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"Are you sure you want me to touch that Tzakiel? You remembered what happened the last time," I said.

"I had not planned for you touching anything last time. This time I have planned for it. Actually Reban, I can't do this without your power this time," responded Tzakiel.

"And what do you plan to do with my power Tzakiel? You just called me over without explaining how you planned to send me to the human's world without the golds noticing," I said.

A broad grin spread across Tzakiel's face. It was a smile that I recognized quite well. It signaled that Tzakiel was especially pleased with himself after figuring out something he did not think anybody else could have figured out. He was practically preening when he said, "The golds came up with a good way of monitoring whether or not any dragons ever traveled to the human homeworld, Earth. They have become arrogant though. It has been over a century since they bothered to enhance or upgrade the field that monitors the Earth. Things have changed since then. Technology has advanced and our knowledge of magic has improved as well. Even so, a normal dragon would not be able to exploit these things yet, but neither of us are normal dragons.

"I am one of the smartest dragons on the planet, definitely the smartest in my fields of specialty. And then there's you. Reban, you are magically one of the most powerful dragons to have ever lived. As you know, the dragons with your level of power have never been black dragons. The golds probably never thought that a dragon as powerful as yourself would be a black and that you would just happen to be friends with a black dragon smart enough to use your gift."

I asked, "That still does not explain how you plan to send me to, what's it called? Ee-are-f?"

"My pet human says it is pronounced Earth. And sending you to the Earth unnoticed actually is not that hard with the proper knowledge and equipment. The golds monitoring field is based on many things that must remain constant in order for them to notice that a dragon is present on the humans' world," Tzakiel explained. "One of those things is the size of the Earth. When dragons used to travel to the Earth they would enhance their own size. I plan on leaving you at a normal size and shrinking the Earth instead. There will even be an illusion set up to make sure that everything in the sky looks perfectly normal to the humans. I don't want them panicking before they get the chance to see you. The golds won't notice a thing."

I was honestly amazed. "Tzakiel, I know how much power it takes just to bring a relatively small number of humans to our world and shrink them. In order to shrink an entire planet it would take..." I said as my eyes widened in sudden realization.

"One of the most magically powerful gifted dragons to have ever lived," Tzakiel finished for me. "Still, it will take a lot to keep the planet in a shrunken state. The effect will only last for about eight or nine hours. That only gives you enough time for one overnight stay."

"That's fine with me. As long as I get to have fun with a city full of humans I will be one happy dragon. I just hope you manage to make me the right size and that you actually manage to send me to a city instead of a desert or something," I said.

"I know I can get the size right. To the humans you will appear to be around 430 feet tall, but they will actually be the ones that are only about an inch in height, said Tzakiel. "I also know exactly where I'm sending you now that I have tested my teleportation technique by sending a few little pieces of junk to the humans' world over the past few weeks. I asked my pet what city he would like to see destroyed by you since he has been helpful to me over these past few weeks. There is a nice big lake outside of the city that I will be teleporting you into to conceal your arrival. I will also be monitoring your situation and I will make escape from the city as problematic as I can from here."

"Sounds good. So what is the name of this city?" I asked.

"It's a nice city with about 2.8 million inhabitants in the city and well over 9 million people living in the city's metropolitan area, a city by the name of..."

******

Chicago was a pretty nice place to live. Sure it could get a little cold every once and a while, but that wasn't too bad. Besides, I liked the way Chicago looked all lit up from out on Lake Michigan, especially on Venetian Night. It was the largest fireworks display of the summer. I tried to see it from a boat as often as I could. This was the first year all of my friends had been able to make it with me on the boat too. We were all having a good time waiting for the show to start. I knew they would be starting in any minute, but something drew my attention away from the city and out towards the middle of the lake instead.

Everyone on the boat except me had to be looking at the city. That was why I was the only one that seemed to notice a brief, dim flash come from out in the lake. For a moment I thought it might have been a light reflecting off the water, but I could have sworn that the light came from deep underwater. I was concentrating on the spot where the light came from so intensely that the first burst of fireworks going off in the air startled me. Then I almost completely forgot about the flash as my attention turned toward the brilliant light display going on in the night sky. People had started taking pictures and ogling the show like everyone always did. I did look at the water every once and a while, thinking about what could have caused that flash.

A short time into the show I thought I saw a huge dark shape gliding through the water when one of the explosions lit up the lake. Then the light was gone and it was too dark to see anything beneath the lakes surface. By the time the next flash lit up the lake whatever I had seen was gone. I was honestly curious that time. For something that large to have disappeared between flashes like it would have had to move incredibly quickly. Or I could have just been seeing things.

The next noise that surprised me definitely did not sound like a firework. It sounded more like wood and metal shattering. I looked over at the source of the noise to see that one of the other boats was sinking. There was a huge whole in the boat and people were scrambling to get off the boat. I heard other people muttering about what could have happened to the boat. It did not look like the hole had been caused by an explosion or something like that.

