Dragon's Tale 80 (Patreon)

“Good morning,” I answered even as I gazed toward the woman that had forced me to take such a dangerous risk of infiltrating such a well-defended location. 

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t tempted to teach her just how bad of an idea was to blackmail me to the point of forcing me to take such a big risk, but her power, radiating with overwhelming strength despite its soft nature made such a path foolish. 

Not because I was afraid of her in a battle. With the soft feeling of her magic suggesting that she wasn’t exactly geared for combat, I was confident that I could defeat her in a few seconds. With my developing skills, I was confident that I could take down any other sorcerer in a fair fight. 

The months I had spent increasing my control and magical expertise in such a suffocating location, hunting ethereal beasts and combating disaster beasts more than once was not garbage. The days that I had to risk everything for a deadly gambit even in an environment that heavily favored me to even have a fighting chance against a sorcerer were long gone. 

Yet, combat was not an option even if my assumption was correct, and I could take her down in just a couple of seconds. A magical battle, even between two ordinary mages, would have triggered the wards. Between two sorcerers… 

The word spectacle would have been inadequate. 

And with the immediate solution that would have been provided by violence gone, I turned my attention to the smug expression of the foreign sorceress and her environment, trying to decide on the best way to open that discussion.  

My first focus was her room, furnished opulently. A huge, four-poster bed stood on the corner, the sheets giving the unique shine of silk. A magical variant, even, radiating a subtle sense of mana, while the bedpost had quite a generous amount of silver decorations on its dark mahogany surface, turning it into a beautiful spectacle. 

The rest of the room was decorated no less opulently. Comprehensively, the decor was even more impressive than the guest rooms I had been visiting for the latter half of the night, occupied by the other nobles. The dress she was wearing, a long, flowing silk nightie, just reinforced the impression of noble decadence further. 

The only exception was a desk, and not due to its expensive nature. It was filled with a careless pile of papers, some crumbled, some piling high enough to create a hazard. 

Not that it changed one important thing. The thick wards around the room, along with the rest of the security measures, told one inevitable fact. She was a prisoner, one that was treated nicely, but a prisoner nonetheless. 

“So, are you here for another healing session?” she said, her lips quirked in amusement. A beautiful sight, and her soft, slight accent, accentuated the words in a manner I wasn’t familiar with. “You should be more careful about venomous monsters.”  

“Maybe,” I answered, unable to prevent a matching smile from appearing on my lips. Being blackmailed was not fun, but, I had to admit, if I was going to be blackmailed, sexy exotic beauty with a sense of humor — and daring required to use it against a potentially hostile sorcerer — was not the worst option.

I could imagine much worse deals. 

Of course, from her relaxed attitude, it was clear that she didn’t miss the significance of my presence. If I wasn’t interested in cooperating with her — even if that was under her implied threat — I would have just abandoned the city rather than going all the required effort to sneak into her room. 

Once again, I let the silence stretch as I looked at her foreign beauty, appreciating the contrast between her black hair and fair skin, before peering into her eyes, their sharper angles adding a subtle sense of danger to her look — not that I needed their warning. 

Not with the magic radiating off her casually, still impressive despite its soft nature. 

I waited for her to say anything else, opening with her requests and needs. It was a simple negotiating trick. In any deal, information always meant power, and speaking first meant giving up some of that power. Deliberate silence was a way to leverage that, because most people reflexively tried to fill that silence, which made them reveal their needs and requests. 

However, as the silence stretched, a small smile appeared on her lips, showing that she was not inexperienced enough to fall for that trick. If the circumstances were different, I might have tested her patience for several minutes, but considering I was the one under the immediate time pressure, it was hardly the most viable strategy. 

I had no choice but to start our negotiations from a point of disadvantage. And just to rub vinegar to my wound, it was against a literal prisoner. 

How fun. 

“I’m guessing you’re going to ask for your freedom to cooperate,” I asked. 

“No,” she said, though her smile suggested it was just a part of her counterargument rather than a categoric rejection of our deal. “That’s the price for keeping my mouth shut about your little secret,” she answered. 

“That’s not a bad deal,” I answered, as her silence about my secrets was the only thing I needed from her. As much as being a healer was convenient, I was not exactly incompetent in that aspect. 

“Oh, really, heretic,” she said, the last word with a suspicious emphasis. I had no idea why she called me a heretic, nor did she feels it was a relevant part of our discussion. I just assumed it was about her land of origin and their beliefs. 

Then, I noticed she was looking at a particular location in my body as she said so. The center of my chest, where my sorcerer core was located. If it just had been just that, I might have also assumed it was just about my identity as a sorcerer, but her gaze slipped to my right arm immediately after. 

The arm that was currently going through a transformation under the effects of the Dragon’s Heart continued to plague me. 

“I see,” I murmured. I could have acted stupid, but clearly, she had not only recognized what I had done to myself — which didn’t surprise me as she had easily detected it during her healing attempts — but also the long-term implications and my inability to stop it. I had no idea why that made her call me a heretic, but that part, I let slide. I had bigger problems than that. “And you can help me with that.” 

That question, she didn’t give an answer. At least, not with her words. Instead, she flicked a finger, and a pile of paper floated off her desk, and hit the floor in front of me. 

I froze as I looked at the contents of it, as each piece of paper was filled with information about dragon hearts. “I see,” I murmured with a sigh as I cycled through some of the papers, trying to absorb the content of the papers. 

It was a veritable treasure of information, the kind that surpassed the scraps of information that I managed to find in Olivia’s private library. Some of those papers were old, their smell suggesting that their age was easily measured in centuries, each containing information about dragon hearts. Some were just legends and basic theories, the kind I was able to find in the library, only more detailed. 

Some papers were much more detailed, giving a much more detailed breakdown of the possible ways of using them, their potential side effects, other dangers, and even some theories about their origins, though there was nothing conclusive about the last aspect.

Yet, their value was nothing compared to the other half of the papers, the ones that lacked the acrid smell of ancient parchment. Some of them were filled with research comparing various theories about dragon hearts, from their origin to their impact, trying to understand which ancient source had the necessary reliability, each sentence more precious than gold for me. 

However, even those couldn’t be compared to some of the other papers, filled with experimental notes about the effects and destructive impact of dragon hearts on ordinary people and mages, with some theoretical calculations of how it might be extrapolated to sorcerers. 

Unfortunately, unlike the others, those experimental notes were useless to me. Not because the information that was contained was useless to me, but because I lacked the necessary expertise to understand their intricacies. It required a true master of healing arts of understanding them. 

… or write them in the first place, I thought. I didn’t miss the fact that every single of those new notes was written by the same hand. Soft, gentle writing, with a beauty that I had never seen in simple writing, each letter soft, yet carrying a surprising sense of presence. 

A familiar sensation, I thought as I glanced at the sorceress that was blackmailing me, before glancing at her desk, a half-written paper with a brush next to it enough to confirm she was the author. 

How interesting. No wonder it took only seconds for her to not only discover my deepest secret, but also understand the full implications of the Dragon Heart I carried in my core. 

“What is your decision, heretic?” she asked after a minute, and I glanced at her, unable to hide my sigh, preparing for negotiation in that I was the losing party for the first time.