Random Dragon 5

Once upon a time...


Random stared at the small shape in front of him. I was the only thing with any form in this place, but it acted as if this was something it wasn't very proud about, twisting and twirling in the air as if made of very solid smoke. Smoke was a very accurate description in fact, the whole thing being little more than deep red mist formed into the semblance of a robe, or a very sick pillowcase. Random, small hungry dragon he always was, thought wistfully of christmas stockings and candy. There probbably wouldn't be any of either here.

It was entirely possible he was dead, but if so, this place didn't resemble any heaven or hell that he'd heard about. (And he'd heard about an awful lot of them; humans have always been very good at creating hells, and he'd known enough of them in his time.) It was just... grey. Lots and lots of grey, as if he were inside a giant drab soap bubble. There wasn't even a suggestion of walls or floor; weren't you supposed to be standing on some sort of endless plane? Here the ground just became... indistinct, like a strangely persistent mist.

"Am I dead?"

That remains to be seen.

"So I'm in a coma or something?"

You are nothing.

"Hey hang on! That's a bit harsh isn't it?"

I do not know, nevertheless, you are nothing.

"Well how do I make something of myself?"

You do not, your next author may will give you detail.

The voice was strange; just talking to the robe-thing made Random feel like the wax was liquefying and running out of his ears. (It was.) The voice was very definitely speaking, he heard every word, but like its speaker, it had no form at all, no tone, no pitch, no volume, and most worryingly, no point of origin. It seemed to him that the thing was speaking to him from everywhere all at once.

"Who are you?"

I am a narrator.

"Yes, but who are you?"

That is what I am.

"Ummm... ok. What now?"

We will go to the auction.

"That doesn't sound good. Can I opt out?"

No.

The... figure began a monologue, involving a description of some building somewhere. It didn't seem to be talking to random, or indeed anyone. Random had the rather spooky (To a small dragon.) idea that it was talking to the universe, and that the universe was somehow paying attention. Certainly as the voice droned on details appeared... no, had always been there. Walls appeared, and doors, stalls and people and a background hubbuh, said by real people, or at least mouths.

The auction was located in a building that stretched for literally miles in every direction. It was divided roughly into compartments by thin white wooden paneling, cheap and tacky. There was a section labeled 'caves' and next to it 'strange and unusual geography' Above, toward a roof that was at least a mile distant, floated zeppelins, hot air balloons, even small planets, by the look of things. The sound of voices grew louder and here, here the sections were smaller, say only a few acres each. They held a lot of cages, though also some stages and stalls. Things, living things, were being sold here.

And what things! There was a section labeled 'Mythical - ancient greek' and another labelled 'Dogs, nonathroponorphic, classical' and there were more, so many more, stretching off into the distance. Above them all stood, or rather, floated a large, menacing sign 'Lost characters.'

And if the merchandise was strange, then the buyers were just as odd; it was impossible to tell who was the buyer and who was the stock; there some sort of alien was examining the teeth of a blue and red zebra; next to him a man purchased two small terrier dogs while a pair of labradors next to him argued of the price of a rather annoyed looking fairy in a glass jar...

Random blinked as the talking suddenly ended. They were standing outside a stall now, as if they had walked here instead of just appearing from somewhere somehow. It was probably magic of some sort. He would have to-

"Hola!"

"What?"

"Oh. English Hey there! Young fox, able bodied, capable of a variety of roles, villain preferred, only 49 generic monetary units!"

"Um.. ok?"

"You look like you could use a fox in your fiction! We're firm favorites with a long history of...history."

"No... I don't think so..."

"Nonsense! Everyone loves foxes! Let me show you my cute, I do a very good cute!"

Random didn't quite know what to say. There was a fox at least twice his size almost dragging him into the small cage he was in. He pulled back, if only to prevent himself being messily devoured, which he was sure foxes did to things. It looked quite mad, or at least earnest, which is a quality that anyone with half a brain soon learns to dread. The fox wore a tattered army uniform of some sort and spoke with a thick accent. He was the only thing in the cage except for a small plaque near the bottom saying 'Fox, anthropomorphic, standard. Ciro. 49 GMU'

We will go now, you must be prepared.

