“Dalton.”

Amaranthe turned her head to the side, her cello was resting propped against the wall next to her within easy reach. Gone was the carefree expression on her face and the lovely meadow where Heath had left her to recoup her strength. She missed that clearing. Soot and grime covered the hair and fur on her head and a small cut was healing rapidly under her left eye.

The sounds of furious fighting still sounded below as war raged onward without stopping for the tired. Amaranthe had only been in this pocket dimension for a day in reality, but the time that had actually passed for her was more like a week. A week of non-stop fighting as Lucian, a favored chosen of Damascus had started his war with his forces against Harper, one of Heath's chosen. Amaranthe had no real stake in this fight except for being an unfortunate bystander when Lucian had issued his challenge. She was here now to show solidarity with those chosen by Heath, and to earn a future favor. She regretted her decision. Lucian was likely to win out by the end of the next two weeks inside the dimensional gem. Three days in the real universe and Harper’s head would likely be taken. Amaranthe would lose the favor and be marked as an enemy to Lucian.

Maybe it was because she was feeling depressed and tired, but Amaranthe was not immediately terrified when the golden-eyed slaughter goddess stepped out of nowhere. The wall was bare and overlooked a crucial part of the fortress that was falling.

“Dalton?” Amaranthe asked.

“Dalton, of the College of Serpentine Skirmishers,” Tamara looked toward Amaranthe’s cello as she paused. Amaranthe turned her head to look toward the same spot and noticed her cello was missing. When she returned her gaze to Tamara, the clean and fresh-looking slaughter goddess was sitting in an upright wooden chair that hadn’t been there before, the fingers of one hand moving expertly over the tuning pegs while the other hand held the instrument up. She had the bow as well, sitting on a knee.

Amaranthe felt a pang of envy for a moment. Wishing she could move so instantaneously and acquire the things she desired. She banished it immediately. She cast her eyes down respectfully and did her best not to project any sort of negative thought toward Tamara. The skin of her once separated arm was slowly beginning to turn the same color as the rest of her body once more. The discoloration was still a constant reminder that even though she had made significant strides toward gaining the power to hold her own fate in her hands, she still had a long way to go.

“I do not know who that is,” Amaranthe said softly. “This one apologizes.”

“Of course you don’t know who that is. Why would I need to explain something of which you have an understanding?” Tamara strummed a few strings with her fingers, almost prompting a grimace to appear on Amaranthe’s lovely, if dirty, features.

Tamara was clean, beautiful, powerful, all the things that Amaranthe with real battle damage, currently was not.

“This one awaits the lesson,” Amaranthe spoke carefully. She had noticed that all the other people holding the wall had, inexplicably, vanished from her sight. Even the fighting below seemed further away even though this was the inner wall before the Sanctum where Harper was preparing to make her final stand.

“You were wondering, moments before, what my chosen is doing.”

“This one admits the very same transgression,” Amaranthe tried to still the slight tremor in her voice.

Tamara stopped briefly, fingers frozen in place as her eyes looked up and met Amaranthe’s for the first time since she had appeared. All pretense of being a beautiful and compassionate being vanished as if it had been a placard that Tamara wore over her body like a sheet. The amused look, the flushed cheeks, the slight fumbling as her fingers turned the pegs. Even the breath seemed to be stolen from her lungs as her body went completely still. It was, Amaranthe decided, like looking at a creature that pretended to be living but had long ago forgotten how. Forgotten because all the things that made a living creature were absent, and had been for some time.

Tamara smiled slightly, the animation returning to her actions. “It is not a transgression. Heath wished me to impart you a lesson on that temper of yours, and it seems you have learned it well. I forgive your impertinence, and for the moment I have need of speech. Sometimes it is easier to bounce ideas off people who are far removed from your vision.”

Amaranthe was trying to figure out how to reply when she felt a warm sensation on her arm. She lifted it and flexed her trembling fingers as she realized that it felt more alive than it had before. The skin brightened and all the blemishes, minute though they were, seemed to be merely dirt she could now simply wipe off instead of marred skin. It was even more beautiful than the arm that had not been cut off, and, Amaranthe guessed it would be stronger as well. It didn't end there. Before Amaranthe could be disappointed that it would just be the one arm, the warmth spread to her body. Amaranthe felt stronger, lighter, and -- inexplicably tired.

“This one will try and understand," Amaranthe felt the fear start to crawl up from her soul once more. The casual power and ability to manipulate her doing more to frighten her than the memory of losing the arm.

