He rode to the place where Kriseya had been found. It was pretty easy, from there, to see the broken and weirdly cracked trees. Apparently, that was something to do with Path’s unusual approach to her breath weapon, some sort of intense ice flame. He sighed, and slid off Oberon, walking over, patting Oberon on the shoulder to signal he was fine to graze, but to stay generally where he was.

I had hoped it would take days to track the dragon, since tracking something flying would be basically impossible. However, as he walked near the trees, and saw the broken tree with ribbons of scaled flesh still dangling off of it, he sighed. The blood trail is entirely obvious. He tied a cloth over his face as he could see the flaking pink toxins feathering off the trees as the breeze picked up, and imagined it had been a fairly savage fight between giants.

Deep breath in. It hadn’t even been a week and he had a feeling that Rag Doll and Scurrying Mouse were going to have an opportunity to grow. He didn’t like it at all. Is this because I rejected a quest with another god as an audience? Or part of some plan you have for me?

He felt like a ship lost at sea. His anxiety about doing this on his own beat on him in waves as he walked around the battle site. The dragons were big. He was just a half-elf. He looked out at the sea, and for a moment he fantasized about boarding a ship and running away forever. They did think I was an elven pirate in the town, he thought.

My real mother is somewhere across that sea. He looked where the blood trail led north, and he sighed. He prayed, “Oh the Divine Lady of Luck, is it really your will that I go by myself into the den of a dragon?”

He closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and all but held his breath awaiting… something.

Sub quest: Do not make a pest of yourself, Mouse Lion.

He sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his long brown hair and sighed. He felt that he should put it up. He removed his gauntlets, and then pulled his hair into a ponytail and twisted it, securing it with the tie as a bun at the nape of his neck. He shoved some of the stray shorter hairs behind his ears as he would cluck at Oberon to come over to him.

A breeze kicked up, flaking off more of the toxins, and he noticed that Oberon almost immediately got wobbly. Within a few heartbeats, he also felt dizzy and fuzzy, like there was a weird buzzing in his brain. He grabbed Oberon’s bridle and walked forward until they were well upwind of that stuff. “I guess it’s good this Path-dragon has that ice breath,” he sighed.

They rode in silence, following the blood trail. As they came to a steep incline, and he could see the shadow of a cave in the hill, he hopped off Oberon again. “Really? I thought that was a stereotype and joke… this dragon really lives in a cave?”

He breathed out, patting Oberon. He stared out at the sea for a minute, trying to calm himself. He focused on his skills and looked at his colorless First Knight of Chaos. Nothing to compare his rank with because she accepted him, even though he would turn out to be the only one so far. He was adrift the whole time. “What is that they would say? A ship in uncharted water?” He sighed, patting Oberon’s face as the horse nudged him with his nose. “Uh, find yourself a good home if I don’t come back, all right?”

Oberon snorted at him.

Have faith in the Lady of Luck that accepted you, and use your skills wisely, he told himself. Each step up the hill made him feel like he was on the brink of discovery. The armor was loud, his breathing was loud. Any moment he was going to be noticed by the big green monster in that cave, and it was going to come at him.

As he got closer and closer, he began to wonder if the beast was sleeping heavily or not. That might be lucky indeed - if she was asleep after such a savage fight only a day or so ago, that would make it easier to deal with her. On the other hand, if the ice breathing monster was sleeping, he would have to enter her lair, which would make his bow hard to use. He would much prefer to fight outside, in the daylight. Unless, well, I can creep up on the horrid beast and kill it with one blow.

He tried not to pant into his helmet as he crept up the hill, trying not to make too much noise. Somehow, he had reached the mouth of the cave, and he could not hear the dragon. It had not come charging out at him. Here goes nothing. He put out his right hand, Blade of Unusual Chance, he willed. The amethyst on his wrist glittered a little bit, and a purple-blue steel blade with amethysts and sapphires in the hilt. It glowed very faintly in his hand.

First step into the cave, he found that he couldn’t breathe out, every instinct in his body wanted to freeze and to turn back. Next step… next step, the metal of his armor clinking sounds like alarm bells. Where are you, dragon? he thought anxiously as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Was that movement off to the right?