"Ah. A character huh. Right. You! You sir! Fancy a fox? Sir? Sir? Aww c'mon! I'm on special!"

Random was dragged away, not in any physical sense, but for some reason his legs weren't under the direct control of his brain any more. All around him there was a clamor; there were more creatures in cages, some attacking the bars, others crouched in corners, many more trying to get themselves sold. Other beings walked around him, he was almost stomped by a dragon so wide it almost blocked the thoroughfare, and he was half chilled by what looked for all the world like a living snowman. Worryingly, it became a lot easier to see who was property here, most of the caged creatures were dragons of sorts, some of them quite large. Gouts of flames, fire and mist surged everywhere.

"Why is everyone wearing bracelets?"

They are avatars, not characters, it is to ensure there is no confusion.

"They're gods?"

You could say that.

Finally they came to an empty cage; it was Random sized, and already bore a plaque saying 'Male, small, classical children's. Random. 15 GMU' This was somehow offensive, Random was sure he was worth more than that. He was ushered in and the door closed behind him.

Well, back in a cage again! It figured. Oh well, at least there was company here. He took stock of his surroundings. (And they were his surroundings, every dragon, no matter how small had a territorial approach to personal space, and the last PETA member that had attempted to free a dragon had got away after only a mild savaging.)

To the left of him (Was it left? Left of the cage maybe, but what if he turned around?) of him was an impressive sight. The plaque introduced him as 'Male, medium large, classical children's. Droxal 245 GMU' and he was indeed, medium large, which was to say he would only be able to peek through your window if you lived on the second floor, you could house him quite nicely in the basement provided both wings stuck out a window.

That was what Random dreamed of, a towering  (If not skyscrapering) colossus, a brilliant tribute to the dragon race, shining silver and gold in the sun (Or as it were, nondescript light source.) Scales gleamed on a creature that seemed to bring its own portable treasure hoard with them. Random was breathless as he stared up at something that could, at least in theory, tear its cage apart like so much tissue paper. A head the size of a dishwasher (Random was an indoor dragon.) turned and looked at him, the slowly and majestically leaned towards him, moving like continental drift on instant coffee.

"Ah. A new one I see. You'd think they'd be more sensible about the size wouldn't you? I mean, at the very least they could put all us medium-larges in one space?"

Random nodded, he was speechless.

"Or maybe not... some of them can be awful tetchy. They get all proud and scalier-than-thou about things. Need taking down a peg they do! Hmph! This'll teach em huh? Slap a price tag of a unit on em I say!"

Stare. Nod.

"But they could at least stack a few more of the smaller cages here huh? I mean it's a waste of space. Or maybe not... I mean, it'd get awfully unpleasant for the guy on the bottom am I right? Specially for the more classical dragons, I tell you, blood that can etch steel is all very well, but man are they hard to clean up after!"

Nod. Blink. Stare.

"Hah! Put em over the big cages says I! That'll teach em huh? Or maybe not... I mean, it'd just be providing snacks in a lot of cases. You should see the villain section, you can't move for hellfire and asbestos paneling! It's the classical ones I hate most, not a brain among the lot of em, just a lot of roar and hot air, though that describes most dragons if you want my opinion. What they need to do is clean out all the riff-raff. Or maybe not..."

Nod.

"Say, you talk right? They didn't get you mixed up here by mistake? It happens you know. They got the angels and demons mixed up once I heard, and before you knew it, there was a colony of incubi infesting the place!"

Random managed to mumble a generic greeting and held out a hand. It was taken and shaken (Including him and his cage) by a claw just a bit smaller than a coffee table. The dragon could have held, and crushed him with two fingers. After he recovered and regained consciousness, to profuse apologies from Droxal he inquired about just what this strange place was and what was going on.

