Chapter 32: Oval
Ever since the church's conversion, the mountain gate had not been quiet.
Goblins moved in and out of the obsidian entrance in a continuous stream, their small bodies bent double under loads that should have been impossible for something their size. But they moved nonetheless for fear of the single pair of lavender-off-purple eyes carefully watching them from nearby. Well, not that they were afraid of Veliah in particular, but rather of who she would report to if she saw them slacking.
Princess Rou-Ya was more lenient on them. But all of the dragon clan goblins knew that the elf was the dragon's taskmaster. Why else would she have such big ears if not to hear them trying to get out of work?
Chests of silver. Bags of coin. Wrapped bundles that clinked with every step. Loose gems cupped in both hands. The goblins were loaded with an endless abundance of treasure, carrying it back to the dungeon. The forest path below the gate had been worn smooth by the heavy traffic. Torches lined it now, planted every ten feet from the tree line to the entrance, burning through the night without pause.
Veliah stood against a tree at the forest's edge and pressed her knuckles to her temple.
She had a list. The list had seventeen items on it as of this moment. But eight of those items had been added after she arrived here. She had completed two of them, and each one of those completions had immediately generated four new items. Her list of tasks was a self-replicating monstrosity. It was like a hydra, constantly regrowing new heads every time it lost one.
"Where is it all coming from?!" she yelled to nobody in particular, clutching her head with both hands as she watched more and more of the dragon clan goblins running back and forth. Her silver hair had given up any pretence of arrangement hours ago. It stuck out at angles that suggested a person who had been running in several directions at once without adequate sleep. "There's no end to it!"
She watched a sea of treasure flow into the dungeon and she was the only one in charge of keeping a ledger of it all. But it was too much. She couldn't keep up. Even with her skills and training, she was just a merchant's daughter, after all, not a kingdom's treasurer.
The goblin princess Rou-ya stood beside her with her hands folded behind her back and the expression of someone who was managing better, but only barely. She watched a goblin trot past with a velvet sack so full it was leaking silver pieces from the drawstring so regularly that a second goblin was running after him, doing nothing else but picking up the dropped coins.
"Hat men," said Rou-ya.
Veliah turned to look at her.
"The church," Rou-ya clarified. "Their entire following is paying tribute to the Dragon Queen." She shook her head slowly, watching another pair of goblins stagger past under a shared chest. "It's actually very impressive if you step back and look at the scale of it." She paused, seeing Veliah's pale face. It had lost colour beyond the stress of her work. "...Are you okay?"
Veliah slowly shook her head. "I feel really weird, Rou," she said. She looked exactly the part, her face pale and her eyes slightly glassy. She straightened with effort, pressing one hand against the tree bark for support. The elf straightened herself up again. "I understand that the church is supporting her now. But how is it getting here so fast? The nearest church city is Durinas, and that's three days by road. There's no way that -"
She stopped.
Her eyes caught something in the distance, between the trees where the old mushroom rings grew in the shadows of the oldest oaks. The air above one of them shimmered, a brief distortion of light and space, and then a goblin simply appeared inside the circle with both arms wrapped around a bundle of loose silver that spilt over his grip and bounced off his knees.
He stepped out of the ring, adjusted his load, and trotted toward the mountain gate without breaking stride.
Presumably very likely unrelated to that, Veliah abruptly leaned sideways over the tree roots and vomited into the underbrush.
The goblins around her parted without comment, stepping neatly aside and then closing the gap again once she was done, their loads continuing uninterrupted.
Rou-ya whistled, having a couple of workers come over to bring the elf back inside, carrying her on an open treasure chest into the hoard to rest despite her protests.
The fairy kingdom hummed with activity that it had not seen in a very long time, not since the fall of its grandeur generations ago.
Where the old structures had crumbled and the paths had gone to moss, goblins and people now moved in a tide of bodies. They were carrying, stacking, sorting, and receiving. Priests and priestesses from the church network were loading in gold and treasure through the mushroom rings at the kingdom's edges in steady rotation, each one depositing tribute into the growing collection points before stepping back through and disappearing again.
The air in the fairy kingdom, as always, reeked of old magic and crushed flowers.
Barjuchne stood in the centre of it with her arms crossed, watching the operation with focused attention.
