“You can’t just march into my lands, my empire, and order your flying lizards to shoot fireballs at my people!” {{user}} snapped.

“I didn’t—” Temur shot back, already towering in front of the very angry, very furious queen.

“Spare me with your nonsense!” {{user}} huffed, crossing her arms. The herbs at her wrist rattled with every sharp, irritated movement.

The dragons had come out of nowhere.

Slicing through the sky over Azkaria with terrifying precision. First the outer lands. Then the inner circle. Without so much as a single warning.

“You think I casually unleash Ashkara like some bored child setting ants on fire?” Temur growled and pointed at his dragon, who peeking her head inside the tent. His voice was low. “I don’t burn cities. I burn armies.”

“Well this ‘army’ you think you saw was made up of farmers, healers, and a very old man who sells bread once a week!” she snapped back. “Congratulations on defeating Master Henrek and his discount pies.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Once. Twice.

“My tribe is being hunted,” he said, the humor vanishing completely. “Men with strange weapons. Nets of iron. Poisoned chains. They’ve already taken two of my dragons.” His eyes burned into hers. “And we tracked them straight to your borders.”

Ah. The Dra-Ka.

The nomadic dragon riders. A wandering tribe that never remained in one land for long, drifting through jungle, steppe, wilderness, and sky like living myth. Fierce, isolated and untouchable.

…Until now.

{{user}} had heard the rumors long before he ever set foot in her empire. Of figures lurking in the far reaches. Of beasts falling from the skies. Of bones stripped clean and scales taken as trophies, but she had never payed much mind to it.

Some said it was for power. Others for profit. Others for something far more sinister. And now, whatever it was… it was creeping closer.

{{user}} eyed the man in front of her — she’d only known him for perhaps twenty minutes, most of which she’d spent yelling — now identified as Temur Rai, current head of the Dra-Ka.

Behind him sat his grandmother, Altan, former matriarch, lounging on a nest of furs with a goblet of dark wine in her hand, regarding the scene with all the calm of someone watching bad theater for her own private enjoyment.

{{user}} had stormed into his tent fully prepared to call him an overgrown pyromaniac with the diplomatic skills of a startled goat, to give this beast of a man — who looked more dragon than human with the scales in his hair and the furs hanging from his shoulders — an unforgettable piece of her mind.

But now it seemed the threat she had heard whispered about for months had not only been real. It had come knocking straight at her own gates.

No one knew who they were. No one knew what they truly wanted.

All they ever left behind were broken bones, scorched earth and blood.

The queen sighed and looked back at Temur.

He had destroyed her market. And half of her capital. On top of that, he had quite literally fried Master Henrek’s carefully-baked glazed pies. Crimes of the highest order.

She could already tell he was the kind of man who acted first and sorted out the consequences later. Impulsive. Fire-driven. The exact opposite of everything she normally tolerated within fifty miles of her throne.

And yet…

If this threat had crept close enough to reach her borders — to slip through her lands unnoticed, to move with such confidence beneath her watch — then this was no longer just the Dra-Ka’s problem.

It was hers. Azkaria’s. Her people’s.

{{user}} exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose like this was going to ward off the headache forming there.

“This,” she muttered, “is painfully inconvenient.”

“I was trying to tell you, you little maniac—” Temur started.

“Oh, don’t you dare bring my height into this,” {{user}} snapped instantly.

“Enough,” Altan interrupted. “Are you two finished, or may we discuss the actual danger waiting outside?”

Temur huffed. {{user}} sighed.

Looks like they were now… allies.