I was starting to get a bad feeling as I looked around the water for the shape I had seen earlier. Another set of fireworks exploded in the air and I was finally able to spot it. The shape was headed straight at another boat. They did not seem to notice the shape on that boat. Then, just before the shape passed under the boat, four pointed objects raised up out of the water. Two of those objects collided with the side of the boat and tore a gaping hole into it. The boat started to sink immediately and the people on board gave startled screams as they scrambled to make their way off of it.

People were starting to panic. One ship suddenly sinking was bad enough, but two of them sinking around the same time did not seem like it could be a coincidence. I was still the only one that had seemed to notice the shape in the water too. That made things worse for me. The objects that had appeared out of the water had looked sort of like horn tips to me. If those horns were attached to the shape I had seen in the water then there was some sort of absolutely huge creature swimming around sinking ships. I hoped the creature was doing it on accident or that I was going insane.

Insanity was quickly ruled out. The shape that had previously been underwater was slowly emerging a relatively short distance away from my boat. A wedge shaped head tipped with horns and a red mane of hair running down its back started to become visible. Bat like wings were folded tightly against it back. Scales as dark as the night itself covered what I could see of its body. I was left speechless, but someone else was able to utter the words that I could not.

"Is that a dragon?"

The dragon was busy surveying the city and the fireworks display. I doubted he even noticed that we were there at the moment. It seemed to be thinking about what to do. I had a lot of thoughts racing through my mind as well. The first thing I wondered about was how nobody ever noticed that something as large as that dragon was swimming around in Lake Michigan. I was also trying to figure out why it had suddenly decided to make an appearance in Chicago. The dragon definitely had a predatory look to it and I did not think I wanted the answer to what it wanted to do in Chicago after all.

I would never get the answer to anything I was wondering about. The dragon's long thick tail lifted up out of the water and came down within a few feet of the ship. To the dragon he was just casually flicking his tail around, but to us mere humans that tail was large enough to completely destroy a ship. The waves caused by the impact of its tail in the water so close to us was nearly enough to capsize the boat. People were really screaming as the boat nearly tilted over. A couple of people even seemed to be suffering from a mental breakdown. They did not get the chance to recover from their breakdown. The dragon's tail had lifted up again and this time it was coming back down directly on the boat we were on. Armor like scales rushed down on us and some people tried to jump off the boat to avoid their fate. It would do them no good. Being in the water would not protect them from getting by something that large. I was on the lower deck and I had just enough time to see that the people in the upper deck could shatter just as easily as wood. The ship, everyone on it, and the people in the water were reduced to nothing more than splinters and scattered chunks of meat.

******

Apparently there was some sort of celebration going on. I was wondering why things seemed so active even during the night. Many of the people in the city seemed to be gathered right along the lakefront to observe the fireworks show that was going on. It insured that I was going to have quite a large audience for my appearance. Tzakiel's pet had done a good job choosing this city. There was still fun to be had in the lake though. The city could wait since most of the people were still too busy watching the light show to notice my dark form in the water. I was wrong about one thing. There was not much fun to be had out in the lake.

My tail had been wagging excitedly while I had been looking at the city. Many of the boats on the water had not survived the experience. They had either been capsized by waves generated by my tail or smashed directly by my tail. I had sunk two boats on purpose with my horns just to see how frail those primitive little things really were and to see the humans scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. The humans had not faired any better than the boats. They had drowned in the rough waters or been smashed by my tail. Humans and their creations really were such frail things, but that was what made them so much fun.

I submerged myself in the water once more and used my tail to propel myself toward the shore. The humans were going to have something much more spectacular to see very shortly.

******

There was a big crowd for the show tonight. Unfortunately, I had showed up a little too late to get a good spot. It was a good thing the fireworks themselves were visible to half the city. I did not need a good spot to see them. After a while I came to a spot that I thought I could be happy with. I could only catch glimpses of the boat parade, but the fireworks display was impressive enough on its own. It might have been nice to see the show from the tour boats on the lake, but I had missed my chance to be on those as well.

There was a sudden change in the crowd. It was hard to tell just what that change was. Something about the noise they were making had changed closer to the show. There were hundreds of thousands of people that attended the festival and the loud music plus the fireworks explosions made it impossible to for me to determine just what was going on with a relatively small portion of the crowd. That soon changed. I caught glimpses of an odd shape in the water in occasional gaps in the crowd. There was also a bit of pressure to start moving away from the water. It was as if the people in front of the crowd were trying to run from something but they were finding it to hard to move through the tight press of human bodies that made up the rest of the crowd.

I did not need to peer through the crowd to see the shape much longer. It was rising above the crowd, far above the crowd. The light from the fireworks glinted off the dark black scales that made up most of the dragon's body and the red scales on its belly. It had eyes as black as its scales and a vicious set of claws tipped its hands. A long red mane of hair was matted down along its long neck and disappeared behind its back. It had a powerful looking upper chest that made me think the wings on its back were not just for decoration. I understood why the people in front of the crowd wanted to run away, but I was frozen in place by the sight of the monstrously sized creature rising up out of Lake Michigan.