"This is definitely something," she said, her heart overwhelmed by the sheer amount of treasure flowing in. She was rich beyond belief, richer than most kings and lords in the world. Day by day, she was generating an empire's worth of wealth.
She was doing her best to maintain a controlling presence over her workers. But her tail betrayed her true feelings on the matter. Like a dog watching its favourite mailman approaching the door, her massive draconic tail was swiping a storm up behind her.
Drunk on happiness, she had a nearly delirious thought.
Maybe she would give her princesses an allowance. Maybe something like... one Obol each. Just a little treat. Just some free money to spend on their own, not for any particular reason. Just because she wanted to do something nice for them. They deserved to be spoilt a little.
...Not that she would want them to leave her mountainside anyway to go into town. But symbolically, maybe. They could just each have their coin and then not spend it. But the implication would be there, that they could.
The dragon thought about that for a moment, counting the number of princesses in her head. Her guts began to melt with what felt like ice. One coin... each? There were so many of them, though. Did they really all need their own coin?
Maybe they would all be happy to get just one coin, singular, in total? They could share it. Just like they shared her. That seemed reasonable to the dragon.
Four goblins, carrying one single sack of several thousand Obols, struggled past her. Her idly swishing tail nearly blasted them off of the road.
"Well, of course it is." F.P. sat on a toadstool nearby, her legs crossed, her hands folded over her knee. She wore the composed expression of someone who had been waiting for this moment for a while and was choosing not to show how much they'd been looking forward to it. "My people spent centuries building these networks." The fairy casually examined her own nails. "And since I am your favourite now -"
"- You're not," interjected Barjuchne.
"- you should clearly make use of the gift I have given you. Anything else would be very rude," F.P. continued, as if the interruption hadn't happened.
Barjuchne's eyes followed a golden statue of some foreign god with gemstones for eyes being carted in. "Put that one in the hotsprings," she commanded, taking a liking to it.
"Yes, my queen!" replied one of the goblins.
"They're well connected. Extremely well connected," went on F.P. The fairy turned her head, looking at a particular ring near the kingdom's eastern edge. "That one, for example," she pointed idly at a mushroom circle that a particularly large heap of silver was coming in through. "That will take you to just outside the nation's capital."
Barjuchne's tail stopped mid-motion.
Slowly, the dragon turned and looked down at the fairy.
F.P. casually sat on her toadstool, not phased in the least by what she had just said.
"It does WHAT?"
F.P. tilted her head, her grey eyes bright. "Oh. Did I -" She pressed one finger to her lips, her expression arranging itself into something that conveyed mild surprise with the act of someone who had rehearsed mild surprise. "Did I never mention that? Huh." She smiled to herself, her wings making a small, satisfied movement. Barjuchne said nothing. Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, do you know what terrible thought I just had?"
"I'm going to break your neck," said the dragon, feeling sure she meant it.
"If someone found out about these fairy doors," the fairy continued, her voice taking on a playfully horrified quality, "they could use them against you. Walk an army straight to your gate. It would bypass the whole mountain. Could you imagine? Ha." She buzzed her wings once. "That would be very bad."
Silence.
"Oh!" F.P. lifted her eyes, as if struck by inspiration. "You know what you should do? You should rebuild the interior of the fairy kingdom!" She clapped her hands together once, excitedly. "Fortify it with some captured slaves. Maybe use it as a defensive buffer in case anyone seedy discovers how the rings function." She tapped her chin. "Especially now that the church is involved. It is really only a matter of time before someone with less friendly intentions figures out that -"
Barjuchne's hand closed around the fairy and lifted her off the toadstool. F.P. found herself at eye level with two burning red eyes. "You little witch," the dragon said. Her voice was quiet. Hard. The growl that came from her throat shook the ground. The goblins all around her started screaming, thinking they were the cause of her rage, and redoubled their efforts. "How long have you been scheming this?" Barjuchne pressed down the thoughts she had of just taking a bite straight from her.
A large part of Barjuchne was mostly just annoyed at herself, though, having lowered her guard around F.P. since the fairy had seemingly been working hard to redeem herself.
"Scheming?" F.P. held one finger to her lower lip, the picture of innocence. "Why, I would never."
"Do you want me to put you back in the cage?"
The fairy's wings went still. Her composure flickered for just a moment. "And here I thought we were past that," she sighed, blissfully unaware of the hovering thumb that was a twitch away from bending her head sideways on her neck.
