“Well first, that was indeed a goblin,” Edith said as she patted her skirt and stood straight. “That one had a name that was like Sings-with-Sparrows. It sounded a bit more like a ‘job’ than that. A bit like calling ye ‘Huntress’, lass.” I kept it to myself that I’d used to refer to Cassia in that fashion.

  “Anyhow, ‘Sparrows’, let’s call her, is… exceedingly unlucky,” Edith continued. “Not an excuse for her shooting me with a bleeding arrow, but nevermind that.” She glanced down at where she’d just patted a faint blood stain onto her skirt and sighed. “There’s other humans up in the hills. Sparrows didn’t know much about ‘em, but said they burned down her…”

  Edith waggled her hands in front of her by her wrists. “Lets call it a nest? Whatever you call where she and the other goblins lived. The humans stole a buncha shite, killed some goblins, and captured others. Sounds like a band of brigands hiding out in the back woods to escape the authorities.”

  “So we just…,” Cassia trembled, gripping her bow tightly. “I just… killed people, because they thought we were someone else?” She was shaking slightly, her breath hissing rapidly between her teeth.

  Edith moved over and raised one hand. She thought better of it, quickly wiping down her palms on her already soiled dress. Once they were reasonably clean she raised her hands and cupped both sides of Cassia’s face.

  “No lass, ye defended me and yourself,” Edith told her sternly. “They meant to kill us, lass. Not one of them bothered to check whether we were bandits or not. It shouldn’t have happened, but don’t think for a moment that it’s your fault.”

  Cassia dropped her bow and threw her arms around Edith, holding her tightly. I could hear her speaking, but it was muffled by her face pressing into Edith’s shoulder and her own sobs. Looking down at my blood stained claws, I wondered how I should comfort her.

  I didn’t feel the slightest hint of regret. These goblins had meant us harm. The circumstances changed nothing. They had died and we had lived. That was the way of the world. I knew that my human companions would feel differently. Fighting monsters wasn’t anything glamorous like in my Cassia’s story books. Edith seemed more practical, but it was obvious that my ferocity had shocked her.

  Carefully, I lowered myself down onto my belly. With slow scoots forward, I brought my head up next to Cassia and Edith. Edith glanced over at me, chewing on her lip. With a sigh, she nudged Cassia.

  “Lass, ye beasty wants ye to know he’s worried about ye too.”

  Cassia sniffed and pulled her face back from Edith to look at me. I gave a low and questioning rumble. Even if I did not feel the same way she did, that didn’t mean that I was not worried about her. Her pain was my own. She hesitated for a moment before moving her arms delicately from around Edith. She wrapped them slowly around my neck right behind my jawline.

  “ Y-you…,” Cassia whispered soggily. “Y-you’re still my dragon, r-right? The... the one I held when you were the size of my thigh?” I rumbled my assent. I was not the ‘same’ as I was back then, but I would always be Cassia’s Sanguine.

  “I’m… I’m scared, Sanguine,” she whispered to me. “I thought I’d… got over things when we flew together. But I’m not… I didn’t. I want to run away. You terrify me. But I can’t bear the thought of being without you.” She held on tightly to my head by the horn nubs along the back of my jaw.

  “We just… hurt a lot of people. I can’t take it back. Please don’t hate me.” I gently nuzzled the side of my head against her. My tongue pushed from between my teeth to lick where her neck met her shoulder. She sniffed soggily as she pressed her head into the side of my neck. “I just wanted us to… to go back to how things were. You. Me. The forest.”

  “But they’re not, are they Sanguine?” she asked me as she tightened her grip on me. “You’re going to keep getting bigger and scarier and… I’m still going to be this stupid girl who wants to be a fairytale princess.”

  I raised one of my forelimbs. Some quick scuffing in the dirt was my best attempt to clean some of the drying blood off of my claws. As tenderly as I could, I wrapped my clawed digits around Cassia back and pressed her into me. She gave a small stifled sob and gripped me tighter once more.

  “Not stupid,” I rumbled against her. “Brave. Most brave. Girl who…” I searched for the words. “... hugs scary dragon. Fly in sky. Fight big bear monster. Keeps Edith safe. My Cassia. My Cassia is…” What was the right thing to say? “-is princess. My Hunter Princess.”

