Czerthaz glided through the clouds. At least Czerthaz was what he was calling himself now. A few days ago he had been Jake, the nobody. Then the Book of Myth had fallen into his hands and everything had changed.
The first thing he discovered was that while reality would alter to make the changes he made to other people normal, no matter what he did to himself reality wouldn’t adjust. That was a cruel irony for someone who had always wanted to soar through the sky as a proud dragon – someone who now had the ability to make that dream happen for anyone else. But someone who could never make it happen for themselves, at least not unless they wanted to go toe to toe with a military that was shocked to find out that dragons really exist.
And that was why Czerthaz was so proud of himself – he had found a way to adjust reality so that he could still be accepted by the world as Czerthaz even though he couldn’t get rid of Jake.
There was a large apartment building with a few hundred residents on the outskirts of town. He had turned the manager into a small, young dragon and the residents into the dragon’s subservient kobolds. When reality adjusted, in place of an apartment building was a semi-active volcano straight out of a DnD game, complete with its own dragon and kobold tribe.
Then, he had turned himself into a bigger dragon and killed the former manager. As subservient as the kobolds were, they simply accepted Czerthaz as their new owner – as was appropriate in dragon/kobold society. With the kobolds behind him, the rest of the world just seemed to accept how things worked as well. It didn’t matter that nobody had ever heard of Czerthaz before – everyone just understood that new dragons would occasionally migrate into town, kill weaker dragons than themselves, and take their place.
Yes, it was a plan so perfect that only a dragon, such as Czerthaz, could have come up with it. And he had executed it to perfection.
The next part of his plan was to send his kobolds out to look for more books. It hadn’t taken them long to locate a human named RK Palantine. The kobolds saw a book that looked very similar to the one owned by Czerthaz, but they couldn’t ever get close enough to tell him which one it was. He’d ordered to them follow him, and their reports on the speed with which RK had gathered 2 more books that gave Czerthaz pause.
Clearly, this RK Palantine was a capable human – too capable to be allowed to remain in possession of his books. So Czerthaz had taken to the sky to oversee this mission personally.
Flying at 40,000 feet, Czerthaz was confident that a human like RK would never be able to see him from the ground. On the other hand, Czerthaz’ telescopic vision allowed him to watch even the ants skitter about, so watching a human was no problem.
Czerthaz watched RK approach a house, knock on its door, then turn its owner into a houseplant. He watched RK sitting in the window, staring out at the house across the street for well over a day. He watched the neighbor – a tiger man holding his own magical book – walk out of the house. He watched RK turn that tiger man into a very pregnant tiger woman. For a moment Czerthaz was concerned that RK would accumulate another book but, to his surprise, RK let the tiger woman struggle back inside without making any further adjustments to her.
RK was clearly playing a game and Czerthaz wasn’t foolish enough to allow it to go to completion.
“Take the human alive if you can, but the books are the top priority! Do not let the human cast a spell under any circumstances!” Czerthaz commanded to his kobold scouts through a small radio attached to his head.
“Yes master, kobolds will obey,” came the reply.
Czerthaz watched them silently jimmy the lock on the backdoor – he was impressed with their ingenuity but, then again, kobolds were skilled thieves and breaking into the houses of better people may just be something that they’re naturally good at.
From that point they had disappeared inside the house and Czerthaz had no way to track their progress. That was why he was a bit surprised he saw a small splatter of blood appear in front of RK, followed by the sight of his body slumping forward into the window.
Czerthaz had told them to take him alive if they could, and from his perspective it certainly looked like it was possible. Then again, kobolds were evil, and he’d told them that the books were far more important than the life of a human. Not that he disagreed with that sentiment. Humans were cattle. But there was value in being able to interrogate someone like RK, even more so in the ability to experiment on him.
Questions swirled through his head after watching RK change the tiger girl, especially since Czerthaz remained aware of the change. Were other book owners immune to the reality changing effects of the book? Did reality change but book owners retain their memory? Was there something else at play here in terms of how the books worked? The only way to find out the answers to those questions was to obtain a live specimen of a book holder.
That meant that RK was a valuable resource – something that Czerthaz hadn’t appreciated when he gave his original order. While he would never admit it to anyone else, internally he knew that he had foolishly wasted that resource by telling the kobolds not to let him cast a spell. Even if kobolds didn’t bread quickly, it was no matter for him to make more. Better to lose a million kobolds than one book holder.
In any event, what was done was done, and Czerthaz still had another resource at his disposal – the pregnant tiger girl. She couldn’t stay in that house forever and as soon as she stepped outside, Czerthaz would get to conduct a bit of an experiment on her with the Book of Myth.
After hovering for another hour, Czerthaz saw the tiger girl step out of her house. She looked exhausted, and it was clear that, despite using both hands to hold up her stomach, she was in a great deal of discomfort as she walked down the driveway.
As Czerthaz stared at distended her stomach, he came up with brilliant idea for an experiment. Yes, he would turn her into a truly low creature, a creature so pathetic and worthless that no sane individual would accept its life. Then he would see how it reacted. Would it try to use its book to change back? Would it be wild? Would it be loyal to him? Yes, Czerthaz thought from the safety of the upper atmosphere, this would be a fine experiment.
“Lesser shift.”