Some people were running away in terror, some people were filming the thing, and others looked like they did not know what they were supposed to do. The dragon surveyed the crowd with those sinister eyes of his and just kept rising up higher and higher. Fireworks were still going off and the music was also playing, thus I did not hear any bones breaking as the dragon's four toed foot stepped ashore right into what I knew must have been a dense crowd of people. I would like to say that the dragon just did not notice that anyone was on shore, but he was clearly looking directly at the crowd as he brought his other foot down into the crowd. A smile spread across his face which looked more sinister than I would have thought possible. A part of that might have been that it just seemed so strange to see the normally stiff features of a reptiles face contort into a smile, but I knew most of it was because I could see his cruelty in that smile. Then I made the mistake of looking directly into his eyes. There was something about them that left me paralyzed with fear even as the crowd around me started to break up and flee. I was rooted in place and nobody was even able to knock me down as they tried to shove me out of the way in their own attempts to escape the imposing dragon above us.

"Thank you for the grand welcome humans," said the dragon. The sound of his voice stopped a few people in place. They looked back at the dragon. Many people were obviously stunned that the dragon could talk. I know I was. "I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with all of you." It was obvious that the dragon was going to be the only one having fun. The rest of us were going to be lucky to survive. My time was nearly up. The dragon took one step forward, a step that brought him closer in my direction. Then he took another, and another. His footfalls shook the earth beneath me. Concrete screamed in protest as it tried and failed to support his weight. I realized the dragon was taking slow deliberate steps. He was taking his time crushing those he stepped on. Then one of his clawed feet hovering above me. Even as it came down on me my legs did not feel like they could move.

There were other people scrambling to get out from under the dragon's foot, but they were not moving fast enough. I was at least able to get my hands up in a futile attempt at supporting the dragon's weight. That was not an easy thing to do either. The bloody remains of the dragon's previous victims decorated his foot like some sort of morbid tapestry. I did not want to know just what I was touching when my hands came in contact with something moist on the bottom of the dragon's firm leathery soles. My mind just hoped that it was water from the lake. I was quickly driven to my knees as the scaly foot lowered to the ground. It was actually kind of amazing. My mind refused to accept what was going on. It told me that this could not be happening. It told me that I was going to wake up in any minute. It was wrong. The sound of bones cracking, some of them mine and some of them belonged to others, filled my ears. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. I was in shock. Soon, I was forced onto my back and my body was being compressed into the pavement beneath me while the flesh of the dragon's foot pressed down around me. My body took much more pressure than I thought it could before it finally gave out, adding to bloody smear to the dragon's soles that would disgust others soon to be crushed like bugs beneath the dragon's massive foot.

******

This was what I had always imagined paradise would be like. There were humans all over the place and they were all to do with as I pleased. It had been too long since any dragon had the opportunity to visit the Earth and there were no golds around to ruin the fun this time. Countless black dragons had dreamed of having an opportunity like this and now I was the first one to truly have these pathetic humans all to myself. The sight of all those tiny humans fleeing before me and the feeling of the ones being crushed beneath my feet was a priceless experience.

Tzakiel may have been able to bring limited numbers back to our own world and it had been fun toying with them, but a city like this provided me with virtuously limitless bounty. I only had a limited amount of time here, but I had more than enough time to have all the fun I wanted. Humanity was going to learn to fear dragons once more and this time there would be no non-black dragons around to provide the humans with any aid whatsoever. I smiled pleasantly to myself as I continued traveling through the crowd, the thudding of my feet and the wet crunching noise that humans bodies make when stepped on echoing pleasantly up to my ears.

******

I was never the type of person that liked any major celebration. That was why I had avoided the festival tonight. All those screaming people and having to be in close contact with those same people, many of them sweating and unwashed, was not my idea of fun. All those tourists coming into the city did not do much for traffic either. The only thing that really comforted me was the thought that it would all be over tomorrow, or at least tomorrow night when all the tourists left. As I walked around a corner I found that the tourists were in a bigger rush to leave tonight than I thought they were.

The looks on the faces of the people I saw running toward me told me that they were not going to stop if I did not get out of the way. I thought something must have gone wrong with the fireworks display. There was a lot of drinking that went on at that festival. Combine that with a lot of explosives going off and it was asking for a disaster. I thought I felt something in the ground though. It was different from the constant rumble caused by all of those people running. The periodic quakes seemed to be getting more and more powerful as time went by. I had to turn around and run or risk being trampled by the crowd before I could figure out what was causing the quakes.

Whatever had scared all of these people had them scared well beyond the capacity for rational thought. They were acting more like a herd of fleeing animals than anything else. Then, an inhumanly deep voice, a voice so deep and resonant that it seemed to reach into my body and shake my very bones, was heard from above. "Running will do you no good insects. You all belong to me now and you will only live if I let you live." I craned my neck to see the impossible. There was an actual dragon stomping after us. It had to be a trick, some sort of illusion. I thought I had stumbled onto some sort of movie set, but nobody really used Chicago for giant monster movies.

