The report took twelve pages, thirteen if one counted the appendix.

  I numbered them, signed them, added the date, and then read everything once more. Not because I doubted what I had written, but because I knew they would. Accuracy was not protection, but it was the closest thing available.

  When I arrived at the king’s quarters, the guards stepped aside without comment. That, more than anything else, told me the evening would not be simple.

  Inside, a long table had been prepared. The king sat at its head. To his right, the nobleman. Around them councillors, the mage, the scribe. No one spoke when I entered.

  I placed the document on the wood.

  “It is complete,” I said. “Timeline, decisions taken, effects observed, and measures that were missing.”

  The nobleman did not reach for it.

  “You are defending yourself,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “I am documenting the situation.”

  The king opened the first page. He read slowly, which I appreciated. Speed encouraged interpretation. Slowness favored comprehension.

  After some time he looked up.

  “How many would have died?” he asked.

  “Without intervention?” I clarified.

  He nodded.

  “Between thirty and fifty,” I said. “Depending on wind direction and reaction time.”

  I noticed the mage inhale. The nobleman remained very still.

  “And because of you?”

  “Seven injured. No fatalities.”

  The king closed the pages halfway. “That is not nothing.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It is a reduction.”

  The nobleman leaned forward. “You altered procedures. You issued commands. You interfered with existing authority.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You had no right.”

  “That is correct,” I answered. “But it was necessary.”

  He seemed prepared for denial. Necessity irritated him.

  The king watched us both.

  “You are telling me,” he said slowly, “that my realm currently functions better when you override it.”

  “No,” I said. “I am saying the situation requires decisions that someone must take.”

  He leaned back in his chair, fatigue briefly visible behind the discipline.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  That was the first productive sentence of the evening.

  I opened my notebook.

  “Defined chains of command,” I said. “Evacuation protocols. Agreed signals. Allocation of resources. Training obligations. And protection for those who must decide under uncertainty.”

  The mage studied me. The councillors began to whisper.

  The nobleman gave a short laugh. “You are asking for immunity.”

  “I am asking for operability,” I corrected.

  The king tapped his fingers against the table.

  “If I grant this,” he said, “people in this room will lose influence.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then you will lose settlements.”

  Silence followed. Longer than before. He looked again at the numbers in front of him, at the clean absence where a list of the dead might have been.

  “You offer me no comfortable choice,” he said.

  “Reality rarely does,” I replied.

  He stood.

  “Wait outside, we have to discuss this matter.”

  The reaction passed through the room before anyone tried to hide it. The nobleman’s expression hardened into something far less controlled.

  They did not decide immediately.

  Of course they did not.

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  Kings rarely ruled by impulse when witnesses were present, and tonight there were many. So I was asked—politely, formally, unmistakably—to wait outside while the council deliberated.

  The door closed behind me with ceremonial softness.

  In the corridor, a bench had been placed against the wall, either out of courtesy or calculation. I checked it for stability, then sat down and opened my notebook.

  Raised probability of mandate.

  Simultaneous increase in political hostility.

  I added a line beneath it.

  Delay indicates resistance alignment.

  Voices murmured beyond the heavy wood. Not loud enough to understand, but intense enough to measure. Someone argued at length. Someone else interrupted. At one point I heard the king.

  Then silence.

  I continued writing.

  If authority is granted → implementation possible.

  If refused → responsibility reverts to the throne.

  It was, from a structural perspective, an efficient situation.

  The door opened.

  A guard gestured. “You are called.”

  I closed the notebook, stood, and returned to the table.

  No one had changed position, but everything had shifted. Faces tighter. Calculations finished.

  The king regarded me for a long moment.

  “Very well,” he said. “You will receive provisional authority. In matters concerning civilian safety and defensive organization, you may issue binding instructions in my name.”

  The words moved through the room like a draft of cold air.

  The nobleman to his right did not hide his reaction this time.

  I nodded and wrote it down.

  Mandate granted.

  Duration undefined.

  The king watched that as well.

  “Do not misunderstand,” he added. “This is not trust. It is necessity.”

  “That is sufficient,” I said.

  He inhaled slowly, then leaned forward.

  “If I am to place faith in your judgment,” he continued, and now he briefly glanced toward the others, “then prevention alone will not be enough. You must also provide a solution.”

  Several councillors straightened.

  “Yes,” the king said. “Tell me, Max Mustermann. How do you intend to deal with the dragon?”

  There it was.

  Expectation of heroism.

  I folded my hands behind my back.

  “?hem,” I said carefully, “if you had wanted a knight, you would have summoned one. If you had wanted a weapon, you already possess many.”

  The nobleman smiled thinly, sensing vindication.

  “But you summoned me,” I continued, “which suggests the problem is not the dragon.”

  Silence settled again, heavier now.

  “The problem,” I said, “is exposure. Unprotected settlements. Slow communication. Undefined retreat paths. Predictable targets. The dragon succeeds because the environment is favorable.”

