A Benevolent Evil Dragon

Edith has a good head on her shoulders and despite always seeming to think that she's out of her depth, she makes the best of the worst situations just by being quick witted. Thanks to that, I find her rather quickly as I look down at the ground, probably appearing like a distortion in the sky with my altered shroud. She reached our camping spot and was running herself ragged trying to use whatever mild, primitive medicines she had gotten or made at some point in order to patch up the almost dead Meruk… As I land and finally get a good look at him I am certain that she isn't going to manage that with just some scrappy bandages and some leaf paste.

"Meruk! Ah, you stupid, stupid man… I should've protected you! Why did you take them on in my stead?" The second I touch down, Verah yanks herself free of my grasp, running to her husband. At least she doesn't shake him, instead letting him lay bloodied on a piece of cloth that Edith laid down.

I can't let them have their moment, sadly. Just by taking a deep breath I can smell his unique blood and the trail the two left as they ran here… I took flight to keep those dogs from sniffing us out, but if the nobles follow this trail… We need to leave…

My tails reach forward, grabbing Verah and pulling her back, to very little resistance. My wings spread to push Edith away as well, which does have her saying something, yet my mind can't focus on her words. I need to focus on Meruk. His right arm was reduced to a cooked chicken wing, no feathers remaining on it. The rest of his body sports cuts, clear frostbites, broken bones protruding outwards and at least one foreign plant matter growth spreading out of him. There was much I needed to do, and mundane means weren't likely to work.

Thankfully, Fredrik gave me his medicine. The viscous, green fluid inside the clear crystal bottle is infused with a perfect mix of life, nature and the three body manas. It likely had its instructions written like a spell within the fluid, or maybe even in the bottle, but all I knew was that it would work, or he would die. Already I could see his body beginning to break down, the barest of hints of death mana beginning to pour out from him. I bit the bottle open, then focused the paste to his more vital parts.

"Verah, prepare to move him. Two long sticks, one piece of cloth between them. Big enough to lay him on. Edith, pack up the camp. We need to run. Hunting party reached me. They have hounds. Blood trail leads here." I speak my commands roughly, most of my brain power being focused on using limited first aid knowledge and some spread apart urgent care experience from when I was a patient, all to try and keep Meruk conscious.

It is under stress that progress is made, because for once I use my magic in a completely new way. I breathe out bone mana over him and I start to see it set. WIthout orders, mana either lingers in place or moves towards its titular matter. With my central eye I get to see his spread of bone mana, a good chunk filling his core, but the rest marks the outline of his skeleton. I use that to figure out where his bones are broken and set them manually, ignoring his screams.

He has a lot of wounds to bandage, so my next move is to bring in water from the river, throw cloth in it, flash boil the whole thing and spin the water as it turns into steam, leaving behind some decent bandages that will hopefully not infect his wounds. I remove Edith's first attempt, then hold Meruk down as he struggles, the hot bandages clearly giving him a second wind from the pain alone.

The few wounds I couldn't bandage, grass and thorny vines growing from them, were met with sharp claws and the glowing hot edge of what used to be my magnet experiment, now turned into a flat piece of scrap metal, completely ruined by the multiple meltings I delivered to it. At least it did its job in killing the plants and closing the wounds.

I feel the world darkening around me as I do everything I can to fix him. Ironic though that I can disable my senses to save on processing power, but my own worries, thoughts and confusions are still running in the background, hogging resources. Even in the body of a supernaturally optimized apex predator I still manage to mess it all up.

Thankfully, my body does still react to my thoughts, so a swift, self-inflicted slap hitting my head is enough to pull me out. He's a sweaty, bloody, crying mess, but he's alive. I can see the death mana trying to cling to him, but then being pushed out by all the other types, especially life. Verah looks at me with concern, but a look from me is enough to make her focus on moving him. She takes him by the shoulders and wings, while I grab his hips with my wing hands and his legs with my front ones, keeping him steady as we move him on the improvised stretcher. From there we placed him on the wagon and off we went, as fast as the horses would take us.

Or at least, as fast as it would take them. With him having to lay down flat on Edith's bed, Verah next to him doing her best to tend to her husband and all our stuff being thrown in there without any sort of order, the wagon is actually too much of a cluttered mess for me to fit, so I am left outside. At least, despite feeling tired from using my magic in so many ways, I do feel an influx from my stomach. The crystals I ate, both from my hoard and from my targets helped me more than I would have expected.

I watch our surroundings as the road dips down over a hill, finally being hidden from sight. A look back at our camp I see two dogs running around, sniffing the spot where I treated Meruk. They spin around, looking for our trail and almost seem to follow, when a sharp sound, something so sharp I feel like I shouldn't hear it, echoes through the air, calling them back to their master.

I remain here a while longer, making sure nobody follows us, then I rush to catch up, taking some distance from the road. The forested area gives way to roiling hills, which means our travel time will be a bit inconsistent. We need to take a break at the next town, that's certain. We need medicine and rest, but now I know we have people on our trail…

Stolen story; please report.

I curse and want to roar, but I can't let myself do even that. Verah and Meruk got attacked for fitting whatever twisted description they made up. They didn't expect a dragon, they expected outlaw sorcerers and Freefolk. The gods don't know yet, and currently the only loose thread is Fredrik. He joined this hunt, clearly, but attacked his own when they put Edith in danger. Also, his lightning was nowhere on either Verah or Meruk, yet I kept hearing the thunder of his magic… He tried to help from the very beginning.