Horror spread through every inch of him instantly.. The scaled beast was looming over him - he had practically walked into it! Path nearly blended in with the darkness as deep of a green as she was, but even in the dim light, Dainin could see the difference in shades of her belly to her scales, and her cold, steely-gray eyes literally glowed in the dark as she loomed.

Dainin cursed under his breath as he saw the movement of the big paw - big enough to pick him up and encompass almost all of his body - come sideways at him. Rag Doll! Rag Doll! He thought frantically as he came completely off of his feet. He struck the side of the cave wall quite hard; it winded him, but a shimmer of purple sparkled around him, and so when he landed on the ground, he felt battered, but not broken outright. He had dropped his sword, so he dismissed it back to the gem storage on his wrist and he summoned it again in his hand as he pushed himself up.

The dragon was starting to snarl, disappointed that he had gotten back up. “Deyusa Luze!” he cried out, and a purple-tinted light burst from the enchanted amethysts encrusting his armor, a gift from his mentor at Ninanya’s temple. It filled the cave with reflections as it glittered off thousands of shiny objects that half-blinded him, but he felt satisfaction as he heard the dragon hiss and recoil from the light.

He blinked and focused on the dragon. Path. Her aura was… pale purple. Lighter than his own. He felt, for a second, relief, joy even, but then he saw in the upper edges of his vision, hovering near her head, a pinwheel of color. Wait… and as he comprehended that her power was so immense that it had to be accounted for by showing the full spectrum had been lapped and started again with pale purple, the pinwheels he focused on separated… one… two… three of them. I am dead.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

***

Path huffed a big frosty ring of irritation as she saw the insolent knight somehow get back up? What was he even made out of? She could barely register his magical presence even when she focused on him. He suddenly flared with light, and she hissed and backed up. I just want to sleep. I just want you vermin to respect me. She danced forward and batted at him again, sure that he couldn’t take a battering forever.

He brought his sword down against the side of her knuckle and pushed himself back. It bit into her flesh, shattering her scales. He got out of her range, ripping that horrid blade back out, which made her yelp. It must be magical. Backed by an angry goddess?

She lowered her head and snarled at him. I haven’t even had a chance to recover from what the blue dragon did to me. Just lowering her head that much made the day-old scabs on her neck feel tight, and shifting her weight made the areas on her side where she had been raked by the other dragon’s claws feel tender. Any sudden movements would tear open her wounds again. She stepped back from the paladin, who watched her warily, and she shook her injured paw, feeling the amulet she had stolen tighten on her middle claw. It had been stuck there since she had robbed the temple. She growled again, How dare this little mouse come here to antagonize me?

Rather than sustain even minorly irritating injuries on top of the more severe ones, her irritation and impatience got the better of her. It would cost her some of her treasure, but she took a deep breath and roar concentrated blue fire at him.

***

It was the inhale that cued Dainin that he was in trouble. Scurry like a mouse indeed, he thought as he rushed to get out of the line of her fire, the horrible stuff curling on stone, gold coins, anything it could touch and turned it to brittle ice.

Would have been nice if you were hanging out in a cave with water. The roaring ice barrage lasted for what felt like forever, but he somehow stayed just ahead of it, as if the dragon could not quite turn her head.

***

Path flamed, and then flamed harder, and then pushed air out of her lungs until there was a tingling sensation in her vision, but the obnoxious knight did not fall. She did plenty of damage to her things. She glowered as she finally had to breathe in and then saw the glowing divinely charged energy around him. He must have some sort of power from the Gods.

She caught a glimpse of a stalactite on the ceiling. All right, so a servant of a peeved goddess was here, and I can’t hurt him. What about nature? Is he protected from that?

She reared up and slammed into it, splintering it, and a few other stones from the ceiling from their base, and let them rain down on the still-glowing paladin and shatter bits of her ruined hoard everywhere.

***

The big green monster reared up on her hind legs and raked her claws over the ceiling. Dainin clamored to scurry out of the way fast enough, but he wasn’t technically running from her, but the falling stones. The ability did not trigger properly, and the first of the stones glanced off his shoulders and the bulk of a second one smashed him down. It, luckily bounced off of him after he was slammed to the floor, so he was not pinned, but he was flat on his back on the floor and had all the air crushed from his lungs.

