War crimes are no laughing matter, and I was pretty sure I’d just committed one. Not just starting the battle before the agreed time, as Lille, Pete and Bonglebounder all shot into the sky and lined up for a strafing run, but by unleashing the beast among the young dragons.

  “Dagrun taught us to control the dragon. It was the trap, the cruel joke of our resurrections. And you just told them they could indulge the monsters inside that they’d been fighting against for so long. Stupid boy!” Chi growled at me.

  “This isn’t healthy,” I muttered.

  Bargleblaster was strafing the front lines with his poo-fire, swooping and diving as projectiles flew up towards him. Pete was a snarling silver ball of teeth and fangs rolling around on the Umbrati left flank. Blasts of purple fire, interspersed with snarls and hisses, broke up the green dragon's assault.

  Lille… Lille was terrifying. She didn’t have a breath attack, or if she did, she wasn’t using it. The spines along her body would shoot out like six-inch-long bullets and quickly regrow, only to be fired again. The spiky ball of her tail swept down below her as she passed low to the ground, smashing aside soldiers and cavalry in her wake.

  Jace was waiting quietly next to Chi, the red dragon shifting nervously from side to side.

  “Oh, go on, boy. You know you want to, and the rest are indulging themselves,” Chi said, nudging him with her tail.

  “I don’t know. Dagrun told us to make good choices. This doesn’t feel like a good choice.”

  I considered my internal menagerie. Vanity, Greed, Lust, Wrath and the rest were all at war with each other as much as they were with me. Maybe I could share some wisdom?

  “You’ve got to learn to play your urges off against each other, kid. And learn how to argue with them. You hate the thought of paying for something, right? The idea of parting with your shinies for goods or services seems revolting. But sometimes you’ve got to spend money to make money. You need to learn to live with your draconic nature. Sometimes you give in to it, sometimes you bargain with it, sometimes you make it obey you. Choosing your battles is the key, Jace.”

  The red dragon craned his neck round and looked up at me. He blinked his pale blue eyes and nodded decisively. His wings snapped as he rose into the sky and circled up to altitude.

  “Damn fool with your fortune cookie philosophy. You know what Jace is capable of? What any of them are? Our evolutions are focused, unlike your mongrel state,” Chi muttered.

  “The system just gives you random shit. You can’t pick a particular path,” I snorted. “Oh damn.”

  Jace had released his breath attack. He sneezed a massive crimson orb down to the ground, where it cracked like an egg. Rivers of fire spread out from the impact, quickly covering a large area with dull red flames that melted anything they touched. Armour, weapons and flesh glowed brightly and collapsed to dust.

  “He’s a goddamn bomber,” I said, impressed despite myself.

  “And Lille likes hedgehogs. Bargleblaster is a biological weapon, and Pete is a brawler.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m none of your damn business. Oh look. The humans are joining in. This is where it gets messy. You’d better go keep an eye on them. If anything happens to the little ones, Dagrun will not be happy.”

  The forces of the light, most of whom I assumed were as morally grey as their shadowy opposition, had begun their advance. Ranks of soldiers in cheap armour or padded jerkins marched forwards in lines, spears levelled, glinting at the moment as they were still clean and polished. Soon they’d be stained red, assuming Pete didn’t just eat everything before they could arrive.

  Cavalry from both sides duelled on the flanks, men and horses screaming as wounds were exchanged. They would pull back, reform and charge in again. Then the mages got in on the fun.

  Robed figures behind the front ranks of the Umbrati forces raised their arms and chanted their spells. Serving in place of mobile artillery, they launched weird orbs, energy blasts and jets of liquid across the rapidly shrinking no man's land.

  Shields appeared to block some of them, but soldiers began to die in explosions or be ripped apart by tentacles oozing out of tear-shaped rips in reality.

  I launched myself upwards and swung round to strafe the enemy mages. They were the biggest threats to me, the TOTS and the light-side troops. My target priority made sense to me. I would look to take out the things most dangerous to me, and those things were generally the most dangerous to everything anyway.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Missa Somnambulis!” I roared as the frontlines finally clashed after their steady approach, and the good guys pushed over their now sleeping foes. It was a little unsporting, but they had no qualms about stabbing the sleeping soldiers.

  I barreled down to land next to Pete, swiping away a lancer who was charging in to hit the dragon from the flank. Orange-green fire poured out of my nose as I swept a clear space around us. Gold clinked into existence on my faraway hoard. I shoved Pete aside and moved ahead of him, my tails lashing and thrashing into the humans who tried to charge me.

  Lille passed by on my left, peppering everyone with her needles and snapping a man off his horse with her jaws and swallowing him whole. After she turned towards the centre of the enemy formation, only a handful of soldiers remained, lowering their shields and peering about to check that the pink-white dragon had indeed moved on.

  “Bob! You challenged me!” Gigglesworth yelled as he used his sword to swipe away the spines sticking out of his shield. He strode forward confidently, a heavily armed sidekick at either shoulder.

  “Speculator Visus!”

