Policeman and the cat

50 - A bit weird

Ian's type of person was not common by any means, but some people like that popped up from time to time - the kind who learned to turn their fear into a mix of admiration and fascination. Rather than fearing, those types plain and outright liked dragons and dragons loved to play with them. But being a dragon's plaything was merely a shortcut to the grave. Not because dragons outright killed those people, but because dragons tried to groom them into being more powerful by-- using dragon logic for getting to be more powerful.

If a dragon wanted to be more powerful, they didn't waste time, they attacked someone twice as strong as them. So for their playthings, they looked up a doubly strong opponent and sent it after them and so over and over. Till they were either dead, or hero, and then the dragon claimed them, at the peak of their power, to make them into something immortal and fitting their preferences.

Ian had escaped becoming Ceruleum's plaything by a thin margin without even realizing it. That's what the question - 'would it be a problem if Ian runs into trouble' had been actually about and there was no way August would not realize it, having dated one. Had it been 'no problem' then Ian would be well on his way towards that sort of journey, but most likely, die trying. And if he had succeeded, then Ceruleum would claim him at the peak of his power and reforge him into a legendary weapon. That was Ceruleum's preference.

Most of this had been a mushy mix of intuition for both Nelly and Chilli and each of them had tried their best to do something and be something that would prevent things from going that way.

They also sensed, by intuition, that Purple was an ally, that he also tried to prevent things from going quite like this by suggesting a way for Ian to become valuable in a different sense to dragons - an ambrosia maker. To dragons, ambrosia was the same as catnip for cats. It was not even uncommon for some dragons to become something like semi-pets, lingering around ambrosia makers.

But then Lorenz blabbered, girls appeared, things got frightening in a different sense and they figured that the best way to keep Ian safe was to get him to have the most horrid reputation, yet backed by a dragon who would 99/100 not take a special sort of liking to him. Ian was, as a person, right up the alley for most dragons, but not for Bermont, or so it had seemed for Kenneth, Nelly and Chilli alike from all the bits of information they had picked up about Bermont.

Bermont had only ever taken a liking to - 1) females, 2)familial and faithful types, 3)busybodies, yes, but never into anything risky. And no one quite knew what his collection was, but it seemed to have something to do with types like those. And differently to most dragons who didn't quite panic if their person of choice perished, Bermont didn't care only if it was a natural cause.

But he did also like ambrosia a lot, so he shouldn't be hard to talk into being a taste-tester. A few smooth tricks to make it look like something was going on, then eventually come out about it being due to ambrosia when Ian was strong enough to at least reliably escape from most paladins. And things would have rolled about just right. Grisham would figure what this was about as well and wouldn't raise any panic, but not outright deny things either.

But things had gone TOO well. And the fact that Guild had taken a stance of 'well, good that we at least know, but let's prepare just in case' meant that some Oracles had done divining to confirm the facts and right now Nelly and Chilli also knew that it wasn't due to ambrosia.

Not that any of them disliked Bermont, they wouldn't have a mixed alignment right now had that been the case, but dragons were fishy - if they liked someone they wanted to collect them and that meant that most likely one day Bermont would reforge Ian into his collection item. But that time would likely be moments before natural death, that seemed to be the rule for people Bermont liked to collect.