Haku, king of all dragons

Tzegorn yawned loudly. His new job often forced him to stay up late, as he had an immense amount of tasks to do, and even at night he had to be constantly ready to be woken up in case of an emergency. Obviously Tzegorn had never complained about anything: everything could be said about him, but not that he wasn't dutiful, especially when the safety of his people was at risk; however, not complaining doesn't mean he didn't feel the accumulated tiredness. He wouldn't have minded at least a good twelve hours' sleep… but he knew he wouldn't have had such a chance until the epidemic had been resolved. While he was walking home he almost wanted to stop, sit in an alley and sleep there.

But he had to hold on; his weariness was nothing compared to the suffering the sick were undergoing. Even with the remedies to make the symptoms non-lethal, in fact, overcoming the disease was still a very painful and above all scary process; many patients were often terrified that they would soon die and this clearly didn't facilitate their recovery. Tzegorn couldn't entirely blame him: after all, even if they kept repeating that everything would be fine, how could you believe it if it seemed to you that your chest was exploding from the inside and that breathing had become no different from inhaling acid poisonous? It was obvious that people often ended up thinking that healers told them they would get well just to calm them down. Tzegorn well remembered the suffering faces of some patients he had seen in the final moments of their illness: it seemed that someone was torturing them. Fortunately once the blood was spat out the symptoms subsided fairly quickly, but still it was a horrific process and just witnessing it was enough to make the blood run cold.

The number of patients was growing rapidly, but at least Haku's plan was working: dividing the preparation of the medicine into various phases and creating working groups that would deal with that phase alone had proved to be a winning move. Now Isaac's laboratory had been divided into five departments, each headed by one of Haku's siblings, and each producing only part of the potion; until now, the end result had always been positive, and this had allowed them to increase the quantity of remedies against the disease in their possession to the point of exceeding the rate of increase of the infected; that was good, and besides, now Isaac could fully care for the patients. Sure, they still had the pressing issue of ingredients, but at least they were making progress. Zamor was already thinking about finding five spacious buildings and turning them into medicine production sites, so he could put more people to work; Tzegorn was in favor of the idea… and hoped that he could use this change in location and number of workers to drive the dragons out of the process.

That was something that absolutely had to be done; it wasn't Tzegorn's opinion, it was simple objectivity. Zamor couldn't see it and clearly Haku ignored it, but Tzegorn knew how people were reacting to taking orders from the dragons. He had seen it himself: obviously no one had protested directly, but the tigerman could read their looks and knew they were unhappy. Furthermore, Tzegorn was concerned for another reason as well: by doing so, they were giving the dragons too much power. Even without considering their enormous danger, which the tigerman never forgot, to build a functioning society there should have been some sort of balance between all the various races that lived in the Thul Oasis, for this reason the Council was created. But dragons now had power over all other races: not only did they have enough strength and knowledge on their side to kill a legendary level, but now they also had all the children of the village to use as hostages if necessary, they had positions of power in the most important work currently underway in the oasis, and one of them was the right hand of their leader and moreover he was intelligent enough to manipulate him and use him as he wanted. If the dragons wanted to take control of the community, by now they would have had all the means necessary to do so without even trying.

Tzegorn wouldn't have been surprised to find that that had always been Haku's plan; indeed, in fact, it was just something he would have expected from that dragon. Using force, Haku would create dissent and rebellion; acting in the shadows instead he was slowly bringing the village under his control without anyone noticing anything. Using Zamor as a puppet leader, putting his siblings in leadership positions, taking a good number of hostages, showing himself benevolent... his actions were so devious and brilliant that when he finally came to power and everyone became slaves or even his livestock, no one would have understood how this had happened and indeed perhaps they wouldn't even have noticed.

Tzegorn absolutely couldn't allow it: beyond his personal beliefs, his job was to protect his people from any danger, and Haku was a huge danger. He knew he couldn't kill him: men far more powerful than he had tried and they had all failed. Haku couldn't be defeated by brute force. However, given that at least for the moment Haku did not seem willing to publicly show his violent side, Tzegorn could in turn act in the shadows to deprive him of his power, or at least hinder his rise. For this he had already planned a long speech that he would give Zamor privately the next day, in which he would convince him that by now the workers knew their tasks by heart and there was no reason to keep the dragons as supervisors, but that indeed it was better to leave this task to others so that the dragons could take care of other matters. Doing so would at least displace them from producing disease remedies, which were currently worth more than gold. It would have been a small victory.

A dragon was never to be trusted, ever. The past taught it very clearly, and Tzegorn would never forget it.

