Dragon Goddess’s chosen

“Ok. What is it?” I finally sighed at Eris and Nicolas. The two of them had been staring at me since Max, Kat and I had returned with a lucky find, a quest to guard a wagon to Rookport. 

“Nothing~ Just nice to be taller than you again~” the fighter laughed, leaning back on the crate she was using as a seat. This ride was much more crowded than our previous ones, both from an additional person along with more cargo so we had to make do with crates and barrels as seats.

“Definitely… less, um intense looking?” Nicolas added.

“Hmm...” I grumbled and rested my head on my hand, continuing to let Kat solve her boredom by putting my hair up in what she called a Dutch braid. I knew nothing of braiding hair so I took her word for it. “How did the sparring go?” Both of them tensed up for a moment in front of me and looked away from each other.

“F-fine, he still needs to work on his footwork” Eris answered dismissively. I glanced at my girlfriend and noticed a slight smile on her face.

“Stay still, I'm not done” She lightly chastised.

“You do look good with it…” Max said softly as he watched her work. I could still tell he was trying to work things out in his head after Kat's kiss a couple hours ago but for the most part he seemed to have recovered from it.

“It's pretty easy to learn, I can teach you if you want”

“Oh um… sure” he scooted against me more and once again I found myself sandwiched between my partners, not that I minded.

‘At least you don't feel too awkward to interact with her anymore… you recovered quick…’ I thought to myself as I relaxed and let them work on it for the next few minutes.

“I probably have some makeup in my bag somewhere, if you want to use it, Kat” Eris suggested with a slight smirk and I glared at her a little.

“I'm not going to sit through a make-over” I grumbled. 

“I don't know… you might look good with some eyeliner,” my girlfriend giggled as she finished up what she was doing, securing the end of the braid with the twine I normally used to put my hair up.

“Of course you want to go along with it.” 

“What?” She gave an innocent smile. “What do you think, Max? I think she'd look good with a little bit of a black outline around her eyes~”

“Don't drag him into this!”

“I-I don't know… maybe? I would have to see it…” my boyfriend hesitantly agreed. 

“ugh… not you too…” I groaned before turning where I was sitting to put my legs up on Kat's lap and lay my head back on Max’s.  

“U-um…” a blush quickly started to appear on his face.

“You two used me as a pillow the last few trips, now it's my turn.”

“Fine with me~” Kat laughed and playfully patted my thigh, the touch making me shudder slightly. Meanwhile, Max recovered from initially getting flustered from this and shyly petted my hair. I sighed, happily relaxing under both of their attentions.

“So… um, you guys don't seem too worried about the dra-” Nicolas started to say after a few minutes of silence.

“Don't ya say it, Lad, you'll make it appear!” the dwarf merchant we were working for barked gruffly, interrupting him. “Ya adventurers should know better not to tempt Ivra like that.”

“Sorry…”

“Yeah, we shouldn't jynx ourselves,” I agreed . “We aren't ready to fight one, but we shouldn't have to, they shouldn't be interested in tools anyways and it's not like we're guarding food or gold.”

“And here's hoping ya have enough in ya that it'll keep it and all the other beasties away too.” the merchant added, knocking on the wooden seat he was driving from.

“Oh, we can take care of beasties.” Eris laughed. 

“Don't jynx us either” Kat warned jokingly but I could feel her hand tense up on my leg a little. I immediately glanced back towards her. She was smiling and laughing with Eris but I could see slight worry in her eyes.

‘You know something is going to happen, don't you?’ I thought then I saw her quickly look towards the front of the cart right before the sound of creaking wood rang out, followed by a thunderous boom. “The fuck?”

“Blasted tree just fell on the road.” the merchant grumbled as the wagon came to a halt. I sighed and slowly sat back up to see what was going on. I then moved to the front of the wagon and found that sure enough, a large tree was now blocking the road.

“I might be able to chop it up… I don't know if I could move it without raging…” 

“No offense, shorty, I don think raging could help you move that,” I couldn't help but feel the slight flames of my rage get ignited at this but I ignored them.

“You'd be surprised~” Eris chimed in.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I sighed and started walking back to get off the wagon, grabbing my poleax off the floor and securing it to my back along the way. As I dropped down, I heard a pair of soft steps right behind me.

“I'll come with,” Kat said softly as she gracefully stood back up, bow in hand. 

