Fyre Fly: Chapter 34 – Friend or Foe?

I’m blasting out of the city with my Jets before I even have a moment to consider my options. Dizzi is still in the shop. I probably scorched Blair with my flames, which certainly wasn’t a wise move. But all I can think about is Ollie, whose alarm is spiking through me indistinguishable from my own.

“What is it?” Mirzayael asks. “Is Ollie alright?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. I’m high enough above the city I can see Ollie and the clearing we’d landed in. “Ollie. Ollie, what’s happening!”

“HE STUCK ME!” he cries. “HE TRIED TO STICK ME!”

“What?” I ask, desperate. It takes me less than thirty seconds to rocket out of the city. “Who? What happened?”

As I get close, I can make out a lot of raised voices—and Ollie’s growl. It’s a low rumble that resonates in my chest. I’ve never heard him make that noise before. I also notice his alarm has shifted to anger.

I land hard, cutting the Jets before I’d fully slowed down, and stumble across the grass. Both Fyrethians and the locals are yelling, though it’s so chaotic I can’t tell what they’re yelling about, or if it’s even at each other.

Ollie swings his head toward me as I run up to him. “FYRE! WHAT DO I DO?”

“About what?” I ask, quickly looking him over. He’s laying down where we’d left him, and I’m relieved to not see any blood. When I Check him, he’s missing one point of HP. “I still don’t know what’s going on!”

“ABOUT HIM!” Ollie says, nodding his head toward the ground.

It takes me that long to realize there’s a person pinned beneath Ollie’s paw.

The man appears to be an elf. He has brown skin and long black hair, but that’s about all I can make out beneath his continued frantic struggle—and Ollie’s massive paw. Ollie’s claws have dug into the ground around the man, one on each side of his head, and two more beneath his arms, effectively ensuring he won’t be able to squirm free.

“Let me go!” the man cries. “Please! Someone help!”

As I’m staring at this, baffled, Salvia hurries to my side.

“We confiscated his weapon,” they say, gesturing to an unsheathed sword they’re carefully holding to their side.

“What happened?” I ask for about the tenth time.

“He tried to stab Ollie,” Salvia says, looking back at the elf, who’s given up the fight and is now laying there, hyperventilating. The giant dragon paw pressing down on him is probably making it hard to breathe, but I’m too mad to feel very concerned for his safety.

“Tried being the operative word,” Salvia continues. “Ollie pretty quickly took care of that.”

“THAT’S WHAT I ALREADY SAID,” Ollie grumbles. “HE TRIED TO STICK ME.”

“Well done, Ollie,” I tell him, willing my heartrate back to normal. “And ease up a bit, will you? I’ve got questions I want answered before you squish him.”

“HE’LL WIGGLE FREE,” Ollie protests. But he shifts his weight anyway and lifts his paw. Sure enough, the man starts fighting, trying to slip one of his arms out. Ollie quickly presses down once more, and the man lets out an audible “oof” as the air is knocked from his lungs.

I quickly relay the situation to Mirzayael as I stomp over to the stranger, my own anger rising.

“Who are you?” I demand as I Check him. “Why did you attack Ollie?”

[Check,] Echo says, his stats populating my vision.

[Name: Sandro]

[Species: Elf]

[Class: Spellsword]

[Level: 28]

[HP: 120/120]

[Mana: 150/150]

[Role: Dragon Slayer]

My breath catches in my throat. He’s like us. He’s from Earth. But that Role fills me with dread.

“Ollie, Check him,” I say as I crouch down at Sandro’s side.

“DRAGON SLAYER?” Ollie exclaims. “THAT’S MEAN!”

And it also explains why he attacked Ollie.

Echo can I see someone else’s Sanity Stat? I ask her, examining the man as he stares up at me, wide eyed.

[Permissions granted,] she says. A new stat appears above the man’s head. [Sanity: 85%]

Damn. I had suspected as much. I keep an eye on the stat, but so far it remains static. I’m still very upset on Ollie’s behalf, but I try to soothe some of my anger away. This isn't his fault. At least, not entirely.

“Hello, Sandro,” I say, and his eyes widen as he looks up at me. “I don’t appreciate you attacking my kid.”

