//------------------------------//
// 73 - Done, but not Gone 
// Story: Bind on Pickup 
// by David Silver 
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Smolder set out onto the streets of the city. She was done with the niceties of the human district, and her belly warm with drink, she set out to the part of the city she really liked: the demihuman district.

It was late and things weren’t rowdy anymore, but the warm lights and warm temperatures of the open restaurants were much more friendly than the closed off little palaces the humans preferred. 

Then there was Pella's shop! Smolder smiled brightly as she approached her friend and mentor. "Hey!" They met, palm against palm in a high four both could enjoy. "How's business?"

Pella suddenly had a knife pointed at Smolder. "So, when were you going to tell me?"

Smolder put up her hands placatingly. "Woah, easy there. What didn't I tell you?"

Pella rolled her eyes. "The eyes of the entire district are on you, friend. You came down from 70." Her tongue seemed to curl as she said it again with emphasis, "Seventy." She rubbed two fingers together softly. "You are pushing into the stuff of legends, and you ask me what you haven't said. Chica, I am ready to slap you, then hug you. And maybe a slap afterwards."

“Oh.” Smolder laughed. “I’m sorry, we’ve been real busy with actually getting up the tower. Lots of prepwork. And, well, you know the value of that, right?”

Pella sighed with half lidded eyes and a smile. “Yes, you want all the ingredients ready before you start.”

“That’s right, if anything it’s great I ran into you tonight, as we used the prestige of getting past sixty to get into one of those hoity toity human places.” Smolder leaned over, waggling her eyebrows.

An eyebrow was raised. “Scandalous. Did you ruffle some feathers?”

“There were a lot of forced smiles.” Smolder’s smile was anything but forced as she described the culinary delights found in the extremely high class restaurant they just ate at.

“About halfway through, though, they swapped waiters? The new waiter’s smiles were a lot less forced.” Smolder turned her eyes up in thought. “She was actually kind of like… too excited?”

An ear and head cocked as Pella blinked. “I guess they decided to be nice?”

“Well, it was right after we mentioned how good the gems in the salad tasted, and they were all surprised we could taste them.”

There was a moment of pause, then Pella sucked air through her teeth. "So, it's true then."

"What is?" Smolder reached for a kebab. Not that she needed it, but it was a familiar and comforting food. "That we got to 70? Heck yeah!"

"Not that." Pella reached to tap her student on the nose. "You really are dragons."

Smolder blinked blankly. "I'm sorry? I thought that was a given at this point."

"You don't understand." Pella leaned forward, resting her arms on her cart. "Dragons are not demis."

Smolder struggled to assemble that properly. "Demis is a dumb term anyway. You're all way different from each other. It's the humans that lumped that on you. So, yeah. I'm not you, and you're not me." She waggled a finger between herself and Pella. "I knew that."

"I knew that… But there is some connection between us demis." She smirked faintly, inclining her head faintly. "A connection you don't have. You've thrown off the demi weight and taken on a whole new batch of dragon weight. Girl, you're still mine."

"Good!" blurted Smolder. "You were starting to sound like you were about to chase me off."

"What do you think I am, a human?" She chuckled softly at the idea. "We're cool."

"Great." Smolder chomped the rest of the meat off the stick and dropped it where it could be cleaned and re-used. "Seriously, this changes nothing. I was a dragon from day one. You were awesome from day, uh, before that." She leveled a finger at Pella. "I'll never forget you."

Pella suddenly dropped a hand on Smolder's head, grabbing her. "This ain't about us." She drew Smolder in closer. "There are some people, watching you, your group. They were hoping, praying… You were a symbol, that we could do it. Everything humans said we couldn't, you were doing…"

Smolder swallowed heavily, the last of her meal gone. It seemed to dawn on her, slowly clicking into place. "They thought we were demis, and they thought if we could be that awesome, so could they?"

Pella shoved her back. "I knew you'd get it." She crossed her arms under her chest. "That human will not be quiet. You're a dragon. You're all dragons. The city will know in days. Everyone will know. Your life will get easier. The idea that a dragon could go that high? Not so hard to imagine. Demis? Trash, always were. Silly us, thinking different."

Smolder furrowed her brow. “That’s… that’s nowhere near what we’re trying to do, Pella. You-you know that, right?”

“That doesn’t make it wrong, Smolder,” Pella said with a sigh. “I love ya, and I know that you weren’t doing anything to try to show us up, and the humans were hardly nice, but…” She looked down to her student. “Things’re gonna change.”

“They don’t have to,” Smolder said. “Things absolutely don’t have to change. I prefer it here. The human stuff was fancy but boy was it stuffy and even the excited waiter made me feel uncomfortable. I’m comfortable here.”

