I should take some time to appreciate the countryside... but to be honest, it's basically just vast expanses of nothing. I mean, sure, all the way to the east, at least I think it's the east given that the sun rises from that way, there's some big huge desert, then there's rolling hills and a big mountain that's directly under me.

  Far to the north is a huge ice wall. Far to the south is another huge ice wall.

  Huh.

  Freaky. This world doesn't have ice caps. It has huge fucking mountains of ice that stick out from where the vast plains of nothing but ice and snow should be. Interesting but, not totally or terribly relevant, so instead I just slowed down a little more and went lower, so that I could perceive closer things to the surface, meaning I had to go under the cloud cover.

  Once I went past the white and ice cold clouds, I could start seeing things more clearly, and I was getting closer to the ocean by the second. My eyes could easily see that there were many villages strewn about, and even some bigger towns, places with actual buildings and not just shacks or tents... Not too far from the Argentum tribe and thus not far from my lair, there was even a large walled city, and I could see signs of recent battles.

  Animals and monsters would deal quickly with the remnants of battles, but piles of corpses in a valley, both human and not, stuck out nevertheless... But that was none of my concern until it started spilling over my way.

  So I paid it no mind, and instead spread my wings to slow down my descent as I started to come closer to the ocean's level, flying past quite a few small villages and even what seemed to be a nomadic tribe's encampment, using my power to cancel out my momentum and bleeding it off as I slowed down, pulling my legs, all four of them, into my body as I used my head like a spear's tip to break the surface tension of the water.

  Now, I know, intellectually, that hitting the water at the velocity I was flying at, even having slowed down, should've resulted in me splatting against the surface tension, it's actually pretty strict and past a certain point it's basically no different than hitting face first into a brick wall.

  I'm not surprised to say, it might as well have been me slowly stepping into the water for all that the surface tension stopped me.

  Swiftly and quickly, I pulled my wings and furled them up, then spread them again. I don't need to swim, I can simply fly with the same ease as I can in the air, under the water. The water will not stop me, and I can use the same powers that allow me to fly, channeled through my wings, in the water. Alright, good to know.

  Also good to know, I still need to hold my breath.

  And that means, no breath weapon underwater, as I need to breathe in to launch it. Not cold, not heat, not even pure destructive force, if I didn't breathe in to launch it, it wouldn't come out, that was an issue, and something I'd need to be aware of if and when I needed to actually engage in battles in the future.

  I can also confirm that I can see in the ocean with ease, though my sight range is greatly decreased. I suppose that makes sense, water doesn't let light through as easily as air does, and the deeper, the darker, on top of that, it wasn't exactly clean either, with tons upon tons of little fishes everywhere, plants of all kinds, and if I focused, in the far distance and deep depths I could see some large prey.

  Alright, time to get to it.

  I flew through the water into the depths, approaching what I thought was some sort of whale at first, but it didn't take me long to get close enough to perceive it was a bit bigger than a whale, and more importantly, it had a really long neck, a thick tail and long limbs that ended in webbed hands that looked like flippers.

  Okay.

  Water dragon?

  It turned to look at me, and it seemed pissed.

  Definitely a water dragon.

  And then it opened its mouth and despite the distance between us being what I think is dozens of kilometers between us, it struck me instantly, making my ears ring and my eyes hurt. That was quite painful actually, I think he must've fired some sort of water based attack at me, maybe a beam of sheer pressure.

  It was rushing at me at great speeds, and for a moment I panicked, immediately breaking and blasting upwards as fast as I could, breaking the surface and increasing my speed immediately, behind me came up the water dragon, it was way bigger than me now that it'd gotten close enough to see for sure, but once we were out of the water-

  It blasted me with hyper highly pressurized water, and I barely avoided having it strike my wings, putting my hand above it, it felt like getting blasted with the world's strongest powerwashing machine, ripping several scales off and actually gouging a cut in my flesh.

  Good news, I have fast speed regeneration too, I made sure of that.

  Bad news, IT HURTS LIKE A BITCH.

  And that made me REALLY FUCKING ANGRY.

  Turning around in mid air with a U turn that actually broke the sound barrier like a whiplash, I breathed in through my nostrils, opened my mouth, and blasted the biggest and strongest stream of pure destructive energy that I could, a blast of white energy that distorted the very air and world around itself as it struck the Water Dragon, which hadn't even started falling back down to the water yet.

