I’d lost one of them.

  A hat adorned with a peacock feather was between my claws. The scent of the one who had worn it still wafted through the air. If I hurried, I could probably still catch him. Wings would always outrun a human’s feet.

  Did I really need to, though? Now that my blood had cooled off a bit, I remembered what my Cassia had made me promise. ‘Do what you must, but don’t hurt anyone you don’t need to.’

  Was one human life worth- My head tilted up towards the night sky. Remembering what I’d done when my blood boiled was difficult. The best guess I could muster was thirty four brigands. I was certain that the colorful Fool had escaped my grasp, at least.

  So was one girl’s life worth thirty five others, if I decided to chase him down? These brigands had also burned down the logger’s camp and presumably killed all the human males working there. I estimated maybe a dozen workers had died there, though getting an exact count would be impossible due to the fire. I didn’t know how many goblins the bandits had killed beforehand.

  The girl wasn’t ‘Mine’, exactly. In a sense, she’d passed into my care when her vitality became a part of me. I’d never known her beyond her scent and one moment in a dark cave. Burning down the entire Redstone Hills looking for one man did not balance the scales.

  If he’d done that to my Cassia or Edith, I’d have torn apart anything that stood in my way.

  I’d need to ask my Edith about this. She had a much better head for knowing when enough was enough. She was already going to be cross with me for attacking the bandit camp. Cassia would take some of the blame for it, but I doubted my Edith was going to let me hide behind my Hunter Princess for something like this.

  My eyes latched onto movement in the dark, interrupting my thoughts. It had only been a hint of something out of place. I was sitting in the open some distance from the bandit camp. The movement had come from the deep shadows next to a stone outcropping. I took in air through my nostrils slowly. Hopefully they didn’t catch on that I’d noticed them.

  I couldn’t smell anything unusual. This location was far enough from the bandit camp that its stench didn’t pollute the air. Faint traces of the bandits I’d hunted down in the woods further back lingered. The only trail that was still fresh was the colorful man’s.

  No scent betrayed the presence of the person I’d spotted.

  Now that I knew where they were at, I was able to pick their shape out from the shadows. They’d spread their cloak so that it obscured their outline against the rocks. In spite of that, I could detect a slender body laying on its belly.

  Eyelids that I didn’t use much slid into place over my amber orbs. When they were in place, the night became a series of hazy blotches. The lack of clarity was why I didn’t care much for this kind of sight. If I looked into a fire like this, I’d be blinded. What it was good for was spotting patches of heat in the cold winter snow.

  The person attempting to hide from me in the rocks was revealed as a patch of body heat against the cold stone. I could see something long and cold tucked against one of their arms. That was probably a blade of some sort.

  They hadn’t attacked yet. I’d already decided that there had been enough killing for the night, but I was unwilling to let another bandit run off into the night. There was a flicker of memory in my mind. My Edith had gotten useful information out of the goblin. She might be less mad at me if I brought back another captive.

  “Come out,” I growled in the direction of the boulders. The hiding bandit flinched slightly, but remained still otherwise. After a few moments of waiting, they showed no signs of obeying my command.

  “Come. Out,” I repeated louder. “... If you do not, I will burn you.” I projected just a little bit of my Truth into the words. It slipped my unskilled grasp, resulting in a low rumbling boom that echoed through the night.”

  Now the bandit startled properly. They seemed to realize that their movement had completely given away their position. Slowly they rose to their feet. The slender blade in their grasp had been blackened so that it did not reflect the moonlight. I pulled the lids back from my eyes and I turned to face them fully. The hat beneath my claws was shredded in the process.

  A slow step brought the bandit more fully into the moonlight. The cloak hung around their shoulders, hood pulled up to obscure their features. I was still fairly certain that this one was named ‘Visk’. The way they stood matched the one who had been hanging around in the shadows around the bandit camp.

  “Closer, Visk,” I commanded, trying my guess at their name. They stiffened up when I said it. That probably meant I was correct. Their steps were slow and reluctant, but they did obey.

  Once we were both standing fully in the open, I got up from where I’d been sitting on my haunches. Visk’s grip on their blade noticeably tightened. My tail flicked back and forth in irritation behind me. Negotiating was not my strong suit.

  “Pull off the hood, drop the sword,” I continued to order. Visk looked like they were about to disobey, so I unfurled my wings fully. They cast deep shadows around me as the moon spilled over my back. “Do not run. You will not escape.”

