Sheathing a pair of longswords, the warrior looked around the mess of destruction around her. It wasn't an uncommon sight to see a tall orc covered in countless battle scars in a dungeon. It was odd when the adventurers rushed over and checked to make sure she was okay. "What? I'm not hurt! Not by this trash."

  Rolling his eyes, the party's priest slapped her on the back. "Mixie, I don't care if they're trash—you're not."

  The rush of warmth surprised Mixie. Several pains she had barely noticed stopped, leaving her feeling even better. "Next area?" She reached out one big, meaty hand and grabbed the priest by the shoulder. Pulling him against her, she said, "Thanks, Axel."

  Clearing her voice, Elanor said, "Mixie, he might be your brother here, but—"

  "No. He my brother in game too. Look! Wrote an elabi— elaba— big backstory how he was adopted by Verdant goblin dungeon, and grew into being a priest of dungeon." Mixie passed over a fifty-page manuscript written in surprisingly neat penmanship. "The special bits are pages five through twenty-three." Finally taking a breath, Mixie looked up at Axel in time for him to ruffle her hair.

  Blinking rapidly at the booklet, Elanor flicked through to the relevant pages and read a few paragraphs.

  "There's a summary on page forty-eight, just before the glossary," Axel added helpfully, not mentioning how long Stephan had spent with her to help her write it.

  "Can we get back to it?" Astrid asked.

  "These tracks lead down the tunnel." Hand brushing over the marks on the dirty floor, Astrid drew her bow and looked down the passage in question. "Three."

  "Well, looks like we get to dance some more!" Drawing her swords again, Mixie stalked down the tunnel with the rest of her group following. She didn't care about making noise—that was how she made sure she was the first target for anything coming their way.

  Only, what came their way made her pause. "What are they shouting?" Mixie asked when the group of lizardmen charged at her. The reason she asked was they didn't have any weapons out and looked to be in shabby rags rather than armor.

  "I can't understand them."

  "Me either."

  Elian's ears twitched. This was a significant event for a rabbitkin. She chewed on one nail for a moment and her eyes widened. "Don't hurt them! They're running away from—"

  "Me." Stepping around the corner, the dragon eyed the party and licked its chops. "See, I eat things like you, so, GET IN MY BELLY!"

  "Does the dragon really say that?" Astrid asked, trying to hide the smirk on her face.

  "Oh, totally." Travis' tone was as calm and even as he could make it, which meant it was neither calm nor even, and giggles escaped him. "He's a rather overweight dragon. It looks like he's been eating well."

  "I run up and bite him!"

  "Roll to attack, Mixie."

  Clamping her jaws around the dragon's leg, Mixie tightened her muscles, but the dragon didn't seem all that harmed.

  "What are you doing?" the dragon asked, lifting the leg with an orc attached and shaking it. "Let go!"

  Growling, Mixie clamped down harder and said—nothing because she couldn't talk with a dragon leg in her mouth.

  The rest of the party, not leaving their tank alone to fight the dragon, moved into action. Astrid drew her bow and unleashed arrows. Several of her shots hit the beast, but none broke through its scales.

  "Can you do anything to stop it?" Axel asked. "Because I don't think Mixie and Astrid are doing so well."

  Elian laughed. "I am a wizard. Not only do I have every spell in existence prepared and almost ready to use at a moment's notice, but my mind could run rings around the beast and still decide what spell I will use to bring it down. Watch as I conjure a mighty sphere of fire to engulf it and burn it to—"

  Cutting in on her, Axel said, "Call me crazy, but its scales are bright red. Doesn't that mean it would be immune to fire?"

  Derailed in her attempt to explain why a fire sphere would seem to be the right spell at first, Elian changed to an alternate spell. "I cast Lightning Bolt!" The electrical charge was launched into the air and hit the dragon squarely in the face.

  "Ow! That hurt!" Shaking its leg with Mixie still attached, the dragon squared off against the other three members of the party and exhaled.

  Astrid rolled along the ground, getting under the fire. Elian and Axel weren't so lucky. Looking a little more crispy than a wizard should under any circumstance, Elian managed a gasp of pain before Axel reached out and healed her, then did the same for himself.

  Shifting her grip a bit higher up the leg, Mixie flexed her muscles and, to the dragon's (and everyone else's too) shock, flipped the drake over and onto its back. "Rrrrar!"

  "Is she?" Astrid asked.

  "Can she do that?" Elian asked.

  Axel just shook his head.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "I'm gonna name him Bitey!" Mixie said, reaching out to grab the nearest lizard, lift it onto the table upside down, and work her claws over its belly. The lizard looked like it wanted to protest, but after a few good squirms didn't get it free, it slumped into surrender.

  Travis tried to head off the immediate responses of everyone and asked, "Mixie, how many points of Handle Animal do you have?"

  "Fifteen! Oh. Plus five!" Leaning forward, Mixie blew a raspberry on the lizard's tummy, which had it squirming again.

  Astrid, who'd thought she'd built a pretty good hunter that could work with animals, sat in mute shock at what she heard. "But doesn't that only work on things with a type animal?"

  "Got feats," Mixie said, rotating the character sheet that was actually a five-page booklet so Astrid could see. "Also, counts as a mount, so I can use Horse Whisperer."

  About to argue that the dragon wasn't a horse, Astrid realized what was going on and smiled. "Very clever. Well done, Mixie."

  Beaming happily, Mixie pumped her fist in the air, almost but not quite knocking the lizard off the table in the process. "Yes!"

