"Mama! Mama! I saw the dragon!"

Little Varilortha cried out to her mother while running up and tugging at her skirt.

"Oh, did you now, my little Sundancer?"

"Yes, Mama. The dragon walked down the road and made it better."

The girl's mother smiled warmly at her daughter, all the while continuing to knead the bread she labored to prepare in time for the evening meal.

"Perhaps your father will be right behind him then, coming home at last after the moot over there in Dawngate."

"Really, do you think so, Mama?" the little girl asked excitedly as she jumped up and down.

"Oh, something tells me he will be just as soon as he finishes thanking the good dragon for the new road."

Newer and safer roads would lead to an increase in the quantity and frequency of merchants, and the mother of the family looked forward to that almost as much as her husband's safe return. With her Blessing of [Homemaker], her quaint little cottage was the pride of the community, with its humble but otherwise well-curated collection of decorations. It also allowed her to detect that her husband was indeed splitting off onto the pathway that led to their hamlet. With proper timing, he would arrive just after the dough was set aside to rest.

Varilortha ran around the table once in excitement before coming back to rub her head into her mother's skirt.

"I miss Papa. I hope he is okay."

"And that he remembered your present, if I am to guess."

A shy girl, caught in her inquiry before she could even move on to that topic, rubbed her head deeper into her mother's hip. The mother just grinned and beared the forehead pressing right to the side of her pelvis, as all good mothers do.

"Why don't you go outside and let me know when you see him? I think a little bird told me that it could hear his voice upon the wind."

Excited again, the little girl bolted outside and down the hill to the main pathway through the hamlet, her eyes peeled for any sign of her father. There were other children there as well, for a hamlet of this size was not large enough to have true aldermen, so most of the men had travelled to the next town over for a meeting to discuss the dragon and the likely offer that would extend to them some day.

Before the small talk, bickering, and bullying that children are prone to indulging in could commence, one jumped and shouted, with finger extended, at the approaching figures.

"Look, look! Here they come."

Blessedly mindful of their manners, the children waited as patiently as they could as they hopped up and down in excitement, for running out of the hamlet in that direction was forbidden for safety reasons.

Eventually, a tall and handsome elf, the kind with fair skin and blond hair, scooped up his awaiting daughter and hoisted her high into the air.

"Woah! You are getting so heavy now with all that growth. Soon, you will be the one lifting me up."

Little Varilortha squealed excitedly before clamoring to ride piggyback. The father graciously acquiesced, although he dramatically exaggerated with lumbering steps that she burdened him so. Varilortha laughed all the more for his dramatic antics, and eventually, the pair of them made their way into their cottage. There, an elven woman, also of fair skin and blonde hair, was making the finishing touches of setting the dough aside to rest.

"I have returned to the warm embrace of your arms once again, my love," the man greeted his wife in elvish.

"May you always find your way back to me, my love," she replied back in the same language.

A certain imp tugged at both of them as they were disgustingly mushy with one another.

"Oh, does my little Sundancer want something?" The man asked. "Hmm, whatever could it be?" One hand stroked his chin in ponderous thought while the other made a fist on his hip as he exaggerated his contemplations.

"Papa, you promised, remember!" the little girl almost squealed in protest. She made efforts not to pout at his teasing, as she was a big girl now and it would be improper for her to throw a tantrum.

"Oh, I think I remember now!" the man continued. "It was something about more vegetables on your plate at dinner, right?"

The little girl blanched at his suggestion, then impatiently tapped her foot as she tried unsuccessfully to not let irritation show on her face.

"Oh, not that then. Maybe it was this," he continued as he reached into a leather pouch on the side of his belt and pulled out a little bundle wrapped in simple cloth.

Eager hands reached up to the awaited offering, and almost as fast, they were about to unveil the contents when a disapproving sound came from the mother's mouth.

"What do we say, young lady?"

"Thank you, Papa," the little girl replied sheepishly as she awaited an approving nod from her mother.

