Kapitel 124: Interlude - The Princess Testimonies part 2

{"The youth are quick and clever. We their elders cannot keep watch on them all the time. They leave to hunt, but we cannot be sure just what it is they seek to hunt. If they leave the Sanctuary they also forfeit its protections."}

"Wait, hang on." Sir Zah raised his hand, palm up. He took a deep breath. Then he said "So to sum it up… you are saying…" Another quick breath, "THAT I HAVE JUST MURDERED THE EQUIVALENT OF A SHITTY TEENAGE EDGELORD?"

The dragon blinked. {"Hrrm. I do not quite understand what you mean… by that word. But if it means what I think it means… then yes. Be proud. To defeat… this malevolent youth… is a great thing for small beings as thineselves. A dragon is still a dragon."}

"My scales are like tenfold shields," Sir Zah whispered, but his voice carried. "My teeth are swords, my claws spears. The shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath – death!"

The red dragon nodded. {"Indeed. Hrrm. Be proud, young man, but not too proud. I am given to understand… that the body of a dragon is most valuable… among your kind. You may do as this one's corpse as you wish."}

"See, I know that you're trying to be nice about it all, but what you're saying is just making me even more ABSOLUTELY LIVID." (1)

Sir Zah began to vibrate in place.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were Yumina Erneas Belfast. A lot of things could be said about you – most of them flattering - but that most of all… that you were *trained*. You understood the duties of your station while those of lesser nobility merely luxuriated in the benefits of their position. You understood that the world did not run on calm logic as much as you may wish everyone to be reasonable, that no matter what happened even you would always play second fiddle to a man. That was the inherent sexism of the world that ran on male primogeniture – even your mother and father, as much as they loved you, they would instantly hand the inheritance over towards a male child just born.

The fact that you had been their only child for so long had rankled the nobility and weakened the throne, but your father was adamant at not taking a mistress and so you would always be grateful. You understood that things could be better but it was better than the worst they could be. Life was a delicate balancing act between priorities.

People acted illogically on their emotions, people were spiteful, people were afraid, people were lustful, people were kind. As someone who could see the inherent moral worth of a person you had always been careful not to judge anyone. Your Mystic Eyes demanded that you judge them by their actions and not their intent.

Your Mystic Eyes did not work against monster beasts, and you long thought because what is 'good' was different for beings who lived by the strength of their fang and claw instead of the work of their own hands.

Now imagine – that one day you threw away all of that carefulness in a fit of your own desires to become more than just your place in the world. And you understood now why so many were so willing not to step up to stop evil, because the consequences of angering those above you in power were so dire. Imagine that one day you basically lost all control of your life. You were expecting this to happen some day, but your own stupidity – when the one thing you were most proud of was your discerning intelligence – was the one to throw it all away.

But change by itself was not bad. As much as it was nerve-wracking to be around Lady Monika and Sir Zah, you could not deny that times were quite a bit more interesting than your life at the palace.

You are Yumina Ernea Belfast. You made a risky bet, you bet your life on it, and much to your regret you got everything you ever really wanted out of it.

You still had some measure of control over your own life, which was what made it all so aggravating. Because you knew that you could walk away from all this nonsense if you didn't have such an inflated sense of responsibility... and a stubborn royal's pride not to give up and look like a weak little girl.

Which lead to the current point: Dragons were a grand and terrifying existence, but like most things Sir Zah had a way of destroying that.

Yumina was coming to understand that just because something or someone was terrifying didn't mean that they couldn't be completely ridiculous.

It was night, it was muddy, she was cold and wet and her white dress was stained, and unlike her cousin Sushie she had no healing White magic. All her involvement in the debacle was to send out her summoned Silver Wolves to sniff out and herd the slower villagers.

/"Yumina. Do you realize your position in this team?"/

"Y-yes! Yes of course!" Yumina replied with a hint of panic. "Just because I'm a princess doesn't mean I should expect things without having earned them. Obedience flows from the chain of command, not titles of nobility."

