The early days were the worst, understandably. After just barely surviving because of the whims of a hatchling, wolf-sized as he might be, every single second, every moment was a new torturous flavor for the young woman that was torn from her family. It was like she had died yet it was taking her body a while longer to properly accept it. It was like when her hand was scorched to the bone after she overused her magic.

Ah, that day. Such a stupid day. She wished it could have been a good story of protecting the town from some runaway monster of the woods, but no. She was young and angry. She did not take her mother’s teachings of finesse, understanding and politeness, did not listen to her when she said that a good girl should be kind and obedient, and got angry from being teased by the chief’s girl, Tanja.

My skin just started to darken and she said I would be charcoal before long… She was right, in a way, yet I still hated her. But then she said what really set me off: that maybe my mother did it with a southerner and I was just starting to show my true “colors”... That’s when I got mad and the fire in me lit up.

She had just wanted to scare her, after all the one thing she had over the others, despite her useless element, was that she could use simple magic without words. In truth all she could do at the time was to create bursts of sparks. And yet, despite that, she knew that she could scare her if she threw all her core’s worth of sparks at her.

She did not know how dangerous it was to use her whole core without giving proper shape to the spell. Nobody else did anything like that, and as such no one knew what could happen.

For half a second she laughed, hearing the high pitched scream Tanja let out, but then her own shout joined in. The mana was shaped just by the vague idea of scaring the girl, and magic did as magic does. It terrified. All the mana that didn’t get to reach the end of her fingertips and become outward sparks, instead sparked within. Her flesh bursted and bubbled and-

“Edith! Edith, girl, your hand! Control yourself!” It was spoken with urgency by a raspy voice she became all too familiar with.

She was suddenly in the present, hit by an improvised switch which will certainly leave a mark later on her good arm. She yelped from the pain and went to hold her other hand over the reddening line, only to notice her clawed hand was on fire. That stopped her for a good few seconds before she pulled in the mana, letting the fire smother itself. Her hand was fine. There was nothing left to burn after all. She turned to the old woman who was holding a fresh, thin branch she had just hit the young girl with.

“S-sorry miss Yvonne… I was remembering bad things.” Edith spoke quietly, shame evident in her expression. Maybe if the cards were stacked differently she would have been a talented sorceress, with how easily flames answered to her mere emotions, but she wasn’t a sorceress. She was just a witch with a bad temper and little control over her own mana… No, not even that, she was merely a child’s pet. Yet that situation helped her grow her core so much faster than it ever would have back in her town. A weird situation all around.

“None of that “miss“ stuff, I told you to call me grandma Yv already! You’re little older than my nephew! And I told you to leave your woes behind. You cannot bud if you keep airing out embers of that which burnt you before. Some may tell you to harness your anger, I say you do better to smother it and build a strong hearth before you start setting sparks again, so the fire won’t burn what’s left of you.” She spoke all too seriously, but her voice held no anger or sting. She was trying to help and teach, but they are vastly different and there’s only so much one’s experience can help another.

She simply nodded, apologizing quietly once more, then went back to peeling and cutting the strange orange fruit that only The Mistress could grow. It had become the base of their meals, well, the fruit, the vines and the leaves that grew all over the place. The latter were only mildly edible, but they were greens and boiled in a stew they weren’t too bad. There’s only so much sweet someone can eat. And to everyone’s despair it’s been almost two weeks since their last serving of meat, and more than two weeks since they last saw their young savior.

And isn’t that weird? She asked herself as she chopped up the fruits. Thinking of that strange dragon child as a savior, but there’s really nothing else I can describe him as. We were going to be eaten and he saved us from that. When we started wondering about food and water he came with a solution. After spending many days eating only fruits he brought meat for us. I was worried he’d only bring bugs… But he brought actual meat. He even broke open the carcass for us and brought us a sword and firewood. The fact that the two chained women broke out thanks to that very sword the kid brought so we could cut a Bone Boar was a whole different thing.

She laughed a bit, thinking of that time. She had thought the beast woman and the noble scary, but they both turned out to be a lot more kind than she’d expected. The beast woman, barbarian in act as she may be, brought a lot of food from her hunts with the dragon and handled all the butchering herself to great efficiency, leaving the rest of us to only cook the meal. As for Lady Meredith Glessher, she was an odd but respectful woman.

She had been a sorceress before being imprisoned, learning proper spellwork from a book her father, apparently a merchant of great renown, had given her. It was sad that their elements did not have much in common. The woman could make shadows dance and poison things with a touch, nothing like her flames.

