Dragon's Tale 9 (Patreon)

The realization that I had been cockblocked by the sudden involvement of a third party had been annoying even before I realized that the sudden brightness was a fireball that was directly aimed at us. And that wasn’t the only distraction I was feeling, because my new set of instincts roared angrily once more, pushing me to punish the fools that dared to distract me in such an intimate moment. 

For once, I was in full agreement. 

My first thought was to throw a shield up to block the assault, but that plan was ruined by my magic itself, transforming into a sharp and crackly form, extremely unsuitable to form a shield, but excellent for offensive purposes. Transforming it back would have taken even longer. Since my own magic decided to cut me from the defensive strategy, I chose to shape my magic into a penetrating bolt of silvery energy, carefully aiming so that it would pass through the center of the fireball before continuing towards the ship, hoping that it would destabilize the other spell enough to make it harmless. 

I couldn’t help but feel despair when the spell left my hand, because the bolt had come out wrong. It was supposed to be bright silver, crackling with occasional bolts of lightning as it failed to contain its energy. Instead, an anemic ray of crimson left my hand, its surface flickering with ambers. 

The spell had failed, I realized in horror. It was probably due to my unfamiliarity with the changes in my magic, though its forceful transformation definitely hadn’t helped. I couldn’t help but lament as I prepared to grab Lillian and jump into the water. My magic was much stronger, but also much harder to control. 

Not to mention it was almost like it had a mind of its own… 

Lillian turned to me when I grabbed her shoulder, a shocked expression on her face. I didn’t feel like blaming her, as the shift from a heated embrace to a heated skirmish happened too quickly. But before I could drag her into the water, something shocking happened. My poorly-formed attack spell passed through the fireball, and the fireball just collapsed into embers and dissipated while my crimson bolt continued its destination, shining even brighter than the first time. 

I could see Lillian’s face filled with fascination as she turned to me. I relied on my acting skills -sharpened during my time at the school- to reflect pure confidence like I was expecting that to happen all along, but inwardly, I was truly shocked. After hours I had spent trying to get just a rudimentary control over my magic, I knew it was stronger, but effortlessly destroying a fireball with a malformed, anemic spell was well above my wildest expectations. 

In my shock, instead of preparing another spell, I idly watched as the crimson bolt exploded violently against a shield, draining a decent amount of energy from it. Under the bright lights of the explosion, I could see that my target was a longship, a small but nimble ship that was preferred by raiders and pirates alike. 

Taking down a longship along with its crew was doable even with the extremely fragile boat I was currently occupying. However, the brightness of the explosion revealed five longships around the first one, making it an extremely dangerous fight to take, especially with my magic acting out unpredictably. I waved my hand to summon a shield. My magic resisted me once more, but this time, I was prepared for the struggle for dominance, and after a moment of meditation, a shield appeared between us and the ships, just in time to catch several enchanted scorpion bolts and a few lightning bolts before they could hit the ship. 

The only good thing about the ambush was their direction of approach, allowing us an angle we could follow towards the shore. “Take the controls and move to the shore at full speed,” I ordered to Lillian. She nodded and jumped to her feet, though I couldn’t resist the temptation to slap her bottom playfully, my other hand still raised to maintain the shield. 

Our boat started to cut through the water violently once more, this time followed by six longboats. “Full power ahead,” I ordered her when I noticed the distance between us was closing at a dangerous speed. Not all of them, thankfully, but two of the boats were noticeably faster than the others. Clearly, my boat wasn’t the only enchanted one, and I doubted that they were constructed over an afternoon. 

But there was one advantage of shoddy construction philosophy, and I wanted to use it to its limits. “Do you remember my warning about pushing too much magic to the central rune,” I asked Lillian. 

“Yes,” she answered alarmedly. “I remember you mentioning never to do that because it would explode!” 

“Not would, might,” I corrected her, and received an incredulous glare in return when she realized what I was driving at. 

“How likely is the explosion?” she asked, her eyes tightened suspiciously even as she looked at me, ignoring the flares of magic around us as the bombardment of spells were stopped by my shield. At that moment, I couldn’t help but gaze at her beauty. She was even more attractive when she stood strong while spells rained around her. Also, her trust in my strength was interesting. She didn’t even blink, completely sure that the spell would hold. 

