Simon

Dragon tails are very strong. They also have spikes on them. Do not get hit by one.

I put the feather down and rubbed at my chest yet again. It was still sore even several hours later. It was a good thing the dragon had been careful enough to avoid hitting me with any of the sharp pointy bits along the sides, or else I would probably need to find a healer. Which would have led to a whole new set of problems.

Rubbing at the dull throb in my chest didn't do much for the pain – and my skin was starting to itch the more I messed with it, especially around the shoddy clothes-cleaning spell I was using to cover any traces of my magic – so I gave up trying and went back to writing my letter again.

I don't have much news other than that. I have arrived at Lakeshire Village and met the dragon here, though it seems very uninterested in me. It said very little and flew away rather than talk with me, despite my attempt at flattery, so I will have to rethink my approach. As well as the pick-up lines you gave me.

As you can expect from that, I have not yet been able to verify any of Katerina's information. I tried to offer a cooked meal to the dragon, in the hopes that would cause it to offer me something in return, but the dragon had no interest in the meal at all (even though I am certain it was hungry at the time), and only seemed angry with me for getting involved. It may be that Katerina was telling the truth and the dragon was just avoiding having to pay me back, or it may be that Katerina was lying, and the dragon left for unrelated reasons. And yes, before you suggest it, I made sure to bathe first.

I can at least confirm the rumors that this dragon is living here on its own. A blue dragon did visit briefly early in the morning, but it left without meeting the dragon that lives here, and flew off to the south. The dragon that lives here is a pink dragon, though aside from its color I don't know much about it. I believe it may be a 'she' from the sound of its voice, though since we didn't speak much I am not certain of that. I am including a sketch of its head in case you can remind me which horn arrangement means what for these surly overgrown lizards.

If nothing else, I do not believe the dragon detected my magic. This suggests Katerina may have been truthful about our shields hiding us, and of clumsy spells leaking enough magic to provide us with cover.

For now I have decided to get more information from the villagers here, and will try to meet the dragon again once I have more to work with. I will send another update after that attempt.

I finished the letter and returned the feather to the pot of ink. I had hoped to write my letters in pencil, but Lakeshire Village – the poor farming village closest to the dragon's lair – seemed to be too remote to have any available. And as remote and poor as this village was, I would probably have two or three letters written before anyone arrived to actually carry messages. Still, it was good to keep a record. If something happened later and the dragon used some form of mind-altering magic on me, the other Wellsprings might be able to notice the change in my letters. And if something caused me to not send the letters at all, they would take that as a warning the dragons were not to be trusted.

The ink would need some time to dry, so I pushed it to one side of the table and motioned for another drink from the server. I wasn't worried about her seeing my letter. I had used our codes to hide the message inside the words of a made-up cover story, so unless she was a Wellspring herself, she would just read a rather boring story about the weather on my journey here. And the chances of her being a Wellspring were non-existent – waiting on a customer who turned out to be a mage would practically guarantee exposure for a Wellspring.

I sipped from the drink she brought me, then turned my attention to the other conversations in the tavern. Eavesdropping was a survival trait for Wellsprings. If a mage was planning to visit or already in town, it was good to have all the warning we could get, and I had gotten pretty good at the skill over the years. Most of the chatter was boring – talk about the dismal growth of the crops this year, gossip about the failing health of some person I wasn't familiar with, speculation on what the weather would be like. The villagers seemed to hope it would rain, but expected dry weather. 

 I was quickly getting the impression the village was not very prosperous, and had gotten used to expecting hardships. Which wasn't unusual. There were a lot of villages that struggled to survive. A skilled mage could in theory help with the growth of their crops... but only a prosperous village could hope to support a mage to begin with, and even then, most mages with the necessary level of skill would seek out a more glamorous life working in a city or castle somewhere.

A few people made comments about the delicious turkey meal that the tavern was serving today, which made me feel a little better. Especially since the turkey in question had been roasted over a campfire out in the countryside, instead of one of the tavern's ovens. I hadn't wanted the turkey to go to waste and had given it to the tavern instead – it had paid for my drinks for the day and given me a place to sleep tonight – and it was nice to know somebody was enjoying it. The spices had been more expensive than I had liked, but that was usually the case. I never wanted to attract attention by haggling prices down too much.