/"… No, that's not what I meant."/

"Um." Would she have to say it? How humiliating. "I don't have any intentions getting between Sir Zah and-"

/"Actually that is what you should be doing right now."/

Yumina blinked. "… what?"

Monika's tiny figure tugged at the young girl's ears. /"If you don't act right now, by the time this is over Player would have forgotten about his actual mission and gone off to pick a fight with all dragonkind."/

"What? He wouldn't…" Yumina winced and breathed out. "Oh. Ugh. He would. And you… you wouldn't stop him, won't you?"

/"A man who screams and rages and throws a tantrum like a child at every little inconvenience is unappealing. But as a woman I have to admit that watching *my* man fight gets me all hot and bothered. That moment on the bleeding edge of combat, where my power and his force melds into one, that moment where our purposes align, when everything banks upon how much trust he has in me – that moment when you can lose it all is the moment you live the hardest." /

Miss Monika's little face smiled fondly and looked off to the distance. /"This is Mismede, not Belfast. If this sabotages the alliance but makes Player happy to be The King of Dragon Pass(2), that is fine with me. We will have to find less clean ways to defeat Regulus."/

Yumina blinked. "That sounds interesting, in honesty." A thought bubbled to the front of Yumina's brain, and she winced even as she said it. "Solve your problems by throwing dragons at your problems until dragons stop solving your problems oh wait, no. No that's bad."

If Sir Zah picks a fight, it is perfectly possible that he and Lady Monika were simply grossly overconfident and then they die! If they win, they would be too dangerous and too out of control!

She looked up again and saw that while Sir Zah was arguing with the dragon, Miss Elze and Miss Linze were subtly moving to either side of the dragon. The red dragon's nictating eyelids flicked, and his eyes squinted aside looking towards Miss Linze. The dragon gave derisive snort accompanied by a rush of smoke from his nostrils.

Yumina could feel the air suddenly become still and heavy with implied threat.

"That's it? Your dragon young escape your notice and wreak havoc, and kill, in lands not their own the people who had never harmed them before, and all you do is 'whoops, our bad?!" Sir Zah shot back.

The red dragon blinked. {"What more is it that you desire? I am given to understand... that the body of a dragon is most valuable among your kind. Do you seek even more compensation? Let us not pretend that the life of any number of peasants are equal to that of a dragon. Corpses dropped do not equal their own weight in gold... we know well how greedily yon small ones covet our cadaver."}

"Feck off! You do not get to dismiss the lives of the young! Not in front of me!"

{"Do you wish to fight me?! If your greed goes so far, then I will show you how your power of magic matches to a dragon's born power!"}

"SIR ZAH, STOP!"

Everyone turned at the young girl's scream. The princess was wearing sensible green skorts, just like Elze, but out of habit hiked up the hem of her dress to run, trying to keep her skirt from tangling and being ruined by all the sloshy mud on the ground.

Yumina fidgeted nervously at all the draconic attention, then continued. "WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHY ARE YOU ANGRY?"

/"Oh! Good approach, Princess in Yellow."/

Yumina resented just how good it felt to have Lady Monika's approval.

Sir Zah blinked. He clenched his fists and breathed in. The wind swooped in. Breathed out. The wind swooped out.

After a while he whispered in a voice that carried: "A dragon… is tyranny. I accept this. A dragon can be as petty and self-absorbed and cruel as anyone – where a noble back his words by steel, a dragon does so with his fire and claw."

He looked up at the red dragon and shook his fists. "A DRAGON IS TYRANNY! A DRAGON IS POWER! A DRAGON IS A KING IN HIS OWN SELF!

"WHERE IS THE PRIDE? WHERE IS THE HOARD?! A PATHETIC DRAGON THAT BURNS PEASANTRY FOR SPORT, WHAT SORT OF HALF-ASSED CHILD RAISING DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR SANCTUARY?!"

Yumina stopped. Wait, what. "Is… is that what you're angry about? Not the fact that dragons are burning people alive?"