"Ah, you wouldn't know. First time huh?"

"I hope so, I would hate to have been here before."

"Well, your story died, dinnit? Or maybe your author, that happens too. They get hit by a bus and what happens to their dependents huh? Oh, sometimes they get someone to keep the place going, but most of the time as soon as they shuffle off this mortal coil, it's 'so long and thanks for all the fish.' I don't think!

"You don't? What coil?"

"Nevermind. Long and short of it is, you're here to be sold to another author, get yourself a new writer and plot. I've had ten, outlived one, seven others were rubbish, their stories died in no time, other three, well, nice guys, but as furry as anything."

Random listened in polite incomprehension. "You mean they think I'm a story?"

"Not think mate. you are; you, your whole world, everything you knew, all a story, a figment of someone's imagination. You're past the fourth wall now mate, on to newer and better things!"

"I don't see any walls."

"Whoo, no wonder that head of yours is so titchy. Not a bit classical are you? Nah, you've been removed from your story because it died, or your author did, or maybe they lost interest in you, or had a rewrite. Now you're here until another author buys you up for inclusion in their story. And so it goes. It's not to bad except for the food."

Random turned around, following the pointing of another giant claw. There was a shallow water dish and a bowl of something... indescribable. Not like say, severed heads or anything, just indescribable. It was a pink mush with all the adjectival detail of... well gelatin.

The bowl hardly touched the ground as Random attacked it with more gusto than a Mexican at a sombrero sale. This was the good life; a solid cage, regular meals and... regular meals. Droxal made an impressed sounding noise and Random, distracted, inadvertently ate half his supper dish.

"Well, at least you'll like it here. Oh. Hey, sir! Over here!"

"Interesting. Age? Location? Personality?"

"407, below the moon and left towards midnight, though I did a stint in a generic cave once, and noble but friendly, suitable for children between 7-16. Genre? Position? Plot?"

"Children's fantasy, generic monster, a group of children find themselves while battling adversity in a far-off land."

"Ah. I'm available, but monster isn't one of my stronger roles. I'm a major character kinda guy, good for preference. You want about three rows across, if you want sentient."

The buyer, this time a large, tiger-like cat, stalked off towards distant cages. random had understood approximately a quarter of the brief exchange.

"That guy there? Professional, the best to work for. You shouldn't trust the furred ones, they're usually quite strange. Look out for kindly old ladies or at least someone human-shaped. If you see anyone drooling, best to get your head down and pretend to be asleep."

The advice came in handy, along with other tips on how to find and attract a desirable author. Random learned that he was in the children's fantasy section, so there tended not to be many disreputable characters (Or authors) about, but they got everywhere. For several worrying minutes it looked as if a rather creepy looking rat in a fedora and long coat was going to purchase him, but he left in disgust after Random tried his 'cute puppy' routine.

It was like an auction at both ends! Characters were always fighting with each other to get a good writer, or at least a bad writer that wouldn't have them do anything undesirable. (This varied a lot between characters, Random spotted the rat not an hour later being very personal with a newly acquired hydra. It was amazing they got to the door without being booted out for indecency.) There was no day, no night, no end to the constant competition and the smell of raw capitalism. Droxal said things usually quietened down for a few hours while the Asian contingent moved in. (While many were dragons, at least in spirit, they weren't interested in their kind he explained.) Random tried his best to attract a buyer, but he was never good at being assertive, or promotional, so his sales pitch tended to be along the lines of 'Small dragon! Excellent teeth! Eats stuff on demand!' and 'I can stand on tip-toe! I can chew gum and walk! I can carry plague... or was that rats?' Whenever anybody came close, he was always drowned out by the clamoring of the dragon beside him, whose plaintive cries needed a heart of stone to ignore. Random wondered how long this 'Male?, Medium-small, classical fantasy. Kai Pen. 2 GMU' had been there; certainly the cage had a lived-in look and the price had been slashed repeatedly, as had the dragon by the looks of things.

