166 The Dragon on the Summit
166 The Dragon on the Summit
The climb grew steeper the higher we went, the rocks colder, and the air thinner. Every now and then, the wind tore across the ridge and forced us to crouch until it passed. Amelia moved with feline ease, the Seer stumbled with theatrical misery, and Abner clanked with every shift of his armor despite his best efforts. When we reached a narrow plateau halfway up the mountain, I raised a hand.
“Stop here,” I whispered. “I’ll go ahead alone.”
Abner bristled immediately. “My lord, that’s reckless. At least let me—”
“No,” I said. “You stay. All of you.”
He was about to protest again, but I cut in before he could build momentum. “Seer, you have operational command until I return.”
The Seer perked up with visible delight. “Oh-ho! The Seer has been promoted—”
Amelia shoved his shoulder. “Don’t make it worse.”
She turned to me then and gave a short nod. Of all of them, she was the one I could trust not to panic if something went sideways. I returned the nod and started up the slope.
The higher I climbed, the stronger the presence above became. It was massive and heavy with instinct yet threaded with something more complex. Not mindlessness. Not animalistic hunger. Something resembling intelligence.
And most importantly… fear.
That’s why I decided to go alone. I had already brushed the dragon’s consciousness with my empathy from a distance. What I found there wasn’t rage or predation. Instead, it was a knot of anxiety, a distaste for violence, and a sense of being cornered.
If Prince Grant had been using hypnosis, then the amount of conditioning required to suppress something this intelligent would be staggering. Even then, hypnosis usually eroded faster in minds that were sharp or willful… or gentle.
The dragon was all three.
As I neared the summit, the heat reached me first with waves of warmth pulsing like a furnace breathing. I crested the ridge and finally saw it.
It was enormous.
The dragon lay curled on a flat stretch of stone, its massive body rising and falling with each slow breath. Red scales glittered like molten metal. Each claw was the size of my forearm. Even its wings, folded tight against its body, cast shadows large enough to cover a wagon.
Then it sensed me.
The head lifted, slow but heavy. Two golden eyes opened, slitted and bright as forges. Fire hissed from its nostrils. Its wings twitched. Its neck arched back in warning.
A growl rumbled through the plateau, deep enough to shake dust from the rocks.
I didn’t move.
Because the fear rolling off the dragon wasn’t the fear of me. It was the fear of hurting someone. The fear of being forced to fight. The fear of what might happen if it loses control.
Soft-hearted. A pacifist dragon. That was new.
I reached out with my empathy again, deeper this time, threading my will through the layers of fog that clung to its mind. Prince Grant’s psychic mark sat there like thick oil. It was crude and clumsy, but powerful due to repetition.
The dragon didn’t understand what the hypnosis was, but it had been resisting it. That made my job easier.
“Let’s fix this,” I murmured under my breath, even though my voice meant nothing compared to the psychic intent behind it.
With a concentrated pull, I ripped the mental bindings apart.
The dragon jerked first in shock, then in a strange relief that flooded through my link like warm steam.
And then, the dragon shook.
Scales glowed. The massive body warped, bones folding, shrinking, twisting. Wings curled in on themselves like burning parchment. Fire licked across its form as the tail evaporated into smoke.
I waited in silence as the transformation finished.
When the blaze dimmed, a woman stood where the dragon had been. It was a young woman with vivid red hair cascading down her back and bright, ember-like eyes. Her skin steamed faintly in the cold wind. She blinked at me with bewilderment and vulnerability.
She was also very, very naked.
“...Ah,” I muttered.
She stared at her hands as if she didn’t recognize them. I sensed confusion, fear… and a profound relief.
I reached out with my mind and sent a whisper across the link to Amelia.
“Bring the others. I found the dragon. Sort of. And I think we’re going to need clothes.”
“M-my b-brother…” the woman choked, her voice hoarse and trembling. “Please… s-save him…”
Her desperation struck harder than any attack could. Her whole body shook as if she were still half-dragon, instincts coiled tight with fear. I stepped closer, gently extending my empathy, but her terror made the connection volatile.
I needed clarity.
More importantly, I needed to understand why someone like her had such a ‘potent’ gift.
Her shapeshifting was astonishingly advanced. The sheer mass she could manifest was something only mid to high sevens could normally pull off. Her willpower alone could put her into an eight.
That sort of power wasn’t natural in this world.
“Hold still,” I murmured.
Before she could react, I placed my hand on her forehead and let my consciousness dive into hers.
“Possession.”
It hit me like a hammer.
The world twisted, shrank, blurred, and then reformed. My feet were smaller. My hands were tiny, trembling. And cold metal bit into my wrists.
Chains.
A child’s chains.