I am… sort of feeling bad for leaving him behind, but hopefully he will help keep that hunting party from coming after me… He didn't turn on me after he saw I was a dragon, and I know for sure it would be troublesome. His lightning is still not fully natural, but it's fast and powerful nonetheless… No, I would have survived. Verah, Edith, apparently the bear and even its mate managed to already tire them out. But if there was no betrayal and no bear… Water and ice, light, lightning, air, twice at that, earth and nature, two knights, at least… Maybe I could have made it if I kept myself in the middle of them all, made them hit each other… But if not for the fear factor and their exhaustion, I would be dead.

A good knight is worth ten… twenty men. A good sorcerer can be even more dangerous… I click my tongue and keep up the pace, trying to think of a way out of this. To think they had hunted us all along… I got too complacent. Wasted too much time. We might have lost them if only we got deeper into the territory, more places we could have gone too, more everything. We should have used a different name, even if it was difficult for Edith to adapt…

I rumble, my eyes focusing on the grass as I walk, stewing inside.

Three days. I stayed awake for three days. Verah did too, to be fair, but she did so for other reasons. Meruk is lucky. Every so often she would utter a prayer and I would feel their unique manas pouring in from nowhere, helping Meruk slightly. It was not the make or break kind of magic, but it was the difference between losing his arm or not. He won't grow feathers for another long while, his skin still needs to heal, and he visibly has some nerve damage, but he's healing. A fully scorched limb is something that he is slowly healing.

His bones are already mended for the most part, a few parts looking frail, but clearly patched up by his own regeneration, and he's still looking like a mummy, but a few days of rest and he's out of the woodworks. He's been sleeping for 20 hours a day, being awake in bursts worth minutes at most. Just enough to eat a bit or take care of his needs, but no more than that.

Honestly, it's impressive, especially since the only other person I know that heals that fast is myself, and even I could have had a rougher time if I had my wing incinerated when exhausted. I shake away the thought and instead thank my lucky stars for not having to bury the man. It might be a selfish thought, but I feel myself being one more bad day away from incinerating a town… Or this might just be my own exhaustion..

I can't help it. Even now, so close to a whole different town, I still take flight and look at our backs, making sure we are not followed. I would call myself paranoid if only we didn't get followed across multiple towns and even a whole city by a group that tried to rob us. What's worse, their count will be wondering what happened to them at some point… If Fredrik ever speaks… It's clear, no matter what, we need to skip countries.

If Verah's words during her moments of crying are anything to go by, she's not keen on leaving anymore. Almost losing her husband hours after leaving my protection clearly made her less than keep to risk it all again for a family that might already be dead. I don't like being grim, but that's the truth. I know how slavery was in all societies back on Terra… Death in chains is a hideously common thing.

"Heart!" Edith's voice cuts through the rain that I have been ignoring. "Heart, come back here! It's getting stormy!" The lightning dancing across the sky agrees with her, but I don't feel like going there. The storm is doing wonders at keeping me awake… Plus, we're surrounded mostly by empty plains and hills, I have negative hiding room, so the storm gives me a unique chance to stay much better hidden than I normally would be. All I need to do is ignore… "HEART! PLEASE!" …her….

I make my way over to the road, walking by her. She is covered in the cloak I made for her and another improvised hood made of flax. The horses react, getting rowdy, but thankfully they calm down as Edith soothes them. Her attention then moves over to me and I am about to give an excuse to go back out…

"Get in. Now. You need to sleep." I frown in response, but she frowns even harder, somehow. A strong gust of wind makes her hunker down with her eyes closed, but then she focuses on me again, snapping at me. "GET IN! You've never been awake this long and I know for a fact you're not getting enough mana to make up for it since all the mana's in here! You need sleep. We won't get attacked on this weather. Please, at least a few hours."

I try to say something, but I slur over my words so hard that I don't even know what I tried to say. I pretend that the storm made it unintelligible, then move over to the back of the cart, while using water magic to clean myself up.

Inside I find Verah carefully giving Meruk some water while his eyes are focused on me. At least there's more room now, so I manage to curl up, keeping my eyes wide open as I absorb mana forcefully. I need to be quick. Using a storm like this is the perfect way for pursuers to gain ground on us…

I focus on getting more lightning and cold mana, the rain being a great boon to those elements in particular, but before I can feel myself packed with enough mana to go on a slaughter against any attackers, I find myself sinking into a comfortable armchair. I look in my hand and I see a book about my first proper hangover… I frown and put it where it should be, then look around at the library, cursing to myself.

I fell asleep.

I try to wake up as soon as possible, but much to my displeasure I find myself alone, in a sunny midday. I walk out and I am confused by the sight. We've stopped somewhere by the side of the road, but on one side the trees have already lost a large part of their leaves, the rest just hanging there, rusty in appearance, while on this side of the road all the plant life is a vibrant green.

I fly up, but I do not recognize the location as being anywhere near our last spot… And I can't see anything because of how dense the trees are here… I go back down, make sure there's no one around, then start following the footprints and scents of my companions. I go deep into the forest, so deep that light itself barely reaches the floor, but then, at some point, I lose the trail. I double back, but the trail is gone, as are my own footprints.

I breathe in, feel the strangely rich mana in the air, then frown as I hear a beautiful melody.

I'd curse, but I think my own curse of bad luck is more than enough.