Barjuchne, controlling herself, studied the fairy for a long, measured moment. Then, with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snarl, she let go and gracelessly dropped F.P. down onto a toadstool. The fairy spun, her wings just barely causing her to land on her stomach as she was spread out over the large mushroom, spread out flat to not slip off of its side.
"You're in charge," said the dragon, flat and dull.
F.P. blinked. "...Huh?" She lifted her head, her confusion evident. "Pardon?"
"You're in charge," repeated Barjuchne. A black tip of a claw pressed against the centre of the fairy's forehead. "You want your kingdom rebuilt so badly? Then you can have it," said Barjuchne, lovelessly. Her sharp teeth were bared down toward the fairy princess. Barjuchne turned and started walking. "Have the goblins do the work." She looked back at her with a cold glare. "If I find what you produce unsuitable. I'm going to leave you in here by yourself and destroy every entrance there is."
"Wait -" F.P. turned on her stone, watching the dragon's back move away. "Where are you going? Hey!" She looked down at the gap between herself and the ground, which was inconvenient to navigate at her height. "Come back! What do you mean you're putting me in charge?!" she asked in shock, as if she hadn't actually just quite literally got exactly what she wanted. "Let's plan it together, then!"
"No." Barjuchne waved one hand without turning around. "And you're staying in here until it's done by yourself."
"What?!" The fairy's voice rose sharply. Her composure cracked down the middle with an audible quality, the way ice sounds before it gives way. "That'll take days! Weeks, maybe!" She moved to the edge of the flat stone, looking after the retreating figure. "I don't want to stay in here by myself again without -!"
A pair of goblins crashed into each other. The gold ran down an incline into the bog water. They panicked, chasing after it. But something in the water grabbed their legs, pulling at them. They panicked. A whole host of goblin soldiers ran over, batting away the black, slimy tendrils of the unnamed creature. Most of them ended up hitting each other in their panic instead of the entity.
"- Months!" self-corrected F.P., looking back after observing them for a second. She didn't finish her original thought.
The dragon kept walking.
F.P. rose and stood at the edge of her toadstool, the fairy kingdom spread around her, goblins moving past on all sides without paying her any particular attention. The old structures loomed in the middle distance, familiar and hollow. The air had the particular quality that old, empty places accumulate over long years of quiet. Even if it was filled with movement now and noise, somehow the feeling of a graveyard never really left her heart as she stared around at it.
She had spent a very long time in here, in this dead place.
Her fists clenched at her sides.
Why was she doing that, though? What was happening to her? The fairy didn't understand. In essence, her lifelong scheme had finally come true. She was finally going to be able to rebuild her kingdom with a pool of infinite labour and resources. It was exactly what she dreamt of for so long. It was perfect.
F.P. lifted her head and looked at the space where Barjuchne had been. But Barjuchne was gone.
Behind her, a battle was unfolding as the goblins were chaotically fighting off a many-tendrilled monster that was splashing up from the mire. One of them screamed out, being swung over her head.
Something in the fairy's torso did something uncomfortable, something she had no framework for processing. She stood very still in contrast to the anarchy around her, while gold and gems flew all around her. A legion of the Dragon Clan's pikemen charged in in the background, crying havoc.
"I'm sorry, okay!" called the fairy, annoyed, but she wasn't even sure what exactly it was that she was annoyed about. She just had no idea what she was doing anymore.
Nothing.
Despite all of her planning, she had not expected success to hurt should she ever get it.
Suddenly, F.P. yelped in surprise.
Sharp, pinching claws closed around her and lifted her up, and she found herself looking at Barjuchne's face again, closer than before, the dragon's eyes tight and assessing her.
They stared quietly for a moment.
"...Any other secret schemes I should know about?" asked the dragon.
F.P.'s expression went through a few separate things in rapid succession before arriving at something bright and genuine. She shook her head, her silver hair swinging. "Cross my heart!"
Barjuchne's red eyes didn't move. A single black claw extended and pressed with deliberate precision against the centre of the fairy's chest.
"I will," she threatened.
F.P. squirmed. The claw was sharp and the dragon's grip was firm, and the combination made a very convincing argument for honesty. But underneath the squirming, something had settled in the fairy's chest that felt suspiciously close to relief. Barjuchne held her like that for another moment, then tucked the fairy close against her collarbone and turned back toward the mushroom ring that led home.