  Its head was incinerated in moments, and so was much of its neck, and the blast caught the end of its tail too, eliminating the fin there, before hitting the water and punching a hole through it all the way to the bottom, where it exploded with a force that would put nuclear bombs to shame, creating a gigantic wall of water that rose in the form of a tsunami, and no doubt, shaking the world underneath it, the spiraling force of the explosion causing a gigantic storm to develop as well.

  For fuck's sake I did it again!

  In a hurry, I made a split second decision, sweeping my mouth across the forming tidal wave and loosing a much weaker beam, creating a counter force that should cancel- it didn't cancel out shit it actually just made the waves bigger.

  God fucking dammit why is not being an engine of destruction so hard!?

  My next idea was actually to just fly up, gain height, then dive bomb and fly through the wave at speed, breaking it with the impact... and that actually worked!

  A little, anyway. I had to do a couple passes to get the entirety of the wave to calm, and even then, there'd probably be some pretty huge waves, because this solution also wasn't flawless, in fact it was mostly flaws really, but hey.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I stopped the tidal wave. That's gotta be worth something. Probably. Maybe.

  Deciding I was fully prepared to pretend absolutely none of that had just happened, I decided to leave the corpse of the dragon I'd just killed be, and instead, I dove back into the water, to look for a giant fish instead. It took me the better part of an hour, but I did eventually find a huge fish. And when I say huge fish, I mean, I don't know what kind of fish it is, it kinda looks like trout, but the size of, roughly, a bus.

  A double decker bus.

  It tried to flee the moment it saw me, but, I was way faster than that thing could ever hope to be, even in the water, and though its tail swipes could cause terrible waves of force and its cry made my ears bleed... I punched it in the face and through it, burying my claws all the way to the wrist into its skull, killing it instantly.

  And then I turned around, and started to fly up, only to notice, I was going down instead, and corrected myself, flying up.

  Man it's so easy to get turned around in the ocean, everything's so dark down here, it's worse than space, and I've been very close to space, I can tell you, underwater sucks, I'm not ever going back there.

  Finally breaching the surface again, I realized there was another problem.

  I couldn't remember which way I'd come from. And that was an issue. So once again, I had to fly high up into the sky, which caused the fish I was carrying with me to freeze as well as all the water that was still clinging to me, which didn't form ice like I expected but instead got weirdly foamy and slushy, it was positively disgusting to be honest.

  At least I could see the massive spot of green that was the forest around my lair, as well as that huge mountain I remembered passing, so I went that way, and flew much faster than I had coming in, fast enough that the air resistance was actually starting to warm up my scales, but both myself and the fish were still mostly frozen when I pierced the cloud cover and saw the village.

  It was... bigger than I remembered it. I hadn't really paid attention when I left, but, it's not just a couple shacks and tents, there's actual structures there now. In fact, they seem to have built up a big circular plaza, which seems somewhat designed to resemble my lair, with a raised dais in the middle, surrounded by paths made of stones and they had even planted trees around the circular path surrounding the dais.

  And then I dropped a huge fish on it.

  I planted my clawed paws on the ground just behind the fish I had just dropped, caring little for the fact that I was destroying their hard work, because, to be quite honest, it was in poor taste anyway.

  "Separate the meat from the bones. Half of it is to be shared between yourselves, however you wish. Store the rest in the ice cave, for it is mine, and it is to be sent as a tribute alongside the offerings of fruit," I spoke with the most official tone I could muster, still pretending I totally wasn't covered in a slurry of half frozen salt and water. "Also have the Priestess gather a group of people, and bring cleaning supplies, this is even more disgusting than what it looks like," I said, whipping my tail, spreading clusters of seasalt and foamy water everywhere.

  "The Great One has blessed us with food for the winter!" someone shouted.

  If I had lips I would be pursing them, if I had a brow I could furrow, I would be furrowing it. Wasn't there supposed to be way more people in this village?

  "Where's everyone?" I asked, imperiously rising to my height and looking around. The Priestess was nowhere to be seen, but I suppose she tended to spend a lot of time traveling back and forth from the village to my lair, maybe she was in transit.

  There were only the elderly and children in the village. And normally, when the able bodied young are absent, it's because of war.

  "Great Lord, during harvest season, all available hands work the fields!" the elderly villager said. I noticed he had something roughly approximating a straw broom which he was probably sweeping the plaza with, but the wood wasn't from the forest, it was of a reddish color, probably bought in trade.

  Actually, I should've checked the fields too.

