“Well, I-I-I come from an unusual family. W-we trace our lineage through a few grandads back to the renowned D-D-Dragonslayer… oh, who y-you won’t have heard of. But the story starts there, in a sense…”

  Some number of greats-grandfather Mensura had been afflicted with a great stutter. Almost entirely by accident, he found himself leading an adventuring company, and by virtue of overcompensation and the generally murder-hobo-ous nature of adventurers he possessed the most social skills of anyone in the group. So it was that, stuttering and stammering over some words—nearly all words under pressure, and pressure was not uncommon—he navigated the social waters of rulers and authorities who did not entirely appreciate having a band of armed and armored mercenaries wandering through their realm, killing whatever monsters and criminals they would, and generally not fitting into the neat organizational scheme of autocracy.

  Then he met the Dragonslayer. She was not, at the time, the Dragonslayer; she was, in fact, considered a bit of a joke as an adventurer. She was a little person, wielding a full-sized sword inherited from her adoptive father. For all that it was too big, she was actually quite damnably good with it, though she ultimately discarded it in favor of two smaller blades. She joined his party, and for all that she had the social skills of an outsider as well, she deferred to him, the now-experienced adventurer.

  He was not just experienced, he was articulate. He still tripped over words, much as Ruler himself did, but he was proud of himself. He was a self-made man, and Ruler took to heart what became the family ethos: It is brave to speak when speaking will make others think me a fool. Especially considering that Mensura had led the woman who would go on to be the Dragonslayer. Or knew the Dragonslayer. There was a little haziness in the chronology of his retirement.

  Every son and daughter—there were unquestionably both in the lineage—was afflicted with a stutter, and expected by family tradition to take on the mantle of party leader. There was, by Ruler’s time, a system by which this occurred. The child born and named for their pater—again, against tradition—they would be brought up to be proud of overcoming their stutter, explained the mechanisms of crutch words and the power that came from overcoming. They would be sent to a sorcerous school to learn air sorcery, later light sorcery, and then to a Coven of Geometers, were one available. Sending a boy to a Coven posed a number of problems and social issues, but by now the family had made a tradition of solving problems. Often, the protege would stay in a rented apartment near the coven, or in a pinch in a supply closet emptied for the occasion.

  Upon Associate graduation from the Coven, the former child—yes, I-I know, almost all adults are former children. Almost? I-I-I would argue some are still children—would be introduced to one of the psychic abominations known as a gutfish. The reason for this was… strange. Mensura had not himself been sorcerously trained until later in his life, he had been a mystic. When he sought out a mage’s college, he experienced the curious sensation of psychic contact. The entity contacting him initially expressed derision at a man going about claiming to be a leader with such a stutter. It was rebuked soundly. The family ethos. Mensura had replied to the contact with the strong sentiment that, if opening his mouth invited derision, daring to do so when he had something to contribute was an act of bravery, and that he was very brave indeed. The contact lightened to nothing, and he was left to ponder the meaning of the whole ordeal.

  He was not left to wonder long. The abomination, the gutfish, reached out again and said it could fix his mind, if he would take it on. Its present host was not ambitious enough for its liking, and would be glad to be free of the burden. He countered that he would take it on only if it did not attempt to “fix” his mind. No doubt he was mindful of the risks of magic which was, at the time, not even understood as psi, but also he had no intention of letting go of his source of pride. He was introduced to a professor at the academy of sorcery, and then experienced the painful event that was the inhabitation of a gutfish. The creature resided inside his stomach, feeding on what he fed upon, reaching out with psi to sense those around him. It was a potent advantage in the dark, where only some nephilim and spirit mages could see.

  As he’d said, graduates from the Coven of Geometers were introduced to a gutfish. He had one himself, and the scar to prove it. Their psychic abilities were unique. To them, sightless eel-looking things, minds shone like light in their “vision.” It hadn’t come up, or he would have explained at the time. It was unlike her water sphere, there was no judgment, there was only awareness. She wanted to meet the thing? She was by all means welcome to make contact with it, his normally rested, it was content that he was doing both dragon’s work and Lord’s work, and for whatever reason this satisfied its demands of ambition.