He tried to take deep calming breaths, but he found his chest couldn’t expand. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out if he was hurt, pinned down by rocks, or something else.

He could hear each heaving breath, each one coming up short, pressing into his gut - no… no, it was his armor, it had dented in on him, and he couldn’t breathe!

The dragon loomed over him, leering, clearly pleased at the effect of dropping part of the cave on him, and it raised a big paw to just crush him at last. He felt stabbing pains in his neck, but raised his sword, struggling to suck in air. “Blade of Unusual Chance!” he wheezed between breaths, trying to call on his goddess and the ability the sword had to do… well, unexpected things. He had never tested it like this before though. He felt warmth run through his body, reassurance, she had been with him the whole time. He stabbed with all the force he could muster upwards into the dragon’s paw.

***

Path huffed - finally. If she had known it was required to kill ridiculous knights with falling rocks, or at least maim them, she would have done it to start with; he had invaded her home and was intent on harming her, and she had already harmed her treasure in the name of getting rid of him. Note to self for next time, she supposed.

She watched him struggling to heave in breath despite a horribly indented chest plate and decided it was now time to put him out of his misery. He began to say something, and she decided she could not tolerate more of those spells and brought her paw down hard. She felt the metal start to bend and crack beneath her weight, and she expected it would be over in a moment.

The next cracking sound that resounded through the cave was not of the knight’s armor smashing in to kill him - but that of a clap of searingly bright purple energy erupting between injured knight and injured dragon. She hadn’t even had time to comprehend the brightness of it before her back hit something hard and knocked the air from her lungs. She realized in a befuddled manner that she was looking up at the cave ceiling. What? What happened? She realized she could only see the parts of the ceiling illuminated by the knight’s armor - further back in the cave, there was darkness.

She sat up with a sharp gasp - she had never had trouble seeing in the dark - was she partially blinded by that bright light? But her eyes could make out the blue fire still humming over bits of her hoard, the faint glow from it. Not all blind, she stood up, feeling disoriented, somehow the room was terribly off, but she couldn’t name the cause of it. She went to step forward to where she could hear that troublesome knight panting and struggling to breathe, where he seemed to be squirming out of his armor… and landed flat on her face. Her front paw did touch the ground, but only after she fell on it.

She yelped, it really hurt, and it bit into her scales horribly and she could feel the misery of the fall all through her wrist and elbow. What was this? What was wrong with her?

She looked down at her injured paw… and a sickness swept through her. That pink fleshy thing wasn’t her paw… it wasn’t. She flexed her claws, and the fingers on the human hand moved. She looked more at herself, at the lack of scales, at the wrongness of her skin, the wrongness of her proportions, and squeaked. “What did you do to me?” Her voice was wrong, she could hear the fear that she felt. It infuriated her. She grabbed at that fury like a warm comforting suit of armor, “WHAT did YOU do to ME?” she shrieked out.

***

Dainin had felt pure relief as his lady rewarded his faith. He squirmed so he could see, expecting to see the corpse of a dragon, but it wasn’t the smoldering remains of a wicked dragon that remained: instead, it was a human-looking woman. What? Why?

Well, she was harmless enough for now, and he was desperate to breathe. He began tugging at the joints in his armor and pulling it off. The dragon-human shrieked the world’s most obvious question at him in a pitch clearly calculated to make ears bleed, but he ignored it.

“Thank you, Goddess,” he muttered under his breath as he finally wrenched his own destroyed chest plate off of himself. He took his first full breaths, and the burning sensation over his shoulders and back of neck from lack of air and compression faded. He picked up his sword, time to finish the monster off.

But instead, his quest hovered in his vision. Quest and subquest complete! Congratulations! You defeated a dragon. Scurrying Mouse, Rag Doll, and First Knight of Chaos updated.

He blinked. What? No upgrade to his skill with his blade? But he got immediately sassed by the female voice, You only got one hit on her, and I did the rest of the work. Want to fail your subquest after all?

He shook his head and frowned.

The dragon shrieked something at him again and started flinging coins at him. What do I do now?

New Quest: Uncharted Waters