Chapter 43: DD2 Chapter 037 – Coming Together

The morning came, and no one was grateful for it. While the bards had managed to do something that seemed to be affecting morale in a broadly positive manner, it wasn’t enough to escape the fact that the number of souls fleeing Rhelea had essentially dropped to zero during the night. Many had held onto the pervasive belief that the flow of refugees would resume with the rising sun, but Typh had recognised that for the wishful thinking that it was. With the gates sealed, no one would escape the city in any real numbers, and it was that which would keep the horrors contained.

The campgrounds had no walls and nowhere near enough combat classers to keep all of the civilians safe. But so long that there was no trail of humans to lead the aberrations to them, the Monster and its spawn would remain inside Rhelea. With the wards embedded in the fallen city’s fortifications, and the runic array buried in the catacombs below, the creature had no need to move from the market square. The various humans involved in its birth had unwittingly created the perfect feeding grounds for it. While a little over ten thousand had fled Rhelea, tens of thousands more remained trapped inside—hidden away inside houses and basements where they waited for rescue, a rescue that Typh knew wouldn’t come nearly fast enough.

“If we send riders to Nauranos we can have an army of twenty thousand here inside of two months,” Lord Faslan declared confidently.

“In a week we’ll have run out of firewood and the refugees will start freezing to death. In a month the fighting men will have starved. And in two, the roads will be clear enough for anyone who hasn’t already abandoned us to take their families and seek employment in a neighbouring city. We need to disperse the survivors to the nearby villages immediately; those with high enough levels can go to Musama and join up with the Nauron army when it comes to relieve us,” Lord Bidden argued. The old noble had been repeating the same plan in slightly different ways for the entire duration of the meeting. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but it had already been dismissed, and this time the humans gathered around the table were not discreet when it came time to roll their eyes. 

“Monsters have been acting strange all season. The beasts that are supposed to be hibernating have been attacking hamlets and villages like they're made out of godsdamned veal. Splitting up the survivors and sending away all of our combatants to Musama will only see the nearby villages gutted by the end of winter,” Lord Ignatius replied dismissively.

“I agree with my cousin,” smiled Lady Domine, nodding towards the lord who had just spoken. “When Lord Nauron hears what we have to say, he will think we’re exaggerating. His lands have their own problems to deal with, and without a direct order from the King, I doubt he’ll move his forces till late spring at the earliest. And even then, it's still almost a month away by barge or horse. I find Lord Faslan’s estimation of two months woefully optimistic.”

“Lord Nauron’s dynasty is an old power. Even so, his army will consist of no more than a hundred iron-rank knights, a thousand bronze men-at-arms, and maybe a few thousand more pewter soldiers. The rest of that twenty thousand will either be unclassed or recently bestowed. Ordinarily a force that size would be more than capable of fending off a border skirmish from an Epherian upstart, but against that Monster? The knights might be able to cut a path to it, but steel ranks in spitting distance of the beast have already failed to kill it—I don’t see what an army of skill-less farmers are going to be able to do that Inquisitor Xanthia here couldn’t do herself,” Lord Traylan said dourly.

In response to his words, a chorus of discontented, but largely affirmative grumbles spread throughout the collection of well-dressed nobles and their retainers. All eyes turned to Xan, no doubt expecting the woman to take charge. She was a noble herself and the only steel rank in the camp, let alone the crowded command tent. The Inquisitor ignored their gazes and merely looked on impassively, seemingly content to let the nobles carry on their circular debate for a little while longer. They had been going at it for hours now, and had yet to come up with any meaningful solutions to the myriad of problems facing them. Not that Typh particularly wanted them to start solving their issues. She wanted them frustrated and scared. They needed to recognise that their entire world had ended the moment the Monster spawned out of the chaos, and if they were to ever truly accept her help—her leadership—she needed them to be desperate.

The conversation more or less repeated itself for about an hour or so, with subtle variations and increasingly frequent pointed jibes. Wine was poured from Typh’s personal stash, and any possibility of the nobles pulling together vanished as it became increasingly clear to them all that for all of their blustering, there was no singular candidate for them to rally behind. While each minor house brought something to the table, no matter how they calculated it, they didn’t have enough swords, food or gold to have a hope of retaking Rhelea—not without a third party to bloat the numbers of combat classers they could call upon.

“Do we even have an accurate figure on how many of those things there were?” Lady Domine asked. The noblewoman didn’t even bother to look up from the table, instead she continued to hold her head in her hands, following Lord Bidden’s uncomfortable report on the dire state of their supplies.

“Our people estimate no more than a thousand, My Lady,” Barnabas replied patiently, and with those words Lord Tralyan’s manservant earned himself scoffs of derision from the better half of the nobles gathered in the room.

