The next morning Hadofi felt less rushed. The days in this new world stretched long, and his golems only lasted seven hours, so he could afford to wait before summoning them. As his invisible butler served ham, eggs, biscuits, and herbal tea, he reviewed his notes at the desk. Summoned creatures lasted less than half an hour. He needed a real workforce to fortify this place. Leveling up might unlock higher-tier spells for better assistance. Although yesterday's mountain exploration had granted experience, gains would slow as levels rose. Mapping the mountain's interior and tracing ore veins would take days or weeks. What he truly needed was a secure base. Any day a new dragon could arrive and end him in an instant. Perhaps the time had come for a real adventure: hunting monsters to grind experience.

  As he finished breakfast and stepped to the cave mouth to relieve himself, he spent a few minutes shaping a garderobe in an alcove. It simply flushed out over the cliff, aided by a bucket of water. "It may be medieval, but it's better than nothing," he said with a laugh. He added a stone door, not for privacy but to block the cold wind while seated. He contoured it to blend with the cavern wall when closed. He had meant to test his skills, not create a secret door, but that was exactly what he achieved. It even earned a small amount of experience.

  He wondered when his visitors would arrive. Instead of walking back to the cabin, he summoned a new one right at the mouth. Did two cabins now exist, or had the first vanished? Could he summon an entire village of them? He had to know. He summoned another adjacent to the second, attaching it as a large bedroom. Now he had two personal servants here.

  He summoned four golems to widen the cold storage room and start stacking blocks where the future wall would rise. Two golems carried one block. They would only manage three feet of height with the stones they had, but it would be progress. While waiting for guests, he turned to crafting. Elea's new magic box could produce items as long as he could craft them himself. It was full, so he transferred what he could to his first box and removed two small kegs of beer to free space. He placed stones inside and activated it. The process was slower than his direct magic, more like hand-chiseling, but a jug slowly formed. A small keg seemed the largest item that fit through the opening, and interior capacity scaled with his mage level.

  Over the next several hours he crafted stone plates, mugs, and pots. "Everything a good camper needs," he joked to himself. As if he had ever camped beyond childhood beach trips near home.

  He was about to sit for lunch when a troop of eagle-men began landing on the ledge. He walked out of the cabin to greet them. They were all smaller than Hebe, though still towering at nearly nine feet. They wore eagle-feather garments and bore massive wings, but none shifted form. None spoke the human tongue of the highmen, which Hadofi still called English in his mind. They carried stacks of white wolf hides, bundles of books, and a few scrolls.

  He encouraged three large stone chairs to rise from the rocky ground. A beautiful woman landed last, folding her wings in one graceful sweep as she touched down. Her dark skin and raven-black hair distinguished her from the others. There were seven of them in total. Finally, he had guests. He motioned to the chairs. "Please, sit," he said calmly, then remembered they would not understand. He prepared a comprehension spell, but her voice cut through first, delicious and rich.

  "I am Diadlerin, initiate of the fourth circle. I speak for our tribe. We thank you, master dragon slayer, for freeing our people from this oppression."

  They all bowed, some deeper than others, setting their burdens on the ground before him. Hadofi was momentarily stunned by her beauty and presence. Her voice carried sultry confidence, sweet yet commanding. He wanted to impress her.

  After studying them closely, he cast a spell, and polymorphed himself into one of them. Drawing on the intimate knowledge of Hebe and his sharpened powers of observation. His face remained, but he grew to ten feet tall. Wings stretched thirty feet to either side as he executed the formal, slow, deep bow Hebe had shown him repeatedly, eyes never leaving the woman, a smile playing on his lips.

  Astonishment swept their faces. One dropped to his knees. "I doubted, lord of skies! Forgive me!" he begged in broken highmen, as if Hadofi were divine.

  What exactly had Hebe told them? Hadofi wanted every advantage in this negotiation, but he refused to be mistaken for a god.

  "I am no god," he declared, struggling to fold his enormous wings for the first time. "Please sit." He gestured again to the chairs.

  The envoy and her two guards took seats, wide-eyed and shaken. As Hadofi lowered himself, stone rose to cradle him, molding to his frame and crowning above his head with the overhang of a dragon skull. Perhaps overdone, he admitted silently, but it looked impressive and the moment had passed.

  Diadlerin was a mid-level shaman. Hebe had visited her and her master in a dream, proclaiming Hadofi was sent by the gods to slay the dragons plaguing their lands. Hadofi opened his mouth to correct her, then paused. The more he considered it, the harder it became to deny. Hebe had described his needs: knowledge of the lands, furs for warmth, maps for reference. In exchange, they had been promised half the steel dragon's meat.

  Hadofi gave them all of it.

  Surprised by his generosity, they thanked him sincerely. Diadlerin directed the other four to begin transferring the meat.

  "Just how many dragons oppress your people?" Hadofi asked, curious about their prevalence here.

  "Three, my lord," she answered. "The steel dragon of the mountain, the black dragon of the swamp, and the green dragon of the forest... my lord."

  Relief washed over him. "So only one more remains. That's good."

  Their eyes widened at the implication that two of three were already dead.

  "And do not call me lord or master. I am not divine," he stated firmly.