  Count Gingler Gigglesworth

  Paladin of Silentium

  Level 82

  STR 98 AGI 34 MAG 25 ARM 176

  “Os Opprime!” he bellowed.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Os Opprime

  I opened my mouth to snap back with a witty comeback. Or at least a your mum joke, but nothing came out. I snarled, or tried to. My mouth moved, I felt my throat vibrate under the scales, but no sound emerged. I stamped forward, but my footsteps made no sound. I reared back and clapped my claws together, and again: silence. Plus an explosion of bloody sparkles.

  The three men charged at me, spreading out as they came. They’d robbed me of my magic, but they hadn’t… yep, they had. Somehow, when I leaned forward to douse them in fire, nothing came out.

  My head swung hard to the left, sending Gigglesworth rolling to one side. I followed him, moving forward and using a pair of tails to club one of the guards into the ground while snatching the other up with a spare.

  Agony. I screamed silently. My head snapped round and found the man I’d picked up was battering at my god-forged scales with his mace. They weren’t breaking or cracking, but each blow sent spikes of pain through the flesh below.

  I hurled him away, watching him bounce across the ground and come to a tangled stop in a cloud of dust. I slammed another tail down on the trooper I’d merely smacked before, the painful pair held cautiously up in the air as the muscles twitched and juddered.

  Gigglesworth, arguably my most stupidly named enemy thus far, had picked himself up. He’d lost his shield, so he held his sword above his head with both hands and screamed as he charged at me again.

  Why did they all have to have stupid names? The mighty battle between a dragon called Bob and the dark knight Gingle Gigglesworth was going to look pretty shit in any history books that might be written about the Battle of Shady Crevice. Thinking about it, it probably wasn’t going to matter much in the grand scheme of stupid names. I resolved to found a town called Hairyvag and deliberately start fights there.

  He brought the sword down in a vicious overhead slash, and I ducked my head back, curling my neck to let the blade whistle past my snout. Gimme-The-Treat sent my jaws snapping forward, but he twirled to one side like a dancer, an impressive feat in full plate.

  A foot lashed out, slamming into the side of my face and swinging my head off to one side. You-Aren’t-My-Pimp turned the momentum into a turn, my left foreclaw moving into snatch him up, but he cartwheeled backwards out of range. Sussy-Booty-Shake sent a tangle of tails writhing out at him as I continued my turn and presented my rear, but his sword blurred, swatting my attacks aside, using the force of the blows to help him dodge or parry the next one.

  Chun-Li’s-Sexy-Legs turned my tails into a flurry of stabbing spears. He backed away, twisting his upper body from side to side until he had escaped my range, his sword held casually along his side.

  Not being able to speak was particularly frustrating. He moved like an effete waiter, arms held still, cocked at odd angles. He was begging for me to take the piss out of him. Perhaps this was what hell was like? So much shit to talk, no vocal cords to talk it with.

  “Such an uncouth beast. You killed Hateskale as well, didn’t you? He always skimped on training.”

  Oh, that was great. This asshole got to banter and taunt; I couldn’t even growl. I nodded instead and crept forward, belly held low to the ground like a cat stalking a shiny mouse.

  Spines peppered the ground around us, sparking off my scales and his armour as we closed the distance.

  “I’ll send you to your next life as a groaning axolotl, you sparkly bastard!” he bellowed.

  That was weirdly specific. I managed to dodge with a blast of air from a flap of my wings, lifted my body up off the ground, then I bore down with both claws. Giggleworth dived sideways, flicking out his sword to send sparks showering amongst the sparkles as he cut at my armoured hide.

  My jaws snapped around, and he rolled away to escape my fangs. A tail speared down in a move I knew as the Shish-Kabob, and it pierced through his left arm at the bicep. The shiny armour buckled as the tail impaled the ground beneath the man, chopping off his arm in one blow.

  He kicked his feet hard into the ground, launching himself away as another tail came for him, and backrolled to his feet. He looked down at his arm, looked up at me, and lifted the visor of his helm with his remaining limb.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  Goddamn silence spell.

  He twirled his sword in his right hand and charged forward again, utterly unconcerned about having lost an arm. I was aware that they could be regrown fairly easily from what Mordechai had said, but you’d think it would at least warrant an “oh, bugger,” or even a “you bastard!” I felt let down by his response.

  I dodged backwards, Kitten-Slashing-Toiletpaper made me rear back and swat my long claws at lightning speed in front of me. His blade flashed, sparks mixing with my sparkles once more, then I used Ankles-Are-Overrated, a pair of tails wrapped around each other, sweeping round and catching him in his calves, flicking him into the air.

  My jaws lunged, and I clamped down on his legs, my teeth sinking in and snapping closed. There should have been a satisfying CLOP noise, but nope. I amputated both his legs in total silence. The bastard didn’t even scream as what was left of him cartwheeled to the ground.

  With a grunt, he levered himself up with his final limb, sword somehow still clutched in his hand. “Tis but a scra–”

  Pete slammed into the ground and ate him before he could finish his sentence.