A Benevolent Evil Dragon

The sound of bone being pulverized, accompanied by a wet splatter is all I need to decide that Edith kind of scares me. Turns out she is great at using a sling. It only took her a couple days to figure it out, which is unnaturally quick to say the least. It still tires her, and she's not perfect, but being able to nail a rabbit in the head some 50-60 meters away is definitely impressive.

Incidentally I ended up taking the staff sling for myself. I don't have the range of motion needed for the normal version and my tails simply can't grasp things that I am swinging around freely, but I have muscles in my arms that are more similar to mechanical pistons than anything, so I can put some terrifying power into anything at the end of a stick. Of course, I somehow lack the targeting precision that humans are born with, but who needs precision when you have primitive grapeshot? I'm not a slinger, I'm straight up an artillery piece.

"Cursed be existence."

Turns out, even when my mouth speaks before my brain can think, I still speak in weirdly dramatic and flowery sentences. This will take some adjustment.

"What's wrong? I thought I did pretty well… Did I ruin the pelt? Its brains did splatter all over… Ah, I hope it washes away…"

Edith, ever the helpful girl that she is, picked up the rabbit so I don't end up as the permanent mule just because of my strength. She's pretty thoughtful.

"None of that. You are impressive, a source of pride even, despite having taught you only the bare essentials. I curse my own mind for I could not even compliment you in my thoughts without pride creeping in and boasting about my own abilities and talents. The occasional whispers of my magic do not make it any easier to not consider myself severely mentally afflicted." I sigh, doing my best to keep a hold of my own thoughts.

"I am still wrapping my mind around how you figured out how to speak better than me… not even The Mistress learned Vernian, just used that weird magic for it…" I glance her way, interested in the awkward expression she shows. She's not too keen to hang onto my flaws if she can help it, it seems.

"Vernian, huh… Regardless, you err. She knew your tongue. She merely lacked the vocal ability to properly speak without using her spell." She froze at that, then looked at me like a deer in headlights.

"Wait, she understood us? All the time? How do you even know?!"

Ah, right. For all that she put in me in the face of death many times, mother is still not an actual threat in my mind, since she never seemed bloodthirsty towards myself, just detached.

"She answered when she was asked to heal Alek. She started the spell only after the request was made, thus she knew its contents without needing the magic. Or the magic worked retroactively. It is always a possibility."

That did not help her at all, but the reminder that the giant dragoness is nowhere near and likely won't be for a long time if ever does help her calm down eventually.

"Hey, you didn't even answer the first… Fine, different question: I do understand that dragons love their hoards, but do you really need to gather so many stones? You are the one that said that we need to prepare to be on the move once we get used to things, but you've got a big pile of pebbles you use as a bed that I doubt we can take with us…"

"And you have a hoard of berries that will rot and spoil soon, yet I see you gather more." She looks away, but still picks up a wild strawberry from the ground. "I do have a method to my madness. It would be a small amount, an unhelpful one even, but rocks, especially river ones, tend to have many things in them. Rivers themselves carry much, so if our river happens to come from a mountain with healthy deposits of metals or minerals, I could gather at least a small quantity of valuable resources that might serve us in a time of need. I can feel the mana in each pebble now that I have gathered a few, then smash open the ones that might have something good in them then scrape away said useful thing. At the end I should have some shavings of precious materials, or a grand total of nothing but wasted time. Either works, in times of scarcity."

Edith sighs as the tanning spot comes into sight, then she places the rabbit on a flat rock for me to skin. "You ramble when you are worried." And in comes the cold shower I did not want to take today.

"Must you sing a ballad on the strings of my heart about the workings of my mind?" I turn to look her way with four eyes affixed to her two, but she is not amused.

"You are being difficult on purpose." Huh, she actually called me out on it. "You really don't want to raid a town even if it would make things easier for you, huh…"

"Making people aware that I am alive would not be the easy way. I have at minimum some nobles and a goddess looking for me, possibly more of them… But yes, I also do not want this in the first place. I was honest when I said that I dislike the suffering of sapients. Even for animals I prefer to kill them swiftly and painlessly." At least this element of myself remained, even if it got twisted a bit along the way.

Edith looks my way, then nods and focuses on the rabbit I am absentmindedly cutting up. I won't be going to any cooking shows, but I'd say I am a good butcher. With the animal properly cut up, I leave her to her cooking, putting my sights on the stones.

Turns out I needed a second day just to finish going through all the stones. I am left severely disappointed. No gold, sadly enough, but I did get splinters of flesh and blood mana that got calcified. Sadly those are also the elements I have no rune for, so my only way of using this mana is through whatever the hell I did that one time, manipulating water directly with my will and concepts.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I also stumbled across something more useful, namely some copper shavings. There were a few other metals in the mix, but none had any sort of reaction with mana, so I left them behind. The copper, interestingly enough, had a bit of mana, which means there might be a source of it up this river, or it might mean that it's been here long enough to absorb those dust-like amounts and accumulate a useful volume of it. I'm leaning towards the second.