  Daisy felt the tickle of a very gentle psionic touch against her mind. “Tickle” was the only way to describe it, though she cast about for a more suitable word.

  She wasn’t sure how one communicated telepathically, so she simply thought to herself, “You’ve watched Ruler and I grow closer, why haven’t you said anything?”

  “Oh, like you didn’t recoil in disgust at my presence inside him. ‘Tool of the Powers that Be’ I think you thought of me.”

  “Sorry, D-D-Daisy, it’s… like that.”

  Ruler was speaking aloud. Daisy decided to reply in kind. “No, no, it’s absolutely right. Does it have a name? I would like to apologize.”

  “You want to apologize, you get on your knees and—”

  This time Daisy was surprised by the psionic slap because it was followed by a heated argument by Ruler. “Y-you will be respectful towards her-r-r, or I-I will become a monk. A monk, do you hear me?!”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re in love and I—” Another slap. “Well sarx, you’re serious about that. Okay. Be nice to the lady.”

  “Again, I-I am sorry about it. This is why I was traveling alone with my prophecy.”

  “Your dazzling people skills didn’t have a role, chum?”

  Daisy laughed. “I’m sorry, it’s just so ridiculous! A stomach-living eel abomination is critiquing your social skills when it’s tried to alienate me three times in the last minute!”

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  “You want alien, you get a gutfish. We’re as alien as they come, sweetheart. Sorry, Madame sweetheart.”

  “Why doesn’t its psi—again, do you have a name?”

  “My name is unpronounceable by your meat-tongues. You could call me Uriel if you wanted?”

  Daisy replied dryly, “I’m not quite blasphemous enough to call a human-made abomination the same title as the Virture of the Student.”

  “You watch your mouth! I’m dragon-made, and proud of it! A dragon set Ruler on his present quest to get himself ganked or I’d be pitching a fuss and shocking his insides!”

  “Even more blasphemous. Pass. Ruler, you’ve never named it?”

  “I communicate with it telepathically. There’s never been a need.”

  “Speaking of that. Why doesn’t its psi hurt? Telepathy isn’t comfortable in my experience.”

  “That’s a skill issue, too—Daisy. I’m a centuries-old abomination born to wield psionic power, while Ruler here has all the finesse of a drunken rhinoceros.”

  “Y-you should have told m-me I-I-I was causing discomfort. I-I can be gentler, albeit more slowly.”

  “No, it’s fine, I just… wait, why not have your gutfish relay the meaning of the Marzeilles words for things and what to say?”

  “Do I look like a… well, I suppose I mostly look like a bulge under Ruler’s robe.”

  Daisy’s voice grew cold. “You know the difference between a parasite and a symbiote, little thing? One of them gets to stay in its host.”

  “Alright, sure, I can do that.”

  “But you were telling me—via the long road—how you came to be on Marz, Ruler?”

  With the advent of the Age of Steel’s advances in magic, gutfish served a secondary purpose, one upon which Ruler relied. Gutfish were derived of electrical eel stock. Rituals gained elaborations over the generations, and what had been added to the ritual with the second-order sphere of electricity was branding an electric rune on the hands of the graduate. Normally this was not resorted to, or required an electric pile to be carried, or else the impulse of nerves would be deadened by its use to a sometimes-dangerous degree. But the gutfish, originally having the ability to punish a disobedient host, served the same purpose as a heavy and bulky electric pile. Thus when they were arresting Ruler he had attempted to shock those grabbing him, but they had been too numerous. Then, too, his revolver was specially designed to be a gun that could not point both ways, requiring an electrical impulse to trigger. Those were not the only uses of it, but those were the ones Daisy had seen thus far.

  In his travels, a sponsored and celebrated part of every generation of his family, Ruler had come into contact with a yellow dragon of air. It had seemed serendipity, though Ruler now suspected the guiding hand of the Lord in the entire affair. He had been wandering through the Sevens when he encountered the drake. She had introduced herself in Draconic, but telepathically. Like his gutfish, her telepathic touch had been painlessly gentle. He’d felt the little monster squirm excitedly in his stomach at the touch. This had been the only reason he hadn’t fled, the war on dragonkind being widespread on Orth.

