Caprifexia, true Queen of the Black Flight, rightful Warden of the Earth, last daughter of Neltharion the Destroyer, and baby dragon –correctly termed 'whelpling'– of twenty two months was having a bad day.

  It had started well enough. She'd woken slightly before sunset, and once night had fallen she'd crawled from the small cave that had been serving as her strategically chosen and highly clandestine headquarters in search of food. After a few hours she'd managed to catch a rat in the nearby grassy mountain meadow, and after sating herself with the fruit of her successful hunt she had returned to her top secret base of operations to indulge one of her favourite pass-times.

  Caprifexia liked many things: rending the flesh of her foes with her razor-sharp talons; shattering the weak wills of mortals; and setting farmland ablaze and listening to the anguished cries of the villagers. Normal interests for any properly brought up and well adjusted young dragon. She also very much enjoyed reading.

  She had managed to salvage around a dozen tomes during her clever relocation after 'adventurers' had sacked her home and slaughtered her brothers and sisters. While a far cry from the expansive library of her home, Blackrock Spire, which had sat atop the summit of the tallest mountain on the continent, it had been better than nothing.

  She had been half-way through a chapter on pyromancy when suddenly she had once again found herself under attack by adventurers. Now, as a dragon Caprifexia didn't feel fear. No, her withdrawal from the dracocidal maniacs had been calm, collected, and entirely tactical. Any alarmed exclamations heard by any hypothetical observer would have been solely the result to the over-active imagination.

  Presumably the assassins had been sent by her last living brother, although it could have been someone from any of the inferior mortal societies who had had the temerity to take exception to her people's quest to subjugate and/or exterminate them. If Caprifexia had been human, she might have thought it was all some kind of elaborate life-insurance scam. But she didn't, since, as we have already established, she was a dragon.

  She hadn't really been concerned by the assassins of course. They were just mortals, and she was a dragon. Mortals were, by their very nature, lesser and more limited beings than their dragon betters. Therefore she had never been in any danger. It was simple logic.

  But it had been mildly stressful to come within centimetres of being skewered by a spear, and of course she had better things to do elsewhere. Which is why, when a rift in space and time had suddenly appeared in a swirl of golden light she hadn't hesitated in throwing herself through it with something that only the most uncharitable and wrong onlooker might have described as a terrified scream.

  The rift in space-time had led onto a strange platform suspended in an abyss filled with non-euclidian shadows, crackling clouds, and cords of dazzling energy. The platform looked as if it had been constructed by a deranged mind: walls of dwarvish masonry changed from one point to the next into elvish wooden paneling before shifting into dark orcish alloy barricades; tribal totems depicting great spirits and animals were joined to orderly geometric columns of black basalt trimmed in brassy metal; and the plants that grew here and there were twisted mockeries of reality.

  Seemingly endless vanished into the foggy, twisting, writhing distance, hanging suspended in the abyss, oriented at different angles and connected by haphazard bridges that followed impossible and contradictory laws of geometry. Stairs that led up and down at the same time, rope bridges that inexplicably split and forked, and stone spans that twisted in over themselves like corkscrews.

  The only common factor within the vast, seemingly endless mishmash of different architectural styles, climates, and general chaos were the stars. Floating at the centre of each platform, or thereabouts, were miniature suns blazed with a kaleidoscope of colour, connected to one another via the twisting, arcing mass of rainbow colour streams of energy that surged through the great abyss in massive torrents of power.

  Inconveniently for Caprifexia however, she had entered the rift with rather too much momentum to remain on the platform she had arrived on, and emerged from the portal in the star at significant horizontal velocity. Despite the best efforts of her small wings she had been unable to create any lift whatsoever, and had fallen down, then sideways, then up, then down, then in an entirely unclear orientation somewhere between up and down before finally colliding with another platform.

