Chapter 35: Making Peace (Patreon)

So. I wasn’t sure, but I had a pretty strong feeling that sleeping on my hoard helped me heal. That… was useful information.

It was like when Makanna had healed me. Last time I slept most of my injuries had gotten better, and I’d become very, very hungry. Now I’d just eaten a big chunk of a goat, gone in for a nap, and I felt just fine, but hungry. That seemed pretty conclusive to me!

It also seemed to knock me out for as long as necessary. When I left the cave this time it was, again, not long after sunset. I stretched and flexed my wings, and they felt stiff from not being used properly for a while but otherwise really good. A few careful practice runs from the end of the ledge to the cave opening confirmed that yes, I could my right wing without any pain. The relief was incredible. I had missed flying so much! Yes, I had been very proud of my accomplishment in getting home on foot, but walking was stupid. From now on I was going to fly everywhere I possibly could, which, to be fair, was what I’d been doing until I busted my wing.

I celebrated by flying over to the remains of the goat. It was slightly bird-pecked and beginning to get a little ripe. Not enough to put me off, though. I told myself that it was just “aged”, tried to put away my human prejudices, and tucked in.

I finished off about a quarter of the animal and then, again with great difficulty, I stopped myself. The dragon was no less disappointed than before, and I figured I’d have to make it up to her sometime that I didn’t have things to do.

I thought about bringing the rest of my meal back to the cave, but since it was sometimes days before I got back I decided against it. The idea of coming home to a rotting goat stinking up the place was too much, even if the dragon probably wouldn’t mind. She was gross like that, and I still had some limits to what I’d put up with.

After filling up on water at the spring and taking care of necessities elsewhere, I went up and enjoyed the simple pleasure of flying for a little while. Not for too long, though. First I had some humans to creep on for the sake of my own curiosity and amusement, and then I needed to check the lake. I missed my friends. Friend. I missed Herald.

Confident that I wouldn’t be spotted against the night sky, even as full of bright stars as it was, I flew south along the hills. It only took a minute or two before I spotted the angular notch cut into the stone where the camp had been, and I set down about a hundred metres – or yards, I guess – south of it, then walked back towards it quite casually, confident in my ability to blend into the darkness.

The camp was right where I had left it. It must have been two days or more since I was here, and it did look a little rougher. There was more equipment lying around, and clothes were hanging to dry on a rope strung between two trees. A different man was sitting guard than the first time, completely bald and with no facial hair. He was no better at spotting me than his predecessor.

It looked like they were settling in for the long haul, and I wondered how they’d handle food. I hadn’t seen any signs of them hunting. Were they having supplies delivered? Would there be more people wandering about, clueless to the fact that they were on the porch of a mighty dragon? Only time would tell, and as long as they didn’t bring a bunch of adventurers or monster hunters to my doorstep it didn’t make any real difference.

They had gotten a lot of work done on their hole. If the gate here was the same size as the two others I had seen, I’d say that they were halfway down. It looked like they had put a lot of effort into digging out the walls, which were clear and clean for several yards to each side of the recess the gate sat in.

I was pretty sure that these people were archaeologists, or at least scholars of some kind. It was the way the hole was dug. The walls were clear, clean, and more importantly, completely undamaged. There were no fresh scars that I could see on the stone, where a pick or a shovel had chipped it. These people hadn’t just been digging. They had been carefully excavating the gate and the area around it. Looking for what, though? Murals or rock carvings? If they were looking for the gate, wouldn’t they have dug that out first? Unless they had no idea what they’d found. Herald had been shocked at my ability to see magic, so perhaps all they saw was a flat stone surface set into the mountain wall.

These people had me very, very curious. I wanted to know what they were here for, and how they’d known to dig here. Beyond that I was excited to see what was inside that gate. It led into my mountain, after all. I wondered if they knew. Really, I wanted to have a conversation with them, but it was hard to guess how big of a risk that would be. There was apparently a bounty on me, and I had no good way of knowing who might try to cash in on it. There was no point in pushing fate, and I would really rather not have to kill these people just because I was curious about what they knew.

The more I waited, the more obvious it became that there was no point in hanging around. Nothing was happening. Maybe I could see how many of them there were, if they each took a shift on guard duty, but I could just as easily come back during the day when they’d be working. So I left the lone guard staring into the darkness, and took off into the night sky.

