Mark flattered the dragon Zirmondo with both truth and flagrant lies. It was no lie to say that the Dragon was handsome in a stark way, nor to say that he was intelligent and terrifying. Saying that his fame had spread beyond Alpha Centauri with its hundreds of alien habitats to Betelgeuse with its vast antimatter and antimanna mines was purest blarney, but Mark said it so adroitly that the Dragon smiled.

  He played games and tried to wager things he couid lose safely while gaining some critical advantage. This was a hair-raising, unnerving experience because while Dragon's are susceptible to flattery, Men are very susceptible to blind spots. And a Dragon might take two disparate pieces of fact, and weave a whole net out of it. Mark was almost caught twice thus.

  Even still, he wondered if the Dragon had let him go. Perhaps the Dragon was bored, and was enjoying their month long duel of nerves and wit. Without Biggie by his side to bolster his spirit, and frequent prayers, Mark would have broke under the Dragon's intensity of spirit as the second month turned into the third month.

  By this time, they'd played all the games that Mark had ever played: Chess, checkers, gin rummy, Battleship, Monopoly, Life, DnD, Champions, Multiverser, Traveller, Settlers of Cataan, Carcasonne, Twilight Imperium, Splendor, Iron Dragon, Eurorails, Sorry, Uno, Go Fish, Rook, Milles Bornes, Magic: The Gathering (the Dragon was an aficionado and had nineteen separate decks, and was most keen to complete some of his collections for his 'card horde'), Go, Risk, Puerto Rico, and Tri D Chess. They even tried competitive Solitaire and War.

  To his surprise, the Dragon was a good gamemaster at DnD, and Champions, and very good at the more complex for the gamemaster, Multiverser with its tales of dimension travelling heroes.

  Mark played Poker as well, but not Texas Hold 'Em because the no limit was a risk he could not take. And a dragon sitting on top of a small hill of gold and gems could always outbid him.

  They told stories as well, and at one point, six months into the duel, Zirmondo made an unexpected offer.

  "Mark, I feel as if I might call you a friend."

  "You'd still eat me tho' right?" Mark replied, unexpectedly finding a tear in his right eye.

  "Well yes. But I have another solution. You swear yourself to me. I'll turn you into some other species. An Elf if you like. This will not give me as many experience points as killing the last human, but it will still be a lot. And you'll live, and frankly, you'll be an asset to my cave and hoard."

  "Just a shiny jewel then?"

  "A really big shiny jewel. You've gone up to Level Seventy Two as we've faced each other off. You're the Omega. You're a Hero of Humanity."

  Mark paused, and considered the offer as was meet. It was a splendid offer from the Dragon's point of view. The Dragon would be sacrificing several levels and as a Level 200 dragon, levels got harder to find the higher you went. Mark knew this from his own experience as a Level 72 with the class of Jack of All Trades.

  Jack stood up from his post on top of the Deep Fountain where the water was dense enough that not only the Son of God or Peter might walk on it, but anyone who did not have fire affinity like the Dragon. He bowed.

  "Dragon, Great Lord, this is a most generous offer. I am touched. I might, if I did not conceive plans daily to kill you, call you friend. But as you say, Hero of Humanity. Your own words declare what my choice must be. I will regress, and you will not stop me."

  "Well,that's one theory." The Dragon Zirmondo flickered out its long forked tongue, and breathed out a whiff of fire as he focused his giant eyes on Mark's.

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  Mark climbed into the Sleigh. He looked at Biggie who opened one frightened eye on his metal door panel as the iron elemental lay in the back seat of Santa's Sleigh.

  "You should get out. Sink slowly into the Deep down five hundred miles. Live your life, Biggie."

  Biggie just stared at him, and then rippled in a pattern that suggested the shake of a human head even if the iron elemental was in teh shape of a blanket. Mark nodded.

  "Thanks, Biggie. Death or Glory time it is." He turned about, and sat in Santa's Sleigh.

  Looking up at the curious Zirmondo, whose head was roughly the size of the Sleigh, Mark spoke with finality.

  "Last game, Dragon. I know that if I fly around you in the Sleigh, I will hit at terrifying and destructive speeds one of your walls of magic. I'll be dead, along with my companion, instantly."

  "An acceptable conclusion, but not what I expect from you, Hidden Miner. You never give up."

  "True. Instead, I'm going to aim right at you. Either you dodge out of the way, and I wager, weaken your wards enough that with some tricks and magics I've worked up, we'll break through, or I hit you full on, and hopefully break through the wards at their natural weak point, and smash into you."

  "You'd obliterate us both." The Dragon seemed shocked.

  "But I won't, Dragon. Because you value your life more than you value the Triumph of the System."

  "I do." The Dragon slowly admitted. "But my wards, even at their weak point are very strong."

  "I think you're bluffing."

  "Oh, because of this 'tell'?" The Dragon drooped his left eyelid just a shade, and then smiled.

  "No, but you are bluffing."

  "You;'re mad."

  "I am a bit angry. You come to a People living in peace. And you bring your ways. And its not like you're some high civilization that deigns to show us a better way to live. Your System has very little to recommend it."

  "You get Power, and Levels, and Magic." The Dragon said, sounding baffled.

  "At the cost of destroying our way of life, which in most regards was more decent than yours."

  "You lot killed your eggs by the tens of millions!" Zirmondo nearly roared. Mark winced. Not from the sound as he was quite sturdy enough not to be bothered, but by the Truth of the Dragon's accusation.

  "And how many hundreds of millions of babes did your precious System slaughter because they knew not how to fight?"

  Both of them glared at each other, and then at the same moment sighed.

  "I do not agree with your Human viewpoint, but I have come to understand it. I have spoken to Saints, and Heroes, and Philosophers, and Prophets, and ordinary souls before I ate them. If you valued your culture, your ways, your People, then yes, the System is a terrible wrong. But I do not. I find your lot amusing rarely,; ultimately humans are Prey. Prey may amuse, but in the end it either serves or is eaten."

  "Or Prey may turn on the Hunter, and rend him apart." Mark replied evenly aware that their philosophical assumptions were unjoinable. He was sure he could win such a duel, but in the end, a Man or a Dragon is not convinced by logic, but by his desires, and what he has chosen to be his desires. Zirmondo was a Dragon, and he wanted to be the Bane of Humanity, and so he would be unless he chose differently.

  "It has happened." Zirmondo allowed. But then he grinned. "But not to me."

  "Last chance, Biggie." He heard an irritable thump from the back seat. Clearly a 'get on with it Ironfriend.'

  "Lord of Hosts, Master of the Angel Armies, He Who sat the Galaxies Spinning, and He Who Regards the System as a Toy, be with me now." He prayed, and then cried out loud to the Sleigh.

  "On Dasher, on Blitzen...." And the Sleigh heard him even if those reindeer were long gone.