"A dragon that burns people alive in malicious joy is acting like a human. If it wanted to kill and eat, that would have been understandable. A dragon is a beast, and all smaller things are prey. If it wanted to burn to gain tribute, that would have been fine too. A dragon that burns down a kingdom relishes the challenge of it!

"Yumina! A dragon can help humans. A dragon can hurt humans. But it must do so by its own terms, for its pride – but not to feel strong by picking on the weak. That is the fear of mortals. Dragons like these… they are meat. They are just fearful children, afraid to overcome their peers and find real strength. They are not children of time. This should not be happening."

"But… Sir Zah. Things… things could be worse." On some level she understood that, people were capable of viciousness well above and beyond animals.

{"Mmhrmm. We know of your endless rapacity. We dragons protect all under our wing. The Dragon Sanctuary... is the one place in all the lands that beasts can live true to their nature. In the Great Sea of Trees, there live even more of you small ones that hunt and enslave. The ones you call Monster Beasts live on the tide of magic – and where you build your cities - where you kill and clear the land, you take and take and never give back. The land dies at your touch.

{We remember… we remember when once we dragons ruled all. We remember how we were beaten, for there among us yet live who remember ten thousand of your years. We watched your great works and watched when your great kingdoms fell to a tide your endless magic could not stand against. Hrrrh. The world broke, and we protected what we could until life could stand again. Humans…!"} the red dragon spat. {"Humans and beastkin, there is no difference. Your natures are the same. A dragon's greed is nothing before the manling's lust for more. The world belongs to you again... only time will tell if you will ruin it all as you did the last one."}

Yumina nodded. All of that sounded fair, much to her regret. But it was not worth the senseless killing.

Sir Zah grimaced. "There's that ancient civilization thing again… I'm picking up plot coupons one after the other, they better not have any sealed evils in a can or advanced to a higher state of existence where they can sneer down at all us mere mortals…"

Sir Zah tapped at the side of his head with the ball of his palm, as if to jostle loose thoughts back into place. He raised his palms up again and made a small wave. "The world pushes at you, you push back equally at the world. Force. Balance. Push. All together this creates an Unrelenting Force. A dragon's words is an oath onto the universe.

"As a man born with the soul of dragon, I say that the lessons given to young dragons that make them go off to kill helpless mortals is NOT OKAY. Letting me profit by desecrating the corpse of the kid I just killed is NOT OKAY. This is a failure of leadership and I would like to speak to your manager."

{"That is…"} The dragon tried to scowl. {"That is, like the old saying you small ones like to use, the droppings of bovines."}

"Your young are BORED and they hunt even weaker prey to feel better about themselves. This is a problem that can only be resolved from your end!"

In a smaller voice he begun to mutter to himself "Like, I'm not going to invent World of WarCraft to make dragon-neets just for the hell of it..."

The red dragon shook its great head. {"No, I mean being born with the soul of a dragon. That is not how things work."} With a confused rumble to its voice {"That is very much not how things work."}

"[YOL.]" Sir Zah spat a fireball from his mouth onto the red dragon's face. Yumina felt her heart stop in her chest. "Let me taste your voice, if you are a dragon true!"

{"What."} It blinked down at Sir Zah. {"Is this a provocation to violence?}"

Just a few minutes ago it was ready to fight. But now that Sir Zah was openly goading it to breathe fire on him, the dragon started to feel unwilling.

Sir Zah was confusing in that way. The more he wanted you to do something, the more it stank like a trap and you shouldn't just let him win.

"I am a child of time! It is clear our draconic heritages differ, the dragons I know are different from your nature as a dragon. That is fine. But this is now mostly about how our cultures clash. As an outside I have no right to interfere. But as a dragonborn this offends my nature."

/"Yes indeed, play that role to the hilt."/ Lady Monika whispered. /"There was a point in which we clearly had to stop but we are long past that so let's just keep going and see what happens."/

"Um, Sir Zah, *please*. You saved all these people. We still have a mission to complete." So I'm going to say what Miss Monika refuses to say and what Miss Elze and Linze don't think they have a right to speak against as your role as the team leader- "Could you PLEASE pick a fight with all dragonkind at another time?"

