Chapter 27: The Blackscale Dominion
The wind cut sharp and cold at this altitude, carrying the crisp bite of fresh snow from the lower peaks. Barjuchne circled wide over her mountain, her wings stretched taut against the morning thermals that rose from the valleys below. The sun hung low in the east, painting the landscape in shades of amber and rose, and from up here she could see the full extent of what she'd claimed.
The dragon scanned every forest, every path and every village that paid tribute to her.
But it wasn't enough.
The thought settled in her chest with uncomfortable weight. She'd spent a third of her quest-given days already, drifting from one peaceful morning to the next, counting coins and avoiding the inevitable. She'd told herself she had time. That the deadline was distant. That she could afford to simply exist for a while longer in the small, comfortable space she'd carved out of the world.
But ninety days was now sixty days, and she hadn't completed a single objective. She needed a vanquished hero, ten subjugated cities, and, somehow and most perplexingly of all, an egg.
The whole 'hero' thing was something she couldn't control. And the egg thing, well, that was within an understanding that she didn't have yet. But there was one task she could complete. One goal that was simply a matter of willpower.
Ten new cities under her domain.
The wyvern Barjuchne banked left, her long, black-scaled tail adjusting for the turn, and studied the territories below with eyes that saw too much. Several villages already flew her banner, the scattered settlements that had once belonged to Lord Parsmuth before she'd ended him. They paid their tributes in gold and livestock and quiet terror, and she'd been content with that arrangement.
Content. That was the problem.
By this world's definitions, a dragon should, apparently, never be content. A dragon's nature was, allegedly, one of expansion, conquest, and the endless accumulation of more. Her instincts whispered it constantly, a low rumble beneath her conscious thoughts. She needed more territory. More gold. More power. More everything.
But her human side resisted all of that, even now.
She didn't really want to hurt anyone. She didn't really want to be the monster that burnt villages and demanded submission to her through fear. Really, like any commoner of the world, that humble part of Barjuchne’s heart wanted for nothing more than a luxurious home, her passionately devoted princess harem, and maybe a few million gold coins.
Truly, she was a simple creature.
She just wanted to be left alone with all of those things.
The wind shifted. Barjuchne adjusted her wings and climbed higher, her eyes scanning the horizon. Sadly, being left alone wasn't an option anymore. The quest had a deadline. Failure meant despair so profound she might not survive it. And beyond that, beyond the system's demands, there was a simpler truth.
Adventurers kept coming her way. Armies kept forming against her. Her mountain was a target now, and targets needed strength to defend themselves.
For the sake of her princesses, for the home she was building in the deep stone, she had no choice.
Barjuchne turned south and began her descent.
The city of Durinas sprawled across the valley floor. Stone buildings were pressed close together, their roofs forming a patchwork of slate and thatch that spread from the central district outward in broken rings that told a visual story of several partial reconstructions over generations. Smoke rose from morning cookfires. The streets were already filling with merchants and workers beginning their day.
Barjuchne had seen it before from a distance: a glowing cluster of lights on the edge of her claimed territory. Veliah had named it for her weeks ago. Durinas. It was the nearby regional capital and home to guild halls and nobility and, most importantly, the staging ground for many of the adventurers who had attacked her mountain.
That seemed like a good place to start.
She folded her wings and dropped.
The descent was fast and controlled, the city growing larger below her with every heartbeat. She could see people now, tiny figures moving through the streets. One could smell bread baking and grey runoff running out of the city, mingling into the particular scent of human civilisation.
Barjuchne spread her wings at the last moment and landed on the city's main gate with a crash that shook the structure to its foundations. The stone cracked beneath her weight. The gate tower swayed. Guards on the walls screamed and scattered, their weapons clattering to the ground as they fled.
She stood on the gate and looked down at the city below.
Silence fell like a blanket.
Barjuchne took a breath and let her voice carry, loud and clear and edged with the natural resonance that made the thin glass of the houses rattle in their names. "This city now falls under my protection and domain. You will pay tribute. You will offer fealty. In exchange, I will keep you safe from outside dangers."
Simple and sweet.
Really, it was a perfect speech. Reasonable. Fair. Short and to the point. Exactly what Rou-ya had helped her practise yesterday evening.
Below, in the streets, people stared up at her with expressions of absolute terror.
A man in expensive robes emerged from a nearby building, his face pale. The mayor, perhaps. Or some other official. He approached the gate with visible reluctance, his hands raised in supplication.
"Great Wyrm," he called up to her, his voice shaking. "We accept your terms. The city is yours. Please have mercy for our people."
Barjuchne blinked, almost confusedly. That was… fast.
"Good," she said, uncertain what else to add. She looked around for a moment, not sure why this was so easy. "- Good. I'll expect the first tribute by the next full moon."
She launched herself off the gate before anyone could respond, her wings catching the air and carrying her upwards. Behind her, the city erupted into noise. Shouting. Crying. The sounds of people who believed they'd just narrowly avoided destruction. She's not sure if they knew she would have also just accepted a 'no' as an answer.
Barjuchne climbed higher and turned toward the next settlement on her mental map.
She, in her mind, had thought that she had at least offered them a pretty sweet deal, so there wasn't any guilt. They, of course, were terrified of her and had assumed her words were a barely masked threat of total destruction.
One down. Nine to go.