  Or rather, she collided with a piece of diagonally slanted masonry, bounced, hit what might have been a roof, bounced again, rolled off a column, and hit another roof before finally landing on the platform's ground and rolling once, twice, and then three times before touching the platform's star and finding herself transported.

  From one moment to the next she found herself plunged into foul smelling swamp water, higher than her head, all of which had been more than enough for the drowning whelp to decide it had very much been a 'bad day.'

  Caprifexia was many things: brilliant, witty, brave, elegant, and regal, to name just a few of her virtually innumerable qualities. What she was not however, was a good swimmer, and her lungs burned as she thrashed about in the water in a manner that to a foolish mortal might have appeared to be terror.

  Caprifexia realised that she was going to die. Realised that she, the last true member, and thus Queen, of her dragonflight, a being of immense perfection, intellect, might and majesty, was going to drown in a few feet of water. It was unfair, totally against the natural order, and more than a little humiliating.

  Then, as black spots began to creep in on her vision, she remembered that she was a dragon.

  To a foolish mortal, this might not have seemed like much of an insight. But mortals could be depended on to be disappointments. To Caprifexia, as a dragon, she knew that naturally, as a dragon, she had solutions to any and all problems she might find herself facing. As a dragon.

  In this case, the solution to the problem of being too small was to make herself bigger. She didn't actually know how to enlarge herself with magic, at least not directly. Although one day she would be a sky-shaking juggernaut of scaled terror and destruction, that wouldn't be for a few centuries. But that didn't mean she couldn't, after a fashion, be bigger in that moment.

  For a Black Dragon the capacity to infiltrate mortal societies and bend them to one's will and/or destroy them was considered an essential foundational skill, and two and a half months earlier she'd managed to get the hang of the spell that let her assume a mortal guise. A mortal guise that would be able to stand in three feet of water without difficulty.

  So with a surge of magic, and a feeling of slight embarrassment, she began to transform herself into a young woman that, while not particularly tall, would be able to safely stand in the water without it going over her head.

  Her black scales shifted beneath her power, lightening in hue and smoothing as they changed into dusky olive skin. Her mane of thick black hair which ran down her neck, drew upwards, concentrating itself on the crown of her head as her eyes shifted to face forward. On her back her wings folded into her spine, her talons shortened into nails at the end of fleshy fingers, and her arms and legs reoriented themselves, lengthening and changing as sleek black leggings and a coat wrapped spun themselves into existence, until finally, a moment later, in the place of where a regal and majestic – if somewhat small and drowning – whelpling had been drowning stood a somewhat damp, somewhat short five foot two half-elven woman who looked to either be in her late teens or early twenties.

  Caprifexia was a remarkable wizard, but despite her prodigal nature she hadn't ever quite gotten the spell right. Her eyes still glowed the same burning red as when she was an whelpling, she hadn't managed to shed the now quite large ebony horns that jutted from her temples and swept back behind her skull, and her mortal guises' cuspid teeth were too sharp and vicious to belong to any real half-elf.

  Had her home not been overrun and sacked by mortals she could have simply sought out the appropriate tome in their grand library, or asked one of her older siblings how to fix the problem, but as the last of her kind it was unlikely she would be correcting the – very small – error anytime soon.

  Muttering several curses that a young woman – dragon or half-elven – definitely should not have known she scrambled up onto some drier land, glad that no one had been around to see her rather embarrassing flailings.

  She sat down on a rock with a huff and took a moment to compose herself. Once no longer shaking –not from fear, of course, since dragons didn't get scared, but for a totally unrelated reason that was quite frankly not something that was of no concern to nosey mortals at all– she began looking around at the new environment she had definitely intended to come to.

  As the musty smell had told her, she was indeed in a swamp; and judging by the insect chirps, one infested with disgusting creepy crawlies. Caprifexia wasn't scared of bugs. She was, after all, a dragon; that would have been absurd. She simply hated insects with a burning passion and wanted them to be exterminated to the last ant, or, in the mean time, at least be kept as far away from her as possible at all times.

