Chapter Text
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Being aware of that doesn’t fix when you’re one more missed meal away from starving though.
Caleb stood in the middle of an empty field with two other vagrants and Nott all dressed up in crownsguard armor. A huge chest of gold sat between the four of them.
“You know, we could just… just take some.” One of the vagrants suggested. That one was Phil. Nott shifted from one foot to the other. If Caleb knew his little friend she had already snuck a bit out of the chest.
“They might be watching from afar,” Caleb pointed out. “They would want to know our mission was successful.”
The other one, Simon, grumbled. “How long do we gotta wait? What are we even waiting for.”
He wished Frumpkin was around his neck, but the cat had been poofed back to the feywild from a kick by a drunk three towns back. Caleb doubted whatever they were waiting for was good. When the guard comes around to the slums and offers one gold piece and a free meal if you dress up like them and stand in a field you’d have to be desperate to think the odds would be anywhere near in your favour.
Caleb was both desperate and aware they were probably screwed. He kept one hand in his pocket toying with his dimond trying to be prepared for anything.
He wasn’t prepared.
Blood drained from his face as a speck in the sky streaked closer and closer. Faster and faster. Oh gods. That was a dragon. That was a fucking dragon.
Phil screamed and instantly made a break for it. Simon made a succession of high pitched squeaks, too afraid to move an inch.
“They’ve fucked us, Caleb!!” Nott squealed downing a shot and grabbing at her crossbow not sure what her tiny arrows would be able to do against the gigantic creature.
“Don't’ shoot! It’s here for the gold, not us. Just stay still and it’ll be fine.” He wasn’t sure if he was lying to her or himself, but running wasn’t an option. At full speed they would never make it to the city walls or the river to their right. Better to take the chance of survival than certain doom. He gave a second to look over at her. Her skin had gone green again the disguise spell was wearing off.
The purple dragon slowed, wings causing gusts all around them. Caleb threw off his helmet unable to see in it anyway.
“We have your prize!” Caleb shouted over the wind. He gestured to the chest. The dragon tilted its head, the air was still now. It’s long neck craned down at him.
“Nice dragon, nice dragon,” Nott whimpered under her breath.
The dragon made a… it sounded like a deep growling chuckle and then lifted off again. It glided forward it’s claws coming down.
But it wasn’t the chest it grabbed.
“CALEB!!!!!” Nott screamed.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh no.
There was suddenly no ground under his feet. Tiny crossbow bolts struck at the dragon. None of them getting past its thick scales.
Caleb was not strong, and even if he were strong and was able to break the dragon’s grasp he was also not able to sprout wings and fly away. Nott’s form became smaller and smaller until she was out of view and the fields below became patchwork of colours and the town looked like a small speck and oh, he was having trouble breathing now.
He blacked out thinking misty clouds and an upside down world were the last things he was going to see.
-
He woke up on something hard. It wasn’t his first time waking up in an uncomfortable position, but he didn’t have the luxury of thinking he had just made a bed in a ditch again. He remembered exactly what his circumstances where.
He forced himself not to move, to keep his breathing even and crack open his eyes. It was dark, impossible for him to make out anything. Whatever he was lying on was small, cold and flat shifting underneath him like gravel He must be on the dragon’s horde.
But he was alive and not in a dragon’s belly. That was something. He might be a snack for later, but alive was alive.
He seized when he felt hot air blow against his body. The dragon that’s head had to be right above him. He tensed, waiting for the bite that would end his life, but nothing happened. The Dragon seemed to just be watching him.
“Are you awake?” It had to be the Dragon’s attempt at being quiet because the voice didn’t rattle his bones like its laugh had back in the field.
It’s going to torture you, do terrible things to you before it kills you. Dragons are known to be cruel creatures. The longer you remain inert, the longer you have.
But there would only be so long he could keep up the act and the tension was killing him.
“Your heart beat’s sped up,” The Dragon pointed out, voice still low. “I’m not going to eat you, if that helps any.” He (He?) added as an afterthought.
“Oh,” Caleb said very quietly, his world shook with the Dragon shifting in whatever they were on top of. It seemed he had heard him. “Well…” Caleb said trying to keep his voice even. He pulled himself to a kneeling position trying to balance on the mound of what was probably gold that slid around him. “That’s … comforting.”