I could feel the weight of her fear and hopelessness like it was my own.
I lived her memories as though they were mine.
A dim room lit by torches. The smell of sweat, sickness, and iron. The constant clatter of chains. And that gnawing cold that seeped into the skin of every child trapped there.
Beside me stood a boy older by a year or two, with dark, messy hair and bruises wrapped around his arms like vines. He held my, her, hand with a gentleness that felt out of place in a life like this.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered to her. “I’m here.”
He always said that.
He wasn’t her real brother, but they were the only children among a group of slaves. They were all each other had.
He ‘pulled’ first.
A wound he received one day in the pit closed instantly. No blood left on his skin. No scar. The slavers cheered, seeing profit in his powers of regeneration.
The next day, he was thrown into the fighting pits. Again. And again. And again.
He lived. That was enough for them.
Years bled into years. It was monotonous, humiliating, and cruel.
By the time the girl grew older, the slavers realized she was pretty. Pretty enough to fetch a price. Pretty enough to drag to a brothel. Pretty enough to sell off to a noble for entertainment.
Their touches grew invasive.
The night they tried to violate her was the night her powers awakened.
Scales erupted across her body. Her bones reshaped. Her screams became a dragon’s roar.
She tore half the encampment apart.
But she didn’t kill her brother.
They fled together. They stole food, ran through mountains, and survived on sheer desperation.
And then they were caught.
Not by slavers.
By Prince Grant.
His voice slipped into her mind like poison. It was gentle, persuasive, and absolute. His hypnosis reshaped her trauma, twisted her fear into obedience. He transformed her into a ‘dragon’ and sent her to devastate villages and nobles, making her the perfect monster for his political theater.
Her brother was immune to the hypnosis.
So the prince took her hostage.
If he wanted his sister alive, he’d obey.
And he did.
Because he loved her.
Because he had no choice.
Because he was a slave.
…
..
.
The memories slammed shut, ejecting me violently back into my own body. I staggered, gasping, wiping cold sweat from my forehead.
That level of trauma was too much for my current potency. My consciousness simply couldn’t hold it. It was layered trauma from childhood to adulthood at a level I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend if I didn’t have my powers.
Amelia was already supporting the newly-human girl, wrapping her coat firmly around her shoulders.
“Do you have a name?” Amelia asked gently.
The woman just shook her head weakly, unable to speak.
“She doesn’t,” I said, catching my breath. “Neither does her brother. They were slaves since birth. That black-haired slave used in the admission test earlier? The one with regeneration?”
Amelia’s eyes widened. “The one who fought us?”
“Yeah. That was him.”
Abner took a step back, staring at the woman as if she had transformed again before his eyes. “So the dragon… was a woman all along?”
The Seer let out a low whistle.
“Well,” he said, folding his arms behind his head, “even I didn’t foresee this. I thought the dragon was just some overgrown lizard with an anger problem. Turns out she’s a woman with an overblown tragedy instead. Fascinating.”
The woman trembled again, clutching Amelia’s coat as though it were her last anchor to the world. “P-please save my brother,” she cried a second time. “Please…” I sensed the ache behind her voice and the hopeless devotion only someone shaped by lifelong misery could carry.
It tied perfectly into something I had glimpsed earlier in Abner’s thoughts. A whisper about a ‘blessing’ and a strange branch of Prince Grant’s power. A gift that could raise the potency of one’s abilities.
If that was true… then Grant’s gift was more monstrous than any dragon.
A manipulator who could strengthen his subordinates?
In a world where gifted individuals were already feared yet limited in potency, that sort of power wasn’t just broken. It was a recipe for absolute tyranny.
“M-My brother… my pitiful older brother…” she sobbed, her voice cracking as if she were reliving her chains. “P-Please… help him…”
Before her panic spiraled, I gently brushed her mind and induced sleepiness. Her breathing steadied, and she finally slumped against Amelia’s shoulder, exhaustion overtaking fear.
I turned to Abner and Seer.
“Any idea how strong her brother actually is?” I asked. “Grant wouldn’t waste time on someone useless.”
Abner frowned, brow creasing with effort. “I… don’t know. I barely saw him. When I did, soldiers were usually pushing him around or beating him. From what I’ve seen, he’s quiet, obedient, and terrified. Collared. Cuffed. Always dragged somewhere.” He shook his head. “His regeneration is strong, but in terms of fighting? He’s not that good.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Amelia countered, folding her arms. “The way he moved during the test? Even if it was sloppy, his instincts were sharp. I thought he couldn’t fight, but now that I think about it, he wasn’t trying.”
I nodded slowly. She wasn’t wrong.
