A Benevolent Evil Dragon

Edith found the quietness of her mind to be stressful. She had expected Heart to take some time, especially when handling something that would be a death sentence for her, but the fact that it took a day and a half to hear anything from him turned her relaxing facade into a constant grimace. Of course, he told her that he was actually back before morning and ended up sleeping to heal slightly, but that did not make things better. Rather, it only worried her more since he was covered in gaping wounds. After hearing everything that happened, she understood why he looked halfway ready to storm the Baron's mansion and eat his face. She shared the view before he left, but right now she knew it would be a bad idea and so did he.

Good news was that it went mostly alright. Only one person ended up dying, and that was to a previous wound. There were a lot more than a handful of people, but that was for the lord to sort. Now, she had to focus on the change of plans. The two days' wait was anyways more of a power move than anything, so speeding things up to this evening did not sound too bad.

She already did as was instructed and not only got everything she needed, but even pressured the witch into teaching her some basic local medicine and a crash course in reading Vernian, which revealed to the woman that Edith was indeed a witch. Still, old ladies just couldn't resist her charm, and being a witch just made the old woman more interested in helping her. Even if it felt a little underhanded, she decided to use every advantage she has for the sake of living.

All this work was exclusively for her benefit anyways. She knew that some dried and dusted weeds with wine would not do anything to her draconic companion, but unlike him she could get sick and die from any dangerous critters. She needed to have something to fall back on, especially as Heart did not know any sort of healing, which was quite ironic in her mind.

Hearteater still fits him more, I think. He's kind for a dragon, but that is a very big "for a dragon". I wonder how he'd react if he lost a limb and couldn't heal it or if people managed to take everything from us… He might actually burn down a village for that... She couldn't help but grimace at the errant, unfair thought. Looking at the meal in front of her, which was better than most people could afford, she felt sick imagining just how dangerous her lifeline seemed even after all this time. He was nobler than most, but she also knew that after his first kill, murder became one of his first options. If slaughtering innocents was their only way to survive, would it then become his first choice?

No matter how she put it, no matter how much the mana guided him and gave him strange mannerisms and ideas, she was pretty sure he was as dragon as they come. Dragons took what they liked, destroyed what they didn't like and killed for a slight, if not for sport. She realized the overlap between them and nobles… but still, the difference was in scale. A high noble might burn a village for a severe insult. An equivalent dragon would burn a country. In a way she was lucky that Heart was the only dragon around.

Focus, Edith. Simple stuff left. Buy food for the road, a few flour sacks for Heart, then rest a bit and prepare mentally for antagonizing a Baron. She sighed, but kept going. This place was nice and she was going to miss how friendly everyone was… Well, most people were. Every so often she'd see a soldier, one that likely knew what she was, and she'd see a sort of hate in their eyes that she didn't understand. It was different from the hate she knew, foreign, something she was sheltered from. The Mistress wanted as many magically apt people as possible, unlike the kings and nobles. She wanted them as food and material for her experiments, or whatever else she might have done, but it was still a better life than this.

As a wandering witch she will never have a home. All she had was a dragon that was keeping her around. Even the stuff she now "owned" was actually his. Sure, she survived somewhat fine in the wild by herself and could do it again, but the occasional hunger, sickness, cold, and even the extreme exhaustion she would feel after being forced to use magic went away once he woke up. Even before that she used him as a battery when she was starving for magic, even if all he let out was chaos.

She sighed after dealing with her last stop, namely the mill. She did as told, taking a few sacks and then dragging them out to the edge of town, hiding them in bushes wherever she could, while careful not to rip them. Despite their weight, having to hide from the Baron's spies as she did this was the more difficult part. Thankfully Heart was able to help her, as always. She did find it strange that occasionally, instead of talking, she would hear very confusing sounds, almost a melody but much more alert and violent than she was used to, played on instruments she didn't recognize.

The dragon's oddities aside, her job was done and the suns were setting. At Heart's prodding, she changed into her brand new armor, then followed his instructions and turned a corner, coming face to face with a man dressed in plain clothes with his face partially hidden behind a simple hood. The man seemed surprised for a moment, then acted as if he had something to do behind her, so she simply stopped him with her right hand, which flashed like a rainbow for a fraction of a moment, claws digging into his skin for that brief time.

