Dealings With A Dragon II

Kies' guts were telling him that this was a trap and that he was being set up for some grand scheme, but he didn't have a choice. He couldn't just leave the juvenile dragon on the floor. Shrouding it around in a soundproof bubble of wind, Kies took it and started going to where the fight was happening. He needed to stop it before there were any more casualties.

As Kies approached the battle, shards of ice and fire breaths strayed towards him, cutting off his path. He dodged them all while caring for the juvenile dragon. He kept a close eye on it. It didn't matter if he got hurt since he could just regenerate it back but if the important package he was carrying got damaged then he was in trouble. Fortunately, no harm came to the dragon and he arrived at the fight safely with it.

There, he spotted a heavily wounded dragon, the injuries looked a lot more severe up close. It was preoccupied with Rui as was the Iceblade the other way around. Lying scattered throughout the destroyed marketplace of a battlefield were bodies, both innocent and soldiers alike. Some were half-buried in the sand, some had missing limbs, and many were burnt. A few were even frozen in ice, showing that Rui couldn't afford to hold back in this fight and her own soldiers got caught up in her attacks.

Parts of the ground were damp, frozen, charred, or a mix of the three. It was just like what he saw before but it was even worse this time around. In the center of it all were the two, still duking it out. Despite all the blood oozing out from the dragon's body, it was still rearing to fight. Rui was unharmed which was impressive but her complexion didn't look good. Her skin was so pale that she looked like someone who already died. There were long pauses in between her breaths and ice was slowly creeping across her body.

It was hard to tell who would go down first as they both looked to be on their deathbeds, but the spirits in their eyes were still glowing brightly. It was a fight till one of them could physically not continue anymore.

"Hey!" Kies called out to get their attention but they were too busy fighting and didn't hear him. Running between the two was a dumb idea and so he had to try something else. Kies picked up half of a house with his magic and interrupted the fight by chucking it at the two. It landed in the middle of them both and as Kies hoped, they stopped fighting and looked to see who it was that threw that.

They saw Kies and the juvenile dragon too. A low growl could be heard from the adult dragon and it was so powerful that Kies felt his entire body shuddering. "Let's hear what you have to say," the dragon's words came out of its unopened mouth. It was the first time that Kies had heard its voice. The dragons are a proud race that refused to speak with others as they consider everything else inferior to them. In the few cases that the dragons do, they usually do so because they view an individual as amusing, sort of the same way a child would toy with the insects they find on the ground.

However, on rare occasions such as this, dragons are left with no choice but to speak normally to a person outside of their species. Kies didn't want to beat around the bush and shot the dragon a proposal. "I will return this back to you, and in exchange, you leave this place and never come back," Kies told the dragon. It was more than fair for the dragon after it had incinerated a good portion of the city.

The dragon didn't speak for a minute, thinking about the offer. "You're not with them, are you!?" its voice roared dangerously.

"If you talking about the demons, no," Kies gave the dragon an answer that it would be satisfied by. It gave Kies a suspicious look but ultimately chose to believe him. Kies had the small dragon in his hands and was fully capable of killing it in a flash should the dragon try something. It had no choice but to listen to him.

"I'll agree then. I'll swear upon my honor that I will keep true to my word," the dragon grudgingly said. To swear upon one's honor as a dragon is something significant and it means that the words can be trusted. Hearing this eased both Kies and Rui. If it didn't accept the offer then things would turn out for the worst. Fighting the dragon would result in Otane's destruction regardless of the outcome. If they defeat it then more will eventually come to avenge their fallen kind.

Kies relinquished custody of the juvenile dragon to the adult dragon. He floated the bubble containing the tiny beast to the dragon and dropped it into its bloodied claws. The dragon's eyes showed a glint of relief as the juvenile dragon was finally returned. It was like a parent reuniting with their child after so long, which looked to be the case.

The dragon shook out all of the ice stuck inside of its body, spraying fist-sized droplets of blood everywhere. The ice slid from its body and slumped into the sands, thick with the dragon's blood. It unfolded its wings and prepared to take off. But before it asked one important question. "I'm not going to ask you how you got my child back, but what I will ask is if you know where the ones who took my child are. I have a debt to pay back to them," it said in a menacing, slithery voice.