Despite it all she had learnt from both her and granny Yvonne how to better use her magic. An old witch and a noble sorceress, more chances she wouldn’t have had without the dragon taking her. Aside from the fact that she will probably not leave this place alive, this whole situation was quite good for her.

Now if only that hatchling would come back… For a week now she has noticed the siblings of the witty one looking at them differently, more like food. Maybe because he wasn’t around they’ll try their luck. Looking around she knew that the three dragons would devour them even if they gave it their all to fight back. Months ago they were fighting mana afflicted wolves like one would kill rats with a broom. Maybe Meredith would be able to run away with her darkness, maybe that barbarian woman would be able to escape with her beastly speed, but a fight they’d lose.

Her eyes turned to the boy, Alek, youngest of them all and who just barely survived a horrible sickness, also with the help of the dragon, right before he vanished. She just hopes they’ll manage to hold on until that kind dragon comes back.

Thunder echoes through the cave, startling her into cutting her palm.

Since when were storms this bad so early into the cold season?

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Ever since taking on the role of sacrifice the world has gone mad. She understood it, in a way. Dragons were gods among men and beasts. Even the emperor of legends, if it somehow was as is described, would be little more than an annoyance to a grown dragon. Magic was the plaything of these monsters, the world was their property and the accomplishment and dedication of an entire lineage of witches is a toy for a dragon child.

Even more so for the child that saved them. She was not as naive as the girl or boy, both so impressed by that animal… but she had to admit it behaved strangely human-like at times. The way it used tools, the way it studied them so closely, the way it apparently started learning the barbarian’s tongue and used magic to speak back…

She knew that despite all that, despite all it did, that beast was still a dragon in the truest sense. It learned magic by copying them, learned how to hunt, learned music, learned so many things that it would have probably needed years to properly observe from afar, just by keeping them close.

She remembers when the thing, after bribing them all with mana crystals fit for each and every one of them, learned to fill itself with mana. She remembers the sight of it when she bore the eye of mana. It looked like a star, compared to its siblings… A terrifying thing that grew grander by the day. And whether they wanted to or not, they would end up helping it become a menace down the line much worse than The Mistress ever was.

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She sighs, after calming down the girl. Her days are numbered… Every moment she feels herself withering, and the pressure of protecting and teaching the kids, while living under the claw of beasts, is starting to stomp out whatever good the mana of this place did to her.

Bah, I did come here because I was dying either way… What use is lamenting that my death is slow and stressful?

Indeed there was no point, so she pushed the thought aside and focused on her work. She had to do her best with this soup, fearing what might happen if that monstrous woman gets any hungrier. She saw how she craved flesh, how she looked at the others every so often, with that crazed, yellow eye… A shiver ran down her barky back and she stirred the brew ever so slightly faster.

She hated being so dependent on a child and she hated how others started believing a monster of chaos to be benevolent, but she had to admit his presence kept them safe and it could do things nobody else could… like heal the boy. What happens if the kid dies… will The Mistress just stomp them all down in anger? Maybe. Or maybe they’ll go back to being food.

Regardless she had to do what she could with the time she had. Otherwise-

Thunder.

Thunder was never quite so loud before. She noticed everyone getting scared, especially the boy who started tearing up. She sighs, far too on edge from all this uncertainty, then goes right back to cooking. Storm or no storm, it had nothing to do with them. Or at least it didn’t until two powerful roars echoed and shook the earth.

A dragon.

A second dragon.

And it was fighting The Mistress.

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Pain. More often than not, her days have been pain. Taken from her clan, beaten down into obedience, chained with wicked iron that sickened and banished her guardian spirit, leaving Her gifts to rot despite a still living body. She cried until she had no more tears, then worked until they could beat her no longer. She survived. Eating rotten bread and leftovers, often even having to steal from livestock or to catch whatever bug or tiny animal came too close, yet she survived.

She worked the fields until her fur was soaked and her skin was burnt. She obeyed and pretended to be afraid of the disgustingly weak men, so taken by grandeur because they wear cloth and steel and have a bit of mana running through their cold veins. A swipe of her claws would crumple all their armor and pride, but not when her gifts are bound so tight.

And that was the truth, for from the moment she was taken to the moment she reached this cursed den, she was not able to take a single life. Yet here things became different.

She had no reason to protect the wicked slavers, yet women and children were the only things behind her, so she fought. Especially after seeing a Godling of Flesh protecting them. The mother said as such in the end, using her divine power to speak even her very own tongue with ease. The elder boy, the grandest of his clutch, decided their life was spent better than as food, so now they were his. He had the might, true might, that afforded him that right.