  I’d acquired some more holes in my wings while I hunted the bandits. Not all of them had been too drunk to fight back. The crossbows they wielded were the first things I’d encountered which were a real threat to me.

  At close range they had the ability to punch through the gaps in my scales. The one using the crossbow generally didn’t live long after they fired, but the three bolts stuck into my body were a reminder to be wary of human inventions.

  Visk looked at me looming in front of them and decided to obey my commands. The fight seemed to go out of them a bit as their shoulders slumped in defeat. They slowly crouched down and placed the blade flat on the ground. After they’d carefully stood back up, they drew back their hood.

  They were not human. My head tilted to one side. Like the goblin, Visk was humanoid, but not enough to be fully ‘human’. I could see skin the color of slate peaking out from behind a mask they wore on their lower face. White hair that was brighter than snow was done up in a tight braid on the back of their head.

  Sharp pointed ears sat on the side of Visk’s head. Unlike the goblin’s droop point, these were angled high and backwards like arrow heads. I noted that their ears twitched every so often while I was staring at them.

  “What do you want, ‘demon’?” Visk asked with tension in their voice. “Have you not had enough blood today?”

  “Not a demon,” I growled back. “Dragon.” I didn’t know what a ‘demon’ was. If their appearance resembled the noble form of a dragon, it was clearly an inferior knock off. “Done with killing. Time for questions.”

  “Very well,” Visk replied slowly. “What questions do you have for me ‘dragon’?”

  “Not mine,” I huffed in annoyance. This creature was wearing on my already frayed patience.

  “Not yours?” Visk asked crossly. “Then do you mean mine-”

  I leapt across the clearing, interrupting Visk’s words. They let out a cry of anger. One of their feet kicked the blade that had been lying on the ground up towards their hand. As I descended on them, Visk tried to scramble backwards and thrust the slender blade point into my chest.

  The days since I’d been caught off guard by a rabbit mid leap were long passed. One of my forelimbs knocked the blade aside as my body landed on top of Visk. Metal clanged against the stone beneath as Visk lost their grasp on the sword’s hilt. My other front foot latched around their torso.

  My wings ached as I flapped them hard, dragging both me and Visk into the air. A shrill scream came out of their lips as the ground dropped away beneath them. Once the both of us were far enough into the air, I tilted my body so that my other foot could latch onto their body.

  A sharp pain bloomed in my foot latched onto their torso. Looking down, I could see that Visk had jammed a small knife into the softer scales between my claws.

  “Cease,” I commanded them loudly. “Or I drop you.”

  “Then drop me!” I heard them call out around the rushing air. “Let go of me you bas- Don’tLetGoDON’TLETGO!” Visk had looked down beneath them and seen how far the ground was. Their hand let go of the knife and both their arms latched around my leg. “By all the Trees in the Greatwood- Please don’t let go!”

  Their entire demeanor had collapsed. Visk was clinging to me like a baby raccoon would to its mother’s back.

  “Drop your knives,” I responded to them. “All of them.”

  Visk seemed reluctant to let go of me to make that happen, but a subtle loosening of my claws around their body got them scrambling. A small hail of sharp objects fell from the sky. Hopefully there was no one standing below and looking up at the night sky.

  “There! That’s all of them!” Visk cried desperately. I gave them a moderate shake. A couple of extra knives were unstrapped from hard to reach locations on their body. “Really this time! Please!”

  “Good. You will obey,” I growled down at them. “When I put you down, you will answer all questions. Do not run, or I will fly you up and drop you.”

  “I understand! Promise! Swear on my heart!” Visk grasped. “No tricks! All the questions you want.”

  With that sorted out, I started looking around for the road where I’d left Edith’s cart. Picking one canyon out from the rest in the moonlight wasn’t an easy task, but I’d manage.

  Hopefully she didn’t yell at me too much.

  By the time I landed at the correct hiding place, I was tired. Searching for the bandit camp, waiting for night, and hunting down all the brigands had taken the better part of a day. I’d not eaten anything either. The occasional mouthful of human blood didn’t count. While neither of them had come out and said it, I was sure that eating people would not go over well with my Cassia or my Edith.

  In summary, I was exhausted, hungry, and highly irritated by the time I got to Edith’s cart. Visk had tried to struggle out of my grasp when I landed. Tightening my claws into their body a bit had been enough to make them stop. They hung in the grasp of one foot while I hobbled forward on the other three.