The dragon's long stride let him move much faster walking than the crowd's attempts at sprinting. I turned away from the dragon before I ended up tripping over somebody. When the dragon was only a short distance away I could hear more than the sound of the dragon's thudding footfalls. Each boom was accompanied by crackling, popping, and squelching noises. Those noises were nearly enough to turn me into a mindless animal like the rest of these people. Fortunately, I retained enough of my rational thought to notice an alley up ahead, one I could duck into in order to get out of the doomed crowd that I was in.

I made it into the alley not a moment to soon. The dragon's foot came down right where I had been standing. Blood and the occasional other things that used to be inside of people squirted out from beneath the dragon's large scaly foot. Its foot sank deep into the ground as pavement gave way to the dragon's overwhelming weight. A few people bounced off the dragon's foot as if it were a brick wall before they could stop their own forward momentum. It looked like they were safe as was I. There was another noise coming from above though. The dragon had been running his fingers through a building. Stone and metal were torn into as if they were nothing more than tissue paper to the dragon. Chunks of debris rained down into the crowd and onto me when the dragon's hand passed overhead. I tried to dodge it and I did a pretty good job up until the point when a something hard hit me in the back of my head, knocking me out.

When I woke up there were more people in the streets than I thought there would be. They were just wandering around, looking like they did not now what to do. More than a few of them looked like they were on the verge of panicking. I wondered if I was just seeing things. The spot on the back of my head where I was hit was throbbing and when I reached back to touch it the tips of my fingers came away with a little blood on them. Not knowing what else to do, I walked up to someone that was wandering around nearby and asked why they were not trying to get out of the city.

"Why? Because there is no way out of the city! I nearly made it out of the city at the same time the military was coming into the city. Then, right after they made it in this 70 or 80 foot tall completely smooth wall rose up out of the ground. Some people tried to pile up stuff in front of the wall, but if anything gets close to the top of the wall a spike juts out of the wall and impales the person attempting to get out of the city. Trying to swim out is no good either. Lake Michigan has turned into acid or something like that. If anyone attempts to make it out that way they end up dissolving in less than a second. We're stuck here! That dragon's going to kill us all!"

I tried to get away from the person. It looked like he was two seconds away from a complete mental breakdown and I did not want to be around him when that happened. There had to be a place to hide, a place away from a lot of people. That monster probably would not bother trying to find one lone human. Chicago was a pretty big place. There would surely be a place that I could find to lie low until the dragon left, if he left. A building probably would not be a good place though. I looked back at the building the dragon had run his fingers through and it looked terribly wounded. If the dragon decided to start knocking buildings down for the fun of it there was not a single building in Chicago that could stand up to him.

I started wandering around the city looking for a place to hide. There were two occasions where I heard the dragon's footfalls and I ran in the opposite direction of the sounds each time. On the second occasion I was nearly run over by a tank as the military rolled on in the direction of the dragon. As I tried to get around them the dragon made his appearance. He looked curiously down at the armed men confronting him, probably wondering why anyone would be headed in his direction instead of running away from him. I thought he was finally going to get what he deserved when all the soldiers and the vehicles took aim at the dragon and opened fire. The sound was deafening and I had to cover my ears as I huddled up against a wall to stay out of the way.

After a while the military stopped firing. When the smoke and flames cleared I expected to see one dead dragon. I was horribly disappointed to find that not only was the dragon unharmed, his scales did not even have a trace of soot or ash on them. It was like the military had not even attacked him. All of that weapons fire had been totally useless, no, worse than useless. The dragon looked angry. He obviously did not like being attacked.

"Worthless bugs, you dare to attack your better. Some of you may have lived if you had just let me have my fun, but now I am going to kill every last one of you vermin that now stands before my eyes," said the now infuriated dragon. That left me more than a little terrified. I was one of the people standing before his eyes. The dragon inhaled deeply and I, along with a few soldiers, realized dragons were supposed to be able to breathe fire. We all ran out of the way into a different street, just as a line of flames shot down the street we had all just been on. It was not red flames that shot past us. They were also black, just like the dragon's eyes and scales. The flames absorbed more light than they gave off. For the brief moment that the flames were there it was as if I had been bathed in darkness. The heat was intense too. Even though I had not been touched by the flames parts of my skin were still burned and a couple of the soldiers that had also managed to dodge the flames were smoking. Any one that had been bathed in the dragon's flames were dead. Those on the very outskirts of the flames were charred beyond all recognition and those in the center of flame were just gone. There was no debris, no ash, nothing. Not even a trace of the armored vehicles had been left behind. It was more like those in the center of the dragon's flames had been hit by a nuclear explosion rather then a normal fire.

Before we had time to do anything about what we had just seen the dragon came waltzing around the corner. He was looking down on us, presumably the only survivors of the dragon's flames. The dragon bent down and started reaching for us with one huge hand. It was obvious that we could not run fast enough to get away from the dragon. The soldiers opened fire in a futile attempt to find a weak spot in the dragon's impossibly tough hide. They did not even slow the dragon down. He easily scooped all of us up in one hand and wrapped his fingers around us. Then he started to squeeze.

