Ch. 70: The Plan

"So, I'm just going to come out and say it. These dragons are a lot tinier than I'd expect from real mythological creatures." Adrian mused aloud.

The dragons' bodies were exactly as you'd expect dragons to be. Lizards with scaly wings that breathed fire, but the stories that Adrian'd read about dragons portrayed them as huge beings. These dragons were actually quite cute, between the size of a rat and the size of a small dog depending on the individual. Draco, who had attempted to burn Adrian's face off the moment that the door was opened, was the smallest one, but his breath was still capable of frying the skin off Adrian's entire upper body.

"Blood magic at work, Adrian. What did you expect a dragon to be? 50 feet tall with four stomachs?" Rosy asked, "They're just lizards with the ability to breathe fire. The largest ones around are only a few feet long. They're basically pests that breathe fire." She shrugged.

"But they're the natural enemy of the Arachne. There's nothing better when it comes to burning huge spider webs." Doma added.

"So we're talking about spider-people?" Adrian asked. That felt obvious, but he still wanted to clear it up. He'd learned that quite a few of the myths he'd heard of in Uriah were based on real things, but, like the dragons, the things he knew of tended to be off in some way. 

"More spider than people, but yeah." Rosy nodded.

"They're capable of organizing themselves and laying traps, but that's it. No higher intelligence to be found in their heads. They're just animals." Doma told him.

"And that's why they need to be put down!" A drake shouted into Adrian's ear, entering the room from behind him. Adrian barely managed to stop himself from elbowing the drake in the gut on reflex, instead spinning around as quickly as his body would allow. 

This drake was different from Doma. While Doma was an old man who had grey scales covering his torso and upper arms, which were just a shade darker than his hair, and wore a thin shirt and drawstring pants, this drake was notably younger, maybe his late 20s or so, and had bright red scales and golden hair. This drake was shirtless, showing off a scaly torso rippling with muscles that honestly might have made Adrian jealous had he not been able to completely understand how Rosy thought about the guy from the moment that he walked in the room: Utter indifference with a hint of annoyance because of the guy's loud shout.

"Boone, you're back. Good. We should take this to the back room for now." Doma greeted the drake.

"Alright, elder."

'Elder?' Adrian asked Rosy telepathically.

'Drakes live by an honor system. The strongest or most honorable are considered for the role of king. Doma's the strongest, or at least he was, back when he was younger. He got denied the role of king, but his position in the Drakelands is still fairly high up.' Rosy explained as they followed Doma and Boone to a room in the back of the safehouse. 

The back room was a lot more roughly made than the front room. While the front room had walls lined with metal and something that looked like granite, the back room looked like it had been dug out recently with a pickaxe or something. There was a thin frame of metal holding the room together, but other than that, the walls were rough stone and the floor was just dirt with a stone table in the center of it. 

Leaving the dragons in the main room, which wasn't that big of a deal since it was a reinforced room without anything that they would be able to burn, the four of them gathered around the stone table.

"Alright, Boone. How are the corridors leading to the Arachne nest?" Doma started off the meeting by asking.

"Give me a second. I'll make a model." Boone raised his hand over the table and concentrated for a few seconds. Slowly, bumps began to appear on the table's otherwise smooth surface. After a few minutes of the bumps slowly appearing one by one, there was an entire three-dimensional stone labyrinth protruding from the table. In the center of the labyrinth was a fairly large room that Adrian was almost certain represented an area important to the Arachne.

"The north and west quadrants are packed the heaviest with traps. I got stalled here, here, and here by traps that we're not going to be able to simply burn and forget." Boone pointed to three different places on the map as he spoke. "With her by our side, the east is probably our best bet. The terrain's better for mobility, but the corridors that way are absolutely packed with the stupid spiders. The only real problem other than the high spider presence is the higher amount of webbing that comes with it, but we can use the dragons to deal with that."

"I'm kind of surprised. Did you just indirectly call me an asset in battle?" Rosy asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Of course. You're clearly more skilled than me, and us drakes respect that." Boone said without hesitation.

"And you're not concerned that I'll betray you?" She wondered. That was the main problem that Rosy and Adrian had come across so far, so it felt weird to be accepted so easily.

"No. You're stronger than me." Boone explained without batting an eye.

"You trust us completely because we're strong?" Adrian asked, confused.

"You're stronger than me. And the elder, here. If you tried to turn on us, there's nothing that we could really do to stop it, so there's no point in worrying about it!" Boone declared with confidence. It made complete sense. Rosy actually was that unreasonably strong when she tried to be, but the tone with which he said it made everyone in the room look at him like he was an absolute moron, because it sounded that stupid.

"Umm... I'm sort of glad to hear it...?" Rosy half-muttered.

"Of course! And if you could pound me into the ground in a fight once we're done killing the sticky bugs, I'd be eternally grateful!"

"Uummm..." Rosy pursed her lips, taken aback a bit.

'So he's an idiot.' Adrian thought. Rosy slowly nodded in response.