  “Edith,” I rumbled as I approached the bend in the stone. “I am here.” I was aware that my appearance right now would not be pleasant for either of my companions. They’d reacted poorly after I’d come back from hunting down the goblins. I was even more gruesome looking right now.

  For a moment I worried that they’d not respond to me. Someone could have attacked them while I was away. Running footsteps and a familiar scent responded to my words. My Cassia skidded around the corner of the narrow cleft in the rockface, her bow in one hand.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Sanguine!” she called out to me, her voice a mixture of happiness and concern. “Please come here! Are you alright? You sound awful!” My Cassia turned her head back and forth, looking for me even though I wasn’t that far away. It took me a bit to remember that her eyesight in the dark was much worse than mine.

  “I am… fine,” I grumbled as I shuffled forward. Visk was squirming in my grasp. “Is Edith all right?”

  “Huh? Oh! Yes, sorry,” my Cassia responded after a brief confused look. “We were taking turns staying awake til you got back. It’s my turn right now. Let me wake her.”

  Cassia turned and headed back around the bend. I followed after her.

  Bronston greeted me with an uncomfortable nicker when I came into sight. The poor horse had been standing in a cramped stone canyon all day with no grass to eat. A giant blood soaked predator coming in the middle of the night had him at about wit’s end. If we’d not already been familiar with each other, he’d have bolted.

  I saw Edith’s head rise up out of the back of the cart as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Cassia had climbed up the side of the cart to shake her awake. A moment later, her slender fingers turned the catch on the lantern hanging by the driver seat.

  “Good gods!” my Cassia hissed as the lantern light showed my gore caked and battered appearance. “What the hells happened Sanguine! You look like you fought an entire army! … And who is that you’ve got there?”

  Edith shook herself awake again and squinted at me in the low lantern light. Her lips drew back in a tight frown that boded ill. She didn’t say anything to me as she clambered out of the cart and scooted between it and the stone wall to one side. By the time she reached my side, Cassia was already poking and prodding at the crossbow bolts sticking out of my scaled hide.

  “Can you let me go now, Lord Dragon?” Visk whimpered from beneath me. I glanced down at them. They were looking pale, beyond their normal gray skin tone. After some consideration, I opened my claws and dropped them onto the floor of the gulley.

  “So this is one of the bandits, aye?” Edith asked shortly. Her arms were crossed under her chest and she looked back and forth between my wounds and my new ‘guest’.

  “Yes,” I answered. “The last.” I thought about it for a moment. “One of the last. Their name is Visk.”

  “So ‘Visk’,” Edith said in a strangely neutral tone. “Were ye one of the ones who shot my beasty here?” Her foot tapped on the stone of the gulley. I found that far more intimidating than any amount of crossbows pointed in my direction.

  “Wha- No!” Visk gasped as then rolled over onto their belly. They were moving stiffly after hanging in my claws the whole flight over. “I never hurt it-”

  “Knife, in my claws,” I interrupted. Visk cursed under their breath.

  “Only after you dragged me into the sky like a blighted hawk!” they protested. Edith made a ‘tsk’ noise behind her teeth.

  “I’m gonnae’ make this real simple, ‘Visk’,” my Edith said harshly. “I’m gonnae asked ye a set o’ questions. If I don’t like te answers, ye get squished by my beasty. Aye?” While she was keeping her tone level, I could tell that my Edith was greatly upset. Her accent got thicker the more put out she was.

  “I swear,” Visk responded. “I already swore to the dragon! I’ll answer all your questions.”

  “Right then,” Edith said. “Are ye a bandit, crook, or o’er kind o’ criminal?”

  “I-” Visk started to say, but corrected themself. “Yes, but not on-”

  “Shhhh,” Edith cut them off. “Were ye responsible, fer burnin’ down’ that logger’s village?”

  “N- I- A bit?” Visk said nervously. Edith’s eyes narrowed. “They weren’t supposed to burn it!” Visk’s voice grew panicked. “I just made the maps! I’m a scout! They were just supposed to get some protection money, or make them work off the cost c-cutting t-timber!”

  Something about ‘cutting timber’ made them hesitate, but I didn’t see any obvious signs that they were outright lying. Edith did not relent.

  “‘Protection money’ aye?” Edith growled. Her hands were balled up into fists beneath her crossed arms. “Protection fro’ who or what, I wonder? And when they didn’t pay, ye lot slaughtered ‘em like butchers.”

