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King Copperscale

By Strega

They called him King Copperscale, but not because of the color of his own. No, Copperscale's own natural armor was a deep crimson, shading in places almost to a fire-red glow. His long curved horns and wickedly sharp talons were so close to black that only in direct sunlight could the blood-colored highlights be made out.

His eyes were amber, slit-pupilled and keen, his back ridged from his nose to the end of his tail, and if he spread his leathery wings to their widest they would shade nearly the entire town square. Travelers and traders would stop at the caravansary around which the little village was built, spy him curled up in the ruins of the old temple, and there would be talk of "Doing something about that red dragon."

But no-one ever did, because the villagers would always take them aside for a word.

"That is Copperscale," they would say, "And he is our king. He is a good king, makes few demands, upholds the law. I do not care what color he may be, he is the best king we have ever had. You will not bother him."

And since he did not have a horde in the sense of most dragons - he did require tributes from traders, but always sank that money right back into the village - that was pretty much the end of it. Who wants to fight a dragon that is causing no trouble and who does not squat on a mound of gold?

But he (or she, they were never quite sure) was still a dragon. Slow and efficient though his metabolism night be when not breathing fire or flying, eventually he did need to eat.

"What has he done," Copperscale hissed, and tilted his head at the band of villagers before him. A matronly woman held the hands of two children, who peered wide-eyed past her skirts at the dragon. No-one else save the prisoners seemed nervous, for Copperscale was their king, dragon or no.

"A fit of madness," the constable said, his hand heavy on the shoulder of a thickset man whose arms were bound behind him. "He drank too much at the tavern, and when he lost a fight he kicked in the door of Matron Cooper's house and killed her husband."

"Is this true?" Copperscale hissed, and the man cringed as the dragon's head loomed close overhead.

"It is, sir," said the man. "I cannot hold my drink. I can only beg for mercy, and say that I did not know what I was doing."

"Very well," said Copperscale, and the words came out with a wisp of smoke from his nostrils. "Here is your mercy. You are now Matron Cooper's servant, for a term of five years. You will live in a shed next to her house, which I will arrange to have built, and you will as best you can continue her husband's business, or another lawful one, so to support her. In five years her children will be old enough to help support her. Next."

The remaining two prisoners included only one human. The larger was a hulking, black-furred beast, half animal and half man and tightly bound with ropes. Bugbear, the race was called, larger kin to orc and gnoll in the group of species loosely referred to as "humanoids". Strictly speaking there was little relation, any more than two "demi-humans" like an elf and a dwarf were kin.

Tied to his ankle by a thick twine of rope was a slender man with a patch over one eye and a general look of disreputability. A tunic of scale armor - real scales, possibly a basilisk's - a loincloth and sandals were all he wore, which was more than the bugbear had. He stood barely to the bugbear's armpit.

"And these?" hissed King Copperscale.

"Bandits, your majesty. Only survivors of an attack on a caravan bound for our caravansary. Fortunately not a well organized group, and also fortunately the wagon train had a strong guard."

In the back of the small crowd a pair of khardaki lion-people, the male and a female both tall, lithe and strong, nodded and smiled. The villagers knew them well for their habit of hiring on as guards for caravans that were scheduled to pass through this little burg. Khardaki were well known for liking dragons, and they could hardly pass up the opportunity to see this one, whatever the color of his actual scales.

"Hrm," hissed the dragon as he looked the bugbear and man over. "It is not unheard-of for bandits to be redeemed in time of war or desperation. This is not such a time. Who will vouch that these charges are correct?"

"They are correct, lord," said the caravan-master, who had come with the lions and other guards to see justice done. The man earlier condemned to servitude had also been from his caravan, so he felt doubly obligated. "There were half a dozen bugbears and twice that many kobolds acting as scouts and skirmishers, plus a few men. They attacked as we were camped a night out of town and killed several before they were overpowered."

"Then thank you for bringing these to meet justice here, rather than killing them on the trail," Copperscale hissed. "Your consideration is much appreciated."