  That made Cassia chuckle, if weakly.

  “Hunter Princess huh?” she said softly. “That’s silly… but… I like it. Cassia the Hunter Princess, mighty slayer of… creepy undead bears and dragon bride-” She choked off at the last part. A small strangled noise left her lips as she planted her face back in my neck. I could see Edith mightily resisting the urge to laugh. Both blood-tinged hands were planted over her mouth.

  Both women eventually collected themselves.

  “Hooh… oh boy,” Edith said with a huff. “Hunter Princess Cassia? That’s a wonderful title lass. Do I get to be a Princess too?” She mused as she sidled closer. Edith nestled herself against the other side of my neck. It was a nice feeling, with both of them holding onto me. “Witch Princess doesn’t really have the same ring to it.”

  “You can be Queen Enchantress,” Cassia remarked idly. “Princess is mine.”

  “Aye, I suppose that’s true,” Edith responded warmly. “Queen Enchantress Edith… I like it.”

  There was a period of comfortable silence as the two women held onto me. Bronston broke it by nickering in annoyance. He’d not been hit by an arrow, but holding the cart in place on a sloped road was putting a strain on him.

  “Your Queen’s first command,” Edith said with a short sigh. She used an affected imperial tone. “-is for our lovely King to move the bloody logs so that we can get moving. I don’t want to sit here waiting for another bloody ambush.”

  “So if there’s bandits and goblins fighting in the hills, should we go somewhere else?” Cassia asked once we had the cart back underway.

  I wasn’t going to hide under the tarp any more. For one thing, the tarp had been shredded. Aside from that, I wasn’t going to let myself get caught off guard again. Trotting alongside the cart would definitely draw a lot of attention to us, but anyone planning to ambush us might think twice if it meant angering a bonafide dragon.

  “Hmm, if it weren’t already spring time I’d say we should turn around,” Edith agreed. “But by the time we get back onto the lowlands the roads will be full of travellers. Bandits and goblins might be a pain, but a cohort of knights hunting our ‘King’ would be a lot more trouble.”

  Edith was back at the reins again. Bronston had been acting skittish ever since the ambush and needed a more experienced hand to guide him along the twisting and turning road. The horse had largely gotten used to me by now, but the scents of smoke and blood had disturbed the poor creature.

  I wondered what we’d do with Bronston when we got to wherever we’d set up our homestead. We’d not brought a great amount of horse feed with us. Maybe Edith would sell him to another human.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Cassia said with a deep sigh. She was keeping her bow close at hand. Regardless of her conflicted feelings about killing, she didn’t want to be caught unaware any more than me. “But should we try to do something about it? Getting attacked again when we’re unprepared might… be bad, next time.”

  I was pretty sure she didn’t want to say what might happen if I wasn’t around. While my Edith and my Cassia were both capable humans, an attack like what we’d just experienced could end in disaster. The thought made my blood boil, but I successfully tamped it down before it got out of hand.

  “Could hunt?” I growled up at them from where I trotted beside the cart. My wings were tucked against my body. Walking on all fours like this was good for keeping my claws from getting too long. “Hunt bandits.”

  “That’s…,” Edith said hesitantly. “Not to rain on ye parade, my King, but I’d rather ye didn’t. What happened just now was unfortunate. Life’s hard enough without needless slaughter. Imagine if ye go haring off after bandits and burn down some poor village of woodsfolk in a case o’ mistaken identity.”

  I understood what Edith meant, but I didn’t agree that there was another way to handle the situation. Leaving a band of brigands lingering in the area near my new den was unacceptable. Edith seemed to gather my opinion on the matter from the low rumble of displeasure I let out.

  “Now I ain’t sayin’ we just leave ‘em be, my lovely beasty,” she said with a twitch to the reins to keep Bronston on track. “But I’m sure ye lass taught ye that a good hunter knows how to stalk their prey back to its den.”

  “Sanguine usually just runs them down,” Cassia said with a look of exhaustion from recalled memories. “He’s too bloody fast to let them get away. One time, he was running so fast after a hare that he ran clean into a tree-”

  I was distracted from my incredulity at my Cassia spinning a yarn of my past mistakes, by a familiar scent wafting across my nose. A chuff of warning passed my throat. Edith pulled on the reins hard and brought the cart to a stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Edith asked seriously.

