Perfectly Peaceful Trip Home

After a VERY humiliating trip in the transformed dragon's talons, Haalfrin is taken directly towards the archmage's tower. Apparently, Dakka recognized Haalfrin's smell and followed it all the way back home.

As Dakka approaches the city of Brandsdale – the archmage's hometown, they both see a tall tower on one edge of the city, with its peak resting twice as high as the duke's castle on the other side of town.

Meanwhile, the guards lining the walls think the flying dot in the sky is just another bird… until the dot gets REALLY big, and they see the long tail dragging behind it.

Unlike the archmage, who's had experience in the Otherworld and has plenty of informative material on the beings there, all the residents here have completely no clue what a dragon is. As far as they know, it's some sort of giant, brown-scaled, and green-striped demon coming to wreak havoc upon the town and eat them all!

I mean, look at those teeth - those claws! It must be a demon!!

The alarms all around town sound loudly, and the duke's men all line the walls and arm up the mana cannons and ballistae.

Dakka completely shrugs off the hailstorm barrage that, with the assistance of precision and spirit thread enchantments, never misses its target. Well, Dakka does make sure to completely cup Haalfrin in his talons, to protect his passenger from harm.

In his heart, Dakka feels that it's immoral to ignore another's challenge. 'When a man has the courage to challenge you,' Dakka thinks, 'isn't it just wrong to humiliate them by ignoring them? Only bad guys humiliate their foes.'

Meanwhile, Haalfrin feels the heat build up in Dakka's body, and he gets a bad feeling. He shouts out, "DAKKA! JUST SET ME OUTSIDE THE CITY AND GO AWAY!" Haalfrin knows deep down that something terrible is going to happen once Dakka reaches those walls.

Sure enough, Dakka casually flies past the walls, and he droops his tail down as he glides by. Despite being enchanted, that section of the wall is completely ripped apart, like a shirt being rent by a passing blade. A couple of dozen guards are pulverized by the strike, and the rest of the city is panicking at the invulnerable beast and flying debris.

Fortunately… or perhaps unfortunately… the Archmage Kalastros has already returned from his trip, and he had finished arming the defensive enchantments on his tower. Among the defenders of the city, the nation's archmage is really the only one who understands the severity of the situation.

And so, Kalastros uses the far speak crystals to give his orders to the captains atop the walls, "Spread out NOW and get off the walls! Your defenses mean NOTHING to that dragon. Get the people to safety in their homes and announce for everyone to hide beneath their tables, in case the roofs of their houses collapse on them!"

Kalastros then looks grimly at the giant gap in the outer wall, then relays one final message. "Just stall the dragon for another minute while I do a quick ritual to overcharge the enchantments on my tower."

Once the archmage cuts the communication link, he sits down and starts speaking aloud a long, complicated spell.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, the guards are quickly getting outside the walls and shooting up arrows (or spells, for the mages among them). They are hoping to draw away the dragon's attention with this… but Dakka actually doesn't notice a single one of these puny attacks.

Instead, the oblivious dragon is circling the city, trying to guess where he's supposed to drop Haalfrin off. Haalfrin normally travels all around the city, so his scent is everywhere.

Dakka grows impatient and dips his head down to look at Haalfrin. "Hey, human child? Where's your house? Your scent's everywhere."

Haalfrin only widens his eyes. "WATCH OUT!" he screams.

In the moment Dakka wasn't looking where he was going, he was headed right into the Duke's mansion.

With the help of magic to make building things cheaper, faster, and structures more durable, it's not uncommon to see a wealthy person's house be absurdly large; in the duke's case, his mansion is tall enough for Dakka to fly straight into it.

With a loud crash, Dakka barrels right into the building. If the place hadn't been far more heavily enchanted than the city walls, Dakka would've completely obliterated the entire mansion, which was about 200 feet high and 3000 feet across.

Instead, Dakka's snout punctures through the outer wall – only stopping at the horns.

Dakka looks inside and sees a huge entryway that he can easily fit a dozen of his heads in. All on the floor are dozens of servants screaming and running into corners.

Haalfrin just sees the giant hole in Duke Byron's castle keep, and he slaps his forehead. "Dakka!" he roars, "Just put me down! I can find my way back home from here!"

Now that Dakka isn't flying absurdly fast through the air, he can finally hear the little human's soft voice. "Just a minute!" Dakka replies back with excitement in his voice.

Since the civilian humans down below clearly aren't looking for a fight, Dakka completely ignores them. What he can't ignore, however, is the large thing hanging on the wall up the first flight of stairs directly in front of him.