"How dare vermin like you attempt to harm me," the dragon said, "I can see it has been far too long since you humans have seen a dragon. You have lost your respect for dragons. Even the golds would not tolerate such an act of disrespect like being assaulted in mass by your pathetic race. It is only right that I punish you so." The dragon had slowly been tightening his grip around us as he berated us. We were pressed tightly together within our vice like prison. Our bones started to break against each other. We squirmed as best we could in an attempt to get out of the dragon's grip. There was no opening for us. The pressure just increased until our bodies could take no more and we were reduced to nothing more than an unmoving ball of flesh.

******

I could not believe they had actually attacked me. Surely their ancestors must have passed down some stories about how powerful dragons truly were. Then again, they must have only had swords and shields the last time they faced a dragon. The only time a dragon had nearly died fighting a human was when one nearly died laughing when some lone human knight actually did try to take her on with just a sword. Still, I would think that the humans would realize we were a bit tougher than what they could hope to take on when none of their ancestors had ever slain a single dragon. Then I thought about it, maybe the humans had changed their stories over the centuries and said that a few knights actually had managed to slay dragons. I laughed that idea off, it was just so ridiculous that not even humans could have come up with stuff like that.

At least they made up for their stupidity with their taste. I had expected the ones that I had crushed in the palm of my hand to hold out for longer than they did. My plan had been to just hurt them a bit and then to swallow them alive. There remains did taste good enough, but I preferred my prey alive and squirming as they went down my throat. It was a good thing there were plenty of other humans in the city. Tzakiel had trapped them in here with me. The humans still had the option of escaping by air, but I was certain my flames could handle any of their flying devices. Besides this one incident, it was looking like I was really going to enjoy myself tonight.

******

There really was no hope for survival. Half the city had been able to hear the military's attack on the dragon. Now, the dragon was still moving around and the only soldiers to be seen were at the evacuation zones. They claimed there were helicopters on the way to evacuate everyone and that meant people were flocking to those zones. I had seen that dragon and I was certain he could fly too. It just did not feel like a good idea to be in the air when the thing we were trying to fly away from could also fly. The distant roar of engines could be heard and I thought my feeling was wrong when I saw the helicopters approaching the evacuation zone.

Then a burning black ball flew straight through the space that the helicopters had occupied. I had no idea where that ball had come from. For a second I feared that the dragon had snuck up on us, but when I looked in the direction that the ball had come from I did not see the dragon. All I saw was a hole that had been burned straight through the John Hancock center off in the distance at about head level for the dragon. The air was definitely not an option now. That ball of flames had to have come from the dragon. He was nowhere in sight, yet he had still been able to shoot down those helicopters.

I started to break off from the crowd surrounding the evacuation zone. A large crowd like that was bound to attract something like that dragon and I did not want to be in it when the dragon came stomping by. There really was nowhere to go, so I just walked into a nearby building. It was just an average sized apartment building and I walked all they way up to the roof. I did not really know why I did that. It was probably just something to do and I felt like I needed to do something. The roof did provide me with a good view of the evacuation zone on the ground. Many of the people had chosen to remain there. Perhaps they had been hoping that the black ball of flames which had wiped those helicopters out of existence had just coincidentally hit them. I thought they were just fooling themselves, but I could not really criticize them since all I could really do was sit around and watch to see what happened to them.

About half an hour later the dragon finally made his appearance. He walked straight past the building I was standing on. All of his attention was on the crowd still in the evacuation zone. The dragon was licking his pebbly lips and strings of saliva were dripping from his purplish gray tongue. My attention was drawn toward that strange triangular shaped tongue tip with its gill shaped protrusions. It was an ugly thing, but I am sure its appearance must have looked worse to the people on the ground. The dragon looked hungry and that tongue was showing those people that he intended to feed on them. The crowd tried to break up and flee. A ball of flames took out the bottom floors of one building causing its collapse and the dragon's tail displayed whip like speed as it caused the destruction of buildings to the left and the right of the crowd. There was a cloud of debris that momentarily obscured my view of the crowd. But, when it cleared it was obvious the dragon had cut off their routes of escape, unless you counted trying to run in between the dragon's legs.

"Did you all gather together just for me," the dragon taunted the people before him, "I appreciate that. Chasing all of you humans around has helped me to work up an appetite and I could use a nice tasty meal." The people wailed in despair as the dragon proceeded to get on his hands and knees. His head lowered over the crowd and his tongue began to snake out to lick people off the ground. Even if only a small portion of a person's body came in contact with the dragon's tongue they would get stuck to it and pulled back into his greedy maw. He did not waste time chewing. Everyone was swallowed whole and I do mean everyone. Not a single person managed to escape the dragon.

The dragon just stood up and pet his stomach. "That was a nice little snack. I wonder what I should do though," the dragon said as he started to rub his chin contemplatively. He started to sit down to think, much to my horror. The dragon was sitting down on the building that I was standing on. I tried to rush back through the door leading into the building, but I was not fast enough. As I looked up the see the dragon's large scaly rear descending on me I discovered that there was a hole in the dragon's tail. I knew what it must be, but I thought getting under it would give me a much better chance of survival than being under the much more solid looking portions of the dragon's rear.

