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“He was saddled for a reason, and the reason was not to be stolen. Some of the younger whelps wanted riding lessons today. That will have to be delayed.”

“Wait,” I say. “Was Otto your horse when you were a boy?”

“Of course not. I am over a thousand years old. The horses I used to ride when I was small are dust now. Otto is something more precious.”

“Oh?”

“No buck, bite, bolt, or rear,” I say, as if intoning a near religiously significant set of auspices. “This is a horse rarer than any in the kingdom, worth his weight in diamonds. There are those who would steal this horse, and would be destroyed for it.”

“Oh. I guess I’m lucky to be alive then.”

That’s precisely the wrong thing to say, because it brings his eyes toward me with vicious swiftness.

“You are lucky to be alive. The fact that my archers missed you is a miracle of the kind I cannot begin to describe.”

“I was probably out of range and their aggro probably dropped.”

His eyes narrow at me. “I do not know what any of those terms mean, but I can always tell that you are talking about that infernal blasphemy.”

“You really don’t like computers or games, huh?”

“They are irrelevancies that humans busy themselves with when they do not want to live their lives. This is a real place. There is real magic here. The notion that some of it has been distilled into the human realm is…” He does not finish the sentence, but his upper lip curls with obvious disgust.

Ornix

Fortunately I will not be subjected to this babble much longer, because the kobold den is not far away. There is a fairly clear track leading to it made by the feet of dozens of kobolds coming and going.

“How are we going to do this? Do you want to tank? And I can do damage? I mean, I guess you’re really a tank, a damage taker, and damage dealer. Oh, my god, what are you doing?”

What I am doing is tying her up so I can stash her somewhere out of the way. I do not want her in the kobold den. I do not want her to kill another creature and make a complete hash of it and traumatize herself, and the rest of the kobolds as well.

“Stop! What the fuck! I can help you!” She whines and complains as I wrap rope around her limbs and body, trussing her up very securely to a tree. “Ornix! Don’t leave me here!”

“You’ll be safe enough,” I tell her. “Though, do try not to scream too loudly, it might attract predators.”

“Ornix!” She hisses my name as I turn and walk away, feeling no small sense of satisfaction at having finally contained her.

I walk into the kobold den quite casually, unworried about the guards. I’ll let them attack me if they feel the urge. They cannot actually damage me and a good portion of them scatter the moment they see me. If I had Melissa with me, they would all attack her. She would seem like prey dressed in mismatched armor.

“It’s Ornisius, Destroyer of Worlds!”

The chief of the kobolds is in his room at the very end of the den. He is sitting on a tall chair cobbled together with bits of junk salvaged from various excursions. He is slightly taller than the other kobolds, and wearing a crown made from smaller, shinier junk.

I can understand the urge to collect. It is ingrained into my psyche as well. But where I sit upon a horde of handcrafted precious jewels, this poor creature must linger in the dirt with garbage facsimiles.

“Where is the fifth seal?” I intone the question.

His eyes glitter with glee as he realizes he is going to have the opportunity to lie. Kobolds love to lie. “Fifth seal? Fifth seal? We don’t have any fifth seal.”

“There was a package with some couriers. A letter indicating the transportation of the fifth seal.”

I look around the room. I feel it, but I cannot see it. The item thrums with power, of course. It is here. Undoubtedly. I close my eyes for a moment and I let my senses do the work for me. One of my kind always knows where something precious is.

It’s behind me.

I turn around. There is nothing behind me besides the door I just came through. Strange. And then I see it. The oversized handle that doesn’t fit the door properly.

The fifth seal has been painted with beige paint and stuck to a door in the form of a handle.