There was little ceremony in what happened next. The bugbear only had an instant to snarl his defiance as Copperscale's long jaws opened, then he was in them. With a toss of his head the dragon got the bulky morsel to the back of his mouth and swallowed.

The other prisoner was considerably more vocal, letting out a high-pitched scream as he was hoisted into the air by his ankle. The great bulge in Copperscale's neckplates slipped down toward his body as his swallowing muscles sent the bugbear on his way, the passage of the bulge revealing the dark flesh between the scutes as they stretched apart to let it pass. Over the course of ten seconds the lump traversed twenty feet of gradually thicker neck, soon joined by a second, smaller bulge.

There was no time for the man to save himself. Three hundred pounds of bugbear sliding down a dragon's throat has a momentum all its own and the rope connecting their ankles was thick and strong. By the time his foot was pulled toward Copperscale's jaws they were open and waiting for him. There was a last muffled shriek as he bumped over the rows of sharp ivory fangs and disappeared neatly into the dragon's gullet, sandals, loincloth, armor and all.

Copperscale lifted his head and bent his neck into an ess above the upper, smaller bulge. With a ripple of his muscles he worked the curve downward, pushing the two bulges together. A last stretch of his neck and the lump was gone. He was not the largest of dragons but though they had made a heavy lump in his neck the resulting bulge in his belly was scarcely noticeable. He did not even bother to belch.

"Caravan master," he hissed, and the man stepped forward. "Justice must be done, and for it also to sate my appetite is efficient. If I find that innocents are being so dispatched to benefit you, however, it will be you who feeds me next."

"I understand, your majesty," said the caravan master respectfully. Copperscale had made it plain on more than one occasion that he would not tolerate deceit in this, and if he had not so far eaten anyone who misled him, no one doubted that he'd do it. It must be equally plain to the man Copperscale condemned to a term of servitude that causing the widow trouble or trying to escape was unlikely to end well for anyone but the dragon.

There was one more matter to address, but that was merely a property dispute and a deathly dull business. By the time that was sorted out most of the crowd had left, including the two now-fatherless children who would regale their friends with tales of seeing Lord Copperscale swallow two people whole. That tale would grow in the telling until it'd be a wonder that anyone in the crowd had failed to end up inside a dragon.

It did not surprise Copperscale that a few people lingered when the main body of the crowd dispersed. With his belly only sufficiently occupied digesting the bandits to provide a comforting fullness without making him sleepy, he gestured with a claw to the figures lurking in the shadows.

"I thought as much," he hissed, his tone moderated from his public speaking voice. Now the volume was scarcely above conversational. It was the khardaki and two others of the caravan guards

"If it pleases you, lord, we would like to talk," purred the lioness. "We have met other dragons, but -"

"But why is a Red the king of some insignificant town," Copperscale continued without missing a beat. His bed of scales rustled as he shifted where he lay.

"Yes, lord," said the older of the two human guards. "Chromatic dragons, not to offend, do not have the best reputation." The distinction between 'chromatic' dragons - Reds, Blues, and so on - and 'metallics' - the Golds and their ilk - came from heraldry, where silver is a 'metal' but green is a 'color'. However the label had come about, dragons by and large could be trusted to follow a certain nature: the metallics were largely trustworthy and the chromatics largely weren't.

Copperscale rested his chin on a claw and narrowed his eyes, but was not annoyed. It had taken rather longer than he'd expected for the khardaki to work up the nerve to talk to him. That people were almost as fascinated by dragons as kobolds were. And of course humans, those were often inquisitive.

"Twenty years ago I first came to this town," he hissed. "Flying by on my way from somewhere to somewhere. To my surprise, there was a dragon here."