My attempt was a success. I managed to get directly under the dragon's tail hole and I was forced into it instead of being crushed. The smell was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I tried to avoid touching anything. There could not have been anything that I would want to touch in this portion of the dragon. Something hit my back even though I thought I was standing still. I moved away from the thing only to run into another solid object. As I tried to move around even more I discovered that the muscles in the dragon's rear were closing in around me. I tried to get back out of the dragon, but his tail hole was shut tight. The muscles continued to close in around me while I tried to claw my way out. I continued to do so until the dragon's muscles handled the little invader to its body that was me. The pulp that had been me was then expelled from the dragon's body like so much waste.

******

That was one brave little human to think that it could actually escape into my body. If I were as poorly built a creature as one of its kind that might have worked. But, I am a dragon and we are far superior to any humans. It had been simple enough to handle him like the unwanted invader that he was. The human had put up a good fight trying to get out. It had even managed to handle an itch for me. One day I might have to find a human to keep as my pet like Tzakiel did, if only to scratch those hard to reach places.

My stomach was telling me that it still wanted more meat to satisfy it. A dragon could eat half its body weight in a single meal before it was satisfied. The humans I had just eaten barely counted as a snack for me and I had skipped lunch and breakfast today in anticipation of my trip here. I was starving and the humans were going to have to help me get over my hunger.

******

I was hiding in a building from that demonic monster. It had switched from just stepping on people to eating them as well over an hour ago. Being on the street was a good way to ensure you would eventually receive a short ride to the dragon's belly. I felt like I was about to wet my pants as I watched the dragon from a window. He was currently messing with the building across the street. The dragon would do a little damage to it and then the people would come running out of it. He seemed more interested in toying with the people that came running out than anything else. I little flick from one of his toes would send people flying like broken dolls or he would slowly crush the people with a single toe just for the fun of it. The last few people that fled the building were turned into a meal and then his attention turned toward my building.

Some people were already trying to get out of the building before the dragon made his way over to the building. His eyes looked at the ground and I was sure he had spotted them. Then the dragon started to look through the windows in the building. A chill raced down my spine as the dragon looked through my own window. It was impossible to tell if those dark eyes of his had spotted me, but I was starting to think that those eyes did not miss anything. The dragon stood up to his full height and the window I was looking through was filled with the sight of the dragon's abs. A few seconds later I heard something crashing through the upper levels of the building. It was probably the dragon trying to scare us out like he had done in the other building, but I was not going to fall for that.

The crashing noise was getting closer to me. It was a real struggle for me not to run. When the ceiling above me started to crack I knew I had to at least get out of the way. Hiding would not protect me from a finger or claw that was destroying small portions of the building. It was no finger or claw that burst through the ceiling. That monsters ugly tongue tore through the ceiling as if it was not even there. I spotted someone that had been terribly battered stuck to the dragon's tongue as it made its way through the building. The tongue paused and oriented itself so that it was pointing at me. I ran and did not look back as the tongue broke through anything in its way as it pursued me. It took a few seconds after entering the stairwell of the building before I realized the tongue was no longer chasing me. For some reason it had disappeared and I tried to find another open room to see what was going on outside.

I was just in time to see the dragon turning around outside. The sound of jet engines could be heard in the distance. I was barely able to see a ball of black flames shoot from the dragon's mouth and soon after the jet engines were silenced. They must have been able to fire some missiles or dropped some bombs because the upper part of the dragon was engulfed in flames and he fell backwards, right into my building. The walls of the building were not even close to being strong enough to stand up to the dragon. His body tore through the outer shell of this building. I barely missed being flattened by one of its horns as they flew by me. The floor beneath me crumbled as the rest of the dragon's head passed by me and I found myself falling after the dragon.

My fall was halted when I landed on something hard. I was disoriented from the fall and it took me some time to realize I had landed on one of the dragon's fangs. A few other people were not so lucky. I spotted at least three people fall right down the dragon's throat. It turns out that I should not have been paying attention to them and that I should have been trying to escape instead. The dragon's mouth was closing and I did not have enough time to avoid the fang accelerating toward me. Death came quickly for me as the fang pulverized my body and wedged me in between his other fangs.

******

I was glad no other dragons had been around to see that happen. There I was happily chasing down a tasty little morsel when I realized other members of the humans military were coming to fight me. While their weapons may not have been dangerous to me I was worried that they were about to incinerate my meal. I had then withdrawn my tongue from the building to turn around and shoot down the offending pest when my foot came down on an unnoticed group of humans. There had been so many of them there that I slipped on their guts shortly after sending a ball of flames to destroy the humans flying contraptions. Those worthless weapons of theirs hit me right in the chest and anyone watching would have thought they were what knocked me over. If weapons as weak as those could knock me over I would be too embarrassed to show my face to any other dragon ever again.

