I have to escape this madness somehow before it's too late, he thought to himself, as he handed a rolling pin up to someone on the palisade.

  After he had heard Ivar and Albert's speech from the inn, he had finally moved with Boris and the others to the north gate sometime later.

  Or rather, despite his protests, Boris dragged him along because, as the innkeeper had so beautifully put it, this was also about his ass.

  Maybe I should have protested more, but he had started waving his stupid tankard around as he spoke and that scared me, he continued to muse to himself, passing on a cleaver.

  After he and the others had listened to the exchange between Albert and Bartold and it was clear that there was going to be a fight, he was overcome by the same fear that he had felt earlier at the gate when he had felt the cold steel of Bartold's sword on the back of his neck.

  The last time he had been involved in a real fight, he had been almost a fledling himself and it had only been a small squabble over territory, which he had quickly given up on because this strange sea cave was not worth all the trouble.

  Who would want to live so close to demons? No, he had much more luck later with the dwarf fortress.

  Apart from that, he had watched fights between different groups of two-legged creatures a few times for fun, but now he had to realize that there was a serious difference whether you experienced such a fight as a dragon or a human.

  Back then he had found it funny how a few hundred of the two-legged creatures ran towards each other and then started stabbing each other with all kinds of strange tools or using their little magic tricks on each other.

  He found it particularly cute when they started to conjure and manipulate fire, if you could even call it fire at the tiny size they were commanding.

  To him, such "battles" as the two-legs called them had always looked like a game or a sport and he had never fully understood the chaos that people who took part in such events always spoke of.

  However, now that he himself as a human was at least indirectly forced to take part in such a battle, he understood and he felt absolutely no desire to expand this understanding, which is why he feverishly thought about how he could escape from Schlucht without running into the axe-wielding arms of his former servants.

  Although he could not yet see anything of the battle raging outside the gate, what he heard was enough for him.

  Roars and screams, both of pain, fear and anger, echoed loudly through the air and for the first time he was grateful that he no longer had the senses of his old body.

  Although sounds of this kind had never bothered him back then.

  The worst thing about the whole thing was that he knew it would get much worse.

  So far only a few stray arrows had flown over the palisade, most of which hit no one or only injured them slightly, as they had probably been intended for someone on the palisade.

  Of course, he had seen some of the defenders fall over the wall, but the only ones he really cared about were the ones who had fallen off the wall into the village, so now he always had to climb over their corpses when he had to pass on some junk to the people on the palisade.

  And yet the noise was clearly the worst part of the fight for him so far, and the worst part of the noise wasn't even all the screaming, no, it was a dull, cracking sound.

  The sound of axes hitting wood, as the increasingly panicked calls from the palisade confirmed.

  Unlike Albert, Aodhan had never read a book about sieges. But he could still imagine what would happen to the defenders, of which he had to count himself among them, if they managed to break through the gate.

  Although he wasn't entirely sure whether his old subordinates would manage to break through the gate without his help, especially now that Albert and Ivar had started pushing this steaming cauldron around, he was sure that he wouldn't take the risk in his fragile human body, which is why an escape plan was needed.

  The north gate was obviously out of the question, which left the south gate.

  Although he couldn't be sure whether that was locked.

  Where had the gatekeeper gone? He did his best to look around the chaos before realizing that he didn't know what the man looked like anyway.

  Instead, he tried to attract the attention of one of the people around him who were busily running back and forth to get new projectiles.

  Finally, he managed to catch an elderly lady who was just coming out of the palisade with a pace that was not quite walking but not quite running either.

  "Um, excuse me, but do you know where I can find the Gatekeeper?" he asked, but the woman in question did not stop, so he tried to match her speed, which was a challenge in itself.

  "The Gatekeeper? don't you have anything better to do than ask for the porter right now, boy? You'd better help me get a few more pots for the ones on the palisade," the old woman answered, irritated, without slowing down.

  "Oh, but that's exactly the point. I talked to a few people who said the Gatekeeper had some really good things to throw at home and we wanted to ask him if that would be okay," he improvised quickly.

  Now the old woman stopped and turned to him before answering.

  "That's probably not going to be that easy. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I saw him fall from the palisade. The bastards must have hit him with an arrow," the woman explained with angry sadness.

  "Oh, that's, well, that's just terrible," a gasping Aodhan blurted out, managing to sound completely genuinely after, realizing that possibly his only escape route had just disappeared

  "Yes, Horst was a drunken grump, but he didn't deserve that. I hope he fell on their heads," the old woman agreed sadly.