*****

It was a Copper, one scarcely larger than himself. He had not spoken to another dragon save a few of his siblings since his mother turned him out of the nest, and most of his siblings were dead now. Young and foolish they had attacked towns or greater monsters and as was the usual way with dragons, only the few smartest and strongest were left. He was one of the smart, strong ones, and he avoided his remaining siblings, two of whom he had personally killed and eaten after they intruded on his territory. Both had been males and had they been female perhaps an accommodation might have been reached, for no older female dragon would consort with a male as young as himself. Imagined incestuous beddings aside he had no friends among other dragons and proud and powerful as he had become, occasionally the urge to talk to someone almost as mighty as himself grew strong.

So he circled slowly twice, making his presence known in an nonthreatening way, and when the humans had scattered from the town square in front of the Copper he landed on the opposite side.

"I am Crookclaw," he hissed, "And I merely wish to talk."

"Verdigris," the Copper replied, and that was a mighty egotistical name for what was manifestly a dragon not much older than he was. Verdigris is the corrosion that forms on old copper, and was properly a name for a Great Old Wyrm, not a dragon barely into his second century.

Verdigris was coiled in a white marble building all out of place in the muddy little village. It resembled a temple more than anything else, complete with what might be an altar in front of the Copper's claws.

"It has been years since I spoke to another dragon," Crookclaw hissed, "And I find you in an odd situation."

"Isn't it," the Copper said, and curled his head around to nibble at the scales below one wing. He of course kept the closest watch on Crookclaw. Coppers are not as steadfastly anti-Chromatic as their larger kin, though, and so he kept talking - which was the reaction Crookclaw had hoped for. He really did just want to talk.

"Let me tell you how to make a living," the Copper said. "What you do is to make friends. Eat the occasional bandit, don't eat the villagers, and you might have a town of your very own. It might not suit you, but it works."

"Hrm," Crookclaw pondered. He too watched the Copper with utmost attentiveness but he was also aware of villagers creeping back close enough to watch them. Unlike some of his kin he had no special dislike for humans and other two-legs and preferred larger meals. He had even considered talking to them, but his color gave him a reputation that generally sent smaller creatures running as soon as they spied him.

"I have heard of Reds with coteries of kobold servants, or orcs, or gnolls," Crookclaw hissed, "And in Greyston a Red is a ranking official of the army, or so I have heard."

"Well, there you have it," the Copper - Crookclaw could even think 'Verdigris' without his scaly lips twitching into a smile - replied. "Make friends."

Friends, Crookclaw thought as he flew away. So why were the humans, as they approached the two of them, shying away not only from him but from the Copper as well? He did a slow circle before flying away, and witnessed the Copper cuff some human so hard as to send him flying.

His curiosity was slow to arouse but a few months later, still recovering from a fight with a pack of giants who didn't appreciate him stealing their equally giant sheep, he decided to visit the village again. He waited until his right wing would unfurl without pain once more and until the one giant he'd caught alone was no longer a twelve-foot long-bulge in his middle before heading back to the village.

"You look well-fed," said the Copper as he landed. Once more Crookclaw had circled twice in midday to announce his arrival, and this time rather than watch the Copper he had paid attention to the activity of the villagers.

One would think that a friendly dragon wouldn't cause much of an uproar once the people got used to it, but Crookclaw was struck by the behavior of the humans and the few non-humans. No one approached the Copper save in greatest caution, almost reluctantly, and with belly-scraping respect. Young though he was he had seen behavior like that before, and it was not that of friends interacting with each other. No, this was more the fearful actions of a populace with a powerful and ruthless ruler.

"A giant I caught," Crookclaw said. "Their armor takes a while to digest or I would have stopped by earlier. You, too, look well-nourished."

And so the Copper did. To the point of putting on fat, even.

"Oh, the villagers bring me all sorts of food," the Copper said with a grin. "Nothing they can't spare. You would be surprised how many bandits and criminals there are hereabouts, and why hang them when there is someone who can dispose of the bodies so neatly?"

"Indeed," Crookclaw hissed. "I thought you smelled of human just because you lived amongst them. You are what you eat, after all."