  There were a few other bits of land here and there, but on the whole the swamp was mostly below murky water. Tall trees raised on labyrinthine roots rose in every direction creating a seemingly impenetrable wall of wood that extended off into the distance. The only light came through foliage so thick that although the sun was directly above her head it felt like it was already dusk.

  Something niggled at the back of her mind, telling her she was missing something. It was like an itch on her lower wing in the place she could never quite reach to scratch with her too-short neck, or like the small shards of bone that sometimes would get wedged between her teeth after a meal, and which she'd have to spend ages worrying at with her tongue to dislodge.

  No, she was fairly certain that the thing she was missing was important. Despite the buzzing and chirping of the swamp it was almost as if she was suddenly floating on a still ocean that had previously always been a raging tempest.

  So preoccupied was Caprifexia with the strange stillness that she didn't notice the giant centipede crawling towards her until she felt the weight on her shoe.

  Caprifexia certainly didn't hurl herself backward and land in a heap, screaming and swearing and scrambling away. That wouldn't have been in keeping with her great dignity as Queen of the Black Dragonflight. That definitely didn't happen.

  "Ahhhhh!" screamed Caprifexia, shifting back into her whelpling form and flapping up into the canopy, away from the creature that definitely didn't terrify her.

  It took a lot of biting, clawing, and a few small gouts of fire, but she did eventually emerge from the thick canopy and out into the brilliant sunshine. From atop her perch on one of the higher trees she could see some mountains to her right, capped in snow, and she sighed in relief.

  Snowy mountains, unlike swamps, tended to have very few bugs.

  ***

  "You there," said Caprifexia in her most endearing voice. "Tell me what town this is called at once!"

  She had flown west for a while, figuring that if she remembered her geography correctly – which of course she had – she had probably landed in the eastern swamps she should hit the dead lands around the famous mortal wizarding tower of Karazhan, or if not that then the haunted woods beyond – both of which would be a good place to lie low for a while.

  She had, however, not hit a desolate mountain range or haunted forest, and instead had found jagged snowcapped mountains that seemed to go on and on forever. There were a towns where there shouldn't have been any towns, roads that made no sense, and ruins with strange, alien architecture nothing like the shattered dwarven city she had been to on a very enjoyable field trip with the rest of her clutch to illustrate what a successful razing looked like.

  Her second thought was that she might be in the north in the mountainous region of Alterac, which was an area she was less familiar with. But there was no immense lake to the west, nor any ogres or undead apes that the books she had read would have led her to expect in the north.

  After that she had thought she might be in the far western continent, Kalimdor, but that didn't make sense either. There were swampy areas there, but to her knowledge none that lay directly to the east of snowy mountain ranges. And certainly there were far more pink skinned apes in this strange new place than there should have been on Kalimdor.

  So after several confusing days of flying back and forth looking for some kind of landmark she might recognise she had decided to simply land and gather some intelligence from local mortals using her overabundance guile and charm. She had picked one of the larger settlements, ringed by a large wall, and at the centre of which stood a stout stone keep.

  "This is Helgen," said the man, looking askance at her for some reason she couldn't identify. "You have some kind of magical accident, elf?"

  "Excuse me?" she said.

  "Your horns," he said.

  "My horns? Oh, yes, that's right," she said, inwardly cursing her inability to cast the spell correctly. "An accident –not my fault mind you– that is definitely what happened."

  The man grunted in a way that might have indicated that he was extremely unimpressed. Or not. Caprifexia hadn't interacted much with mortals. At least, ones that weren't screaming in pain or sobbing in terror. For all she knew he might have been making an observation of how wise she was. That would make more sense than someone being unimpressed with her after all. Yes, that was it, a grunt of impressed… ness.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "You with the Thalmor?" asked the man.

  "I am not with anyone," she said with an imperious sniff.