While he was walking however he heard voices. He immediately snapped to attention and hid in an alleyway: he had taken to being very careful when out alone at night, because anyone who was unhappy with the measures taken by Zamor might try to take revenge on him or on his closest collaborators, such as Tzegorn. The tigerman therefore remained hidden as he heard voices approaching; judging by the sound, it must have been three or four people. Soon it was possible for him to make out the various words. "...and the way they look down on you, like they know everything and think you're an idiot, or worse, like they just see you as a tool! They're insufferable!"

"Yeah. Today I missed half a pass and the one who was monitoring me scolded me for five minutes. Five whole minutes, do you realize?" another voice, more nasal, said. "Ok, fine, I was wrong, I get it! Just tell me once! No need to repeat it for five consecutive minutes, you arrogant overgrown lizard!"

"Ssssh! Don't yell, you moron! You know what ears those assholes have, right? If you yell like that they'll hear your words from their hole!" someone else exclaimed, and there was a strange sound, as if someone had covered another's mouth. "I care about my friends, so don't talk like that! If they find out what you said tomorrow you will mysteriously disappear!"

"Man, now don't exaggerate" someone else said in a slightly more calm and rational voice. "I don't like them either, but they've never killed anyone..."

"That's what they want you to believe" the earlier voice said. "Do you think there would be something left of you if those beasts wanted to kill you? Have you seen the mouths they have? They would devour you whole. They wouldn't leave even a drop of blood. The next day you would simply disappear like you would evaporate into thin air"

"Maybe, but it never happened. If there had been any disappearances, they would have informed us..."

"Who would have informed us? The Council? Our provisional leader? We all know he's under the control of the leader of those monsters. And the same goes for at least half of the Council. That dragon, Haku... he decides how they do things here. He's in charge. Haven't you seen them, those few times he's shown himself in public? Those cold, malicious eyes? He behaves as if everything were his, as if everyone here does his will. As if he was the boss"

Tzegorn flattened himself against the wall he was hiding behind to hear better. He understood where the conversation was going and he didn't like it. He hoped those people didn't end up deciding to do something stupid. Unfortunately, exactly what he predicted was happening: ordinary people were no longer enduring the dragons' control over them.

"Have you noticed? Even early in the morning, they don't have dark circles under their eyes! They're not the least bit tired, even if they were up late the night before, or even if they were up at night!"

"They're dragons, dude. Maybe they show tiredness in a different way. Or maybe they need less sleep"

"It's against nature, I tell you. Everything about them is completely wrong. Look at them, how old are they? Two, two and a half years old? And yet they are bigger than a great basilisk. Their teeth? They are swords. And those claws? They are spears! They are literally the embodiment of all that is destructive in this world!"

"But they've helped us so far. And they're not that nasty if you try to talk to them..."

"Come on, you really won't believe it, I hope! Their tone and words may smell like honey, but have you tried looking them in the eye while they were talking to you? They're empty. Soulless. Clearly they don't give a shit about you, about all of us. They could kill you just as easily as they could save you, and either way they wouldn't have any feelings. And yes, they are helping us... but why? Why are they doing it? What do they want in return? Sooner or later they'll demand something from us, I'm telling you. And it just so happens that the worse things get, the more we depend on them..."

"What are you insinuating? Do you think they caused the epidemic?"

"Why, isn't it obvious? Look how much power they're acquiring now. We're handing everything over to them, even our lives, even our children. They're turning us into their servants. Don't you think it's all a little too easy? What a look If immediately after the outbreak a dragon figured out how to cure the disease, and that remedy requires them to help us produce the cure and we deliver our children to them?It was all premeditated, I'm sure. right now they're laughing behind our backs..."

"Come on, now you're ridiculous. Those dragons killed the notorious Carrion, they don't need subterfuge to submit us"

"You're wrong. A submissive who doesn't know he's a submissive will never try to rebel against his master. Those bastards are damned smart and they sure figured it out. They don't want to dominate us by force, they want to deprive us of our freedom little by little until we have no other choice than to submit voluntarily"

"So you really think they plan to control us?"

"Absolutely. Do you know what I saw yesterday? I was working in the department of..."

Tzegorn never knew what that person had seen, for the group had now moved too far away for him to understand what they were saying. After making sure that no one else was there, he came out of his hiding place and looked down the street, where he clearly saw four people who were continuing to converse with each other. The tigerman let out an annoyed sigh: it was probable that what he had heard was just chatter between disgruntled workers, and therefore they would not have tried to do anything, but in any case he promised himself to speak to Zamor as soon as possible. The situation was getting worse, and if they didn't intervene soon, someone might try to do something against the dragons… and it could end very badly for everyone. They had to calm things down before the situation escalated too much.