"Well, a lot of the bandits are human, it is true." With his attention fixed on Crookclaw the Copper did not see the two humans behind him, but Crookclaw saw them mouthing words.

How curious, he thought as he flew off a bit later. Why would humans ask a dragon - a Red no less - for help against their own, supposedly friendly one?

His interest piqued, he flew in increasingly wide arcs around the village until he understood the countryside. The muddy road leading through the Copper's little town was the closest thing to a thoroughfare there was hereabouts, and yet from tracks in the mud he could see that many travelers went out of their way to avoid the town.

He was simply going to have to ask. He found a nearby hill with an abandoned church, coiled up around the building and waited. Two days later, disturbed by nothing more annoying than a family of squirrels that chattered at him until he inhaled and swallowed the noisiest, he saw a solitary wagon making its way down the rutted track.

He had let a caravan and several bands of riders go by unquestioned but here was what he'd been waiting for. He was still learning magic but it was a trivial endeavor to cast_Invisibility_ and wing toward the wagon, staying below the hilltops in case the Copper, who he trusted less and less, had villagers watching for him. He intercepted the wagon in a flat ahead between two copses of trees, as private a location as he could arrange.

The first warning the man driving the wagon had was his draft horses rearing. The thunder of wings made him look up in alarm and a thin woman carrying a crossbow popped out of the wagon to join him on the driver's bench. They were both casting about for the source of the sound when Crookclaw spoke.

"I mean no harm," he hissed in his mildest tones. "But I must be invisible lest I be seen by enemies. Allow me five minutes of questions and I will be on my way."

Invisibility has its limits and the great clawed footprints that suddenly appeared in the grass finally told them what was there. Or so they thought. Crookclaw was astonished to see them cower back into the wagon not because there was a dragon talking to them, but because they thought they knew which dragon it was.

"Please, lord," the man cried as he shielded his wife from Crookclaw's imagined anger. "We will bring more bandits next time. We have left word at many inns about the treasure to lure them in. Please don't punish us."

He had been about to drop the_invisibility_ so they could see he was not the Copper, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Thinking back to his own conversations with the other dragon, he altered his voice as much as he could to resemble the Copper's.

"So you say," he replied in a growlier, deeper pitched version of his usual hiss. "Yet I am barely fed. I will have to start eating villagers at this rate. Perhaps even you."

"No, lord," the woman shrieked. "There are so few of us left already. If you eat many more, there will be no one to polish your scales or sharpen your claws."

Eat many more?, Crookclaw thought. And he thought about how well-nourished the Copper looked, and what he smelled like.

"Very well," he growled. "I will give you one more chance. Do not waste it or you will join the others in my belly."

That was interesting, he thought as he flew away. The Invisibility spell would not last much longer, but he resolved to simply re-cast it at need and question more travelers. Over the course of the next two days he did just that, talking only to ones headed away from the village and watching them afterward to make sure they did not double back. Soon he had a pretty clear picture of the Copper's activities and it was not a pretty one.

An older Red, or a Red who hated humans more than he did might admire the Copper. He found that he did not. Some years back the Copper had stopped by the town, telling riddles and paying for barrels of ale with coins he pried from between his scales. A few bandits had been caught and the mayor had asked him if he would be so kind as to dispose of them. Several gulps later the bandits were no longer an issue...but the Copper never left.

Whether he was ill-natured before or was tempted by the easy food source and the sense of self-superiority that comes so readily to dragons, he had stayed for a week, then a month. Dragons do not need to eat much or often but with a taste for bandits and humanoids in general the Copper insisted that all criminals caught be brought to him. Increasingly inconsequential crimes were given a sentence of "dragoning" and after almost a generation of watching petty thieves and even villagers who merely disobeyed the Copper disappear down the dragon's throat the people were terrified of their 'friend' and obeyed him as though he were a god.