Gasping in shock at the painting, Dakka squeals out in his mother tongue, "Is that THE original copy of Caprio's Seasong Bird?" He pulls his head out, then lets himself descend to the ground gracefully.

The joyful dragon then stands up on his hind legs, props his wings like giant arms against the wall, shifts Haalfrin to one hand, then uses the other hand to tear off a larger chunk off the wall, revealing the entire corridor he was eying greedily.

Carefully, Dakka reaches inside. Seeing this, Haalfrin yells out, "Careful with Mrs. Norris!" The last time he stayed in Duke Byron's house, she was very kind to him his whole stay.

Dakka looks again and sees an old lady in a maid uniform fainted on the stairs right in front of the painting. "Oh," Dakka apologizes. "Sssssorry about that."

He points out one finger and delicately brushes aside the woman's body. He then pinches his fingers and picks her up by the back of her dress, then props her up against the wall on the other side of the room – safely out of the way.

Once all obstacles are gone, Dakka pinches his thumb and forefinger claw on either side of the painting – using just enough force to grip it without destroying it. Plus… Dakka used his magic to strengthen the frame, as dragons are liable to squeeze things a little too hard sometimes.

Once he snatches the giant painting off the wall, Dakka holds it carefully to his chest in one hand with Haalfrin in the other.

Haalfrin looks over at the painting pilfered away in the dragon's other hand. Recalling some of Dakka's earlier words, Haalfrin thinks, "'Healthy appreciation for art' my *ss. Dragons are just greedy!"

Thinking of the destruction of the wall, the terror of the citizens, and the casual act of breaking and entering another's home and stealing their things…

"Perhaps," Haalfrin says aloud as he looks up at Dakka, "there's a reason why those 'self-proclaimed heroes' are always trying to kill you Drakin." (Drakin being the proper term for dragons in the soul language)

Dakka gets a little offended at this, and he pouts irately as he pulls himself away from the duke's mansion and turns away with his treasure, which is hugged protectively to his chest. "It's a disservice to let such a beautiful painting rot away in a cringy, poor person's house."

"Besides," Dakka proclaims proudly, "if someone is so weak that a young, inexperienced dragon like me can just walk in and take their stuff, then the universe itself doesn't want them to have it. I'm stronger than that human owning that house, which means the painting was destined all along to belong with me!"

Looking down at the horrified Haalfrin, he sees the little boy struggle about while shouting out, "Well, you're pretty crazy, aren't you? Please just don't wreck anything else!"

Tactfully ignoring Haalfrin's plea, Dakka just stands there awkwardly on his hind legs for a second and says, "Anyway, child. Where's your home?"

"That's not the point!" Haalfrin replies angrily, "Just set me down!"

Dakka shakes his head, "No. I can't let a little child walk around unsupervised. My mom and dad always said that there's a lot of bad guys who'd like to kidnap me or dissect me if I went out on my own. You're even smaller and weaker than me, so I won't feel good if I don't drop you off personally."

Haalfrin groans painfully, realizing that it's impossible to reason with this giant creature. Reluctantly, he points over to the archmage's tower. "… Please don't destroy anything over there…" Haalfrin pleads. "I don't want to give my teacher any more reasons to be mad at me."

"Oh," Dakka asks casually, "Are you talking about the tower with that giant death ball growing over the top? I must say, it's a pretty spell."

Haalfrin looks up and sees what Dakka was referring to. Instead of being intimidated by the tower's defenses, he's only curious if Dakka or his master's tower would win in a fight.

Dakka starts flying towards the tower, and just when he lifts off the ground, the archmage lets loose the attack (as he'd been waiting for the dragon to be in a position where his attack wouldn't blow up the town any further.)

As the purple ray of energy shoots faster than the speed of sound towards Dakka, Dakka just opens his mouth and breathes out his own column of pure heat. The mana he shot out of his mouth is so hot that a huge explosion shoots along the line of mana and lags behind, as the air around the orange laser is ignited on fire.

After both attacks clear, neither the tower nor Dakka is harmed. Dakka beats his wings and tries crashing straight into the tower by ramming his thick skull and horns into it, but the defensive spatial barrier around the tower proves too difficult to directly break, so Dakka crashes against it and slides ungracefully to the ground.

Seeing the dragon land on Miss Chuckna's garden she's so carefully tended to for Master Kalastros, Haalfrin winces in visible pain.

Meanwhile, Dakka feels a little surprised to find something in these lands that can match him.

Not wanting to refuse the challenge, he flies up into the air… and so begins the battle between Dakka and the Archmage of Alasta.