Story Complimentary Comic Page [10/12]
Drawn by @5enketsu
Written by D.M. Rhodes
The anqa's powerful legs ate up the distance with each bounding stride, its iridescent feathers catching the morning light. The priestess leaned forward in her saddle, urging the great bird onwards despite the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. She had not slept since leaving Jaesownen Vale. Could not sleep. Not whilst the kingdom remained ignorant of what stirred in the southern mountains.
A dragon.
The word felt strange even in her thoughts, maybe even a little fantastical. For people of her year, dragons were just myths. Ancient terrors from the histories of generations now passed. Yet she had seen the creature with her own eyes, perched on that mountainside whilst the world trembled beneath its presence in the wake of the defeat of the regional Lord Parsmuth.
The road stretched before her, winding through rolling hills towards the first town large enough to matter. Durinas is the regional capital of the next county over. Home to guild halls and minor nobility and the Archbishop's seat of power.
She would start there.
The Adventurer's Guild smelt of leather, sweat, and cheap ale. She never much liked these seedy places. But right now, she needed to be here.
The sister pushed through the doors into a common room filled with scarred warriors and hedge mages, all of them looking up with varying degrees of interest at the travel-stained priestess who had burst into their morning routine of getting drunk before the sun had risen to noon. "A dragon," she said without preamble. Her voice cut through the ambient noise. "In the southern mountains. It has claimed Jaesownen Vale and the surrounding territories."
Silence fell across the room.
Then someone laughed. A scarred woman with an axe slung across her back, her expression suggesting she had heard every wild tale the roads had to offer.
"Dragons are extinct," the woman said. "Have been for two hundred years."
"I saw it." Sister Marythe's hands clenched at her sides. "Black scales. Wings that blocked out the sun. The ground shook when it moved. Lord Parsmuth sent armies against it. None returned. They’re all dead."
The laughter died. Of course, it was a hard tale to believe, but there was something about the look in the eyes of a sworn priestess of the faith that made them reconsider their doubts.
A younger adventurer, barely past his twentieth year, leaned forward with hungry eyes. "What's the bounty?"
"There is no bounty yet. I'm riding to the capital to report. But when the crown hears -" She paused, letting the implication hang. "Dragon hoards are legendary. Enough gold to buy generations of prosperity. Enough magical artefacts to arm entire companies."
Greed flickered across faces around the room. She saw it catch, saw the idea take root. Adventurers lived for this. The impossible challenge. The legendary reward. The chance to write their names into history.
"Where exactly?" someone asked from the back.
The priestess told them. Gave them the way, described the mountain, detailed the approach through the valleys. Watched their expressions shift from scepticism to calculation to barely contained excitement.
They would go. Perhaps not today, perhaps not all of them. But they would go. Of course, she was sure they would all die. But they would buy the world some more time with their lives. Every day they could keep the beast busy would be a day won for the powers of the kingdoms to muster themselves in defence of the realm.
Not telling them that last thought, she left the guild hall with a grim expression and mounted her anqa once more.
The Academy of Arcane Studies occupied a sprawling campus on Durinas’s western edge, its towers reaching towards the sky with architectural ambition that bordered on arrogance. The sister’s credentials as a church official granted her an immediate audience with the Dean of Mystical Zoology, an elderly dark elf whose white robes seemed too large for his narrow frame. They had perhaps fit more snugly in his younger years.
"Impossible," he said flatly when she finished her report. "Dragons require highly specific magical conditions to survive. Those conditions have not existed in this region for centuries."
"And yet one exists." The sister kept her voice level. "I saw it. I heard its voice shake the mountainside. Impossible or not, it is real."
The dean's expression shifted from dismissal to reluctant interest. He reached for a leather-bound journal, his movements suddenly precise and focused.
"Describe it in detail. Scale colouration. Wing structure. Size estimates. Behaviour patterns."
She told him everything. The way the creature moved. The intelligence in its glowing, ruby eyes. The cave it had claimed began to manifest the properties of a dungeon.
The dean wrote furiously, his pen scratching across parchment with academic fervour. It was slow at first, but by the time she had told him half of her details, he was sure that she was telling the truth, simply because of the specific nature of such an obscure creature that, in this day and age, only scholars really knew.
"We'll need to send observers," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Document everything. The first dragon sighting in two hundred years… Do you understand what this means for magical theory? For our understanding of mana flow and ecological balance?"
The priestess understood only that scholars would come. That they would poke and prod and study the creature, and perhaps in their observations find weaknesses the kingdom could exploit.
She left the academy with one more group mobilised.
The minor noble's estate occupied prime land just outside Durinas proper. The lord of the region received her in a parlour decorated with hunting trophies and expensive tapestries that probably cost more than most villages earned in a year. He listened to her report with the calculating expression of someone whose entire existence revolved around political advantage.
"Jaesownen Vale," he mused when she finished. "Lord Parsmuth's territory. Or rather, it was."
"The dragon killed him. Killed his entire army."
"Convenient." He steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "That territory has been contested for decades. The crown never quite trusted Parsmuth. Too ambitious. Too independent. And now a dragon conveniently eliminates him and claims his lands for itself."
The priestess blinked. She had not considered the political implications beyond the immediate threat. But of course the nobility would. They always did.
"This creates opportunities," the lord continued, speaking more to himself than to her. "Whoever brings the crown proof of the dragon's defeat could claim those territories. Could petition for governorship. Could -" He paused, refocusing on her. "Thank you, Sister. This information is invaluable. I'll send word to my contacts in the capital immediately."
