"I was trying to be friends with him, not enemies!"

"Friends?! Remian, did not see him destroy our town? He's already an enemy!"

"He doesn't have to be! We need to end this amiably if we're ever going to have a shot at living peacefully in the Wildlands!"

"Peacefully my foot! Now Darrian's gone, and we're going to have to hunt all over the Wildlands for him!" Mindy threw her shoe at Remian just to show him how mad she was.

Remian ducked and the shoe went flying overhead, over the edge of the airs.h.i.+p, and clear into the deep blue sky.

***

Darian found himself nauseaous and dizzy after all the whizzing and speeding about. He hadn't quite learned about the concept of motion sickness, but he was quite sure he was about to throw up.

"Ugwuu…" he tried to say something, but his stomach and throat clenched at the same time.

"What?" The guy carrying him frowned, and set him down. "What is it?"

"Ug… bueeeh!" Darian threw up on him.

Or at least, he almost did. As quick as a flicker, Doom retreated to a safe distance.

"Here." Doom reached out to a kettle hanging over a campfire. "Drink some tea."

"Where… bueeh!" Darian threw up again.

"You're going to have to bury that yourself." Doom eyed the mess on his camp grounds.

"Where am I?" Darian asked, once he'd emptied his stomach.

He sat down on a log by the campfire, looking around. They were at a lakeside, though the lake was so huge, Darian could barely make out a sh.o.r.e on the far horizon. Large ripples indicated movement below the surface of the waters, and there were some water lilies not to far away with leaves large enough that Darrian felt he could quite possibly stretched out on them with s.p.a.ce to spare…

The sh.o.r.es themselves were spa.r.s.ely wooded, but the trees around here, while few, were gigantic. The nearest one was so large, Carrie could have easily climbed up to any of the branches and slept in them without worrying about falling off.

"You're at my camp." Doom said, without revealing more.

"What are we doing here?" Darian tried another question.

"We're going fis.h.i.+ng." Doom informed him with a straight face.

Fis.h.i.+ng…? Darian looked at him blankly. Doom handed him a bamboo fis.h.i.+ng rod, an extremely simple, ten foot pole with a cable that looked to be made of Dark Iron.

It was heavy. Darian almost dropped it. "Waa…"

"Careful. Don't drop it on your toes. That's not normal bamboo." Doom advised him.

"Why are we fis.h.i.+ng?" Darian had to ask.

"For dinner. We have to eat." Doom said, as if that explained everything.

Just then, there was a movement. Not too far away, the entire ridgeline suddenly s.h.i.+fted, raised its head and yawned.

Darrian froze. "Um… mister…?"

"What?" Doom asked, readying a second fis.h.i.+ng rod.

"That's… a dragon…" Darian gulped, looking over on the left surrept.i.tiously.

"Yes, it is. That's Har'es-dras." Doom shrugged. "Over there is his brother, those three on that side are his sisters, and that really big one up on the cliff? That's his mom."

"This…" Darian was speechless. Was this supposed to be funny? An eleven year-old armed with only a fis.h.i.+ng rod, surrounded by dragons on all sides… should he be laughing?

Har'es was already big enough to swallow Darian whole without chewing, and he was the smallest of the dragons by far. Compared to his siblings, he was just a runt. Compared to his mom, Har'es-dras was tiny.

"Har'es-dras is just a child, a Tier 5 juvenile dragon. His siblings over there are proper Tier 6 adults. His mom up there? She's a Tier 7 Senior Dragon. But his dad is even bigger. Not quite an Elder Dragon, but still about half a Tier up from his mom. Don't worry. They're my friends."

Either one of his parents alone could totally fry all of Frontier Town to a crisp and there would have been nothing anyone could have done to stop them. Har'es-dras himself, coiled up, was comparable in size to Spike. He could easily have munched on Carrie and Buff in the same meal and still have s.p.a.ce in his tummy for dessert. Had Doom decided to raid Shadowflash Fief with this dragon family instead of the Beast Tide, in all probability none of them could have survived.

But Doom didn't seem to be trying to put on a show of power. He just hummed as he cast his fis.h.i.+ng line and sat on the log by the lakeside idly waiting for a bite.

Darian meanwhile, just sat there and s.h.i.+vered.

"What's wrong?" Doom asked.

"I'm… scared." Darian answered honestly.

"Why?" Doom asked.

"I'm out here, alone… and I can't do anything…" Darian s.h.i.+vered again.

"Well, I'm here, so you're not alone… and if you need help with something, you could just ask me. I could help you." Doom said generously. "Do you need me to show you how to cast a line?"

Darian shook his head and hurriedly set his fis.h.i.+ng line into the water to catch some dinner.

They sat in silence for a minute, then Doom's line twitched. Instantly, he reacted, hauling his line upward in a violent heave.

Out of the water came a towering form. Darian's jaw dropped as a fish thrice his size flew out of the waves and onto the sh.o.r.es, flopping about, almost slapping him in the face with its tail.

"Just a small one, today? Oh well. It's enough for dinner, at least." Doom grunted. "Maybe I should get one more…"

"WHOA!" Darian yelped as his line twitched next. There was a sudden, overpowering tug… "HELP!"

Doom was there in a flash, and before Darian knew it, both he and a fish six times his size went sprawling side-by-side onto the sh.o.r.e.

"Nice!" Doom grinned. "Good job, boy! Now we have enough to share!"

Har'es-dras raised his head, glanced over at them sleepily, and yawned again. Darian suddenly felt like he'd gleaned an understanding of exactly how Doom managed to make friends with the dragons.

It was similar to the way Remian and company made friends with the wolfcats and the lynxmice and such. Very, very similar.

"Why did you attack us?" Darian asked at last.

"I had to save the world." Doom answered simply.

"How does attacking us save the world?"

"You were destroying it. Not you, personally. But your people. The forests, the land, and the air… you were destroying all of it."

"Then why attack us? There are other people out there doing far worse!"

"Sooner or later, they will face a reckoning. But you guys were here, in the Wildlands, killing Wilds."

"Wilds kill Wilds all the time!"

"But they do so for food. Your people were doing so for greed."

"We…" Darian scratched his head, finding himself way out of his league in this debate. How was he going to argue his case with someone so much older, and wiser, and stronger?

Then, he said, "I give up. I can't argue with you. Can you help me?"

"Help you?" Doom instantly became more amicable when Darian said he gave up. "What do you need help with?"

"I need help to argue with someone much older and smarter than me." Darian said plainly.

"Eh…?" Doom blinked. "You want me to argue your case… against myself?"

"You said I could ask you for help if I needed it. Well, I need help arguing." Darian said, earnestly. His tone and expressions was similar to a wolfcat pleading for a snack, as if his ears were laid back and tail wagging, whining softly. "Can you help me?"