Above the trees it was just me and the lights of the night. I had the moon ahead of me to the east, and the sky above, almost free of clouds, was so full of stars that it was nearly dazzling. I hadn’t paid much attention to the night sky, either before or since I came here, but that night I couldn’t tear my eyes from it. There were no city lights here, and together with my superior night vision I could see more stars than I had ever imagined existed. Or maybe there actually were more stars here. Maybe the stars were all different than the ones I’d grown up with. They might be. I’d never been good with constellations beyond Orion or the Big Dipper, and while I couldn’t see either I also couldn’t really tell if the stars looked right or not. All I could tell was that they were beautiful.

When I arrived at the lake there was no one there. Not a single lonely tent stood in the campground, and no one waited beneath the tree. But there was a note! In the same place as the first note Herald had left me, stuck with a silver pin, was a piece of paper or papyrus or whatever it was that they used. Only this time it didn’t have any weird letters on it. Instead it was divided into three sections.

The one on the right had a crude map of the area, with the city, the coast, the mountains, the road, and the lake. Arrows travelled along the road to the lake. Above the map was one horizontal line.

The centre section had two simple drawings. The sun behind the water, then an arcing arrow pointing to the sun behind the mountains. This repeated once below. Two days, I guessed. Above all of this were two horizontal lines, one on top of the other.

The section on the left, unsurprisingly marked with three stacked lines, had a drawing of a tent with a fire outside.

The message, if I interpreted it right, was pretty clear. We’ll come from the city in two days, and we’re staying.

Something struck me then, sitting by the calm lake, under a sky full of stars and in the silence of the cool night air. I had a safe home, and a reliable source of food and water. I had my hoard, which helped me recover both in body and in mind. My last several weeks had been full of pain and anger, sure, but most of all there had been almost constant excitement in one form or another. And I had friends and acquaintances who, to various degrees, wanted me around. Enough that they’d come here and wait for me.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I wondered if this all was real, or just a figment of my dying or damaged brain. I still had no idea what had happened, how I’d got here, but of course this was real. It was as real as anything I’d ever experienced, except that I didn’t have to worry about work hours or paying taxes or global warming or any of that bullshit anymore. I had a home, which needed some work, sure, but it was mine. I could sneak and I could hunt, and feeding myself was no longer an issue. I could fight off almost anything I’d come across so far. I could do fucking magic.

I could fly.

Above all, I wasn’t just surviving any more. I had, in every way that mattered, an actual life. I had one close friend, which was more than you could say for a lot of people and more than I’d expected, and other than her I had a handful of friendly acquaintances. And I realised, in that moment, that I was happy. Not for any specific, short term reason, but because I just felt generally good about myself and my situation. I was here to stay, and I liked it.

At that realisation, a part of me bubbled with excitement. I was going to see my friends again. Of course I had no idea when they’d left the note, but the paper looked alright. It might be tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. But they’d be here, and I would not disappoint them again. They trusted and wanted me to show up, and this time I would.

However long it took, when they got there, I would meet them. And it was going to be awesome.

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Note on the 7th September 2023: This is an updated version of the chapter, originally published here on 11th August. I agree with some comments I've received that the original ending of this chapter was a little confusing considering the following two chapters. Hopefully this version avoids that.

Original Notes from 11th August below:

Post-chapter notes: Well folks, this is a short one, and I'm considering adding to it, but it is also what I consider the end of part one of the story. Not in the sense of being a turning point in the plot, per se, or the end of an arc, but in the sense that Draka is pretty much settled in and is getting familiar with herself and the world around her.

The story to this point consists of 35 chapters and just over 105200 words. That's about 70000 more than I've ever written on a single story before, and part two is rapidly approaching 30000 words.

Today, Friday the 11th of August, also marks one week since I launched this Patreon, and I'm baffled in the best kind of way that 28 of you have chosen to sign up. It's extremely flattering. You're all awesome. Much love, and thank you all!

We're continuing as usual on Monday, with something I've been asked for and decided to try out: Part two starts with an interlude chapter, from Herald's (though in third person) POV.

See you then, and thank you for all of your support.

//AB