NOVEL NEXT Book 5, Chapter 19
"Hello, Catherine," Lysander said, as I woke up in the afterlife. "That was a clever play, at the end. Well done."
"Thank you, Lysander," I said, nodding idly. "I don't know how much attention you've been paying to the day I've been having, but... Those Wood Elves, Clan Darenthus, think that I should take up your mantle, and become the next High King."
"I could see it," Lysander said, nodding slowly. "You're nowhere near fully grown in terms of your personal ability to fuck people up, but... well. I was, and look where that got me."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean," Lysander said, "that I lost the War of the Roses because I hadn't realized that war had changed. I'd thought that, if I rallied the knights and rode out to meet Hano on the field of battle, I'd be able to cut him down and end the war. And instead, I got shot by conscripts with mass-produced battlestaves until Hano was able to walk up to me unopposed and break my skull with his iron fists. War's changed, kiddo. Men like me don't matter anymore."
"...Mmn. Yeah, that's..." I sighed. "That's kind of the clear, inevitable lesson of the War of the Roses, isn't it? The High Elves failed to keep up with the Hikaano, and their adherence to the old ways got them crushed behind a newer, more capable paradigm of war."
"This means, incidentally, that a lot of my advice is useless to you," Lysander admitted. "I am, for the most part, very good at a model of kingship that doesn't work anymore. You'll have to make your own path, but..." Lysander shrugged. "I believe in you. You'll make it work."
"What about me being a dragon, instead of an elf?" I asked.
"Don't let anyone tell you that the contents of your bloodstream disqualifies you from being an elf," Lysander said firmly. "You were born an elf, raised an elf, ate elven food at elven tables with elven families, and are a cleric of an elven god. You are an elf, Catherine, no matter how much of a dragon you are at the same time."
"...Thanks. I... needed to hear that."
"You'll be going back soon," Lysander said. "Take care of our people, Catherine, but... don't forget to also take care of yourself."
"I will."
---
I woke up to the familiar sight of Emily Redwater fussing over me. A quick look around informed me that she'd sealed up those nasty cuts, and was giving me a blood transfusion from...
"Is that the bloodbag Uncle Frederick gave me?" I asked. It was mostly empty, by this point, and I'd probably be back to... well, a functional amount of blood in my veins. I'd get it fully healed once we rejoined the others.
"Maybe," Emily said, shrugging. "I don't know, it wasn't labeled. I found it in your pocket, confirmed that it was undiseased humanoid blood with a spell, and since you're AB+, that's all I really needed to check for."
"...Mmn. Yep, that sure is a liter of pure dragon's blood you're dumping into my veins," I said, as my more mystical senses came back to me. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you- I was gonna ask you to pour it inside me next time I saw you. But, uh... wow, am I feeling the effects."
The Mask of the Dragon beckoned to me, but now that I knew what it was, I could control it. No more a mask, now a mantle. I am Catherine Ironheart, and I happen to be a dragon. Sure, that means I've got certain urges, but... I'm an adult. I can control myself.
"All done," Emily murmured, once the bag was properly empty. She disconnected the tubing from the bag, and then slowly, carefully, removed the needle, holding a fresh pad of sterile gauze over the injection site as she slid it back out of the vein. It was an unpleasant experience, but I held still for her, knowing that jerking and jostling would just lead to internal bleeding. The needle came out- all in one piece, thank Asklepius- and Emily sealed the injection site with a puff of holy light. "There. It's safe to move, now. Is this the fourth time you've died, this year?"
"Fifth," I corrected her. "It's been a long day."
"Mmn."
"You got anything for treating mana burn?" I asked.
"Already applied it," Emily said. "It's outside my specialty, but... just sticking needles in you? I'm plenty capable of that."
"Fair enough," I said, as I slowly sat up- favoring the arm that hadn't just had a needle in it. It didn't help, as my whole body was sore and achey after today's exertions, but... I'd live. "Now... Let's address the dumbass in the clearing, yeah?"
Once I was up on my feet, I could see, facedown in the ashes, the bloodied, twitching body of Antoinette Tenpenny, as the wounds I'd given her worked together with the growing blood clots to slowly but surely kill her from the inside.
"I've been pretty fucking mad, over the course of my adventures," I began, smiling gently. "People have done all sorts of awful bullshit to me and my friends. But you, Antoinette? Oh, I am going to savor watching you die, more than any foe I've ever bested."
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She managed to lift her head up to stare at me.
"Who... who are you?" she demanded, hoarsely. "You're not... There's no way you're just, just some punk kid. Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm the Red Devil, bitch," I said. "I'm the girl who started her career as an adventurer by killing your husband, and only went bigger from there. I'm the girl who killed a half-dragon with her teeth, and killed every other man aboard his ship so I could take it for myself. I'm the sudden, tragic end of the pathetic little story of your life, and countless other lives. I'm the fucking Grim Reaper of failed hopes and broken dreams, come to harvest your own. I am Catherine Goddamned Motherfucking Ironheart, and I'm going to bury you under the Temple of Terpsichore so that, every day until the end of time, there are going to be thousands of gleeful strangers, singing and dancing on your grave."
