Watch Party!

"Wait, hold up a second," said John. "No offense to you, because I'm sure your cause is good and all, bias notwithstanding, but the treasure is just a shard of your queen?

So there's not anything in it for me? Just resurrecting her? I don't mean to sound selfish, but I really don't want to be doing all this for nothing."

"My friend, you think far too little of me," said Hemet. "Each shard was entombed with the finest artifacts that our kind have ever fashioned. You can have everything that we find, all the marvelous iceforged blades, staves, shields, and the like that is certain to be there."

"What about the shards themselves?" asked John. "You mentioned there were twelve, but this is just one of them. Do you have the others with you right now? Or do you have a way to get the rest?"

"As for the shards, no, I do not have all of them. Or any of them yet," said Hemet. "And I was entrusted by the queen only with the means to reach one of them."

Hemet held up the snowflake compass. "But she did tell me that once one was found, destiny would align the others to follow."

"You personally knew this Ice Queen?" said John, a little incredulous. The Ice Queen sounded like an insanely powerful being if she could hold up against a demon literally called the 'Flame Emperor', and Hemet was only High Terran grade in core strength.

What business had he with the queen?

"Surprising, no?" Hemet laughed. "Heh, I have always been good at sneaking. Once, when I was young, perhaps seventy years ago? I was a starving young imp with nothing to my name and a fine penchant for trinkets.

A fine thief I was, taking from those with power just enough to make sure they did not notice me, and what better symbol of power was there to steal from than the Ice Queen herself?

I had nothing to lose and a hot head more fit for a flame demon.

Once, when she was traveling across the kingdom, she came upon the rural wastes of my home.

While she visited my village, putting down her royal cloak to greet us, I tried to steal it away. Her guards caught me, of course, and wanted to lop my head off, and they asked me what my reasons were for insulting her personage so."

"So, what did you say?" said John.

"I said 'it would look better on me', and that answer amused the queen enough that she spared me and took me along with her," said Hemet, grinning as he recalled a vast swathe of fond memories.

"At first, as a jester of a kind, but then, as times grew harder, civil war looming, decisions made more difficult, she consulted me for my bare honesty and simple views of the world.

Me, a lowly imp who had once had nothing to his name as one of the Ice Queen's advisors." Hemet nodded to himself in remembrance, the wrinkles around his pale blue eyes deepening.

John became deeply aware at that moment at Hemet's age. The imp seemed to always be far younger than he actually was in the pursuit of treasure, but now, with those deep furrows of time lining his eyes, the old scars and discolorations lining his skin, his age truly showed.

John did not know exactly how long imps lived, but he could sense that Hemet was in the twilight of his years, that was for sure.

"Through her, I became learned of the worlds and their ways, and in her service, came to learn that there was much joy to life other than thievery. My daughters and mate an example of such."

"I get it," said John. "I can understand why you're so devoted to your queen. She basically lifted you out of nothing, and she does sound like a good person, but at the same time, it makes me wonder about this treasure.

If we get the shard, its just one of twelve, right? How are you going to get the other eleven? I don't think 'destiny' is exactly the best thing to rely on.

What's, well, how to word my question without being so blunt-,"

"What is the point of this search? You wish to ask this?" said Hemet, and John nodded.

"I do not know," said Hemet. "I know I do not have the power to gather the other shards, and I was entrusted only with the location of one.

Even on this one, I have spent the past forty years on this world searching for it, only ever making headway recently until I was captured."

"Excuse me, did you just say forty years? Forty entire years?" John cocked his head. "You spent that much time camped out here in this wilderness? All by yourself?"

Hemet nodded. "Yes. It was the last duty invested upon my by the queen, and it is one I shall dutifully carry out to the end of my days. But do not look at me with such pity, my young dragon friend.

It has not been so bad. At least I am alive. That is more than can be said about the rest of my kind."

"That just sounds like survivor's guilt," said John.

"Heh, perhaps at first, I felt that. For the first ten of those forty long years, I searched more out of a sense of emptiness than anything else, with guilt driving me forward.

I had lost everything, my queen, my kingdom, my mate, my daughters, and now I had only but one thing left to keep me alive: the search for the shard." Hemet smiled. "But I suppose life always finds a way to go on.