  She wasn't entirely sure what a 'Thalmor' was, but as a general rule Caprifexia operated under the assumption that if she didn't know about something then it probably wasn't important. After all, she was a dragon. If something was worth knowing, then, almost by definition, a dragon would know about it. QED.

  "On your way to Winterhold then?" said the man.

  "What makes you say that?" asked Caprifexia. She didn't know what a Winterhold was either, although it wouldn't do to let the mortal know that.

  "You're a wizard, obviously – only they're stupid enough to give themselves horns by accident," he said.

  "Stupid!? Watch your tongue mort- I mean, man!" she said, almost calling him a mortal before she remembered her lessons and caught herself. Mortals didn't call each other mortals, they actually thought they were not only important, but normal, as if it were normal to age and die like a pathetic insect.

  Then man spat at her feet.

  There are a few generally agreed upon rules that most Azerothians knew to follow when dealing with the magical apex-predators. Harris Flimphan, a Lordaronian scholar who wrote the book 'Talking with Dragons: Why don't we just not?,' had three cardinal rules for how to survive an encounter with a dragon:

  Firstly, be careful. Dragons are immortal, hyper-intelligent, hyper-magical, flying, armoured, fire-breathing killing machines. Even the 'nicer' ones are dangerous. When dealing with a dragon, take all possible steps to not anger them and, if possible, run away.

  Secondly, dragons are Arrogant. They take insults personally, and even unintentional slights can result in a prospective dragon-scholar breaching the first rule and being incinerated. Compliment them and excuse yourself as quickly as possible before running away.

  Thirdly, under no circumstances should anyone engage or treat or even speak with a black dragon. Black dragons are all, to an individual, homicidal, megalomaniacal maniacs who have less empathy than the average paper bag. Run. Away.

  Unfortunately for the human who spat at her feet, one 'Harvor,' he had not read Flimphan's book, was thus unprepared when Caprifexia instantly saw red, and was only part-way through opening his mouth to say something else impudent when her fist rammed into his nose. It broke with a crunch, and he let out a muffled scream as he collapsed backward onto the dirty cobblestones.

  Caprifexia might have looked like a small young half-elven woman, but even in a guise she was a dragon, a being off immense might and magic. She didn't need massive muscles to break a puny mortal like a twig.

  "Hey, she hit Harvor!" shouted another mortal from a nearby stall that seemed to be specialised in selling entirely uninteresting trinkets.

  Caprifexia turned toward the mortal and narrowed her eyes, and was just debating as to whether she should kill the man who had spat at her first, or if she should dispatch this second impudent fool and then get back to him when there was a rushing sound and the scraping of steel. She looked behind herself to see a group of armed and inexplicably angry looking mortals in uniforms.

  "That's enough!" said one of guards, brandishing their sword at her – as if she was the one who had done something wrong. "Elf, you're under arrest for assault; you'll have to come with us."

  "That man insulted me, and is- and is a racist!" she immediately countered, digging into what she had learned from a pamphlet she had read as part of her studies entitled: 'Incitement 101: ten fun steps to get mortals to kill each other.' Step one, cast blame on the other person. "I was provoked!" she continued. "He threatened to kill my entire family, and burn down my home, and sell my brothers into slavery, and- and he wanted to harvest my organs, and carve-"

  "Disliking Elves is not a crime in Skyrim, and no he didn't, I was standing right there," said the guard. "But please, by all means, resist. I got good at killing your kind in the war, and I would hate to let my skills get rusty."

  Caprifexia glowered at him, but didn't resist as two of his fellows secured her arms behind her back and she was frog-marched towards a fort that lay at the centre of the town.

  Had she been older she would have simply fried them all with magic, or transform into a giant wyrm and rip them apart with her teeth, but while she was still a whelpling her hide wasn't tough enough to turn aside mortal weapons – she couldn't defeat a dozen or more guards just quite yet.