“Guess I'll stay here…” Max grumbled softly, hanging over the side of the wagon watching us.

“We’ll be right back, pup” I laughed and I playfully reached up and patted his head. At the same time I felt the familiar pressure in my head of Kat using the Message spell but she didn't say anything right away. Max seemed to feel it too as he looked at her questioningly.

“Ok… if you say so…”

“I'm sure everything is going to be fine”

“It might be tough but if we're careful it will be…” Kat sighed as she started walking towards the fallen tree.

“She k-knows something…” my boyfriend mumbled softly.

“Definitely but she would never put us at too much risk… just keep an ear out for anything” I whispered. He nodded and I squeezed his hand before starting to follow Kat. I quickly caught up and grabbed her hand. ‘Ok, what do you know?’

‘Oh, you could tell…’ she responded immediately, squeezing my hand slightly.

‘I can tell when you're stressed, Kat, same look in your eyes as you had before finals when we were still in school…’

‘Sorry, I… I was told not to get in the way of us getting stronger…’ I looked up to her at this.

‘What's that supposed to mean?’ she hesitated to answer until we reached the tree.

‘Don't look, either of you, but there's bandits somewhere to the right.’  

‘W-wait, bandits??’ Max's voice echoed in a yelp.

‘That's why I waited to say something… You're adorable, Max, but you get nervous really easy…’ A flustered whine is the only response she got from that. 

‘Still, warning about a tree falling could have been nice…’ I sighed and looked the tree over. It certainly was too big to move on my own, I might have been able if I could take the form I saw as my vestige in my weapon but I barely knew if I could return to quarter dragon at will.

‘Don't look at the cut end yet, it might make them come out’ Kat warned. ‘I didn't see them try this when I looked ahead for the dragon… they might be really impulsive, like you…’ “So, what's the plan, babe?”

“... burn it or chop it up I guess..” I glanced at her. ‘Why out loud now?’

‘Don't hear them yet, I want to turn this around on them, act like we don't know what they're doing. Since they changed tactics, I don't know more than a few seconds ahead anymore…’ she crouched down by the tree, running her hand over it. “Burning might be hard… it's still green, weird that it fell…”

“Fine, chopping it is then…” I sighed and retrieved my weapon from my back. The ax blade was definitely more suited for combat than lumbering but it's what I had on hand.

‘Um… I-I heard some footsteps…’ Max warned and I saw Kat grip her bow tighter out of the corner of my eye.

'Alex, how long does it take to charge your lightning…?’ Kat asked as I set the ax on the tree, ready to start chopping.

‘A few moments… why?’ I responded.

‘I heard someone too, when I shoot them… let out lightning um… if where you're looking is 12:00… do it towards your 5:00…’ I let out a sigh before starting to build the charge up in my chest.

‘So much for our quiet week…’

‘Yep… oh and be careful with the minotaur.’

‘The what?’ Max and I both asked but that is when Kat drew an arrow from the quiver on her hip and fired up at the top of a tree in what seemed like one fluid motion. I was stunned for a brief moment when a kobold dropped to the ground with a sickening crunch, so much so I nearly forgot what her order was. 

“A-alex?!” Max yelped and I whipped back around to find a pair of human men aiming crossbows at the cart… more importantly, at Max. Any hesitation about fighting people I would of had left at that moment. A roar escaped me before it was drowned out by the boom of the thunder made by my lightning. The one that was hit directly seemed to get flung backwards and the other crumpled, spasming when electricity arched from the first to him.

“Shit, shit, shit,”  I growled softly and the thought of trying to calm the now-panicking horses crossed my mind but more bandits started to exit the woods. Over a dozen kobolds peeked out from the treeline and a half-dozen humans and beastfolk including a towering bull-man with a large ax in his hands walked ahead of the small reptiles. 

“This could have been an easy hold up” the minotaur boomed as he stepped over the fried corpse of the bandit I hit. “But you just had to kill two of my men…”

“Two?” I glanced back at the kobold that Kat dropped, confused. Not wanting to ponder it much, I turned my attention back towards the bull man. “We're going to be too much trouble for you, might as well let us go!”

“Alex…” Kat warned softly, notching a couple of arrows as the minotaur burst out laughing.

