Dear reader. In this last season I have spent time convalescing in the Kingdom of Scales. In many ways, despite my loyalty to and origins in Draoidahaek, as a dragonkin this realm feels more like home to me. I have been treated with grace and dare I say, warmth. My wounds are healed. My mind recovers. My sceptre has been returned to me.

Dear reader, I must confess to you. The crown I gained in Xin was not my achievement to celebrate. The drowning beast was already injured, washed ashore after suffering a number of deep puncture wounds. I delivered the final blow when I recognized the barbs growing from its head as a magical crown, and I won the glory despite not earning it.

I wonder if that is why I have suffered. I am no longer as filled with excitement and hope for the sights of Gewinn as once I was. Domina Neferkare has been defeated. Perhaps by Iom. Perhaps following my murder of a woman I grew to appreciate as more than just a bedding companion. Perhaps I am unworthy on this dusk. Perhaps I am unworthy of the blessed status great Khufu Triple-Wand bestowed upon me.

I can recount for you this, though I shall omit passages that do me harm to think of them. I did escape Iom, but only through acts of great sacrifice. I did emerge in the Nithera Empire, and this time I knew it to truly be the imperial domain, as before long I was seized by dreadnauts who brutalized both myself and Sheos, who somehow found her way free with me, and while these dreadnauts were no different to Iom’s torturers, their dullard insistence on vapid questions of politics, invasion, and territory were wholly unlike the imaginings of the fae kingdom.

I was certain that Sheos and I would die in those cells, by my reckoning somewhere close to Mudriven, within but ten days of travel to my own, beloved Draoidahaek. I could practically smell the spiced tarts from Flirin’s Market, though I know that olfactory memory to be a self-constructed tormenting illusion. Each day we were dragged out and put through further indignities and agonies, and when they weren’t questioning us under their chimerical banner, they were making us wade through the thick muck of that town to burrow for their catfish and mudclams. Apparently this work is beneath the good folk of Nithera.

Aye, dear reader, I felt this would be the end of my tale. That if anyone found my journal, it would end with my plaintive intent to escape Iom. I mused whether some feyborn merchant might sell my incomplete thoughts to a magus from Draoidahaek as a novelty narrative, to read to children or for the amusement of other apprentice magi. I wept at the thought that I would be mocked after death. I realized that despite the inevitability of doom, I wanted to leave a legacy of greatness instead of a half-concluded destiny.

I engineered my escape. Despite past differences, I enlisted Sheos for the task, relying on her shapeshifting affinity to act as a distraction, if not a weapon. With Sheos I recruited several other prisoners, many of whom originated in kingdoms Emperor Supherus has been assaulting and raiding in recent years (Dys, Tsul Gazar, Pandemion, among others). The most curious of my newest companions was Zeldera, of the Kingdom of Shards.

Do not think me some traitor to doom and Draoidahaek that I would align with a forlorn from that realm. Here I address my good reader and archlich Khufu, who I know reads my mind. When attempting to overthrow the might of the imperial gauntlet, one finds allies in the strangest of locales. Verily, though it turned my stomach to work with her, Zeldera was a prestigious rootwinder, and I could scarcely turn away her elemental power or the crown she bore deep within her skull.

It was a coup, a revolution, a prison break, dear reader! Oho, it thrills me even now to think of the dreadnauts, Nitheran jailers, and weak prisoners who aligned with their wardens instead of the righteous escapees. But my thrill is subdued, I confess. Many of those righteous souls died, with several drowning in that thick mud as the Nitherans fought to turn the land against us. Only through Zeldera’s crown magic did we prevail and though she is no longer at my side, I hope that one day I might find her again and introduce her to the archliches of Draoidahaek. I believe there is much we might learn from her.

You may be wondering, dear reader, how this brings me to the Kingdom of Scales. For after all, Mudriven is closer to Draoidahaek and Tsul Gazar than the dragon kingdom. Perhaps fortuitous, mayhap fated, the great black dragon Olza-ku was in flight during our mutiny and laid waste to the Nitheran reinforcements ready to march into Mudriven. I saw over a hundred gauntlets and marauders perish in magical dark fire. It was glorious.

I knew this opportunity would not present itself again. I reclaimed my belongings (those not sold or destroyed by the Nitherans) from the remains of the prison storehouse and pled with the dragon to carry me to his home, revealing my scales to be opal black just like his. For a moment I suspected he might devour me, and I was ready for this. Instead, he lowered his head, allowed me to climb upon him, and in a matter of seconds we were in flight, leaving the empire and flying northeast to Scales.

You may not believe this tale, dear reader. It may feel too fantastical, especially following the events of the prior seasons. I give you my solemn word, however, that from here everything I write shall be truth. 

I am now in the Kingdom of Scales. This realm of deep chasms, snowtipped mountains, and broad, expansive fields feels so alive compared to the prisons from which I recently escaped. Scales is enormous. I could never explore every town, every village, every tomb, and every plain or forest. Nor, do I believe, has an inhabitant of Scales done the same. For while the dragons fly and view their vast realm from above, they do not know what their kin (such as myself) and the many humans, kobolds, and other creatures think or feel. They engender fear, for true, but they do not know every small nook and every uncomfortable cranny where a being in this kingdom might hide a valuable, a note, or a loved one.

What I am learning in my rest here is that as in most of the Monster Kingdoms, the peoples here are secretive and paranoid. I suspect not all of them welcome autocracy, but they have little option but to bend the knee and accept errant dragon strikes and make offerings to their betters to avoid arbitrary destruction. Scales, for all its size, ancient history, and even older wyrm dukes and duchesses, is a kingdom that feels ready to break apart.

I would not be surprised if the dragonkin and kobolds launched a coup that saw every dragon herein slain to protect the folk of this realm. But what then, dear reader? Would they install a new regime? Would they subject themselves to the mercies of the Nithera Empire?

Politics is not my place. My suspicions, therefore, are that Scales is wracked with the same turmoil as every other kingdom, but that turmoil is invisible unless you dwell with these people, observe their fears, and note down (as I do) how they look up at the sky in terror whenever a shadow passes overhead. They may claim fierce devotion to the dragons, but I assure you, they are praying that the darkness cast is from clouds, not wyrms.