Balthazar looked up at the back of Madeleine’s head, the sun shining around her strawberry blonde hair giving the baker a halo of resplendence, her shadow over him like a giant protector shielding the crab.

He couldn’t believe her courage, but also the foolishness of what she was doing. Especially by doing it for him.

“Please stop! I can’t let you do this.”

The draconic beast stared down at the girl, a squint of curiosity in his eyes.

“You cannot let me do this?” it said in a deep, calm voice that still imposed a dreadful respect. “Who do you think you are to stop me?”

“I’m… I’m nobody, really,” Madeleine said, her voice faltering slightly. “But I… I always heard the stories, from my mother, and my grandmother, about the mighty and venerable dragons of legend. Majestic creatures with a keen intellect, and above all, a high sense of honor. Maybe I’m wrong and this is foolish, but I really want to believe those stories were true, and that dragons…”

“Do not bring my honor into question, girl,” the red dragon interrupted. “Many have met an early end by making that mistake.”

“No, no, I did not mean to, I swear,” the baker quickly said, raising her arms forward in an apologetic manner, but still standing her ground between the beast and the crab. “I just mean that… if your sense of honor is so high, you should not harm my friend Balthazar. I beg of you.”

“And why not?” the other said, his voice growing louder with impatience. “He is nothing but a meaningless crab who already admitted to have dealt with the thief who stole from me. There is no honor in those who steal.”

“Please! Hear me out! I know Balthazar, and I know he’s no thief. Just because he encountered this thief of yours, whoever it might have been, that does not mean he’s associated with him in any way. Is that not logical to you?”

The winged beast did not respond, but its gaze told Madeleine to continue.

“But above all that, I call on your sense of honor to spare him because he is noble and honorable as well.”

The dragon scoffed loudly. “A crab? Noble and honorable? You mock my morals and waste my time, girl! Step aside if you don’t wish to meet the same end as him.”

“No!” she exclaimed, in what felt like a louder voice than she intended.

“No?” the dragon repeated, his brow furrowing and his nostrils flaring.

“He might be a crab, and maybe that’s an insignificant creature to someone like you, but he’s a lot more than that to me, and to a lot of other people. He has a good heart and… and he’s been put through enough today already. He does not deserve this. Please…”

Balthazar raised a reluctant pincer towards the baker, despite being too far away to reach her, and far too injured to move.

“Madeleine,” he said in an unusually gravelly voice, “you should—”

“Shut up, Balthazar!” she pleaded, the tone of her voice painting a clear picture of the tears welling up in her eyes despite her refusal to turn to face him. “For once, just don’t talk and let someone else speak on your behalf.”

As if commanded by her order, a lump in the crab’s throat kept him from saying anything.

The red dragon straightened itself, its immense size towering over the two mouse-like specks standing before him, one defiant and determined, the other broken and apathetic.

The creature’s eyes narrowed on the baker, as if she had captured its interest and curiosity.

“And why does he not deserve it?”

She hesitated at first, but after taking one shaky breath, the words poured out of her like the waters that had flowed down from the mountains for years before that day.

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“Because despite being just a crab who knew nothing or anyone outside his pond, after he got to know people, especially adventurers, like those you blew away out there, he still learned to deal with us, or at the very least tolerate us. Because despite his grumpiness and hard temper, so many of us could not help but grow fond of him ourselves. It was never meant to work out, yet it did. Because deep down, under that shell of gold, there’s also a heart of gold.”

The dragon’s gaze shifted to the crab behind the baker, looking at him with disdain.

“Those annoying adventurers you experienced out there? They have been wearing his patience thin for far longer, and guess what? Many of them owe their lives to this crab, either saved from a venomous spider, or from a drunk giant on a rampage. A simple crab earned the respect of the whole adventurers guild. He once caught a thief stealing from his treasures too, and guess what? Today that thief works for him. He made friends in the most unlikely of places and situations, whether it was a scared little goblin he rescued from slavery, a baby drake with no mother to hatch her, or even an old rock given life by a crab’s wish. All those things tell me I was right from the day I met him, that Balthazar has a good heart.”

