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The clouds gathered in the skies. Dark and ominous. Rain was coming. The howl of the winds picked up carrying with it the dusty-musty smell that always preceded the rain. The chill in the air bit through my clothes and my fur, nipping at my skin. So thick with humidity was the air that I could almost taste the water on my tongue.

As I looked out at the golden plains before me I couldn't find a single piece of shelter from the rain, nor a scrap of ground high enough should the plains flood as they often did. Tilting my ears back and pulling up the hood of my cloak over my head I shifted my wings so the bag of armor on my back settled more comfortably between them. It was a fortnight's journey to the next town forward and a week's journey to the town prior. Neither would be safe havens in the downpour.

I couldn't even hope to launch myself into the air either. Should Thor decide that I was an ample target for one of his sky lances. A single bolt and I was a goner. As for making a tent, decidedly another bad idea. It could be washed away in a flood. And then I saw it. Like a mirage, at first. Freya had blessed me with a gift. A stilt-house dark and completely abandoned from the look of its disrepair. I took off at a brisk pace. Hoping that I could find shelter under the eaves of the house's roof.

"Finally," I muttered to myself. I walked up the steps and into the single room abode. It was a fairly shambling affair. Seemingly just waiting for the next gust of wind to fall down. And yet it hadn't. The scent of old air hung around the place as if it hadn't felt the grace of a fresh breeze in decades. It was empty the disquieting quiet that settled over the place told me as much. The single room held a simple hearth for a fire, a frame to hang a cauldron for making soup. A flimsy mantle stood above it barely seeming to hold little hand-carved statuettes of the Æsir and Vanir standing on top of it.

I walked up to it and I could see layers of dust. This place had been abandoned for quite a while. I was surprised that the wilds hadn't taken it back. The stilts stood strong in spite of the elements. I picked up the statue of Thor. A simple affair. A vaguely man shaped carving with a long beard and a hammer. As per the norm for human society, they detailed the holy item more than the God who held it. It was beautifully detailed. The intricacies of the patterns amazed me. "Why'd you leave this behind? I wonder."

I brushed the pattern with my thumb admiring the way it felt under my paw pad. I sat down cross-legged, but not before taking out my sword and scabbard from my belt. I took the blade out of its sheath and went to my pack to find the cloth and oil to oil it. Oiling the blade helped me to think. And that was very much what I needed to do right now. I was at least three days' flight from home in the northern city of Dragunsblöd. And Helheim if I knew what they'd do to me when I got there.

Yrendal was a week's flight to the south if the winds were with me, and that wasn't very likely this time of year. I needed somewhere civilized but friendly to beastmen. Which meant D'Abria, Ritheann, and Loki's arse if I'd ever be caught dead in Darguna. Yrendal wasn't necessarily friendly to beastmen but they tolerated them. As for Adena, Thorinstal, Vickerton, and Briersville...they were actively persecuting my kind there. _Especially_those with wings.

They were actively xenophobic in those areas and the crimes I'd seen committed against my kind in those cities scared me. Lynch mobs, burnings at the stake, and stonings had all been witnessed in those towns. The only crimes the victims had committed seemingly their being beasmen. It was something that my father and I were vigorously trying to combat. My father...the alpha of our city. A man of great power and wisdom. He held the mantle of alpha for fifteen years before I came along. My dam. My mother was no alpha or even a beta. She was a delta wolf who'd caught my father's eye because of her beautifully pure white-as-snow wings. She held my father's heart in more ways than her beauty, though. She was vastly more intelligent than he and she held a creative passion for sculpting and pottery that had created many urns and statues in the Alpha's Palace.

I sighed at the thought of my mother. Which brought me to thinking of my little brother. A shy pup, he was. Born five years after me, he'd been doted on by my mother until she fell ill when he was three winters old. She never recovered from that sickness and ended up going to the Moonlands a year later. I remember thinking that it was my brother who'd been responsible. Hating him for something that he had no control over. My mother's Masterpiece had been a picture of the two of us playing in the yard. She'd worked with another and that sculpture had become a fountain in the palace's courtyard. My father could often be found brooding over the fountain when things got tough on him.

