By the time Sable made it back to her hoard, she was nine-tenths dead—and her HP agreed with her on that fact. It was more of a controlled crash-landing to set down onto the small island in the middle of Lake Plateglass, and after dragging herself onto her meager pile of treasure, the warm glow of [Recuperate] acting as an instant salve to her soul, feverish sleep claimed her almost immediately.

***

She clawed her way out of a fugue-like state some indeterminate time later, her entire body aching. A glance at the sky told her at least six hours had passed. It was evening by the position of the sun.

She let out a long groan that some might even call pitiful.

During her frenzied escape from the disaster that had been Verindale, Sable had been in far too dire straits to catalog her injuries. She’d barely been able to keep in the sky, her entire concentration needed just to make it back to her hoard and collapse.

Now, somewhat recovered thanks to several hours basking in [Recuperate], she needed to appraise just how bad off she was.

Initial inspections weren’t great. The system affirmed that belief: her HP sat at seven thousand to a thirty-one thousand total. Before, she’d been well under ten percent, approaching triple-digit health. Her fight against the insane cultist had been by far the closest she’d come to dying. The fight against the hivemother seemed like a joke compared to it.

Her body was littered with gashes, even her impervious scales having been cut and torn into. Several of the gleaming white armor plates were bent, slashed, or even nearly hanging off of her—it was a disturbing sight. Dried blood coated her body, stark against her snow-white and nearly reflective complexion, and much of her hoard was also coated red-brown; she’d been bleeding freely for some time as she rested with [Recuperate].

Her nearly amputated left arm, possibly the worst single injury, had improved considerably, but resting her weight on it still hurt. It wasn’t half cut off as it had been before, but it would be another full night’s rest or more before she could rely on it. Even that was incredible, honestly. Her legendary constitution, and capability of recovery through [Recuperate], was really something. She’d gone from crippled to only debilitated in a single six-hour rest.

“Are you … okay?” a worried voice asked.

Sable twitched, her head snapping in the direction of the noise. In her feverish state from so many serious injuries, she’d somehow forgotten she wasn’t alone. Obviously Aylin, Granite, and even Ignisfang was there, accompanying her, though staying a safe distance away, watching her with concern and even wariness. Sable supposed she was lucky none of them had traitorous tendencies. She’d never been in a better position to be betrayed.

The goblin woman paled at Sable’s attention so suddenly, and harshly, pivoting to her, and she even took a step back. If Sable had to guess, she wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, and an injured dragon, and therefore defensive and irritable dragon, wasn’t something a person would want to antagonize.

Sable gathered her thoughts, then said, [I lived. That’s what matters.]

In another circumstance, she suspected Aylin might have snorted at that, but the goblin woman kept a serious expression, and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Getting out with your hide. Really all that matters.”

[You and Granite are fine?] A quick survey showed that they were. They didn’t seem worse for wear.

“We got sent scrambling away the moment something started to happen,” Aylin said. “So yeah. We’re fine.” There was a small frown at that—at having been mind-controlled to flee, which had broken through the ritual’s effect—but she seemed to recognize the necessity of the situation.

Sable limped over to shoreline of the island. She didn’t know if cleaning her injuries was necessary in a world operating on so much magical healing, but she wanted the blood off her regardless.

That done, she eyed a scale on her shoulder that was nearly dangling off, barely attached to her. The skin beneath was a grotesque mess of red and white. The gore was upsetting in a few ways—it meant that spot would be weak for the foreseeable future, not protected as the rest of her body.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[Do scales grow back?]

“Uh.” Aylin seemed caught off guard by the question. “No idea.”

Well, seeing how she was pretty sure the scale wouldn’t somehow resettle, with the skin beneath already having healed somewhat through [Recuperate], she accepted the loss and ripped it the last tiny bit of the way off, only a strand of flesh. Her other scales might glue themselves back together as she healed, but that one had been a loss, she was certain. She grit her teeth and growled at the pain, but compared to the events of the day prior, it wasn’t much. She tossed the scale onto her hoard and settled back onto the pile of treasure so [Recuperate] could seal up the trickle of blood.

[What a mess,] Sable said. [Skatikk’s warriors are still inside Verindale. What happened there, do you think?]

