New Quest: Uncharted Waters

Coins bounced off of him as the now human woman screamed something at him that he wasn’t listening to. He waited for the details while feeling sassed. Was his Goddess going to send him off to sea because he made an off-handed comment to his horse?

Finally, information appeared beneath it to explain what it was.

Marry this dragon.

His arm was up, scrubbing that out before he had even properly thought about it. Then, his heart felt like it skipped a beat as he realized what he had just done. He felt like he heard a soft cackle in his ear, but he was distracted by the next thing.

Fine. Sleep with the dragon.

He looked at the dragon who was still flinging whatever she could get with her left arm and flinging it at him, and even though she had nothing on and looked fine - it was too easy to remember what she had done to Kriseya and how hard she had tried to kill him.

No! He thought as he waved it away. When he waved, the dragon-woman growled at him and backed up.

Another feeling that he was being tested and basically razzed as if there was some giggling at him.

Take care of the dragon. Teach her how to be good. Teach her how not to be alone.

He didn’t wipe that away right away. I do not want to. Yet, he could feel that it was serious. He probably would get one of those swirled triangles if he said no to this one. He was lucky she let him get away with refusing the first two.

He lifted his sword and began to come toward her, not sure what to expect out of a woman who had just been a dragon a moment ago. To his surprise, she squeaked and scrabbled back from him. She was a little flustering for him to look at, since the disappearance of scales didn’t happen to manifest into some kind of magical clothing, and even in the dim light, he was keenly aware of every curve.

He advanced, and she gave up, putting her arms over her face and balling up. It made his heart beat fast, and he felt… sympathy. A lot of it. There was horrible scabbing all over her ribs and one shoulder that had been scraped or agitated enough to split and bleed again, and one of her wrists was swelling and not at a normal angle. I guess Kriseya did her own harm, he thought as he saw an open injury around the back of her neck.

He hesitated and backed up a little. The moment he gave ground, she was scrabbling to get away from him, higher up on her gold pile. It showed him how hurt she was along her back and neck. He almost felt bad for picking a fight with her, except she had stolen from Mysteera and Aurell. So how do I proceed? And just like that, he accepted his quest into… uncharted waters, apparently. He still felt sassed.

***

She couldn’t believe that she was still alive after she had fallen on her back and had him standing over her like that. She was aware of how soft her skin was like she had never been aware of her scales - of the rocks and gold pressing into her hands and the back of her legs. But, she had scrabbled away from him, and even though she put her now soft foot square on a pointy gemstone, she winced and yelped and did not stop. She yelped and winced, yanking her foot away, but still not willing to stop, managed to attain higher ground on one of the hoard piles. She stared at her hands, scuffed, one of her palms was bleeding pretty horribly from the cut earlier from his sword, and now she was covered in scrapes. She could feel and see her scraped knees. Her back and neck throbbed with the injuries from yesterday, and her foot throbbed from the gemstone attack. How could something so horrible happen to me?

The soft pink hands trembled in her vision, and a sick feeling boiled up from the pit of her stomach: terror and adrenaline spreading through her. She would close her eyes really tight, just change back. I can just change back. She would focus her magic… or try to, but she would feel nothing answer her. New terror burst through her, dragging icy fingers through her spine and she reached for the simplest of dragon spells - ice breath.

She exhaled, but nothing but clear air came. Was it because she was human? Could she cast any spells at all? She called for the water in the air to come to her, she even called out loud and gestured for it, but nothing happened.

No magic.

The realization weighed like the mountain above them on her. No magic. She couldn’t change back. She was soft and defenseless and…

“If I kill you, will the spell go away?”

***

Dainin raised a brow as he looked up at her. “Even if it could, I would not tell you that. No, this happened because Mysteera saw fit to punish you.”

She growled at him, a ridiculous sound from a human voice, and so dragon-likethat it made him struggle not to laugh about it.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He cleared his throat, “Why don’t you come down here?” he invited.

Baleful gray eyes tried to pierce right through his soul, and he felt his face flushing with embarrassment.

“I can help you?” he volunteered with uncertainty.

There was an awkward pause, and then, “You have helped more than enough. Take this curse off of me right now!”

He winced at the venom in those tones, not that it wasn’t deserved, but she practically snarled at him. It was a fair point, but he didn’t know what exactly to do. “I cannot do that, you stole, and this is the Goddess’ response to it. But, I can still help you,” he tried to be reasonable.

“NO!” she screamed at him with even more venom, grabbing at a useless pile of coins and flinging it at him. He turned his face and squinched his eyes as the bits of metal bounced off of him.

He felt his empathy wilting, “Come down, now!” he yelled at her. Then he felt like a monster as she winced and flattened herself against the coins. Even if she is not acting like it, she is actually afraid of me, he reminded himself. He took a deep bracing breath in, and then he gave a slow breath out, steeling himself. “Come down, please, or I will come to get you.” She remained crouched down against the coins, some wild dark hair and faintly glowing eyes were all that he could see of her.

***

She watched in pure terror as he kept his word and stood up, climbing up the pile of her hoard to come for her. She started to scrabble down the other side, but she made the mistake of putting one leg forward and then trying to put weight on her arms, as if they were still her front legs, and she went tumbling into the pile of gold. This really was the worst. She scrambled to get up again, but by then, he had already caught up to her. He gripped onto her least injured arm, pulling her toward himself.

