BECMI Chapter 47 – A Dragon’s Years
P+1 year...
Her shining white eyes blinked, looking about abruptly at the situation, prepared to move… and finding herself alone, the men and women around her shifted out of the way so she could move without disturbing any of them.
Cirruluxul looked down at the terrifyingly powerful, yet terribly restrained elfin maga who had forced her to submit. Her anger had the situation puffed up for a moment, then was crushed equally as quickly.
This… had not been a humiliating period of being used as a beast of burden and sacrificial creature of war. While the elfin had absolutely no tolerance whatsoever for her draconic pride and place of power, she likewise didn’t treat her like like an animal, as so many of the tales of her elders spoke of with such distaste. Many dragons simply did not survive submitting… but some did, and so it was better than dying outright. The clever and patient could find an opportunity to escape or turn on their masters, or simply be released from their service with the right words and negotiation, or by the deaths of those who had bested them.
She… was instead being treated like a lesser, but an equal with all the other intelligent beings here. Neither better nor worse, expected to do her part and treated as an equal if she did so… and, it was left unspoken, she would either be treated like a dog or outright killed or left behind if she did not.
She was quite certain at this point that simply being left behind was a death sentence, too.
“Mistress,” she said slowly, bowing her head, then turning to look at the ceiling. “The moon has risen. Is there no Portal?” she asked slowly and respectfully, keeping any suspicion of possible treachery taking place out of her voice.
“No, and there will not be one for years. Accompany me upstairs.”
A elf turning her back on a dragon was never something she had considered a possibility before meeting this elfin in red and black, one with the liquid ruby eyes from Hell that seemed to burn a hole in her mind when she met them.
So dangerous. So willing to kill her. Restrained will, mastering herself and her impulses, the magic humming around her like a beast waiting to be unleashed in howling worship of her power.
“Yes, Mistress,” the dragon whispered, turning carefully, raising her head and tail to avoid the waiting statues.
They were not truly of stone. She could hear the whispers of their thoughts still, as she had while she also transformed into stone, slow and wondering, a unique experience, like a waking dream, days passing in blinks of the eye, timeless and yet aware of time without it resting on the mind…
They were whispering still as she padded quietly up the stairway, distributing her weight automatically so it could take her weight, into the kitchen and then the main eating hall above.
A whole two hams she was quite familiar with, although the glaze on them was new and stirred her interest, were already cut up and waiting for her.
She didn’t recall any of the tales of submitting dragons being treated thoughtfully, with no servility or fear involved. Just… treated like an equal, a friend, or a valued servant.
It was very different from draconic society, where power was everything, and although care had to be taken, strength meant more than almost anything else when it came to status, and equals were never implied, ever.
At least her clan had been close-knit enough to back one another, and her parents had not kicked them out into the wild just after they were hatched, as so many dragons did.
She took the first cut, flipping it up and swallowing it as Mistress seated herself, pouring herself one of the many bottles of wine from the Inn’s cellar. The variety there was impressive, but naturally she had seen many of them already as the men and women of the company treated themselves to all of them on a regular rotation, seeing what tasted like what in wines that had likely been distilled nearly four thousand years before she’d been born.
Just like this ham, which she had eaten over a dozen times now. Pains were taken to prepare it many different ways, a fact she enjoyed even if wasn’t all that important to her.
Pig wasn’t her favorite meat, but it did the job, and there was a lot of it available to be eaten. She definitely wasn’t going to be eating human or elf any time soon, although elf especially was quite delicate and tasty…
She was pretty sure if she were to taste Mistress’ flesh, it would taste like bile, spite, and flames, and likely kill her from the inside. She could vividly remember the hydra head that had managed to land a bite on Mistress’s arm. She had barely reacted, and there had been a red and black flash.
Blood had crawled up out of the hydra’s mouth, and wiped away its flesh and hide in a reeking, dripping sloughing spray of rotting meat and brains. The very bone had blackened and decayed away like slime, the whole effect oozing down that head as little spirals of hissing vapors spiraled up and down into the tiny holes on Mistress’s arm where the jaws should have torn off half her arm, closing up the pale skin and sleeve of her blouse and leaving no sign of a bite whatsoever.
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Even the crimson-threaded black silk of her sleeve had repaired itself, leaving her completely unmarked, her expression not even acknowledging that she’d been bitten at all, while the hydra lost that head all the way to the stump of its neck, and it hadn’t grown back.
Cirruluxul wasn’t going to bite or claw Mistress if she had any choice in the matter whatsoever.
“We came in just after the Crimson Cataclysm, if you remember the tales of it.”
Cirru’s white eyes widened in alarm, looking around carefully, and then arching her neck to peer out the closest window.
