A Tyrant, Sort Of

Sable veered toward the ruins, coasting at a much lower altitude than during the trip, and peered around, seeking out prey.

She kept to the outskirts. Instinct told her the weaker golems would be on the edges of the ruins, and in toward the center, she’d find much more dangerous creatures. She didn’t want to push her limits. Not this early. Staying alive was priority one, especially when she had a crippling debuff in the form of a ninety percent reduction to all stats.

Finding a pile of rubble in a crumbling, overgrown city was … easy. There were tons. But how did she tell which hosted a malevolent mind inside? That would animate when she descended near it?

She tried leveraging [Inspect] towards the various piles—especially the suspicious looking ones—but the skill returned nothing. Was it because none were golems? Or did the creatures have an ability that let them hide themselves? It would be a useless disguise, she supposed, if [Inspect] compromised it so easily. So perhaps that was it.

Which meant Sable had to descend and trigger the encounter manually. From there, she could take to the sky to escape, if it proved necessary. Aylin had seemed confident Sable wouldn’t have a problem fighting one of the creatures, even in her crippled state.

She trusted that assessment, though only to an extent. The girl was uninformed, a random, unnoteworthy denizen of this world. Though, Aylin seemed to have genuine motivations behind wanting Sable to succeed. For selfish reasons, which were trustworthy ones. Aylin was convinced being in Sable’s thrall was how she would get a class, and make a name for herself, so Sable’s success was her own.

At the same time, maybe the short green girl was a vicious, clever opportunist, and she’d invented that reasoning to lure Sable to her death. Maybe the Ruins of Nefar were some devastatingly dangerous zone in which Sable would be wiped from existence without even opportunity to flee.

That seemed unlikely. But better to have that itching paranoia than to not, right? She couldn’t let it overrule her good judgment, but being aware of the possibility—that was only pragmatism.

She set down on the outskirts of the decayed city, stone and vines shifting underfoot. How long had this civilization been lost to the wild? Centuries? More than a few decades, certainly. An abandoned, ancient air draped across the city. It made her scales crawl, just looking around. The sensation had been worse gazing toward the middle from up in the air.

Find a golem, Sable told herself, enthrall it, then ask where his people store their easily-obtainable piles of gold. Simple.

Taking a deep breath, she plodded forward on four legs, tail dragging along behind her, scraping stone and tugging vines free. She kept a sharp eye out, looking for aggressive piles of rocks. It was a hard quality to suss out.

She walked perpendicular to the center, avoiding going deeper. The outskirts were safe, for a sense of the word, but further in, she could sense that wouldn’t be true. Danger lurked that way. Even for a powerful creature like her. Maybe the paranoia was just that, but for now, she trusted her instincts. Whether system-inflicted, dragon-paranoia, or the regular sort, she intended to heed it.

Plodding along and throwing cautious [Inspects] toward suspicious rubble, Sable was met with so little resistance she started to let her guard down. It took several minutes before she was finally rewarded.

A nearby pile of rubble shivered, then piled upward in a symphony of chaotic clacking, broken rocks assembling into a cracked statue of vaguely humanoid shape. The golem looked as she imagined it would: an elemental made from fractured blocks, approximating a human form with wide shoulders, and a thick, square head. It was a crude form, lacking the finer details of a human, but still visibly a golem.

It happened fast. Faster than she’d expected. Sable barely had time to launch herself off the ground. Maybe it was her amazement that had slowed her down. Since arriving to this world, she’d been faced with several fascinating sights, but the golem’s assembly had been particularly entrancing. It had cost her a valuable second.

She didn’t clear out in time. Still taking into the air, the golem leaped at her, constructed and functional in no time at all. It grabbed her tail with both hands, then heaved with vicious force, swinging Sable’s entire body and smacking her down with a thud that rattled her brain. Her breath taken from her, she laid there, stunned. As a legendary beast, the blow shouldn’t have done much to her, but again: a ninety percent reduction to her stats, and being a fresh level one juvenile, meant Sable was a shadow of what a real dragon should be.

She recovered, though only barely, in time to twist away from the follow up, dodging a two-fisted slam where her head had been. Earth, stones, and plant life flew into air with the impact. The golem looked powerful, but even then, its form belied its strength. The attack had been a miniature meteor impact.

Maybe Aylin had set Sable up. This thing was vicious.

She recovered her wits, then did the obvious. An action that had slipped her mind, considering more pressing matters. She inspected the creature.

[ Stone Golem - Lv. 4 ]

Well. Not a level ‘??’ like the mountain troll had been, so this thing was weaker, presumably by a significant amount. Aylin hadn’t set her up. She ought to be able to handle it.

Hopefully.

Next, she leveraged her [Dominate] skill toward the creature. What were the odds she could crush its mind in the same way she had Aylin’s, without much of a fight?

The golem recoiled, and so did Sable. This mental battle was nothing like the previous. Rather than crumpling as Aylin had, the golem fought back viciously. Several agonizing moments passed, the pressure in her head building, building, and building, until her head felt like it would explode. She was forced to relent. The golem grunted, sagging and stumbling back a step, the mental duel as taxing on it as it had been on her. They’d been closely matched.

She had to soften it up first, clearly.

She had [Fire Breathing], and had confirmed it was a potent weapon against rock. She ought to be able to bring the monster’s body to a high enough temperature to melt. The problem was, she intended the creature to be her ally. She didn’t want to permanently damage it. If she melted it into stone sludge, it wouldn’t make a useful servant, would it?

Then again, a bit of scalding ought to do her well. She assumed it could heal, slowly, in the same way all creatures could. It wouldn’t have survived untold centuries in these ruins if not.

Letting that pulsing in her chest build to a becoming-familiar scalding high, Sable released a jet of molten white-blue flame. It poured across the creature, through joints and across its broad surface, splashing sideways in a huge fan. The monster pushed forward, advancing despite the assault. She likewise back-peddled, keeping the stream going.

The golem lunged, crashing into her. Sable grunted as powerful arms wrapped around her, and her stream of fire cut off.

She thrashed and clawed. A scuffle ensued.

It was … not as deadly as she expected, having secured a grip on her. Why had its initial attacks—the tail-yank, then the two-handed meteor-strike—been so much more potent?

A skill, she realized. The golem had used skills to create such devastating initial blows. The earlier attacks weren’t indicative of its default power, but what it could do when greatly amplified by its supernatural abilities.

She broke free. As Aylin had suggested, even with a massive reduction in stats, Sable’s genetics afforded her an advantage. Even a level four golem couldn’t match up to a dragon’s might, not in a direct contest of strength.

Out of its grip, Sable took to the air, then continued scorching the golem as it fumbled about, confused. The golem looked around, before settling on a plan of attack: picking up chunks of rubble and heaving them toward Sable. It had surprisingly good aim. A few of the rocks slapped into her, and—even needing to be thrown high into the air, losing speed—the impacts hurt. But her stream of fire was much more potent. The golem blackened, gray stone turning shades darker. No permanent damage, though. She didn’t make the flames hot enough to melt.

The golem flagged, hurting. Seeing that, Sable swooped in with a second [Dominate] attempt.

That same agonizing clash occurred. Sable should have set onto the ground before unleashing it. Staying focused on the brutal mental combat while staying airbound was more difficult than she’d expected.

Eventually, she came out the victor. The pressure released, and her thrall expanded to two.

***

[ Entity [Granitemaul] added to Thrall ]

[ Thrall capacity: 1/5 -> 2/5 ]

[ Entity is of inferior sapience. Granted moderate boon to intelligence when interfacing with skill-user. ]

***