Chapter 50: A Dragon’s Quest
The light settled like heat haze on a summer road, the white fading to transparency in slow pulses, and Barjuchne lay on the broken marble floor and looked at the figure standing in the centre of the throne room.
The girl was human. Her hair was red, not the orange-red of autumn leaves but something deeper, a red that seemed to hold its own light, falling from her head in a heavy curtain that reached her shoulders and stopped. Her eyes were green, bright in a way that had nothing to do with the room's illumination. They shone from inside, the colour of deep forest canopy with the sun coming through.
The floor around her feet was cracked. The marble had fractured in a spreading pattern, the lines radiating outward from where she stood. The air moved around her in slow, visible currents, the magic so dense that Barjuchne could feel it pressing against herself.
She was built like a warrior but her skin was that of a princess. The armour she wore had not been put on. It had manifested with her, the plates and joints and fastenings appearing as part of the same moment she had appeared, as if she had been born wearing it. The sword at her hip was the same. It sat there with the natural weight of a fifth limb.
Barjuchne stared.
Her body had gone very still. Every sense she had, the draconic ones that operated below conscious thought, the ones that read heat and pressure and the particular chemical signatures of threat, all of them were reporting the same information at the same volume.
Danger.
This person was dangerous, in a category she had not encountered before. But underneath the danger, buried beneath it, something else was stirring.
The girl was beautiful.
Not beautiful the way the princesses were beautiful, each in their own measured way. This was something else. The line of her jaw. The weight of her hair. The way her armour sat across her shoulders, the way her hips moved under the plates when she turned her head. The breadth of her hands, warrior's hands, with visible tendons and a calloused grip visible at the edge of her gauntlets.
Barjuchne's throat went dry.
— But that was only because she had been out of water for too long again.
The girl looked around the throne room. At the guards pouring through the doors, at the pikes lowering, at the chaos of bodies filling the space around her. Her head turned slowly, taking it in.
Then she looked down. At Barjuchne. On the floor. Blood on her face. Scratches across her jaw.
The emerald light held still.
Barjuchne saw the working behind her eyes. The rapid processing of information, the fitting of new data into an existing framework. She recognised the expression because she had worn it herself, waking up in a cave full of bones.
This girl was from the same place. The same world. The same origin. The intoxicating smell of it was still on her, clinging like a ghost. The perfume of that old world: instant noodles and gasoline.
The king rose from his throne. His voice carried across the room. "You've finally arrived, great hero."
Barjuchne's mind moved. She had seconds. The hero was here, summoned by the bell, designated as a threat to her. The king was about to explain the situation. Once he did, the fight would begin, and she did not know if she could win it.
Then, something unexpected happened.
"Are you alright?"
The hero knelt down. She was looking at Barjuchne's face, the bleeding spot, the scratches. Her hand reached out and touched Barjuchne's cheek.
Her touch was very warm. The contact sent a current through Barjuchne's skin, an electric quality that had nothing to do with the magic in the air.
Oh wow," the hero said. She was not speaking to Barjuchne. She was speaking to herself. "A suit? It's way better than mine. Is this real leather?" she muttered and then poked Barjuchne. “No, it’s so soft…”
Barjuchne stared at her, lost. The stranger’s hand was still on her face. The thumb moved. It traced the line of her cheekbone, the pads of the fingers pressing gently against her scales.
The hell was she doing? What was this?
The hand moved from her cheek to her jaw. The fingers curled under her chin, tilting her face up. Barjuchne went with it, offering no resistance, her body responding before her mind had caught up. The girl turned her face to the side, examining the cut. Her thumb pressed against Barjuchne's lower lip, pulling it aside to look at her mouth in a gesture that Barjuchne was only ever used to being on the other side of.
It was a brief touch, professional in intent. The thumb dragged across the inside of her lower lip, hooking the corner of her mouth open to look at her teeth. But the contact was not brief in the way it landed on Barjuchne. The taste of the girl's skin was salt and warmth and something metallic, the particular flavour of blood and magic mixed.
The dragon part of her registered it with a sharpness that was almost painful. It took everything she had not to bite down then and there.
"How did you make this?" the hero asked.
She did not understand that the skin was real.
She thought it was a costume.
Was she being hit on?
Nobody had ever approached Barjuchne this way. She was the one who took charge, who grabbed, who pressed people against walls and told them what she wanted. The feeling of being on this end of it was so foreign that it took her a moment to process what it meant.
The dragon decided then and there that she wanted the hero.
The thought arrived complete and uncontested, a physical thing that settled in her chest and low in her belly.
A hero was not a princess. But it was something rarer. A true champion, the pinnacle of mortal power. And everything in Barjuchne's draconic body, every instinct she had built this empire on, told her that she wanted this.
And underneath the wanting, something else. A sharper instinct. The need to teach this girl who did the face-grabbing.
The hunger and the violence were tangled together in a way she had no interest in untangling.
But first.
"Ah. Hero." The king's voice came from the throne, trying to reclaim the attention.
Barjuchne moved. She reached up and grabbed the hero's wrist. The skin of the girl's inner wrist was bare above the gauntlet, and it was smooth and warm under her fingers. She made her eyes wide. She had heard plenty of damsel voices. She knew the tone. And with the hero's wrist in her hand, her thumb pressing into the pulse point, it was not difficult to set the performance in motion.
This performance would be the hardest thing Barjuchne had yet to do in this world, because it required setting aside her radiating draconic pride for just a minute. Even if it was for a scheme that would make the king of thieves proud, it was very difficult for her to do.
