“You sure you’re alright, mom?” Kate’s eldest daughter eyed her. “I can stick around if you need a hand.” The dragoness smiled gently at Maisie.

“I’ll be alright, Mais. I just need to breathe a little while.”

Maisie, of course, was old enough to’ve seen her trashed before. She gave an I’ll leave her to you I guess kind of look to Rue, before giving a slow nod. “Fine, then. I’ll be next door. If you need me, you’d better call.”

“Count on it.” Kate promised. Finally, Maisie wobbled off. Whew. To Kate’s experience, what she was feeling was painfully normal. After a fight this big, a night this awful, a brush this close with death, there was an awful sense of unreality when she returned somewhere safe. The fact that she was home, surrounded by her loving family, and safe at last, it needed a little while to become more real than the lingering terror of the fight, and the awful day before it. But it was real, and she’d survived the worst day she— or the town, probably— had had in five years. Somethin’ to be proud of.

Kate— finally not Cpt. Ashborne, but Kate— managed to smile and tap her nose. “Our kids really showed what they’re made of today. I’m so damn proud.”

“Same here, darling.” Her wife smiled at her gently. “We’ve raised some amazing children, you and I.” She placed a hand gently on Kate’s. “Which means I know you pretty well too. Are you ready to talk?”

D’oh. “Can’t slip anything past you, can I?”

“Darling, you didn’t even slip it past Maisie. You think you can hide things from me?” Ugh, no fair! Rue was giving her those warm, tender doe eyes. And her tone was soft and sweet, not pressing, just inviting. “I think you’ll feel better if you get it all off your chest.”

Oof, bad choice of words. Kate winced. The dragoness’s ears twitched, just to make sure their children and the witch had moved on. They were alone. Kate breathed a long, tired sigh. “I feel fried and breaded, babe. Like burned schnitzel that got dropped in the dirt.” The captain’s armor was scorched through or melted in several dangerous places, and she was missing several scales in awkward patches. Not only that, but she was filthy with soot and ash from her armor and clothes getting scorched by the Voltcage. …And, she was kidding herself if she said it was just the armor that looked battered to bits. She shook her head. “Mat looked me over, so that’s the worst of it, but still… ugh. Armor’s melted all over me.” Rue bit her lip in worry.

Kate couldn’t keep up the reassuring front for her wife, and Rue wouldn’t want her to, either. The exhausted dragoness all but collapsed over the nice, soft tablecloth. Her wings were so sore, and now that she could do so, she let them hang limp by her sides like wilted fronds. Her wife sat down beside her, pulling a chair so close she could rest her hand on Kate’s shoulder. She wasn’t just doing it to steady her, though. “Alright then. Let’s start on that armor, dear.”

The dragoness rolled her head to look at her.“Aw, babe, y’don’t gotta—“

“The sooner you get it off you, the sooner you’ll feel better. Get that ‘breading’ off you.” And she fixed her with those eyes again, and Kate knew there was no arguing.

“Okay…” Kate dragged herself to a sitting position. “I kinda had to field weld it, so it’s gonna take some doing…”

The watch armor was usually pretty easy to put on, especially compared to some of the crap active soldiers or mercs wore. Rue knew how to undo its straps and buckles, and Kate helped too, but tonight that’s where the easy part ended. The boiled chitin plates had sloughed and fused into each other, where they hadn’t just burned away. Some of that was her own doing, having to get the suit combat ready in a hurry after V and Mat hacked it off the first time. Soon, it was less stripping her armor off and more scraping chitinous sludge off of her, chunking away huge lumps where possible. Going too fast hurt, because the chitin goo had melted to her scales. Poor Rue was getting filthy with bug scraps, but it didn’t slow her down none. If anything, that made her set her jaw and form a knife of light to help hack the mess apart. “Ugh, between battle damage and my hack job, this thing’s had it. Gonna have to take it to the Scrubbis for recycling. Sucks.”