Well, my hard work earned me… about enough copper to make a handful of coins. What wouldn't I give for a good screen box or something of that sort… I'd probably get good results if only I had the tools, but some things just aren't meant to be. For now, I wasted enough time on my pebble project. I eat the metal I've gathered and absorb the mana slowly. Earth, water, nature, air… there's more but that's the main feeling I get from the taste, so I figure this will be at least useful enough to get me flying for a bit. My main problem currently is that I have yet to take flight in my new body and I am exponentially heavier than last time I flew. On the upside, I also have longer wings, but I doubt they are proportionally better.

"So… do I try to catch you if you fail?" Edith is sitting on a log, looking at me with unrestrained curiosity. She might not have good memories of flying, but I guess some amount of the charm of a genuine flying dragon still remains.

"I am graced by the trust you have placed in me." I stare her way, showing my best deadpan expression. "On a more serious note, that would kill you. I weigh about as much as a horse right now, so I doubt you would survive having me fall on top of you."

"How do you even know the word horse, much less what it is? I'm starting to think that 'I just learned by listening' is horseshit." I frown and throw some sand her way with my tail.

"Your way of calling something a lie is by saying the word 'horse' followed by the word 'shit', which means it's likely an animal. And I saw one of them in one of my outings, drew it, then Alek promptly identified it for me." Well, the seeing it part is a lie, but Alek is still the reason I know the word.

"You're a weird creature. Anyways, enough of that, Hearteater. Let's see you fly!" For a moment she gets so excited that her skin flashes into her burnt up form, then back to normal… I really need to figure out what the hell that rune is trying to do.

"I will attempt to fly so you don't think I am trying to buy time, and after that we will talk about that identifier, because I don't remember ever accepting it as my actual name." Weird how little using a name comes up when it's just two people, cut off from the world… This is the first time she used it.

Oh well, I shake my head, focus my senses and push mana towards my wings. I can't get enough mana to make the complex flying rune without quickly draining my reserves, so I will need to fly the old school way, using charged up wings and hope. I stand on the river bank, wiggle my body to get a good feeling of everything, then start running. I quickly pick up the pace, spreading my wings to catch the air, then once I get to the limit of my acceleration, I flap my wings once and take off with a jump.

I missed this freedom. I ascend above the tree tops and see the sea of mismatched greens. I fly in a wide circle, slowly going higher and higher, but nowhere near as high as I've ever been. I am consuming mana faster than I've ever done, so I am simply unable to go high enough. Using just my wings is nowhere near as efficient as a spell, just like how a spell is more efficient than my breath attack. Still, this works for now, and if I need to nap for the next few days, then so be it, but I need the lay of the land and my eyes are built for this.

Turns out, we're not too far off from something, but we're far off from anything good. The only sort of man-made thing I can see is a wooden bridge that goes over this very river and a dirt road that leads to it. Noticing that, I go a bit higher, hoping to maybe notice people walking it, or maybe seeing it lead to a town, however the only thing I notice by going higher is a small clearing of trees on the other side of the road with some faint smoke coming off it. So, people camping out in the wild, close to a road. Maybe it is a campsite?

Before my tired wings fail me, I notice another thing, just at the edge of my vision, a wagon slowly moving from my left to my right. People. Lots of people and so close from us… We could get there in two days, maybe three if we take our time… I can't be wasting my energy.

I descend a bit faster than I want, but I manage to land into the river softly enough that it doesn't feel like concrete. Edith looks alarmed for a moment, but then calms down when she sees me walk her way. After a quick full body shake, I excitedly told her about everything. She gets thoughtful, then nods with a serious expression.

"It's going to be night soon, but we should be able to walk through the night. I'm not particularly tired, but you might be. That wagon would have been a godsend. Anyone that travels like that would know a bit about our surroundings." As she talks, she walks towards our small shelter, starting to pack up. The benefit of having so many hides and tendon rope from animals is being able to just bundle all the good stuff together. I pull away two dark boar pelts, much to her confusion.

"I had something else I needed to make for you. I need these. I originally wanted to make it out of bear hide, but I couldn't find any of them around. I will finish making it, then sleep and run after you once I am rested. I will hopefully not sleep to full energy since I have some metal digesting inside myself. Also, rather than you carrying everything, tie them to me. I do not enjoy being a mule, but for now we need to be efficient."

Weird as it might seem to her, she nods and goes back to packing, after which she ties most stuff to me, only keeping some cooked meat for herself and a waterskin of purified water. Carrying the purifier would be too much of a hassle so we just fill up a lot of skins with water that passed through it and then take the textile and charcoal, everything else we can get somewhere else. Soon she leaves and I get to sewing up a hood for her to the best of my ability. What traveling witch doesn't have a badass dark cloak to hide under, especially one made from animals? I could also make her some bone charms to complete the look.

Well, regardless of trinkets, her cloak is done and placed on my back, covering our things. A quick nap later and it's the middle of the night, which lets me gallop after her at a relaxing pace, since any faster than this would result in me losing stuff on the way. I get to enjoy the cool night air, at least until I stumble across her about an hour after I started. Turns out she fell asleep somewhere in the night. She wakes up when I approach, but is clearly still out of it, mumbling nonsense while reaching for me.

Sleeping so peacefully, I couldn't help but think of her as cute. She deserves to rest some more, so I pick her up, holding her in my front and wing arms, while I continue walking for a few more hours, falling asleep myself when the sun starts rising. We might actually catch up to the cart at this rate… though ultimately she would be the only one that could get on…