Odds N Ends

               A heavily armored military truck rolled down the street, beams of light shining from lamps on either side and illuminating the side-streets and alleyways of the beaten down neighborhood. Besides the hum of the engine, there was no noise on the street; it seemed even the rats and alley cats hid from the searching lights of the patrol vehicle.

               Once the truck had turned a corner and returned the street to its darkened state, people began slinking out of the shadows, watching over their shoulders for any sign of the vehicle’s return. Together, they moved down the street in the opposite direction from the patrol, keeping near the entrances to the alleys as if waiting for another armored truck to jump out from behind a lamp-post.

               After a few minutes of haste-driven walking, the group of a dozen figures of a variety of shapes and sizes arrived outside a partially constructed multi-story apartment building. The thing had been sitting half-finished ever since before the war with the Vadir Conclave had started. It sat empty and vacant all during the war and continued to crumble now, long abandoned by the construction company that no longer existed. In the days before the war, a finished building like this in Whitetower would have housed the wealthy and powerful, but now in the days of the Vadirian occupation, it only housed vagrants and stray cats.

               The dozen figures ascended the tower, taking the stairs where present and climbing from beam to beam when needed. On the top floor, the walls were finished and the ceiling was intact, so no one from above or below would be able to spy upon their gathering.

               Four other people were already present, standing among the bare walls and exposed pipes, waiting for the arrival of the others.

               It was clear from appearances that the members of both groups came from very different walks of life. The four waiting in the apartment were well-dressed, clothed in suits, long coats, and fancy hats. They had a look of vitality on their faces and they lacked the tell-tale scars of mana poisoning that plagued a large portion of the city’s populace. These men were wealthy, powerful, and completely out of place in that part of the city. Were it not for their business interests in the area, they would have avoided that region altogether.

               The twelve new arrivals were of rougher visage, and not all of them were human. A tall and sturdy orc with sharpened fangs was the obvious muscle of the group. Two elves stood near the empty window, keeping a lookout above and below. There was a felid among them as well, one of the cat-folk from a distant land. All of them were fairly young, in their late teens to early thirties, dressed in whatever clothing they could find or steal. The human who stood at the front of the group, a young man in a tattered, hooded coat, looked upon the wealthier men with a steely gaze that made it clear he was not to be trifled with.

               “Hello again, Cairn. I assume you’ve kept to our arrangement,” one of the well-dressed men said, barely disguising the contempt in his voice.

               “We’re here, aren’t we?” the young man responded, not disguising the contempt in his voice. “Varshka, give him the goods.”

               Varshka, a half-orc whose only trace of his lineage was his slightly green-tinged skin and diminutive tusks, unshouldered his backpack and carried it over to one of the subordinate men.

               The man taking the backpack snapped his fingers and a small orb of light appeared in the air above his head. He unzipped the bag and carefully pulled out a sculpture of a strange figure. Whoever had sculpted it had either been man or a genius, for the clay had been shaped into such a form that the subject appeared to be alive, but no living thing had ever looked as grotesque as the being the sculpture depicted.

               “Your boss has some strange taste,” Cairn commented on the statue, “but as long as he keeps coming through, we’ll get anything else he wants. Now, our payment.”

               One of the suited men placed a briefcase on the floor and kicked it, sending it sliding along the bare concrete floor to the young man’s feet. He snapped open the clasps and started examining the contents, freezer bags packed tightly with small blue crystals which gave off a slight glow. He put his hand near the bags and watched as a series of small, lightning-like discharges of energy sparked up from the bags into his palm.

               “It’s good,” Cairn said, tossing the bags to Varshka who, having regained his backpack, began stuffing it full with the bagged crystals. Cairn kicked the briefcase back over to the suited men. “You know how to contact us if you have anything else on your shopping list that needs finding.”

A maw filled with sharp, curved teeth, wide enough that I could tear a cow in half with one bite and swallow the rest with a second. Claws tougher than steel that allowed me to slice through the mightiest of trees with little effort. Wings which stretched out to darken the sky as I flew overhead, soaring above the confines of the Earth. Living eternally, nearly invulnerable, a master of arcane forces, such was once my life and the life of my kind, but now no longer.

We dragons once soared through the skies, flying with a majesty that birds could only dream of. The most ancient of humans feared us, the first civilizations worshipped us, the later societies despised us, and the modern cultures believed us to be a myth, the product of their ancestors’ superstition and ignorance, now something to be read about in cliché fantasy stories and destroyed in silly imaginary games.

In ancient days, we served as guardians of the world, protecting the planet against threats both mundane and magical. With our mastery of magic we drowned fires, calmed volcanos, stilled hurricanes, and quieted storms. In times of famine we drove wildlife to where it was needed, in times of plague we healed the sick, in times of war we sundered the forces of evil, and when Shades, beings of shadow and destruction, broke into the world and sought to wreak havoc, we drove them back into the abyss. We did not interfere in every single localized disaster or conflict, but we instead focused on those events which could have threatened humanity on a larger scale.

Why did we do these things? With our magic, we could have been living gods among the humans, given offerings in exchange for magical trifles, living in exorbitant luxury for the eternal existence, but this was not our way. We could have isolated ourselves from the infant human civilization and paid them no mind as we fended for ourselves, but this was not our way. We could have remade the Earth to suit our own desires, cutting away anything we did not desire, but this was not our way.