John could hear the slight pain in the imp's voice. It was not the kind of pain you heard outright, it was the kind that settled just underneath the voice, hidden under years and years of coping.

Eventually, the search became a part of me. The emptiness and guilt faded because this search became all that I was. It was what gave me energy to scavenge for food, to hide from Hunters, and to wake up in the mornings."

John could empathize with this pain. He himself had lost his father to war when he was just a boy. Seeing his dad come back in a coffin, so mangled up that nobody would open the damn thing to let John even see his dad's face - that was the type of pain that stayed with you, the type that hit your right in the center of your being and molded who you were.

John could only imagine that the reverse, with Hemet losing his daughters, was just as bad, if not even worse, because as a child, he had the luxury of being too innocent to understand the severity of his dad's death whereas Hemet knew what he had lost from the very beginning.

This search for the shard was Hemet's means of coping. The guilt and emptiness had not gone away, it had just gotten absorbed into the idea of this search.

What happened when that was taken away? When this search was finished?

Would he not lose his purpose to live?

"You sure…you sure you want to find this treasure?" said John.

"Heh, my young dragon friend, of course I do," said Hemet. "It was my duty, and so I shall carry it out."

"Then afterwards? Once we find it, what will you do?" asked John.

"Hm, I do not have many years left in me. Perhaps five or ten, but enough time to still see the Finalis bear down upon this realm," said Hemet. He cocked his head and went into thought. "I suppose a change in pace may be nice.

All my life, I have been a runner and a thief, taking things, breaking into places, and such. Even in the times I stood by the queen's side, many around her reviled me as a lowly rat.

Perhaps it may not be too late to truly do battle, to scream at the top of my lungs in a battlefield and show the realm that I, Hemet, am mighty! And what better battlefield to reveal my might than in the Finalis itself?"

Hemet puffed his chest out in pride before nodding at John. "This dragon that you know, the treasure hunter one, the one called James Bond, you say he used all manner of tools to sneak in and out of places."

"Yeah, he definitely did," said John.

"I know your kind loves to hoard treasures, but they often take them by force. Was this James Bond reviled among your kind as a coward for sneaking and stealing? Did others look down upon him because all he could do was hide and run?" asked Hemet.

"No. He fought when he had to. Went on secret missions. Sneaked when he had to so he could take down bigger bad guys," said John. "I think most people would think pretty positively about him."

"Aha! Then that is what I shall strive to be after we find the treasure," said Hemet. "One who sneaks AND one who fights, for though I do wish to try battle, I do not think I can give up the thrill of sneaking either, heh."

A brief silence befell the two of them as John basically realized Hemet was taking his suicide run of getting the ice queen shard and directing it into a suicide run onto the Finalis, because cut off from his people, reviled by flame demons, and targeted by all other races, Hemet truly had no way to survive.

The only reason he had lasted this long was because this Wild World was off radar, off radar enough for John, one of the literal last heirs to the entire dragon race, a pretty freaking important race, to remain hidden and hatch.

Hemet broke the silence with his usual cheer. "But enough of this heavy topic, my friend, for we are on the eve of great success. It is a shame we could not celebrate with drink, but perhaps we may admire the treasures you have seized from the captain?"

Hemet reached into the bag of holding and fished out the captain's mana crystal holding box. The lacquered, decorated wood shone in the light of the campfire. He opened up the box and watched the gleaming mana crystals.

"Impressive," said Hemet. "Recording crystals."

"Wait up, that's-," said John, but could not stop Hemet from touching a mana crystal and playing the recording within.

The catgirl idol Astra projected outwards again, this time in a lush forestland where she danced and performed atop a collection of vines, swinging around with remarkable agility while scantily clad in a dress of leaves.

Beneath her, it was elves this time that raised their fists in the air and shouted her name.

"Heh, so this is what the captain is into," said Hemet. "Well, my friend, you wish to watch?"

John shrugged. "Sure, why the hell not."

==

Datu, Eluf, and Pav, a trio that had now come upon times most unlucky, trudged across the dark side of Pluton where there was only eternal winter. They struggled their way through whipping winds lined with ice and snow, watching as barren trees

"Gods above, it is cold!" complained Datu. He was only dressed in light robes entirely unsuited to the wintry weather. He looked to Eluf, the Lupid Werefolk, and eyed his coat of grey fur enviously. "I am a few steps removed from skinning that fur off of you."