  The mage lowered his hands from his sleeves.

  “You want to fight the surroundings,” he said.

  “I want to remove the advantages,” I corrected.

  The king watched me closely. “And the dragon himself?”

  I allowed myself a brief pause, mostly for accuracy.

  “He becomes significantly less impressive,” I said, “once he is denied victims.”

  Murmurs spread. Some angry. Some thoughtful.

  The nobleman leaned forward. “That is not victory.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It is control. Victory is unreliable.”

  The king rubbed his temple.

  “You are telling me,” he said slowly, “that we may never slay him.”

  “I am telling you,” I replied, “that dead heroes are expensive and rarely repeatable.”

  The mage made a sound that might have been a laugh before he suppressed it.

  The king leaned back.

  “And if,” he asked, “I demand both? Safety and removal?”

  I met his gaze.

  “Then we proceed in the correct order,” I said. “First stability. Then options. Preferably ones that survive contact with reality.”

  No one liked that.

  Which usually meant it was usable.

  The king exhaled through his nose.

  “You are profoundly irritating,” he said.

  “That has been observed,” I answered.

  A pause followed, long enough to become decision.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “You have your mandate. Build me the structure you claim we lack.”

  I inclined my head.

  “Gladly,” I said.

  Behind him, several men realized they had just lost ground they would not easily regain.

  I wrote another line into my notebook.

  Authority formalized.

  Conflict escalates.

  For the first time since my arrival, both statements were compatible.

  The guard accompanied me as I left the chamber.

  Not ceremonially this time. Not as an escort between powers, but as someone assigned to make sure a newly authorized problem did not wander off and reorganize the kingdom before breakfast.

  We walked in silence for a while. Boots on stone. Torches. Draft from the high windows.

  He kept glancing at me.

  Finally he cleared his throat.

  “You meant what you said in there?” he asked. “About using the surroundings.”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  He hesitated, searching for the correct way to doubt a man who now technically spoke with the king’s voice.

  “Do you believe you are a god?” he asked at last. “Even the greatest battle mages can barely shape a field for a short time. And you talk about changing an entire realm.”

  I stepped around a bucket someone had left in the middle of the corridor. The handle was bent upward at ankle height.

  “No,” I said. “I do not need to be a god.”

  He frowned.

  “Then what do you need?”

  “Time,” I answered. “Standards. Repetition.”

  He looked unconvinced.

  So I continued.

  “If villages are harder to reach, the dragon must travel further. If alarms are faster, people move earlier. If storage is decentralized, fewer burn at once. If shelters exist, attacks lose efficiency.”

  I gestured vaguely ahead of us.

  “If prey becomes inconvenient, predators reconsider their investment.”

  The guard blinked. “That is your grand strategy?”

  “That,” I said, “and removing stupidity where possible.”

  He almost smiled despite himself.

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “It is simple,” I replied. “It is merely unpopular.”

  We turned a corner.

  A servant rushed past us, carrying a crate stacked too high. He nearly collided with me, stumbled, recovered, and vanished with a whispered apology.

  I watched him go.

  “Load securing,” I muttered. “One day gravity will unionize.”

  The guard stared at me.

  “You notice everything, don’t you?”

  “Only what will eventually become paperwork,” I said.

  We descended a staircase. I kept my hand along the wall, not the railing; it ended too early to be reliable.

  The guard tried again.

  “You really think inconvenience can defeat a dragon?”

  “No,” I said. “But it can defeat panic. And panic kills more reliably than claws.”

  That kept him quiet for several steps.

  Then my stomach made a decision on its own behalf.

  I paused.

  “There is another matter,” I said.

  He looked alarmed. “What now?”

  “I cannot work on an empty stomach.”

  He stared at me.

  Of all the declarations he might have expected from the man who had just restructured authority in the kingdom, hunger had not ranked highly.

  “…Right,” he said after a moment. “Then we go to the staff canteen.”

  “Excellent,” I replied. “Function requires energy.”

  We changed direction.

  The parts of the palace reserved for servants were narrower, louder, alive with movement. People carried linens, tools, messages. Several slowed when they recognized me.

  I stepped over a coil of rope that occupied precisely the space most compatible with falling.

  Unmarked hazard, I noted internally.

  The guard watched the maneuver.

  “You always walk like that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I prefer arriving.”

  The doors to the canteen stood open. Warm air drifted out, along with the smell of soup, bread, and exhaustion.

  I stopped at the threshold, studying the arrangement of benches, the flow of people, the distance to the kitchen.

  “What is it now?” the guard asked carefully.

  “Nothing dramatic,” I said. “I am merely verifying that feeding a workforce has not been designed as an endurance trial.”

  He exhaled in relief.

  “You are very strange.”

  “That has also been documented,” I replied.

  Then I stepped inside.

  Feel free to share any ideas for scenarios you would like to see him thrown into — especially situations where the German controller is pushed to his limits, or moments where he might despise this barbaric world and try to turn it into something different.