The smell of them reached her before the sound of their boots on the mountain stone did.
Barjuchne lifted her head from the pile of coins she'd been arranging, her nostrils flaring. Sweat. Leather. The acrid tang of oil used to clean metal, although she’s not sure why she immediately recognised that. It must be some sort of dragon instinct. And beneath it all, the bitter scent of unwashed men who'd been travelling hard for days, making their way up the dense mountain trails. Her thin, whiplike tail lashed behind her.
People were coming.
She rose from her hoard and moved to the cave entrance, her claws clicking softly against the obsidian gateway. The forest beyond was still, the morning mist clinging to the treetops in pale wisps. But the scent grew stronger, and with it came rough, male voices.
Her scales prickled.
Veliah emerged from her room, her eyes wide. "What is it?"
"Stay inside," Barjuchne said. Her voice came out flat, cold. "Hide in the back."
"But -"
"Now."
Veliah hesitated, then retreated.
Barjuchne turned back to the forest and waited. It looked like the knight she had been waiting on had arrived, and he’d brought company with him.
Thankfully, she had the foresight to prepare and the advantage of having had enough time to do so.
They came into view moments later, crashing through the undergrowth with all the subtlety of a landslide. Ten men, armoured and armed, moving in a loose formation around a central figure who rode on a large, bipedal bird while the others walked. The rider was broad-shouldered and thick-necked, his dark armour polished to a gleaming shine that caught the morning light. A red plume sprouted from his helmet, and a sword hung at his hip, the pommel wrapped in golden wire.
A knight, most certainly.
From her hiding place deep within the cave, Barjuchne watched through the darkness. Her heart began to pound, but she remained perfectly still as she watched the intruders approach from down below the cave’s entrance, entering into the clearing.
The knight reined the large, bipedal bird he was riding to a stop twenty paces from the entrance.
He removed his helmet, revealing a square-jawed face with a neatly trimmed beard and cold blue eyes. He surveyed the obsidian gateway with a mixture of suspicion and interest.
"So the merchant was telling the truth after all," he said. His voice was deep and carried easily across the distance. "Some kind of cave. Whatever monster or brigand the old fool was rambling about is likely here."
One of his soldiers stepped forward nervously. "Sir Malwas, perhaps we should -"
"Silence." Malwas dismounted, tossing the reins to one of his men. "The girl is in there somewhere. We go in, retrieve her, and be done with this foolishness. If she’s dead, then the old man is next for wasting my time." He clicks with his mouth, hissing between his teeth in annoyance. “I paid handsomely for her. I shall be made whole, one way or another.”
He drew his sword, the blade gleaming in the morning light. "I am Sir Malwas of Valdisheim, sworn knight!" he called toward the cave entrance. "Girl! Show yourself! Your father has sent me to retrieve you from whatever vagabond took you!"
Silence answered him.
His jaw tightened. He gestured to his men. "Inside. Find her. Kill anyone who gets in your way."
The soldiers exchanged uncertain glances but obeyed, spreading out as they approached the entrance. Barjuchne melted further into the shadows, her dark scales making her nearly invisible in the darkness of the cave now that the fires had been extinguished in preparation.
They never saw her at all.
And as for the crude sign by the entrance saying, ‘Stay out! Only death inside!’ — They all ignored it.
It was worth a try.
The first trap inside of the dragon’s dungeon triggered before the intruders had gone ten paces.
A section of floor gave way beneath the lead soldier's weight, and he dropped into the pit below with a scream that cut off abruptly. The others froze, staring down at the sharpened stakes now slick with blood.
"What in the hells -" one of them gasped.
"Traps," Malwas snapped from behind them. "Watch your step, idiots. Probably set by whatever bandit scum is squatting here."
They advanced more slowly now, testing each stone before putting weight on it. Barjuchne watched from alcoves and shadowed corners, perfectly silent, perfectly still. They never once looked up to see her clinging to the ceiling, her powerful claws dug easily into the stone with enough force to allow her to traverse there like a lizard.
The knight stopped and then grabbed some of his men, shoving them forward. “Go,” he ordered.
The second trap caught the two of them almost immediately after when a tripwire released a cascade of rocks from above. One man died instantly, his skull crushed. The other crawled away, whimpering, until a third trap, a vine-swinging log hidden in the crevice, finished him.
Seven left.
"I said watch your step, you fools! Keep moving!" Malwas barked. He spat, looking at one of his dead men as he did so. “I’ll take my pound of flesh from her and that old weasel for putting me in this mess,” he swore in a mutter. He seemed more upset about the inconvenience than about the death. “Whoever finds her first can have what’s left of her when I’m done,” he snarled at the retinue.