  But she remembered their faces. Oh yes. Give her a few years to grow into a full drake and then she'd come back and show them the price of assaulting a dragon. She'd show them. She'd show them all!

  ***

  Two weeks later Caprifexia was still kicking her heels in gaol. Or rather, kicking the metal bars of her small dirty and dingy cell deep beneath the town's squat keep. She was starting to feel antsy, too long in a mortal form made dragons get like that. It was a bit being stuffed into a too small box. Well, in her case, the box was a bit larger, but it was still unpleasant.

  "Hey!" she shouted, for the seventeenth time that hour, banging her boot against the metal bars. "When am I going to get – what do you apes call it – a trial?"

  "For the love of Akatosh, will you please shut up," said the only other inmate from the cell opposite hers, a swarthy human with tanned skin and dirty blonde hair. "Didn't you get your answer when they socked you in the face for the tenth time?"

  Caprifexia did have several bruises from when the wardens had gotten sick of her imperious demands, but she was a dragon, the definition of stubborn, and she had simply etched their face into her mind, added it to her rapidly growing 'kill later list,' and kept on going.

  "Hey!" she shouted, ignoring him. "Hey!"

  Then there was a rumble and the keep shook and something exploded outside. Some dust fell from the ceiling, and there was the sound of running far down the corridor.

  "Finally," breathed the man opposite her, rattling at his lock.

  "What's going on?" demanded Caprifexia.

  "An opportunity, the guards will be distracted by whatever that is," he said, pulling out what looked like a flattened fork and trying and failing to fit it into the lock. "Damn, wish I had a proper pick."

  "You know a way out?" she asked, as another explosion rocked the keep.

  "Sure," he said, ineffectually scraping about the with piece of metal. "Not the first time I've been in here."

  "How about we make a bargain then: you agree to show me the way out of here, and I break that lock for you," she said.

  Mortals loved to bargain, at least according to her textbook. Ideally you made bargains where they gave you something first, so you could then immediately double cross them, but in this case that didn't seem to be possible.

  "How are you going to do that?" he said sceptically.

  Caprifexia took her own lock in her hand for focused, weaving her magic into the necessary form.

  "Ignis," she intoned, using the nonsense mnemonic that she had associated with generating heat.

  Incantations were personal, and not entirely necessary. Accomplished dragons went without, but while Caprifexia was an amazing whelpling and far beyond the pathetic flailings of mortal mages, she hadn't quite mastered word-less magic. Yet, that was.

  There was a crackle as her power made its way from her fingers into the metal, and the lock began to burn first orange, then white hot beneath her fingers, before dripping down onto the stones and landing with a hiss.

  "Why by the Eight didn't you do that weeks ago!?" he said. "I wouldn't have had to listen to your whinging."

  "You didn't say you knew a way out," she said, stepping out of her cell and into the prison's corridor. "So, do we have a deal?"

  The blonde man nodded and extended his hand. "You have my word, elf."

  "Caprifexia," she said, ignoring whatever silly mortal ritual he was attempting.

  "What?" he said.

  "My name, I am not called 'Elf,'" she said. "You will address me properly or I will kill you."

  "Oh, err, of course. Sorry, you're right, that was a bit rude, I'm Einar," he said, peering at her as she repeated her spell on his lock. "How does that not burn your hands?"

  Because I'm a dragon. "Because magic, shut up," she said, opening the gate as the building shook once more. "Now what?"

  "Well, first I think we should-"

  Before he said could finish his likely needlessly long winded explanation the doors to the prison crashed open, cutting him off. A slightly burned looking woman with tanned skin and a short man with a shaved head entered the corridor. They were both wearing the armour of the 'Empire,' as Caprifexia had learned it was called, and looked rather peeved.

  "There is a way out-" began the woman, before she saw Caprifexia and Einar's in-progress breakout.

  Rather than being reasonable, the female guard yelled and drew her sword, not even bothering to ask if they had a good explanation for being out of their cells before charging them with bloody murder in her eyes.