And so she lived, prisoner still, but now to someone noble, someone rightful, someone she could understand being entrapped by. And this one was kind. Child as he may be, he was Godling and his innate wisdom showed. Bringing food, including a graced bug that might have been troublesome to kill with how thick that shell was. He brought water so that our thirst may be quenched, and while she did not wholly understand the language of the slavers, she understood that he used his divine power to move that water. So young, yet already able to mold the world to his will.

A true Godling.

Yet also something else. The mother Godling was the perfect example of what one normally is. The power in her voice, stronger than her chief’s, deeper in wisdom than the shaman’s, so much grace and might in a beast she will never comprehend… A beast so distant and grand…

Yet her child was closer to a mortal than one might expect, especially for one so young and naive to the world at large. He left with her, at night when others rested and spent a moment just gazing at the starlit sky.

“Oh Harisar, with your glorious, cold glow, mirror of the world, I beg that my kin is safe and they too watch your beauty from the freedom of the fields and hills, away from the slavers and their tainted touch.”

She cried. It had been too long and she was not one to dwell underground. The mere sight of the sky, of the great moon they all watched with love and awe…

She missed home… but she remembered that the Godling was with her, and if she showed how weak she truly was, it might decide she’s not worth feeding, so she calms her expression, back to her strong self, to the one that survived captivity.

And then he sang. It was… amusing in a way. It was bad. The boy’s voice is made for roars and squeaks, but he hummed to the best of his ability. And while the sound was not that great, the tone, rhythm, the melody! Everything else was great. It was a song of power, of glory, a song of closeness, of bonds…

And so they sang together. It took a bit to learn, but she did, and she enjoyed it. Then when things quieted down, it was her turn. She sang the song of the hunt. The song of survival, the one that her clan sang before going out looking for a worthy feast, the one they only finished after everyone returned and before they got to butchering.

It was the song that pumped their blood and that mourned their losses, the song of their life.

And then she heard a drum.

Godling magic, the shapes that ruled the world, the seemingly simple things that mortals never could quite imitate.

And it was a drum, a drum made of treated deerskin wrapped around a wide tube of hardwood, something the slavers don’t make.

And she continued the song. More drums joined in, carved horns of great beasts, even voices… no, not any voices, her family. Her fathers and mothers, her siblings, her children… She could hear the drunk chieftain, slurring his words, she could hear them all, like they were there…

And then the song ended, with a happy mourning, and she looked at the collapsed, laughing form of a Godling, a divine being wearing flesh, a friend… a new, young, beloved friend that would hear her crying, truly crying.

After that time passed, but eventually, as she was in pain from hunger, her friend returned with a bounty greater than she’d expect. A boar with the essence of bones, a tough beast… too tough for even herself.. yet he broke it open for her. Ah how she feasted… And then he brought a dangerous artifact of the slavers…

After he left, no doubt thinking that he sword would be used by them to cut open the carcass, she watched the woman with the foul scent of poisons reach for it and slam down her bindings into it, slicing them cleanly as well as their evil curse that restrains any blessing one may have.

She saw that dangerous glint in her eyes, and knew she’d try to run, now freed from the bindings, but a Godling would not take kindly to their mercy being trampled, and it might reflect poorly on her friend, so she roared as she freed herself, then grasped the blade and pointed it at the highborn slaver.

She looked terrified, and did not move.

So Ayrah got to cutting the boar. She did not know what her Godling friend was thinking, or what he was doing, but he brought the sword after seeing her struggle to bite into the animal, just like he brought the meat after seeing her starve, so she used it for what he most likely wanted her to use it for.

And when he returned with wood for a fire it was clear that he knew the others would not be able to handle raw meat, slavers having a notoriously weak stomach. Wise indeed, little Godling, he was a wise one indeed. Her actions were also proven wise when the mother Godling returned, threatening torturous death if any of them even think about escaping her domain. She did however affirm that her friend could take them wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and only then would we be allowed to move from this room. She made sure to show her reverence.

I will not betray him.

Yet now he is nowhere to be found. After their many hunts and the time she spent teaching him words, after she begged him and he saved the boy that reminded her too much of her youngest brother, she now sits in pain from hunger, not having seen her friend at least pass by the hall. She was worried. It had been more than two weeks and she had yet to see him return from his last leave. His siblings came and went, explored and smelled of more power each day, yet he never returned…

But she was still alive, as were the slavers, so he must have been alive still.

He was the wisest of his siblings, strongest too… There was no reason to believe he would fall to something they would not.

So she held out hope.

As the storm began she held out hope.

As the roars echoed deep in their cave, she held out hope.

As the young Godlings ran past their room, she held out hope…

And as everyone abandoned the stew and followed them , she held out hope.

Oh Muur, dearest guardian spirit… I beg you to help me hold out hope…