Though we had received no directive from God and received no lasting reward for our efforts, we still aided the humans and the world to the best of our ability. To us, it was instinct. The world needed caretakers. The humans possessed the spark, the drive to manipulate their surroundings, but they were short-sighted and easily distracted, rarely able to focus on a goal for more than a few decades, failing to understand the consequences of their actions further than a century or two. The care of the Earth was our purpose, and we held on to our duty with the firm conviction that our efforts would not be in vain. It was our hope that one day the humans would grow enough to join us in the keeping of the planet which was our home.

From the earliest days of human civilization, we were there, protecting them, guiding them, and offering them wisdom and knowledge.

As the ages wore on, it became clear that despite all our power, we dragons had a major weakness which could not be overcome. While the humans grew in numbers, our population remained constant. Being dragons, we could not breed or have young of our own. In the rare instance when one of the dragons was slain by one of the Shades, they would be reborn from an egg that had pre-formed within their body. After the dragon’s corpse had rotted away, the egg would hatch, and a young dragon would emerge. After some time, the dragon’s knowledge and memories from their past life would reemerge. As the number of humans on the Earth only continued to increase and they began to spread farther and farther apart, it became clear to us that the troubles that plagued them followed close behind.

We tried out best to tend to the humans and the rest of the planet, but the task became harder every century. We soon found ourselves being forced to make difficult decisions we had not considered before. Diverting flood-rains from one village would only cause a flood in another. Stopping a plague in one country would mean another would succumb to it. As insightful as we dragons were, we did not understand everything, and having to make impossible choices again and again and rushing from one corner of the globe to the other was exhausting our spirits.

Watching the humans increase their knowledge and expand their control over their lives gave us hoped. We waited with anticipation for the day they could join us in tending to the world’s needs. It filled me with such joy when I first saw the humans experimenting with stone architecture. They had grasped some small parts of math and physics. Even more thrilling was seeing the near-infinite variety of their imaginations. As dragons, we always had our magic to manipulate the world around us and thus never needed any sort of technology to solve our problems. The humans, on the other hand, found many ways to solve a single problem with nothing more than the cleverness of their minds and hands. Seeing the humans work with all their clever implements delighted me. Their hunting tools, farming tools, building tools, cooking tools, and all of the other tools they used to improve their lives gave me hope that the day they would join the dragons in our task would soon be arriving.

The hope that our patience would soon be rewarding was shaken during a meeting of our kind. Every few decades, sometimes no more than once per century, most of our kind would come together in a desolate place to discuss the state of the world and our efforts to hold back the destructive forces that threatened it. In former days, these were usually joyous occasions, a time to celebrate a great feat of one of our brethren or a notable achievement among the humans. (The celebration that occurred after the humans first made fire lasted for several weeks).

In latter days, our gatherings were more somber affairs. We were all tired from dealing with the hazards that presented large-scale threats, and our hearts were heavy because of the disasters which we had to ignore in order to focus our attention elsewhere. We were of one mind in our feelings, but none of us wanted to admit we were failing at our task.  After a lackluster discussion about issues facing the world, one of our number finally said what we were all thinking.

“We must face the reality of the situation,” the dragon said darkly. The matter had evidently been on his mind as much it has been on all of ours. “The Earth and humanity both required too much attention for both to be cared for effectively. More and more disasters requiring our attention have been springing up. Humanity is growing too quickly and spreading to distant lands. We no longer possess the ability to care for both. Were we to split our numbers, both the planet and the humans would meet catastrophic ends. We must choose which to focus on, and the other must be left to fend for itself.”

The gathering ended in an uproar. Many dragons were outraged that such a suggestion would ever be entertained, while others were more vocal about their concerns. Arguments ensued and order was lost. We all went our separate ways and did not gather in large numbers for some time.

I myself did not want to consider the decision which would inevitably need to be made one day, so I busied myself with as much work as I could take. The humans had recently started building ships that took them out to deeper waters, so I spent a few years patrolling the oceans ensuring that none of the humans became stranded in the middle of the sea.

For the work I did, I was paid exceptionally well. All things considered, I performed maybe six hours of work every week. The rest of the time, I was asleep, but I still got paid enough that I could have retired any time I wanted and still lived comfortably. 

It took a special kind of person to operate an interstellar supply ship. To even qualify for the piloting exam, a person had to be in the top 99% of the population in regard to spatial reasoning, hazard assessment, and emotional stability. The pilots had to be the best of the best. After all, they would be responsible for billions of dollars of resources being sent out to mankind’s distant colonies. 

For the most part, the supply ships were entirely automated. The onboard computer took care of navigation, and the autonomous android crew handled all of the maintenance, repairs, and upkeep. Strictly speaking, the only reason I was on board was for insurance purposes. Despite the technology deployed on the spacecraft having been proven for decades, the insurance companies still insisted on having an actual human on every ship for docking procedures, even though 95% percent of accidents involving all stellar craft could be attributed to human error. Nevertheless, the stubbornness of bureaucrats is what got me the job.

If our ships possessed the ability to travel at light-speed, it still would have taken months for a trip to even a single colony, but our ships did not travel through normal space. The engine in long-distance craft was able to punch through normal space and travel through what the scientists had dubbed hypo-space. A ship would activate its engines, disappear from normal space, and reappear at its destination several days later, but the journey inside hypo-space took much longer than that. Time in hypo-space worked differently than in normal space. Though an outside observer would see a ship go from point A to point B in a matter of days, any people on board the traveling ship would experience weeks of time.