“What?” he gasps. “How do you…”

“Did you Check Ollie first?” I ask him. “Did you know what he was and try to hurt him anyway? I find it hard to believe you ran into a fight with a dragon without attempting to scope out his level first.”

“Check? Level?” Sandro repeats. His frantic gaze appears to dart randomly around the clearing before settling back on me. “You—you can see it too!”

Oh boy. This is not going to be an easy conversation, is it?

The chaos is starting to settle down now, with the Fyrethians and townsfolk giving me and Ollie a wide berth.

I turn to Salvia. “Do you have something to secure him?”

“Yes, Lord Fyre,” they say, passing Sandro’s sword off to another guard as they produce a loop of spider silk from their bag.

I gesture them forward as I step back. “Ollie, you can let him go. We’ll take it from here.”

Ollie lets out another low growl, and Sandro goes very still. “ARE YOU SURE? HE’S NOT GOING TO TRY TO HURT ME AGAIN?”

“Salvia will tie him up so he doesn’t,” I promise. “You did a great job, Ollie. I’m proud of you.”

His growl turns into a pleased rumble—a purr, maybe, for an enormously oversized cat.

Ollie lifts his claws away, and again Sandro tries to make a dash for it. He yelps, flipping onto his back as his cloak flaps out behind him, and he awkwardly crab-walks backward.

“No, wait!” he cries, grabbing at his neck. “Stop!”

I stare at Sandro, baffled, but it isn’t until Salvia pounces on his legs and pins him in place that I’m able to parse what I’m seeing. He makes a strangled noise as his cloak continues to flap wildly at his back. But there’s no wind.

The cloak is moving on its own.

The cloak is trying to get away, and it’s dragging Sandro with.

Sandro gasps in a breath when the cloak stops strangling its owner to whip around toward Salvia instead. I jump forward, grabbing the cloak before it manages to wrap around their head. The cloth thrashes in my grasp, surprisingly strong. Strong enough that I’m beginning to think I made a mistake.

“No!” Sandro cries. “Please stop!” But he’s not fighting us, and Salvia takes advantage of the moment to quickly bind his feet. I try to pull away from the cloak, which is terrifyingly attempting to encircle my torso like an anaconda.

Salvia binds his hands in seconds, then jumps on the cloak with me, yanking us apart. The cloak goes for Salvia next, but by then several other Fyrethians have rushed to our aid and are able to wrestle the magical cloth to the ground.

We all lay there panting for a moment.

“WOW!” Ollie suddenly says. “THE CAPE IS ALIVE. THAT’S SO COOL! JUST LIKE DOCTOR STRANGE.”

I Check the cloak, still quivering beneath the four guards it’s pinned beneath.

[Check,] Echo says. [The Shuddering Shroud. This powerful and ancient artifact is dedicated to the protection of its wearer, enhancing their agility and evasiveness. It is even capable of acting independently from its wearer in order to ensure their safety.]

I suppose dragging its wearer across the ground by their neck is one way to save them.

It takes some work, but five guards working in tandem are able to wad up and secure the Shroud. It looks a bit ridiculous, crumpled and bound against Sandro’s back, but at least it’s no longer trying to strangle anyone.

Sandro looks downright terrified. “Please don’t kill us!”

“I’m not going to kill you,” I say, grunting as I push myself back to my feet. “Not unless you try to attack Ollie again.”

“Ollie?” he repeats, looking around wildly.

Is he even using his System access at all? “Can you disable that cloak?” I ask instead, focusing on the more pressing issue.

“Uh, no,” Sandro admits, shaking—actually shaking—beneath my glare. “I think it’s stuck on me. It won’t let me take it off. It’s terrified of being removed—well, it’s terrified of most things, really.”

Not just a magical cloak, but a consciousness? That sounds strangely like the Dungeon Core, if you substituted fear for hunger. This raises more questions, but Ollie’s safety comes first.

“Can you add it to your Inventory?” I ask him.

He blinks. “My what?”

A gust of wind washes over us as Dizzi lands nearby. “Fyre! What happened? I turned away for like one minute and you disappeared.” Then she notices Sandro, bound and surrounded by five guards. “Uh, it looks like I missed some things.”