"Just you try," said Eluf with a gruff growl.

"And you, how do you keep warm?" said Datu to Pav as the dwarf put his canteen full of liquor to his lips.

Pav kept drinking his liquor. "With drink, I stay warm. With drink, I tolerate you. Drink is the cure to everything."

Datu sighed. "You are certain this is where the imp went?"

Pav looked down at his wrist. It was encased by thick plates of iron forming a gauntlet, the barrel of a magitek arm-blaster jutting out from it. One of the plates was inlaid with a mana crystal that projected a screen that tracked magical energy signatures.

"The engines released a breakdown surge near the Winter Gate," said Pav. "And our Passage Seal was used to enter the Gate. I am certain this is where they are."

"Could that vampire bastard not have flown us closer?" said Datu. "Don't their kind love dark and desolate places like this?" He spat on the ground. "And those flesh pods he sent us in."

Datu shivered in disgust.

Vampiric wild magic manipulated blood and flesh, and their spacecraft were therefore floating chunks of giant muscle fibers wound together to make plating and fueled by thrusters of ignited blood.

Grotesque things that matched their night-dwelling, blood drinking nature.

Because the Ravagers had lost their ship, Marcus, or to be more exact, one of Marcus's crew, a vampire called Flavia, had given them a bare minimum of support, putting them into flesh pods and ejecting them to a location they wanted. That location being Pluton's winter zone.

Since they had no Passage Seal, the crew had to travel the distance in the pods filled with squishy flesh, blood, and tentacles for hours all the way to the other side of the planet.

The whole trip had felt like complete violation, and none of them were eager to relive it.

"Now we follow the dragon's energy signature," said Pav. "It has only gotten brighter since last we saw it."

"At least dragon alive," said Eluf. "Otherwise we have nothing to show the vampire, and we all die."

"And if we do not find them in two days, we are dead anyway," said Datu. He gripped the handle of his blade tight. "Thank the gods that the dragon is still alive through the ship's crash. With it alone, we can buy a ship fifty times better and stay alive, too."

This was what Datu said, but in his mind, he reveled in the idea that he could enjoy all of Astra's scheduled shows for five years until the Finalis hit, and then because the foolish imp was leading them directly to the Ice Queen, use it to offer Astra a chance to join his cushy new spot with the demons in their new realm order.

"Dragons are strong though," said Eluf. "That's what I hear. When they were alive, they destroy entire cities and kingdoms. Now its awake. We fight it?"

"The dragon was young and between the Terran and Mystic stages. It may have been holding back its power, but if we go all out and coordinate our attacks, then we should take it down. The imp is inconsequential. A weakling," said Datu.

"Oh!" Pav looked at his gauntlet. "They are near. Within a hundred meters of us."

"Good," said Datu. He unsheathed his blade, a slightly curved longsword that crackled with electrical energy, and started to sneak around, slinking between tree trunks, tilting his head to try and hear the faintest of noises.

"Keep quiet and listen to my plan," said Datu carefully. "We will attack with an ambush using-,"

He turned the corner of a tree trunk and saw a most unusual sight.

A golden scaled dragon and a blue skinned imp sitting around a campfire. They stared at a projection of a Felid Werefolk girl in a one piece swimsuit that hugged her figure, singing her heart out in a beach setting.

"Hoh, so this is the taste of a dragon," said the imp.

The golden dragon put a scaled finger to his chin and narrowed his reptilian eyes. "She's a little too skinny. I like em' a bit thicker, you know what I mean?"

Datu immediately charged in with a roar.

These fools dared to sully his prized collection of Astra's concerts?

Her three month Alliance Morale Boost Tour that spanned not just Ragnok, the world of Werefolk, but also Gaia, Durdor, and Ao Abhainn, the worlds of humans, dwarves, and elves respectively?

And that dragon, such insolence! To dare to insult the perfection of Astra-

Datu went in sword slashing and crackling. "You would insult Astra!? You face your deaths!"

Eluf watched with confusion, tilting his head. "We attack with ambush using what?"

"Eh, just fight, I guess," said Pav as he cocked his blaster.

"Sounds good to me!" Eluf leaped in, fangs bared and muscles rippling.

==