He sat upon the road, blocking it with his scaly body and
overly-large head. My army ground to a halt in front of him, the columns trailing
fifty miles behind me. Swifts croaked overhead, avoiding impatient swipes from
the greater battle dragons, and the repulsive reek of fresh lava jaw shit made
our nostrils sting.
“We’re sorry, but something went wrong,” the baby dragon said,
and turned his round yellow eyes up towards me as if his sweet expression would
stay my hand from smiting him into a thousand bits.
“We’ve been notified about this issue,” he continued in the
same pathetic, melancholy voice, “and we’ll take a look at it shortly.”
“You said that yesterday,” I replied.
“Hmmm? Yes. Yes, I believe I did,” he countered, and then
proceeded to chew on his left wing.
“You said that the day before as well,” I reminded him.
“Uh huh. We’ll take a
look at this shortly.”
“Take a look at what?” I asked.
“This. The issue.”
“What exactly IS the issue, dragon?”
“What issue?”
“THIS issue! The issue that caused something to go wrong,” I
said, and none too gently. How could any creature be so dense?
“Something is wrong?” he asked.
“Obviously. You’re standing here. I’m suffocating from lava
jaw stench and you’re sitting here and telling me that there’s an issue that
won’t allow me to pass. How long are you going to keep me waiting? I have
cities to plunder, enemies to destroy, armies to build, and an entire alliance
to run!”
The dragon examined his left wing with bored expression. “Hmmm.
You said the same to me yesterday. I’m sorry, but we’ll take a look at this
shortly.”
“TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT?” I shouted. “What the bloody hell are
you looking at? Server overload? A new damned outpost that nobody really needs?
A troop build contest that only idiots can afford to spend money on over the
course of a weekend? Kabam web site-only troops? What? WHAT?”
“Did you fill out a ticket?” he asked.
“What ticket? For WHAT?”
“For your issue. If you go to –“
“Now look here, you silly shit. My issue is that you’re
standing here and blocking me from Atlantis!”
“Hmmmm. Am I? That sounds like an issue, doesn’t it. Thanks for notifying--“
“Oh no, we’re not doing this again. Fix your damn issue or
so help me, I’ll—“
“What? You’ll what?” he asked. “You’ll quit? Hardly. You
keep returning to the realm. Day after day, no matter how much Kabam mistreats
you. Hourly slaving away, wasting time you could be spending with living human
beings in a park, or at a club, or even in the back yard. Got kids? Anyway…” he
scratched his jaw and shrugged.
“Anyway, what?” I asked tentatively.
“Anyway, you have an
issue. It’s not with me, by the way. It’s with yourself. Why do you keep
returning and, much worse, spending money on an inferior product? You do know
that you’re paying for their new headquarters with your hard-earned cash,
right?”
“Um…”
He offered a toothy grin. “How’s that lava jaw shit smelling
now? Are you really going to continue to stand there like a hapless pawn of the
gaming industry? It says something about a character when it lets itself be
manipulated into actions that are contrary to its wellbeing… some poor WoW creation trotting along in
cyber space, beholden to the will of its human master. It’s quite another thing
to be the human and trotting along with a credit card, beholden to the will of
a game company.”
I looked at my generals. My vast army sprawled behind me, a
sweltering hot mess of ogres, jaws, fangs, banshee and reapers. The newer
troops clustered at the rear, and my drafthorse brood of raiding dragons
swarmed in the skies above. Somewhere beyond the little dragon was my city, and
all of my outposts, and my spectral ruins crammed with resources that my hands
would never touch if the little dragon didn’t get out of the way. I pondered
his words, and the time wasted in building my armies. I considered his sage
opinion of just who I was beholden to. I considered all the money spent thus
far on something so completely intangible. And then, with a shrug bereft of all
apology, I shot him and continued on to my city…