"Hero. Please. I need you."
The hero blinked. "Wait. It's not a suit?"
Barjuchne held her hands. Corralling them, drawing them close, keeping the girl's attention fixed on her own face. Letting the proximity do work that words could not.
"I am Barjuchne, the dragon queen of this nation. The wicked human king has sent his men to invade my home. He wants my death." She paused. "I summoned you to this world. Please. Defeat his forces. Protect my home."
It was not a lie, technically.
The hero's eyes went wide. "Oh my god," she said. The pieces were fitting together.
"This is absurd!" the king shouted. "Hero! Kill her!"
"Father! No!" Schmand's voice cut across the room.
The hero looked at the king. Then back at Barjuchne. "You're really a..."
Her face began to glow. Her eyes moved over Barjuchne's face, then down. They traced the line of her neck, the angle of her shoulders, and the curve of her shape. They lingered on the scales at her collarbone where the cloak had shifted and on the particular way her tail curved around her legs on the floor. The girl's breath changed. Her lips parted slightly.
She pressed both hands to her cheeks and held them there. "A dragon girl!" she said. "A real, actual dragon girl!"
Her expression carried the light of someone who had just learned that the thing she had wanted for her entire life was real and was standing in front of her.
Barjuchne understood.
Of all the cosmic coincidences, this one might take the prize. The hero from her old world, the champion summoned to slay her, was a scalie. That is, a furry who had a particular affinity for reptiles.
The realisation made her mouth curve into something sharp.
"Seize her! Kill the dragon!" the king shouted.
The soldiers surged forward. A hundred men with pikes, their boots striking the marble in a rising tide of sound.
"Father! No! Leave her alone!" Schmand grabbed at the soldiers, but she was one girl against a hundred. She fell. The maid pulled her out of the way just before the trampling.
The hero looked at Barjuchne and smiled. The smile was wide and unguarded. "My name is Edelgard Von Erde. I will protect you. I promise."
Barjuchne did not understand what happened in the next second.
Edelgard rose. Her hand moved to her sheath. The sword was barely unlatched, barely visible, and the power that radiated from her was sudden and total. The air crackled. The broken marble beneath her feet cracked further. The light in her eyes became something that lit the room from within.
She moved.
The sword was not drawn. It was simply present, and the arc of energy that came from it travelled through the air as a visible line. A hundred pikes disintegrated mid-shaft. The men holding them went flying in every direction. The eastern wall of the castle ceased to exist. Bricks and stone and mortar left the building at speed and continued travelling, some of them still visible moments later against the sky.
"Hell yeah! Awesome!" called Barjuchne. She was not ashamed of the reaction as she looked at the hero, standing there in a frozen pose worthy of a game’s final credits, her sword still in the air as a wave of destruction laid beyond her stance.
It was pretty awesome, frankly.
Edelgard turned toward the throne. The sword was pointed at the king. "Wicked monster. You will leave this precious creature alone from now on."
The king stared at her. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Behind Edelgard, Barjuchne leaned to the side and stuck out her tongue.
The king's face fell.
Edelgard looked back at Barjuchne, who was on her knees, looking helpless and powerless again. She turned back to the king, who was sputtering, distraught, his authority crumbling in front of him.
Barjuchne tried not to laugh.
She rose to her feet.
This was too perfect.
She turned and looked at Schmand. The princess was standing at the edge of the room, her eyes wide and wet. "Are you going to be good?" Barjuchne asked.
Schmand nodded. "P-please don't give me away." She sniffled. "I'm sorry."
Barjuchne sighed. It was a contented sound. "...This is the best day of my life. Hey, Edelgard. Hero-Who-Got-Tricked-Says-What?"
Edelgard turned, confused by the rapid delivery. "What?"
Barjuchne smiled.
The power came up from somewhere deep. Barjuchne let it take her.
Her body changed. The castle roof opened above her as she grew, her form expanding upward and outward, tearing through stone and timber. Her scales came in black and dense, each one the size of a ship of war, layered in overlapping plates. Her neck extended, longer than her entire wyvern body had been, curving up through the breach until her head was above the castle's highest tower. Her wings unfolded, broad enough to cast the entire palace courtyard into shadow.
The people of the city ran. She roared. The sound carried outward from the city and did not fade.
Barjuchne stood in the centre of the capital in her new form, her head above the tallest towers, her wings casting the city into shadow. She lowered her head until her face was level with the broken opening in the castle's roof.
Edelgard stood in the debris, her sword still drawn, her red hair catching the light. Holding her own face, she was looking up at Barjuchne with an expression that was no longer confusion.
It was wonder.
"AWESOME!" yelled a tiny voice from down below, apparently fully on board with the program despite the utter destruction around her. She didn't seem to understand the situation, frankly. That was fair. She did only get here a minute ago. It was a lot to take in. "You're really an evil world-destroying dragon?" Barjuchne just shrugged one of her four shoulders. A castle tower fell over, soldiers scattering in all directions below. A quiet "Yes!" came from the ground level, followed by an excited fist pump.
Apparently, the hero's dream had just come true right off the bat.
Not every reincarnator could be so fortunate.
But Barjuchne decided that still had plans for this airhead. It would be a shame to squish her.
"...Hey. Wait a minute. Did you trick me?" asked a quiet voice from below, not sure if it should be offended or not yet.
Barjuchne rolled her massive eyes. A barrage of arrows clattered uselessly off of her scales from the nearby fortifications. Turning her head, the dragon roared at the archers, who had been in the seconds before that, motivated well beyond their paygrade.
The rest of the castle collapsed.