Totentanz

Book 2 Chapter XII: Der Drache

Warning: contains major character death (yet again).

DER DRACHE
German, "the dragon"

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive. -- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Karandren's screeches echoed off the walls. Diarnlan winced and wanted to cover her ears. It was a pity that in this form she both couldn't cover them and technically didn't have ears to cover anyway.

"Will you shut up?" she yelled. "You're the most ridiculous creature I've ever had the misfortune of knowing! You'll face skrýszel and jǫtnar without flinching but you're terrified of something you yourself created?"

Karandren finally shut up. She suspected it was more because he'd run out of breath than because he'd calmed down. He gawked at her as if he'd never seen this ugly lump of metal before. Really, of all the places she could have ended up, why did it have to be the bloody dragon? Being an ordinary ghost would have been preferable!

Though come to think of it, were there such things as ordinary ghosts? Diarnlan briefly got distracted by pondering this. By the time she brought her thoughts back to the present Karandren had also recovered.

"...Diarnlan?" he asked faintly.

She glared at him. "No, I'm the Dragon God[1] come to drag you down to the underworld for creating this monstrosity."

For a moment there was silence. Karandren stared up at her with a bug-eyed expression that suggested he believed her. Diarnlan began to reconsider her choice to come here. Being sent back to the in-between place would have been much less irritating.

"You're joking?" Karandren asked. With more certainty he continued, "Of course you're joking. But what are you doing in my dragon?"

"It's a very long story," Diarnlan snapped.

"And? We have plenty of time. The politicians won't bother me until tomorrow. I'll boil them in oil if they try."

Diarnlan tried to raise an eyebrow in confusion. She failed because the dragon didn't have eyebrows to raise or any ability to change its expression at all. "Politicians? Since when does Miavain have politicians?"

She distinctly remembered that she'd had to recruit some very confused and frightened law students to become makeshift politicians the last time she'd been here.

"Since I started trying to turn this into a civilised country."

Diarnlan stared at him. Then she looked around at the room to make sure she wasn't dreaming. No, she couldn't possibly imagine such ugly tiles on the floor. "Civilised? You? Did you hit your head or is all that dark magic finally taking its toll?"

Karandren glared at her. "Remember that I created that dragon and I can melt it down again with one spell. What do you think will happen to you if I do that?"

She tried to shrug and only succeeded in scraping the dragon's claws over the floor. It was an improvement, considering that she'd partially obscured one of the incomprehensible drawings -- was it meant to be a bird or a snail? -- on the tiles. "I don't know but it can't be any worse than what's already happened."

Karandren waited expectantly. Diarnlan sighed and filled him in on the events of the last few days. Had it really only been two days since she first felt someone was watching her? It seemed so much longer.

"You must be making some of that up," Karandren protested several times during her story.

Only the determination to finish telling everything before she got side-tracked again prevented her from starting an argument over that. When she finished Karandren looked more baffled than she'd ever seen him look before.