The building I had been having fun with was now effectively ruined. Part of it was still standing, but I strong gust of wind could probably knock it over with the condition that it was in. I was a little angry that my fun had been interrupted and I swung my arm around, hitting the building as hard as I could. The building crumbled into dust and I did not sense any survivors in the wreckage. That little act of destruction helped to improve my mood and put a smile back on my face. It made me feel so much better that I decided to completely level the city. I had planned on leaving most of it intact for a return visit someday, but there were plenty of other cities. It wouldn't hurt to leave just one city with no survivors.

Just as I was about to commence with the cities destruction I felt something jammed in between my fangs. I used a claw to try and remove the annoying little object and I was surprised to find the remains of a human stuck to my claw. Since I never chewed up any humans in this city I wondered how that human had managed to get there. It was not like I could ask the human in that condition so I just flicked its body aside and went on my merry way.

******

That dragon's initial appearance had been horrific enough, but over the past couple of hours he had made that appearance look rather pleasant. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands had been crushed or eaten and millions more had fallen to the dragons flames. I had personally seen the dragon destroy some of the most famous structures in Chicago as if it were child's play. The dragon's flames made it look like the Aon Center and Water Tower Place had never existed while he tore down the Sears Tower with his hands alone. The vast majority of the city met the same fate.

Personally, I had not encountered another person in about 20 minutes. Everyone else I had been fleeing with had been killed off by the dragon at some point or another. I was just trying to avoid the dragon as best I could in the parts of the city that he left in a good enough condition for me to get around in. There was no undamaged structure in the city now. Every building at least bore the scars of the dragon's claws tearing into them. It was sometimes hard to tell where the dragon was now. A low cloud of dirt and debris covered the city like a thick fog. There were random explosions that sometimes felt like the dragon's footfalls. The ground was rumbling now. I had hoped that it was those explosions that were causing those rumblings.

The rumbling grew in intensity. It felt like it was coming from all around me until it suddenly stopped. The thought of how close the dragon could be encouraged me to flee as quickly as I could. That was why I ran right into a wall, or at least what I thought was a wall. A gust of wind cleared up the fog around the supposed wall I had just run into and revealed thick black scales. The thing I had run into was the side of the dragon's right foot. He was staring directly at me and smiling that sinister smile of his.

"Well hello there human. I hope you didn't hurt yourself. It would be a shame if you did," said the dragon. I could not believe that he was talking directly to me. That did not fool me into sticking around and talking to him though. I turned around and started to run. "Oh, so you are still in a good enough condition to run. That's good." He started slowly chasing me. As close as I was to him he could have easily stepped on me whenever he wanted but he chose not to. The dragon would make sure his foot always came down about a foot or two behind me. Those quakes were more than enough to cause me to lose my balance and I had to struggle to stay ahead of the dragon even with him letting me stay ahead of him.

The dragon continued taunting me as I ran. "Are you tired vermin or is that really as fast as you can run? Here, let me help you out a little bit." As it turns out, the dragon's idea of help was a slight kick from behind from a toe noticeably taller than I was. The kick lifted me a few feet off the ground and sent me sprawling across the shattered debris filled street. "Was that too much for a frail little creature like you? I apologize. If you are in pain I'll just put you out of your misery."

The dragon's foot was now directly over me. In a few seconds I was going to be crushed beneath it. Then I noticed that there was nothing beneath my left hand. I looked over to see an open manhole. With the dragon's foot descending on me I did not hesitate to scramble down it. I thought I had been saved. The dragon would think that I had been crushed beneath his foot and that he would just leave me alone if I stayed down there. Then the dragon shattered my hopes when he said, "You managed to find a way to escape did you. Let's see if I can find you."

I started running down the dark sewer tunnel. The sound of concrete being shoved aside could be easily heard behind me. A quick look over my shoulder showed me that the dragon had forced his muzzle into the sewer with me. His tongue was already pursuing me down the tunnel. It was moving faster than I was. I had only made it about 30 feet down the tunnel before the tongue came in contact with the bottom of my shoe. The dragon's saliva was surprisingly sticky and I fell face first to the ground as my shoe stuck to the dragon's tongue. I was being dragged backwards into the dragon's maw as I frantically struggled to get my shoe off. By the time I did manage to untie the shoe and pull my foot out of it I had to be within a few inches of the dragon's waiting mouth. I started to sprint back down the tunnel faster than I had ever run in my life.

The dragon actually laughed and said, "I thought I had you that time." Then he continued talking in a much more serious and commanding tone, "Stop right there human. I have an offer for you."

For some reason I actually stopped. I knew the dragon was just playing around with me and that if he really had an offer I really should listen to him. I asked, "What do you want?"

The dragon's muzzle forced its way further into the tunnel. It covered all the distance I had sprinted in the blink of an eye and it only stopped a few inches away from me. His muzzle was so close to me that his rancid breath washed over me every time he opened his mouth when he decided to talk to me. "I want a lot of things human. One of the things I want is to finish you off. You are the last human left alive in this city you know. I wanted to have a little fun with you and you have complied with my wishes. Since you have done that I'm going to give you a little choice. You can continue running and I will make your death as painful as I possibly can or you can willingly step into my mouth and I will make your death much less painful. The choice is yours."