Random did not know much about dragon breeds, indeed he wasn't planning on finding out anything on the subject until he was sure that he was large enough to fend of competing males. (As things stood, at his current size competing males wouldn't even notice he was there. He often wondered what a competing male would do when they found out the girl they were after was being romanced by, for all intents and purposes, a scaly tick. Possibly they wouldn't care, in all likelihood the girl wouldn't have noticed either.) He didn't know much about fire types, or ice types, acid-bloods, speakers and insentients, hydrs and dinosaurs and avatars, and all the many, many ways of classifying a set of species that had nothing in common but a single descriptive term. He had heard of docked tails, but someone had evidently docked his neighbor's legs, either that or they had been his size once and stretched out a few dozen times until they resembled a fancy snake. With a large, bushy mustache.

Droxal said he was desperate, very desperate, despite having been there only a few days (Droxal had, he said, been there for almost two months now, and in total had spent nearly a year in the cages.) He certainly was jumpy, and he never seemed to sleep. (Occasionally he would lie down, with both eyes open and whimper a lot.) It was stress Droxal said, which you got with some of the more highly strung characters, or ones that had left a story they were attached to, or, in the worst cases, had been subject to character abuse. (While there had been several movements dedicated to improving the lives of characters, they tended not to get very far, because some characters would do anything. The ephebian slave quotient for example found it exceedingly offensive that someone might take away their rights to be beaten and whipped, while the aptly named prostitute's collective was dead set against the censoring of racy novels. The only real force as it were, for good, was the censorship institute, which represented 'moral authorities' of all brands of story. They couldn't stop the actual abuse, but they could stop it being published, and often ensured that the more unpleasant stories died out quick enough.)


It was noon the next day when his author found him.

Random had spent a lot of time wondering what his author was like, and what kind of stories they wrote. Droxal said (Did he ever shut up?) that the first story a character was in often shaped their personality, though later stories would modify it to a greater or lesser degree, so that to Random, everything that had happened would seem quite ordinary, even if it involved, say rains of ten ton turkeys in top hats. From the sound of things though, Random came from the mind of someone who was better off drawing comic strips, ones with big pictures of funny cows in them. Random thus kept an eye out for any bovine looking authors, even if they could change their shape. (So what? So could random! In fact, if he pressed his head against the bars he could squidge his entire face into all sorts of shapes!) When she arrived, she was quite a dissapointment.

The creator of Random, and his whole world, was a rather shabby shade of brown, and even smaller than he was. At first Random thought that the author striding down the thoroughfare was unaccompanied; he looked like a Good Author; he was a rather impressive human, clothed from head to toe in very impressive looking armor. He could quite well have been a character from some old fantasy story, complete with dragons and princesses and castles, and Random didn't even attempt to sell himself to someone who surely, would be after something bigger and more upmarket. It was only when a small voice  said "Random? What the hell? Did Kai talk you into this?" that he realized there was someone else, tagging along behind.

"You know who I am?"

"I bloody well wrote you."

"Um, you're smaller than I expected."

"You get that; did you know you can tell how someone's going to vote just by seeing which person they think is taller? And that president Bush has lost almost half a foot off his estimated height since he entered office?"

"A bush is president?"

"It'd have been better if that was true, yes. KAI!"

"GAH!"

"I thought you'd sneak off here! Dammit! This is the third time! So help me, I'mma nail your tail to the floor this time, you hear me?"

"Excuse me, that's my character you're talking about."

"I thought we traded?"

"Oh yes. The 'scholarship' he's still rather dissapointing though."

"More whipping will fix that."

"No problem then. Right! !"

"Help! Help! Mad author!"

"Oh shush! This is the one warden."