“At least it took it worse than you, right?” Rue carefully sawed the last big glob apart, and the armor went slack. “Oh, thank the sun. There we go, dearest.” Kate winced, knowing what was coming as her wife slowly peeled the damaged armor off. Larue gasped and dropped the slagged plate to the ground with a hollow ‘tok.’ The charred scraps of Kate’s underarmor, her shirt, and even her sports bra crumbled out in a small shower of ash. Kate sheepishly chuckled, knowing exactly what she was looking at: where most of her body was covered in scales, a huge starburst patch of bare, freshly regrown skin now lay over her heart and a vast part pf her chest. It looked nasty.

“Oh, Kate…” Rue breathed. “What happened?”

The dragoness forced a smile. “It ain’t as bad as it looks—“ she stopped as her wife gave her a look. “Uhh, right. Well, V and Timothy already told you their side of things, mostly. So… I’d been flying over Wolfpack Road out west, just in case Meri’d decided to, I dunno, go on an adventure to Strenel or something. Just as I was heading back, I saw the massive lightning strike, and put two and two together, y’know?” She smiled weakly.

“Right.” Larue swallowed hard. “Go on.”

“Well, I rushed over as fast as my wings could get me there— not as fast as I’d have liked, since I’d spent so long looking for Meri from the air. I got in close enough to see the monster chasing V.” And boy, it was a real bad feeling as a seasoned ex-merc to see a monster you don’t recognize. It was an even worse feeling to clock that V had her little sister on her back, and someone else in her arms, leaving her at the monster’s mercy! “It didn’t take a sage to see that it was some kind of fairy wizard asshole, and that it was gunning for the kids. I tried to rush in and pull the heat off her, but I wasn’t fast enough, and the monster got’em. Well, it would have, except someone cast a really strong shield at the last second. At the time I thought V’d pulled out a hands-free shield spell out of desperation, but I guess it was actually Timothy having his hero moment.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

She couldn’t, and didn’t want to, describe the relief of seeing that spell that should have fried her daughters splash off of a shield, even if it wasn’t a perfect block. Her kids were alive. Relief, then fury. “Well, I saw red. I wasn’t gonna give that sack of crap another shot at my daughters! So I rushed it. I flew right over the kids and started blasting.” Embers of a small, fierce smile burned. “I don’t think it was expecting th’likes of me, and in the moment the shock of melee hit, V booked it, yelling she’d be back.”

“That’s our V.” Larue sighed, half exasperated, half fond. “And then he got you?”

“Not right away!” Now that the chestplate was gone, it was easy to pull off the rest of the suit, and her wife did so as she kept on telling the story. “We got into a nasty dogfight. All close combat, lightning vs sand and claws. Slippery bastard kept going intangible, so I kept whiffing slashes what should have torn its gasbag to shreds. I got frustrated, and I overcommitted, and, well… it got me.”

“Got you…?”

She gestured at her de-scaled chest. “It kind of… shot me point blank with a lightning blast?” A sharp dive had got her behind the monster, and her neck was pulling back for a sand blast, when it just twisted on itself like an empty balloon, and boom, pain. The volt exploded across her body, locking her throat and chest mid breath blast, making her would-be sandstorm choke and churn out of her mouth like vomit, turning into molten ribbons of glass from the heat. The sheer force threw her away in a wild, uncontrolled tangle of wings. Her watch PAT— her Personal Armor Talisman—burst into flames, because it was never meant to protect from such a vicious spell point blank. Kate fished it from her pocket, showing the charred wreck to Rue. “Blew out my PAT, turned my sand attack into a flurry of glass, the works.”

Her wife’s warm hands squeezed her shoulders hard. “Kate—“

“Don’ worry, though! My heart’s fine. My PAT soaked the hit some, I’m an earth dragon, and my sand breath sucked up some of the charge.” She hastily tried to reassure Rue. “And, you know I’ve had way, way worse.” Memories of seasons in a wheelchair after the Nightmare lord flashed through her mind. She shuddered. “Plus, V bailed me out. Soon as it got me, she dropped out of the clouds and sandblasted it. The town bell had started ringing at some point, so the rest of town popping spells and gunshots and whatnot from the ground sealed the deal. The fairy fucked off back to the woods, and V lent me a wing right to the hospital.” Kate looked down at her chest.

“Before Mat healed you,” Rue asked softly, “How bad was it?”