She left feeling vaguely unsettled. The dragon was a threat, yes. But watching nobility see it as nothing more than a political chess piece sat poorly in her stomach. But a lot of things had been doing that today.
Dark times.
Still. More pressure on the creature. More forces mobilising. That was what mattered.
The cathedral was modest compared to the grand structures in the capital, but it still commanded respect. High ceilings. Stained glass depicting saints and divine interventions. The scent of incense was hanging heavy in the still air.
The archbishop was an older man, his ceremonial robes immaculate, his expression grave as the priestess knelt before him and delivered her report.
"A dragon," he said when she finished. The word came out soft, almost reverent. "After all these years, do you know what this means?"
"That we face a grave threat, Your Eminence."
"Perhaps." He rose from his seat and moved to the nearest window, staring out at the city below. "Or perhaps it means something else entirely. Dragons in the old texts were not merely monsters. They were divine instruments. Tests sent by the gods to measure humanity's worthiness and to shepherd us into new eras. Good and bad."
He pondered. "The last dragons fell two hundred years ago during the Great Ash," the archbishop continued. "Humanity declared itself victorious over the old powers. We claimed dominion over the world without divine supervision. And now..." He turned to face her. "Now one returns. Ask yourself, Sister. Is this creature a threat? Or is it a reminder that we are not as sovereign as we believe?"
"...People are paying it tribute out of fear, Your Eminence. They tremble before it."
"As they should tremble before any power greater than themselves." His expression hardened. "But fear without understanding leads to foolishness. I will send word to the capital and you will proceed with your audience. The church must be involved in whatever comes next. We cannot allow adventurers and nobility to dictate our world’s response to something that may have spiritual significance."
He looked at her with some contemplation. “I will notify the saintesses,” he says. “We need their power now, more than ever.”
“Them?” asked the priestess. “Your Grace… are you sure? You know that they’re…”
“I am aware,” he replied. “But, of royal blood or not, the gods gave them their abilities for us to use.”
She left the cathedral feeling more confused than when she entered.
She rode through the night, pushing her anqa to its limits. Village after village. Town after town. At each stop, she delivered the same message. A dragon had returned. The south was in danger. The kingdom needed to respond.
Adventurers sharpened their weapons. Scholars packed their research materials. Nobles sent urgent letters. Priests argued over interpretations of ancient texts and prophecies.
And the sister rode onwards, her exhaustion mounting with each passing mile, but her determination unwavering. The capital loomed somewhere ahead, its walls and spires the ultimate destination. The King needed to hear her report. The kingdom's armies needed to prepare. If she had one last prayer left to make along her journey, it was that she could only hope to be received by him and not his daughter, the princess. Rumours of her troublesome personality had reached even these distant places.
It would take weeks, still, for her to get there.
In the meantime, she could only hope to light smaller fires that would apply pressure to the beast.
Her anqa stumbled slightly, exhaustion finally catching up to the great bird. She urged it forward with gentle encouragement, promising rest soon. Just a bit further.
But the long road stretched on beneath the stars.
Barjuchne sat atop her hoard, gold coins shifting beneath her weight as she adjusted position. The treasure chamber glowed with firelight, casting dancing shadows across the cavern walls. Her left hand was resting on Rou-ya’s flank, the goblin's form warm and comfortable in her grip in that way that had become familiar over recent weeks. Spent, Veliah lay there on her, against the dragon’s right side, asleep. The elf was curled up in a burrowed groove on the quilt in the treasure next to her with her head nuzzled against her. Barjuchne’s other hand rests on her head, softly stroking through her white hair.
The slime princess was swimming around in the water of the hot spring, having made a game out of chasing the gems that would sometimes fall off of the ledge and sink into the water. It was surprisingly easy to explain to Veliah and Rou-ya where she had come from, but it seemed harder to get them to accept the monster as one of their equal brides so suddenly. The competition in the market for Barjuchne's free time and attention was definitely starting to get heated, and they were making it obvious. The elf and the goblin had essentially been clinging to her all day, one at each leg, while the slime had essentially latched onto her in the gaps.
"...Do you think it's been too quiet lately?" Barjuchne asked out of the blue, the question escaping before she could stop it.
It was just a feeling in her core.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a tribute delivered today? She hasn’t heard anything about that.
Rou-ya, still energetic at this later hour, looked up at her, pulling a strand of black hair back behind one crooked ear to get it out of her face as she adjusted her head to meet Barjuchne’s eyes for a moment. "Isn't that a good thing?" asked the goblin princess, lifting an eyebrow.
The dragon girl considered it for a moment. Then, she shrugged. She supposed it was.
Relenting to that, Barjuchne leaned back against her treasure pile, coins cascading down the pile as her hand rose upward along Rou-ya’s back. Nonetheless, she stared up at the ceiling, her instincts prickling with an unease. There was a voice in her gut telling her that something was in the air.
Something was coming.
She just didn’t know what it was yet.
Barjuchne lifted a hand, looking at the ant princess that was clasped on the sharp, blade-like edge of her claw. Dignified and noble, the ant dripped venom onto the dragon. "Your heart will be mine one day. You cannot resist me forever," said the dragon, narrowing her eyes as she studied her smallest princess.
The ant princess did not respond, being much too dignified and proud to surrender so easily to the terrible dragon, being her captive or not. Also, she was an ant.
"What did you say?" asked Rou-ya.
"Nothing," replied Barjuchne quickly.