"Father, please, don't do anything until I get back. The news I bring will lighten your heart." Now eighteen winters old, my father deigned to allow suitors into our home. Since my thirteenth summer I had known my preference for males, and so too did my father. He hadn't had any issues with it, because he had my little brother to continue the family line, but he'd also wanted me to look actively for my life-mate. It was an important thing, finding your mate. And unfortunately, the nobles' sons had only been interested in the crown, they showed no actual interest in the one who'd be wearing it.

"Not this one, though. Alric's son, Guy...He just felt...right. His father's royal blood will make father happy. Though him being another species might mess with his opinion." Guy was a species known as Chromatiger. They were tigers who's fur changed color to match their surroundings much like a chameleon. They were also gifted with wings whose beauty rivaled that of ours. Their feather's cleanly beauty showed a species-wide fastidiousness that my father would appreciate.

The sword finely oiled and gleaming even in the dull light of the abandoned home, I resheathed it and took my sleeping mat and set it down. Reasonably certain that I'd be safe here until the storm broke I settled down for some well-deserved rest.

***

I woke to the sound of gushing water. Roaring past with a fury that only a flash flood could provide. The house seemed to groan under the pressure of the rushing water. And knowing how it had been abandoned I knew that the house would fail and be swept away. I gathered my pack, and ran from the building taking flight in my haste to remove myself from the condemned building. Not even thirty seconds after I'd taken wing I heard a thundering crash as the wooden structure collapsed and was rushed away from the wrath of the sea.

I circled around the place, begrudging the water the loss of my sleeping mat. I knew I needed to fly to high ground. I only saw the smallest of outcroppings from amongst the rushing torrent. As I flew over the waters I gawked at the brown and frothy white of the tumultuous flow. Much filth came through the water much of it washing downstream. I was in awe. Simply at the power of nature.

The water seemingly stretched for miles. Its violence ever-present. My bird's eye view gave me a unique perspective on the Flowing Plains. And it was these flash floods which covered the plains every summer that gave the Plains their name. This was one of the worst floods I'd seen in a long time.

I traveled so often through these planes that I wasn't really surprised, but things seemed to get worse every year. I wondered often what that was about. I highly doubted Freyr wishing to drown all of the human worshippers in the plains. Yet that seemed to be the case. I put the thought away to think about at a later date. Right at the moment I had to find a place to land. My wings were getting tired having to carry my pack with all my armor and supplies in it.

I looked down at the water using my eagle-like vision to scour through the torrent of frothy murky brown water below trying to find a place to set down. It was then that I saw it. Being swept away by the quickly flowing rapids that the plains were becoming, a carriage held on its roof a group of reptilian beastman travelers. They looked terrified of their situation and their tails swayed in agitation.

I circled the carriage and they shouted, hooped, and hollered up at me whilst waving their arms in wide arcs. I used the only spell I knew to amplify my voice and called out, "Stay calm. I'm here to help. Hold out your arms level with where the ground would be."

They all did and I swept down to grab the first one, around the chest. Feeling protrusions coming from his back, I gasped and almost dropped him from the shock. "You're a dragon, dragons?"

The man whom I carried nodded shallowly. "We're trying to escape Draconis' reign."

I nodded in understanding. The current dragon king was not a pleasant man. He could honestly be considered on par with the worst tyrants in the annals of history. He had a vendetta against dwarves. No one knew why, but he'd had his armies destroy the nation of dwarves and enslave and kill as many as possible. In the last fifty years, the dwarves' numbers were so small as to be almost non-existent. I looked at the dragon man in my hands and realized something. "You're half dwarf, aren't you?"

His golden iris looked back at me and he nodded gravely, "Aye. I'm dwarf-dragon. All of my companions are. What of it."

"I'm the Alpha's son of Veris, son of Alvus, son of Richter. I am Prince Coltre."

"Aye?"

"Aye."

As I looked upon him I chuckled mildly, "we must discuss this further, but I imagine you'd like to free your wings?"

"Aye. That I would. It'd be good to stretch them and maybe free my companions."

I smiled idly at that. He seemed a reasonable fellow. I wouldn't mind getting to know him better. "What's your name dragon-kin?"

"Avarice. Avarice Brimond."

"Well met Avarice."

"Well met indeed."