“LET! ME! GO!” she snarled every word at him and tried to wrench away from him, but he just put his other arm around her waist, just beneath her chest, and pulled her in, and she couldn’t figure out how to squirm free. “LET GO!” she shrieked at him and turned to try and bite him on the face, but her teeth lightly scraped against the hair of the short beard on his jaw before he lifted his head of out reach of her teeth.

“Easy,” he said soothingly, “easy, I promise I am not going to try to hurt you again. Easy,” he repeated again, holding her until she gave up squirming. Then, as she felt him relax, she threw her whole weight backward, slamming herself against his chest as hard as she could, and down they both went, tumbling down the hoard pile. She was satisfied at his yelp of surprise, and even more satisfied that he let her go…

But that sense of satisfaction dissolved as she tumbled off the hoard pile and landed pretty hard on her side on the rock floor of her caves - and something popped suspiciously in her now rather weak wrist. She ignored it, intent to get away from the paladin for now, andtried to get up. As she put her palm flat on the ground, she felt lightning jolts of pain jumping from her palm through her wrist and elbow and right into her brain. She yelped and flopped back on the ground, clutching her wrist to her chest.

***

Okay. She looks like a person. But, she’s clearly a dragon in a person’s shape. And so, I need to treat her like it. He sat up, watching her arch her back in sharp pain over that either broken or dislocated wrist not holding her weight up. He didn’t feel roughed up at all from his tumble… probably because of rag doll.

He dusted himself off and took off his gauntlets, walking past her for a minute while he whistled for Oberon.

He put his gauntlets on the gelding’s saddle and then took a blanket from his saddle bag. All right, confused dragon-beast that might kill me in my sleep if I am not careful, let’s get you to town where we can find a healer. “Stay,” he told Oberon, who snorted at him. Dainin assumed it was disapproval of hanging out somewhere a dragon’s smell would be pretty strong.

He came back inside the cave and approached the dragon who was trying to get up again, this time without using an obviously swelling wrist, and he just dropped the fur-lined blanket over her soft naked body, and swaddled her up in it. He had seen someone do it with baby griffins they had rescued once - to keep the nasty talons from scratching and prevent the baby from thinking it should try to fly away.

At first the dragon flopped about and fought the process of being bundled up, and she even snarled at him, but it ended with a yelp when she pressed her wrist against the fabric, and after that, she stopped. He gathered her up in his arms, took her outside, and sat on a rock that was a bit shelf-like just before the entry of the cave. She had sagged in his arms as if she could use limpness and gravity to get out of his grasp, but this failed her.

He arranged her in his lap, cradling her against his chest as her shoulders pressed against his left arm and used his right arm to go under her knees and keep her quite wrapped up against him. “There we go, that’s better,” he informed her.

She glared daggers at him. When those gray eyes weren’t glowing hot wrath at him, they were a bit pretty. In the light, it was even more clear to him, even though she was dirty and her hair was uncombed, her body felt soft against his and she was warm. Her hair was nearly the same green as her scales had been, but he was a little surprised to see soft pink highlights in it. Had some of her scales been pink?

He waited for her retort, but there was none, just giant eyes trying to glare ferociously at him to convince him that she wasn’t scared of anything, and especially not him. But, he knew better, he could feel the way she was not quite able to repress shivers as he kept her tightly bundled up.

“I am not going to do anything else to hurt you, I promise,” he restated. She huffed and looked away from him. He waited, but she gave him nothing. “I am going to take you and the amulet back to the town, and I will find a healer for you.” She stared out at the trees since their backs were to the cave. She shivered harder in his grasp, so he tried to soothe her. “You have already been punished with this new shape by the Goddess, so I promise, nothing else bad will happen to you.”

She huffed and turned intense eyes on him. She clearly did not quite know what to say.

“I want to do some first aid on the injuries you already have, all right? If you try to run away, I am going to turn you back into a swaddled grouchy dragon.”

She huffed and the glower she gave him helped him feel a little better as he realized he had somehow successfully teased her, based on that expression. He used his imber magic to call water from his canteen and formed it into a little ball that he used to help clean her injuries. He applied the salve Elene had given him a couple of days ago to open injuries and bandaged them up. The pressure clearly helped her wrist, and the bandages seemed like they helped with the spot he had cut on her hand and with some of the scabbing on her ribs.

When it stung her to have the injuries touched, she actually hissed at him like a dragon, but she settled down when he said, “It is good that I had a Goddess on my side, or I could not have beaten someone as ferocious as you.”

She gave him a look that said, I see through this praise, but she became calmer all the same.

She had a ring on her thumb that did not come off. “What is this?”

“The stolen artifact,” she said flatly. “Take it back,” she demanded, practically shoving her hand under his nose.

He tried to pull it off her thumb, but it did not move. “Well, I think it is yours for now,” he said, bundling her back up and holding her as she made a series of protesting noises.

“I do not want it. I do not want a Goddess involved in my life, and I do not want you!” she tried to growl, but it came out more like a squeal.

Teach her to be good and not alone indeed, he thought as he glanced at his current quest floating in the corner of his vision. He squeezed her delicately, smooshing her closer to his chest. “It is too late for that,” he said with his best most serious tone. “You are stuck with all three now. Best relax and get used to it!” He couldn’t stay serious all the way to the end and just grinned at the wild thing.