A few minutes later.
Merinelteratsin, also known as Merlin.
“What are they doing?” Nimue asked me curiously through telepathy, still circling with me over the village and the soldiers’ camp.
“It looks like…
They think we want to eat,” I telepathed back, but a distinct grin was already audible in my tone.
“What?” the golden dragoness muttered under her disguise, her eye twitching slightly.
“Two whole dragons are circling above them, and they decide to pay us off with tribute?”
“Yep,” I telepathed with a snort, assessing the scene unfolding below.
“Maybe it’s time to become rulers of two-leg lands?
And demand tribute from them?” came the thoughtful reply.
“Yeah, until they decide to create a bunch of sorcerers and witchers, and then, at the cost of heavy losses, they finally kill us,” I immediately relayed a very likely scenario in that case.
Kings don’t like it when there’s someone above them.
Especially a winged, scaly creature.
“How pessimistic you are, Merlin…” Nimue chided me mockingly for my caution, but didn’t pursue the topic.
“Shall we take it and pretend that’s exactly why we’re here?”
“Why not?
I don’t know about you…
But when have I ever turned down completely free food?
Besides, they’re in such a hurry they don’t even have time to poison it,” I recalled one case from canon, grinning with my entire considerable maw.
“Huh?” She suddenly shot a suspicious look at the pigs, cows, and sheep being led away from the road — the village turned out to be quite wealthy, if I understood anything about medieval peasant material values.
“Poisoned?
Food?
By two-legs?..
But that’s impossible — a dragon eats anything in nature!”
“And what if you mix what’s in nature into an even stronger poison?
It won’t kill us, of course, but it could weaken us.
Even some natural ones can, and this would be something unnatural,” I snorted, warning my overly careless acquaintance and turning her even further away from the idea of making the human kingdoms her tributaries.
No, no, no — humans were too resourceful creatures, and they would deal with such a scourge.
“You’re being too pessimistic again and saying scary things!” I was reproached once more, but the former self-confidence of the golden dragoness quickly evaporated, and I clearly caught nervous notes in her telepathic voice.
“Well, I’m currently disguised as a scary and evil black dragon — it’s basically expected of me.
But since I’m still Merlin, there’s wisdom in my words too,” I telepathically laughed at the irony of the situation, then sharply beat my wings and, maneuvering with my tail, dove toward the largest cow.
I’d had my fill of slightly singed sheep, I didn’t feel like eating dirty pigs, but I could try some raw beef.
Especially freshly killed — that was best for a dragon’s tongue, yes…
As I approached, the soldiers and villagers started amusingly scattering in all directions, even dropping everything in their hands for speed.
Of course, it wasn’t very nice to feel satisfaction from scaring people, but…
There was something amusing about it, something I probably wouldn’t be able to give up.
Besides, it was their own fault for wandering into elven territories and considering them their human lands, right!
Meanwhile, the claws on my front paws pierced the cow, granting it a quick death, and lifted it into the air.
Yeah, beef was certainly heavier than any goats or sheep, and definitely heavier than light slyzards, but…
Mmm…
Delicious!
And as a pleasant side effect, there were the fear-filled faces of people who had seen the bloody feast of a huge flying reptile from almost close range.
No, it really was amusing, heh-heh.
“Do you really think they didn’t have time to poison them?” Nimue telepathed to me again, with notes of caution uncharacteristic of her.
Although she had taken one of the cows and killed it in the same way I had, she wasn’t in a hurry to sink her jaws into the juicy meat.
Looks like I had really scared her well with the treachery of humans, heh-heh…
I had little idea how one could kill a dragon without being a powerful sorcerer, without trickery and the stupidity of the armored reptile itself.
“O magic and all gods…” yes, I still couldn’t decide what exclamation to use here.
“Of course yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be munching on this cow so appetizingly right now.
They’re too scared and too busy trying to avoid a fight with us to look for poisons potent enough to kill us.
Besides, you saw for yourself how fast the local bipeds grabbed their animals from the wooden houses and started leading them out of the Village — they simply wouldn’t have had time.”
“Hooo…
First you scare me, then you calm me down…” She’d used telepathy again, but now only out of necessity.
It’s hard to communicate even in the Dragon tongue when your mouth is busy tearing apart prey and ripping whole chunks of meat from the carcass.
“What can you do, nothing in life is easy…” I replied, lifting my head a little higher and letting a large piece of meat slide down my throat.
Alas, chewing with Dragon teeth is extremely inconvenient — actually, practically impossible — so I had to swallow in separate chunks.
Still, I could taste it, so I was satisfied, and soon I was full…
Well, a third full.
“Maybe we could pull the same trick in the next biped Village?” Nimue asked in a pleased tone.
Being smaller, she was still finishing her cow.
“Well, we could.
But just this once.
Doing it systematically, I mean constantly, isn’t a good idea.
Right now they don’t have time for poison and don’t want to fight, but next time they might hire sorcerers and witchers…” I explained my reasoning, spitting out an especially large bone that had broken when I bit down and gotten stuck between my sharp teeth, which could easily pierce it.
“And if they can’t handle it, people will create things specifically designed to fight Dragons, and we’ll have to be even more careful — and neither you nor I nor any other Dragon wants that.”
“Fine, fine, I get it — you know these little creatures better than I do…
Ugh, they’ve multiplied like crazy.