  "But we can mourn later, just go to him and kick the door down or something when it's locked. It doesn't bother him anymore anyway, and I think Horst would have liked it if you threw his stuff at the bastards who killed him," she continued with a diabolical smile.

  "Yes, I think so too, could you maybe point me to where he lived?" he asked innocently.

  The old woman looked at him for a moment, somewhat surprised, before she answered.

  "Where he has lived for a dozen years or so. On the fountain square, to the right of the happy dwarf," she said, beginning to examine Aodhan more closely.

  "Thank you very much," he replied quickly and turned away from the old woman to set off for his new destination.

  "Hey, wait a moment, aren't you that guy they dragged to the gate?" he heard the old woman crow behind him, which he decidedly ignored and continued on his way.

  Nothing is lost yet, maybe he left the key at home before he went to the palisade, or maybe he has a spare key lying there or something, he thought frantically as he ran through the empty streets of Schlucht.

  He got further and further away from the chaos at the north gate, so that soon he could barely hear anything except his excited breathing and the clacking sound of his own footsteps on the cobblestones.

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  Which was a relief for him compared to the chaotic, shrill noises at the gate.

  Contrary to what he had told the old woman, the ammunition collectors had not yet penetrated further into the city center.

  In fact, he found, the quiet moonlit streets were so quiet and peaceful that it was almost easy to forget that everyone inside the city was in immediate danger of death, but only almost, so he quickened his pace again.

  He was also grateful for the moonlight for very practical reasons, as he wasn't sure how well his human eyes would have seen in the dark otherwise.

  But given his current experience with this body, he would probably have wandered around the city blind as a mole.

  Especially since no one had bothered to light any lanterns in all the commotion.

  Finally, he reached the fountain square, probably the only place he knew before the whole fiasco, as he had once almost tried to tear down the statues, mistaking them for prey.

  I've never understood why they built monuments to creatures that are even lower than them in the food chain, he thought as he walked past the statues of the pig and the cow.

  As far as he knew, the only people not at the gate were the youngest children and a few sick and injured people who had barricaded themselves in the basement of the happy dwarf inn.

  Luckily, that meant that no one was standing in his way, and he wouldn't have to make up a story about why he was here.

  Something he had a lot of practice at by now, but which he was increasingly disgusted with.

  In his opinion, a dragon shouldn't have to make up lies and excuses like humans and other two-legged scum did, but as long as he was trapped in one's body, he would have to adopt a few of their characteristics in order to survive.

  With these thoughts in mind, he approached the supposed gatekeeper's house, which the old woman had described to him.

  On a small wooden sign next to the door he read the name Horst Schlurfer.

  Even though he didn't know the gatekeeper's last name, this was enough confirmation for him, and he tried to open the door.

  Holding his breath, he pushed down the door handle and, to his relief, the door opened easily.

  Either the former gatekeeper of Schlucht had forgotten to lock the door in all the confusion or it was a very trusting community.

  Not that Aodhan really cared about that anyway when he finally opened the door completely and entered, feeling for the first time in a long time that luck was on his side.

  Not even the strange, but vaguely familiar, acrid smell of alcohol that hit his nose as he crossed the threshold and entered the dark apartment, which sank almost completely into darkness when he closed the door behind him, could change that.

  Eager to search the apartment for the key and his associated salvation, Aodhan took a careless step forward before his eyes had even adjusted to the darkness.

  Suddenly the floor beneath his feet seemed to roll away, so that he had to fight for his balance, cursing and flailing his arms in the air.

  He staggered a step back against the door and looked at the floor in front of him suspiciously, missing once again the keen eyes of his old body, with which he could make out every detail even in the darkest of tunnels.

  When his current pair of eyes finally got a little more used to the darkness, he noticed that the floor was covered with mostly empty bottles.

  This also explained the smell that hit him from seemingly every corner of the house, which he thought, was almost enough to get someone drunk.

  Something that sounded tempting to him but would certainly not be very helpful in his current situation.

  If they accidentally set his body on fire at the gate, the whole palisade would probably burn down, he thought, snorting, and began to look around the deceased's apartment.

  He still couldn't make out too many details, but he could see the general layout of the room. In the middle of it stood a round table with a simple wooden chair.

  To the right of it was a fireplace under a vent that probably led into a chimney on the roof.

  He had been told that smoke was dangerous for humans. Almost as dangerous as eating raw meat, something he couldn't really believe at first, but which was confirmed to him by his servants.