  She—Sritzan—had been in the air at the beginning of their conversation, but gradually lowered to the ground as it went on. She had been watching him, it seemed, and having conversations with his gutfish without his awareness. Which was only natural, as before his trepanation he had no psi outside what his gutfish relayed.

  Sritzan had seen the way the winds were blowing. What the Dragonslayer had begun could not be stopped without a radical change in the way her people did things. They had changed things once before, from open warfare to games of intrigue. But this would not suffice, they still arranged society as they saw benefitted them. They failed to see what was on the wind. There was, she felt, a particular poetry to recruiting the party leader of the Dragonslayer to try and preserve the existence of dragonkind. The proof of their mortality would be proof against their mortality.

  She wanted to find a way for dragons and humans to coexist. She had sired nephilim, but they had not been able to integrate sufficiently in the face of the antipathy towards all things draconic which prevailed. She needed a trueblooded human if she was to spread the word of peace before the fires of war consumed her kin.

  Ruler had responded by asking what her idea of coexistence looked like. The cold war between dragons had taken lives, toppled nations, and generally sown chaos and misery for all but them. This was the reason for the revolution in the first place. Sritzan replied that she wanted dragons to be full and integrated members of society. They might rise to positions of authority by virtue of their long lifespans, but there could be limitations. Their wealth would be routinely dispersed, by some kind of human-run agency.

  He was skeptical, but his gutfish was eager and excited. As a family heirloom, it had a long view of history, and ultimately this zeal decided the matter for him. He would, on a trial basis, be the agent of Sritzan. He reserved the right to terminate that agreement at any point, a stipulation to which she agreed.

  After several years of approaching government leaders in the Sevens and meeting with a number of perplexing entities which made up those leaders, Sritzan had explained the process of trepanation. Ruler lifted his bangs and showed the faded scar. He had been nervous, naturally, but the nephilim child of Sritzan expressed confidence and familiarity with the procedure. He was put to sleep using an obscure application of water sorcery, and when he woke up he had… not a headache, but he had received a slap from his gutfish as he moved to touch his forehead. The world around him seemed strangely vibrant, and he was able to actively seek out Sritzan telepathically. She told him theirs would always be the strongest bond, unless he took a mate. His gutfish, curiously, had not protested despite their arguably comparable intimacy. They were, after all, of dragon-make.

  He had struggled to learn to use his psi, but eventually acquired a satisfactory degree of mastery. It was on the night he set out from Sritzan’s domain on another quest that he was approached in a dream by a messenger of the Lord. The angel showed him many terrible scenes of warfare and death, and told him these were the things to come. Whether there was bloodshed was not the question, the question was whether humanity would survive in any great numbers. It was his duty to spread the word of the war to come, the war against the false prophets that dragons represented, from Mercurie to Neptoon. Greatly distressed, he asked what would become of his now-friend Sritzan. The angel had replied enigmatically that she would be paid back as she had paid others.

  Ruler’s first reaction had been skepticism. He’d been psionically awakened, any number of strange entities could contact him now. Something had just overcome his mental shields and presented him with his nightmare vision of the future. He reached out to his Lady, Sritzan, and told her all that had happened. She replied that he should greet the vision by name, and demand its name in turn. Shaken, he continued on his way until the following night. Once again, the angel had appeared, this time showing him a landscape with a cave where he might find a dead dragon and a portal to Marz. He pronounced himself Ruler, descendant of Mensura, leader of the Dragonslayer, and demanded to know to whom he spoke. The angel replied, for it was an angel, that it was the Power of Wisdom, Willamina, and that his time to act was short. He awoke at once and made contact once more with Sritzan. She told him to go. If she would be dealt as she had dealt, so be it; her people would fall. Humanity, at least, would carry on their memory.

  And so, following a vision from an angel, he had made his way to Marz. Where he had not been listened to. Not to mention, with the prevalence of trepanation on the planet, he wasn’t sure anyone wanted to listen.

  Having shared their respective stories, Ruler rested his head on Daisy’s shoulder, and they intertwined their fingers. Perhaps it was love. Perhaps it was survival forging a bond. But for now, they would enjoy this companionable touch as they sailed on to their next destination.