Assassin was writing a letter.

It was remarkable how information gathering had gone full circle. In his day he had to make do with an army of spies and informers, street urchins and busybodies, evesdroppers and opportunists. The information he received had to be judged based on the source's reputation and placed in the context of every other report. It was a long and painstaking process to sift truth from fact.

Technology had changed that. Originally the interception of a letter was a singular coup. Then people had figured out how to intercept every letter ever sent. Intelligence agencies had drowned in an unending flood of raw data. They had come up with techniques to manage it; filters to sort the signal from the noise, and perhaps that might have worked. But then they'd gotten greedy. They stopped being satisfied with just reading everyone's mail but decided it wouldn't be enough until they knew everything there was to be known. They wanted to track people by their faces, by their gaits, by their body language. They applied mathematical models, then machine intelligence, then artificial intelligence, then daemonic intelligence. Eventually they decided to cut out the middlemen and just summon demons from hell and ask them questions directly.

Assassin kissed his crucifix. "And we all know where that leads," he murmured to himself. Back to a world where nobody knows anything. Back to a world where sending letters to the people you trusted was the best way to find out what was happening.

Speaking of people he trusted...

The door slammed open. "She's [i]burning [/i]my shrine!" said Actia.
Assassin folded the letter smoothly. "Who do you think is burning your shrine?" he asked.
"Diaofei!" Actia stormed into the room. "I can't believe her! What happened to universal peace and guardianship between the worlds!"
"I presume it was you that happened," Assassin said mildly, dripping wax onto the fold of paper.
"That wasn't my fault," said Actia, folding her arms and looking away. "She knew I was a fox when she married me."
"I see," said Assassin.
"What do you mean by that!?" snapped Actia.
"I was just wondering if you knew she was a scorpion when you married her?" Assassin, pressing his seal - three ascending chevrons - into the wax.
Actia clenched her fists, surging with crackling power. Her eyes glowed, cold electricity crackled along her tails. "Easy," said Assassin. "Without your shrine you won't have mana to spare."
Actia clenched her jaw and the electrical energy dissipated, though the air still held a menacing charge. "So you are aware of the situation?"
"I am," said Assassin, starting on his next letter. 
"And you're aware that shrine was our trump card?" said Actia. The angrier she got the more cold and corporate her tone became. "It will come down to me, Berserker and Archer and I'm the only one of us who took the time to secure a mana supply in advance!"
"And you imagine we should..." Assassin asked.
"Send Berserker and Archer again!" said Actia. "I will talk to their masters and make absolutely sure they understand the situation -"
"That would be remarkable, given how little you seem to," sighed Assassin. "Berserker did not fail. She betrayed you."
"She -" electrical power crackled around Actia again. Assassin continued to write.
"Archer knows too, of course. Not party to the deal himself, but the man has a nose for betrayal as good as mine. And just like that your little alliance is compromised. Even the Romans knew that a Triumvirate could never last." Assassin scattered dust across his letter to help the ink dry, and then gently blew on it.
"Those little [i]kits[/i]," snarled Actia with a mouth full of fangs.
"Did you not know they were foxes when you allied with them?" Assassin asked.
He looked up. He hadn't needed to do that during the entire conversation, but this was the dangerous stage. She was looking at him, looking at her command seals, wondering if she could trust him. He certainly didn't trust her to come to the correct decision by herself. So it was time for a display of contrition and competence. Kings always appreciated those.
He stood up and walked around his desk, letting his fingers trail over the fine oak affectionately. He reached the window and looked out over the lake, sidelong body language, no longer immovable and confrontational. Let us look together out at this treacherous world, the posture said, and she could not help but follow it.
"You are wondering why I did not intervene," said Assassin. "Why I am not intervening now at the destruction of your shrine. That is because to intervene is to become entangled, exposed and vulnerable. It is to become a part of their legend. When I destroyed the greatest empire of my age the history books recorded it as a senseless tragedy, the careless movement of great historical forces, a polemic against cousin marriage. And that is how the world will remember this war too. A natural disaster, a tragedy as inevitable as a scorpion riding a frog. Nobody will ask who flooded the river."

*

A dragon descends from the skies.

This world has always had dragons, just as it has always had magic. The two are inextricable. Leave magic to its own devices for long enough and it will take the shape of a dragon; this is a law as timeless as carcinisation. Even in this distant future the principle holds.

There are some quirks though. The dragon is - small is a strange word for something larger than a horse. It is a strange word for dragons in general. There is no proper size for a dragon; a dragon might be small enough to curl up inside a coffee cup and people would accept that as a true and proper shape for a dragon, just as they would accept a dragon the size of mountain range who causes earthquakes with each shake of her tail. So small is perhaps the wrong word, but not entirely - perhaps we want [i]slender[/i]. That is not an aspect of size but of dress; of the tight fitting clothing, sleek utility bandoleer, and sleek catlike silhouette. She traces over the fire, head tilting as she scans the inferno, before diving into its hottest part. She vanishes into the flames.

Minutes later she emerges from the conflagration clutching a clay jar close to her chest. She pours it out onto the grass and two dozen frogs frantically hop away.

The Command Seals are clearly visible on her neck, running along the silver-white scales like rubies. A Master - distracted and vulnerable, and for all her strength completely at the mercy of an ambush. It seems too good to be true - but perhaps this world truly is that naive.