“With all due respect, your people are blind, Lord Traylan. There were a thousand horrors in the square alone when I fled. But with how quickly they reached the eastern and southern gates, and in such numbers, the true figure has to be at least five times that,” Lady Arusal said scathingly.

“I still don’t see why we abandoned the city at all. Sure, there were a lot of those creatures, but they didn’t even have levels. While I’ll admit unclassed monsters are a new development, with the adventurers and soldiers at our disposal I just don’t understand how we could have lost,” Lord Melias complained, somehow managing to get his words out between deep swallows from his wine cup.

“You speak to your own ignorance—”

“I take offence at that!” Lord Melias snapped.

“You should. It was meant to be offensive. Those beasts were comparable to a low-bronze warrior. Except you have to hit them in a central spot no larger than a thumb or they keep on going, and that’s not even talking about the thing in the square... Inquisitor Xanthia, you’ve been silent until now. The large one that almost looked human, what was that? Silver?” Lord Ignatius asked.

“No. If it was silver we’d all be dead. Peak steel though? Maybe,” Xan speculated. 

“For now. Although I imagine that it will cross into silver long before the month is out,” Typh said, speaking for the first time from the back of the tent. Her calm words caused the collection of nobles and their servants to turn and finally acknowledge her. Expressions of disgust and outrage flickered across their highborn faces in an obvious, albeit predictable breach of etiquette.

“What is it doing here, Traylan? You were supposed to cut its head off. I don’t see why the beast hasn’t been carved up and handed over to the alchemists, surely some of them survived,” Lord Faslan asked.

“While I normally detest everything Faslan has to say, on this I agree wholeheartedly. The beast should be collared at the very least, although considering who its tamer is, I don’t understand why both of them aren't in irons,” Lord Melias added, joining his voice to the murmurs of discontent that were steadily growing in the tent.

Numerous glares swept over Typh and Arilla both, although some were more intense than others. The nobles continued to blow hot air, taking turns to volunteer to slay them for Lord Traylan—no doubt recalling the large bounties for each of their heads—while the dragon allowed herself to dwell on how much she preferred receiving this kind of attention now that she was no longer pretending to be human. Still, the open hostility—while nostalgic—wasn’t exactly productive. When she was ready, she stepped forwards away from the back of the room and approached the round table where she pulsed her aura, briefly cowing the humans into giving her the silence she desired.

“I’m here because this is my tent, in my campsite, where you are currently welcome guests. The adventurers that you’re so intent on using to take back Rhelea are currently all in my employ. So when you address me, you may call me Lord Sovereign,” Typh said confidently.

“That can’t be true! Lord Traylan, please tell us this is a distasteful joke,” Lord Bidden emphatically pleaded, and his words were almost immediately echoed by the other nobles around the table.

“I’m afraid that it is not. The dragon—Typh—somehow managed to arrange contracts with the vast majority of adventurers and grain merchants within Rhelea. While the legalities of her actually owning anything are subjective… The Lord Sovereign currently possesses more food and swords sworn to her name than anyone else does at this table.”

“Even you?” Lady Domine asked quickly, the astute woman catching the changing winds of fortune with remarkable speed.

“I—I may have greater numbers—should the surviving members of my guard deign to put their uniforms back on and report to duty—but she certainly has the levels. Especially after I lost most of my knights getting out of the square,” Lord Traylan admitted with a resigned sigh.

The other nobles looked extremely uncomfortable following that admission. With her perception skill, Typh noted with some amusement how many hands briefly went to the swords at their belts, but the nobles gathered in the tent were not great powers, and a single glance towards her level tag was enough to dissuade them from any suicidal bouts of violence. 

She had called on Rhelea’s unlanded nobility to attend this meeting because between them they had a little over a hundred bronze-ranked combat classers to command and a small hoard of food. Unlike Lord Traylan, they had escaped the city with most of their forces intact, and their command structures would be useful in the days to come. None of them were particularly powerful individuals, and without the wealth hidden away in their estates, or generated by their investments in Rhelea, their finances would soon run out. Typh wanted their help to kill the Monster, but she didn’t need them, whereas they could not say the same thing about her.

“Well thank the Gods she did,” Lady Domine said, and then upon seeing the incredulous looks from her peers, she spoke again. “What? You’ve all seen the camp, and I recall how impressed you were with it back when you thought it was our Liege Lord’s doing.”

“Be that as it may, a monster has no place in one of these meetings, let alone leading one. It’s unseemly,” Lord Ignatius offered in what was the most laughably poor attempt at a diplomatic dismissal Typh had ever seen.

“Are we honestly supposed to listen to this creature? I know we all saw it fight against the other beast, but how do we know that it isn’t a ploy, that it isn’t really in league with the Monster? Inquisitor Xan, remove this dragon so that we can make our plans in peace,” Lord Melias commanded.