  I don't know what these people cultivate. But I can go check. So I did exactly that, once more taking flight, ignoring the gathering of individuals, and trusting that the elder guy, actually was it even a guy? I didn't check.

  Whatever, the elder would tell them what to do I'm sure.

  I moved to the sky again, and looked around, there were actually several fields, not very close to the village at all, in fact, there was a river running near the village and it seemed like they had created some sort of lake and flooded some plains, which there was a swarm of villagers working on.

  I made sure not to land with much strength this time, as I touched down next to the river, and it only took a few seconds for the Dragon Priestess, in the crowd, to notice I had come down, and she started to rush towards me, tripped on a plant or something, and fell facefirst in the muddy, dirty water.

  As she finally reached me, cut off her pleas and simpering as she began spewing a torrent of apologies for her state.

  I appreciate, however, that they're clearly dressing better for the work, everyone is wearing simple pants and shirts, and most people even have sensible shoewear, sure, the sandals weren't much, but they protected the soles of the feet. Not the case for the barefoot priestess though.

  "Gather your people and bring cleaning supplies to my lair, I will sleep, and while I do, you will clean my scales," I demanded.

  "Great One, it would be an honor to personally attend to you, but I must beg you, please allow us to finish our harvest first, then I shall-"

  "Get everyone out of the field right now," I demanded, focusing my eyes on her. By the reflection on the water, I can tell the blue of my eyes glows intensely when I do, but it's really the only way I can actually tell what she looks like.

  She's not wearing robes so I can tell she's actually got some muscles now. I think I vaguely remember her being thin as a reed. Also her hair is longer, though it's hard to tell since it's put up into a bun, as is everyone else with long hair that I can spy in my peripheral vision. Muddy, dirty and covered in weeds, she looks positively silly.

  It took a few minutes for her to get everyone out of the fields, the moment she came screaming in a panic, everyone was quick to flee.

  Then came the next step. First, I had to think of how to do what I was about to do, and second was doing it. So, I would need to speed up this process, which would normally take hours if not even days. The field was huge, farms sufficient to feed the entire village without modern techniques would surely had to be, especially with the large amount of dead or diseased plants that they could do nothing about.

  Fuck it.

  With an application of my will and reminding the planet that I am the dragon, I commanded the wind to cut through and slice every plant, and then the Earth obliged, separating the wheat from the chaff, not quite literally but close enough, as I pictured in my mind threshers and harvesters, and by my will, golden, green and brown streams of seeds and grains and... maize?

  Big circular corn balls.

  All of it flew towards me and then created a messy pile of crops.

  "There. Done. I have no time for excuses, I will be waiting, I better not wake up still dirty," I said, trying to inject severity into my tone, before spreading my wings.

  "I shall offer myself as tribute should we disappoint you, Great Dragon!"

  I'm starting to wonder if she's doing it on purpose. I really should teach these people about how to address a majestic being such as myself. Eh, too much work, I can just sleep off today.

  I looked around, and saw that there were people guiding the indentured servants of the state. Their 'uniform', so to speak, featured a leather rope tied between their legs, just enough that they could walk, but not enough for them to run, as well as a leather collar and armbands with hoops to tie a lead to, and so that they could be more easily immobilized.

  Realistically, holding people prisoner was simply not viable.

  And despite everything else, I was uncomfortable with inhumane working conditions, they were after all my humans, even if they were criminals. Maybe I shouldn't have accepted responsibility for them because now I feel responsible for their wellbeing.

  Or maybe I should've been more strict with execution, rather than leaving it only for remorseless murderers.

  Hmm, maybe I could do something.

  I turned to the Priestess, who seemed to sense my stare, and turned back to face me.

  "What is it you desire, Great One?" she asked, bringing her hands together. I noticed she hadn't brought her staff, which I guess made sense since she wasn't performing her official and usual duties.

  "Establish a permanent guard on my lair. They are to patrol the immediacy of my lair and the path between it and the village... make it the bravest and the boldest, the smartest and the strongest."

  "Should they be able to read, write and do the maths that you have shown us, Great One?"

  "A minimum of one," I said, already thinking about the impending nap, and not really thinking about what I was saying. "I grow weary and bored. I will sleep. Do not wake me for some trivial matter..!"

  I felt sleepier than usual, and I practically flew to my lair with my eyes closed, curling up to and resting my head on top of the tip of my tail, settling to rest, for as long as it took to get back the energy I'd spent.