“You can’t kill Harald.”

  “He’s my minion. I can do what I want.” I knew I sounded childish.

  “Bob, that’s why you can’t kill him.” Kat stood up and stepped around her table. She put her hands on her hips and glared at me.

  “Say ‘Pika Pika.’”

  “No. What you need to do is stop the prophecy. Harald isn’t guaranteed to bring about a new primal empire. You’ve got him tied down; administering Longbottom keeps him busy. As long as you keep him occupied, he can’t accidentally lead a revolution. Towards that end, I’ve got a meeting you should attend.”

  Meetings are a bit like paperwork, in my mind. A necessary evil that should be avoided as much as possible.

  “I was thinking of popping into the city and finding an auction house. I’ve got all the crap I sto- was given by Bulb to get rid of. How’s Cyrus doing with the potions I asked for?”

  “You want to go into the city?” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and stuck one leg out to the side like an anime character.

  “Yeah?”

  The gut punch stung, despite my ARM stat. The little corruscating sparks of lightning mixed with my own sparkles to create a lightshow that I failed to appreciate. I was grateful she avoided her usual target, though. My undercarriage still stung from the egg defecation.

  “Don’t you bloody dare! Every time you go there, you get yourself into some stupid shit that causes me headaches to sort out.”

  “Dammit, Kat. It’s worth a lot of gold, and wars take gold to win. We are in a war, remember?”

  “You should listen to the tiny stripper, boy. She’s right.”

  I turned back and found one of Chi’s eyes and part of her face on the other side of the portal. Dammit, I would have to fly those idiots back to Mount Bob before I could do anything.

  “Can Inedible-Reg make bigger portals?” I asked Kat, choosing to ignore the judgmental grandma for the moment.

  “He’d need to modify his spells. More mana, and they will take longer to make.”

  “Get him on it, please. Flying is fast, but instant is instant.”

  “We cannot fit through this portal.”

  “I’m aware of that, Chi. Kat, can you send a human with half a brain through to negotiate the loot? I’m up for seven point five per cent.”

  “Which you will be sharing with us, I trust,” Chi said through the portal.

  There was that hateful word again. Sharing. My face must have changed because Kat held up a hand to stop me from exploding.

  “Once you sign a contract, as high-ranking minions, your stipend will be generous, and I’m sure that Bob will allow for a generous split, but without an accurate tally of the profits, it’s far too soon to make a call on exact numbers. I’m sure you understand, Madam Chi.”

  “He had better. I’ve eaten noodles less wet than this creature. He lacks discipline!”

  “Could you wrangle up the rest of the TOTS, please, Chi? I’ll settle up here and come back through in a moment,” I said in my nicest voice. It practically oozed syrupy sweetness.

  The dragon withdrew, and I heard her mutter insults as she moved away until she started calling out the names of the others and ordering them to form up.

  “I like her.”

  “You would, Kat. I’ll be back later tonight. We’re going to need accommodation for five more dragons and some kind of anti-dragon defences on the opening to my lair. That, or we move it somewhere secure. Go kick Cyrus in the nuts if he hasn’t got some of those potions ready for me. I’m going to go deal with the kids.”

  “I really don’t think you should head back to the city, Bob. Go find a few towns to defend or attack instead. The tax is starting to add up. A couple more towns and you’ll be a very happy dragon.”

  She made a fair point, and the Greed-goblin rubbed its claws together happily at the notion.

  “I’ll think about it.” Long-term profit or short-term gains from an auction… Why not both? Greed mirrored my own movement as I nodded decisively.

  “This meeting, it’s Esme, Jenny, the de Sackville brothers and Denton. It’s to coordinate the pub chain, and you really should be there. I’m going to portal Tex in as well to represent the traders who’ve started signing up for–” she paused to sigh, “Bob’s Bargain Bonanza.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I knew you’d come round on the name. Fine. Can we do it tonight when I get back with the dragons?”

  “Sure.”

  “Say ‘Chu’.”

  “Piss off Bob.”

  I tossed her the portal stone and chuckled to myself as I headed back to the battlefield before reality hit home. The only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won. It might have been the other way around; I forget where the quote came from, but it wasn’t far off the mark.

  What had been a pleasant valley between two low hills was a charnel house. Bodies from both sides lay scattered like soggy mops after an orgy. While we’d clearly had the best of it, there were still plenty of bodies clad in yellow and white livery mixed in with the black and grey.

  I pushed down the thought that there was a lot of protein to be had right now, and it would spoil soon. Going around like an industrial digger scooping up corpses for biomass would probably not endear me to my allies.

  Chi had collected the TOTS together off to one side, and I made my way over, trying to think about how to handle this. They’d finally unleashed the beast after years of isolation, and they’d probably want more.

  A young woman in silvery armour stopped me as I walked towards my new allies with a scowl on my face.

  “Sir.” She passed me a scrap of paper, saluted, pivoted on a heel and marched away.