There were more robes now, or... well, the same kind of creatures as the narrators. They were like melted plastic, mostly tentacles and twisty bits, as if an octopus had managed to succesfully breed with an oil slick. They grabbed the protesting dragon and manhandled (Dragonhandled?) him off, accompanied to begging and protests in some strange tongue. Maybe chinese. (Random had heard that the chinese invented their words by dropping a tin can down stairs, something which he believed utterly, it made a lot more sense than just making them up. When you're part of a species that involves wings, multiple heads and fire breathing, you haven't the slightest comprehension about racism, though Random did distrust anything with black scales intensely,a fter all, black was evil.) This left him face to face, well, snout to beak, with his author. He would have been happier had she been more. (More refined, more impressive, more tall, he'd have settled for more anything.)

"Hey there! Looking for a child friendly main character?"

"I don't know, do you like children?"

"Oh yes, but I prefer cookies."

"How about I slice them up real thin?"

"Ah. Um, I think I'll pass."

"So then Rand, what are you doing here?"

"Story died."

"What? When?"

"Um, yesterday I think."

"Damn! I knew I forgot something! And that means I have to buy you back too! Oh blast! And everyone else! How many characters did I have again? *Sigh*"

And so it was that, one short, but confusing hour later, Random and his friends were walking rather bemusedly between aisles of characters, each with a large 'SOLD' sticker attached about their person (Except for Random. He'd eaten his, it was their fault for making such a damn tasty glue.) Random explained to everyone that they had better enjoy the experience, since he'd been told they'd forget all about it until their story died again, unless their author, who had introduced herself as Ziblink The Magnificent, Creator Of Worlds, Bane Of The Unrighteous, allowed fourth wall breaking. (Random was quite sure he'd never broken any walls in his short life, you needed to be at least a medium-medium to do that. Besides, what about the other three?) They were almost at the exit when-

"There she is! Script! Script! I found her!"

"Quick! Nab her quick!"

"Tar and feather! tar and feather!"

"She's already feathered Nyc."

"You call those feathers? Nonsense!"

"I'm pretty sure that-"

"Look, I'm a mage right? We know these sort of things."

"¿Cuándo matamos?"

"Okay, maybe we just tar her then."

Random turned to his author to ask what was going on, only to find that she had, somehow, managed to get several dozen feet away from him, and was still accelerating. The mob was a small one, but it had all the essential ingredients, upset people,torches and pitchforks (Though one, possibly 'special' member was waving a bubble wand.) and a lot of yelling. Some freshly purchased barrels of hot tar were being dragged along for the ride. Random, out of instinct fled. (Dragons have two very powerful instincts regarding mobs; the formerly dominant 'burnating' response, which involved rearing up and incinerating all attackers had suffered in recent years, what with the invention of knights and firearms and nuclear bombs, and had caused an evolutionary shift to the recessive, and formerly rare 'flee' response which involved tucking one's tail between one's legs and getting as far away as possible, which was spreading fast among those segments of dragon society not impaled, beheaded or residing in dozens of small jars at the local traditional medicine market.)

"Um, is this normal?"

"Oh yes, happens all the time.  I don't get it, you write someone a story and they get all mad at you!"

"That's not very nice!"

"You're telling me?"


* * *

And Random awoke.

Ah, so it was all a dream. He hadn't even been in bed when dreaming it either, and now his snout was all stiff from being pressed into the ground. On the upside, there was some gum on it. (The sheer magnitude of that cliche, appearing as it did just mere seconds after the story had been resurrected, caused massive shocks through what passed for reality; a bevy of car insurance salesmen appeared in the middle of the amazon and danced the fandango, the sun set bright pink and the mythical land of Atlantis rose from the sea. None of this was noticed by anyone except the US immigration service who wrote a report on the possibility of illegal immigration from the offshore territory.) As they said, another day, another dollar. (Though where these dollars came from, who knew.  Random certainly hadn't seen a single one, and he was sure he was owed quite a large sum in, possibly back taxes.)

And with that, the story continued.