“I know you will. Your reactions will be your gift to me, and then I’ll owe you a favor. It’s important for you to know that the favor can only be asked for at this time. When I am about to leave you may ask something of me, and if I am able, I will do something for you. Do you understand?”

“This one… does not, but will try…”

“Goodness look how frightened you are!” Tamara laughed. She looked out over the battlefield and her gaze sharpened even as she continued to laugh for a long moment. Amaranthe was confident that Tamara's eyes could see the slaughter that was happening, and that she paid it no mind.

“You were wondering why I chose Ruth,” Tamara no longer laughed, but her face still held traces of contentment.

“Yes,” Amaranthe dared not repudiate the slaughter goddess outright. She had actually been wondering what Ruth had been like as a dragon. How had he come to the attention of Tamara in the first place?

“Dalton, of the College of Serpentine Skirmishers,” Tamara said it again, and Amaranthe detected just a hint of distaste from her words. It was something about the way she said the name and the whole title. “He was a knight employed by a Duchess to remove Ruth from her territory. To hear Ruth think of it, it was a vast territory reaching as far as the eye could see. Jewels and gems were plucked into his claws like one might pluck apples from trees. The trees were gorgeously enriched with mana and the rivers ran with fish who were so fat they sometimes beached themselves, warming under the sunlight as an offering to his appetites.”

Tamara played a few notes on Amaranthe’s cello, lowering her head and closing her magnificent eyes. Amaranthe trembled, relaxing a bit as that gaze turned further from her. The few notes she was playing now elicited a strange mixture of warmth, comfort, and comedy into her body. Like the opening lines to a particularly funny little play. The notes lowered in pitch even as Tamara continued to play, her voice moving over the notes in some fashion that made them easily understood despite the wonderful music that was being played.

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“In reality, his lair rested on the peak of a lonely mountain in a small and impoverished kingdom. The ladies and lords of the land often squabbled but rarely fought each other because there wasn’t really anything of worth or value there to fight over. Not sincerely fight over anyway. Ruth, in his time there, fought ferociously for his one mountain peak, accruing enough wealth and earning enough ire to make him seem quite formidable to such a number of frogs within that small well.” Tamara lowered her head again, shoulders moving slightly as she abandoned her story to play sincerely for a moment.

Amaranthe felt something seizing her body. It was like a powerful force flowed within that music. It captured her, made her spellbound, made her breathe faster. Pressed down on her, made her lighter, and made it hard to breathe at the same time. It was music like this that let her know that there were still heights she could reach and even loftier aspirations beyond those that she might not even glimpse in her life. When the fever pitch slowed once more Amaranthe almost complained, a lost look in her eyes and a wet pout starting to form on her lips. She wetted them with her tongue and would have forgotten herself to ask for more, but Tamara’s voice cut through the strangely pleasurable fog that was starting to drown her like an overweight blanket.

“Still, Ruth had been there, if you were to ask the peasantry -- well, forever.” Tamara slowed her pace again with consideration to the tempo of the music but continued to keep her eyes closed.

“He was just like the weather. There was a dragon on the mountain. There was a rainy season and a dry season. The dragon would take cattle or sheep or horses from time to time, but largely left them alone. The wolves would do the same. You didn’t hate the wolves. You did what you could but largely expected them to just take from time to time. More importantly, Ruth provided a strange service. He was extremely territorial toward other creatures. Orcs, goblins, ogres, other dragons, really anything that wasn’t a human being if we’re being honest… He fought them all and killed them in order to keep his territory clear of what he thought of as ‘the rubbish’. It was a strange sort of symbiosis. The proud and cowardly dragon, the human beings that cultivated and tended the land.”

“Why humans,” Amaranthe managed to ask in a pleasure strangled voice. It wasn’t fair… she decided. When would she be able to play like this?

“From an early age he already pegged humans, and demihumans, and anything that walked on two legs and looked a certain way and wore clothes, of all things, as troublesome and something to avoid. If you’re asking me why he knew the difference between them and monsters like himself or even not like himself? The non-humans and non-demihumans smelled bad to him. Hygiene saved many, perhaps? It may just be that he had an odd mutation and everything smelled bad except the certain type of flower that is humanity and all their myriad transformations.”

Amaranthe startled herself by snorting out a quick laugh. Bathing saved a community, or there was a dragon that liked the smell of flowers and humans. She forced herself to focus even as another wave of warmth washed over her like a comforting morning fog. This was no less a fight for her life than when she was on the battlefield below. “...Dalton...of the Serpentine Skirmishers…”

“Yes, Dalton. A knight.” The music changed in tone then, becoming longer and melancholy, a prelude to a great tragedy.