  “Smoke. Burnt meat,” I replied, tilting my head so that my snout caught the breeze. “Not mine. Old. Close.”

  Both women looked at each other then back at me.

  “We should check that out, right?” Cassia said uncertainly. “It could be a campfire, but Sanguine seems concerned.”

  “Aye, we probably should. Let’s pull off the road here,” Edith agreed. “I’ll stay with the cart while ye two scout ahead.”

  “What if someone finds you?” Cassia said with concern. “You could get hurt.”

  “And if someone steals our cart because no one was there, we’re up the creek with no paddle,” Edith replied grimly. “I’m no good and skulking around the woods lass, but I can keep m’self out of trouble fair enough. I didn’t spend my whole life dodgin’ witch hunters without learnin’ some tricks.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “... One of these days, I’m going to tie you up and make you tell your story Edith,” Cassia said with a furrowed brow. “The whole thing. No vague hints about where you’ve been.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Edith retorted. “I might be an old lady, but I won’t let myself be manhandled-”

  “I’ll tell Sanguine to pin you down like that goblin girl,” Cassia interjected. “A-And lick your face til you spill the beans! Besides, you look like you’re an older sister to me rather than a matron!”

  Now that made Edith go quiet. One of those ‘complicated’ human expressions settled onto her face. Cassia pursed her lips, occasionally glancing over at me. I chose to stay out of this contest. This sounded like ‘Young Lady’ business and I wanted no part of it. Edith finally drew in a deep breath and let it blow out of her lips.

  “Don’t go making jokes like that lass,” Edith said sternly. “Besides, I already promised to tell ye both everything once we’d settled in where we’re goin’. Now is not the right time.” Curiously, she didn’t say anything about disliking what Cassia had threatened.

  Finding a place to pull off the road took some effort. The terrain up this far into the Redstone Hills was full of narrow gulleys and canyons. Stands of trees dotted the hills but rarely clumped together tight enough to provide effective cover. Eventually we had to back the cart into a gap off the road that was barely wide enough to fit its wheels between two towering rises of red rock.

  Passersby wouldn’t be able to see the cart from the road and the terrain was too steep to easily come from above or behind. Edith would be able to hear someone coming due to the echoes off of the stone walls.

  I still wasn’t keen on leaving her behind, but we needed to see what lay ahead of us.

  “What the hells…,” Cassia whispered as she looked out over a scene of destruction.

  She was lying beside me on her belly. The both of us were a mid-length hike from where we’d left Edith, hiding on the top of a ridge and looking down into a small valley. The scent of smoke and burned flesh had led me right here. I could still see a low haze of ash hanging around the bowl of the valley beneath us.

  It might have been a logger’s camp in the near past. A collection of six crude huts had been placed around a central fire pit. Around them had been stacked large piles of roughly worked logs. All of that was ash and cinder now. My gut told me that the fire must have burned exceptionally hot. Trees far from the main blaze showed signs of being scored.

  In fact, we were remarkably lucky that the entire Redstone Hills wasn’t on fire right now. The towering conifer trees common locally probably made for a logger’s paradise, but they were incredibly flammable. The piles of logs next to the huts would have been more than enough fuel to get the fire burning incredibly hot.

  Here and there, I could see blackened and charred bones laying on the ground. I didn’t draw Cassia’s attention to that. The scent of burnt human flesh told me all I needed to know. Humans weren’t stupid, despite evidence to the contrary. They wouldn’t throw themselves into the fire if there was a possibility of fleeing.

  Someone had murdered the people who lived here and left them to burn.

  “Sanguine, what should we do?” my Cassia hissed. “Should we check for survivors?”

  That was a foolish notion, but I knew it came from my Cassia’s upbringing. Her parents had been good people and raised her on stories where the heroes and villains were obvious. None of those stories thought to mention that when a knight slew a dragon, the dragon died in terrible pain. They probably neglected to mention how human bones looked in a fire pit.

  I had learned that my Cassia’s heart was surprisingly fragile lately. She didn’t need a shock like that right now.