There was snow covering everything, but it was not as deep as it had been at the last stop. She could not see the effect on anything.
“Mother passed on tales of a poisoned land, things rotting and dying from fell power in the very air. It took many years for the poison to dissipate and pass, and even then the hollow echoes of it persisted in the lands to the north and east, and so dragons did not settle there,” she remembered uneasily.
“Wise. That pure source is called nuclear radiation, and it indeed will rot you from within, riddle you with cancers, and your body will eat itself from the inside out. I Petrified everyone because even an hour of exposure to that radiation was a death sentence to all of you, and I don’t have enough magic to protect all of you for the entire day.
“I can, however, protect the two of us.”
Cirru chewed thoughtfully, considering the elf’s motivations, and finding them inscrutable. There was no malice in her voice, nor expectations.
“Your intentions, Mistress?” Cirruluxul asked carefully, wondering at her purpose.
“If there are absolutely perfect circumstances, it will be a decade before a Portal will form and we may continue our path onward. If there are the onerous expected circumstances, it may take four decades.”
Cirru considered that. She was into her third decade, still very young as dragons saw things, and age was power among her kind. Not being able to fly free for decades was odious, but something she could deal with.
Thoughtfully, she turned her eyes on the fully stocked larder and pantry, and then looked outside.
She would have to do absolutely no hunting whatsoever. That… was something very useful. Unlimited amounts of food were right there, and she could gorge to her heart’s content every day if she wished to, especially with the bipeds frozen in stone.
The rest of the time… she could just sleep if she wanted to.
“This is a unique opportunity for you.”
Mistress’s voice rapidly brought her thoughts back. “Opportunity, Mistress?” she repeated carefully, wondering what they meant.
“Dragons tend to have a very repetitious life. Hunt, eat, sleep, grow bigger. Occasionally duel for territories to hunt or for recognition for mates, raid bipeds for trophies of battle to accumulate a hoard to mark your power and prestige. Repeat and repeat until death from battle or old age, the latter of which rarely happens.”
Cirruluxul turned the words over. If incredibly blunt and terse, they were not at all wrong. “While unable to hunt, I will have no need to hunt as long as I am within these walls. I can simply sleep away the years if need be,” she acknowledged.
“Or you can work the years away, and become the toughest bloody dragon of your age on the continent.”
Cirru instantly perked up with interest. “How might that be done, Mistress?” she asked warily.
“Dragons are lazy, because age is power. They don’t have to work for it. But if they do work for it, well… they simply dominate dragons who do not do the same.” Mistress regarded her with those burning cold ruby eyes, like Cirruluxul was an experiment that could live or die, it was of no importance to her. “You are a very average dragon. There is literally nothing special about you as far as dragons go.”
Cirru choked back her instant pride and arrogance that a biped would dare to say that to a dragon, say that to her-!
There was just the tiniest twitch in the manafield, and any anger evaporated as Cirruluxul suddenly had the impression she was standing on the edge of a very sharp sword, and if she did not step very, very carefully, the abyss on both sides was going to claim her.
She bowed her head meekly. “How may I take advantage of this opportunity, Mistress?” she asked humbly.
“During our moon’s-long pause, you had ample opportunity to see the humans and elves engage in intense physical training. You are literally unable to do the same while in dragon form, but if you were to adopt a bipedal form, you could engage in much the same efforts.
“And dragons, dragons do nothing but grow in power.”
Cirru found herself leaning forward in great interest.
“Exertion in an alternate form carries over to the base form. You have the chance to train for years, without interruption. You can become a warrior among dragons, and a Caster among dragons.
“Stay to your draconic form, and you will instead sleep, and you will gain nothing, and be just another blue dragon, differentiated from another only by your choice of spells learned and a few experiences that, in the end, gained you nothing but an awareness of how dangerous some bipeds can be… and just how rapidly they can get stronger and more dangerous, when for you, it takes years.”
Cirru couldn’t stop her tail from twitching. It was true. She had watched just how fast some of those bipeds had improved, how their teamwork became almost… musical, a dance of violence, and how dangerous beasts and groups of humanoids she certainly would not have faced so easily with tooth and claw had perished very quickly.
Even two red dragons stronger than she was had fallen to them, rendered down into incredibly tasty ‘burritos’ after they fell. They’d fought desperately, but magical weapons, teamwork, and a few defensive spells had been enough to do for them when they could not flee.
She knew Mistress could have killed them with a sweep of her hand, had been prepared to do that… and the reds had known it when she had casually walked through their dragonfire and protected every single warrior behind her from their flames.
The sheer POWER of her magic was greater than any Cirruluxul had ever seen, from even the eldest of dragons. To be able to protect so many beings with one single spell-!
No, she wasn’t going to be defying Mistress at all, that was the path of doom!