I will not deny it. In exploring your fears I have learned that you have much reason to desire the utter destruction of those who oppress the most vulnerable members of society. I offer you the fall of Minrathous, an end to the capital city of the empire that enslaved both your ancestors and your holy prophet. An end to those whose lust for power led them to become the very threat you rush to save your country from now. The streets shall run red with magister blood.

In return, I ask only that you act to preserve your own life.

We are of one cause.

"Huh. Gimme a sec to confer with my people."

Of course.

"Well. Opinions?"

"Man, he could've just not expanded on his plans," says Fazil with a sigh. "I would've gone for 'I'm probably gonna keep being evil but not in any well-specified way.'"

"Yup. Super could have done that."

"Bless. Aid. Protection from Evil. Shield of Faith. Magic Vestment."

"Holy Aura," says Hagan.

"Good parties," says Mahdi with a sigh. "Haste."

"We're super gonna die."

He's spinning fire in between his hands.

"Welp. We have a unanimous vote in favor of 'fuck you'."

The walls melt. They are on a patch of dirt that dissolves into yellow haze a few paces away from them in all directions.

There is what appears to be a giant undead dragon in front of them. It roars.

Then perish.

Mahdi makes Hagan a bow. 

The dragon breathes fire at all of them. It aims its claws at Mahdi.

Aaaah he's on fire. He's gonna focus on, uh, shooting fire back at it? It probably doesn't have blood to manipulate. Lots and lots of fire before he goes up in flames.

She slashes at its legs with her bamboo stick as the claw attack passes her. It doesn't seem to affect it very much.

Well, dragon. Fazil channels energy at it. Hagan, to his annoyance, cannot do that since at the dinner party he decided he wanted to spontaneously cast inflict spells. He gives himself infinite ammunition and shoots it three times. " - think we need magic weapons -"

Mahdi takes off flying.

The dragon bites Fazil and tosses him through the air. It aims a second sweep of its claws at Draconis, who has not figured out how to fly and ends up bleeding on the ground with no one to absorb the blow for him. It then continues breathing fire.

She charges it, heedless of the burns this produces. It rakes its claws in her direction. She's armored, so it doesn't completely wreck her, but it knocks her back, hard.

They can't fight a - no, that's not necessarily accurate. They can't fight a dragon in the waking world but right now he has fifteen extra cleric levels even if he spent most of the spells fighting his way out of a dinner party and needs far too much thought to recall what he has -

- Aria gets protection from energy, dragon gets possibly-pointlessly shot -

Protection from energy's great, but she's not, actually, well-armed enough to make very much headway by stabbing it, and she doesn't even know if the thing has vitals to attack.

Mahdi gets knocked out of the sky. 

Hagan gets bathed in fire again.

She closes her eyes and focuses.

 - okay they actually probably cannot beat a dragon who can knock Mahdi at haste-speed out of the sky - 

Focuses, focuses, focuses. Pictures herself becoming the Tarrasque.

When she opens her eyes she is very, very, very large. Larger than the dragon. And she's hungry. 

She charges.

What.

She did not honestly expect this to work but this is true of most of the things she's done that have worked, so.

She bites the dragon. There is the very loud sound of crunching bones. 

She swallows it.

She wakes up in her cell, with North whimpering and licking her face. She sits up. Still feels super hungry, honestly, and seems about equally stuck as she was when she went to sleep, but at least she's not in the Fade.

Hagan awake?

Yeah. 

He looks at her and then gestures for her to lie back down.