One could tell at a glance that the cave five miles north of Wallerstein belonged to a dragon. As you walked up to it, you could smell the sulfur and smoke wafting out with the breeze. Assorted armor and weapons, marked by burns and rent by what could only be claws, littered the winding trail to up it. The mouth itself was broad and tall, with a gentle downwards slope going straight back about a hundred yards before turning abruptly to the right. It was the sort of cave where you knew that if you walked inside it, you'd end up as yet another set of bones littering the floor.

But today there would be none of that. Today, the dragon inside was reduced to a sniveling mound of golden flesh curled up in the back corner of the cave. It wailed into the darkness of the cave at an invisible presence that only it could see.

"I'm sorry, Lord!"

Do you know what you are, Jasiel?

"Yes, my God."

Say it. I want to hear you say it.

"I… I'm a golden dragon." Jasiel hung his head in shame.

Exactly. You, and all the rest of your kind, were put in the world to be the historians and chroniclers of knowledge – to gather the wisdom of the ages and ensure that it is never lost. This is your personal mission, given to you from the moment you hatched, but you denied it. Instead, you became a tyrant and a killer, just like any other lowlife monster. I am very disappointed in you.

“I know I failed you, Lord Wuotan.”

“Failed” does not begin to cover it. All those centuries, where you should have been memorializing the deeds of the gods and the great warriors, you simply ended them yourself. You have forever tainted my reputation amongst the gods; everywhere you brought your own name, you brought mine as well. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Jasiel offered nothing to the contrary. He knew it was all true; what point was there in arguing about it with a god of truth?

I regret what I am about to do, but I cannot avoid it. Jasiel, thirteenth of the line of Aceldama: by the power of the council of the Gods, you shall not be joining me in the afterlife.

“No! Please, I beg of you, have mercy! I’ll do anything.”

I offered you many opportunities for repentance; as I recall, you ate most of them. It is too late for mercy. You are on your deathbed; it is too late to change your ways, so what else can I do?

“You could have told me sooner?” It was an impertinent thing to say, but Jasiel had little else to lose.

Were you not listening? I have told you time and again; you would not have listened to me if I had appeared to you sooner. You are barely listening now.

Jasiel sighed. “Very well. What shall become of me, then?”

Since you have enjoyed the company of that foul red dragon so much, you shall join him in the Hollow Lands.

Jasiel almost fainted, but barely held what little poise he had left; the Hollow Lands were the worst afterlife possible without having sold your soul to something. He simply bowed his head all the way to the floor and said nothing.

Farewell, Jasiel. I might have enjoyed your company under better circumstances.

And with that, the god departed, leaving the dragon to cry alone.

The next morning, a small mounted contingent ascended the path to Jasiel’s cave. Its members were a procession of brave nobles, nervous pages, sorcerers, and armored knights. They paused at the mouth of the cave, and one of the knights rode forward. “Mighty Jasiel!” he shouted into the cave. “I am Hans Helmreich of Wallerstein. I come in peace with a company of landesknecht; if it pleases you, would you come out to meet us? Our god Wuotan has sent word that you desire company.”

“I desire no such thing,” Jasiel spat from the depths of his cave. “I find it odd that Wuotan has deigned to making so many house calls just to humiliate me.”

Hans paused. He hadn’t expected to be called on his reason for coming. He glanced back at the rest of his group. Most of them gestured that they’d gotten a negative answer, and it was time to go home. He turned to face the cave again. “Actually, what I had just said was not completely true.” He paused once more, debating how to put what he had to say tactfully before deciding to have out with it, plain and simple. “We heard your crying from the valley and wish to know what would cause a dragon such distress.”

Jasiel went so long without responding that Hans thought they were being brushed off, but then a rumbling “ugh” reverberated through the cave. “Just come in; two rights and a left.”

Hans and company followed the dragon’s directions, which took them down the main cavern, past a number of passageways, and into the main treasure room. The room itself was about two hundred feet on a side, heated and warmed by channels of molten salt in the walls. Priceless heaps of treasure were arranged about the room; gold here, silver there, diamonds there, assorted iron and steel armors elsewhere, and weapons that were too valuable to discard but too sharp to lay on hung on the walls. The elephant-sized was in the middle of the room, sprawled on the largest pile. He was hardly a pretty sight; his scales were dull and scratched, his eyes were dull, and he was drawn, as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“A flock of vultures come to pick the bones of the dead?” he asked. “Go ahead, pry the scales off my skin, see if I care.”

Nervous glances passed throughout the company. Everyone knew that testy dragons, even weakened ones, were bad news.

