Chapter 77 - The Dragon’s Daughter

A dragon’s attention regards but two things: wealth to be acquired, and rivals from which to protect it. I’ve made my life’s work a study of these noble creatures.

-Lord Vesim - Dragon Naturalist, deceased (presumed eaten by dragons)

Time slowed. Or, perhaps I was pulled out of its natural flow. The library around me became a shade of its former self, darkened and ephemeral. Flames danced in slow waves as water from Maza’s spray fell upon the burning books.

The only thing not dimmed was the fresco of the wane dragons, weaving up and down the hall of the lost elven academy. Annalisa stood at my left, frozen, her face a picture of determination. She tried to protect me, though as I stood, her eyes simply stared past me, unseeing, unable to perceive this moment separated from time. I reached out to her, and my hand passed through, as if she were made of smoke, herself.

“If you’re quite finished,” said a voice behind me.

I jumped, startled, and turned to regard the strange woman before me. She was tall, red of hair and with white gold caps on the tips of her ears. White gold horns pushed out of her hair, as well. The soft impression of scales marked both her cheeks beneath slit, amethyst eyes, and across her throat above a necklace of silver discs. I worried she was another of the Mayazian agents and reached for my knife, but her eyes flashed and the back of my hand burned. I yelped and rubbed the back of it, where a red welt stood out against the skin.

“None of that, now,” the woman blew out a cloud of smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette. I coughed at the harsh, spicy smoke. “You called me here.”

“What?” I asked. “Who are you?”

The woman held out a finger, and against my will, a single card shot out of the deck and between her black laquered nails. She twisted it to show me the face. Heiress of dragons.

“You’re… the heiress?” I asked.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and examined her nails, which were filed to points. “Don’t call me that. It’s so pastiche, like I’m defined only by what came before. No, no. Hmm… Recently, I’ve taken to being called Lady Arkelai. You may use that name.”

“Lady,” I said. “I thought I couldn’t call a suit master until I’d mastered a suit,” I said. “Isn’t that one of the rules of the Deck of Wills?”

Arkelai quirked her eyebrow at me. “Because you’re such a stickler for rules, are you?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” I said. “I suppose dragons aren’t, either.”

“Not so much,” she said, walking over to Darza and the big crustie. She was taller than the shark, and almost as tall as the monster. “Quite the unfortunate situation you’ve found yourself in here. Outnumbered. Outmatched. Arguably outwitted.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Are you going to fight them for me?”

She looked back, half smiling. “I’m not a hound to be let off the leash, child. I didn’t come to fight your petty battles for you.”

I scowled. What good were the suit masters if they could do nothing for me? The court of knaves refused my call, the heiress didn’t want to dirty her nails. “So why did you come?”

“Because you’ve found yourself a treasure, which you’re about to lose. Because you’re something of an investment, and I protect my investments. And because I want to see how much of my father’s spirit is in you.”

“Your father?”

Lady Arkelai held her hand out toward my deck and the cards stacked themselves neatly in her hand. She sorted through them until she found one, and handed it to me. The arcana, Alkazarian. Lord of all dragons. Power, fire, innate strength, but also destruction, material greed, unhealthy appetites. I looked at the card. She let the rest of the cards fall from her hand, and I called them back to make my deck complete.

“He’s had his eye on you for some time, you know,” said Lady Arkelai, pushing herself up to sit on the banister. “Very vexed that another suit won you first. Since he wasn’t willing to let you slip away, we decided to…” she weaved her hand back and forth as though looking for the words. “Bend some rules. Take a page out of the court’s book, as it were. Besides, humans often struggle with the form of dragons. Too attached to…” she fluttered her fingers at me with a vague look meeting somewhere between disdain and disgust. “this.”

I looked down at my body. “Well I’m certainly attached to it in that I don’t want it cut in half with an acid sword.”

“Quite.” She tapped a finger on her chin. “Now. Tell me about this treasure you’ve found.”

I gestured around me. “This library. It’s been lost for generations. No one even knew it existed, and now I’m in a fight for my life over it.”

“Valuable?”

I nodded. “Books of magic, prophecy, and closely held knowledge. Secrets from lost ages written by right bastards. Secrets about me. Exploiting this place… Well, it would make me a highlord of Dragonmaw, at the very least. The kind of power that would mean no one could push me or Annalisa around. Ever.”

I pointed to the Mayazians. “But these fuckers right here. They’re some sort of abyssal death cult following the footsteps of a dark witch who somehow roped me into all this and possibly tainted me with her blood. If they get ahold of this stuff, they’ll use it to become powerful and probably kill lots of people.”

Arkelai pursed her lips and said in a mocking tone: “Oh, Darcent.” she laughed. “We both know you don’t care if they hurt other people, do you? Not really, anyway.”

I considered it. “No. Not unless those people owed me money.”

Arkelai laughed. “That’s not what concerns you, is it?”

I shook my head. I felt the other dragons in my deck start to stir. “No. This place? I want it. I don’t want to lose it. More than that, I don’t want them to have it.”

The dragon’s heiress fixed her eyes on me, and I got the feeling they were looking deeper than just my flesh. I thought about the four of dragons, the greed.

“You would fight to keep it?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her smile widened. “You would kill to hold it in your clutches, and yours alone?”

“Oh yes,” I said. The spicy smoke was starting to make my head feel fuzzy. My tongue ran freely. “I would carve a chasm through Dragonmaw.”

She leaned forward. “Would you burn it all to the ground before you let someone else have it?”

“Every last page,” I whispered. “Down to the foundations.” It was true. In the very base of my core, it was true. This priceless lost knowledge. A king’s ransom in secrets and forbidden techniques and prophecy. And I would destroy every last word if it kept it from the salty hands of Mother Mayaz and her abyssal allies. The dragons in my deck roared, and Arkelai’s smile turned into a cruel grin.

“Perhaps my father chose well, this time.” she pushed off the banister and came to stand before me. “Very well, Darcent of Stitch Alley. Come, then. Let’s be dragons.”