“I would have! with lighter purses and an empty cart!” he bellowed. “But you had to be difficult, shortstuff.” Another growl escaped me at that comment as a wolfman with a spear and a sword-wielding human man cut me off from approaching the cart.

“She's got a pretty face. If we're careful we might be able to keep it that way~” the wolf-folk cackled in a way that made my blood boil and stomach churn.

“The elf too,” the human agreed. 

‘Max, stay with Nicolas and help support Eris until Alex can fight the minotaur.’ Kat ordered. ‘Something is about to change… the kobolds aren't going to fight anymore for some reason…’

“Take a step towards her and you'll die.” I threatened as I glared at the human. A smug look crossed his face before he brazenly disobeyed me. On instinct I tried to get off a spell I had yet to try.

“Sonitus tonit-” I started to roar but my voice  disappeared halfway through the second word. I quickly caught sight of an aura around the head of one of the remaining bandits still over by their minotaur leader.

“She's been silenced, no more spells, have fun boys~” the foxfolk cheerfully called over. Both men in front of me gained wolfish grins and rushed forward. I cursed silently and focused on the spear first.

“Don't kill her, she might be worth some gold!” The minotaur yelled over.

“Wouldn't dream of it, boss!” The wolf-folk called back as I hooked his spear with the bottom of my ax blade and forced it down and away from embedding itself into my side.

 “The hells? Are you going to let a chick overpower you?” the human heckled his ally right before I felt his sword bounce off my right shoulder. Blunt pain radiated out from the strike and fueled my increasing rage but the scales there prevented the weapon from cutting through. I glared wordlessly at him and quickly raised my own weapon, hammer face first, into his right side while he was reeling. I may have just threatened them but I wasn't ready to hear the loud crack of bones when his leather chest piece did nothing to protect against my retaliation.

“Alex, can you handle them?” Kat yelled. I could only nod as I had to defend against another sword strike with my scale-armored forearm. Again, I felt blunt pain from the blade strike but nothing cut. I glared at him again but then I started to realize that I felt a familiar liquid starting to build in my mouth, along with heat.

‘Fire breath isn't magic’ I thought gleefully, but then the wolf man freed his spear and slammed it into my stomach like a quarterstaff and knocked me onto my back on the ground. 

“Get the elf!” He barked to his companion right before I felt a burning pain pierce my right calf. I looked up to see the spear in the side of my leg and the swordsman walking towards my girlfriend while she was taking aim towards the fox girl mage.

 

Emotional threshold reached, use rage?

 

‘That was fast…’ I thought as I started scooting back from my attacker, undoing the buckles of my armor.

“Already undressing for me?” the wolf asked and it made my stomach churn again and fanned the flames of my anger further.

‘Fuck it, I'll fix it later. Start rage now!’ I thought and immediately felt my body start to grow and shift. The remaining buckles strained before finally snapping open from my growing frame. As soon as I had a tail again, I wrapped it around the spear, pulled it out of my leg, and broke it with ease. The snapping of wood made the swordsman stop in his tracks and turn his attention back to me just as I released my fire breath at his companion. ‘Fucking disgusting monster!’

“What in the hells?!” the man managed to yelp as the wolf started screaming from the fire.

“Come on, she's a head shorter tha -aghk” the fox girl started to taunt but her words were cut short and only a gross, wet gurgle escaped her. I was able to spare a moment to look up as I cut my flames off to find her slumping to the ground with an arrow in her throat and another in her chest. At the same time, the wolf dropped to the ground, still screaming and fruitlessly tried rolling around to put out my fire. Unfortunately, with the short amount of time I did it, my fire didn't go beyond the stream of liquid flame it normally started with. I should have been horrified to see this but they made me too angry to care at the moment.

“What the h-hells are you?” the man stammered as I stood up, now over a foot taller than him. I let out a growl and started to lunge at him but Kat swiftly pulled an arrow out and stabbed it into his neck while he was distracted with me.

“Alex… are you in there?” My girlfriend asked hesitantly as she lowered the bandit to the ground.

“I'm not feral” I huffed softly and retrieved my weapon, it immediately growing to an appropriate length for my new stature. A familiar yelp made my blood boil more before I could say anything else to her. What was worse, I couldn't see Max or any of the others anywhere when I looked up, only the now-overturned cart and the minotaur's head on the other side. I growled once more and immediately started rushing that way.

