The matriarch was at a loss as to what to do. The flames that she had spent days stoking were dying down with every tussle between her and Vur. Any injuries she inflicted on Vur were instantly healed by forces she still hadn’t discovered. If she retreated now, she’d be leaving behind her eggs which she was unwilling to do. But there was no way for her to win. She tried burning the potion that Lulu kept providing Vur, but he always managed to drink it before she could. And every time Vur drank the potion, his attacks would become more unbridled. Her holy area had already been devastated by the time Vur flew through the ground, thinking he was in the air, and it was only due to luck that he avoided the area with her eggs.

“Dragon!” the matriarch shouted. “I surrender; please stop!”

The spinning blue ball stopped rotating, revealing Vur’s upside down figure. His head twisted around, followed by his body. “Huh?” Vur asked, his head lolling to the side. His face was flushed, causing the scales around his cheek to take on a purple hue. “Surrender? You’re going to let me eat you without a struggle?”

The matriarch shuddered. “You want to eat me?” she asked. “I, I thought you were just passing through.”

“If you knew I was”—Vur’s brow furrowed before he shook his head and grunted—“was passing through, then…”

The matriarch waited while holding her breath. Vur’s eyes had a faraway look in them, and there was a faint smile on his face. Only the sounds of the crackling flames in the sky could be heard. The matriarch tilted her head to the side. “Then?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Then? Then what?” Vur asked, raising his head to glare at the matriarch. “What are you looking at? Do you want to fight? Is that it? I’ll give you a fight!” He charged at her while snarling, his body no longer snaking through the air like a fish through water. His movements were more akin to a hippopotamus charging through a shallow river.

The phoenix’s eyes bulged as she flapped her wings and soared into the air, narrowly avoiding Vur’s jaws. “Stop!” she said as an ocean-blue tail smacked into her, dispersing her into a puff of flames. Her body reformed a second later with a crying expression on her face. “Let’s talk things through!”

“The time to talk,” Vur said as his body whirled around to face the matriarch, “is in the future. But we’re in the present right now, so we fight!”

The matriarch let out a strange whimpering sound as she dove towards Lulu. “You’re a holy dragon,” she said. “You should know how to calm him down, right? I just want to talk!”

“What does being a holy dragon have to do with knowing how to calm a drunk dragon?” Lulu asked and tilted her head to the side. She sighed when the matriarch made a pained expression. “Fine, fine. You promise you won’t attack us and will do your best to negotiate as the losing party, right?”

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“Right,” the matriarch said as she dodged a random claw from Vur. “But there’s a few terms I won’t agree to. I want to guarantee the safety of my eggs. And I don’t want to be eaten.”

Lulu scratched her head. “I think that’ll be fine,” she said with a nod.

“Great!” the matriarch said as she landed by Lulu’s side. “Now stop him, please.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lulu said wrapping her paw around the matriarch, “about that…. Go fight with him for another ten minutes.”

The matriarch’s eyes widened as she was flung towards Vur. She glanced at Lulu, but the silver dragon was whistling to herself while scribbling on her stone tablet. Ten minutes later, the flames in the sky had died down, barely blazing above the tree tops. The matriarch sighed as Vur disengaged from battle to fly towards Lulu. “Potion!”

Lulu nodded and made a heaving motion. A blob of clear liquid flew into the air instead of a green one. Vur swallowed it and flew back towards the matriarch before halting in place. He blinked before turning his head towards Lulu. “Potion?”

“Mm, yeah. Potion,” Lulu said with a nod. “Did it not work? Want another?”

Another glob of clear liquid appeared in front of Vur’s face. He licked it before drinking it down. “This tastes like water,” he said. “You didn’t cheat me, right?”

“Nope,” Lulu said. “That was a potion. Dragons don’t lie, right?” She let out a hollow laugh and scratched her head. A second later, Vur’s body shrank as he ran out of mana, turning back into a human. Lulu gave the phoenix matriarch a thumbs up. “I stopped him.”

“Won’t he be mad at you for tricking him?” the matriarch asked, alighting by Lulu’s side.

“Look at how drunk he is,” Lulu said and nudged Vur’s limp body with her claw. He didn’t react. “He definitely blacked out. There’s no way he’ll remember anything in the morning.”

“But I will!” Stella said as she emerged from Vur’s chest. She stuck her chin into the air and crossed her arms. “And I’m going to tattle on you unless you feed phoenix flames to Sheryl.”

A fireball drifted out of Vur’s shoulder and wobbled around a few times as it made its way to Stella. “I feel sick,” Sheryl said and fell over backwards. “The world won’t stop spinning.”

The matriarch looked at Lulu and then at Vur. With how Vur was right now, it’d be easy for her to kill him. The matriarch sighed as she hopped over to Vur’s side and breathed a bit of her flames onto Sheryl. A promise was a promise after all. A phoenix always kept a promise.

Sheryl’s body turned from orange to red. A pair of blue eyes opened within the fireball, and a pair of fiery arms and legs sprouted out as well. She sat up and blinked a few times before looking around. Stella nudged her from the side with a stick. “Wake Vur up, so he can talk to the birdy,” the fairy queen said, throwing away the flaming twig.

“Vur! Wake up,” Sheryl said, hopping up and down on Vur’s chest. She glanced at Stella. “It’s not working.”

“Stupid! Inject mana into him,” Stella said.

“Oh.” Sheryl nodded and disappeared into the runes on Vur’s shoulder. They flashed with a yellow light, causing Vur’s eyelids to stir as he groaned. Moments later, he sat up and blinked a few times before clutching his head.

“Here,” Lulu said, causing a ball of red liquid to float towards Vur. “It’s a hangover cure.”

Vur drank it down without asking any questions. He froze. His eyes widened and rolled towards the top of his head, revealing their whites. With a plopping sound, his torso fell back onto the ground, white froth escaping from the corners of his mouth.

“Hmm.” Lulu scratched her head. “I guess there’s still some flaws.” She scribbled onto her stone tablet before nodding.