“Do you have Ollie’s translator?” I ask her.

“Yeah, sure.” She digs it out of her bag. “It’s not updated yet, though. I left before we were able to discuss much of anything.”

“That’s alright. This will do for now.” I take the blue stone and head back over to Ollie. He lifts his chin up so I can put the translator back into the leather band on his neck.

“How’s that?” I ask.

“Blah blah blah blah—oh! It’s working,” his translator says.

Sandro gapes. “It—it can talk!”

I sigh. He really did run into a fight with a dragon without Checking its level.

“He can speak through the translator, yes,” I say. “And his name is Ollie. You do know how to Check things, don’t you?” Even Ollie had figured that out before meeting me, and he’s eight years old.

Sandro’s gaze darts between me, Ollie, and Salvia as if any one of us might eat him at any moment. Well, that is a possibility with Ollie, but his continued fearful reactions strike me as far more extreme than they should be. “Of course I can do that. But what has that got to do with anything?”

“Our Roles,” I emphasize, managing not to sigh again. “We’re the only three that have them. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I noticed!” he objects. He nervously glances at Ollie again. “Oh. Well, his Role is the same as his species. I might have missed that.”

“No, my Role is The Dragon but my Species is FROST dragon!” Ollie’s translator says. He opens his mouth, and the back of his throat begins to glow white in demonstration.

“Ollie,” I warn.

He snaps his mouth shut, and a puff of cold air and flecks of ice roll over us. Ollie giggles. “That felt like snorting milk out my nose.”

“He’s eight years old,” I feel obligated to explain to Sandro. “And his role is ‘The Dragon,’ which is… complicated.” I Check his Sanity stat again, but it hasn’t changed. “But I think you better explain your Role first.”

Sandro is still staring at Ollie. His expression and tone have bounced around a lot over the last few minutes, ranging everywhere from surprise to abject terror. We’re back to some level of surprise again now, except this time it’s tinged with something else.

“He’s a kid?” Sandro says quietly. He looks helplessly back up at me. “I—shit. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I—”

Ollie hisses. “He said a bad word!”

“We try to keep our language PG around Ollie,” I tell Sandro.

“Uh.” Sandro is staring at Ollie, whose hissing does sound quite menacing if you don’t know it’s his mocking version of ‘oooOOOoooh!’ “Okay. I’m, uh, sorry about that.”

“Apology accepted,” Ollie says. “I guess!”

Finally, I let myself relax. Sandro doesn’t seem to have any ill intent, despite his initial attack. I suspect he was operating under the influence of his Role. Which doesn’t mean he poses no threat, but it does mean he can be reasoned with.

At least, until his Sanity stat gets too low.

It’s that Shuddering Shroud that I’m more concerned with at this moment. As per its description, and Sandro’s previous objections, it appears to be acting independently of his will. That makes it a bit of a wild card.

I turn back to Salvia and Dizzi, who were watching this play out with various levels of confusion and interest.

“I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day. I’m going to head back up with Ollie.” I nod my head back toward Sandro. “We’ll be taking him with us. There are many questions I need answers for.”

“Yes, Lord Fyre,” Salvia says.

Dizzi looks at him curiously. “He’s from your world?”

“Yes,” I say, lowering my voice. “Though perhaps that is a detail we should keep to ourselves.”

She tips her head. “I thought you were trying to convince everyone you’re not from around here so they don’t conflate you with Fyreneth.”

“True,” I admit, recalling Blair’s warning. “But things have changed. It’s fine to acknowledge I’m not originally Fyrethian—I doubt I could hide it, really—but where I am from, specifically… I’ll explain later.”

Dizzi looks curious but she doesn’t argue. “If you say so. Well, guess I’ll start to get this show packed up. What a way to end the day…”

I watch her head off to start organizing how the transports should be loaded up. I still haven’t told her about our visit from the gods—only Mirzayael knows. I’ve been worried about saying too much aloud, in case the gods were nearby and listening, but after speaking with Blair today, perhaps I’m being too cautious. I decide we’ll have to have a talk with all the council members later to catch them up.

I look back at Sandro, the Dragon Slayer.

For now, I’ve got a bigger headache to worry about.