  “Duke Armand Smith cordially invites you to the battle of Gallow’s Garnish, to be held on the fourteenth of Hogtober. Bring your own booze. Be there or be a traitor to the light, who will be struck from the lists of honour and cast out into the darkness.”

  I had no idea how far away that was. I disappeared the note into my storage space and plodded on. Kids. I was too young to be dealing with kids, especially kids who could eat armies or burn cities to the ground.

  “OK, guys, gather round. We had a good time today, but now we need to get back to the real world.” Not my best opener, but it was all that came to mind.

  “You think this was good?” Chi asked with a sniff.

  “It was fucking amazing! Did you see me? I was all ‘poo-beam for you. Poo-beam for you, and you. I was like Oprah, but with death!” Bargleblaster exclaimed, then proceeded to make pew-pew noises as he shot imaginary shit-fire from his tail, waving it about over his back like a lunatic.

  So that was one I didn’t need to worry about getting PTSD, at least. Jace and Lille looked unhappy. Pete looked blank, like there was no emotion there at all. Troubling.

  “Ok. So Bunglebanger has shit-breath, Jace drops bombs, Lille really likes hedghogs, and Pete doesn’t have a breath attack. What’s your evolution, Chi?”

  The blue dragon looked me up and down. “You should wear better clothes as a human. You look scruffy. You need a haircut.”

  “Mordechai is a fine barber, and I got a trim not that long ago!” I objected. Vanity and Wrath held hands for a moment before charging at my sanity with malicious intent. I did not want to fight one of my proteges, however obnoxious she was.

  “Huh. Some control, then. I’m not willing to talk about my evolutions.”

  “She never does. Chi has the most of all of us, but she never talked about them with anyone but Dagrun,” Jace said timidly. “I’ve never been in a fight before.”

  “You did good, kid. I didn’t know we could do the whole bomber thing.”

  “You haven’t studied the evolution manuals?” Pete asked quietly.

  “Never heard of them. Might explain why I’ve ended up such a mish-mash.”

  “Not having a clear plan is the sign of an infant,” Chi snapped.

  “So I’m guessing you went up close and personal, Pete.” I ignored Chi for the time being. “What about you, Jace? How did you unlock the bomber thing?”

  “Marticulons like bombing things. We’ve sterilised thousands of worlds,” he said proudly. I blinked slowly. Huh, it takes all sorts, I guessed.

  “What about you, Lille?”

  “I like hodgepigs,” she said quietly. The spines, which I now realised sprouted from between all of her scales, rippled down the length of her body.

  “That’s nice.” What the hell was I supposed to say? “Look, I think we need to get you all set up at Mount Bob. I’ve got some lairs being set up for you, and once we’re all home and comfy, you guys can get some evolutions and chill while I sort out the plan.”

  “And what plan is that exactly?” Chi demanded.

  How to avoid a valuable minion upsetting the applecart and bringing about world peace? Finding an auction house that wasn’t worried about upsetting the god of light? Talking to Esme about my sparkly problem? I had a bloody list to deal with.

  “Saving the world, I suppose.” The fact that helping Harald sounded like the karmically correct course to take, peace unto all, etc, didn’t make me feel inclined to support it. I would have to preserve the world as it was, or help bring in a new and theoretically better one. Either way, I would be saving a world, I just needed to choose which one.

  “Mhm. And you think you can do that? You aren’t an impressive specimen.”

  “Chi, I’m guessing no one came to your funeral back on earth. Long story short is I’m awesome. Get your shit together, all of you; it’s time to fly home. There’s a war to win, a world to save and piles of shinies to be made.”

  The mention of shinies perked them all up, even the irascible Chi. We leapt into the air and turned our wings north once more. The land flashed by below us as we headed towards my home. I left a trail of sparkling light in my wake.

  I would have a chat with Tim about some extra security for my hoard. They all seemed nice enough, allowing for various degrees of weird, but I was not going to trust another dragon anywhere near my perfect mattress.

  Trying to distract myself wasn’t working. All the bullshit about the world and fretting about my shinies, while certainly sincere in the case of my treasure, was just a way to avoid thinking about the real problem.

  Esme. My lovely gin slinger, with her taste in extreme lingerie and kindhearted disposition. Not only was I caught up in a war and making a habit of eating people, but I also sparkled.

  She’d been understanding about me being a dragon. In fact, she’d been kind of into it, in a way that I had found very gratifying. Her role within the expanding Swing Cod business empire was vital; despite the amount of time I spent in bars, I knew bugger all about running one, let alone several of them.

  I was being a coward. I knew it, and it just made me more cowardly, and, on some level, angry. The Lust-monkey looked sad every time my thoughts turned to losing her, and Wrath and Greed both got uppity. She was mine, and my draconic instincts told me she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Which made me angrier because I knew it wasn’t right.

  I needed to beard this lion in its den. I wasn’t the monster who warranted a knight in shining armour. Bloody sparkles.