No sooner had the nod come than did her mood shift back to rapid excitement. Cloth soon found itself parted, and within, a prize awaited.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you, Papa!" the little girl continued as she hugged him tightly around the waist, for that was all the higher she could reach.

"You're welcome, my little Sundancer. Now, show your mother; I don't think she got a chance to see it."

The little girl held up her new prize. It was a doll, one of an anthropomorphic bunny rabbit with a blue dress. The ears were slightly pointier than normal though, to make it clear that it was based off of an elf and not a human, as far as anthropomorphism went.

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"Her name is Miss Welleringtonbottom. She is a [Noble] lady from the big city who has come here to be my friend and to hide away from assassins and a man that she doesn't want to marry. She insists that, for all our safety, we have more meat and fewer vegetables at dinner to throw off her pursuers."

The parents looked at each other with questioning glances. Their daughter had an unusually creative and speedy imagination. They gave each other a wry smile as they caught how cleverly she had woven in a comment about vegetables.

"Well, a fancy lady like that needs a fancy coin to show off her wealth, and I have one right here for her."

From his pouch, the man produced a simple wooden coin of a species of tree that he could not identify. At least, it looked like wood, with the same pattern of the grain, although it felt too dense. And for an elf, not being able to identify a tree by its wood spoke was noteworthy in the sense that it must be exotic or unnatural. Carefully, he handed it to his daughter who was more than happy to accept more presents. On one side, it had an image of a dragon walking across a bridge, and on the other, the strange symbols she knew to mean numbers and letters, but literacy was still beyond her means.

The little elven girl soon became distracted by the machinations of her imagination, for her new toys would only truly be hers after some well-deserved playtime. And as she played, her parents talked in hushed tones.

"The doll is lovely, and our little Sundancer appreciates it dearly, but what kind of coin was that?"

The slight air of concern and the general passive disapproval of the unknown did not escape her husband's notice.

"Worry not, my love. The dragon made a little shrine next to the road. There is a slot there, where, if you put your hand in it, a coin like that comes out. It isn't worth anything, and so I have heard, every intersection of his roads has such a shrine, and each one gives a similar yet different coin, serving as something for a traveller to collect, or so I assume. It isn't magical as far as I can tell, and they are free to all who want one. Seemingly an emphasis on 'one', as none of us could get it to give us a second coin."

The woman relaxed, if only for a moment, before she grilled him further by asking her next question, only this time with a raised eyebrow and an upturned palm as a gesture.

"The moot went well. Most are favorable to joining the dragon when the time comes, if he ever makes it over this far west. Some are worried about reprisal if we accept his offer, but word from afar says that those who joined are living the life of luxury. Those who have seen it swear up and down that it is all true, but I wonder what the catch could be. I am not sure what to make of it yet, but I guess we just have to keep our heads down and our eyes open until we see which way the wind is blowing."

Though his debriefing was, well, brief, it provided enough to soothe his wife's immediate concerns. Indeed, similar conversations were taking place in other hamlets and villages in the region and in other provinces in the Theocracy of Ulsfarh. Additionally, all such places were getting a little more than that to sweeten the deal, and the wife, not born yesterday, pressed on with her discerning and hardened gaze.

"And, my love, there is also this." From his pouch, the husband pulled out a brick-shaped object of wood, one with a hole on one end with a cork to stop its contents from spilling out. He removed the cork and poured the powder of life into his hands.

"Salt!" the wife exclaimed with as loud a whisper that her composure could suppress the evident surprise at such a turn. "That must cost a fortune! How much did it cost? Did you just spend our savings on it?"

The man tried to raise his hands in a peaceful gesture, but with his hands so full of something precious, all he could manage was a shrug, which just made things look worse.

"Peace, love, it was given to us freely."

The wife's face contorted into a visage of calculation and concentration as she worked out the truth behind the offering of salt, a vital component to preserving food and an essential mineral for the body to survive. Besides the obvious, it finally clicked, and she explained her reasoning and concern.