Both Sir Zah and the red dragon tilted their heads aside quizzically like small birds. Then they both shrugged, the red adventurer with a roll of his shoulders and the red dragon with a lazy flap of his wings.

{"Manling, if you enter the Dragon Sanctuary, you will die. There are none and will never be any exceptions. This is our oath to the world."}

"That's fair. But I know that it's become a regular occurrence and I would to lodge a complaint to whoever rules your people."

{"It is not so easy to draw out the Blue Monarch. But I will carry your words. Again, you have my apologies on behalf of all dragons, we seek to stop this as much as we are able. This conversation is over."}

And with that said, the red dragon flapped its wings and leaped up into the sky.

It was only later that Yumina learned that dragonkind largely regarded this as a good thing, because it was only also relatively recently that more young dragons were being born. Enough so that losing some to their own stupidity were worth the lesson imparted onto the others.

They were left alone in the mud and the ruins that reminded them all about why it was never a good thing to provoke a dragon's rage.

"Aw, no more fighting?" Miss Elze good-naturedly groused. "That could have gone better."

Sir Zah staggered on his feet. Miss Linze quickly rushed over help, and with glowing hands began to diagnose and heal. Once again, Yumina was struck with a pang of jealousy – healing and Light was a good, virtuous power to have. Her Dark magic affinity was more suited for curses and intrigue and she wondered if people would consider her two-faced if she leveraged her powers in secret for the good of all.

/"Adrenaline crash,"/ Lady Monika said. /"The body's endurance can be amplified with magic so that it doesn't get tired, but that means the brain expects more and more from the body until you stop – and then the body can't keep up with all the ramped-up tension. This doesn't happen with natural personal magic like Elze's [Boost]."/

But they were just talking. But it was talking while wound tight with tension ready to burst into combat at any moment, so Yumina supposed just like a bowstring suddenly being released, it could feel jarring.

Now that things looked safe, the villagers began to filter back into town. The village chieftain approached Sir Zah and dropped to his knees.

"Milord! Milords!" the old beastkin with ram horns blubbered out. "Oh my lords and ladies!"

"Uh… what? What's wrong? The dragon's not going to come back, don't worry. We're going to stay awhile to make sure, but we're all probably safe for now. Other monsters would still be too scared to come back for some time."

"Thank you! Thank you!" Chief Solum began bowing and weeping. "You have saved our lives!"

Sir Zah winced. He looked over the chief and the now gathering villagers, who one by one dropped to their knees in respect. Behind him, the group of Belfast and Mismede guards stood at attention. The village was still mostly a wet, charred ruin.

Sir Zah looked past them all and towards her. A desperate grimace crossed his face. He began mouthing 'H E L P M E'. He looked so uncomfortable receiving such heaping praise, and Yumina sighed as she remembered her role to play in this party. Ladies were always expected to resolve social situations that their husbands and brothers were often too brusque to navigate. A man could use violence to solve their problems, but as a princess she could only make use of soft power.

She sighed and approached the old man. She stopped him from genuflecting any more, and as the elder looked up at her she could see that his expression was more fearful than it was grateful. She smiled wryly.

"I understand. Please get up. We have more to do to save this village before we can rest easy."

Yumina could feel a cool weight fall over her shoulders for a moment, a thankful shift in air pressure. That was the exact opposite of comforting, Sir Zah; she thought. I don't need any more reminders that you can hurt people invisibly.

Miss Linze said firmly that Sir Zah should really rest easy! She had a healer's resolve that rendered all other concerns unimportant. No one could see his eyes, but his tall wiry frame looked just exhausted by… everything. Yumina knew the feeling. But she had no luxury to rest.

Sir Zah sighed. "Um. Yes. Lyon!"

"Yes, milord!" The general's son stepped up and rapped his fist on his armor.

"Yumina's in charge. Take care of everythiiiing…!" Sir Zah spoke out as Miss Elze and Miss Elze dragged him by both arms, frog-marching him away back into the carriages.

Everyone's gazes turned towards the young Princess. She eep'ed and then stiffened her spine. This was her battlefield.

