Across the shelter, Vyrathion points at him. "You see?"
I look down at Clyde. He looks back up at me with large, innocent eyes. "See what?"
"The spy doing his job."
I look back at the Plood. Clyde is currently trying to fold his leaf in half. "If he’s a spy, I’m not sure he’s doing it right."
"He makes sure to keep an eye on us. Even in our lair."
"Maybe because it's raining."
"He’s monitoring our activities and conversation."
The certainty in Vyrathion's voice suggests he considers both possibilities equally plausible. I'm not sure whether that's more ridiculous or more impressive. Somehow he's convinced himself that a creature whose primary hobbies appear to involve collecting leaves and following me around is actually an undercover operative.
But I notice he says ‘us’ and ’our’. So maybe he’s at least given up his idea that I’m a witch. "Clyde likes me. I think that’s why he sticks around."
"You’re easily tricked."
I shrug. "Maybe. Or I just don ‘t see spies everywhere I look."
"You’re not a dragon. Everyone spies on us. Especially other dragons."
Clyde tries to offer me the leaf again. Whatever secret intelligence network he supposedly belongs to, it clearly operates under unusually relaxed standards.
Our strange conversation eventually fades, replaced by the endless sound of rain. Water hammers the leafy roof hard enough that normal speech would be difficult outside this bonfire of a shelter. Beyond the entrance, the island has almost disappeared into a gray curtain. The river remains visible only because its movement is impossible to ignore. Even from here, I can hear the floodwater roaring around us.
For a while, neither of us speaks. I find myself studying Vyrathion instead. He looks tired.
The realization takes me by surprise. He doesn't look exhausted, exactly, and certainly not weak. Vyrathion still carries himself with the same confidence he always has. Yet there's a heaviness in his posture that wasn't there before. His hair remains damp from the river, and water glimmers along the scales visible near his neck. I've spent so much time seeing him as an unstoppable force of nature that I've almost forgotten the obvious truth: even dragons have limits.
Maybe that's why I finally ask the question. "Can you tell me about another world?"
He changes his position. "What sort of world?"
"I don't know. The strangest planet you've ever seen."
To my surprise, some of the weariness disappears from his expression. It isn't dramatic, but it's there. For all his complaints about the jungle, Xren, weather, Earth women, primitive tribes, and virtually everything else in existence, Vyrathion clearly has been around.
"There was a planet," he says, settling more comfortably against the wall, "where chlorine fell from the sky as rain."
I blink. "Actual chlorine? As in, bleach?"
"It was not the best smelling planet. Significantly worse than the sulfuric acid one."
I scratch my nose. "How did anything survive?"
"It didn’t, which was why Sperukiax the Pale had located his hoard there."
“Were you there to steal it?” I ask.
“I killed Sperukiax and took his hoard, yes. For a while I had to keep it separate from my own, because of the smell. But it was a rich hoard.”
For the next hour, the storm fades into the background while Vyrathion describes places I can barely imagine. Crystal deserts that sing in the wind. Floating islands drifting through the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. Cities carved into the bones of creatures larger than mountains.
And him only going to those places to steal gold.
Every story sounds increasingly impossible, yet I have no reason to doubt him. A year ago, I wouldn't have believed any of it. A year ago, I wouldn't have believed I could end up stranded on an alien world beside an arrogant dragon who considers treasure acquisition a legitimate philosophy of life.