“Mighty Jasiel, could you please just tell us what happened?” Hans asked, avoiding a potentially compromising answer.

Jasiel then recounted his conversation with Wuotan, downplaying his own helplessness and emphasizing Wuotan’s harshness. When he was done, a sorcerer stepped up out of the procession and bowed to Jasiel.

“If I may, I think we might have something that could help,” he offered.

Jasiel rolled his eyes. “I doubt it,” he said. “But go ahead anyway. No harm in trying, I suppose.”

“We’ve been working on a potion, and it’s nearly done… we, um, it, how to say this… It’s supposed to turn a dragon into a human. Don’t be angry with us, please, it’s supposed to be a more humane way of defending ourselves, without killing anyone, you understand. We just need an arcane link, say, oneofyourscales, and it will be done.”

“Say that last part again, you’re mumbling.”

“A… a scale.”

“Hmph. And why should I believe you’re not just going to poison me?”

“I have every reason to believe it will work. Your life-force isn’t strong enough to sustain a dragon’s body, but a human’s-”

“What he’s trying to say,” Hans interrupted, “is ‘what do you have to lose?’ If this works, you can still live a human life; perhaps you can win favor back after all.”

“Unlikely,” Jasiel said.  The look on his face said that he was interested, even if his voice did not. “But there’s a chance. Very well, bring me this potion. No tricks, now.” He winced as he plucked a plate-sized scale from his side and handed it to the sorceror.

“We shall have it tomorrow,” the sorcerer said. 

The procession found itself back in Jasiel’s cave the next morning, bearing a large vial of what looked like thick golden silt swirling in perfectly clear water.

“Is that all?” Jasiel asked, examining the glass bottle from all angles.

“Yes,” the sorcerer replied. “Just drink the contents. We’ll see you on the other side.”

“Cheers, then.” Jasiel popped off the cork with his teeth and chugged the potion at one go. He hiccuped, then began tapping his claws against the floor as he waited. “I don’t feel anything. Are you sure you got it righhh…”

As he started to say the last word, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell unconscious. A blinding white glow radiated from his body, forcing everyone to step back. Jasiel’s tail was faintly visible as it shrank and disappeared into his body. His wings did the same thing immediately after; he looked so much smaller without them! Next to go was has neck, as it retreated and assumed a new shorter size. The observers could just barely see talons fading into hands and legs restructuring before the glow intensified, and Jasiel shrank down to a size more appropriate for a human. When that finished, the dragon was gone, and there was a golden-haired man, just over six feet tall and evidently in his thirties, lying unconscious and naked on top of the gold pile.

The next few days were a whirlwind for all involved; Jasiel had to adapt to a new life and make a change in his attitude, from being a self-righteous tyrant to reasonable human being. He used some of his hoard to build himself a manor near his old cave and hire guards (which only took a paltry sum compared to what he had), some more to repay the sorcerers and make donations to the appropriate authorities, and then a much larger quantity to make reparations to the town of Wallerstein, which he had razed at least once in the distant past. From there on, he lived his days making a catalogue of his collection and returning certain treasures that would still be missed. The rest of the items went to a museum, the best in the land.

But even a magic potion could not stave off death indefinitely. Some fifty years later, when Jasiel was in his biological nineties, illness struck, and he found himself on his second deathbed, surrounded by the friends he had made. They watched him and cried for him as he said his final goodbyes and slipped into the after, never to return.

Jasiel found himself alone in a small stone anteroom, with two enormous oaken doors on either side. Wuotan walked in through one of the doors.

“Hello, Jasiel. I’ve got to say, interesting little trick there with becoming human to avoid dying that time. I imagine you have some questions?”

Jasiel bowed. “Yes, I do. This doesn’t look like the Hollow Lands, at least not how I imagined them.”

“Of course not. And this is not where you were originally going, either. Those are afterlives for dragons; you are hardly one of those anymore.”

“So where am I now?”

“You’re in Sonneschloss; this is the hall where my faithful human servants go.”

Jasiel’s jaw practically hit the floor, and he immediately fell to his knees.

“I can’t thank you enough!” he whispered.

“I could almost say the same of you. None of the gods were quite sure what to make of your decision to become human, so we waited to see what would happen. When you started making reparations, it was clear that you had a change of heart. You did quite a lot to clear both our names, so I talked to the council, and we got you placed somewhere more suitable.”

“Your mercy will not be forgotten, Lord. What do I do now?”

Wuotan opened the other door to reveal an impossibly huge mead hall, with rows of tables full of carousing people.

“Now, you and I go and have a drink, as friends.”