Trouble With The Church III

After the assassins left, Kies heard a door behind him open and four very tired and cranky-looking demons stumbled out. "Who the h*ll used that spell!?" Falte furiously asked. Getting caught up in that spell really put the demons in a bad mood. Kies explained to Falte that people belonging to the same group as the assassins who attacked them last night came into the slums.

"Those rats again? I'll teach them a lesson when they come back here again." Falte sounded fairly confident that the assassins would try to attack them again even after failing twice. But it made sense considering how their objective was in this area. They needed to find the baby dragon and recapture it in order to fulfill their plans. They were going to come as many times as they needed until they got their hands on the dragon. That meant that they could expect more attacks from them soon.

"Anyway, I don't see any bodies here," Falte observed. "You've been fighting for quite a while and yet there's nothing. Don't tell me you went easy on them again..."

"They took me by surprise and ran off once they saw that they couldn't win," Kies explained. While he did hold back against them, he wasn't sure if he would even have killed any of them if he tried. The enemy had two light mages who could heal almost everything that he dealt. Unless he killed them in a single go, the mages could just treat their injuries.

"Huh... Well, that's quite surprising. For the enemy caster to be able to use a light detaining spell as strong as that, you somehow beat them despite them having a powerful mage on their side. So, how did you do it?" Falte asked intriguingly.

"They weren't very strong..." Kies didn't know what to tell him. Even though they had a powerful mage, two to be exact, they couldn't do anything to him since he wasn't a demon. If he had been then he would have lost without even having the chance to put up a fight. And it was a good thing that he was here when it happened. If he hadn't been here, then two light mages would have had the four demons suppressed and at their mercy.

Falte scratched his chin and walked up to Kies. "What is it?" he asked the demon. He was acting weird.

"By any chance, did you happen to come across something? Say... A certain fire-breathing lizard with wings by any chance?"

"The baby dragon? Yeah, I saw it just a couple of minutes ago."

"Where?"

"That house," Kies pointed at the house he tore a hole through with his magic. The baby dragon was of course nowhere in sight. It had either still hiding in it or if it was smart, it left and found somewhere else to hide. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no particular reason." Falte put his hands on Kies' shoulder and turned him around.

"What are you doing?"

"Why don't you take a look at the house to your left?"

Kies turned his eyes to the broken-down house on his left like Falte said, and saw a scaly head with two horns and two big round eyes peeking out of the entrance and at him. "Oh..." The dragon's eyes met with Kies' and it immediately retreated back into the house. But the house wasn't big enough for its body and its tail still stuck out.

"So what do we want to do about that?" Falte asked, pointing at the tail which was wiggling out of the door.

"I don't know." What were they supposed to do about the baby dragon? If they tried messing with it, they might incur the wrath of the dragons if they think that they're the ones responsible for kidnapping one of their kind.

"As much as I want to leave that thing alone for obvious reasons, I don't know if we can. As long as that thing is here, the dragons might blame us. We need to chase it out. It would be great if we can blame this on the humans." So that was his plan. Well, it was the assassins' plan also.

"If we save it, wouldn't we have a bargaining chip with the dragons?" Ammine pointed out, disagreeing with Falte's idea of chasing it out. If they could return the baby dragon back to its home or keep it safe, they might be able to gain some favor with the dragons. The dragons were well known to repay their debts and it would be great to have a dragon ready to help them.

Falte thought about it for a moment and said, "You have a point, but who is going to do it. Certainly not me, I can tell you that for sure. If I get anywhere near that thing, something bad is bound to happen."

"Kies?" Ammine turned to him.

"Um... I'm not sure about that." He didn't know anything about dragons, and he might mistreat or scare it. He was not a good choice either. Just like Falte, he had a feeling that if he got close to the dragon, something bad would happen. "What about the other two?" he asked, referring to Messa and Jasyeu who were just quietly listening to the conversation.

Did they know how to get close to the dragon without scaring it? "Messa?" Ammine looked at the demon. She shook her head in response. "..." Ammine then turned to Jasyeu and explained to her the situation. The small demon also shook her head.

*Sigh* "Do none of you really know how to deal with that?"

"If you know, then why not do it instead of asking us?" Falte asked her. It was also her idea in the first place.

"You think I would be asking if I knew?" Ammine crossed her arms and pondered for a bit before saying, "Screw it. I'll do it." Ammine hesitantly walked to the dragon. The dragon heard her footsteps and poked its head out and saw the demon. Both of them froze. After a short moment, Ammine took a slow step forward, then another, then another until she was just a few feet away from the dragon who was still watching her warily.

Ammine kneeled down and said in a soft and sweet voice that did not suit her, "I'm not a bad person," to which Falte snickered. Ammine turned her head and glared at the demon and shut him up. "I-I... will take you to your family?" Ammine told it uncertainly. She didn't know if the dragon understood what she was saying since it did nothing but stare at her.

Some more time passed and Ammine moved a bit closer to the dragon who backed off a little in turn. "Ugh..." Ammine shook her head. "You know what? Forget this. Do any of you have food?" she asked.

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