“And tell me, YOUR MAJESTY, why your kingdom starves the poor until they are too weakened by hunger to work, and they are then punished for not working by being forbidden to enjoy even the sustenance that can be provided by nature, being told they trespass on your hunting grounds by doing so?” Anija was in very fine form with his current tirade.
As King Adam nearly raised his hand to call for Anija to be punished, Sephira gave him a deeply wounded look, and he shook his head as he reached painedly for his temple. “I know that you cannot help yourself, Anija, but could you at least have filed papers to make a proper petition instead of storming in on my peace as I was about to dine?” the king begged desperately.
It was reputed that angelic dragons were descended from a winged centaur, conceived by the goddess Aset after a dalliance with Pegasus, the divine winged steed, but this was a doubtful proposition, in light of every angelic dragon in history having been transformed into one, in times of great need. The few of them that had ever existed tended to make themselves incredibly unpopular among royalty, since they had unending empathy toward the unfortunate and the downtrodden. They also had fully draconic tempers, and Anija was one of the sharpest-tongued dragons that had ever lived.
Thanks to the Medallion of Eternal Chastity hanging around Anija's neck, Anija's body had changed significantly. For one thing, he had been given a form more closely resembling a western dragon. For another, he had become covered in downy white and azure blue feathers all over his entire body, including his wings, and grown a crest composed of nearly invisible white shafts and gold-color feathers that grew out in a pattern that caused him to appear to have an angelic halo. Also, the change had left him with pink paw-pads similar to those of a cat. His tail, while still thick like that of a dragon, had a huge, azure blue tuft at the end of it, similar to the tuft at the end of a lion's tail but, by comparison, much larger. What had not changed was that his body was highly androgynous, so while he remained a drake, he looked incredibly pretty and feminine, for a drake, with soft, bright eyes that burned with compassion, nurture, and care.
Anija's personality, though, had remained mostly the same, except for his newfound fixation on the poor and the socially downtrodden. His rant continued something like, “And by the time you had decided whether you had a mind to answer a requested royal petition, passed to a preposterous putrid pestilential pugnacious pillock priggishly spewing ponderous paraphrasings of outdated case-law in order to avoid getting anything done--in lieu of an actual application of of abstract thought--another of your subjects would have been irreversibly dead, you weasel-hearted whelp-kicking wazzock! People are dying right now, YOUR MAJESTY, and that is why you have been momentarily inconvenienced!” Anija uttered in a prolonged howl, again prompting a number of the king’s courtiers to delightedly scribble down notes.
Anija’s wit had become a thing of legend, and courtiers considered preserving them for posterity to be a local sport. One of them had already begun selling a book based on them, and a local university was teaching a series of courses in poetry, philosophy, language, and literary criticism based on them. Three wars had been averted because of their artistic beauty, and two others had been started by their poisonousness, which was leading to courses in anthropology, history, and political science--again based chiefly on studies of his famous tirades--being considered as additions to the curriculum.
"But the taxes, Anija, the taxes!" King Adam moaned.
Vaestro stepped forward. "Your Majesty," he said diplomatically, "I have talked over my dragon's concerns with one of your scholars, and we eventually arrived upon the conclusion that a brief infusion of aid into historically neglected classes can confer a permanent improvement in their economic outputs, and associating with it an expiry date for its availability can create an incentive for outgrowing the need for it. After examining considerable amounts of historical data, I have actually concluded that my dragon's perceptions of the situation are...perhaps...not far from the truth."
King Adam sighed in defeat. "So he has his Rider's encouragement, now. Vaestro, I had considered you for peerage, but right now, I am unsure whether to accelerate you to that end or have your head removed from your shoulders. Put me in touch with this scholar that you speak of. Just know that your life might depend on him being able to successfully explain the mathematics to me."
Vaestro paled, knowing that King Adam really was an absolute monarch. He was fairly certain that the king was not entirely serious about the threat, but the fact that it was not an entirely inconceivable outcome made him particularly nervous. He turned to Anija, and he muttered, "The things I do for you."
From this point on, the kingdom would be transformed slowly into an economic system resembling that of Scandinavia. With trade pouring in from the outside, thanks to Luka's Merry Crew of Dragon Rider Corsairs cleaning up obstructions along trade routes, the kingdom was also on its way to becoming incredibly prosperous.