Nothing happened for the first five days following the initial trial. The five of us took the time to heal and prepare for the upcoming seventh day. Using the heart energy granted to me by the Orpheus system for killing the Mindscribe and the Shieldmaiden, and the smaller amounts for contributing to the deaths of the Seer and the Valkyrie, I was able to refine two new heart rings around my Bronze core.
It was a surprisingly quick jump to peak Bronze level, but I wasn’t complaining. A silver core was the true start, and the journey to the higher realm cores became exponentially more difficult.
Though perhaps not quite so difficult if the Orpheus System continued to allow for the absorption of heart energy by defeating others. Normally, such heart energy had to be accumulated and refined through meditation and cultivation of your core. Occasionally, one could advance greatly by absorbing the core of the defeated enemy, but it was more normal for the core to break on death.
And no one I’ve seen has had a core anyway, I thought.
On the sixth day, however, Dralos and Chella made an appearance to inform us, mainly me, of the second challenge. The moment he laid eyes on me, Dralos sneered, his draconian pupils dilating with unbridled hatred.
I didn’t bother to react. The dragonborne’s hatred wouldn’t matter in a few moments anyway.
“Alright bugs,” Dralos said with a grunt, pulling out a new scroll adorned with the King's dragon claw stamp. “We’ve received your new test.” He slipped a finger under the seal, and it came off with a low pop. Dralos opened his mouth as if to begin reading, then scoffed and seemed to skip a good paragraph of information before starting again. “By decree of his Majesty, King Isadore, Lady Lilliana is judged as innocent regarding her killing of the Shieldmaiden as all events were within the jurisdiction of Goddess Dahlia of the Light. Lady Lilliana’s next trial will be a Test of Compassion. Let the Light fall upon her in failure or success.” He closed the scroll, looked at us, and laughed. Then he tucked the scroll away and headed toward another group of slaves in the opposite direction.
“Well,” Gronch said, slapping me on the back and causing all the air in my lungs to rush out. “It was sorta nice knowin’ you guys.” Julius chuckled, but Romeo scowled in a way that reminded me of a young noble facing some kind of punishment that was out of his hands. It was a fairly apt expression.
“Don’t give up yet, Gronch,” the raven-haired fighter said, giving the laughing Julius a hard look. “Maybe we can teach her how to fake it?”
“In a day?” Gronch shook his head.
Compassion. The word took me back decades to when my father had still ruled with his harsh iron fist. Compassion, he had told all the Queen candidates, was a tool. And just like any other tool, used correctly it would make the wielder strong. But used incorrectly, and it would turn even a Queen into a fool.
I was no fool.
“Compassion is naught but a tool,” I interrupted, my father’s words out of my mouth before I could help it. His lessons and his way were ingrained into me. Into all Queen candidates. “If necessary, I will wield it as needed. For now, compassion can only do us harm.”
“You saved me, Lady Lilliana, ya know?” Marisar said, quietly. “I would call that compassion.”
I shook my head. “No, that was not compassion. It was simple necessity and circumstance. Your life and my life were intrinsically linked that day. If I failed to win the elixir, it’s likely the cause would have been my death.” I looked at all of them with as serious an expression as Lilliana’s twelve-year-old face could manage. “I believe, for now at least, we live and die together. So, just trust me. I’ve dealt with worse than slavery before.”
“When?” Gronch said, clearly doubtful. “You ain’t even grown yet.” I didn’t answer. Maybe one day I’d explain the truth to them. Probably not, but it certainly wouldn’t be as a gladiator slave in a dungeon.
The awkward moment was broken by a sauntering Dralos who stopped by our little group, an eerie grin having pulled his lips wide. “I’ve just been told that it’s time for everyone to get their first check-up! Our Dr. Darmond is insisting that we start with the young noble girl.” His scaly hand whipped out and wrapped around my wrist, pulling me away from the others with an easy tug. At my slightest resistance, the slave mark on my forearm burned with a rage matched only by the glee in Dralos’ eyes when he noticed me wince. “Oh, ain’t gonna hurt ya, girlie. The doctor is just gonna poke and prod a little.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The others appeared to want to interject, but I shook my head. I sent Marisar a pointed stare, and the Selenian’s eyes widened. Right as Darlos began to shove me toward the large doors and into the dark corridors of oozing slime, I saw Marisar's blue fingers gripping the half-orc’s forearm and returned to me a knowing look.
I would have begun my plan even without Darlos taking me away from the eyes of others, but the isolation was an unexpectedly convenient boon. I began to sink the loose heart energy into the tattoo. The tattoo and the collar.
As Dralos reached into his pocket where I knew handcuffs would be, likely etched with the same skull and chains as the slave tattoo, I asked, “Why do you hate me so much, Dragonborne?”