“Well, around five percent…” I said, and she relaxed for a moment, “for each minute,” I added, and her expression turned into fury. “Don’t worry. It’ll give clear signs before the explosion, and we’ll have around ten seconds to jump into the water. We’ll almost certainly survive.” 

Her gaze danced between me and the two longboats that were closing in before she let out a resigned sigh, and our boat picked up speed. With that done, I turned my attention back to the shield, the onslaught of spells and arrows too thick for me to risk a counterattack, especially with the aggressive pressure of my magic. I was afraid that if I dispelled my shield, I wouldn’t be able to form another one. 

We escaped, and the longboats followed. The two faster ones were quick enough to maintain the distance, but the other four soon disappeared in the horizon. Luckily, the boat continued to work for almost twenty minutes, bringing us to the visual range of the shore, before I felt the build-up of magic. It was a subtle thing, impossible to notice if I hadn’t been looking for it. It would be impossible to miss in around six seconds, but that wouldn’t have given us sufficient time. I didn’t bother to warn Lillian. Instead, I wrapped my arm around her when I jumped into the water, earning a shocked cry as she was hugged by the icy waters of the midnight sea. 

While she sputtered, I used a spell I had prepared beforehand to push the boat back, directly in the way of the closest boat, and just as it was about to glow unstably, I dissolved half of the shield around it. It still blocked our direct reach to the glass boat, but the same couldn’t be said for the longboat. Panicked cries rose from the raiders as they attacked the boat with a renewed assault, but that only quickened its explosion. 

I pulled Lillian underwater to avoid the sudden wave of heat. When we pulled out, we could see the burning wreck of a boat, while the other was closing the distance to help the injured. “Swim,” I ordered Lillian and started swimming after her, for once, my attention was not focused on the amazing sight of her behind. I wanted to be prepared to attack in case the lightly-damaged longboat decided that catching us was more important than their unconscious friends that would either drown or bleed out without their attention. 

Luckily, they decided to value their friends over revenge or whatever aim they had, because their route stayed focused on the damaged longboat, the long-range spells they threw to me side splashing against my shield ineffectively. 

A few minutes later, Lillian and I stepped on the shore, out of breath after our frantic swimming. Unfortunately, our escape was not yet over. “Run,” I said as we dashed forward. To her credit, she ignored the stones digging into her soles as we ran away. We hurried, because I had no doubt that the raiders would continue to follow us to the mainland. I knew about the criminal world enough that if the leader of the force let us go after we destroyed one of the boats and killed so many of their crew, their reputation would never survive. It was likely the captain wouldn’t as well, Mutiny was always a danger at sea. 

We only slowed down after we stepped into a sparse woodland, but it was enough to block us from the sight of the ships in the distance. They weren’t immediately after our trail, so we had a few minutes to rest. Unfortunately, they had a good point not to hurry up. We had nothing. I would have liked to say we only had our clothes, but even those were lacking, as I had forgotten to grab my pants during the latest stage of our frantic escape. 

“That was something,” Lillian murmured as she leaned about a tree, the exhaustion of the last burst of effort mixing with the earlier strain of magically overcharging the boat. Then, she looked at me, her expression an interesting mix of frustration and fascination. “How the hell are you not anything more than an exhausted pile right now?!” 

She had a point with her shocked outrage. Overcharging the boat was exhausting, true, but it was nothing compared to maintaining a shield around the said boat while under an uninterrupted rain of spells and arrows. None of the mages on the assault force was exceptional, but there were more than a dozen of them. Before the dragon heart, I didn’t think I would be able to resist such an assault for more than a minute, two if I was being extremely generous. But now, even after an extended battle, I was still fresh enough to repeat it, something my instincts were begging me to do. 

And if it was just the remaining boat, I might have actually tried to do so, but I hadn’t forgotten the four other boats following us, and my handle over my changed magic wasn’t good enough to bet on destroying one boat before the others caught up. “I told you I’m strong, didn’t I?” I said, playing my achievement off to Lillian. 