Even healed, the answer was pretty obvious. A helion dragon’s scales were extremely tough, and her chest scales were the toughest of all. Kate was a sand dragon, further insulating her, as did her PAT’s warding. And even now, after being healed, massive parts of her chest and stomach were new, thin skin, courtesy of her son. And even after all the healing magic and potions he could spare, she still ached badly. Hell, you could see her old scar from the Nightmare Lord, just a hair above her heart, a jagged gash that to this day left the skin around it blue. Kate swallowed hard. “Like I said, it burned, and coming from a dragon, that’s a red flag and a half. It could have been way worse, though. I’m lucky all our children are pretty great.”

“And lucky that you’re so tough.” Her wife’s smile was weak, but relieved. “Mat says you’ore okay, though?”

“Yeah. He was busy keeping the wolf from dying, but me and V did some first aid on each other til he could get to us proper. I’ll be fine. He does want me to stay put the next few days though.” She grumbled.

“…Didn’t you go back out, though?” Rue raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, yeah. I’m in charge, you know? Don’t worry, though, most I did was coordinate fighters and provide some caster support. Any fight you can walk away from, right?” Half bravado-fueled catchphrasing, half honest merc philosophy. “While we’re sharing stories, what happened to you?” Kate asked.

“Huh?”

Kate flicked a wrist, and Larue’s steel rolling pin flew off her belt into the dragoness’s hand. It had an impressive dent all along its side. “I know your favorite pin didn’t start today like this, babe.”

“Oh! It’s a lot less of a story, dear.” Larue waved her off. “This monster— I dunno what it was, some kinda tangly planty thing— jumped out at me when I was looking around the southeast fields. I had no time for its nonsense, so I bashed it one but good.”

Something a lot of people tended to forget when they looked at Kate’s sweet, dainty wife was that she’d spent her youth rolling around in the dirt, playing football with teens from all over, and generally being the cutest li’l tomboy (Kate’d seen photos.) Combine that with wrangling four kids and hauling sacks of flour and trays of bread, and Larue was far stronger than most gave her credit for. And given the trouble she’d seen over the years, few would guess at her wife’s ferocious, steel will. Kate almost felt sorry for the monster.

But not really. Ancestors, she loved this woman.

“How far did it go flying?” Kate asked with a knowing smirk.

“Oh, a few yards.” Rue waved it off. “Honestly, I’m a rhino. it should have known better.” It really, really should have.

“And then what?”

“It ran like the Flying Mountain was chasing it, of course. It kind of rolled away like a tumbleweed, but in a real hurry? I barely paid it any attention once the fight left it. Bigger fish to fry, you know?”

“A tumbleweed, huh…? Sounds a little like a bumblelash.” Kate shrugged. “It prolly jumped you out of fear, they’re cowardly li’l things.”

“Well, it ran off, so who cares?” The rhino shrugged. “So long as it doesn’t get between me and mine again!”

“Trust me, one clobber from your pin and anyone’d learn not to mess with ya.”

Larue pouted. “Aww, you make me sound like such a brute!”

“Naw, I make you sound like the badass babe I married.” Kate winked. Guess the Deepshadow had a population of bumblelashes…? She’d have to ask Timothy about them later. She shrugged it off, some of the ashes of her shirt crumbling off her chest as she did. “I guess now I—oop!”

Kate let out a soft grunt as her wife threw her arms around her. She didn’t care that the dragoness was filthy, and stank of scorched-up sweat, leather and chitin. Even though she smelled like heaven itself. The dragoness just melted into her arms, finally just getting to rest. “You’re safe. We’re all safe.” Rue whispered.

“Me too.”

“I was terrified, you know.”

“I know.” Kate hesitated. “…I was too. And now I’m worried about everything that needs to happen now… with Meri, and the town’s safety, and the Deepshadow, and the repairs, and…

Larue kissed her, gentle as a butterfly alighting on a petal. “I know. But it can wait until tomorrow. Thanks to you and everyone else, we can rest tonight.” She glanced at the window, where the moons were sinking. “At least for a few hours.”

“A few hours… honestly, I’ll take it.” Kate smiled at her wife.

They stayed like that for a long while, until the fear of the day finally left them both. Nothing more needed to be said… and the town would just have to take care of itself til morning.