Dralos froze in front of me, his body still slouched slightly, and his eyes lingering on his hands at the rim of his trousers. Orange, diamond eyes looked up at me slowly, all the glee gone and replaced by barely repressed hate and, maybe, surprise?
“How do you know of the Dragonborne?” The words were quiet leaving his lips but resounded loudly in the empty, slime-filled hallway.
“Are you not Dragonborne?” I pressed, ignoring his question as he’d ignored mine. “Based on your pure level of spite, I wasn’t sure what else you could be.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. So long, in fact, I thought he’d launch himself at me. Instead, his orange eyes blinked, and then he barked a laugh. “Look at this little girl trying to act so tough with the bit of knowledge she has.” Dralos finished fishing into his pocket for the cuffs and tossed them at me. They bounced off me and landed on the floor with a clank. “The Dragonborne do not work in slave dungeons.”
“Then what are you?”
He spat at my feet where the cuffs had landed. “None of your business, mutt.”
“You should be careful how you speak to your betters,” I taunted, nudging the loose cuffs with a look of disdain. “Though I do not plan on allowing you the chance to make that mistake a second time.”
Before Dralos could so much as finish raising his hand in threat as the scowl formed on his face, I reached into my own pocket. The slave mark seared, and my entire arm burned as if sprayed with lava. Dralos started to laugh at the brilliant red light that indicated the mark’s activation when the mark lifted off my forearm like a parasite rather than a tattoo and then shattered. The slave collar tight around my neck similarly exploded outward. The sounds pierced the air with a shrill metallic shriek, and the illuminating red light winked out from existence.
The dim light of a distant torch casually flickered toward us as I pulled the broken Drakoryx scale from my pocket and buried it deep into the side of Dralos’ neck. The sharp edges of the Drakoryx scale slid through Dralos’s own with deadly ease. Black lines surged from the wound as venom spread like wildfire through his body. Almost instantly, he began to shake and spasm, his mouth opening into a wordless scream as the venom dyed his orange eyes with the black of Nothingness. Then he dropped to the floor, dead as the ground under us.
A red splotch of burnt and simmering flesh remained where the tattoo had been. I had been fairly certain the magic or energy contained within the tattoo could have been overcome by even a base bronze level core formed correctly, so my peak bronze level had easily crushed it. The power dampener around my neck and the cuffs at my feet may have made it more difficult if I’d still been at base bronze. It was hard to tell since both the power dampeners and being under bronze limits were new to me.
Doesn't matter now, I thought and looked down at the Dragonborne-looking creature, frowning as his reddish-white soul light appeared over the corpse. I’d imagined this very situation multiple times and hadn’t been able to come to a proper conclusion.
On the one hand, I could resurrect him and hopefully glean an incredible amount of information from the creature.
On the other hand, I had no idea how someone with at least some level of dragon blood in their veins would react to becoming the servant of a Lunari, whom they so hated. If Dralos came back with enough free will to betray me, then any and all information he provided would have to be presumed poisoned with some amount of falsities.
I supposed I could require him to perform acts that would test the loyalty bond, but for all I knew, that could be faked. Still, I didn’t know how much time I had before someone spotted the body since it wasn’t as if there was anywhere for me to hide it. So if the body could move and act alive…
As time ticked by and my indecision started to become a weakness to my plan, I straightened my shoulders and set my jaw. Then I sank a large amount of power into the soul of Dralos and shoved it back into his body.
At first, nothing happened. Right when I was about to leave the corpse as some sort of mistake or misunderstanding of my abilities, he stirred. I summoned a small white ball of light with my lunar energy between myself and the resurrected being who began to sit up.
Under the light, I saw Dralos’ eyes were no longer their sharp orange and instead were still dominated by the black of the Drakoryx venom. Dralos came to a halt upon reaching his knees and bent one to kneel before me.
“My Queen,” he rasped in a voice more similar to the first man I had raised than Dralos’ own just moments ago. “I have come to serve you.”
A thought occurred to me. “Who… who are you?”
He tilted his head. “I am your servant, my Queen.”
“No, that is your duty and your role. What is your name, resurrected one?”
The Risen Servant stilled like the dead he had once been, in either thought or rebellion, I couldn’t tell. Minutes passed, and I knew Darmond would begin to wonder where we were if this took much longer, but something told me the Risen’s answer was too important to miss.
“I am Dralos. I have returned to serve my master.” He tilted his head, black eyes staring at me. “But I am also not Dralos. Or at least, I am not only Dralos. I was once the Draconian hybrid known as Dralos, long, long ago. Centuries in the timeless Nothingness has long since turned me into something… else.”