  "I can't believe I'm letting you do this," Bitey said. "And Bitey isn't even my name! I am—"

  "A good boy!" Mixie leaned forward from where she sat astride the dragon's neck, reaching out to pet its head. A low rumbling purr echoed off the walls as Flamescale Burninator Bitey struggled to assert himself, and failed utterly.

  When they got to the final floor of the dungeon, a loud voice boomed, "Know this, heroes and mount—

  "I'm not a mount! This is only temporary!" Bitey exclaimed. "I'm only carrying her because… Because…" Bitey tilted his head to the side as Mixie's claws worked into a particularly hard to reach ridge on one side of his head.

  "He's a good boy!" Mixie said, and with no interruptions or complaints from Bitey.

  "Ahem! You will not leave this place alive!" The echoing made it hard for them to figure out what tunnel it came from, other than not behind them.

  "Well," Elian said, "there are four tunnels. We can split up and each go down a different one."

  "Never split the party," Axel said.

  "Always split the party," Bitey said.

  "Pack stays together," Astrid said.

  "Woooo! This tunnel!" Mixie shouted, poking the dragon's neck on each side with her ankles and sending the poor creature majestic beast into a half-panicked run.

  "…" All three stared at the tail of the dragon as it whipped around a corner in the tunnel, but it was Axel who recovered fast enough to say, "I guess we're going down this one. Come on."

  Astrid, normally the trap finder of the party, worked on the assumption that the dragon would have triggered and ignored anything lethal for them, so rather than take her time advancing down the hall—she ran.

  Shouting from ahead of them spurred the other two to match Astrid's speed, and so the three raced down the tunnel that narrowed more and more until it reached a door that was decidedly less than dragon size. There, Mixie was cackling with laughter while dozens of undead tried to force their way through the doorway. Bitey seemed to revel in his new role and unleashed his fire through said doorway.

  By the time her friends got close, Mixie was already confident there were no undead on the other side of the doorway. "Now, Mr. Bitey, you need to wait here for us when we come back. Okay?"

  "Why would I—?" was all the dragon got out before Mixie frowned at him. Memories, recent ones, of her kindness weighed heavily in his thoughts. Sighing and sitting down, he said, "Okay…"

  "Good boy!" Mixie reached into her bag and pulled out a large green hand. "You want a treat?" When Bitey nodded, eyes wide, Mixing tossed it to him and gave his snout a good pat.

  "Was that an orc hand?" Astrid asked.

  "It was an orc hand. Not mine!" Turning to the doorway, and ignoring the flames still licking at the reinforced timber, Mixie drew her longswords and headed in; followed by her party.

  Inside, what used to be a library filled with priceless and rare books was now doing its best impression of a burning house. The books were burning. The shelves were burning. If the dragon had breathed a little more, even the floor would be burning.

  "I hope none of these would have been useful." Elian looked over the conflagration and, to deal with the smoke, cast a spell to blow it all out into the tunnels.

  "I recognized a few treatises on flame magic," Bitey said. "So no, nothing useful."

  "Yeah," Mixie said, walking past the burning shelves and running one of her swords along it, trying to knock out any unburned books. Her self-appointed task seemed to be fruitless. "Nothing useful at all." Unlike Bitey, she had no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  Elian stared longingly at the books. "How can you tell?"

  "Because they're books, Elian. We don't need books. We got each other!" The big orc smiled down at the wizard. "Come on. I bet there are better books where we're going, anyway."

  "And I think that's a good place to call it for tonight," Travis said. "I hope you all had fun!"

  Slumping in her chair, Elanor looked down at her character sheets and sighed. "Do we have to? What's left to do in here?"

  "There are a few encounters and the boss. But we have to stop because it is waaaaaaaay past a little goblin's bedtime."

  Mixie groaned and tossed her head back. "Trav! Can you whine to my mom and ask her for another hour?" She looked at the lizard, who had tried to escape during the last bit of the session, and pulled him back onto the table for more attention. The lizard suffered the petting with aplomb.

  Travis had no way of actually enforcing any kind of end, of course. The best he could do was the dungeon equivalent of rocks fall, everyone dies where he summons hundreds of lizards. "Sorry, Mixie, but that's your job. Anyway. You'll all be back next week?"

  Slipping his books and sheets into a convenient leather folder, Axel replied, "Of course, Trav. I can't spend every hour of the day at the forge. Besides, Potia wants to play, and I need to know the rules backwards and forwards before I can run a game for her."

  "You should invite her to ours," Elanor said, mimicking Axel's actions with her own things.

  "C-Could I?"

  Travis laughed and said, "Sure you can. There's not a lot more work going from four to five. Six starts to get a bit harder."

  Grabbing Mixie around the waist once he had her pouch of paperwork secured, Axel flipped her upside down. "I'll ask her. Thanks again, Trav."

  Ignoring the mock-angry goblin, everyone said their goodbyes—except for Astrid. Sitting alone in the second-floor tavern, she leaned back in her chair and let it ride up onto two legs. "Thank you, Travis."

  "How is the reading going?"

  Holding up her character sheet, Astrid read the statistics from it, not stumbling at all. "This is easy, now. The rule books are still hard to understand the implied meanings, but Elanor is helping. I have learned, from all the people here willing to treat me as kin, that my pack is not so small as I thought. In these southern lands, a pack can be as big as a city."

  "Yeah. I'm glad you decided to hang around." Travis caught Astrid smiling from the lizard on the table's vision. When she stood up, he asked, "Same time next week?"

  Growing her form into her far more comfortable huge wolf, Astrid smiled, showing off a huge row of fangs. "Definitely!"

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