By all rights it shouldn't have bothered him. It was a setup worthy of an elder Red and he had heard of dozens of evil dragons who had their own little village of whatever species to wait on them hand and foot. The metallics were supposed to be better than that, though. Oh, they might take advantage of their small friends in small ways but the Copper had gone so far as to eat villagers who argued with him. In a more populous area the Copper would have been chased away or killed by the army, wizards or adventurers, but here in the farmlands far from any capital there were bigger things to worry about than a dragon who was only abusing a few people in one small village. There was no one to stop him.

No one but me, thought the Red, who had begun to dislike the Copper's slightly smug expression even before finding out the dirty details.

He was still curled around the old church making plans when he spied a solitary horseman making his was down the trail. Keen eyed like all dragons he recognized a man he'd seen in the village on both of his previous visits.

This time he didn't fly down and stalk the man. He had thought of a better a approach: he used one of the simplest magics, one designed to cast one's voice to a distance.

"Listen carefully," hissed the voice in the man's ear, and he pulled his horse up wide-eyed.

"Lord?" whispered the man, and the magic carried his voice back to Crookclaw.

"Not your lord. Listen. Tomorrow at sunset, I will come to your village. I am not coming to harm you. Or rather, I am coming to harm only one person. He is large, and copper scaled."

"You're the Red," the man said wondering, and looked around, but Crookclaw was well out of sight.

"I am interested only in the Copper. He offends me. Do not interfere with what happens tomorrow, and I promise I will do to him what he has done to so many of your villagers."

"Wait," said the man, "I want to help."

Well now, thought Crookclaw.They must hate him even more than I thought.

"All right," he hissed into the man's ear. "This is what I want you to do."

A day and a few hours later the Red was making slow passes above the village, Invisible. He couldn't flap his wings lest the Copper hear him so each pass only allowed him a moment's look at the village before he must once again make a wide loop back out of earshot of the Copper.

On the third pass he saw what he'd been waiting for. The man he'd talked to the evening before had brought others to talk to their dragon. The Copper stirred in his marble temple, which Crookclaw now knew he'd forced the villagers to build for him. For a few minutes the Copper would be distracted and most importantly, would have other things to listen to than wingbeats.

Crookclaw had fought and killed other dragons, but always face to face; he'd never had the chance to ambush one. He had kept his plan as simple as possible, gliding in from behind the Copper's house as he chatted with the villagers. The Copper's head went up at the last instant as he finally heard the rush of air over Crookclaw's wings, but by that time the Red was only fifty yards away. Before Verdigris could do more than unfurl his wings Crookclaw pulled up from his dive and hit the side of the temple claws-first. Four sets of dragon talons and ten tons of mass traveling at quite a pace slammed into the building and with a shattering crash much of the white marble structure came down on the Copper's head.

Dragons are tough creatures but the collapse of the temple half-buried the Copper and top of that the Red, suddenly visible as the spell broke, landed atop him as well. Before he could dig free the Red dragon was atop him and slamming his head against the rubble.

The villagers had fled by the time Crookclaw could glance up from his work. It didn't look as though any had been hit by the flying debris, and that was good. He didn't particularly like humans but he didn't hate them either. He was only here to kill one person, and more than that, to make him suffer. That was why instead of twisting the Copper's head until his neck broke, he pulled him half from beneath the rubble, wrapped his body with coils of his own, and opened his long jaws for Verdigris's snout.

It was not particularly difficult to slide his jaws over the Copper's head. He had swallowed a fellow Red whole who was almost as large, but that dragon had been dead. This one was still alive and sooner or later would begin to struggle. Twisting his jaws from side to side, digging his sharp inward-hooking teeth in on one side and then the other, he ate as rapidly as he could. By the time the Copper began to twitch the slick chute of Crookclaw's gullet had expanded over the entire length of his neck and the Red was beginning the more difficult task of working his jaws over his upper forelegs and wing roots. The overfed Copper was fat as a sausage in the middle and getting him all down was going to be a challenge, but Crookclaw was determined to have this meal.

