A Benevolent Evil Dragon

Months have passed since that horrible mistake she had made. The taunting, reprimands and especially the jokes continued, though less than in that first day. Most divines went about their days, following their own interests, but she was still in the sights of many. Even though she had fumbled it hard, there was still a very potent soul with no chains somewhere in her piece of the world. Certainly it was not only hers, but there were only four other proper gods focused only on this piece of land, one of which was her sister.

“ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING!?” Thundered her sister. Rirshka loved her sister most of the time. Sadly, since her failure with that strange soul, Rahena has been particularly angry… All the time. She could only let out a heavy sigh as the armored woman scorched the marble table they were sitting around, leaving deep cracks in it. Lightning danced erratically, agitated by Rahena’s wrath.

“DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND? With a champion of our own we could’ve already united the humans! First on this continent, then in a year we would have gathered most human civilizations under our mantle! Do you even understand how easy it would’ve been to take over from other lessers with a free champion? MOST GODS TAKE MILLENIA BEFORE BEING ABLE TO AFFORD THE COSTS TO BRING ONE OVER! AND WE HAD ONE FALL IN OUR HANDS! The eastern beastly spirits? The Obsidian Titan? That flaming bastard and his cohort? None of them could deny our claim if we had a proper champion at our beck and call. None of them could stand a chance with how our power would soar… AND YOU HAD TO DROP IT!”

It has been like that since the first day. Coming in, throwing a tantrum, leaving, then coming back a few hours after. At least she got two week breaks every so often, when the empire would war with the eastern barbarians, or the nearby kingdoms, or the independent lords, or all at once.

Still, she wished her sister would just stop. She has enough reminders about her blunder. Ceaselessly she scratches at the meaningless words burnt into her fingertips. She had erased her hand and reformed it, yet still the burns remained. She was branded by her failure, by the wrath and spite of the soul she mocked to amuse those opportunistic rats called gods. She didn’t know how or if she would ever be able to rid herself of these scars… these painful reminders that hurt deeper than anything her sister uttered.

She lets her sister’s speech and the pain from her fingers melt into the background, instead looking through her priests. After they had failed to feel a disturbance in their newborn followers, no soul having been pushed out or destroyed to make room for this new one, she had given the order to seek any child born on that particular day and to investigate them, whether within her borders or away from them. Sadly only her highest priests could even perceive souls, meaning that she had about six worshippers that needed to investigate thousands of people scattered throughout the land. Simply put, it was impossible. That is why she had ordered the lesser clergy to investigate in a more mundane way. Swift growth, unexplained affinity for magic, reactions to words that people of this world would not even understand. Anything to just narrow down the numbers… and even that was unlikely to give results.

Her sister left in a huff, once again resulting in Rirshka being alone. Once again she would break down. Once again she would piece herself back up and continue searching. She had her sister and the red sun looking over her shoulder every so often, each time becoming more and more aggravated by her continued failure to find this mortal. By now she had resigned herself to what The Harvester said. She… well, they would get that soul eventually, especially if it fell within the empire’s borders. But that meant enduring this treatment for upwards of a century if she was unlucky

There was also the chance it was in any of the kingdoms she was not a patron of. Or that it would slip her grasp again if she wasn’t watchful. Fields have already died before being ripened because she was so focused on finding it… who knows how many more people she’ll have to fail. How much more will she need to answer for.

She broke down again.

Thankfully, something drew her attention. It was one of her many priests, this one from a monastery in one of the larger cities of her kingdom, one under a fallen archduke. She wondered why she felt drawn to such an annoyance? After all, this meeting was because the duke failed to aid her priests in their task, instead seeming to dedicate all his resources to some absurd investigations of the piece of land his grandfather had lost a few centuries ago.

“… I simply do not understand how you could value a hunch above a divine mission! You would do well, at least in your final hour, to earn the favor of the gods! Your name is crumbling and instead of aiding our benefactors you waste everything on your personal vendetta!?”

As she thought, it would be infuriating. She knew that the highest nobles of the humans think they are above the chosen of the gods, sometimes even higher than the gods themselves, which often is met with some very satisfying smiting, even if it is only the smiting of a terrain or of important people to said noble. They could not afford to waste such power, even if they had over inflated egos.

She was just about ready to turn her attention elsewhere when someone entered, completely ignoring her priest, instead giving a report to the duke.

“Your Grace! New information came in. A good part of her forest burnt down after a strange storm arrived a month ago. The passing merchant said that they could hear the roars despite being so far away that they could barely see the smoke. Also, they said that the skies shone with red lightning. It’s believed that she fought with a foreign dragon. Apparently odd storms like that one have happened before, but never with so much destruction following.”

She was almost ready to waste her energy on that insolent soldier, but what he spoke of seemed distressing. It was a large blow when the empire suddenly lost land to the dragon, but they never could quite pull their might to deal with it. There were many fronts where they had conflicts and many nobles would keep their men close so as to not be attacked by rivals. All in all, the kingdom was as fractured as sand and there was little she could do about that. Her sister had yet to demand of them to remove the abomination, so it must mean they simply cannot afford to.

Still, it seemed the annoyance might still bring information. She leaned in and listened, hoping that this will at least be enough to distract her from her inner turmoil.