“There are many aspirations of young people. To be courageous, and good, and compassionate, and an inspiration! Who doesn’t wish to be heroic? In the end, some lose their way and become butchers of the magical, the misunderstood, or the inconveniently dangerous. Dalton never started out with great aspirations. When he was a young boy he found he liked to hurt animals. As he got older he channeled that into monster hunting. Rewarded for hurting creatures, lauded by the masses, and extolled for his virtue. A perfect vocation.”

“Heroes… are a blight on the land…” Amaranthe whispered sorrowfully, remembering what Heath had said.

“Nonsense.” Tamara scoffed, opening her eyes briefly.

The music stopped, and Amaranthe gratefully straightened into her sitting position. She had been leaning against a small stone wall with her back to the inner courtyard so she could look out to the sky, but as the music had progressed she had been slowly sinking into a position with her body on the ground. She had lost all ability to control her muscles at some point and was grateful for the opportunity to compose herself once more.

“Heroes are a natural part of the balance of the universe,” Tamara waved the bow slightly and there was no less elegance in that momentary gesticulation than there might have been if she were conducting a symphony and not just making a point to a fox girl. “So too, is Ruth. Both take and return.”

It was strange to Amaranthe that Tamara, the slaughter goddess, was defending the role of heroes and her own god had not.

“So, Dalton had been hired by the Duchess of the land after Ruth had eaten one of the horses that drove her carriage. Unsurprisingly, the Duke himself hadn’t really cared about it one way or the other. He wasn’t about to spend his wealth or his men on trying to kill the dragon. It wasn’t important, and honestly there is something dashing about having land with a dragon on it, isn’t there?” Tamara smiled briefly as if it were a great joke.

“Ruth had thought he was being very generous. Despite eating the horse within earshot of the fainting Duchess, he had, after all, left one horse so they could still get home, hadn’t he?”

Amaranthe was strangely charmed at the idea of the generosity of the dragon herself, to be fair.

“So, at great personal pains, she had retained the services of the College of Serpentine Skirmishers. A newly established order of heroic knights who journeyed the land and took care of dragons! For the low, low cost of two gem encrusted necklaces worth a small fortune, Dalton agreed to use his firsthand knowledge of dragon-slaying and rid the area of the ‘menace’.” The sarcasm in Tamara’s voice was thick, making Amaranthe curious. Tamara was kind enough to continue explaining.

“Dalton himself had killed a dragon a few months prior to this using a particular sort of ballista. The dragon in question had seen the gleam of the ‘bolt’ that was attached atop the ballista and had mistaken it from a distance for some sort of precious shiny metal. It had come over, caught the bolt that had been shot at it, and still convinced it was precious metal and without landing, bit down on it to test out what kind of metal it was. Of course, as an unfortunate circumstance, the meter long metal tip had been coated with a special kind of paralyzing poison. Scentless, naturally, so the greedy creature that had somehow managed to live to the point where it could take to the air was felled by the simplest of forces -- gravity. The dragon, unable to flap her wings, fell to the ground and to her death. A great victory for the newly founded college, to be sure.”

Amaranthe was speechless, as was becoming the case quite often. “Quite...dashing…”

“Indeed. The bards told it differently, else the Duchess might have reconsidered. Perhaps she would not have. In either case, he was there and set up his ballista atop a hill overlooking the heart of the small village. It was the only hill in the area that could be clearly seen from the mountain. It was also the only area where the vast majority of the villagers who didn’t tend the land set up stalls and houses for their families. It was a safe place, was it not? A dragon protected it.” Tamara chuckled.

“Protected it?” Amaranthe had the impression that Tamara was fooling with her now.

“Of course he did. They were peasants! They can’t be bothered to know the truth of the situation! The dragon didn’t eat them and avoided them at all costs. Other villagers had come from other areas and knew the truth! That living was miserable anywhere. There were monsters that raided the crops, monsters that stole the women, monsters that stole the crops and raided the women! So what if there was a dragon on the mountain and you could hear the thing snoring!” Tamara threw her hands up. “To the villagers he was important. The best kind of protector. The one who wanted nothing to do with you.”

Tamara began adjusting the pegs of the cello again. Amaranthe had no idea why. It had never sounded better to her in her entire life. It was possible that Amaranthe would never need tune that cello ever again.

“The first day Ruth became aware of the regions newest creature, there was quite the spectacle,” Tamara smiled.