“W-wait, is that her again?!” A kobold’s voice squawked nervously as I sprinted past the treeline they were barely hiding in. I could see them brandishing crossbows and swords but they were hesitant to join the fight. I quickly put that out of mind, not caring enough to look further, and rushed to the wagon. Without a second thought or a plan I attempted to leap over it and my wings instinctively flapped down to give just enough of a vertical boost to let me clear my obstacle. Unfortunately, I was far from coordinated enough yet with them to actually fly and just ended up slamming into the minotaur shoulder-first.

“A-alex?!” my boyfriend yelped as the bull-man and I scrambled to our feet. 

“You ok?” I asked, quickly taking in the scene: Two bandits dead on the ground, a variety of wounds across both, burns and slashes, and my companions much better off than them. Eris was uninjured, definitely able to avoid the attacks, Nicolas was scraped up a bit and a big wedge shaped cut in his shield, but then I saw Max, cuts across his cheek and on one of his arms and a big section of his robes torn away to expose a nasty gash across his side.

“I-I'm fine” He stammered but I was already focusing back on the bandit leader with red-tinted vision.

“Fucking dragonspawn, pain in the-” the minotaur groaned as he stood back up. I didn't give him time to finish his sentence before I lunged at him with the ax side of my weapon first. To my disappointment, the haft of his ax got in the way of burying the blade in his neck. “Fucking feisty aren't you?! I'll have fun breaking you after all this trouble!”

“Not if I tear you apart first!” I snapped, using my wings to push myself off the ground again with another strong flap to kick my feet up and claw at his armor. 

“Kat, your girlfriend might’ve gone crazy again!” Eris yelled as the bandit tossed me back with a kick of his own, the impact making me spit out more flaming fluid onto the ground.

“Radius flammae!” Max cried out and I looked up in time to see the volley of scorching rays force the bandit to shield himself with his ax blade. I took this opportunity to charge at him again, stabbing the spear point of my poleax into a gap in his leather armor on his stomach.

“Fucking bitch!” the minotaur roared before I was blindsided by a left hook that knocked me onto my back again and my weapon was sent sliding across the ground. He quickly stormed over and raised his ax above his head. I barely had time to block the coming blow with my tail. Despite how hard my scales were, when the blade hit, loud cracks rang out followed by searing pain shooting up my spine as he was able to force my tail down against my body. 

“Alex!” Kat screamed right before I heard a series of whistles and the minotaur above me roared in pain then vines started creeping up from the ground, entangling his legs. Ignoring the pain in my tail to seize this opportunity, I knocked the ax away and lunged at his throat with my claws. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, I found myself coated in blood and the heavy minotaur collapsed on top of me.

“Fuck…” I panted softly and rolled the cow-man off of me before unsteadily standing back up, starting to feel the pain of the spear wound in my leg. I then turned to go check on Max but then quickly found Eris between me and the other two with her weapon pointed at me. “Um…? What's this about…?”

“O-ok… you're still there…” She sighed, lowering her sword tip.

“Of course I am…” I grumbled as I moved past her and towards Nicolas and Max. The demi-angel seemed frozen in place as I approached but I ignored him at first to kneel in front of my boyfriend to look him in the eyes. “Hey, pup, you ok?”

“I-I think so… b-but what about you? you were limping…” he mumbled but then grimaced when he tried to move his hand away from his injured side.

“Nicolas, please take care of Max, I know you have Cure Wounds…” No response and I looked back at the cleric to find him still frozen “Nicolas? Nick…?” I growled softly and grabbed the front of his chain shirt, finally snapping him out of his stupor. “Nick! Come on, I know that was a lot but Max needs to be treated.”

“Oh, um yeah…” he mumbled, slowly kneeling down as well but then paused. “um how…?”

“Use inspect, find the words and say them, they'll look like latin… if it's like how I think it would be, it's a touch spell as well. I don't have the spell so I can't help…”

“Alex! Over here!” Kat called out and I let out another sigh.

“Max… Are you going to be ok with me going to see what she needs?” He gave a cute little nod and I went to kiss him but paused when I saw the bloody handprint I left on Nicolas and pulled away again. “I'll be back as soon as I can…”

“O-ok…” my boyfriend mumbled as I stood up to hobble over to the source of Kat's voice. I found her just behind the back of the cart, standing guard with a small group of the Kobolds in front of her, who started whispering excitedly when I came over. 