You’d think they’d hatch from eggs like normal beings, but no…” Nimue grumbled discontentedly, finishing off the remains of her livestock and turning to follow me — to the next Village.
* * *
In another Village called Badger’s Ravine, things started out following a similar script.
We flew in, people soiled themselves and started running around the whole Village like they were on fire, half of them hiding in their houses.
Soldiers formed up in some kind of formation, archers held their bows at the ready — I had to admit, the local garrison troops were somewhat more professional than their previous colleagues.
And practically all of them were wearing clearly decent chainmail that didn’t look like it was falling apart.
They didn’t try to fight us, wisely.
Instead, they drove some of the livestock a little ways away from the Village even faster, and then the peasants hit the gas at full speed.
So that, you know, the Dragons wouldn’t eat them along with the livestock…
Heh.
What’s there to eat on those bipeds anyway?
A cow has more meat, or even a pig.
Plus you don’t have to pick out all sorts of bits and burn away stuck fabric with fire.
Even Nimue admits eating people is impractical, so what about me?..
…But the surprises showed up just when we were about to descend for our rightful spoils.
I mean, we scared the people, performed a raider takeover of their livestock…
And that was still a small fraction of what we could do with the permission of the government of these lands that the people had encroached on.
“Have they lost all fear?” Nimue growled, sharply climbing back up.
“Completely.” I replied with an equally displeased roar, flapping my wings at altitude and watching the giants emerging from the neighboring forest.
We’d been so focused on watching the Village and making sure no stray arrows hit us in the eye that we only noticed the uninvited guests when they’d already crossed half the forest, literally knocking down trees.
Creatures that would be significantly more dangerous to Dragons than even a couple hundred archers.
Giants were rare creatures, but who else but us would be lucky enough to run into three of them at once, right? Visit g.com for the full chapter.
That was sarcasm, by the way.
Still…
The people of two Villages were also unlucky enough to run into two Dragons — so it’s still an open question who got more of a shock today, us or them.
“…Big.” I noted the giants’ nearly five-meter heights.
Compared to them, I didn’t feel particularly large anymore, even though I was several times their length…
But I wasn’t about to compete in the toughness of my scales versus their skin.
Because we have wings, and they don’t.
Because we have flame and high intelligence, and again, they don’t.
“How dare they steal our prey!” the golden Dragoness practically choked with indignation, and since this was happening in her Dragon form, it was an unforgettable sight.
“Merlin?”
“Agreed.” I snorted hot air in displeasure, and without another word, I took in as much air as possible for a proportionate response to the audacious thieves.
Even if they were five meters tall.
“Grooooooa-a-a-ah!”
The roar I let out instantly scared every bird in the vicinity, sending them soaring into the air and away from us as we circled above the giants.
Giants who finally stopped gathering livestock into huge, crooked, homemade baskets.
And looked at us.
We bared our maws unkindly in return — maws capable of biting off the heads of even such gigantic beings…
After which one of them reached for his belt, where sizable boulders hung along with something resembling a sling of equally large proportions.
Understanding instantly, I didn’t stand on ceremony and just bla-a-a-asted a stream of fire at the giant, immediately forcing him to stumble back and cover his face with his hands.
Normally, the pathetic excuse for a helmet on his head — a piece of wood — would have helped against arrows, but now it only made things worse, because the wood caught my flame beautifully, giving him a better roasting than he would have gotten otherwise.
But the loudly screaming giant wasn’t alone.
There were three of them, and while the others weren’t armed with slings, that didn’t mean they couldn’t throw rocks with considerable force.
A normal person hit by such a throw would be splattered into bloody mush, but the hit on Nimue only made her roar in indignation and resentment.
One stone grazed her and she dodged, but the second struck almost directly in the chest.
And since she was inferior to me in size and stability, the Dragoness nearly crashed to the ground…
But managed to sink her jaws into the neck of one of the giants, sending them both tumbling and flattening trees.
Hissing mentally in irritation, I stopped roasting their leader — who, even if he survived, was incapacitated with his head literally blazing like Hades from some old cartoon…
And I lunged toward the entangled giant and Dragoness.
She was lucky the giants hadn’t found weapons to match their size.
“Hooo…” I inhaled, feeling the flame rising…
And exhaled a brilliant stream of it straight into the back of the giant who had pinned Nimue down.
While such fire would barely harm my acquaintance, the giant immediately leaped up and dove aside like a fish, clumsily falling and breaking several tree trunks along the way.
“Get back in the air.” I growled in displeasure, immediately veering sharply away from a rock thrown at me.
Now I got grazed too, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pleasant.
Like being hit with a huge snowball full of rocks — not a wound, but a pretty decent bruise.
But the giant underestimated — or rather, didn’t know at all — about the mobility of a Dragon’s neck and our maneuverability in the air, which was somewhat higher than one might expect given our size.
Because of magic, yes.
That’s what lets us fly…
Not our wings, which at our weight would have to be the size of a couple dozen football stadiums.
Each wing, that is.
So the giant paid for its audacity immediately, getting burns all over its body.
It tried to run sideways, of course, but I just followed it with my flamethrower, directing the stream of fire slightly ahead of it.
The howl of another burning giant echoed across the area.
And since all three of them were now engulfed in flame, actively rolling on the ground and trying to put out the clinging Dragon fire, finishing off the enemies wasn’t hard.
Just to be safe, we didn’t descend to use our teeth and claws, so the people got to witness an incredibly rare sight — giants roasting in their own juices…