drake v. drake

Previously the stuff of legends, I’m learning there are many subtleties to word “dragon”; indeed, Obegard has a whole host of variants. Not only are there different colours which are somehow linked to their abilities, but there are different degrees of drakedom. The variety is mind-boggling, seemingly akin to saying that humans are related to dwarves.

Perhaps ignorance has some reward, however, as in order to trade for the remaining dwarves we had to drink potions that allowed us to breathe underwater, swim for hours, and when we finally emerged into another dwarven complex the only thing breathing was a large copper-coloured dragon, whom we found out was called Ironfang.

He had quite the little treasure trove sitting there for us to admire and I could see Obegard near to slobbering at the rather pretty green gem sparkling in the reflected light, but afraid to do anything about it.

Ironfang had apparently been told by our buddy Rime that we’d be along, and it became clear we’d been set up because Ironfang had been told we go around wantonly slaying dragons and were coming for him. Yeah, right, like there are even enough dragons around for anyone to be “wantonly” slaying them.

We managed to set him right and avoid a confrontation, and the others were getting ready to genuflect their way out of Ironfang’s presence but I figured we had some crap to dump, and Ironfang had some stuff that looked a lot more portable so I asked if he was interested in trading.

The others looked at me with crazy eyes and I heard Obegard whispering something about shutting up and getting out while we could, but it was all drowned out by Ironfang’s booming voice asking what we had to offer. Man, you should have seen how quickly the dudes changed their tune and were dragging out all those weird pincer staves and other stuff that we’d never be able to trade for more than a few gold elsewhere. Sure, we still didn’t get as much as we might under perfect selling conditions, but since we were never going to get perfect selling conditions I think we did pretty darn well.

Obegard was particularly happy as we were able to scrape up enough to score him that big green gem that will apparently allow him to bad the arse out of his staff.

We were just about done when Rime and a bunch of buddies arrived. There were four of those nasty fighting types, and another thing that Obegard later told me was a half-dragon (as opposed to Rime being a dragon-spawn—I wonder if the difference is anything more than academic?). They were all beefed up for dragon fighting, and I had a brief moment of satisfaction at Rime’s disappointment that we’d avoided fighting Ironfang, and then we were embroiled in a fight with Rime’s bunch.

It would have been way too much for us, but with Ironfang there they had to expend considerable effort just keeping him out of it, though they did that with some skill. The half-dragon shot nasty rays from his fingers that seemed to disorient Ironfang and as a result he wasn’t doing much throughout the fight.

Obegard was instrumental, despite being almost out of magical reserves for the day. He managed to pull off a spell to speed everyone up, then managed to completely immobilise Rime just in time for me to slit his throat, and then made me invisible so I could start cutting down the fighting lizards while they concentrated on Ironfang.

Dearthen seemed obsessed with taking out the half-dragon himself—anytime he was offered help he seemed to go almost crazy as he shouted that it was “his.” That wasn’t working out so well for anyone, as Dearthen seemed unable to do much damage, the half-dragon kept casting spells that were making a mess of Ironfang, and as the only one picking on the other lizards it was taking a while to take them down.

But it eventually started to come together. One by one the fighting lizards fell, Ironfang was able to take to the air to stop the last one or two from finishing him off while I continued to pick at them, and Dearthen managed to start doing some damage once someone managed to dissipate some of the magical protections the half-dragon had woven around itself.