"Free salt, besides being a clear bribe to butter us up, is a gift. A gift means no sale, and no sale means no tax on the salt. Our [Nobles] depend upon the salt tax, amongst other taxes, to sustain themselves. A clever ploy if the dragon can afford it, but it will only continue to antagonize the [Nobles] to no end. Depriving them of revenue and peasantry will drive them into a corner, the one where they keep the tools of war. This could blow back upon us if we are not careful."

The husband looked a little concerned at that, and a tad sheepish too.

"I had not considered that. I knew it was a bribe, but that makes more sense. And it will devastate the local salt merchants. There were promises of more gifts to come, such as food and magical tools. It sounds too good to be true, but if what you say is true, then the dragon plans to buy our loyalty and completely undermine our [Nobles] without the use of violence. Our [Nobles], with no means to compete, will turn to war, which will bring consequences most dire, considering the gods have banned such barbarism because of that big war down south. What do we do, love?"

As the brains of the family, the wife found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. No one would be so foolish as to turn down free goods, especially with the prospect of war on the horizon. Serfdom bound them to the land, and so simply packing up and moving would not be permitted. But theirs was a small and insignificant hamlet, and so simply waiting out the times of strife could work if the dragon has no interest in raiding. He would stick to the big cities, and so, it would behoove them to hunker down and cache whatever supplies they could.

"We are on the wrong side of the country to make it all the way to the dragon to seek sanctuary," she started as she shook her head slightly. "That would require us to travel hundreds of miles and to slip past far too many checkpoints and patrols explicitly looking for people like us. While the dragon may be able to send his agents and a few gifts our way, he will not be able to abscond with entire villages.

"We need to hunker down, call in our favors, stock up on all our supplies, and prepare to weather this storm. I am sure that the others are talking of this very thing as we speak, so we must act swiftly and discreetly so we are not caught out. There could be loyalists amongst us that would sell us out for a few scraps from our lords. Best we appear publicly neutral as we keep our eyes and ears open for a way out of this mess."

She turned her gaze to her only child, her little Sundancer.

"After all, we risk everything, that which is most precious in the world. We cannot afford to misstep here."

The husband, having returned the salt to its container, and having set it aside, took his wife in his arms and pulled her close in his embrace.

"I will protect both of you, my love. You have steered us well ever since the day we met, and I will trust in your judgement."

While the pair of them shared a moment of mushy affection that their daughter found to be too gross for her tastes, the little Sundancer continued to play with her new doll, all the while oblivious to its subtle yet clearly magical properties.

Nearby the village, a whelp, one belonging to the Crossroad Wayfinders, listened in to the conversations being carried out in all the households of the village. Such a small draconic creature was not itself intelligent enough to understand what it heard, but it directly relayed its sensory information back to the one that created it.

Naturally, that dragon is me, the Emperor of the Crossroad Wayfinders. With my many streams of consciousness available to me, I relegated some to listening in. Was it an invasion of privacy? Undoubtedly. Did it provide me insight into the hearts and minds of the common masses and what concerns they would have? Absolutely. And both their casual and serious conversations would provide me with the raw information from which I could formulate my next moves.

After all, these are good and honest folks. They are the exact kind of people I need for my burgeoning empire to progress. While I venture into hubris to say I know what is best for them, and thus, am justified in my means when it comes to providing for them, I do know more details about the greater political landscape of their country, the Theocracy of Ulsfarh. Political institutions may find themselves in an adversarial posture in relation to my own goals, but ordinary people are just trying to survive.

I would see the common masses not just survive, but thrive. Their current leadership is bloated, corrupt, avaricious, and generally incompetent at anything that doesn't enhance their personal lifestyles. I will fix that, one bribe, scheme, and manipulation at a time, until all the desirable people are firmly in my pocket and the rest are purged.

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