Mark Tanner slowly spun around even as Biggie, the iron elemental, hid behind him. A man stood between him and his main laboratory for Complex 12. This lab held the Sleigh and the Mirror Array. Both were needed for Plan 9 to work. Time travel. Regression to back before the destroying System had come to Earth bringing with it all manner of monsters and sentient creatures from tales and unleashing potential that had been blocked by the falsely called 'Age of Reason'.

  A short man in a dapper suit stood there. On his tie winked the Hope Diamond, and on his left hand was a ring with a single large pigeon's blood ruby framed by diamonds.

  Object identified: Sunrise Ruby Ring.

  On the left hand was another diamond framed ruby ring.

  Object identified: Elizabeth Taylor's Ruby Ring. Powers available are unknown.

  Well, I could guess. Taylor had been known for beauty and getting given large quantities of wonderful gems. Likely it would raise the charisma of the wearer, and increase their chances of getting good loot. The other one, I was less certain of, but it might well be able to attack with a Light based magic.

  "Looking very stylish, Zirmondo." The old legends were true. Dragons did like flattery.

  "Earth has been very good to me, Omega Man."

  "How did you find me?" I wanted to know, but I also did not want to know. If he told me, that meant he planned to kill me. If he did not tell me, he might be persuaded to try to milk the situation further. I would be worth more experience points every second I lived, and also, I had significant amounts of treasure myself. Like, I had gone to the Vatican, and retrieved one of the Three Nails, and the Pieta, and a dozen storage rings worth of other great art that had been hidden away from the rampaging imps that had swarmed all over the site decades ago. But one of the last Catholic priests had told me where they hid it. It had been in the catacombs behind the temporarily moved dead bones.

  He smiled, toying with me. Biggie groaned.

  "Logic. You've made yourself near invulnerable to direct tracking. Even if someone could keep up with you, they'd run into the hundreds of traps you set throughout the Earth's crust."

  "Not just me. I had a lot of help from others. Including Dwarves."

  "Yes, Dwarven scum. They joined us, and as soon as they got to Earth they left the Grand Alliance, and ran off to do their own thing. Well, we paid them back by making most of them zombies." He smiled cruelly.

  I said nothing,and Biggie vibrated with fury behind me as his anger drove out his fear. As one might imagine, iron elementals and dwarves got on great. Sure, there were plenty of other dwarves on other planets, but most on Earth were wandering around saying 'axe, axe'.

  "So I asked myself what would you do? And what did you need to do that? Where did you need to go?"

  I nodded.

  "Despite your plethora of plans, I deduced that you'd be driven to try regression. So I searched many of your complexes, slowly, carefully because you are a diabolical genius when it comes to traps. I have to say, I almost died four times."

  "So you saw I'd have to be here, and what, you just sat down and waited for me to show up?"

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  The dragon in human form gave me a teethful smile. He waved a hand which might have been a wing, and space opened up behind him. The distance to the lab grew by hundreds of feet. Zirmondo also stepped back and smoothly changed. In seconds, he went from a short man to a dragon over two hundred feet long with a head the size of a car. Now he was resting atop his horde so he was four stories above me, well, at least his head was. His skin was pale white, and two rows of fins ran down each side of his thick neck to the middle of his back where his wings sprouted.

  "DRAGONS SLEEP FOR YEARS WITH EASE." He murmured, and the large cavern shook.

  "Well burn me with your plasma flame then." I provoked him. He smiled.

  "Tut, tut. Mark, I know you're standing on a pool of water that has not been contaminated since the worlds were spoken into existence. Not sure if there is a water elemental in there, but there could be. No, I am not foolish. Mark I am very patient. Perhaps to while away the weeks you'd like to play chess."

  "White pawn from E2 to E4."

  "Why do you get white?" I protested for lack of something better to say. Its better to keep a dragon occupied.

  Zirmondo flexed his claw arm and pointed at himself.

  "Both of us are white, but you're more pink. I'm a paler shade of white with a faint touch of green. So I get white. But I suppose I could provide two pawns, one in each claw, and you get to choose after you walk over here."

  "I'll stay right here."

  "Hmmm, thought so. Your move."

  Despite my decades of experience in many things, and my Jack of All Trades class, and my high level intelligence and intuition, I am not, and never have been a chess master. Oh, I know how to play, but in any given city there had been better players than me. Just because I once beat my tenth grade class in high school did not make a chess master of me. But it had been many years since I played, and I surprised myself.

  I lost, of course. But I did not do horribly.

  After that, we played Settlers of Cataan with memory, and just a pair of dice which meant a lot of dice rolling and lists held in memory. But Biggie helped me with that, and Zirmondo was a dragon so that was not a problem for him. Hours passed, and I lost again.

  "What is the point of this?" I objected.

  "Something to do while I wait for you to starve to death."

  I looked at him and understood. He had opened his horde slowly enough that if I'd been close I might have damaged his pocket bubble dimension. He did not want to resort to fire when I stood on the Pool. In fact, he was a bit wary of getting on the Pool himself probably because he was fire aligned or because the Pool was pure, and Zirmondo was a wicked beast. So he intended to wait until I left the Pool, or I starved to death.

  "I have a lot of food in a couple storage rings."

  "I am a dragon. A year or two does not matter."

  That was a perplexity. Which is how we ended up starting up Satan's Game. No, not DnD, but Monopoly. All about greed and crushing other people just like the Adversary likes. Thing was, I was in a mood to crush Zirmondo. The wicked dragon was pleased to sit there on his mountain of stolen gold, and gems from all lands and watch me slowly starve to death.

  I chose the Car.