"I don't know where they are," Kies answered honestly. If the dragon was talking about the ones that kidnapped the dragon then there is a good chance that they burned alongside Silverfield, so the dragon had no one to direct his revenge at.

"If so then I will take my leave. Don't expect me to compensate you, mortals, since you are the cause of this," the proud dragon said, feeling that it did nothing wrong. Human lives meant little to the dragons and it saw no reason in burdening itself with paying for the damage it had done.

This was displeasing to hear, but neither Rui nor Kies could do anything about it. Standing in the ruins of what was the central marketplace of Otane, they could only watch as the dragon took off while cradling the precious cargo in its hands. It would be a tragedy for the dragon to drop and lose what it had been looking for this whole time, and part of Rui wanted to do it, but she held her dark desires down.

She lost Silverfield to the d*mn creature, and now it tore up almost all of Otane too. What it did was unforgivable in all regards, but she had to think of the future. If she took action here, then it would all be for naught. They need to rebuild right now and recover from this fight. There was still a chance for revenge in the future, just not at this moment.

Kies caught a glimpse of the contained fury in Rui's icy teal eyes. He knew the reason why she was so angry and was amazed by the amount of discipline she had to hold herself back. When the dragon's enormous body was but a silhouette in the distance, Rui finally spoke in a tone that was a mix of both ease and dissatisfaction. "The fight is over at last. Sorry, you had to do my job for me." She was talking about finding the baby dragon. She was tasked with finding that while Kies protected the city but she had to give up on it when the barrier fell.

By now, the situation in the rest of the city was settled as well. Lentis stumbled into the aftermath of the battle, desperately catching his breath as he walked up to Rui. "The dragon left. Will it come back?" It was his most important concern.

"It won't," Rui calmly answered him. She then gave a brief summary of the events that unfolded and while Lentis was glad to hear that the dragon was gone, the grudge he bore too against the beast for what happened that day in Silverfield still lingered. Neither of the two could ever let go of it.

In the middle of Rui's explanation, Kies gave them a quick gesture that he was leaving as he had something else to do. They nodded their heads and he hurried over to the outskirts of the city, beyond the crumbling walls and the scorched farms. Kies knew that the two princesses and the queen were all fine since he could feel the fragment in Iris' possession moving ever so slightly around the vicinity of the inn. He didn't need to check in on them. The worst of the worst was over, but the whole ordeal had yet to end.

Kies felt the presence of two powerful mages outside the walls, and he had a feeling that he knew who they belonged to. Still far from the destination, Kies made out two small figures in the distance, standing a good few meters away from each other. As he got closer, he could hear their voices, arguing. One of them belonged to Messa and the other one... him.

Neither sounded too happy. The figure farther from Kies, standing far left was talking. Kies was close enough to hear some of the words and make what was being said by filling in the rest. "-you're choosing on betraying your own kind!?" It was his younger doppelganger. On Kies' close right was Messa, equally upset over something. "This could have ended here. This cursed kingdom would have fallen. What were you thinking!?" he exclaimed angrily.

Kies landed between the two of them, forming a triangle. The two were well aware of his presence ever since he crossed the walls but chose to ignore him for whatever reason and continued on with their argument.

Messa snapped and yelled furiously at the doppelganger, "You call me a traitor, but you planned on going back on your word since the very beginning."

"It was beneficial for our goal..." the doppelganger tried to explain. His patience was running out and his magic was starting to release into the surrounding environment. Grains of sand were swirling around them, creating a large ring with them in the center. Messa was not convinced by the doppelganger's reason and was flaring her own magic in turn. The two auras clashed against each other violently, purple against the invisible force that was the winds.

Kies had to put up a barrier around himself to keep the two's magics from tearing him apart. He had no context of what was going on and waited for one of them to say something. However, it didn't look to him that either of them was willing to spill the beans. If instead, they chose to fight, then he could only spectate the battle from a distance. He would be a fool to join in with so little magic left and no details on the matter.

Things started to tense and it seemed that the latter was about to happen when suddenly, two more people become part of the equation. "Hold it right there!" Lentis yelled as he landed at Kies' right, followed by Rui.

Their magic auras were released against the other two's. Kies increased his magic output to match the magic that was pushing against his aura. Things were about to get messy from here.

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