  “That’s not what was supposed to happen!” Visk cried out more loudly. “They’re idiots! They couldn’t even follow a simple plan-”

  “Oh and what plan is that?” Edith said as she crouched down in front of Visk. Her eyes were cold. “Harass hard working folk and steal their daughters?” She narrowed her eyebrows and looked up at me. “... Didn’t Cassia ask ye to save someone beasty? Where is she?”

  I looked down at my Edith then over at my Cassia. My silence hung in the air like a deathly chill.

  Cassia slowly raised her hands to her mouth. She dropped her bow to the ground as a strangled noise passed out of her lips. It was the precursor to a sob that wracked her body, sending her stumbling back against the side of the gulley. I could see the hot tears well up in her eyes.

  “She’s dead?” Visk whispered in shock. “No. No. No-no-no-no! Please!” Visk’s eyes shot up towards Edith. My Edith hadn’t moved, her expression pure ice. “I didn’t- I didn’t do anything to her! She’s a hostage! The Captain said we’d keep her to-”

  The sharp crack of a slap rang out in the gulley, disturbing Bronston. As the horse shuffled back and forth on his lead, Edith shook her hand out. The blow had ripped Visk’s mask off, exposing their lower face. A set of swirling tattoos ran up from their neck and up around their mouth and cheeks.

  It wouldn’t be long before a deep bruise in the shape of Edith’s hand formed on Visk’s face. Blood from a split lip dribbled down their face as they gagged against the stone.

  “I’m sorry ye had to see that, beasty,” my Edith said with icy calm. “I’m acting very unladylike, it seems. Did this one have anything to do with that poor girl’s death?” She looked up at me with her icy stare. It was hard to see the kind woman turn to such fury. She’d sailed right past burning anger into frozen calm.

  Trying to explain what I’d had to do would be one of the hardest things possible, right now.

  “No,” I said carefully. “Another one. Wears… many colors, two swords. That one.”

  “Captain! Captain Avery!” Visk gasped as they spat blood onto the ground. “That’s him! Please! He’s the one that you want. He’s the one in charge, the one with the plan. He ordered the others t- to… to do what they did.”

  “Did ye kill this ‘Captain Avery’, beasty?” Edith asked me calmly. I shook my head. “Why not?”

  “I…,” I didn’t know how to respond. I’d thought Edith would be upset with me for killing so many, not for letting one of them go. “I killed… thirty four. Humans.” My claws scratched across the stone as I shifted uncomfortably. “Bandits. That is… many.” I didn’t mention the girl’s death in that tally.

  Edith looked at me for a long time in silence. Cassia had slid down to sit with her back against the gulley wall, head in her hands.

  “That… is why I told ye,” Edith said eventually. “Told ye to not run off on ye own. I know… I know ye tried, Sanguine. I can see it in ye’r eyes. Cassia… she meant well. Asking ye to save that girl, that’s a noble thing. But killing… it’s not to be done lightly.”

  Edith stood up from where she was crouched and moved closer to me. She pressed her hand into my snout while she looked down at Visk.

  “I don’t know if all of those bandits deserved to die, Sanguine,” Edith said quietly. “Quite possibly they did. There’s no way to know now. Once a man’s dead, that’s it. The Gods will have to judge them in the Afterworld. But they will judge us too, if we take lives that don’t need taking.”

  “Do you think ye could find this ‘Captain’, if ye tried?” she asked me. The scent would be old by the time I found the trail again, but it was certainly possible. I tentatively nodded. Edith rubbed her fingers against my blood-caked snout thoughtfully before she continued. “Thirty four lives?”

  Again, I nodded. I’d need to tell her about the girl, but I couldn’t bear to right now.

  “... The Gods have mercy on us,” my Edith murmured softly. “May the Scales not be unbalanced.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “If I send ye off to hunt him, he’ll be heading down to the Lowlands. There’s too great a chance that ye will run into other folk.” Edith clenched and unclenched her free hand. “Visk, do ye think ye’r ‘Captain’ will go screaming about a dragon in the hills?”

  “He… no,” Visk said after some thought. “He’ll probably drop everything and run for the horizon. He’s hard to kill. It’s not the first time he’s turned tail and fled when trouble found us.”

  “Then why did ye follow him?” Edith asked, puzzled. Visk looked at the ground, saying nothing for a bit. When they did respond, it was in a small voice.

  “He… he always had a plan,” Visk whispered. “Even when things got really bad, we stuck together. Through thick and thin. He’d always talk us into… some way out. He’d never…” There was another extended pause. “He’s never left me behind.”

