Dragon Goddess’s chosen

“Ok, Ms. Dragoness, remember the rules I said earlier?” Eris taunted me a bit as she stood ten yards in front of me with the blunt rapier I borrowed from the blacksmith for her. It was an awkward, repeated conversation with him explaining that it was still me and no, I did not know what happened.

“No magic, no dragon breath” I replied and brought my own borrowed practice bastard sword to rest my shoulder. “Go until someone taps out and try not to draw blood?”

“Yep~guess not all barbarians have goldfish memories” she laughed.

‘Great, Kat found a tease like herself’ I thought as I glanced over to where she and Max were sitting to watch us. The mage perked up adorably meanwhile my new girlfriend gave a short wave when they noticed. It was hard to tell from the distance but she seemed to be messing with something unseen as well with her hand that she was keeping hidden from Max. I put that out of mind for a moment and decided to ask her about it later as I focused back on my opponent. “Does everyone think that of the barbarian classes?”

“Kind of, they get hit in the head a lot when they don't get out of the way of things” she laughed more. “But after that boar, I know you have at least some strategy. Hey, Kat!”

“Huh, oh yeah? What is it?” Kat called back.

“Can you do a count down from three for us? For an equal start?”

“Sure, on go then, try not to hurt each other too much. Three… two… one” I let my muscle memory guide me into bringing the sword point down in front of me into a guarding position to prepare myself. Eris grinned and readied herself at the same time, bouncing a bit on the spot. “Go! Good luck, Alex!” 

Eris moved first, dashing forward with that grin on her face still. She moved a lot faster than I expected and I had to adjust my guard to parry her first lunge at me while stepping back. She jumped back immediately to start circling around slowly. She lunged a second time and I went to meet her sword with my own. Just after contact, she dropped her sword tip backwards and lifted the hilt, making my own drop forward a bit. In the next moment, she trapped my blade under her arm, put pressure on my wrist with her hilt, and I quickly found myself disarmed with her blade at my neck.

“The fuck?” I growled softly.

“You're slow” Eris teased and tapped my neck with the blunt blade “Think I win this one” My tail flicked a bit in irritation over it being over so quickly

“Fine you got me…” I sighed. She smiled and dropped her sword tip down.

“Good to go again?” She offered my sword back to me. I accepted it and rested the blade on my shoulder again. 

“Sure, guess I can't be defensive with you.”

“Guess not” she laughed as she walked back towards her starting spot. “How about you play to your strengths instead of mine~”

“Which are?”

“I've been dueling for over half my life. My father hired a tutor for me ever since I was little.”

“That would have been nice to know before I agreed to this” I sighed. ‘Definitely an advantage over me, Rissaeth might have given me the muscle memory but I don't have any actual training…’

“Probably but you never asked so…” she shrugged then grinned more as she started bouncing on her feet again. “Come on lets go again”

“Ok, ok, Kat can you count us down again?” I called over to my girlfriend, bringing her out of whatever she and Max were talking about.

“Already?” She laughed, “Told you she might kick your ass.”

“Not a lot I can do when she takes my sword” I mumbled to myself and gave Kat a look. She smiled back innocently. 

“Ok, I'll do it again. I'm rooting for you though, all the wins we had against goblins and monsters went to her head, I'll never hear the end of it if she keeps beating a dragon barbarian too!”

“I can hear you!” Eris interrupted. “And she doesn't count, I'd love to meet a dragon I could have a friendly fight with… Though not in their full form. Now come on, try to break my apparent ‘winning’ streak”

“Fine, on go again” I readied myself, switching to a two handed stance with my sword and waited for Kat to count down.

 

---

 

“Come on, I thought we were trying to test this form!” Eris taunted, breathing a little heavy though, as she and I circled around each other. We had been at this for awhile and the closest to the win I got was several draws where we got our swords past each other to the other's throat. Most of her wins were from disarms or feints that I fell for and the irritation of these had been building up quite a bit.

“You were right, Kat, she's definitely cocky” I called over to her, glancing past my opponent towards her and Max. The mage had been quiet for most of this but I occasionally heard him cheering me on and almost every time I had looked over he had been cutely attentive to the fights. During this distraction, Eris took the opportunity to dash at me again. 