"Tell the Baron to gather his men. There's quite a few people in there and I won't handle the evacuation myself. Also tell him to bring 70 heads' worth as well as the waggon with all my rightful stuff. And that he's a shithead, if you have the balls to do so." Inwardly she was split between panicking and cringing, but outwardly she seemed as resolute as ever, even the man looked surprised as he rushed away.

Now it was all a matter of seeing how Baron Glozko reacted. She waited by the river, trying her best to seem unbothered while actually being a mess from the worry alone. The longer it took, the worse it was, but to her relief the Baron came together with a sizable detachment of men as well as a few waggons, including her own. The lord was on his personal horse and seemed ready for hostilities as he stopped next to her.

"Lady Feur." He began, with little courtesy in his tone. "I heard some concerning things… I did mobilize my men in good faith but I hope this was not your way of attempting to evade everything. You will still need to accompany us, even if you suddenly changed the way this is done."

"Good, he's playing along, being only the minimum amount of annoyed that he needs to be from the insult. Also, I see his son is there too, so he'll be honorable for his sake. Things are going well. Keep track of pretty face with glowing yellow eyes, he's your lifeline. Kid's got a strong sense of duty for someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth."

She nodded minutely at her own voice's words, a detail she will need to question at some point, then walked behind the man, getting up on the wagon that was promised to her. It had no symbols, looked well made, and at least from a distant inspection, it passed Heart's test, so it was fine for now. It also seemed to have the "suspenzon" that Heart was excited about, so that was a positive. She looked inside and sure enough, an amount of gold that was bigger than anything she had ever seen was just resting there. The little modifications she demanded to make the place livable were also already done. She could only nod with a bit more excitement than the situation warranted, then she shooed away the coachman and took the reins, looking over at the lord that now stood to her left. She began by leaning in and whispering, so that only the lord, his right hand man and his apparent son heard.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"You lied to me and endangered people for it. An established angler nest, over ten kidnapped victims, and yes, around seventy monster corpses. I got less heads than that, but I killed far more. It just happens that I can't be careful about their integrity when I get attacked from all directions." The anger that turned her whisper into a hiss was at least genuine. The man before her wanted to send her into a death trap. Even for Heart it got really close to being one.

"I don't see how you could have done any of that…" The man was stern, putting a bit more edge in his tone than before, but it was all for nothing.

"You didn't have your men on me during the night. I went, killed them, almost died, came back and relaxed a bit. If I had trusted your words I would have left them to their deaths. I know you expected them to be left alive for a while as the fishmen ate away at the other victims, while your knight protected them, but if I had waited two or three days they might have all been killed anyways. They had eggs, a lot of eggs, and all very close to hatching." Edith spoke without letting further emotions slip into her voice, which sobered up the listeners.

Once more it seemed Heart's guesses, or maybe details he got from the whispers of chaos, proved right. Edith watched both the man and his son gape in horror. They knew what she was talking about and things clicked into place even for them.

"Gods above and below… They were breeding… No wonder they attacked in such numbers…" The Baron's voice trembled, then finally looked with sincerity in his eyes at the girl. "I… Gods, I made such a mistake…"

While his father still seemed shocked, the Baron's son came closer, took Edith's hand, much to her surprise, and bowed, placing his forehead to the back of it. "Lady Edith, in the name of my siblings, I thank you and I will forever be grateful that you took on the risks even knowing you were lied to. Had my siblings died as I stood inert, I would never forgive myself. Thank you and please, if there's anything I can do to help, just say the word."

Much as she was told, she took the chance. "I just want to leave here with what was promised to me. I have enough to worry about already. I will lead you to the entrance, tell you how to get to them, wait for your men to confirm everything, then leave. All I ask is to not be stabbed in the back a final time."

The man nodded, putting a fist to his chest, then bowing again. "Then by my name as Fredrik Glozko, son of Baron Jan Glozko, I will ensure that you leave unharmed with all that was promised to you." He seemed resolute in his words, and his magic seemed to reflect that by arching around his body as he spoke. His vow did draw some attention, something his father quickly used.

"Alright, men! Move on, we have innocents to rescue!"

The group moved, but slowly. They could not gallop by the riverbed, especially with carriages in tow. The entire affair proved slow as a result. Even the caves needed to be traversed slowly and carefully, for what was a hole too tight for Heart to enter, was perfectly sized for an armored man to step in accidentally and get dragged by the weight all the way under. The water was sweet and dense with mana, so it was a death sentence for those with no power of their own.

