Book Two Letter Nine

My Dearest Nephew,

Congratulate me! Through a huge exertion of willpower on my part, Remdrix is neither dead nor horribly maimed and disfigured.

Yet.

I never thought that a single Dragon could test my nerves as your uncle Scaligar does. I was wrong. Remdrix is worse than Scaligar, a thousand times worse.

His family is the main problem. I exclude the children from his family’s stereotype as they have contrived to grow into sweet little Dragonletts. One of them is still a toddler, just turned 21, so adorable. Still, the 46 of them do tend to pack my little cave.

However, it is the rest of the Dragons of Remdrix’s extended family that are a problem in the extreme.

First comes his cousin Pyraxan, titled ‘The Infernal’. He is half-Wyvern and therefore his fire-breathing abilities are sadly lacking, reducing him to blowing clouds of sparks into the air at the most inopportune time (I.E. after Remdrix had accidentally smashed a small pot full of powdered phosphorous and sulfur, filling the cave with clouds of its contents) Though damages caused by such incidents are far from small, the real liability caused by Pyraxan’s flammable habits is related to the peoples of the nearby towns.

As a Southerner and rather more importantly, a half-Drake, Pyraxan has little respect for human life and has been using the villages nearby as experiment centers which he attempts to torch. There have been injuries and near fatalities as a result, and Pyraxan is barely recovering after each of my…stern admonishments. I shall have to do something soon else he ends up killing the peoples of the towns.

Then comes Remdrix’s grand-father, a full-blooded Yovian by the name of Gaertho the Inhaler, known to those who have met him as ‘The smoke tub’ and to those who have not met him as ‘that big black cloud on the horizon’.

Gaertho has a passion for smoking large homemade cigars and carries a pouch of tobacco the size of an outhouse with him everywhere. Most unfortunately, he does not always keep a supply of paper to wrap the tobacco in and so has taken to settling for whatever paper comes to claw.

Smoke! My library cannot stand much more of this, some of those scrolls are thousands of years old and they are disappearing by the day to fund Gaertho’s cigars. I have been reduced to tears on several occasions. He has stolen my set of encyclopedias, my collection of the artist Mandollo’s sketches and almost all of my historical scrolls. No matter what I do, I cannot seem to stop him!

Another danger to the population of the nearby towns is Relix the Torcher. A large and brutal Dragon, Relix is something like your uncle Trubodox was while in the grips of his alternate personality, Gargazath. He enjoys above all torching towns (hence the title) burning crops, devouring cattle, demolishing buildings and attempting to slaughter the human population. I say attempted because he has never touched a hair on their heads. These towns are under my protection and Relix shall be eating none of the humans that live in them.

Last but not least of Remdirx’s relatives comes Bortas the Bloated. Need I explain his title? My two main problems with Bortas are space and food. When he sits completely still he takes up an entire quarter of the space in my cave. As to the problem of food, he has been fishing so long in the river outside my cave and has caught and eaten so many that the fish have now learner not to come upstream. Shoals are occasionally washed down from the sea and devoured however. Perhaps I shall build a dam to save the rest of them.

Also he seems to have developed an appetite for human beasts of burden over the course of his lifetime and the flocks of the nearby villages are suffering by consequence. Before long there will be none left.

I am appalled that I am related to such fiends as these, and that’s not to mention Remdrix himself. He is more like your uncle Trubodox than Scaligar, more brawny and very red of scale with a powerful fire breath and incredible spiky tale. This is a rather unfortunate state of affairs as his powerful body makes him even more dangerous than he otherwise might have been in the throes of the rages that sometimes grip him. He is half-mad and I suspect that he has at some point in his life contracted a case of Terminal Bligardazash.

His mate, your uncle Scaligar’s older sister can sometimes calm him in these rages, but often I am forced to forcibly restrain him by force so that he does not demolish anything more than my collection of treasured pottery, though it makes me weep to look upon their shattered shards. However, this is a small price to pay for the lives that might be saved by keeping him far from the towns where the people dwell.

I resign myself to this fate of a hellish few weeks, my only ray of sunshine being that they shall be here for only a few weeks and my darkest pit of despair being that they shall be here for a few weeks.

Your servant, mentor and uncle,

Semithino