Deep inside the wet fleshy tunnel of dragon throat Verdigris's eyes snapped open. The rhythmic pulsations of the muscular walls continued to ease him deeper and he felt the claws digging in as his fellow dragon pulled himself forward over his meal. The stink of acid and burning heat of his surroundings told him at once what was happening. He was being swallowed alive, and his head was already in a fire dragon's stomach - almost certainly Crookclaw's.

"You bastard," the Copper snarled, and tried to pull himself out. Dozens of needle-sharp fangs dug in behind his scales as he tried to do so, for while the front fangs of a dragon may point somewhat forward the rear ones hook sharply back toward the gullet. It is an adaption for holding prey still as it is swallowed whole and though he'd personally never swallowed anything larger than a horse (with rider) it was terribly effective in keeping him from extracting himself from the hungry gullet. Already his forelegs were pinned to his sides by the elastic flesh between the Red's upper and lower jaws and he could feel the shape of Crookclaw's neck scutes as they stretched apart around his body.

Still half buried by rubble and with the other dragon lying atop him as it fed he could only kick in desperation. Once or twice he hit scales but the Red largely fended his swipes off with its forelegs. Eventually the struggle pulled Verdigris's hind legs from the rubble and he dug his hindclaws into the loose stones, thrashing around and whipping his tail.

But a dragon does need to breathe, albeit not often, and by the time his eyes opened his head was already in the Red's stomach. There was nothing to breathe but stinking acidic fumes and there was no oxygen to be had. Any dragon is an efficient metabolic furnace capable of digesting nearly anything and other dragons are no exception. Though his nature made him resistant to acid, he was not immune when soaked in the caustic juices of a fellow dragon and the enzymes of the Red's stomach were eating into the soft flesh inside his mouth and around his eyes. Already the process of digestion had begun and though it would proceed far more slowly on him than it would on a similarly sized fleshy creature the end result would be the same.

Weakening, but struggling for his life, the Copper thrashed and kicked. His desperate efforts threw the Red around but it took enormous effort which the Red met with simple passive resistance. All it had to do was soak up the abuse until he tired and then as he lay panting, desperate for a simple breath of air, once more its jaws would begin to work forward.

He had hurt the Red, he was sure, and finally he spat out his acid. He had two breath weapons but the weakening gas must be inhaled, and with his body filling the Red's throat like the stopper in a bottle no gas would escape until the Red belched it up after his meal, by which time it would be far too late. Acid didn't seem likely to work since if any part of the Red was resistant it would be the part of him already full of it. He tried anyway, and the results were even worse than he expected.

All he accomplished was to fill an already superheated and caustic environment with even more hot acid. The Copper shrieked as his own acid ate at the flesh between his scutes and other tender spots. With a last burst of strength he kicked and struggled, but with the Red's disjointed jaws wrapped around his haunches he could not even claw it. With over half of him swallowed and in the Red's stomach, his head and neck bent down against his own foreclaws, his increasingly weak efforts could not stop the Red from gradually working its jaws over his haunches and rump. Still alive, but helpless to stop the feeding process, the Copper could only lie in the Red's increasingly distended stomach and suffer. The slow but unstoppable process of digestion had begun and barring a miracle the only recognizable part of him that would remain when all was said and done would be his scales.

The mammoth struggle was nearly over. Bit by bit the villagers had crept back in to watch their hated master devoured. The first had even seen the head swallowed, more had watched the easy slide that had taken in the lengthy copper-scaled neck, and everyone that cared to come had seen the long struggle as the Red swallowed the Copper's plump body despite that dragon's terrified efforts to stop it.