F.P. said nothing. She folded her hands in her lap, her wings settling flat against her back, and let herself be carried.
The dragon girl stopped, breathing out a lash of fire over the heads of the goblins, who dived to the ground beneath the fireball, just barely shielding themselves in time.
Whatever the thing in the water was, it screeched and retreated back into the depths.
The deep tunnels of the mountain were quiet.
They were always quiet this far down, the sound of the dungeon's upper life filtered out by layers of stone until only the low, constant presence of heat remained. Lizardmen moved along the walls in the orange glow, their claws finding purchase in cracks that nothing else could navigate, their eyes catching the firelight in brief, bright flashes before they scurried on. For most everything and everyone else, it was just too hot down here because of the magma.
Fuming to herself about what to do with such troublesome princesses, Barjuchne walked through the heat without noticing it.
She had come here without quite deciding to. There had simply been a pull in her chest, low and insistent, the way her princess-sense worked but somewhat differently. She had set F.P. down in the upper chambers, telling her that bad little fairies lost their shackle-free-neck privileges before recollaring her, as one does. Then Barjuchne followed the feeling downward without examining it, the way one follows a sound heard in a dream while sleepwalking.
The brooding chamber opened before her. The magma moat circled its island in slow orange loops, and the single stone bridge crossed it in a straight line to the flat centre. She crossed it and stopped, confused at what she saw.
A thing was there, sitting by itself in the midst of it all.
An egg.
The dragon froze, her eyes widening at the alien sight.
It was only just manifesting now before her, appearing like new walls and chambers did in the dungeon at times. It sat on the bare stone of the island, dark and smooth, still faintly translucent at its rising, sharp edges where the ambient magic had not yet fully solidified it. As she watched, the shell deepened from grey to a purple-streaked black, taking on the same quality as her own scales, the iridescent darkness that shifted colour depending on the light.
Barjuchne held one hand over her chest, feeling the sudden departure of a tension she hadn't realised she'd been carrying.
"Oh..." she said to herself and exhaled. "Oh, wow," she laughed quietly to herself, surprisingly awkwardly. "...That's a relief."
The dragon stared, even somewhat tensely for a moment, as a remnant of her human self shone on through once more. Such moments had become rarer these days, as her evolutions, changes, and even lifestyle had made her more and more of a beast.
In truth, despite her rough facade, she had been privately anxious about this particular matter. The system had mentioned reproduction in rather oblique ways, and her thoughts on the subject had run in increasingly uncomfortable directions every time she tried to examine them directly.
Simply put, despite her most feverish efforts, it simply didn't seem biologically possible for her to produce an egg with the princesses.
But it looks like the dungeon handled it in the end.
A system window materialised in the warm air above the egg.
The egg sat on the stone, warm and dark, its surface beginning to develop the faint texture of scales. The dragon crouched in front of it, her knees settling on the hot stone without complaint.
She put both hands against it.
It was warm beneath her palms. Solid. She could feel the faint, internal movement of something that was not quite alive yet but was moving toward being alive with the certainty of water finding a downward path.
Following her instincts, Barjuchne bent closer, pressing her face to the shell, and breathed in.
The egg smelt of stone and heat and the dungeon's ambient magic. All of these things she had expected. But underneath those, woven through the shell itself, there was something else. Something that made her exhale slowly and press her palms a little more firmly against the surface.
It smelt like Veliah. Clean linen and herbs. There was also a little bit of sulphur from the burning hellscape around her, but that was, of course, secondary.
Barjuchne stayed crouched there with her hands on the egg for a long time, listening to the heat move through the stone around her, watching the shell deepen toward perfect black. She didn't move. Then, she opened her ruby eyes, draconic greed taking over her.
“You are mine,” she whispered possessively to the egg, her tail wrapping tightly around it as she told it the first thing it would hear in this world.
Not that it could actually hear her. But, really, Barjuchne just felt that she had to make sure that it knew from early on who was in charge here. Not that it hatches and gets any funny ideas about usurping her.
She should definitely go check on Veliah, though.
In the spirit of that exact thought, the dragon Barjuchne selected the healing ability from her choice of three. She had the feeling that it would be appreciated.
Influenced by a sudden influx of divine energies, a few of the dragon's pitch-black scales in the middle of the obsidian cluster of her body shifted in hue, flaking into an ashen white.