It was night. The fires were out, but with so much of the village wrecked the first chore was to find everyone a place to sleep out of the cold. It was not just the villagers that had this problem.

Yumina found the guards standing around one of the carriages. As previously noted, the girls of the group slept all together in one carriage, (Elze, Linze, Yumina, Arma and Olga – except for Yae, who slept on top of the carriage roof) while the men in the other carriage. They technically had roomier accommodations since technically only three were officers (Sir Zah, Sir Leon, and Sir Garm) – while the rest of the guards slept outside near their horses on bedrolls and trading watch shifts.

"What seems to be the problem here?" she asked.

"Aah… well… we can't get in." Sir Lyon replied abashedly.

"Why?"

"Uh. Sir Zah and Miss Elze and Linze are inside."

"I see. I suppose Sir Zah does need his rest, so it wouldn't be good to disturb-…" Her eyes widened suddenly, and then narrowed in suspicion. "Are you implying something disreputable, sir?"

Sir Lyon began to wave his arms frantically. "No! No, not at all! Nothing of the sort! I mean – we knocked, and Miss Elze told us to stop with all the noise. There… probably isn't anything very interesting happening in there. We're not being voyeurs, we swear!"

All the other guards waved their hands too, as if demonstrating how far away they were from the carriage and no they weren't trying to listen in.

"What is the problem then?"

"Our bedrolls are stored under the carriage seats." Lyon then grimaced. "I am sorry, now that I say it, it is a very small matter. We can rough it for a night. We can borrow some sheets from the folk- with your permission, milady?"

Yumina supposed he didn't want to seem to be taking advantage of people who already have lost so much. "Do so, then." She too yawned. It was late at night and everyone else had settled in and this day was just so...

So much.

She really hoped that once they arrived at the Mismede capital, they would have to endure only the more boring parts of politicking, which was more dangerous in many more ways, but at least it would be between kings.

Oh father, then Sir Zah's going to be your problem now. She couldn't help but to smile a little as her eyelids began to droop.

Yumina had little difficulty falling asleep.

Her last thought as she dozed off was remembering that a lot of people heard Sir Zah declare that he was a human with a dragon's soul. Leaving aside how even dragons thought that whole idea was rubbish, as much as some might find that impressive others could also use that as a pretext to think him less than human. That could be a mistake.

...

… why… would they…

… how could Lady Monika make such an obvious error?

…

...

"... That gives them better talking points at being similar to the beastkin!" Yumina shouted and sat up suddenly.

Miss Yae quickly opened her eyes and sat up as well. She picked up the scabbard by her side and shouted as well "What is that?! Are we in danger?"

And that woke up Miss Olga. "D-danger?!" she squeaked and reached for her sister by her side.

And that woke up Arma. "Myuuuh…?"

Yumina blushed in the darkness. "Um. Sorry. I was having a dream, I think. Please... go back to sleep." She wiggled back down under the covers.

If Belfast ever became unpleasant to live in, being able to defeat a dragon bare-handed was frightening enough. But even though many would find such a man useful to have, not many others would willingly put him in power over their men. Unless it could be assured that he had some common interest with their country.

Sir Zah was just showing off. He was a creature of pure untrammeled emotion.

But Lady Monika allows it? Of course! She denies him nothing. She delights in his excesses as a person with no body to call her own. She lets him live to be so free. She already set up an exit strategy. Everything was within the range of her divination.

How terrifying.

Yumina groaned and palmed her face with both hands. Her brain was mush but her body was somewhat rested and now she was having difficulty falling asleep again. Oh my waking nightmares!

AN:

(1) https://pics.me.me/we-are-experiencing-lemporary-incoherent-rage-please-stand-by-8045750.png

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Dragon_Pass

King of Dragon Pass – a classic barbarian clan survival and politics simulator

Sorry for the long delay, have a longer than usual chapter instead.

This segment really didn't want to cooperate. There was a lot that I actually written out from Playa's perspective that felt snappier, but other parts worked better from Yumina's outside view and her false conclusions.