The cave was deeper than it once was. If one had never been here before, they would never know. But Barjuchne was keenly aware of it. In the past days, the dungeon had been stretching and expanding itself, as if it were somehow aware of the need she had of it. The cave, which was once an open cavern against the mountain face, was now buried deep in the core behind a long, winding tunnel.
Barjuchne led them on without their knowledge, always just ahead, always unseen. She'd spent days preparing these defences, carving channels in the stone and rigging crude mechanisms with rope and counterweights. Veliah had helped, pointing out weak points and suggesting angles and ideas for traps that she had seen during her father’s travels. She had a sharp, cunning mind behind the facade. It seemed that she picked up a lot of odd skills as the daughter of a wandering merchant.
By the time Malwas reached the central chamber, only three soldiers remained at his back, and they looked ready to bolt. They would, but doing so would mean being hanged. Malwas himself was breathing hard, his armour dented and dirty, but his eyes burnt with what a fool would call determination, but a sharper man would recognise as wrath.
He stepped into the wide, circular room where Barjuchne's hoard glittered in the firelight from the braziers she'd placed around the perimeter. His eyes swept over the coins, the candlesticks, and the bolts of silk.
Then they landed on Veliah.
She stood back near the furthest wall of the cave. Her face went pale when she saw him.
"There you are," he said. His voice was soft now, almost gentle, but the candour of it simply didn’t fit with the look on his face and eyes. He seemed like a jackal, trying to coax a rabbit into coming out of its burrow. "Come here, darling. I’ve come to save you. It’s time to go home."
Veliah shook her head, pressing herself against the wall. "I'm not going with you."
"Yes," he said, sheathing his sword and crossing the room toward her with open arms. "You are. I paid your father good coin for you and I intend to get my money’s worth.”
"Stay away from me!" Veliah yelled, her voice shaking.
"Don't be foolish, girl. I've come all this way. Lost good men for your sake,” he said, scanning the area for her captor. “You're coming with me whether you -"
Approaching, he reached for her, his gauntleted hand closing around Veliah's wrist.
A shadow dropped from the ceiling in immediate response.
Barjuchne landed between them with enough force to crack the stone floor, her thin tail lashing behind her for balance. Malwas jerked backward in shock, his hand releasing Veliah as he stared at the slit-pupilled creature that had appeared from nowhere.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
For a moment, there was total silence.
Barjuchne straightened slowly, her eyes locked on his face. She was small compared to his broad, trained frame, barely coming up to his neck, but something in her gaze made his soldiers, at least, take an involuntary step back.
"What -" Malwas started.
The world turned red.
Barjuchne's vision narrowed to a single point: his hand, still extended from where it had touched what was hers. Her hoard. Her treasure. Her Veliah. The dragon instincts that usually purred quietly in the back of her mind roared to life, overwhelming every rational thought, every shred of hesitation, because he touched what was hers. Nobody touches anything of hers. This sin was worse than that of the intrusion itself.
She moved without thinking.
Her claws raked across his arm, screeching against the metal, and he jerked back with a shout of surprise. She lunged again, faster than anything her size should have been able to move, aiming for his throat. He brought his sword up just in time to block, but the force of her strike drove him backward across the chamber.
"It's a dragon!" one of his soldiers screamed. "A dragon! Look at it!"
"Impossible," Malwas gasped, staring at her with wide eyes. "Get in here you fools!” he yells at them. “Help m-”
She didn't let him finish.
She was on him again, her new strength making her movements blindingly fast. Her claws found the gap between his breastplate and pauldron, sliding through leather and into flesh. He screamed and swung wildly. The blade caught Barjuchne’s shoulder, drawing a line of blood, but she barely felt it in her frenzy. Barjuchne wasn’t even thinking tactically anymore; this was just pure animal instinct triggered by a dragon’s natural possessiveness of everything it collects.
She was as if possessed, mindless, feral.
After that glance that seemed to have hurt her, his soldiers tried to help, rushing forward with spears, but her thin tail whipped around and caught one across the ankle, tripping him to crash to the floor as she ducked past the spear. The other two hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, she twisted her body and drove her claws through Malwas's armour at the waist.
He staggered.
Somewhere behind her, Veliah was screaming, but the sound was distant, muffled by the roar of blood in her ears and the overwhelming need to destroy the thing that had dared touch her treasure.
The knight, gravely wounded, fell to one knee, blood pouring from the deep marks in his side. He looked up at her, his face pale, his eyes wide with something so rawly directed at her that she'd never seen it before from this close.
Terror.
"You… you bitch," he gasped, clutching his bleeding gashes desperately as he fell back and tried to crawl away, but his armour was too heavy to move in such a position. "How are you here?!" he asked, manically. “Dragons are all -!