Even in his upright position he could only make out the outline of the Dragon’s face that still felt very near if his breath was anything to go by.
“Hello, dear.” And there was a smile in the Dragon’s rumbling voice.
“Uh… guten morgen,” He muttered back.
“Oh. Oh good, it’s definitely you.” The Dragon sounded very pleased with himself.
“Definitely me?” He had a perfect memory and in no moment alive on Exandria had he ever met a Dragon.
“You know,” Caleb said trying to fill the empty space of sound, maybe trying to put off whatever envitibility was coming at him. “I’m worth quite a bit less than the gold you gave up.”
“Hah! You can’t see? Do humans have bad vision?”
The hot air moved away from him. More metal spilled around him and then there were torches lighting up all around.
He sucked in a hard breath not prepared to be so close to the massive creature. The Dragon was reclining on a bed of gold. More gold than Caleb had ever seen, could ever imagine. Enough to bed a dragon, or maybe even three dragons. Mixed in were jewels, armor, weapons. Anything the mind could imagine. The dragon’s blood red eyes peered at him.
“I have plenty of gold, darling.” The Dragon’s laughter almost knocked him over. As he laughed his form shifted and shrunk until sitting in the gold six feet away from him was a beautiful tiefling. He sprawled back on his pile and grinned at Caleb his sharp fangs showing.
Caleb stared at him. He knew this tiefling. He was a street performer he had seen around town.
“Wizards though.” the Tiefling continued, “I don’t have any of those. Well. Until now that is.”
“Mollymauk… Tealeaf.” The name had seemed odd when he thought he was talking to a tiefling on the street. It was more suited to a halfling.
“So you do remember me. Then you’ll remember it’s Molly to my friends.”
Caleb felt way beyond the point of comprehension for any of this.
“You… are a dragon.”
“You are a clever one.”
“What…” His fingers slid into the gold. He clasped a bunch of it. “What do you have need of a wizard for?”
Mollymauk, the dragon… the tiefling waved a casual hand.
“Oh, I don’t know, you just seemed interesting. I liked your pretty dancing lights the other night.”
Caleb’s gaped. “You… you gave up all that gold for a cheap parlour trick?”
Mollymauk snickered. “What else do people spend gold on but for cheap parlour tricks?”
“I can think of a few things.” The mountains of fine ink and paper and books and spells he could acquire with just that chest of gold was more than he would have been able to carry.
“Really?” Mollymauk perked up, immediately interested. “What would you spend it on?”
He was at a loss. The creature who was sliding closer to him now was immensely powerful. He had no doubt his smaller form was just as formidable as his big one even if Caleb managed to take him by surprise with a spell. So far it had all just been stiliting small talk, which was a lot better than being torture to death by a monstrous dragon, but he maybe was being toyed with.
“Books probably,” Caleb answered after a few unsteady beats.
“You like books?”
“Yes?” Caleb found himself trying to shift backwards. The Tiefling was within arms reach now. “...Do you have any books, Mollymauk?” he might as well… He might as well just ask.
Mollymauk looked around his giant pile and seemed to be considering. “I don’t believe so, there might be something around...and it’s Molly to my friends, remember?”
“Do you have many friends?” Caleb asked.
“No,” Mollymauk admitted. “That’s fine though.”
Wow now he felt like a dick… well no, no he didn’t because he had been abducted by a dragon. A weird dragon.
“So…” Caleb said slowly. He was still trying to puzzle together things. Mollymauk had a hand on his cheek, still staring at Caleb delighted. His tail swung to and fro under his colourful jacket. “So I’m your tithe then?”
Mollymauk nodded an affirmative. “Yes. Definitely.”
“The town got a bargain. The guards don’t even have to pay me now.” Even if he did escape the arschlöchers would probably say he abandoned his post.
“Well, what’s mine is mine,” Molly gestured to the mountains of gold. “I can spare you some change.”
“How kind,” Caleb offered a dour expression. Now that his life wasn’t under immediate threat he found himself irritated by the whole thing. “You don’t happen to have a shop stuffed under all that gold, do you?”
Molly laughed, a little too loud at the sarcasm.
“Oh, I really do like you. What’s your name, dear?”
“Caleb.”
“Caleb, wonderful. Think of it this way. You are gallantly defending an entire town from fierce dragon attack.”
“By keeping a dragon company?”
“Exactly.”
What had he been pulled into?