  Now, Caprifexia was a practical young dragon. She knew that the more bodies were between herself and a sharp blade the better. Which was why she immediately pushed Einar towards the guard before turning, running off down the corridor in the opposite direction and definitely not screaming.

  "You bitch!" said Einar, recovering and following after her a moment later. "Throw a fireball at her or something!"

  Oh, right. She was magic. She knew that.

  "Augis," she said, tossing the fire that jumped to her fingertips behind her without looking.

  "Fucking hell," swore Einar. "Not at me! At them, at them!"

  Caprifexia threw another fireball blindly.

  There was a masculine scream as the spell hit something with a whoosh, and Caprifexia glanced back to see one of their pursuers fall to the ground, thrashing about as he tried to put the fire out.

  "Again, again!" said Einar.

  "Augis," she repeated, throwing another fireball, missing Einar by a totally intentional and well calculated tiny margin.

  There was a female scream, and Caprifexia slowed as she looked back again to see the woman in the metal armour thrashing on the ground and attempting to put the fire out. Einar was also swearing slapping at some fire on his arm from where she must have clipped him, and Caprifexia almost felt bad for a moment – which confused her, since when did she care about mortals?

  Oh, she realised, it must have been because she still needed him to escape. That made sense. She also needed lackeys. Dragons always needed lackeys. And he seemed to have an acceptably small number of scruples. Yes, her ill ease certainly wasn't because she had nearly killed him. He was just a mortal. That would be absurd.

  Behind him several of the more flammable parts of the prison were on fire, and Einar coughed as the air filled with smoke. It didn't bother Caprifexia though, her kind lived in volcanoes by choice, and could process many normally toxic gases as part of standard respiration. It was one of the virtually endless ways her kind were infinitely superior to ugly hairless apes.

  Einar eventually managed to put out the fire on his arm, and made his way back to where the woman's sword from where it has fallen.

  "Sorry, but you were trying to kill us," he said, taking up the blade, and after taking a deep breath quickly and efficiently ended the life of the still burning and screaming woman.

  The apologising was a bit poor form, but mortals were flawed creatures, and Caprifexia still revised her appraisal of him upward ever so slightly. Yes, she thought, he might make a decent follower after all. After all, according to her textbook, proficiency in murder was a core skill to look for in any potential minion.

  "Ugh. Bad way to go," said Einar. "Can you put this out? She might have some coin."

  "Glacis," she said, launching a ball of frigid mist towards the woman that made the flames splutter and die.

  Einar quickly rifled through her pockets, withdrawing a very singed bag filled with coin, which he pocketed, and a dagger, which he handed to Caprifexia.

  "What am I suppose to do with this?" said Caprifexia, looking askance at the dagger.

  "You stab things with it," he said.

  "That's what you're for, meat-shield," she said.

  "You- you are unbelievably arrogant," he said. "Seriously, I know you're a mage and therefore it's sort of expected that you're a bit of a egotist, but do you seriously think you are better than me because you can set things on fire around with your mind?"

  "Yes," she nodded. Why was he stating the obvious?

  He sighed. "Whatever. Fine. Come on, the exit is this way."

  The tunnel sloped downward for another minute, empty cells lining both sides. Then they reached a dead end and Einar pushed open the cell to their left.

  "Are you drunk, mortal?" she said. "That's just another cell."

  "Mortal?" he frowned. "Wow, you're beyond arrogant, aren't you? What think you're a Divine or something? No – there's a passage."

  He pushed a semi-loose brick in the upper right section of the cell, before one lower down. There was a grinding sound that definitely would have attracted attention had the apocalypse apparently not been happening outside, and to Caprifexia's surprise part of the wall slid away to reveal a dark passage.

  "What sort of imbecile designed a secret escape route inside a cell?" she said.

  "This castle is ancient, maybe it wasn't always a prison," shrugged Einar. "Can you make us some light?"