She didn't answer or let him finish. Instead, she lunged like a predator onto a wounded animal and drove her claws directly into his chest, straight through the breastplate with ease, and through the ribs beneath with even less effort. His sword clattered to the floor. His remaining soldiers fled, their footsteps echoing back through the dungeon, disappearing into the trapped corridors beyond.
Malwas's mouth worked soundlessly. Blood bubbled at his lips. Then he went still.
Barjuchne pulled her claws free and stood over him, her chest heaving. Blood dripped from her hands. The red water was dark and warm. Without thinking, she instinctively brought one claw to her mouth and licked it clean.
The taste was of copper and burnt, savoury salt.
A window appeared in her vision, glowing softly. Before she could find the mind to read or interact with it, however, she finished what had begun.
The dragon girl lunged forward on all fours like a beast and chased down the last two intruders, catching one of them in her pursuit. The other one escaped the dungeon, the last of a dozen. As he fled, the rickety warning at the cave’s entrance sign fell over.
Barjuchne stood on all fours at the edge of the cave, roaring after him as he vanished into the thickets. A blast of fire lashed out on his trail.
A second system window followed.
Panting and catching her breath, her mindfulness slowly returned to her. Quietly, Barjuchne rose back upright onto two feet. Her eyes glanced toward the system windows.
After a moment of thought, she decided to take the growth for her tail. It would offer mobility and balance. Her thin, impish tail had saved her during the fight just now. It would be wise to enhance that capability, giving herself another weapon beyond her fangs and claws.
Heat flooded through her body, concentrating at the base of her spine. The sensation was intense, almost painful, and she doubled over as her bones cracked and reformed. Her tail lengthened and thickened significantly, the vertebrae multiplying and strengthening. Scales spread along its length, harder than the ones on her arms, ridged and sharp-edged. It grew until it was thick and as long as she was tall, heavy and powerful, tapering to a pointed tip. The easily dozens of kilograms heavy tail dropped down to the stone floor of the cave with a loud, dust-shaking thud. Before, it was the width of a stick. Now it is as thick as a tree’s trunk.
When the transformation finished, she straightened and flexed the new appendage experimentally, trying to move it. It was heavy, very heavy. But it moved with precision, responding to her thoughts as naturally as her hands did, much more readily than the old one had. She could balance on it, use it to strike, and wrap it around things.
Looking to her side, she whipped the entrance to the cave with it. The mountainside shook, fragments of obsidian glass spraying outward from the gate she shattered in half with the power of a single strike, pelting the ground below the cave’s entrance with black shrapnel fragments.
This was great.
As her rage settled, she made her way back into the core of the den, seeing the elven girl looking over the mortally wounded knight from afar. He had been pleading with her to help him, but the elf kept her distance.
Barjuchne stood over him.
His blood was pooling across the stone floor. His mouth hung open, frozen in his final moment of shock. He tried to speak, one last rattling breath escaping his lips. "They'll… come for you. Others- Others will -" he sputtered.
And then he was gone.
Barjuchne stared down at him for a long moment. Then she turned away.
Veliah stood pressed against the wall, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears. She was trembling.
Glowing, reptilian eyes looked her way and Veliah flinched in fear of her. Barjuchne's heart clenched as she saw the elf’s frightened face, looking her way in terror. "...Are you hurt?" demanded Barjuchne’s voice, which came out hoarse at first. She roughly grabbed Veliah’s wrist, closely examining it as if it might have been marked or dirtied.
Trembling, Veliah shook her head.
Barjuchne nodded. She wanted to say something reassuring. Something kind. But the words wouldn't come, and the silence stretched between them.
“Are you scared of me?” asked Barjuchne, realising that her blood-covered claws were leaving smears of red along Veliah’s arm. It was the paint of her victims. The dragon girl let the elf go and stepped back and away.
It was quiet.
She’d never killed a person before, let alone multiple. Barjuchne felt as if she should feel something human about this, like remorse or guilt. But instead she just feels… nothing. If anything, seeing the scared look on the elf’s face wounded her more than anything. She wasn’t sure if that made sense.
The silence stretched on for just a moment longer. “...Y- Yes,” replied the elf then, honestly.
The two of them stared at each other. Then, Barjuchne silently looked away, back down toward the dead man at her feet.
Somewhere in the cave, water drips from the ceiling. “Sorry,” apologised Barjuchne, narrowing her eyes as she studies the dead knight. “I guess I really am a monster. You were right the other day to call me one.”