Aylin didn’t have to consider her response, which suggested she’d already though the topic over. To be fair, she hadn’t been nearly killed, needing to crash on top of her hoard in a feverish recovery state. She’d had plenty of time to chew over the debacle.

“Well, seeing how those maniacs killed themselves summoning that thing, our people are probably fine. There’s just not opposition that could hold up to them, after everyone who could fight them man-for-man sacrificed themselves. Sixteen uncontested high level classed? They’re doing fine, if I had to guess.”

That eased some of Sable’s guilt over having fled. Leaving behind a group of people who were nominally her allies in hostile territory hadn’t felt great. She hadn’t had much choice, though. She’d barely escaped with her own life, and the only thing her lizard brain had been screaming at her to do was to get as far away as possible.

Plus, Sable simply didn’t trust Skatikk’s warriors not to take advantage of her weakened state. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they had used the situation to finish her off. There’d been many reasons she’d needed to leave them behind.

Did fleeing reduce her reputation? Even considering how reasonable doing so had been, running away wasn’t an action that suited an all powerful tyrant. Fortunately, her [Notoriety] hadn’t dipped a level, but Sable wouldn’t be surprised if her image had been diminished in some way to the warriors of Skatikk.

[They’re still alone in an enemy city,] Sable said. [Plus the ritual seemed to have affected them, too.] She’d seen several of Skatikk’s warriors who’d outright collapsed in face of the overwhelming magic the cultist had brought to bear. [So they might not be at full fighting condition. And won’t numbers matter?]

“If Verindale’s willing to throw hundreds of lives away, maybe,” Aylin said. “And even then, big maybe. But they don’t have time to mount a resistance against them, anyway. They’re dealing with their own crisis. You turned their town square into a bonfire, and they’re probably dealing with that. Gives our people plenty of time to gather themselves and hole up somewhere.” She shrugged. “Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if they finished taking over the city themselves. Really depends.”

Sable nodded. [Guesswork is pointless.] She looked down at herself and grimaced. [I’m still not in any condition to go help. They’ll need to handle themselves for a while longer.]

Maybe when she’d worked her way up to half health, she’d go deal with Verindale. Until then, the risk of being turned on was simply too high. She was less than one-quarter health, and even less than that in mana.

[I thought I was safe against them,] Sable said. [How did someone so low level have power like that?]

She hadn’t gotten an exact read on the cultist’s level, but [Predator’s Insight] had told her he wasn’t even the highest level of the goblins gathered—which put him somewhere around fifteen. It made no sense that he’d effectively gone toe-to-toe with her, a level nine dragon who’d clearly demonstrated herself capable of torching entire squads a similar level to him.

“Don’t know,” Aylin said. “That gem he had …” she trailed off, then shook her head. “I’m not the person to ask. But if you’re willing to mess with powers you shouldn’t, then anything’s possible, I guess. Especially when you’ve got three dozen willing high-level sacrifices.”

She seemed disturbed, thinking back to the event, and to be fair, Sable was too. That had been their conviction? For three dozen people to give their lives in an attempt to kill her? She’d known the alleged genocide of their entire capital city would make them hate her, but she might have underestimated the extents some people would go for revenge. That had been foolish.

Her life had already been a mess, but recent discoveries had made them even more so. Apparently, she wasn’t safe even from lower-level people like she ought to be; there was always a risk of some bizarre wild-card, like a cultist with access to a ravenous deity.

Sable could intuit she might have simply gotten extraordinarily unlucky with that event, but even so, it demonstrated that the risk was out there, and that she was never truly safe, however overwhelming the power difference between her and her enemies seemed. She’d have to be more careful in the future.

But could she afford to be more careful? She didn’t really think she’d been outrageously reckless, having been more than aware of the possibility of a trap, and prepared for it. Just, it was impossible to be prepared for that.

[There’s a single silver lining, I suppose,] Sable sighed, settling her chin onto her claws, taking solace in the warm radiance of her hoard. [I leveled after killing that thing.]

“Oh?” Aylin asked. “Anything good? Level ten increments come with something strong.”

[Indeed,] Sable said. In fact, a long-anticipated skill had arrived, though perhaps not something ‘strong’. But certainly defining. [My halfdragon form.]