  As he stared at the empty fireplace and the cooled ashes, a now familiar melancholy overcame him.

  Dragons were, after all, the living manifestation of fire; it was his element. The nature of fire, change given form, was connected to his very being in a way that no one but another dragon would ever understand.

  Yet he knew he wouldn’t be able to light even this miserable little fireplace on his own, even if his life depended on it.

  Instead of changing all circumstances to his will with a single powerful blast of fire, he had to secretly search for a key in the apartment of a dead person, since a pile of wood now represented an almost insurmountable obstacle for him.

  Oddly enough, his body reacted to this level of frustration by watering up in his eyes.

  He wiped his eyes dry in annoyance, the last thing he needed was distorted vision as he searched for the key.

  Although something stirred inside him that reminded him that it was against nature for him to run from a fight between humans, an even older and more powerful instinct screamed at him to tear the apartment apart, find the key and escape the carnage at the gate that would undoubtedly spread to the rest of the village sooner or later.

  Like a mad man, he drove through the apartment, ripping out drawers, emptying cupboards and kicking bottles away to avoid tripping.

  Since his eyes had now become as accustomed to the darkness as possible for a Human, he finally saw another door at the end of the room.

  He marched quickly towards it, cursing and almost tripping over another of the bottles.

  In his haste to open the door, his sweaty hand slipped on the door handle first, causing his head to knock on the door.

  With a sound that was half a groan of pain and half an angry cry, he finally ripped the door open and entered the room behind it.

  It was a small room with only a straw bed with a small bedside table next to it, as well as a larger Wardrobe on the right side of the room.

  To be on the safe side, he rummaged through the bed first, and when he found no key there, as expected, he turned to the Wardrobe, which as he found out was filled with crumpled and sweat-smelling shirts and trousers, two pairs of worn boots and a few stained coats.

  With growing panic, he ripped one item of clothing after another out of the wardrobe, searched through all possible pockets and then carelessly threw them onto the bed behind him.

  When he had now emptied and thrown away the boots, he was again struck by the most unwelcome thought that there might not be any spare keys and that the key he was looking for was in all likelihood outside the gates of Schlucht.

  Buried under the body of the gatekeeper, in the middle of a chaotic battle and thus out of his reach.

  "No no no, that can't be," he muttered tensely to himself and went to the small wardrobe by the bed.

  Unfortunately, the drawers turned out to be mostly empty, with the exception of a few still full bottles and two small books in the top drawer.

  For what must have been the hundredth time in his life, he congratulated himself on his decision to force the old Jinn to teach him at least partly how to read.

  Back then, this ability had helped him find the old dwarven fortress and discover its secrets, and now it would hopefully help him escape the death trap that Schlucht would soon become.

  The first book dealt with various brewing techniques, something that would undoubtedly not get him through the gate.

  With shaking fingers, he now looked at the second book, which was probably his last hope.

  This was a notebook filled with all kinds of notes and lists. Increasingly desperate, he leafed through the book, hoping to find some clue to the whereabouts or at least the existence of a spare key among all the shopping lists, bills and jokes about what he assumed were other residents of Schlucht.

  And indeed, he finally found an entry.

  "If the guard already has a spare key, why don't they just use mine for the other gate and be done with it? It's not like you really need a gatekeeper in this Grotar forsaken town," he with some difficulties managed to decipher from the Gatekeepers scribbling.

  After this revelation, he put the book down and started massaging his temples.

  Apparently, there was a spare key, which was probably hanging on the belt of some member of the guard, who were probably all defending the north gate.

  Also, the only member of the guard that he would recognize was Ivar, and he certainly wouldn't try to steal a key from his belt.

  Although he couldn't even be sure that it was Ivar who had the key.

  Something, give me something else that will get me out of here, you old drunk, he thought desperately and reached for the notebook again.

  He skimmed through the pages without much hope until he came to the last entry.

  In it the gatekeeper made a note that he wanted to talk to Albert about the increasingly poor condition of the locks at the southern entrance.

  That could be it, if the lock is rusty or something, I can just break the door down without needing a key,Aodhan thought, now once again with a spark of hope.

  But not in this body. If I try to break the door down with these soft human paws, I'll just break them. No! I need big paws with sharp claws. But humans don't have anything like that. Humans have tools and they make them in the smithy with a hammer and anvil and I could swear I saw an anvil standing under a roof by one of the houses on the way here, he thought eagerly.

  Revitalized with this thought, he left the gatekeeper's apartment and set off to look for the smithy. All is not lost, he thought with cautious optimism, quickening his pace.