But then Veliah stepped forward. She crossed the blood-stained floor, her bare feet leaving small prints in the red, and stopped in front of Barjuchne. Slowly, carefully, she reached out and put a shaking hand on Barjuchne’s back.
“I… I asked you to do this,” replied the elven girl. “I owe you my life. This man… I wouldn’t have lasted a year if he took me. I’ve heard the stories,” she explained. Barjuchne turned her head, looking back over her shoulder at Veliah. “He’s had wives before and bad… Really bad things happened to all of them,” she explained quietly, her long ears drooping. "Thank you," she whispered in a small voice. “For being a monster for my sake,” she finished.
Veliah's expression softened, and the two of them looked at each other for a time.
The elf didn't let her palm slide away from Barjuchne’s shoulder it was holding. “I like your new tail,” said Veliah awkwardly, perhaps trying to change the topic, looking down at the massive tail slumped down between her feet as she stands behind the dragon girl. “It’s very…” she starts.
Barjuchne lifts it, the featherweight Veliah easily rising high up into the air on it with a surprised yelp as it is strong enough to lift her into the air.
It took hours to clean up the bodies. Carrying them outside wasn’t so hard. But dealing with the crushed ones was… gruesome.
They left a mess and she handled it by herself despite an offer to assist from Veliah. In Barjuchne’s mind, the elf was perhaps well-travelled, but she still didn’t need to see that.
She herself was entirely unfazed by the sight of spilt organs, crushed limbs, and flattened skulls jutting with broken, jagged teeth. It was simply the nature of a dragon to not be bothered by such sights in the least. So she took advantage of that gift.
Barjuchne dragged them outside one by one, her new tail helping with balance and leverage as she moved through the half-collapsed primary tunnel. She buried them in shallow graves far from the cave entrance, working in silence while Veliah watched from the gateway.
When she finished, Barjuchne returned to the central chamber and began sorting through Malwas's belongings.
His armour was worth a fortune. It was high-grade steel and reinforced with protective wards that did him little good in the end against a dragon’s claws. Perhaps it was meant to ward off more conventional threats. His sword was similarly valuable, the blade etched with runes that glowed faintly in the dark. Perhaps it was some sort of magical enchantment? Barjuchne was unsure. Oh well. She liked the way it shone in the dark. It satisfied a reptile need in her heart, seeing it shining. The dragon added them to her hoard, arranging them carefully among the coins and silk.
A new pair of windows appeared.
That was two of her three latest quest objectives complete, she still had twenty days to spare for the last one.
It was much later.
Night fell over the mountain, and the cave had grown quiet. Barjuchne sat at the mouth of the obsidian gateway, her new tail coiled around her legs, staring out at the forest. Veliah sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
The night air carried a faint, sharp smell up from somewhere deep in the rock beneath them, sulphurous and odd. Bartjuchne had noticed it before but never thought much of it. Something pressurised and volatile, sleeping in the dark below the gate. Her dragon instincts flagged it as interesting rather than dangerous.
Likely, there was some pocket of natural gas trapped within the mountain stone that had been released because of the damages to the cave.
"He was right, though. Others will come," Veliah said softly, as if afraid to speak with her natural volume. Barjuchne can tell that what Veliah saw happen before had shaken her. Veliah was trying to stay calm and natural, but it was the instinct of the elf’s own body that she herself was fighting to just stay near something as dangerous as Barjuchne was. Assuredly, there was a constant voice in Veliah’s mind telling her she’d be next. “He was a beast, but he was still a titled knight. People will know he’s missing.”
"I know."
"His lord. He'll want to know what happened to his knight," explained Veliah.
"Let him."
Veliah was quiet for a moment. "Aren’t you afraid?"
Barjuchne considered the question. She should be afraid. Even if she didn’t yet understand the workings of this world, her human side still remembered enough to know that she just caused a real splash in whatever pond she had landed in. She'd made herself a target. But when she searched inside herself, all she found was a cold, sharp-edged certainty.
"No," she replied, earnestly.
Nothing was said for a time as they sat and watched the night. Then, after what must have been an internal struggle of some proportion, Veliah leaned her head against Barjuchne's shoulder.
They sat there in silence, observing the stars appear one by one in the darkening sky that had come to cover the world once more.
In her cave, surrounded by her hoard and her first true treasure, Barjuchne waited. The two of them looked out from the mountain over the landscape at the distant glowing lantern and hearth lights sparsely spread out between the forests and hills.
Let them all come. Hunters, soldiers, knights, and even kings. It didn’t matter to her.
She would be ready.
“Random question. Just out of curiosity,” started Barjuchne, glancing toward Veliah. “Which of those villages out there do you like the least?” asked the dragon girl, doing her best to seem inconspicuous.
“…Huh?”
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