“It is her…” one murmured as I carefully watched for any sign of them wanting to attack but I quickly noticed that they left their weapons behind… and they all had bulky metal collars locked around their necks.

“Wait, you know me?” I asked then I realized they also all had red scales. “Wait, it's you little shits…” I growled, my tail painfully flicking on its own as I switched to their language “What do you want?”

“W-we don't want to fight, g-great dragoness!” another spoke up, dropping to a grovel.

‘They know their place’ an intrusive instinct frustrated me further and I pushed the thought away.

“Sure, sure, what about last time? You attacked me and my…” I paused, for some reason not being able to translate the right word. “Agh, you attacked me and my mate last time I saw you”

“Your m-mate?” a third yelped “T-that was Sharpclaw's idea… w-we were just following orders”

“Alex… the fuck is going on…?” Kat hissed softly.

“Max and I fought these little shits before” I growled, easily able to switch back to common. 

“Huh… I think they're the reason why my prediction changed… I don't remember seeing kobolds…”

“Really?” She shrugged.

“Not absolutely sure but it's a maybe…” I let out another sigh and looked back at the group of cowering lizards.

“What do you want?”  

“... the bull man killed Sharpclaw… and put us in chains…” the first spoke back up.

“Well” I glanced back at the minotaur's corpse “Fucking slaver is dead so you are free … ”

“B-but where do we go…?”

“Why ask me?!”

“You killed the bull-man…?”

“And?” I growled and the group shrunk away from me. Seeing this, I let out a sigh, my frustration making my mouth crackle with my electricity, and hobbled back to the minotaur's corpse to search him. It took a few minutes and some effort rolling him over, but I eventually found a key ring with multiple keys adorning it. “You!” I ordered a kobold as I pointed at her, accidentally making her yelp. “Come here”

“O-ok…” she squeaked and hesitantly approached me. She flinched when I grabbed the collar around her neck but then calmed down as I started trying keys.

“What are you doing?” Eris called over.

“Freeing their kobolds.” I responded flatly as I heard her walk over.

“We n-not want fight” the small lizard mumbled in broken common, starting to shake as the armed fighter got close.

“See, harmless…” I sighed then smiled when I got the collar to click open. I removed the key and presented it to the kobold as I tossed the collar away “Free your friends with this.” she hesitantly reached towards it and I pulled it away slightly “And stop being a bandit, all of you… I swear to Rissaeth, if I find a quest about a bandit group of red kobolds, I'll take it myself. Understand?”

“Y-yes, gr-great dragoness…” the kobold answered and I gave her the key. She immediately took off with it back to her group, getting to work freeing them one by one.

“... You're letting them go? They're just going to be at it again as soon as we're gone…” Eris grumbled. 

“Not if they want to live… I kind of threatened her there to stop being a bandit…” 

“... that might work… big scary dragon lady covered in blood…”

“Please don't remind me…” I groaned, very much not liking being aware of the wet sticky feeling all over me.

“Kat, your girlfriend needs a bath~” The redhead yelled, her familiar playfulness returning to her voice. I rolled my eyes and stood back up, flinching at the pain in my leg and tail, before scanning the area for any more threats. “Um… where's the merchant…? and the horses…?”

“Saw him take off with them when you were fighting the wolf man” Kat answered, the surprise of her getting close without me noticing making me jump slightly. “Bend down, please…” I did as she asked and she put her hand above my head. “Partum Aqua…”

“I told him to run and come back around in a bit” Eris said as water condensed under Kat's palm and poured over me. 

“So gross…” I grumbled as I rinsed my hands with the water, just trying to stuff away the memories of what I just had to do and ignore that I'm covered in someone's blood.

“At least it's not the black goo from the draugr” Eris joked and I shot her a look.

“These were people, not undead…”

“I would hardly count them as that. Your scaly friend's are wearing slave collars,” she pointed out. 

“With how they talked they would've done the same to us…” Kat added. 

“Probably would’ve tried to ransom me…” Eris huffed. 

“Whatever… it's… it's over now. Let's get the cart back on its wheels before you turn back and wait for our driver to come back” my girlfriend sighed and cut off her spell once I was blood-free but still drenched.

“Good idea…” I mumbled and stood back upright to get to work.