The tarasque crouched low to the ground, wheezing, its chin resting on a wet stump, looking up at them with its unbelievably ugly face. Its posture was not so much defensive as resigned.

“Leave it to the French to come up with the most fucked-up-est dragon ever,” Asmodeus sighed.

Once the tarasque realized they weren’t going to attack it, it began to talk. In fact they couldn’t get it to shut up. The thing didn’t need a roving strike team of folklorist-wizards, it needed a therapist. They sat there all night on tree stumps listening to it complain about how lonely and insufficiently damp it was. Not till dawn did it lumber back into its hollow.

But the tarasque turned out to be worth it. It was a champion whiner, and if they were trying to figure out who people around here were afraid of, well, it was afraid of practically everyone. They were spoiled for choice. The tarasque was too big for the small fry to pick on, but reading between the lines it was clear that it was a whipping boy for the upper ranks of mythological society. Apparently Reynard the Fox teased it a great deal, though it begged them not to mention anything about that to Reynard, for fear of reprisals. More interestingly, the tarasque was subjected to periodic beatings by a holy man of some kind who had been haunting the slopes of Mont Ventoux for the past millennium or so.

It was the tarasque’s terrifying appearance, see, that caused it to be so often misunderstood. A being of such ferocious magnificence as itself was too often assumed to be evil, and scourged and vilified should it devour even so much as six or seven village folk! That was why it had taken to spending its days wallowing in the salt bogs of the Camargue, nomming the occasional wild horse to stay alive. Why not join it? It was cool and safe here. And you know, it so rarely found anyone nice to talk to. Not like that nasty holy man. They were so much nicer than he was.

Driving back along empty predawn highways, squinting out at the flatness of the swamp through gummy eyes, they all agreed that the holy hermit sounded like a very nasty customer indeed. Exactly the kind of nasty customer they should get to know better.

A new atmosphere had settled over the house at Murs. It had always been a basic tenet there that luxury and comfort were integral parts of the magical lifestyle, not just for its own sake but as a matter of principle. As magicians—Murs magicians!—they were the secret aristocracy of the world, and Goddamn it, they were going to live like it.