He had just demonstrated that he could easily force his way through the tunnel I found myself in. There really was no running from him. The dragon moved his muzzle back a bit and stuck out his tongue for me to step on. I looked in the opposite direction to see if there was a good place to escape to. There was none. I chose what I hoped would be the less painful option and stepped onto the dragon's tongue. My feet clung to the dragon's tongue and he drew my shivering form into his salivating mouth. He licked me against the roof of his mouth, which I had not noticed was covered with tiny spikes. They were not large enough to seriously hurt me, but repeated licking helped to tear my clothes apart.

"I can see I saved the best for last. You taste especially delicious. It would have been a shame if I had stepped on you," stated the dragon. His voice was loud from outside his mouth, but from the inside it was just plain painful to hear. I would have still preferred his voice to what he did next. One gulp was all it took for him to send me on my way to his stomach. I prayed that the saliva coating his throat would help me stick to its insides, but the saliva inside his body was not nearly as sticky when it was outside his body. The saliva was incredibly slick now and that made it impossible to cling to any of the powerful muscles in the dragon's throat.

It did not take long for me to land in the soup of partially digested human remains. I expected things to hurt more than they did now. Getting digested just seemed like something that would be painful. I told you I would make things much less painful and since I am in such a good mood after destroying your city and finding a tasty morsel like you I have decided to keep my word to you for now. Things will probably get more painful in the future though. As a dragon I am not really required to keep my word with vermin like humans.

That sounded like the dragon, but his voice was coming from in my head. I was about to ask what that was, but someone else answered that question for me. "That was the voice of the Master. He's informed me that you are to be my new roommate," said a slightly crazed looking young man. If you did not count the crazy look in his eyes he actually looked like he was in a pretty healthy condition.

"The Master, you mean the dragon? Do you know his name? Why is he doing this? Is there a way out of here?" I asked in quick succession.

"Yes, I know the masters name, but we lowly humans are not allowed to utter his name. We just call him Master or he gets angry and we will be punished. He is doing this because it brings him pleasure. Tormenting humans brings all black dragons pleasure and we humans should rejoice that we can bring such pleasure to the Master and those like him. And the only way out of here is death," explained the man. "But that won't happen for a long time since the Master enjoys our flavor much more than the others. He's told me that he intends to keep the both of us alive for as long as he lives and that is a long time for dragons. Our master is only 44 years old you know. Dragon's live for over a thousand years. Isn't that nice of the Master, to let us live inside of him for that long? Sure, he digests us every once and a while but he keeps us alive and he will give us nice healthy bodies after he is finished digesting us. I could not imagine not living in the Master anymore. It would be lonely without his voice in my mind and I could not imagine falling asleep without the beating of his heart echoing in my ears."

He was obviously crazy, but I knew I was getting a good look at what I would be like if the dragon did decide to let me live. At least I hoped I would find a way to enjoy this. That man had obviously been here for a while and I heard the dragon in my mind telling me that he would keep me alive even after digestion and that he would restore my body. If I could not find a way to enjoy my stay in the dragon's belly it was going to be a long thousand years.

******

That had been fun and I had found another nice tasty occupant for my belly, but it was about time to leave now. I could sense the humans preparing to use one of their most powerful weapons on me now. It was a little too late for that though. Tzakiel was already pulling me back to our own world. A large portal appeared next to me and I stepped through it well before their weapon came into attack range. Even if I had been around it would not have hurt me though. The humans were still a long way from being able to harm a dragon.

I found myself back in Tzakiel's home and he was grinning at me. He asked, "Did you have fun Reban?"

"More than you can imagine," I responded. "You should try to find out how we can both do this together someday."

"I will, trust me I will," said Tzakiel.

He would live up to his word. Tzakiel would invent a portable portal generator within two months and we enjoyed three trips to the human world before something interesting happened. We had lost track of time while having so much fun with the humans. I had been the one to notice that the human world was going to be returning to its normal size within a few seconds. The humans would not have been able to do anything to us even at their normal size, but getting noticed by the golds was still a real danger to us. I had run over to Tzakiel and grabbed his portal generator from him even though he said I was not supposed to touch it. Getting noticed by the golds seemed like a bigger risk than anything that could possibly happen if I activated the generator. Tzakiel had said he did not know what would happen if I activated the generator and that something good could have happened for all he knew. And he was right about that one. What happened was very good indeed. When we showed back up on our own world we were much larger, the other dragons looked like they were only the size that the shrunken humans were compared to us, than we should have been and my magic felt more powerful than it had ever been.

"Now this presents some interesting possibilities for us," said Tzakiel. I could feel it. We were strong enough that we did not have to worry about the golds anymore. The two of us could take over our own world and we would no longer have a need to sneak around anymore. Our kind, the black dragons, were going to be in charge from now on and the humans were really going to learn how bad that could be for them.