I smirked, watching as the light continued to fade from her eyes, her consciousness failing.
"But you can call me Cat."
And then, she was dead.
"Normally, I'd be glad to see that her spell resistance is gone," I mused. "However, I just died, and still have mana burn, so... I'm just gonna have to desecrate her corpse the old-fashioned way. Does Asklepius have proscriptions against that, or can you help me with that?"
"I can," Volex said, appearing from... actually, seemingly nowhere, bleary-eyed and dissheveled.
"...Wait, has your reliquary been in my pocket the whole time?" I asked. "I thought I'd given it to you, and you'd been carrying it ever since."
"Oh, I was," Volex said, nodding. "See, when you took off on your own in the middle of the night to go settle this stupid grudge match, we woke up pretty quickly and hustled after you. I flew on ahead to come meet you- the rest of the group should be here to help chew you out in earnest. What, were you just too polite to wake us up? Well, that didn't work out for you, did it?"
"Look, I-"
"Oh, is Emily here?" Volex asked. "Hi, Emily. Good to see you."
"I was bait, and Cat was told to come alone," Emily said. "Lay off the poor girl, she just died. I think that's punishment enough."
"...Ah," Volex said.
"I did still make some poor decisions," I said. "One of which, I owe you an apology for."
"I don't blame you for getting kidnapped, Cat," Emily assured me. "My family, in their own palace, should have been able to protect me from this; that they didn't is... It's not your fault."
"It's... a little more complicated than that," I said, carefully. "I, uh... I remembered that you wanted to get kidnapped again, so that you could watch me kill your kidnapper, and I chose to leave you at home with your family specifically because I didn't want you to get that. Which. It feels weird to be apologizing for denying you your agency in 'getting kidnapped,' but fuck it, we're weird people, aren't we?"
"It's okay, Cat," Emily repeated. "I don't hold it against you."
"I do!" Uncle Frederick said, sticking his head out the driver's side window of the van as he brought it in for a landing, some ten feet distant from us. "Do you have any idea how much cocaine I had to take to get myself fully alert?"
"Cocaine?!" Emily demanded.
"I'm a High Elf," Frederick said, as though that explained everything. Which, admittedly, it did. Frankly, Talia and I were weird for not having a recreational drug of choice, and only I had the excuse of being medically dependent on daily doses of a powerful stimulant that'd respond poorly to anything stronger than caffeine.
"Well, however long that manages to last for, let's have you start driving off to the Mesa proper," I said. "No point wasting more time. I'd offer to take over, since I've been asleep since early afternoon, but for some reason, I'm feeling kinda worn-out after a vampire drank a whole quart of my blood."
"She what?!" Frederick demanded.
"She's dead, now," I assured him. "I threw an AB Positive wrench into her blood magic, and she got horrible blood clots and died in agony."
"...Ah."
"Is Talia awake?" I asked. "Not to impugn your skills, Emily, but blood loss is almost exactly the sort of thing Primal magic is better at healing than Divine magic is."
"You're not wrong," Emily admitted. "The reason Asklepios makes Healers out of Clerics instead of Druids is the simple fact we can't make that many Druids."
"I'm here," Talia said, stepping into the cab, rubbing at her eyes. "Cat, what the fuck?"
"Can I explain after you make with the healing magic?" I asked. "Because I feel like I just bled to death in the middle of a field, on account that's exactly what happened."
---
I may have been more-or-less fully rested right before I died for the second time that day, but between the blood loss and the whole "dying for the second time that day" thing, I was finally ready for some more sleep, after Emily insistently forced me to eat something sugary and drink some fruit juice while Talia helped regenerate the last bits of lost blood. Standard operating procedure was standard operating procedure, and I had something in my belly when I finally went back to sleep, surrounded by loved ones who were only partially there to stop me from running off on my own again.
Thankfully, I did still get what I wanted out of that whole mess, and had a brand new corpse in cold storage, ready to be desecrated and looted at my leisure. Volex had been kind enough to decapitate the corpse for me before putting it away, just in case Tenpenny had some backup plan that'd resurrect her after death; resurrecting someone who'd been decapitated wasn't impossible, mind you, but it was a hell of a lot harder if you weren't able to reattach the head first.
At some point, I'd want to make sure Cassandra Tenpenny was either dead in the ground or had fully foresworn her revenge, because I really, really wanted to be done with this whole self-sustaining vendetta bullshit, but for now? I was quite satisfied that this was the end of it. All that was left was the driving.