  “Danger,” I growled at her. “People who set fire.” My Cassia swallowed with a dry throat and glanced around the surrounding hillsides. It was buried under the scents of ash and burned flesh, but I could detect that a large number of humans had been in the area recently.

  It could be the loggers, but there were many more scents than would occupy a small settlement like this. I knew my Cassia and my Edith’s scents well enough that I could identify them in a crowded room. Or a hut full of goats.

  Cassia smelled like leather and beeswax from treating her bow string. Edith smelled of herbs and something as of yet unknown from her homeland. I also knew to never mention a female’s scent to her, on pain of death. It was another one of those ‘young lady’ things that made humans infuriatingly complicated.

  That was a shame, really. I adored both of their scents.

  I did not at all like what I smelled coming from around the burnt logger’s camp. It reminded me of the witch hunter named Raban. There was steel, the stink of humans in distress, and the stale stench of old alcohol. Edith had kept some in her house for ‘medicinal’ purposes, but she’d traded it away for my Cassia’s new bow.

  All of the scents coming from the camp were male. Wait. No. There was one female. I’d almost missed it, due to the overwhelming smell of char. It went along with the most recent human scents I could detect, heading up into the hills.

  I highly doubted that any human female would willingly go with such a large group of males that smelled so foul.

  “What is it, Sanguine?” Cassia whispered. She’d noticed how I was sampling the air with both my nostrils and tongue. I tended to zone out from my surroundings when I was so focused on tracking ‘prey’. It was a bad habit she’d often tried to correct me on.

  “... One survivor, maybe more,” I said carefully. I knew my Cassia well. Telling her what I suspected would trouble her. “One… lady.” I sniffed at the air again. “Young lady.”

  My Cassia gripped her bow tightly between her fingers. I could hear her heart beating louder in her chest. She closed her eyes and bit her lips before looking back at me.

  “Do you think you can track them?” She asked me with surprising steel in her eyes. “Back to where they’re camped?”

  I cocked my head at her. It sounded like a straight forward question, but my Cassia’s expression was not one I’d seen her wear before. I still struggled with understanding what humans were thinking, when it came to just their appearance. Slowly, I nodded.

  “Sanguine, my dragon,” my Cassia whispered as she scooted closer and pressed a hand to my neck. I could feel her warmth through my scales and the hidden tension in her body. “I am not a warrior. Hunting is my life, but I won’t ever be comfortable with taking another person’s life. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite. But I need to ask this of you…”

  “Please go and save her, Sanguine,” she whispered to me, her lips hovering near the scales just below my horns. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve… what might be happening.” I saw Cassia’s knuckles were white on her bow as the tension made her tremble.

  “Edith can be mad all she wants later. I need to go back to the cart and protect her. These people, they’re not just hurting goblins, they’re… they’re attacking anyone they can find. So please… do what I can’t. Find these bandits. Rescue that girl, whoever she is. Please?”

  I didn’t need my Cassia to beg me, for me to agree. To me there wasn’t a difference between burning a goblin nest and a loggers camp. These bandits had already proved themselves to be predators of the worst kind. They killed without reason or mercy.

  They were just like the Rotting Bear that served the Vile Tree in the Cursed Forest. The only way to get rid of a plague like that was to burn it out. Fortunately, I was exceptionally well equipped for such an exercise.

  “For you, my Cassia, anything,” I rumbled to her. “Go protect our Edith. Will be back soon.” I slowly unfurled my wings from my back so that I didn’t knock her over. Already the anticipation was building in my veins. The memory of hunting screaming goblins through the fire was fresh. Another hunt so soon would have me riled up for days.

  “Sanguine,” my young lady hissed as she grabbed me by one horn. “Please, still be my dragon when you come back.” I turned my head to look at her, confused. I’d always be hers. We’d established this many times. “I mean…” Now she hesitated. “Do what you must, but don’t… hurt anyone, you do not need to.”

  I considered that request. It was a ‘complicated human’ kind of command. The look in my Cassia’s eyes wasn’t one I could say no to. I adored her gentle heart. Sparing a couple of stinking bandits wouldn’t be all that hard.