THE END

* * *

It was night time now not that this place ever knew such banal things as night and day, but most of the characters were sleeping, or at least had their eyes shut, and the usual background roar had subsided to something closer to merely deafening. Allegro sat in his cage trying to get comfortable, with only a moderate amount of failure. (It's hard to sleep on cold steel, yet dragons regularly nest on gold, silver and assorted gems, which aside from looking nicer isn't much different, if you want to make a dragon's bed, lots of tinfoil is in order.) He was pondering his name and bemoaning the fact that he had it. The small plaque stating 'Male, large, postmodern fiction. Allegro 845 GMU' had a definite singed and melted look about it, as if someone had repeatedly tried to incinerate it.

He was not a happy dragon. (Of course, given the setting it was entirely possible that he could be a happy basilisk or cockatrice or something, but c'mon, nobody write about them anymore.) He'd come so *close* to getting his own story, so *close to being more than a background character, and it had been snatached away from him! He'd been patient, appearing in flights of dragons, in dragon nests, even a few times an unidentifiable miscellaneous swamp monster, biding his time, waiting for his chance, and what had happened? His author died! Dammit!

For most characters, this wouldn't be too big a problem, you'd just go back to the slush pile and await another author. But Allegro hadn't been properly characterized. This meant that, while he looked fine from a distance, on closer inspection, there wasn't that much of him there. His skin was not scaled, or marked or shaped in any way, his hands barely had fingers, his wings were the tradditional bat-like flaps, nothing more. He was, in fact, little more than a lump of dragon-shaped plasticine. This was a major problem, since authors tended to like their characters more developed (In the case of furries, disturbingly so.) Excessive ornamentation, horns, glistening scales, foot long claws, all these things made a character more sought after. (Indeed, the more popular characters would often do as many as five stories at once, it is a little known fact that every Harry Potter fanfic involving long lost siblings was played by the same character in different wigs. Indeed, often these stories are just copied wholesale, with names changed.)

The upshot of this was that Allegro had spent the last three years sitting around waiting to be purchased, with no luck whatsoever. Nobody was interested in a generic red dragon, it was very depressing. Perhaps if he channeled that into becoming gothic? That was popular these days, he could-

"Excuse me, you seem rather large."

"Large category, yeah, eight to forty tons."

"Metric or imperial?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not, you seem a bargain anyway."

"You mean you're considering purchase?"

"Oh yes, I need a new dogsbody."

"Umm, dogs aren't in this section sir."

"Forgive me, my english is poor, I meant I need someone to do my dirty work."

"Coalminers are section 404B."

"Do you want out, or not?"

Allegro considered this, the author looked like a reasonable guy, but of course, such appearances could hide someone who would have you sadistically slaughtered just to further the plot. The guy looked like a knight for one thing, but that just might mean a medieval setting. Mind, he'd been there three years, so it was all quixotic anyway.

"Whatever you say sir!"

"Excellent, I hope you're better than the last one I got here."

"Poor quality? I know how it is."

"Oh yes, I gave him away eventually, had to, he kept trying to impersonate chinamen."

"You don't hear that every day."

"Yes. Why do you have a Mexican flag on your head?"

"Don't ask."


THE END (You should stop reading now.)



* * *

The dragon was struggling, but it was no use, invisible bands of force held him bound and dragged him slowly, but inexorably towards the cage, waiting like a cold, steel mouth.

"You can't do this to me! I'm an author I swear!"

"Uh-huh. Haven't heard THAT excuse before."

"Dammit! I was drugged and illegally sold!"

"Okay then Mr Author, name one thing you've written."

""

"Sorry mate, we don't speak gibberish. Nice try though."



* * *

THE END (Srsly, that's it, I'm not writing another chapter.)

What? It's my story, I can end it where I like!

Fine then! Have it your way, I'll write more! But  refuse to make it humorous or high quality, you hear me?

Oh you have a lawyer do you? What? He wouldn't dare! Al, how could you?

Right. Fine. High quality and humorous, but I'll get you where your legal aid cannot protect you, in your dreams!