He had been in these foreign lands for some years now. Or foreign world, after the explosion he wasn't to sure. All he knew is that before the explosion he had never meet any dwarfs, elves nor seen magic. Magic, the stuff of wonder, capable of anything. Except, of course, bringing him back to the lands that were without it. Many mages he had asked and all had responded with the same thing, theirs was the only world, nothing else existed.
He had almost gotten used to it all. Even tried to find a comfortable little village to settle down in. But even after all these years, these foreign lands held many surprises, and talking to an old villager about his village revealed one of them.
"You voted for the man eating dragon in the mountains? I thought he was a terrible pestilence that brought doom and destruction onto your lands, why vote for him?" Kings and queens he could live with, but some of the more 'esoteric' ruling systems didn't sit quite right with him.
"Cause the other guy was an ice dragon, and you might think fire is bad but that just cause you haven't gotten a proper frostbite yet. At least this ones quiet during the winter!" The old man retorted.
"Yes but why vote for one in the first place, wouldn't life be much better without a dragon at all?"
"We have always had a dragon and will always have a dragon, thank you very much! Its part of the proud traditions of this Kingdom, enshrined in paper by its founder." The old man stretched himself up as he reached the end, even taking all weight of his cane to stand up proud.
"Didn't those papers get burned up, together with the founder?" He had heard a story about that in the next village over, ruled by a sentient man eating wheel of cheese. Normal little villages, not ruled by things that would eat them, just didn't seem to be a thing here.
"A minor point, there were copies." The old man was not prepared to back down over something so irrelevant as the founder getting mysteriously burnt to a crisp.
"Doesn't those contradict each other?"
"Not on the point of the dragon! Don't you see? Its was bind it all together, no dragon no kingdom. Easy as that!" He slammed the cane into the ground at the last word. As to put and end to the argument started by the foreign fool.
"But he slaughters your creatures, burns the fields-"
"Hey, that's the good thing he does. Helps it grow better next year, bringer of life I tell ya."
"And when he burn villages with people in them?" The old man could hardly explain that away, could he?
"Population control, what would you otherwise have us do? Starve when we get to be to many? You terrible human being. Wanting to inflict that misery on us. No, thanks to the dragon we never starve!"
"Just get burned to death." The tradeoff did not seem worth it in his opinion.
"Most of them get stamped to death actually, far more pleasant. It was one of his major campaign promises, more stomping of the villagers. You should have heard what the ice dragon tried to sell."
"What?" He leaned in a bit closer. If the fire dragon promised stomping what could the ice dragon promise that would be worse?
"Ice sculptures! Can you believe that, preposterous!"
"It does seem rather strange." Not at all what he excepted. Longer winters or icing of villagers seemed more in line with the other stuff.
"And no more killing people." The words came out almost involuntarily, as if the old man had trouble believing they had even been uttered, and was horrified over that they had been.
"That seems rather nice." Ice over fire, easily. How could stomping win over ice sculptures?
"So you're a starvation man are ya? Get out of my sight and back to your ice dragon loving likes. From me you will only get hot air, thank you very much!" At that the old man turned and walked away as fast as his cane could carry him.
Well perhaps not this village then, maybe the next one wouldn't be ruled by something that liked to kill humans.