  “Yes, my Hunter Princess,” I rumbled back. She let go of my horn. A moment later I had leaped off of the top of the ridge. The hot air boiling up from the burned camp caught my wings and lifted me into the air. Pain from the holes that goblins had shot through my wing membranes lingered.

  Cassia watched me soar away for a moment before she turned to head back to Edith.

  “What do you mean she’s gone, you idiot?!” Raban roared at the footman standing in front of him. Raban was astride a sleek black warhorse. The footman was standing ankle deep in the spring mud.

  “I m-mean what I s-say Ra- Ah! Sir Raban,’ The footman stammered. He’d almost made the grave error of not addressing the new knight by his station. Several of the squad of soldiers had already learned the hard way how Sir Raban felt about ‘being talked down to’.

  “The witch is said to have h-high tailed it out of here before the Th-Thaw. Sold everything but her boots, she did. E-e-even the b-bedding!”

  Raban looked like he was going to scream in fury, but mastered himself at the last second. The footman could audibly hear the man counting down from ten. That boded ill. Only madmen bothered with reciting numbers.

  “When, exactly, did the villagers say she left?” Raban said through his gritted teeth.

  “J-just over half a moon ago, Sir Raban,” the footman said while trembling under the knight’s withering glare.

  “You mean to tell me,” Raban said slowly while leaning off his horse, staring the footman in the eye. “That the bloody Witch, left right bloody after, the Lord’s bleeding bastard and me, BLOODY LEFT THE VILLAGE.”

  By the time Raban finished speaking, his voice carried clear across the village. Sir Kenneth was sitting on his own steed, an elegant chestnut thoroughbred, a short distance away. The thin man was still dressed up for the chill despite the rising warmth of spring time. A sullen expression was on his face. Sir Raban’s fury drew his attention and he nudged his mount to saunter over.

  “Why are we screaming at the ‘help’, Sir Raban?” Sir Kenneth said with a sigh. “It wasn’t so long ago that you would be standing there.” Raban whipped his head around, one hand on his sword pommel. Sir Kenneth nudged his horse to move a bit further away. “N-never mind. What was that about someone leaving the village?”

  “Well Kenneth,” Raban said with apparent great pleasure in addressing a man of equal rank. “It seems the lovely lass, ye know, the WITCH, left right after ye were mortally wounded and drug us back to our Lord’s keep.”

  Sir Kenneth grimaced to himself. He still had some visible bruises after that trip home. Raban’s new rank and attitude were a direct result of the same ‘family meeting’.

  “Do we know where she’s gone, at least?” Sir Kenneth asked carefully. Both knights looked down at the footman.

  “Ah- uhm- that’s…,” the man stammered, before a light seemed to shine behind his eyes. “Yes! She bought a horse for a cart from the stable. If she’d ah… gone up the road toward the sea, someone would have noticed!” The man grasped desperately at straws for hope of salvation. “A woman, all alone on the road in late winter? People would talk, your Lordship!”

  “Leave off with that. I’m Sir Kenneth to you,” Kenneth said sourly. One hand ran along his smoothly shaved jaw. “But he might be right, Raban. A patrol would have spotted a woman travelling alone by cart and made a report, if she’d headed past the Keep.”

  Raban thought about this for several moments, rubbing the pommel of his sword with his palm.

  “So all we’ve got is that she went off somewhere towards Summershore in a cart?” the large man growled unhappily. “There ain’t nothing out that way ‘cept for some shepherds, til ye get to the hills. Only a loon would go up there by herself though. There’s all kinds of beasts and nasties up that way.”

  “A loon, like a magic wielding Witch?” Sir Kenneth mused out loud. Raban seemed to genuinely consider that question for a bit.

  “... Aye. The Lord’s oracle said she lost track of the disturbance not long ago,” Raban murmured back. “Could have headed out of range, perhaps.”

  “So we’re heading toward Summershore then?” Sir Kenneth asked with a sigh.

  “Aye, that’s the shape of it,” Raban replied. “Let’s gather these laggards up and commandeer a wagon. We’ll never catch her at the rate these layabouts walk.” The footman wisely chose not to object. “I hope you like sheep and goats.”

  “Can’t stand the blighted creatures,” Sir Kenneth muttered. “Their eyes give me the chills.”