Over two hours after the building collapsed atop the Copper and the Red began his meal Crookclaw lifted his head and stretched out his neck. Sharp claws the Copper was now too weak to use slipped out of sight as the Red got his jaws around the hindpaws and thickest part of the tail, and the last part of the bulge with a recognizable shape began to make its way down the Red's long neck. All that was left now was the long frilled tail and the wings, and with his throat wrapped tightly around the neatly swallowable hindpaws the Red had all the leverage he needed to finish his meal. Over the course of only ten minutes and a series of stretches of his neck Crookclaw swallowed the last. First he would stretch out his neck to its utmost, dig his sharp teeth into the tail, and pull his neck back into a sharp S shape, forcing more of it down into his stomach. Then he extended his neck again, jaws wide open, and repeated the process. There was a collective sigh from the villagers as the tip of the tail disappeared at last into the Red's gaping throat.

The Red swallowed one last time, stretched out his neck, and finally resumed what would have been a comfortable sprawl were it not for the grotesque swelling the spread his belly scutes apart. Verdigris was slightly longer and perhaps half again as massive as he was and the weakly twitching bulge extended from between his hindclaws all the way to the base of his neck. As the Red sat working his jaws back onto their hinges it was clear the Copper almost certainly wasn't entirely in his stomach but that no more would fit until his furnace of a belly consumed a few tons of meat and bone. They had never seen their 'friend' eat anywhere near this much in one sitting and no one had any idea how long it would take, but they were pretty sure the Red wasn't going anywhere for a good long while.

Eyes went wide around the clearing as a massive belch that went on and on bubbled up out of the dragon, accompanied by a cloud of smoke and even the smell of burning copper. The vast bulge twitched beneath his spread scutes and scales but it was obvious their long nightmare was over. Verdigris's future would be limited to a tour of the Red's digestive tract, no more, no less. Had they just traded one oppressor for another, though?

Someone had to ask, and it having become plain that Jon Wainwright had instigated this, or at least helped, the man the Red had talked to most recently was elbowed to the front of the crowd. Grimacing, he stepped even closer, perfectly aware that a dragon this size could swallow him with one swift dart of its head. He had seen it happen to hundreds of people and he could only hope the Red was too full or perhaps, hope of hopes, simply not inclined to eat him.

"Lord," he said, twisting his cap in his hands. "What happens now?"

The seemingly endless belch was followed by two more, but eventually enough of the air that had gone down with the Copper was vented that the Red could speak. Thankfully, its first action was not to snap him up or blast the crowd with dragonfire.

"My name is Crookclaw," the Red hissed and Jon stepped back involuntarily as it held up a foreclaw with two deformed digits. "I am not your enemy. I don't particularly dislike humans, or other twolegs. And I am not your lord. That position was reserved for the one who lies in my belly, just as so many of your people lay in his over the years."

Every eye one again was drawn to the weak struggle beneath his belly plates. The Copper was still alive, if barely. "Lord, or rather sir, then," Jon said, "Thank you. You are welcome in our village for as long as you choose to stay."

That brought a sharp, hoarse laugh out of the dragon. "That is good, for your lord will take some work to digest."

"Sir," said the village priest, and stepped forward clutching his sun-disk holy symbol. "It may not be my place to offer, but I have treated many wounds on the one who now lies inside you. If it is no offense, may I see your claw?"

Curiously Crookclaw extended his foreleg, and after receiving a nod, the priest began to stroke the twisted digits and chant. They had seen him do this many times for now-departed Verdigris, though never to a wound this old, and it was only a slight surprise when the gnarled claws straightened. The Red, though, gasped and flexed his toes wonderingly. He looked apologetic when the priest stepped hastily away from the waving foot-long claws, interrupting the further spells he'd been casting to heal the various injuries the Red had sustained from Verdigris as he swallowed him.

"It never occurred to me," the Red said, and then, "I never knew a healer. Healing spells this strong as not common among my kind, and I don't have many friends."

"You can have more now," the priest said. "If you want them."

"Hrm," Crookclaw murmured. "Friends. That's what he said, you know. That you were his friends."

"Real friends," said Jon. "You could have tortured me, or the others you said you talked to, for the information. You could have eaten me and them to make sure Verdigris didn't know you were coming. You could have blasted us all with fire as soon as your meal was done, but you didn't. I don't care what color your scales are. If you want to stay a while, or come and visit, as far as I am concerned you are a friend, and I will tell anyone who will listen that."