“Don't get distracted, Ms. Dragoness ~” she laughed as she tried to swipe at me from the right, forcing me to turn slightly to defend. I quickly caught onto the grin she had right before she turned her attack into a feint and switched her attack to come from the other side. I was too out of position and not fast enough to change my defense with my sword.

A thought occurred to me quickly and I acted on it immediately. The whole time I had mostly been using my tail for counterbalancing myself and it didn't occur to me to use it as a weapon or defense. I lashed my tail out to let her sword clang on the scales of it instead of my side then I quickly wrapped it around the hilt and her wrist. Once she was secure, I started putting pressure on her wrist like she did to me earlier as I brought my sword to her neck.

“Damn it” she sighed as her rapier clattered to the ground. She smiled at me innocently but she'd tried this trick on me already. I had to immediately drop a hand off my sword to catch her left hand before she got out the dagger she kept on her lower back and caused us to draw again.

“Not this time, not going to let you cheat again” 

“Never ruled out spare weapons ~ it was worth a shot though”

“Mhmm. You going to yield though? I'm not going to let go until you do” 

“What? Don't trust that you have the win here?”

“You probably have another knife in your boot or something.”

“... on my right calf, yeah” she laughed. “Ok, you got me, you broke my ‘winning streak’”

“Finally” I let out a sigh and let go of her. “Let's take a break… ” 

“Ok!” She happily retrieved her weapon from the ground and started walking towards the other two of our group.

“So you said you had a dueling instructor when you were little?” I asked as I followed. 

“Monsieur d'Artagnan was his name. He was a great swordsman for my home country a long time ago, he's old now so he just teaches the kids of the nobles that hire him.” I just then started to notice that she had the slightest bit of an accent that was different from the locals as she said that name. The name itself sounded French to me as well so I decided to take a guess from the countries I had actually read about in the cheat book Rissaeth gave me.

“Metreau?” It was the France-like country to the south currently in its third monarchy after two revolutions. “Wait, noble…?”

“Maison de Castellane? You haven't heard of my family? I know we aren't the biggest of Metrian houses but…”

‘So apparently common has dialects… never took French but I could understand this kinda’ “Uh, not really, I hadn't looked at the politics of other countries…”

“You and Kat must have lived under rocks” she huffed softly as we got close to the other two.

“Is she talking about her noble status again?” Kat asked, a slightly amused expression on her face.

“Yep” I replied and sat next to Max, who immediately started checking me over for injuries. “I'm fine, Max”

“A few of those hits were pretty loud though…” he mumbled.

“Sorry for not being from your country and knowing the family of the girl thirtieth-in-” Kat continued with a slight giggle.

“Twenty-first in line for the throne” the fighter corrected.

“Mhmm, twenty and nineteen are your older brothers so…”

“Your hand is bruised…” Max mumbled, distracting me from the two bantering back and forth with his gentle touch on my hand. I glanced over to see what he was talking about and sure enough, a thin bruise had appeared across my fingers where Eris's blade had snapped against them in one of her disarm attempts earlier.

“Huh, didn't think that would leave a mark” I sighed but smiled a little at him to try to calm him down.

“Glad it wasn't sharp…”

“You know I was probably more hurt after our sparring, Max, I have more scales this time to take the hits” I laughed.

“Sorry…” I started to notice that he hadn't let go of my hand yet at this point but happily decided to let him keep it.

“You don't have anything to apologize for, I still wasn't hurt that bad, part dragon remember?” I smiled at him to try to comfort him a bit but it just made him flustered and he looked away shyly, still not dropping my hand. ‘Yep, probably the fangs’ “So you wanted me to still go see your mom about all this?”

“... probably should… not sure if she would know anything though, dragonspawn are so rare that you might be the first one she treated for anything.”

“Oh that's why you wanted her to go to your mom, I was wondering about that” Kat said, reminding me that we weren't the only ones here. “She's a doctor?”

