Royce's Random Thoughts

For mehhayperson: “Something from The Dragon's Companion 'verse - when does the dragon wake up? How well does Teal rule in his stead? Does anything come up before he wakes that makes her miss him?”

Note: Sorry, avanti_90. I kept trying to come with something for your prompt and I came up blank every time. Perhaps I'll return to it later.

* * *

Philosopher dreams in his stone shell, deep in his cave, deep rest after so many years of wakefulness.

He has a Companion now. A human to guide him in the ways of humans as he rules them. He is now the ruler of all he surveys.

And the link between them does not let him escape the truth of this marriage of souls. His Companion hates him.

This should not be. Did he not give her such power in return for mere obedience?

The dragon shifts in his sleep uneasily, and the mountain trembles as his shell begins to crack.

Teal shaded her eyes against the bright sun, as the other dragon's Companion walked carefully along his patron's outstretched, razor sharp, metallic, and surely screamingly hot scales, stepping lightly with bare feet, the knife extended in front of him.

"Dragon," she asked her own patron, "what is he do... Oh, by the Lifebringer!" The Companion pressed the knife between a pair of scales. There was a nasty squealing sound and he removed the blade, a wiggling, pale, maggot like creature the size of a hedgehog impaled upon it. He shook it off and landed on the ground with a sickly squelch. "What is that?"

A parasite common to this warm latitude, he replied.

"Why is he the one that has to hunt those things?"

Who else would a dragon trust to come so close with a weapon?

For once, Teal was very glad for Cymry's terrible weather.

Right now I've got a story seed digging at me where Tez and Maria meet Teal from my Dragon's Companion stories, because her boss controls the Gate to the Dragon States and they really need to get over there.

Short Version: Tez has trouble with ex-girlfriends.

Just sorting thing out in my head while I cuss at my muse for failing me.

-500,000: Rise of the Dragons.

-350,000 BD (Before Diversions): Tez is born into a tribe of pre-civilization elves.

-350, 000 to -300,000: First great age of magic. The gods (mostly) remove themselves from the world.

-300,000 to -250,000: The magic fades over a ten thousand year period. First great age of technology. Dragons (semi) voluntarily confine themselves to the Dragon States when the Old Man of the Mountain is confined.

-250,000: Tez nukes the planet for the first time.

-250,000 to -200,000: The Barbaric Age of Magic.

-200,000 to 0: Several cyclical ages of magic and technology trade off. Tez attempts planetary destruction at least twice more.

-175,000: Tez has bloody vengeance wreaked upon his body by a human whom he betrayed, and is reduced to a quadriplegic, blind, deaf, gelded, mute carcass. He remains two hundred years in this state. It is over a thousand before he regains his sanity.

-50,000: Tez invents the religion devoted to Griznak the Destroyer as a means of long term savings.

-2,000: Tez attempts suicide and finds himself in the care of merfolk (Failure Mode), then enslaved to a group of barbaric island sheep herders.

-1,800: Tez unexpectedly resigns his position as Chancellor to the former barbarians (The Island Lord)

-1,000: Philosopher violates Dragon State law and decamps to the Northern Continent. (possible canon "PC")

-500: Tez moves to the Elven Domain and takes up life as a prosperous merchant.

-408: Andrea Halfbred is born to a human mother, then abandoned a few days later at the town orphanage.

-400: Racial wars begin, Andrea is enslaved by Tez and taken to the Elven Domain. (Andrea's Story) Bard Teal is captured and forced to serve Philosopher (PC)

-246: With some interference by Teal and Philosopher, racial tensions between humans and elves ease. Andrea boys her freedom from Tez. Tez travels to the Dragon States.

-200 to -125: Andrea establishes her leather working business in the human lands, marries and eventually is widowed from her husband Jonathan.

-18 Maria is created by the mage Ezar Liriel.

-10 Tez returns to the Northern Continent.

-3 Maria meets Garvin. Mage Ezar dies and leaves his estate to Maria.

-0 Events of Unexpected Diversions and Unforeseen Consequences occur.

TBC