"I can't go anywhere for a few weeks in any case," formerly-Crookclaw said, and stroked the enormous bulge in his middle with a foreclaw. Verdigris was finally still, or nearly. Only the occasional twitch moved the Red's scales, and the gurgles emerging from beneath those scales showed that even a dragon his own size and more did not intimidate his gut into refusing to digest it.

"So let us see how the next few weeks go," hissed Crookclaw, and his long muzzle curved in a smile.

*****

"It took over a month to digest him," Copperscale hissed, "Well more than a month. My stomach is clever and gathers up things I cannot digest. Eventually I regurgitated a mass of scales. Dragon scales are tough, copper ones especially so. Even my belly had to give up."

The two khardaki and two humans looked again at the bed of scales the Red lay on; a couple of tons of metallic copper scales that from a distance might be mistaken for large coins. They were not. Here were the last remains of 'Verdigris' the copper dragon, whose resting place had been the stomach of this Red. It was also plainly the source of the Red's new name, for clearly he wasn't Crookclaw any more.

"The villagers asked me to stay," the Red said with a shrug of one wing, "And I had nothing better to do. It took some thought but I decided, this bed of scales is enough of a hoard for me. There were some gems and other coins embedded into the scales and I used those to pay for improvements to the local roads. Now we charge taxes for passage but no-one complains much since we really do have the best roads in the region. And our caravansary is first-rate."

"And they don't complain because you're a dragon, King Copperscale," the older of the two humans said a bit sarcastically. The other three eased just a bit away from him, but Copperscale only smiled.

"A village this size really only needs a mayor," he hissed. "But it makes them happy to call me king."

That seemed to be all he wanted to say, so with nods of farewell the caravan guards left. All but the oldest human.

"When I heard a Red was a local king, trusted by the villagers, I had to see for myself," the man said, and it was not just the golden glow of his eyes but the rumble in his voice that told Copperscale what he was dealing with. "And yet it is true. I have met evil Metallics, but you are the first Chromatic I would genuinely call 'good'."

"So it is you," Copperscale hissed. "I've heard of you. If I had proved to be a liar, a threat..."

"Then what you did to Verdigris would have happened to you, yes," the disguised Gold dragon said. "But if on the other hand he had still been here, and not you, why, he would have lain in a different fire dragon's belly in the end. Just last year there was an evil Silver," and he shrugged. "I regretted eating her, but it had to be done."

"So this is my warning, then," hissed Copperscale, who knew he was too young still to stand up to a Gold of even moderate power.

"Not a warning," said the Gold, and he smiled. "You had twenty years to do ill here and instead I find you admirable. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. It is a welcome thing to have another dragon to talk to, and such an interesting individual to boot. I will spread the word among others of my habits, that you are not a threat. Perhaps I could stop by and talk from time to time."

"Hrm," said Copperscale. "Maybe I would like that."

And with that the guard - who was indeed a guard, just not of caravans - made his off into the evening. It was getting quite dark and yet apparently his evening wasn't over quite yet.

"You may approach," he said, having smelled and heard the two lion people before he saw them. It seemed that of the four people he'd talked to earlier, only one had actually left.

"I've heard about khardaki," he hissed, his voice moderated still more. Hardly a whisper, now. "You really do like dragons, don't you."

The lioness grinned, and the male's mane rustled as he ran his hands through it. "We were merely curious, O King," purred the lioness, "As to what gender you are. It is not obvious to the non-dragon, you know."

"What gender am I?," hissed Copperscale, and with a mere tilt of his head he cast two minor illusions. He was better at magic these days and one spell would make any onlooker think there was merely a sleeping dragon here while the second would muffle any sound that might happen to come from the ruined temple.

"Why don't you see if you can find out," he said with a dragonish smile, and the two lions smiled as they stepped forward. After all, he was still a young and healthy dragons, and dragons, like everyone else, have needs.