Days on horseback finally gave way to a proper bed, soft enough to sink into.
Erwin took a hot bath and slept through the afternoon under a goose-down quilt.
By evening, he woke and joined his six men for a proper meal at the inn.
The Sapphire Inn’s kitchen matched anything the palace could turn out, by local standards, though nothing here came close to what modern food science could manage back home.
Erwin ate without much enthusiasm, picking at a few dishes, frowning outright at one or two.
His men had no such reservations.
They ate like they’d never see food again, and by most measures, they hadn’t eaten this well in their lives.
It only deepened their sense that they’d landed with the right lord.
The farmers he’d hired got their own share below stairs, thick soup and soft bread, and left just as full of praise for his generosity.
Once supper was done, Erwin sent everyone off, had Willem post a guard at the courtyard gate with orders to let no one near, and shut himself in his room alone.
He opened his collection and spoke to the empty room.
“Care to get some air?”
A voice answered, one only he could hear.
“You damned human.
Caging the Black Dragon Broodmother like some pet.
I’ll see you pay for this.”
“Sure you will.” Erwin rolled his eyes.
Same fire in her as ever.
“You haven’t worked out where you actually stand yet, have you?
Is this really a cage?
Do you honestly think I have that kind of power?”
“I’ve told you this before.
You were a dragon in a game, back in my world.
I earned your reins fair and square, and you became my mount.
Then something dragged both of us here.
I’m just as angry about it as you are.
Just as stuck.”
“Neither of us is getting home.
We’re in this together whether either of us likes it or not.
You understand that much?”
Silence answered him.
That voice was Onyxia, sitting in his collection.
The last time he’d summoned her, she’d screamed at him without pause, deaf to every explanation he offered, until he’d finally dismissed her back into storage.
He’d since discovered he could reach her without summoning her body at all, some quirk of the system letting her voice through whenever he chose to listen.
The choice ran only one way, though.
Unless he opened the line himself, whatever she shouted from inside that collection stayed shut out completely.
Tonight, with time on his hands, he’d decided to try again.
Her silence felt like an opening.
“That space you’re in…” he tried again.
“There’s nothing there, is there?
Doesn’t it get lonely?
Empty?
Come out for a while.”
Nothing.
“Onyxi—”
“Don’t say that name.”
Her voice cut across him before he finished it, sharp as before.
Still just for him to hear.
“Fine.” He spread his hands.
“Can’t keep calling you nothing forever, though.
Give me something to call you.”
A cold snort came first, then, after a pause, an answer.
“Katrana Prestor.
That’s the name I wore in human skin, if you didn’t already know.”
“Kat, then.”
“No one gave you leave to shorten it.
Use the whole thing.”
“That’s a mouthful.” He let the complaint hang, then shifted.
“You know, when people ask my name here, I go by Augustus.
But I’ve been thinking.
I want to add yours to it.
Augustus Prestor, from here on.”
“My own name’s Erwin.
Names work differently where I’m from, differently here too.
I thought, why not carry yours alongside mine?”
“What do you make of that?”
“Hmph.” Another snort.
“Not much.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Why tell me something that means nothing to me?”
“It’s not nothing, though.” Erwin sensed the door cracking open, and reached for whatever charm he still remembered from talking women around back home.
“I picked your name because it’s the one you wore as a person.
Way I see it, carrying it makes us something close to family.
Every time someone says it, I’ll think of you.”
“You’re the only one in this whole strange world I actually trust.”
Family.
The only one worth trusting.
Somewhere inside the void of her own corner of the collection, Onyxia went still.
It had been a long time since anyone had said that word to her.
And trust, on top of it.
Her father was Neltharion, Aspect of the black dragonflight, known better as Deathwing.
Her brother, Nefarian, led the flight itself.
Both of them had inherited their father’s cunning and his ambition, and both had thrown themselves into his grand design, using politics and war together to burn Azeroth down to nothing and hand the ashes to their own kind.
Onyxia’s part in it had been to wear the face of Lady Katrana Prestor in Stormwind, sowing trouble through the human lands to bleed the Alliance dry from the inside.
It hadn’t worked.
She’d died for it, cut down in her own lair in Dustwallow Marsh, her skull mounted afterward in Stormwind’s square for anyone to gawk at.
Her father had only ever seen her as a tool worth using.
Her brother’s love had curdled into something closer to obsession, a need to own her outright.
Even her death hadn’t stopped him.
He’d taken her skull back, stitched it into some ruined puppet of dragon bone and machinery, and forced it to move again with fel magic.
To Onyxia, family had only ever meant one thing.
Being used, and being owned.
The memory brought the growl back into her voice.
“Never say that word to me again.
And don’t think for one moment you’ll control me the way they did.”
“I’d rather rot forever in that dark than trust anyone again.”
“You damned human.”
Nothing Erwin said after that brought her back.
…..
Full refund, no questions asked.