Deep within a mountain, a woman in ornate armor stood on a platform eye level with the resting dragon.
“So, do I have your support?” she shouted to him.
“Hmm, I need to consider my involvement in these matters.” The dragon slowly closes his eyes. “Come back in a few years and I will have an answer for you.”
“I don’t want to pressure you but the Dark Lord is massing his forces to the north right now. The Southern Nation is threatening to ‘occupy’ our nation to prevent the war from reaching their borders. And my term as Leader ends next year. Time is running out.”
The dragon’s eyes opened wide, “Wow, you really left all this for the last minute didn’t you. Not that it really matters.” He turned his head to gaze off to the side. “When you’ve been alive for … for … Pardon, but what year is it?” The dragon re-affixed his gaze on the woman.
“It’s the five hundredth and twenty-eighth year of the Enlightenment” the Leader shouted.
“I … don’t … know what that is. What happened to the Emperor?”
“Which one?”
“Alfred.”
“Which one?”
“There was more than one?” The dragon raised up his body.
“Yes, there was a succession of fifteen Emperor Alfreds before the calamity that split the Empire into the nations of today,” she informed the dragon.
“How long ago was that?” he asked shaking the dust from his wings.
“The Calamity was three thousand two hundred and five years ago. The Empire, as established under Emperor Alfred the First, stood for three thousand six hundred and forty-three years,” the Leader explained.
“Ah, so as I was saying – When you’ve been alive for thirty-three thousand years these squabbles you humans have between each other don’t really amount to much in the long term.”
“So you won’t help us?” she shouted.
“Hmm, it has been a while since I engaged an army. Does the Dark Lord have any dragons of his own?”
“No.”
“Very well you can count on my support.”