"You're the nicest, too. The other ones tried to kill me. Multiple times." He paused, recalling the numerous incidents. "I'll be honest, my opinion of dragons was not good."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Well, see, there were two super powerful demons in Hell. One of them was named Sathanus, and he was a dragon. He had a son, too, named Cornyx who was being trained by...the good guys, I guess. Anyways, I wound up in a really bad place with this...demon-thing named Boomslang and she kind of used Lucifer and Sathanus as tools a lot or she worked deals or whatever she was doing that time. But when they inevitably figured it out, Sathanus - the brawn - went to deal with it and usually he got ahold of me instead of her. Then, later, Cornyx went to Hell and wound up killing his father and uncle to take the throne and last I heard he was working with Boomslang. She wouldn't let him kill me but I wasn't allowed to hurt him and needless to say fights ensued. And I'm pretty difficult to kill, so..."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
He laughed, somewhat bitterly. "There's a lot of people who want to kill me. But yes, the only dragons I ever met until you all wanted my head on a pike. Or icicle. Depends on which one. 'Tis the life of a mercenary. Or assassin. Or anything else against the law and involving murder, really."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
Bo pointed a finger at Kratzer in agreement. "True. Though I'm fortunate that all of the people who would've wanted to kill me in my assasin-ing days are probably dead now. At least... I think so. Can't say for sure, but I also live in a secret underground base that only Mickey can let people into, so that kind of helps."
"We've got a similar place back home. Not quite so...subterranean. It's just called 'the Guild,' really. It's where the outlaws and workers of dark magic and such wind up." He pulled up his sleeve to reveal a symbol tattooed on the inside of his right wrist. "That's how we get in and out. That, and a password. Lots of bases all over the world. It's good to have a safe haven," he smiled a little.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Oh, definitely," Bo nodded in agreement. "That's awesome that there are bases all around the world! We've just got the one. But - to be fair - it sounds like your world might be a lot more populated than ours. We did just have like, a huge calamity 100 years ago that wiped out a lot of people though, so, that's probably a big part of it."
"Plus we have a lot of technology that allows us to travel. Airplanes, advanced boats, that kind of thing. That and a lot of half-breeds, mancers, and gifted can teleport around. Was it a natural disaster or a war that killed the people here?" he inquired.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Natural disasters plural," he said, poking his fork into a piece of turkey, then pointing it at him. "It was a real mess, I'll tell ya. Was hard for everyone. Kingdoms fell apart, and it was chaos for a good few years."
"Damn, that's intense," he observed. "We might be looking at something like that occurring soon back at home."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Yeah. I mean, assuming Boomslang doesn't release the Void and destroy everything before it. It's a long explanation but basically human tech releases a lot of gases and things that ultimately warm the climate and when that starts melting things and destroying more sensitive ecosystems and such it can have a cascade effect and just kinda...boom."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
Bo blinked. "Wow. And here in Nye it was just... magic stuff. That sounds wild. Technology melting that much ice and snow... there must be a lot of it to do that."
"It's an atmospheric effect. Basically, it keeps the heat in, and when you have seven and a half billion people with tech doing that for several decades which then causes more things to release more gases it builds pretty quickly."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
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