“Yes, you did,” she said as she took a step forward and put her hand on my shoulder. It would have been a simple move if it wasn’t for the fact that she was completely naked, which added a very thick sensual energy to the move, especially when rather than pulling her hand away, she chose to drag her finger down, tracing my biceps. 

I was tempted to push her down and take her there, but unfortunately, we were still in danger. “We need to move,” I said as I caressed her back with an equal suggestiveness, clearly communicating my interest — not that it was needed after the events interrupted by the attack. We trekked deeper into the unfamiliar forest in silence, trying to conserve our breath, more relevant to Lillian than me, because of her unfamiliarity with such intense effort. Her nakedness didn’t help, forcing her to use magic much more than necessary. I stayed behind her to make sure our tracks were hard to find, though the way her naked ass swayed was always a nice bonus. 

Lillian was relaxed as we moved further, but the deeper we moved, the more stressed I started to feel. The reason for that was the suspicious silence around our immediate surroundings. At first, I was alert, afraid of an ambush, but the silence continued even as we continued to move forward, and when I asked Lillian to cast detection spells, she failed to find anything suspicious. I had no choice but to wait, because, with my current control, anything other than blunt combat spells was impossible to cast. 

It took us several hours to find a small cave with a convenient spring. Thanks to magic, it wasn’t impossible to gather water from the plants or condense it from the air, but a source meant that we had an abundance we could use for bathing and other purposes, especially important since we couldn’t distill salt water this far away from the shore. “Finally,” Lillian moaned as she stood next to the spring, stopping only enough to cast a healing spell to fix the wounds that she had accumulated on her feet during the trek, then slipped into the water. 

I followed her immediately, as I didn’t need any healing spells. During the trek, I noticed that one of the changes my body acquired was a slight regeneration, nothing that would work in combat, but perfect against scratches and other small wounds. “That was a difficult journey,” I said even as I dipped my hand in the water and grabbed her foot, gently pulling it on my lap before pressing my thumb on her soles. After her impressive performance and lack of protest, she deserved a reward. 

“It was, but you handled yourself rather well,” she murmured as she leaned back, her breasts hidden under the shimmering surface. She tried to look nonchalant, but she failed to hide the fascination hidden behind her eyes. Understandable, as I was no less shocked by my own performance. The power I was able to display was unbelievable. It was a pity that I lost my versatility, because if it wasn’t for that, I would have returned to the family estate for a frank discussion with my uncle. 

“It’s the result of a secret family technique, too bad that it ruins my control. I have to train myself from scratch,” I explained, giving her some details about my status. With the raiders following us, her having a cursory understanding of my status would help. Naturally, I didn’t share my doubts about the possible permanency of the situation. 

“Lucky for us that you have that, then,” she said with a soft smile, more relaxed due to the distant danger. “I don’t think a full company of guards would have protected me with this level of effectiveness.” The fact that she was here with me was the evidence for that, but I chose not to mention it. It would have been in bad taste. 

“Speaking of your family, we need to talk about the beacon,” I said, not looking forward to sharing my suspicions with her. 

“What about it? Didn’t it get destroyed in the explosion?” I nodded, and she continued. “Don’t worry about it, I can build a new one easily. I just need to rest a bit.” 

“Actually, I don’t want you to build a new one, not for a while, at least,” I explained. 

“What, why?!” she asked, surprised. 

I sighed. “I don’t think it was an accident that raiders managed to find us in the middle of the sea, especially without a blockade where they spread wide. Combine that with the ease the kidnapping happened, it became rather likely that the pirates somehow cracked your communications.” 

“But how!” she said in shock. 

I shrugged. “Long-distance communication is never completely safe. It’s not something that could be casually broken by a pirate, but by now, it’s clear that that captain is no ordinary pirate,” I explained. She looked like she was about to cut me off, but I gestured for her to wait. “Testing it is rather easy. After resting, let’s create a beacon away from here, and put it in a location where we can set up an ambush. If they don’t come, it shows that we can communicate safely. If not, we’ll get rid of some of our followers,” I explained. 

She nodded, but her dissatisfied expression showed that she was clearly unsatisfied with the resolution. I shrugged, and focused on the soles of her feet, trying to get her in the mood once more. She owed me a blowjob, and I intended to collect it with interest…