The thing about dragons was that they were very peculiar creatures. One moment, they would dare you to sell their scales and teeth.

  The next, you have to file their taxes.

  I was never good at math. That was something my teachers had always told me.

  But I was not so burdened as the dragon. Mark was my name. And my dragon patron was Anthony, and he had not paid his taxes for three months.

  So I had to find a way in which I could pay his taxes without letting the authorities know that he had committed a fraud.

  And so, without another choice, I began to make up numbers. His scales were easily concealed to hide his theft, even more so the teeth.

  They cost only one golden coin per tooth. I honestly didn't understand why the goblins were still buying them, but that was beside the point.

  Just as I was about to turn in all of the files, I saw something: "You have committed tax fraud. You will be sentenced to death if you do not fix all of the documents."

  A being sentenced to death while having a dragon as a protector? Did they try to scare me?

  I snorted.

  "Sure, they will,” I was very certain that I would not die.

  And so I filed the tax fraud. Everything was quiet until a couple of days later the adventurers arrived.

  Tony and I were running for our lives. There was no cave big enough to hide us.

  No lord was willing to become a dragon rider and become a tax evader accomplice.

  I didn't want to die!

  The money was in the treasury! What did it matter that they were being brought in later than they should be?

  And yet, I knew one thing: if Anthony didn't step up his game, then we were both going to die.

  Anthony, on the other hand, had never eaten so well.

  Adventuring party after adventuring party found their way inside his belly, only to be evicted out through the back. And he was not someone who was thinking about whether we should hide or beg or plead with the king.

  No, Anthony was ready to conquer and take names.

  We were looking at the map, and he pointed at a village with a clawed finger.

  "Look here, Mark," I was demoted to his supporter, his guide.

  One might say the only thing that was missing was him demanding that I repeat, "Listen" every time we strayed too far away from the location he wanted to explore.

  "This is a dungeon. I can set it aflame from outside, and then we can loot everything inside."

  I narrowed my eyes as I read the dungeon’s name:

  The Dungeon of Animated Mushrooms.

  That wasn't a name that spoke about wealth or even loot. But if Anthony wanted to go there, I had no choice.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Okay, so we need to just follow the river," I said, pointing to the path which was the most straightforward one.

  "No," Anthony murmured as he showed another path, a path that was going through the mountains. "The mountains are a goblin territory. No tax collector is going to find us there. Come now. Trust me, Mark!"

  I had a bad feeling inside my stomach, but for some reason, I couldn't say no. And so, with a single "Trust me, Mark," I doomed myself.

  Anthony was flying. Scorpions on the mountain peaks were shooting scorpion boats. The goblins were chanting.

  I was praying to everything that was good and holy.

  "God damn it, Anthony," I said as he set flame to another row of scorpions. "They have a spawn rune," which was, of course, to be expected. The mountains were truly goblin territory.

  "What did you think will happen?" I yelled, only for him to make a very risky maneuver that nearly made me fall off.

  "I'm sorry," I was even ready to say:

  "Listen! Hey, stop! Hey! Fly towards the valley!"

  But I didn't dare say anything more than a simple apology.

  "I will burn them all," Anthony was going full berserker mode.

  Then a thought struck me. It was something done only during wars, and my shirt was more yellow than white, but surely it was a universal sign!

  I took off my shirt and began to wave it around!

  Little did I know, the yellow flag for goblins meant that it was a declaration of war.

  The scorpions were replaced with catapults and trebuchets.

  As Anthony was trying desperately to adapt and avoid the flying stones, I decided that maybe I should find another job.

  This gig was profitable at the start, but now it was too much problem for all it was worth.

  I flapped my wings, trying to get away from Anthony, who simply used his tail to place me back on his back and dive down so I wouldn't be able to fly away.

  "If we are to die today,” Anthony was now beyond psycho mode. He was in berserk mode. A mode so brainless that most people died during it. "Then we will die together!"

  I was not a master negotiator, but I had to do something. The goblins were attacking as if they meant to kill us both, and Anthony was retaliating as if he meant to truly kill them all.

  I decided to do the only thing I could:

  "Anthony, if your mother could see you now, would she have advised you to continue battling the goblins?"

  "What?" he responded.

  I was banking on common sense.

  How foolish of me.

  The situation had nothing to do with common sense. It was an irrational chaos.

  A once-in-a-lifetime life-or-death scenario.

  "Yes!" Anthony said, which, considering that he was a dragon, might actually be the truth, "and she would have told you to file my taxes properly! By placing my income in the Fairy Creatures Law Section!”

  "Do you want to say," I began, "that the only thing I needed to do was to file the taxes under the Law of Fairy Creatures?"

  I began slowly, as he burned more goblins and trebuchets and began to battle with some sort of metallic dragon that had an automaton powering it.

  "That fairy creatures can be tax evaders and not go to jail?" I asked.

  Anthony snorted smoke into my face while continuing to battle.

  "Well, of course. Who is going to make them pay their taxes?"

  One of the automaton dragon’s feet flew past my ear. I clutched at Tony’s back for dear life.

  Common sense dictated that I tell him the dangers and that the goblins were making him pay his taxes, but I had learned my lesson.

  "Okay, so if I file those taxes under this creature's law, does that mean we will no longer be tax evaders and can go home?"

  It seemed too good to be true. I didn't believe it myself.

  Anthony snorted more smoke, this time into the neck of the automaton dragon. "Well, of course. Fairy creatures are protected by law," he said.

  I soon found myself using the system screen to simply erase the document number and place a new one.

  My shirt turned white. I began to flap it.

  The stigma of being tax evaders disappeared.

  Anthony, as soon as he realized his fun was over, began to fly back towards his cave.

  The thing about a dragon's cave was that when tax collectors find it empty, they looted everything not nailed down.

  So when we came back to the cave, the only thing left behind for Anthony was an audit of everything that had been in the cave.

  I saw Anthony breathe smoke into the audit, battering his tail against the cave’s walls. I was met with his withering gaze as soon as his favorite niche in the wall became a tunnel…

  Hm, strange…

  "This here," he pointed with a clawed finger, "says I had 500 million gold coins."

  I was ready to cry. The tunnel forgotten for the moment.

  "And you're going to go into the courtroom and have the tax collectors give me all my gold back."

  Anthony probably didn't understand that I was just a tooth fairy who was way over his head.

  But well, I had heard about some prisoners being able to defend themselves in court, and if that was an opportunity for me, I was going to take it.

  Otherwise, I could sue Anthony and hope that some judge would be brave enough to issue a restraining order on a dragon and place me under witness protection…