“So, the easiest solution sounds like you should make me your Dragon Knight,” Cass said. That should fix the rabid feral dragon thing, if nothing else.
She’d made herself comfy in front of the fire, leaning back in her extra wide camp chair, one leg hanging over one arm of the chair as she preferred to sit.
“No,” the dragon said. He lay on the opposite side of the fire, still predominately on his empty side of the soul well, but his head and front legs hung over the divide to be closer to the fire. His wounds were closing up as they spoke. Something about how he sat exuded a comfort he hadn’t had when they’d started.
Cass sighed. “Why?”
“I will not bind myself to another demon.”
“Come on,” Cass said. “Is now really the time for pride?”
“This isn’t about pride,” he said. “This is very practical. I can’t be sure your bond with the demon is as stable as you claim, and even if it is, I don’t know that your soul can support both of us. Even if it can now, there is no way to know if our combined future growth won’t break you, dooming all three of us.”
Cass frowned, but that made a kind of sense, she supposed. “Is that why it’s one knight to a dragon?”
He nodded.
Cass ran a hand through her hair. “Fine. Fair enough, I suppose.” She was a little disappointed she wouldn’t be binding with a dragon, but she already had enough trouble with her demon. “Not even temporarily?”
“One does not temporarily bond with a dragon. These things are for life. Until one partner dies.” He got quiet at that, his eyes closing.
Every bit of good sense told Cass she should leave that alone, but curiosity got the better of her, and the question slipped out, anyway. “Were you bonded previously?”
He nodded.
Good sense encouraged her to stop there. “May I ask what happened to your knight?”
He stared into the dark. The fire crackled. The shadows shifted.
Perhaps he wouldn’t answer. Perhaps she shouldn’t have pressed.
“They killed her,” he said. His voice crackled with the fire, burning with a pain Cass couldn’t touch. “They killed her in front of me. They killed her and I could not stop it.” He closed his eyes.
What did he see behind his eyelids? Was it her last moment? Did it haunt him? Was his feral mind trapped in that terrible moment?
Cass coughed. Good sense had been correct. She should not have pressed him on it. She brought them back on topic. “Okay, no binding.”
“No binding,” he repeated.
“So how do I get a giant dragon out of the temple and to someone you can bind with?”
“You don’t,” he said. “Which is why you should kill me and save yourself.”
Cass rolled her eyes. “Walk me through all the ways that saving you doesn’t work if you want me to kill you.”
He grumbled.
“I can’t bind with you because I have a demonic bond and it would not be safe. Why can’t you bond with someone else?” Cass asked.
“They would need a fresh Blessing from Alacrity, for one,” he said. “Her blessing opens the soul. Without it, a whole soul cannot connect with mine. And if it has been too long since they received the bond, the opening will close again.”
“Well, good thing it’s the Festival then, and there are plenty of people with fresh blessings from the Catacombs, huh?” Cass said.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“And they would need to be willing to bond with me.” He said it like he was pronouncing a death sentence, disgust and doom in his voice.
“My understanding is being bonded with a dragon is a huge power boost and very socially advantageous here,” Cass said.
His lips curled into a grimace. “Bonding with a dragonling is a boost. A dragonling is a blank slate. A dragonling and a young martial will grow together into an unmatched power. The dragonling can take on their Knight’s Concepts without interference.
“Bonding with a grown dragon, like myself, provides no such advantages. I have Concepts from my last bond. They define me. Replacing them would cripple my combat capabilities. Same for my new knight. They would have their own Concepts, they couldn’t just take mine. That would cripple them instead.”
“They couldn’t just mix?” Cass asked. That was something one could do with Concepts, wasn’t it? Salos had mentioned combining fragments of Concepts before. Would combining whole Concepts be different?
“Why would you ruin perfectly good Concepts?” he asked.
It was like that then.
“But someone might be willing,” Cass pressed anyway.
He shook his head. “Only a crazy person, more desperate than sensible.”
“But they could exist.”
He shook his head. “Technically. Sure. Such a person who also has a fresh blessing might exist. You might even find them.
“Okay, then I do that,” Cass said. Problem postponed until after she had escaped.
“But they still need to bond with me,” the dragon said.
Cass narrowed her eyes. He’d said that like it was a gotcha. But, “Yes? That is the goal?”
“But I am feral.”
“Yes?” Cass nodded. That was the problem.
“I won’t stand still to let someone do that safely.” He shook his head. “I would if I could. But there is only madness acting on my physical body. I will try to kill anyone who gets too close.”
Cass frowned. “Then we just need to constrain you. I mean, I’m touching you now, and I don’t think you’re chewing my arm off. Are you?”
“You would know if I was.”
“So, no problem. The cults done the hard work for us.”
“That assumes you can remove the cult,” he said.
“I’m not removing the cult.” Cass emphatically shook her head. “You have any idea how many of them there are? Too many. That how many.”
“Then?”
“I am sneaking out of here, telling an appropriately leveled authority figure they have an illegal cult in their basement, and letting them handle it. I’ll come back with someone with a Blessing after.”
“How can you be so sure you can sneak out?” he asked.
Cass shrugged, putting on a brave face. She wasn’t sure. But that wasn’t what he needed to hear right now. “I’ve sneaked this far. Perception doesn’t seem to be their strong suit.”
“But if you are spotted, you will be killed,” he said.
“They didn’t kill me the first time.” Cass puffed up the bravado. Anything to keep him from asking her to kill him. Anything to keep from needing to do it.
That said, why hadn’t they killed her the first time? “Why did they capture me? Do they need multiple demon souls to harvest off of?”
He shook his head. “They probably are waiting until Fortitude’s moon is high to dedicate your death to her in full.”
Cass stared at him. That sounded like—
But that—
“They were going to sacrifice me to their god?”
It was something she had considered. She had discarded the theory almost immediately because it was barbaric, but she had considered it.
“What else would they do with a sacrifice?” he asked like that was the part she was objecting to.
“Do you people just do that here? Sacrifice people to gods?” Cass groaned.
The dragon shrugged. “Depends on the sect and the god. But, yes, it is an ‘easy’ method of dedicating a lot of potential to your god all at once, which is the most foolproof method of gaining boons in return.”
Cass rubbed her face. Great. Human sacrifice was something she needed to worry about, too. Sure. Why not. Was that actually worse than wanton murder? She didn’t know.
Right this second, it was useful to her, though. It meant they would likely try to recapture her rather than kill her if they found her.
“Sure, whatever. Fine—Agh!” Cass’s frustration transformed into pain as the world quaked around her. There was a pressure all around. Like an overstuffed balloon about to pop.
“It looks like our time has ended,” the dragon said. He stood up, returning to his side of the soul well. “Save yourself. Do not risk yourself for me. If you can, end this suffering of mine.”
“Wait! I still don’t have a plan!” Cass yelled after him. She could feel her connection with him shaking. His body faded, his side of the world filled again with trees and forest.
And as suddenly as it began, it was over, the pressure gone. Cass stood in her campground. A System window appeared before her.
Evolution Complete.
Choose new functionality