“Yeah, she's been helping us when we get banged up from quests,” I replied. “Max and I can stop by there on the way back and we can meet back up with you guys later. I can return the practice swords too”

“Ok, we'll probably look at the job board while we're waiting for you, see if there's anything good.” Her eyes flicked down to Max's and my hands, the smallest hint of a smirk forming at the corners of her mouth but she didn't address it. 

“Oh are you two together?” Eris asked and Max cocked his head.

“Huh? Why?” he responded.

‘And she's going to ruin it’ I thought with a sigh and squeezed his hand a bit. A blush quickly spread across his face as his ears folded back.

“S-sorry” he dropped my hand and looked away. “I got distracted talking to you…”

“It's fine, I didn't mind it” I laughed softly then stretched before standing. “We should probably get going though, go get myself checked out then we can eat and grab a quest” Max shyly followed my lead, standing up as well. “You guys ready to get moving too?”

“Yep~” Kat answered happily and Eris gave a nod as her response.

 

---

 

“... an overnight mutation is something new to me and you two haven't come into contact with cursed items…” Mrs. Wells thought aloud as she examined my wings. “You get like this when you rage…?”

“Normally bigger” I answered, absent-mindedly flicking my tail back and forth as I waited for her to get through everything.

“And your first thought was to go duel a new party member? Max, flip to bats in the veterinary book.” She had brought him into the exam room with me and had tasked him with helping her with reference books for the apparent chimeric mess that my body had turned into.

“It was my friend's party member's idea…”

“Oh, you finally met up with that friend you talked about?”

“Here you go.” Max shyly interrupted to bring the book she wanted with the correct page.

“Thank you” she took it and gently went about checking the joints in my wings.

“Um yeah but we are going to stay in town for a bit and do quests, I want Max to be sure he wants to join us.

“I already told you, I want to go with you… I was going to bring this up to you later, Mom…” Max mumbled. 

“It explains some of the things you've bought the past couple days” she responded. “You've started getting ready for this already. Can you get the anatomy book to Lamia… no,... Saurian should work too”

“Ok…” She finished checking the mobility of my wings and moved in front of me.

“Wings are healthy as far as I can tell, tail had a previous injury near the base somehow, but it's healed now”

“Oh, that still showed up? A kobold shot me weeks ago during one of our first quests, got me while I was raging” I explained as she took a book Max was handing to her. She used it as reference as she examined my eyes, guiding me to help her check tracking and responsiveness from what I could understand.

“Alright, mouth now, open up, tongue out” she ordered and I sighed before listening. I was very surprised when my tongue extended further than expected… and the first thought that came to mind was how I could use it to get back at Kat sometime. I had to push that thought out of my head before it made me visibly flustered. “Anyone else, the color could be concerning, but you seem healthy all around… as healthy as sudden mutation with gaining nearly fifty pounds and four inches of height could be. If anything else changes while you're traveling you should find another doctor or priest if this turns out to be a curse or magical effect. Unfortunately this is all I can do for you”

“It's more than what we could figure out on our own so thanks”

“Anytime, and I'll probably tell you this again when you finally set out, don't keep my son away forever, come back again sometime”

“Mom.” Max practically hissed at her.

“What? I'm your mother and I know how you are, you'll get distracted out there and let time slip away. She's been responsible and has been taking care of you lately” I looked away from the two of them so that Max couldn't see my amusement. It was kind of true but my taking care of him is usually just taking hits during quests.

“We should probably get going so that we can catch up to my friend and her teammate before they get bored” I offered the mage a way out from this conversation.

“U-um yeah we were supposed to meet up with them for lunch…” Max sighed as I got down from the exam table, taking great care to fold my wings close to myself and watch my tail so that I didn't sweep things off nearby shelves and tables.

“Take care you two, and if you take any long quests, come by and tell me if you don't think you'll be home for dinner…” she sighed

“I-i will, thanks for the help again” he grabbed my hand without a second thought to lead me out and away from his mother. 

I let him have this moment but he was a blushing mess when he realized by the next corner and was apologizing again for grabbing my hand. I took the lead after that to get us back to the guild hall.