The red giant lowered its head to Madeleine’s eye level.

“And what makes you claim he is honorable?”

“Because more than once he did the honorable thing, even when it wasn’t the easiest choice. He made friends and forged alliances with those no one else would ever agree to making business with despite the risks it could bring to himself. He gave a chance to a fallen merchant when nobody else would see him as anything more than a disgraced drunk. Despite how cantankerous he always acts, he chose to help a cursed innkeeper who was sent to end his business when he found out what she had been through.” She turned her head to look Balthazar in the eyes, the tears pooling in front of her vivid green eyes beginning to roll down her face as she spoke. “And… he brought light back into a baker’s life when she was ready to give up on her life’s dream. Twice. Both when he saved her little market business, and long before that, when he sent a young adventurer looking for a baker of pies.”

Balthazar looked back, following Madeleine’s gaze as she smiled faintly at Rye, who was sitting in the muddy snow, one hand still grasping his wounded arm. Despite the tears welling up in his own eyes, the young ranger returned her smile.

The dragon looked into the baker’s eyes as she turned back to it. After what felt like an eternity, but was likely a mere few seconds, the creature let a long breath out through its nostrils. Not a sharp, quick exhale like the ones from before, meant to display its displeasure at current events, but a calmer, more controlled one, that, despite its intimidating nature, gave the being a less threatening presence in that moment.

“I do not know about your crab,” it said in a lower voice that still rattled the pebbles lying on the ground around it, “but I can see that you, girl, have a pure and honorable heart.”

“Then please, hear my plea and spare my friend,” Madeleine asked, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. “He has already lost so much today. His home was buried under an avalanche, his bazaar is destroyed, and he lost his best friend that was trying to save his life.”

“Honorable or not,” said the ancient creature, “I am still owed the treasure that was taken from me.”

“I have read so much about dragons and their myths, their pride and honor. Surely you can see it in your own heart to spare him. I know from the kid stories I used to listen that your kind has an undying love for your treasures and hoards, for collecting gold and even princesses. I have no gold or treasures to speak of, other than my humble baking, neither am I a princess, but whatever I can offer, it is yours, if you spare Balthazar, even if it is my own life.”

The dragon turned its head to the side and narrowed its eyes as it gave the girl a closer look.

“So you are a baker, girl?”

“Y-yes?”

“Tell me, what is your name?”

“Madeleine.”

“And you would willingly offer yourself up in exchange for mercy for this crab?”

She glanced back at the surprised crab, who was still taken aback by his friend’s words.

“It’s the least I could do for him.”

Pausing for a moment, the colossal being pondered on the baker.

After another small eternity, it spoke again, in a final tone.

“Very well. If I cannot have the one who stole from me and retrieve what is mine, then I shall bring a new addition to my hoard. You, Madeleine the baker.”

“Wait, what?!” exclaimed the baffled girl. “When I said princesses and offering my life, I didn’t expect you to take it—Wooooah!”

Standing on no ceremony, the winged beast jumped back up into the air and—with impressive precision and gentleness—swept Madeleine off her feet and cradled her between the talons of its feet.

“No! What are you—” Balthazar started, but the beat of the creature’s wings raised a gust of wind that nearly tilted his already wobbly body upside down.

“Madeleine!” Shouted Rye, struggling to stand back up and trying to reach for his bow with his good arm, only to realize it was nothing more than a broken piece of wood and string on the ground.

The two wounded friends watched helplessly as the red dragon took back to the skies without so much as looking back, the tiny human he carried shouting and punching at the creature’s scales to no avail.

As fast as it had come, the dragon left over the horizon, disappearing into the orange tinted clouds, carrying the baker far, far away.