jessica’s mind blanked. She barely registered Al slowly sitting down next to her, Y’cennia whimpering, and Ellesea trying to console her.

  ?

  Level 3700. [Destroyer of Worlds].

  ?

  Destroyer of Worlds.

  ?

  Armageddon did come for them.

  ?

  But unlike in her dreams, where it took the form of a cosmic entity devouring the universe, reality was a little more…perverse.

  They were stuck with a gnome-sized terror that could, with the slightest breath, reduce them all to smears. With a level like that?

  The entire kingdom.

  All theories about how the dragon supposedly loved Humanity were instantly forgotten, replaced by generations of folk tales that essentially equated it to death. No, that wasn’t quite right, as Jessica was reminded of something that, just yesterday, seemed inconsequential. Her title.

  ?

  Woe be unto those who try and separate a dragon from her hoard, even death itself.

  ?

  This was much, much worse.

  ?

  Jessica glanced at the section of her system screen that displayed the status of her chatgem. 3 out of 4. One member was out of range, and Jessica had never been more glad to go unheard.

  “We are so fucked.”

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