Pella looked to the side. “There’s another thing… They say this was all really telegraphed because of how you were hanging around with that human, too.”

“What, Sandra?” Smolder gestured her best dismissive gesture. “She’s super harmless. Like, she’s way better than before, but she’s mostly following our lead, not the other way around.”

“That doesn’t matter and maybe makes it worse.” 

Smolder could but apply her palm to her face. "Look… I need to talk, to the others." She suddenly reached forward to grab Pella's less guarded hand. "I'm not ending this."

"They're gonna end it for you, girl," Pella warned, but a little smile grew despite it. "Still, thanks for being you."

"What else would I be?" With a lopsided smirk, she continued on her way, hurriedly marching towards her room, where the others could be found.

Attuned to it, she could hear people talking around her. Word was already traveling. They weren't calling her a demi anymore. She was a dragon. People ducked out of the way without asking. Humans just assumed she was worth making room for. It was like her situation had reversed. Dragons were greater than humans.

She did not expect the sharp point of a rapier to be leveled with her chest. "Pardon?" The guy holding it was familiar. A fencer, that fencer! "Hey! Been a while."

"It has been some time." He waggled the rapier at her. "I thought you were making noise, a reptile demi with grand dreams."

Smolder rolled her eyes. "I never once said I was something other than a dragon and you know it."

Tomás raised his rapier. "This is true, Senorita, but it is also true that were I to prevail against you, I could increase my standing by quite a bit."

Smolder hiked a brow up at the man. "You coulda just kept going up the tower." She waved at the great monolithic thing that could be seen all through the city. "I thought you quit caring about that."

Tomás let his weapon dance left and right slowly. "I am done with the tower, but we are not in the tower, are we? A fight, fair. Me against a dragon that cleared to 70? It seems agreeable to me. I challenge you!"

Smolder looked back and forth. People were already taking interest, she looked back at the fencer, ready to fight. It couldn’t hurt, right, doing something impressive? She pulled out her twin daggers, spinning them around into a battle stance. “Fine, let’s do this.”

Tomás cracked a smile, and his rapier went up and his whole body stance changed, as he moved up with a thin line exposed, his rapier thrusting lightning quick at Smolder. She contorted her body so this was more of a graze, but it hit her nonetheless. She took a hop back, but pressed her own attack, only to find his rapier was there to meet her and she backed off again.

She held her daggers up in a ready position as she tried to circle him. She was pretty sure she was out of his range, but that was a fairly long range. She tried to clandestinely reach back into her pouch for some food to recover, and he exploded into action, both moving forward and lunging his body at her. She could only barely avoid the attack, but the pouch itself was hit, magic jerky spilling out onto the floor. She stuffed the bit of jerky in her hand into her mouth, chewing, rolling away again as he reoriented himself.

He pressed his attack with no  pause, moving forward without putting himself off balance, allowing his rapier to become an unceasing flurry of attacks, none of which cleanly hit, but he was too far away for her to strike, and she backed up with every attack, even as she bat away his rapier time and time again.

As she continued to dodge and bat away, she felt a terrible issue, as she heard a faint tink noise, and she couldn’t move her tail backwards. She cursed under her breath, that was a wall behind her, wasn’t it?

There was a gleam in Tomás’s eye as he pulled his rapier up again. Smolder dodged backward again, the presence of the wall behind her keen in her mind. It was terrible luck… if it was luck at all. This fight was showing her just how difficult it was to get hits in against an opponent without her team creating openings for her. Without her team being fed and nourished by her. Her class was fundamentally a teamwork class, where she created items, exploited openings created by them, and it was becoming very clear that his class was a duelist.

But, as he lashed out with a fierce lunge, she had no intention of actually giving up. She pushed her legs off of the wall, her daggers batting away his rapier as she got inside of his range, slashing at him in broad swipes from opposing directions.

Though he had worked hard to get her to the dire point, his eagerness to pin her meant he had let her get close to him. He was forced back in surprise only for her to dance backwards in a new direction, away from the wall.

"What's going on here?" Guards had arrived, shoving people aside to get to the fight. The one in charge seemed to look between their chains. "You should both know matches are done at the arena, not in the middle of the street!" But he didn't move to arrest either of them, perhaps deferring to the high ranks of the two he was dealing with. "Take it there, kindly."

The two combatants looked at the guards, then to each other, and simultaneously resheathed their weapons. Tomás looked to Smolder and gestured in the direction of the arena. “Shall we?”

Smolder raised an eyebrow, but decided to go with it, and made the same gesture. “After you.”

Tomás’ laughter rang out as the two of them moved in the direction of the arena, a crowd still following them.