The second city was smaller. A mining town built into a hillside, its buildings stacked in terraces that climbed toward the mountain peak. Barjuchne landed in their central square, folded her wings, and repeated her speech.
They submitted before she finished talking.
The third was a farming community spread across fertile plains. She didn't even need to land. She just circled overhead until the entire population gathered in the fields, staring up at her with wide eyes. She called out her demands. They shouted their agreement.
The fourth put up resistance.
It was a fortified town near the forest edge, protected by high walls and a garrison of soldiers who actually tried to fight. Broken arrows bounced off her scales. A mage threw fire that she absorbed without feeling. She didn't retaliate. All the dragon did was just hover above their walls and repeat her offer.
Even they would have protection and safety from the dangers of the world. All she wanted was a little bit of tribute in exchange for that peace. Surely, they had a little gold to spare.
They, like the others, also interpreted it as a threat. But these souls were harder than those others.
"We'll never bow to a monster!" their captain shouted from the battlements.
Barjuchne studied him for a moment. Then she turned and flew away without another word.
She'd come back later. Give them time to reconsider. Maybe they'd be more reasonable after they'd seen what happened to the other cities that hadn't accepted her terms.
– That was nothing. Nothing at all. She didn't plan to do anything to anyone.
Or maybe they wouldn't.
But the silence she left behind sounded like a promise of total destruction anyway. That night, many families would leave the region in fear, travelling in the darkness for fear of the dragon’s immediate retribution that would surely come upon those who stayed at any minute.
Little did they know that the safe and bandit-free roads they were ‘escaping’ over were, ironically, paid and secured for via the dragon’s presence itself.
By the time afternoon light slanted long and golden across the valleys, Barjuchne had visited thirteen settlements total. Ten had submitted. Three had refused.
Her quest objective flashed in her vision, the notification appearing with a soft chime.
She blinked, shaking her head, feeling a strange sensation in her eyes as a clear, almost contact-lens-like structure fell down over them. Her vision blurred for a moment before adjusting.
Relief flooded through her chest as a warm and immediate sensation. That was one objective down. Two to go. She'd even done it without burning anything and without killing anyone. Maybe these other two things wouldn't be so hard after all either. Although… F.P. did tell her that a hero would only show up if there was a threat big enough to require one. Maybe she did need to up her intimidation factor a little bit more to grease the wheels of the universe, as it were.
Barjuchne turned toward home, her wings carrying her north and east toward the mountain that rose dark against the evening sky. Her princesses would be waiting.
Everything was going according to plan.
But then she felt it.
There was a presence in the air. Familiar.
“Princesses…” she said, her eyes widening. She sensed three of them very nearby. Quickly, mid-flight, she turned her head toward the primary source of the auras. "Wait a minute -"
The light hit her before she could move.
It exploded from somewhere below, a pillar of radiant gold that caught her square in the chest and drove the breath from her lungs. Chains materialised in the light, pristine and glowing, wrapping around her ankle with impossible speed.
Weight pulled.
Barjuchne's wings folded involuntarily. The world tilted. The wyvern plummeted, the mountain rushing up to meet her with terrifying speed.
She hit the slope hard enough to shatter stone. The mountainside exploded from the impact. From the afar cities she had just left, it would look as if a volcano had erupted. The populations panicked in terror, fearing this to be an omen of the wrath of the beast to come if they did not obey.
The twin saintess priestesses stood at the edge of the impact site, their hands still glowing with residual magic. The chains of light flowed from their joined palms into the settling dust cloud, anchoring something massive within the smoke.
"I did well," said the first.
"I really did," said the second.
Both of them looked at the devastation they'd caused. The mountainside had a new scar now, a long gouge of exposed rock and displaced snow that marked where the dragon had fallen. Dust hung in the air like fog. Small avalanches continued to cascade down the slopes, triggered by the impact.
Silence settled over the mountain.
The first priestess tilted her head slightly, the two of them watching the lack of movement in the crater. "...Perhaps the prophecy was incorrect?"
"Perhaps," replied the second.
"Disappointing," they said together.
The dust began to clear. The chains still glowed, still held, anchored to something in the crater. But nothing moved. No sound emerged from the settling debris.
The first priestess frowned. "Should it not have -"
A single eye opened in the smoke. It was massive, red, and glowing with an intensity that cut through the dust and made the air itself seem to recoil from the force of the opening lid.
They exchanged a glance.
The chains pulled.
Not towards them, moved by their hands. Rather, the chains pulled away from them. Backward into the crater with a force that yanked both priestesses off their feet. They skidded forward, their boots scraping against stone as the thing in the smoke began to rise.
The first priestess's eyes widened as she struggled to hold her balance. "Perhaps the prophecy was not incorrect?"
"No," agreed the second, standing on the tips of her toes, braced against a boulder. "Perhaps it was not."
The dragon stood in the crater, her wings spread wide, her scales reflecting the golden light of the holy chains. Blood ran from cuts along her side where the glassy obsidian rock of her mountain had sliced through her scales. The dragon’s eyes blazed with fury as it glared down at the two priestesses. Then her jaws opened, and fire began to build in her throat. A primal roar shattered the silence. It was world-shaking and cleared the smoke and dust in an instant in a single pressure wave that rolled across the mountainside.
Both priestesses slid forward another few feet, their boots leaving furrows in the stone as they slid past a cluster of mushrooms and each let out the same exact surprised yelp.