  "Of course," said Caprifexia, raising her hand. "Lucernia."

  A pale white warelight burst into existence over her palm, before wobbling slightly. Caprifexia realised she had probably overtaxed her reserves a bit with the three fireballs and the cooling spell. She was a dragon, and thus good at magic naturally, but she was also very young, and hadn't yet built up much in the way of reserves.

  It was a good thing that most of her fireballs had hit. Not that she would have expected anything less. She was a dragon after all, the definition of perfection.

  "Let's go then," said Einar, ducking his head as he entered the tunnel. Caprifexia followed a moment later, and after ten or so seconds of walking the passage entrance shut itself just as the keep shook once more from whatever fortuitous destruction was going on up above to help cover their escape.

  ***

  Three hours later Caprifexia's arm shook as she lowered herself carefully onto a fallen tree outside the small crack in the rock-face that the tunnel had emerged from. They were far from the town with the prison, three point two miles if her Earth-sense was correct. Which it was. She was a dragon after all.

  Ahead of them was a gently sloping alpine meadow. Wildflowers bloomed, in the distance she could see a herd of deer by a copse of trees, and in the valley's floor a wending river shimmered in the noon-day sun beneath sharp snow capped peaks.

  "Hey, Capri? You OK?" said Einar. "Something bothering you?"

  Caprifexia gulped and stared down at her trembling web-covered arms, flashbacks of the dark cave illuminated by desperate blasts of orange light, the tangled webs, the bodies wrapped in silk, and the giant creeping legs making her shiver.

  "Giant. Spiders," she said. "Why is it always Insects!?"

  "Technically they're arachnids," said Einar.

  "Shut up you stupid mortal," she snapped, peeling off some of the disgusting webbing.

  "Still with that?" laughed Einar. "Look – I get it, you live longer than me, but you're still going to age and die."

  "Age," said Caprifexia imperiously, forcing herself not to think about the spiders and instead focus on recruiting the beginnings of a new network of mortal servants she had been meaning to replace ever since the last of the dragon-cultists that served her flight had all met rather messy ends. She shifted her form, her voice taking on a slight eldritch cadence. "But not die."

  Einar turned blinking as a regal whelpling replaced the small half-elven woman, web still clinging to her forelimbs.

  "Behold!" she said.

  "You can turn into a lizard?" he said sceptically. "I mean, nice magic, but how does that stop you dying?"

  "Turn into- you foolish mortal," she said, flaring her wings. "I am not a lizard – look, I have wings; I am a dragon!"

  Einar rolled his eyes. "Smallest dragon I've ever seen."

  "I- look, I am young, yes, but I am still an immortal being," she said.

  "As opposed to an elf who knows shape-shifting, and has a mild- who am I kidding, an acute case of megalomania?"

  "I am a dragon!"

  "Sure you are," he said, patting her on the head and nearly getting bitten. "Hey!"

  "Listen mortal, I am giving you the opportunity to be the first of my minions," she said. "I can give you power, money, fortune-"

  "How?" he said, rudely cutting in. "You've just been in prison for ages, and while you're clearly a decent enough wizard, if you had that kind of clout I wouldn't have had to listen to you whinge for weeks."

  "I am a dragon," she explained.

  "Even if you were, that explains nothing," he said, incorrectly. "Look, you make me laugh Capri, and after you stopped trying to push me into swords we worked well together. I know some people in Riften, we could go into business together – cons, thieving, that sort of stuff; there aren't that many spell-casters in the business, we could go far."

  Ah, 'business together' was a mortal phrase for forming a working relationship. So he had some pride, but had clearly accepted her offer. Excellent.

  "Good idea, minion," said Caprifexia. "I do need contacts in the criminal underworld… very well, I will accept your suggestion, we shall go to this 'Riften' and begin work reconstructing a network with which I can take over the world."

  Einar rolled his eyes. "Whatever 'dragon,' come on."