During the admission test, the man fought like someone caught between panic and numbness, like a beaten animal forced into a ring. But his movements had a rawness to them, a survival instinct that didn’t match a man who had “no skill.” He just moved with the hopelessness of someone who had long since given up on living.
Seer lifted a hand. “I saw him fight once. Years ago. Back when he was still a pit slave.”
Amelia and I both turned to him.
Seer shrugged. “It was ugly. The poor bastard fought a gifted man whose power let him cut through anything he touched. The slave lost a leg and an arm early on… but he won.” His smile faded a little. “He tore the man’s throat with his teeth. Then he got dismembered even further until he was basically a head stuck to a piece of ribcage. And still…” Seer tapped his own chest, “He tore through the guy’s lungs and stomach with his teeth. No hesitation. No fear. Just instinct.”
Abner swallowed hard.
Seer added, “I don’t know what ‘admission test’ you’re talking about, but if drugs were involved? Then yeah, Grant probably drugged him as part of the brainwashing. It fits the pattern.”
I exhaled through my nose.
“Seer,” I said, nodding toward the sleeping dragon woman, “stay with her. Keep her calm. If anything tries to get close,” I tapped my temple. “Call for me.”
Seer smirked lightly. “Babysitting a dragon girl? How… flattering.”
I ignored the dramatics.
“Amelia. Abner. We’re dealing with the Royal Guard.”
What fueled powers?
Everyone had their theories: from stamina, mental energy, and some pseudo-mystical metaphysics that capes back home loved to debate. But from everything I’d lived through, everything I’d witnessed and suffered… one answer made the most sense.
Willpower.
Endure a trauma. Survive a pull. Break in a way the world can’t understand. And from that fracture, pull power from the abyss. The deeper the ruin, the greater the strength.
Which meant the slave girl’s brother, after everything he’d endured and everything he had survived, could very well be a monster in the making.
A regenerating fighter with a life of torture behind him… augmented by Grant’s so-called “blessing.” That alone was enough to make my skin crawl.
Abner broke the silence first. “What’s the plan?”
I extended my hand toward Amelia.
She immediately understood and handed me her bow and quiver.
I took them quietly, then said, “We kill all of them.”
Abner recoiled as if I had stabbed him instead of giving an order. “W–what!? Lord Eclipse, surely, the Royal Guard would be able to—”
“No,” I said flatly. “They can’t. And they won’t.”
I lowered the bow, looking him straight in the eye.
“Within the dragon girl’s memories… I saw the truth. The Royal Guard is in league with Prince Grant. They knew the king was dead from the start. They weren’t hypnotized. They weren’t misled. They chose their side.”
Abner stumbled back, white as chalk.
I pressed on before he could deny it again.
“The girl was made into a maid. Grant tested hypnosis techniques on her again and again. One night, she overheard the Chief of the Royal Guard speaking to the prince. They discussed your king as if he were carrion already picked clean.”
The memory burned through me, her silent trembling as she listened behind a half-open door, watching soldiers bow to the murderer of their liege. The prince leaned back in his chair, unconcerned, while the Chief joked about replacements.
Of course, I only saw a glimpse, but it had been definitive.
“How about this?” I said softly. “Use your gift. See it for yourself. I won’t argue, Abner. You’re important to me. You swore your sword to me. You deserve the truth.”
He hesitated, and then his eyes unfocused, pupils dilating.
A second later, blood welled and ran down his cheeks.
He gasped. “No way… I… I confronted them about it… a-and they spilled so easily—”
Then the tears came. Not from pain, but from grief, a deep, powerless ache of betrayal. His whole body trembled as the truth ate him alive. Abner surged forward, rage boiling over, ready to run straight down the mountain and confront the traitors. But Amelia grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back with surprising force.
“You got your answer,” she whispered. “Now let us handle the rest.”
“In this case,” I said as I drew the bowstring, “let me handle it.”
Abner blinked, confused. “What are you—”
I released the arrow.
It passed through stone like mist, a silent phantom.
Far below, hidden beneath the earth, a sleeping mind flickered out, gone before it knew it had been targeted.
We were still on the slope high above the cave. A perfect vantage point.
Back in the Malufan vessel, I used intangible cards as ambush tools, slipping between crates and machinery to assassinate from angles that made no physical sense. This was the same principle, only with thicker walls and better elevation.
If I were the old me, even with a sniper rifle, I’d never land a shot like that.
But now? My empathy traced every breath, every heartbeat below us. My telepathy guided every movement of the arrow. Accuracy wasn’t guesswork anymore.
It was instinct sharpened by awareness.
Amelia stepped closer. “What do you need us to do?”
I nocked another arrow.
“Stay here,” I said without turning. “Be ready to sweep them up once I thin them out.”