Chapter 52: The Villain
The wind at altitude was thin and cold and tasted of coming rain, and the land below unrolled in patchwork greens and browns, stitched together by silver threads of river. A shadow the size of God’s hand slid across it all, moving faster than the clouds.
"So this is really a magical world?!" asked the hero, yelling over the wind.
She was seated on a large dark ridge halfway down the dragon's spine, her legs straddling it, her hands knotted in the base of a scale for purchase. Her red hair whipped around her head in a wild tangle, and she was grinning into the wind with the unguarded delight of a child on a fairground ride.
The dragon turned its head mid-flight, its neck curving back so one vast red eye could regard her.
"You're sitting on a dragon," said Barjuchne.
"Yeah, but a dragon could be, like... a one-off big lizard thing somewhere. This is a whole world of it. Magic and everything, right?" Edelgard leaned out over the ridge, peering down at a town passing beneath them. "Is that normal down there? Are they magical people? Are there, like, fairies and elves?"
"They're farmers."
"Magical farmers?"
"I mean… some of them are,” guessed Barjuchne.
The hero absorbed this with visible satisfaction. Then she sobered slightly, blinking, one eye and then the other. "You're funny, I —!" She held her head. "...Ouch."
She stared into the middle distance for a while, her mouth slightly open, her thoughts visibly drifting somewhere they could not follow.
"You know, I think I hit my head really hard when I died. Do you think that matters if I reincarnated into a new body?"
Barjuchne stared at her.
She turned away and kept flying toward the horizon. The gigantic dragon soared on over the nation and did not reply to that.
"So are we taking over the world?"
"You do know you were summoned here to stop me from doing that, right?" asked Barjuchne.
Edelgard sat there and leaned in forward. "Huuuh?" The drawl came out long and flat, the sound of a mind working out loud. The girl in armour leaned forward over the ridge, her gauntlets clasped. "Why would I want to do that?" She put her hands on either side of her head, rubbing her head that apparently did ache a bit. "You told me I got reincarnated to be a one-shot good guy. But why would I want to do that if I can get to be a cool knight that rides on an evil dragon?" She spread her arms wide, nearly losing her seat. "Why would I want to do anything else?!"
"We're going to get along great," replied Barjuchne.
"Just don't trick me again, okay? That's very rude."
"...Right."
The dragon banked, swooping down low over the landscape, and the hero whooped.
"Can I get a red cape?" Edelgard asked, patting the scales beneath her. "And, like... scary-looking armour?" She looked down at her own plate, frowning. "I feel too... generic. Where did this even come from?" She tugged at a piece of the metal at her shoulder. It did not budge. It was part of her, in the way her hand was part of her. "Huh."
"We'll talk about it," said Barjuchne, already running the numbers in her head. Custom armour. A cape. Dyed cloth, silver fitting, a smith.
It sounded expensive.
The wind took them south.
Edelgard was, it turned out, too on board.
"On your knees!" shouted the hero, her sword held out before her. "Bow! BOW!"
The city of Krugsweg sat against the hillside with its walls and its gates and its seven hundred years of proud municipal history, and all of that history was currently being re-evaluated by its citizenry, who ran through the streets in a spreading panic beneath the shadow of a dragon.
Barjuchne had landed outside the gates, and her impact alone had done the convincing. The tremor had rolled through the city, unsettling the older structures, rattling the shutters loose, ringing the temple bells without anyone touching them. The crossbowmen on the walls, who had spent a heroic few seconds firing uselessly against her scales, dropped their weapons and ran.
Krugsweg was one of the holdouts. There were plenty of cities in the nation that had not yet fully submitted, their lords holed up behind their walls, waiting for something to happen that never quite did. Frankly, Barjuchne hadn't cared much.
But it was on the way home, so she might as well.
"Spare us, great dragon! We surrender!" The city's mayor came through the gates at speed, shoving past his own guard captain in his haste, his chain of office bouncing against his chest. He threw himself flat on the road. "The city of Krugsweg yields! Fully! Completely! Take whatever you wish!"
Barjuchne tilted her head.
Somewhere else, an hour later.
"Crush the town!" said Edelgard from her shoulder, bouncing in place. She pointed her sword at the walls. "Just use your tail and swipe it away! One hit! Come on, I want to see it!"
Barjuchne turned her head and regarded her. "Hey. It's your first day. Maybe take it easy?"
Edelgard's enthusiasm recalibrated rather than diminished. "Okay, fine. Then just eat a few people!"
"I'm watching my diet. I'm a modern dragon. I eat tribute livestock. It's free range."
Edelgard laughed. It sounded kind of hollow, not in the sense that it wasn’t genuine, but in the sense that there was something not right behind her eyes.
Barjuchne wasn’t entirely unconvinced Edelgard didn’t actually have physical brain damage.
The mayor, still flat on the road, made a sound that was not quite a word. A monk pushed through the crowd behind him, his robes dusty from the road, Barjuchne's insignia stitched onto the breast of them. He fell to his knees beside the mayor and pressed his forehead to the ground.
"Please, spare these people, Heavenly Dragon!" he called out. "They know not what we of the faith know, but they will learn in time! Give me the time to spread the word of your glory to them! Every soul in this city can be yours, given seasons enough!"
Barjuchne thought about it while the entire population of Fullsae Vale held its breath.
Then she shrugged, the motion sending a small landslide of grit off her shoulder.
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
The mining city of Waldblack had gone less well.
Edelgard stood on Barjuchne's back, laughing maniacally, her armour black with soot. All around them, fires raged across the landscape, running along the hillsides in bright orange lines. Several surface coal deposits had caught fire during her display of power, a single triumphant breath of fire poured out over the slope, and now the blaze scorched everything it touched, and the wind was not helping.
The city itself had yielded on sight. The fires were incidental.
Barjuchne looked out over the burning hills with a heavy-lidded expression as people ran around in terror, escaping the blaze and screaming.
She would have to pay for all of this. Replanting, repairs, and compensation to the miners whose diggings had gone up. Veliah would never let her hear the end of it.
Barjuchne exhaled smoke through her nostrils, long and slow.
The window bloomed into her vision while the distant sirens of Waldblack's bells rang out across the valley.
She read it. A defensive trick for her hide, or a defensive trick for her eyes. She had been blinded once, at the sea, by the ice witch's refraction. She had been burned through her scales by that same woman's ice bolts. Both were good choices.
Something to consider on the flight home.
Then the second window opened beneath the first, unbidden.
Barjuchne went still, even her smoke thinning to nothing.
The nation was hers, all of it. But there was more world out there, past the borders, past the sea. She had seen the edges of it from altitude.
A queen.
Somewhere out there was a woman with a crown of her own, a nation behind her, a throne under her. All three of those things should become hers. That’ll be something.
Edelgard was still laughing at the fires, delighted with herself, soot on her face. It was time to go home.
"Edelgard," said the dragon.
"Yeah?"
"I have some people to introduce you to."
The hero considered the burning hills, the conquered city, the whole bright ruin of her first day of service, and her grin widened.
"Are they evil too?"
“We’re not evil,” replied Barjuchne, taking flight. The buffeting of her wings cascaded across the burning landscape, the flames fanned and intensifying into a firestorm that launched up toward the sky with her.
“...Riiight,” said Edelgard, wiggling her eyebrows and nudging the massive dragon with her elbow as if they were sharing an inside joke of some kind.
First thing on the agenda, she was going to have the saintesses examine her head.