This slowness, in Edith's mind, was a strange blessing. Especially since she knew that Heart cared little for the Baron's apology.

"...Don't you hesi-tate, now, and when you got everything you come and…*

In the silent night I played music in my mind, as I couldn't just cast the rune without drawing attention. I did end up subconsciously humming it under my breath as I shifted through the books, but there was not much I could do about that. Heists are surprisingly boring without a soundtrack.

Yes, I was shifting through the stuff of a man that took most of his guards away to rescue people, he deserves this. To hell with his gold and whatnot. I was honestly tempted to fill the bags with all the gold in his vault, but it seemed that I was already bankrupting him of liquid cash just from my reasonable demands, so I took the little that was left and shifted to everything else. I couldn't steal his decorations, and his home being lacking in guards didn't mean there weren't still people around, including his damn wife, so I couldn't take the stuff that was too fancy or out in the open.

I did get almost everything he had in the pathetic thing he called a vault, including the rest of the gems and some jewelry they weren't wearing for whatever reason. Edith coming here first was very helpful since I didn't need to search like a madman. I was able to pinpoint the room and dig straight into it without anyone else figuring out, thanks in part to my refined earth magic. From there I got a handful of gold, a decent amount of silver, jewels and even a rather fancy shortsword, but it was nowhere near what Duke Varkrm had. Still, Edith was going to like this, and this was all just a sack and a bit. I basically had two others to fill up.

Which was the main reason I was now in a tiny library of sorts, parsing through books. To my relief, there were plenty of drawings. Yes, I am reduced to looking at the pretty pictures to guess what the book is about, since I have no idea how to read and write. I can at least tell some of these are in Vernian, since I saw Meredith scratch a few words into the floor and walls of the room she was in once or twice, but that was all.

I genuinely only needed a basic alphabet and some idea of sound groups, and I could likely read this, but I was missing too much to even guess, so I just took whatever seemed relevant. Magic stuff, plant stuff, animal and monster stuff, any book that had information that would help us survive was a must. I even took a few things that were more noble inclined, like a book that had a lot of coin imagery, now if it was history or economy, I wasn't sure. Regardless, it was a book and books are power when you know so little. I prioritized Vernian ones, but I took even the books written in Kamish if they had magic in them.

I must say, the security in this place is horrible. The vault was one thing, but it seemed the Baron did not expect flying chameleons with the intelligence and dexterity of a human to come through and try to rob him using emptied flour sacks, but here we are. If he didn't want to get dragon robbed, he should've made the mansion dragon proof! Now, what is this one… Looks to be something about fire and… blood?-

A door creaks open as a young maid steps into the room, probably to dust off this place. Why she chose to do this at this late hour in the night, I don't know, but we both stand frozen. After a moment, I close the book, then spread my wings out while rotating my head 360 degrees. It's uncomfortable, but suitably scary.

"Close the door, go back to your room and get some much needed rest, or you might never wake again. Try to talk of this and I will burn down this entire town and make you watch." My threats are, ultimately, empty. If only I knew mind magic like mother, I might have tried that, but for all that I thought I could kill to keep my presence a secret, I was a massive liar. I am terrified that she will scream, but I can't just silence her. She is ultimately as innocent as they come, at least as far as I am concerned.

To my relief, she gulps down her scream, nods fearfully, then closes the door and I can hear hurried steps running away. My hearing is god damn useless if I need to focus on it in order to listen… My body is better than any human one, but it is so demanding of my brain that I can't help but find blind spots everywhere. Still, I sigh, and just hurry. I have one and a half bags filled with valuables and one and a half filled with books, scrolls and I think a few documents. I am prepared to leave, when I hear and see the lady of the house walking through the hall, away from her room.

A flash of greed overcomes me, and I don't even try to fight back. I tie the filled bags, throwing out some of the more ambiguous books from the last sack, then I go out the window, carefully throwing the two filled bags with some mix of wind and nature magic to mimic telekinesis, then climb on the wall over to the main bedroom, climbing in and using my eye to find any valuable piece. There's a lot of jewelry in a cabinet by a large mirror. I take everything aside from a ring with some sort of house emblem on it, then leave before the woman returns.

With all my goals done, I spread my wings and fly away. Now this is what I'd call a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.