At least I could be sure my skill at cooking wasn't the reason the dragon had slapped me in the chest with its tail. And the coffee this tavern served was actually pretty decent. So the expensive meal hadn't turned out to be a complete waste of my time and money.

"It's all the fault of that blasted dragon." A conversation suddenly caught my interest again, and I paused in rubbing my sore chest to give a quick glance towards the loud voice. A man was speaking at a table in the center of the room – a farmer, most likely, and one that had obviously had a bit too much to drink. "I'm telling you, something needs to be done about it. And the sooner the better, for all our sakes. They're all over the place these last few months. My aunt out east says she can't go a day without one trying to eat her cows."

The others at the table – two men and a woman, likely also farmers – rolled their eyes, as if they had heard this from their companion before, and the woman shook her head. "Not every bit of bad luck you run into can be blamed on something being out to get you, Jack. Your crops will start growing soon enough, you'll see. We weren't seeing anything in our fields either, but this afternoon I finally saw a few sprouts. It's just been a slow start to the season, not some dark magic conspiracy by evil mages."

"Bah!" The first man – Jack, I supposed – shook his head and took another swig from his glass before slamming it back down. "Just means the creature's spell wore off, is all. That's how that magic stuff works, you know. Takes energy, and it just finally ran out. I saw it out hunting this morning – crashed through the trees to take down a brute of a stag, and gave my cows a good scare when it did. You're seeing growth now 'cause it just got too hungry to keep bewitching us, that's all. Mark my words – we'll have problems again soon now that it's stuffed its belly, just you wait."

I tried not to roll my eyes at Jack's rambling. That wasn't quite how spells worked – they did take energy, but it wasn't the kind that came from eating a good meal or getting a nice nap. If it were, then getting rid of all my Wellspring magic would be as simple as staying up later each night, or skipping a few meals.

One of the other men sighed and shook his head. "Even if you're right, what are we supposed to do? It's a dragon. They can fly. And they can use magic. And they have really big, really sharp teeth. You need a group of knights and a mage or three to fight something like that – if we tried we would just annoy it. And then it would fly out of reach and set the village on fire. Just leave it be; there's nothing we can do."

Jack grinned and leaned closer to the table. "But there are things the king can do. He's got knights and mages to spare."

"Ha!" The other man shook his head with another roll of his eyes. "Like the king would ever use that to help us. Unless there's gold involved, and there's none of that here, the king won't even remember we exist."

"That's the thing! There is gold involved. You remember that mage from last year – the healer, the one the king sent up?"

The mocking looks at the table suddenly turned suspicious. "I remember. The tax collector thought we were lying about how bad our harvest had been and how sick we were, since 'not enough of us were dead for it to have been the plague'. Young apprentice, came by to make sure we were telling the truth. Poked at some of the wells looking for what made us sick, ate up our food, then left in a hurry without actually helping."

"That's the one. She's been writing to me asking questions; she found something about that cave the dragon lives in. Left in a hurry to go report it to the king." Jack leaned back and took another drink from his cup, then grinned back at his companions. "That dragon's sitting on a huge source of magic, strong enough for that healer to sense it all the way from my land, and the mages want it bad. Bunch of those flashy crystals they use sometimes. That healer's been writing me with questions about the dragon, and says the king should be doing something about it soon. Any day now. The knights will come in and drive that monster away, and then we'll all get rich – the mage said those crystals go for a small fortune, and our hills are full of them."

Jack's companions all shook their heads with another round of "Sure, Jack". They clearly didn't believe him...

...but I frowned as I stared back at my drink. I knew all too well how much mages valued sources of magic. The crystals wouldn't be quite the guaranteed fortune that Jack imagined, but they did still fetch a significant price. If the mages had discovered a new source of them, then they would put a lot of pressure on the king to make it available to them.

If it was protected by a group of dragons, or if the crystals were deeper in the territories the dragons guarded, then that would probably scare the mages away. But if the crystals were only protected by a single dragon, living alone in what the other dragons all acknowledged was human territory... that would be a different matter entirely. The reward of abundant magical energy might be worth the trouble of driving away a solitary dragon.

I stared at my drink, feeling the first pieces of a plan start to fall into place...