  Edith pursed her lips. She then looked over at Cassia.

  “Lass, come here,” Edith said firmly. My Cassia looked up from where she’d been wallowing against the stone, her eyes red and puffy. Edith gestured with her hand, again indicating she should join us. Cassia stood slowly to her feet and stumbled over.

  “This is your call, lass,” Edith told Cassia sternly. “Ye better have been listenin’ close to this conversation here. I’m not trying to be cruel lass, but ye need to see ye’r choice out to the end. Ye sicced Sanguine on those bandits like a hunting hound.”

  “What- what do you mean, my call?” Cassia asked hoarsely. “Haven’t I already done enough? For nothing!”

  “... Not for nothing,” Edith said softly. “But with consequences? Aye. Ye couldn’t have known that Sanguine would be too late.” I internally flinched. “But you saw what happened with those goblins. That was when they’d only nicked me with an arrow.” Edith reached out and placed her hand on Cassia’s shoulder.

  “Cassia, Sanguine is… is a dragon,” Edith continued. She sounded exhausted. “He’s our dragon, aye. I know that. Ye raised him from when he was little. But he… he doesn’t think like us. He cares about ye, don’t mistake that. But he cares…” Edith frowned deeply. “-probably too much. It’s like a tale about the Gods. If ye touch what the Gods love, they will burn ye down to ash for it.”

  Edith glanced up at me, as if to confirm what she was saying.

  I looked back at the both of them, unsure of what to think. While I’d only heard a little about the Gods, the way that Edith described their wrath did ring true to me. I also knew that would be an unpleasant truth for my Cassia to hear. She wanted desperately for me to be like something from her fairy tales. Not the evil dragons that they described, but a ‘nice’ dragon that she’d imagined as a child.

  “I am… me,” I said after consideration. “Sanguine. There is… only one Dragon named Sanguine. Cassia named me.”

  “Aye, I suppose you’re also right,” Edith replied. “There’s only one dragon like you, to me. To us.” Cassia was looking sullenly at the ground, but even she responded to that by stepping closer into the space between Edith and me. I nuzzled her gently in response.

  “But ye need to see this through to the end, my dear,” Edith said to her. “We have one last bandit here with us. Ye need to decide what to do with them.”

  Visk had kept silent for a while, but I’d kept track of them. My claws were too close for them to try and escape again, even if I was distracted.

  “Please, I beg of you,” Visk croaked around their swollen lip. “Please don’t kill me!”

  Cassia looked down at the blooded figure beneath me. She drew a breath in and blew it out of her nostrils.

  “Do you… want to be better?” Cassia asked them softly. The question seemed to surprise Visk.

  “Better?” Visk asked weakly. “Better how?”

  “Do you want… to be… anything other than a bandit?” Cassia insisted. “Can you turn over a new leaf?”

  “Turn over a-,” Visk started, baffled. “That’s a stupid human-” I growled at Visk. “-it’s a turn of phrase, right? Like start over.” Cassia nodded. Visk went to chew on their lip and regretted it instantly from the pain it caused.

  “... The Captain, Avery, he always had a plan?” Cassia asked. Visk nodded up at her. “Then… Then I have the Plan now. If you swear to me, truly, on… whatever matters to you; that you will start over and be better… Then I’ll ask Sanguine to let you go.”

  “Good! Great! Then I swear-” Visk went to say, but Cassia interrupted them.

  “After! After you…You are going to dig graves,” my Cassia said firmly, shoring up her courage. “A grave for every single bandit that died. And… that poor girl. And the lumberjacks as well. And… the goblins, if they don’t already have any! Everyone!”

  Visk and Edith both were now surprised by Cassia’s sudden fortitude. They glanced at each other, then back at her.

  “And I’m going to… to dig them too, with you,” Cassia continued, wilting somewhat. “This is… some of it is my fault too. So I’ll dig with you and if I believe you’ve truly sworn to me that you’ll change… then I’ll let you leave.”

  Cassia looked up at me, her eyes pleading.

  “I know I have already asked too much of you, my Sanguine, but can you help me?” she asked softly. “Please keep track of… Visk, at least until everyone is buried? I… I’ll dig the graves by myself, if I have to.”

  I looked at Edith. She had an expression of deep thought on her face. Her eyes turned towards me and she nodded.

  “Yes, my Princess,” I responded to Cassia. “Until then.”

  “G-good…,” Visk said from beneath me. “Can… can I please get up now?”