Duke Arkros Varkrm looked in annoyance at the priest as the buffoon kept pestering him despite making the most moronic of demands. He had no time to play the games of gods when a threat was at the border… at his border. It was always like this, however. They all called him mad for keeping to a grudge… but it was his grudge to bear! His grandfather slain, his father slaughtered… The only reason he himself still lived was that he left the battle sooner than most would. He lost many men because of that, but still he lived and as long as he did, the beast would end up dead. None other dared fight the monster to reconquer the lost land, so they had no right to judge him.

Had that half-dead emperor listened to him even once and used his army together with the duke’s troops, they’d be parading a dragon’s corpse for half a century now. Instead he had to let it defile his lands. Once the news of the storms came, the duke could feel that they were close to an answer. So despite the damnable priest still being around, he walked off to a room he had repurposed specifically to organize all the reports and results of investigations. Currently there were seven different scholars doing just that as they entered.

“My lord! You have one of the best information webs in the continent! With your aid our task would be complete in a matter of months instead of decades! You must see reason!”

Of course, that the impertinent zealot was still around in spite of it all. He would have had him escorted out if not for his own zealotry about receiving a proper answer. He shouted commands and the men immediately started taking out relevant scrolls and tablets, taking out only the most important of informations. The priest was red faced, but at least had the sense to be silent now.

“Tell me everything we have.”

A young man, at least by scholarly standards as he was merely 38 and in the service of a duke, cleared his throat as he showed testimonies from the few that regularly travel outside of The Mistress’ domain.

“Yes, your Grace. The mistress has been behaving strangely for a while now. The early tribute wasn’t all. She was actually missing entirely for almost a year, but people didn’t realize it until she returned. Once she did, she has been seen flying almost daily, which once again is strange for her more stagnant personality. The number of stray witchbeasts in her territory has also increased dramatically, while growing in strength, but we do not know how that relates to her break.”

A graying man stepped forward, parsing through a neat stack of letters. The priest was almost unable to be silent as he saw the seal imprinted into each and every sheet of paper. He would only think of how wasteful the duke was being, hiring such people.

“The wizards that were able to enter her land all reported the same. The ambient mana was rising. It was all focused into the deeper parts that they could not even approach, but it was clear that something was happening. Three different wizards attempted to use whisps to see into the deeper parts, but they were all snuffed out before even getting close. The Mistress erased two of them, while the third was destroyed by something that used to be a bear. No further attempts have been made out of fear of discovery. The strange thing is that the mistress has never been this attentive before.”

The duke nodded, thinking back to that time before he marched for her head. He had hired wizards then too, and they managed to slip their whisps as far in as her lake, before she even took notice. Her being this alert must mean that there’s something she wants to protect. His eyes drifted over to the last person that had something to say as he tried to piece everything together.

“Storms of red lightning have been seen in different parts of the continent, but most notably there was a case over in the Aiuvar Kingdom during the mistress’ absence. Many oracles predicted a disastrous mana storm forming in that area, a storm that inevitably never appeared. We sent mercenaries to investigate, and although most information was washed by weather, they did find a destroyed mountain peak, as well as many footprints that fit The Mistress. They are recent enough, at most two years having past, though most likely The Mistress and the lightning dragon both went to the Aiuvar Kingdom and destroyed that storm.”

The duke froze, as did almost every scholar. Only the priest and youngest of the learned men were unaware of the insinuations.

This… thought the duke, his lips parting into a smile that would brand him mad if only he were a lesser man. This he cannot ignore. I’ll bring down the weight of The Empire on that wench’s neck and turn her skin into my personal flag…

“Organize all the findings and make sure that anything related to this is taken note of. Prepare to present everything to the court. Also, send a letter to the emperor. We have to talk.”

Rirshka felt herself wilting and trembling, her entire form collapsing, reshaping, collapsing again. This was the worst case scenario. If what these people spoke was true, then there was a chance, a rather good one, that the pristine soul she lost was not in some newborn peasant, away from any power to change anything about the world… it may have fallen into a clutch of dragon eggs… It would meet no resistance… No wonder they couldn’t feel where it was!

She pulled on her power, her divinity, her influence, and manifested a fragment of herself at the edge of the duke’s land, right before the part claimed by the dragoness. It would be a pain, but she needed to verify this. She needed to know… So she pushed on. Every second in this twisted domain, especially during winter, meant her mana would burn just to allow her sight. It was a strange limitation, to be both weaker and stronger than the monster, yet it was a limitation she had to obey.

Regardless of the pains, she got close to the forest where that thing lived, yet she couldn’t approach further. A roar alerted her of the dragon taking flight, which lead her to slip by through the plants, leaving behind whisps to distract, while she pushed on further. The loud explosion behind her was enough to tell her that time was running out.

She feared that this whole thing would be for naught, that she had burnt so much mana just to be repelled by the dragon, yet a simple sight was enough to vindicate her. Two young dragons were flying, in the sky, curious about what was happening. She could hear more beating wings, more infant abominations, more-

Her fragment died. A tenth of her power, simply gone. She paled and gave a new command to her priesthood, no, to her archbishop himself. It was time to rid the land of that dragon and her clutch. Even if the soul did not take over a dragon, just having more of those abominations around would be a threat. It was time to cull them and her sister would have to agree.