  From then on she addressed him as Dominus, a title whose exact meaning escaped him but whose sound he found pleasing. Perhaps it was simply part of their culture. Dominus Hadofi began to feel natural.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He learned the green dragon dwelled in another valley of the Dragon Horn and hibernated in winter. The black dragon had been the only one active in winter. Now it was dead.

  As time passed, new patrols arrived to haul meat. Word spread quickly: two of the three dragons were gone. Hadofi's polymorph expired and he reverted to his original form. The oversized chair now dwarfed him, but he refused to reshape it just to flex.

  He invited his guests inside the cabin to discuss the books and maps while he ate lunch. Diadlerin accepted and dismissed her guards to escort the steady stream of carriers. Hadofi noticed some were giant eagles and asked if they were tribe members who could transform.

  Only shamans and those chosen as divine messengers held that power, it seemed. Some giant eagles were pets, others companions, others mere associates. They possessed their own language and intelligence comparable to young human teenagers. Their tribe had offered them one quarter of the meat supply in exchange for helping to move it all to their mountain village.

  At nine feet tall, Diadlerin ducked through the eight-foot ceiling of the cabin. Hadofi shaped a stone chair large enough for her. Over the next several hours, he learned a great deal.

  The days here were thirty-two hours long, which annoyed him whenever he thought about skills with daily uses. A week was still seven days long, but a year here lasted only one hundred and ten days, meaning each season ran about four weeks. His face paled as the math hit: a year here was less than half a year on Earth. His life expectancy projections were suddenly far shorter. In another week spring would begin and the green dragon would awaken. He would have to locate and kill it before then. One of the giant eagles knew the path and would guide him when he was ready. Several tribes lived around Dragon Horn, all humanoid but none human: eagle, wolf, goblin, frog, rabbit, and dwarf. Local monsters included dragon, troll, frost giant, hill giant, gorlash, giant eagle, bear, tiger, giant snake, giant spider, giant toad, wolf, giant skunk, and giant beetles. Hadofi committed the list to memory and jotted notes for each in the book.

  "These dwarves you speak of, are they far away?" Hadofi asked, already thinking of hiring them for labor in exchange for the coins he had found.

  "Not far, Dominus." Diadlerin stared at the ceiling in contemplation. "Less than an hour of flight, I'd think."

  "How long would it take them to walk here?"

  "If they were keen or lean, three or four days. If they were... ah... typical dwarves, perhaps as much as six." She giggled, conjuring the image of a well-fed, drunk dwarf in Hadofi's mind. "In winter though, you'd have to double that time. Double it again if they need to bring a wagon with tools or supplies."

  Three days might be reasonable. Two weeks of travel through snow and ice was not, no matter how much someone was being paid.

  "Could a dwarf ride on a giant eagle's back?" Hadofi inquired, trying to find a solution.

  "Perhaps. You might find one or two willing to travel this way. To my understanding, dwarves prefer to keep their feet on the ground, or even under it." She smiled knowingly. "Perhaps if the dwarves were tied up really well, an eagle might be able to pick up two of them at a time." Her blinks reminded him of Oshun for a moment. According to one of the books, there had once been a long war with the dwarves, but they were presently neutral toward each other.

  "I'm not trying to capture dwarves. I'm trying to hire them for labor," he said in a scolding voice. "What about the eagle tribe? Do you have spare men I could hire for labor?"

  "Our tribe is mostly males, despite them dying in battle far too often," she said mournfully. "In exchange for food, the village could spare half a dozen men for labor, Dominus," she said, straightening up.

  It turned out their men, although big and strong, were not very good with stone. And Hadofi did not need woven baskets, ropes, or mud huts. He inquired about magical items their village had that might be of use, or if anyone knew the location of the black dragon's lair. He knew it must have treasure. She was not sure about such things and offered for him to come to the village tomorrow to see if they had anything he would be interested in. It was getting late and all the meat was gone. All that remained were two guards with halberds standing outside the cabin. Hadofi offered them the two small kegs of beer, and with words from the shaman, they took them and left. Hadofi was hungry, and it would be awkward to eat in front of her, so out of courtesy he invited her to dinner. She accepted eagerly, even though it seemed the village would be celebrating with dragon steaks tonight. They joked and laughed over red wine, elk steaks, and corn on the cob. Hadofi told her of the great battles with the dragons, playing them up to be more difficult and challenging than they had turned out to be. She told him of their village, less than thirty minutes away. Now down to less than a hundred in number, they would surely recover now that the dragons had been slain. She seemed to take the green dragon as being as good as dead, and Hadofi did not really want to argue. It seemed the green dragon would be less of a threat than the black or steel. She would tell her master of his intention to visit them, and they would throw a grand celebration lunch for the occasion. There, he could examine their magic items and inquire if anyone knew the location of the black dragon's lair. Hadofi was more than pleased with the idea, but his heart dropped when she got up to leave. He still did not know where exactly the village was, or how he would get there. Perhaps they assumed he was so powerful that he just knew the way, or that Hebe herself would guide him.

  "So, someone will show me the way to the village tomorrow then?" he asked nervously.

  "Yes, of course, Dominus." Her sultry tone turned seductive. "I will show you the way."

  Hadofi's heart hammered hard as her feathery dress fluttered to the floor.