Arkadin steadied himself as he entered the atmosphere of this lush, green world. This planet had always been here, but it had always been a dull, brown rock. It wasn’t until a certain incident involving the stopping of the heart of a time god that this planet had anything interesting on it. That was why Arkadin was here, because this world made no sense.
Most of the planet consisted of your standard mountains, oceans, rivers, lakes and forests, but there was a large area where a single sprawling city had been built. Said city had clearly become a country over time, expanding across the forests and across the rivers. This country-sized city was the only place on the planet inhabited by intelligent beings, but it was these beings Arkadin was interested in. After all, life popping up all of a sudden was possible, if extremely rare. But sentient life? With cities and everything? That was unrelated to existing life? This was all beyond intriguing.
Before he could be seen by mortals, Arkadin cloaked himself in a cloud of invisibility, then landed in the centre of the city. The mortals, a collection of brightly coloured draconic beings, didn’t seem to notice much anyway. They were all very prideful beings, almost blinded by how sexy they all were, with their pretty little wings and perfect little horns and shimmering gem-like eyes, all running around with nothing on and everything on show.
It appeared to be midday, but there were plenty of mortal beings happily wandering around and enjoying themselves. The buildings were all made out of white mud brick and were studded with gems and shiny rocks, smoothed out to look attractive. Only one building wasn’t, and that was what Arkadin assumed was the library. So that was where Arkadin went. After all, he was interested in information and nothing more.
Funnily enough, the library was quite busy, but mostly in the fiction sections, where the draconic beings were chilling out, reading fantasy romance novels. The non-fiction section was empty, apart from one being silently organizing things and going through paperwork.
With a flick of his wrist, Arkadin dismissed his cloud of invisibility and changed his form into that of one of these beings. At the very least he looked like one, he had no real idea what their internal organ systems were like. He calmly approached the lone mortal and made a little noise, so he could grab their attention. He needed this being to speak first so he could pick up their language.
“Hello? How can I help you today?”
Arkadin was thankful that he was a deity and could instantly learn languages. He smiled as he leaned on the desk.
“Do you have any books on the history of the city?”
The being eyed Arkadin suspiciously.
“Are you for real?”
“What do you mean?”
“Literally no one fucking asks for any non-fiction stuff unless they work in the Scientifics Block, and they have their own separate library. If Tragons want info, they go online.”
Arkadin shrugged. “You mean, as long as you’ve worked here, no one has asked you for a book?”
The Tragon nodded. Arkadin sighed, but not just because he was picking up species traits at too slow a speed for his liking. For some reason, these Tragons were insanely attractive and that was something Arkadin rarely ever noticed.
“Well…” the Tragon leaned forward. “Not history ones. Yes we have a lack of interest in science but it seems no one apart from me cares about history. Until you showed up just now. Which makes me both cautious and very, very interested in you…” The Tragon leaned forward even more. Arkadin noticed that this one, which was definitely female, was releasing some sort of pheromone which made her even more attractive. “I’m Thisia, what’s your name?”
“Uh…” This caught Arkadin unaware. He hadn’t gathered enough intel to be able to properly create a Tragon name, so he scanned the minds of the other Tragons in the library and grabbed one of their names. “You can call me Kristos.”
“You’re a bit too yellow to be a Kristos.”
“My parents are colourblind.”
Thisia laughed, an insanely charismatic and infectious laugh. “Alright. I’ll give ya some information, but you gotta tell me something first. How many girlfriends do you have?”
“None.”
“Ah good. Because I want to increase my number of boyfriends to three and I think you’ll do nicely. Come on a date with me, and if I like you, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Arkadin shrugged. “Sure, alright. What time were you considering?”
Thisia pulled at the gold chain around her neck. Turned out it was a watch of some sort. “Right now. We’re doing this now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Come on!”
The attractive little Tragon grabbed Arkadin by the hand and dragged him away. Not wanting to break his disguise, Arkadin played along, but was quickly beginning to wonder what the heck he had gotten himself into…