There was a hush amongst the gathered nobility, who, with eyes locked on Xanthia, waited for the woman to declare her—and by extension, the Inquisition’s—allegiance.

“No,” the Inquisitor stated firmly.

“What?! I can’t abide—” Lord Melias began.

“Concessions have already been made,” Lord Traylan interjected, “Melias, I highly suggest you drop the matter, and move on.”

“They killed your son!” the frustrated noble cried.

“I killed him,” Arilla spoke up, “but that matter has been settled between us.” She then exchanged a significant look with the Lord in question, before continuing. “If Lord Traylan can set the matter aside, then so can you.”

There was another long pause, although this one was filled with substantially more grumbling, but eventually the gathered nobles did in fact move on.

“Lord Sovereign, if you would please explain to us what it is we are facing,” Xan implored.

“It’s simple, we are fighting a Monster,” Typh said, her statement earning herself more than a few laughs.

“A monster, of course, how did we miss that?” Lord Faslan asked sardonically.

“No, not a monster, a Monster,” she said, feeling her hackles rise. “The things you call monsters are just different; it’s bigoted and ignorant that you don’t even recognise your enemies as people, but I have no desire to explain your species’s history to you. That thing in the square is different, it is a Monster. It wants nothing more than to kill every last one of us and it will continue to grow in power, never stopping until every living creature on Astresia is dead!”

The silence was deafening.

“Does it have any weaknesses?” Lady Domine asked.

“A few… It is about a day old. It’s still learning how to fight and how to hunt. For a time it will be easy to trick, but that is an advantage that lessens by the hour.”

“If we end up waiting for months I hardly imagine that there will be much remaining at all,” Lord Ignatius commented dryly.

“That matches up with what I experienced. When I first attacked it, the thing didn’t seem to know what a sword was, but by the time the Lord Sovereign pulled me out of the fire it was… proficient with blades,” Xan volunteered.

“Coming from you, that is quite the concession of skill,” Lord Bidden said.

“Quite,” Typh said, much preferring that Xan had proven to be an inferior teacher. “It also needs a constant supply of mana to live; it gets that primarily by eating us. With the wards in and around Rhelea, it is unlikely to leave the square before it has scoured the city of life. From there I imagine it will come here, before making its way to the nearest city.”

“Gods preserve us. If it wipes out Rhelea our families will never recover!” Lady Arusal exclaimed.

“And the hundred thousand dead probably won't help either,” Arilla criticised.

“Of course, a tragedy,” the noblewoman added, but not nearly soon enough to avoid looks of distaste from her peers.

“Lord Sovereign, I think the time has come where you tell us how exactly you plan on retaking the city.” Lord Traylan stated.

“Of course… Lord Faslan is right, we’re going to need an army,” the dragon said, causing the man in question to beam widely. “It’s just that we’re going to need one that isn’t composed primarily of unclassed farmers. Fortunately for you humans, I happen to have one.”

***

Hours later, when plans had been hatched and runners sent sprinting through the campgrounds to deliver their hurried messages, Typh relaxed into the cot that served as her bed. It was an uncomfortable thing, taut canvas over a wooden frame, but it was infinitely better than the sharp rocks she had recently awoken on. Her tent was surprisingly large considering the rushed nature of the camp, but Arilla had taken pains to ensure that the dragon had the privacy she desired, if not necessarily the comfort of a soft mattress. 

With the meeting having gone about as well as could be expected, Typh had firmly cemented her place as the only ally the nobility could rely upon in the time they had left. Without her, there was no food, no safety, and no chance of relief. Of course in three days she would run out of gold to pay the adventurers with, and a few days after that, food, but there was no use in telling anyone that. There was also very little stopping the nobles from just trying to take the tent-city away from her, but doing that would involve them testing who was hated by the people more; the Sovereign Dragon many still credited with getting them out of Rhelea, or the nobility who was still largely blamed for the riots, and increasingly, the Monster’s very appearance.

There was an ugly rumour making its way through the camp—one Typh did not approve of in the slightest—that the priests were right, and it really was an Angel, not a Monster, that had appeared in the square. Only rather than coming to save them, the ‘divine being’ was here to punish humanity for its many sins. It was still small, and largely disbelieved by any who heard it, but ideas were dangerous things, and it was worth keeping an eye on all the same.

When Typh walked through camp, she now did so with her species class and true level on display. She supposed she should be flattered by all the additional attention she now received. The hushed whispers and lingering looks, while not strictly new, had taken on an entirely different flavour, with fear and awe augmenting—but certainly not replacing—the lust-filled glances she had grown accustomed to. 

The dragon thought long and hard about the path she had chosen for herself. The cause she had committed herself to championing. It terrified her, but she found that she didn’t regret it. It would certainly mean a vast reduction in her life expectancy—the past twenty-four hours was proof enough of that—but Arilla was right, if the end of days truly were coming, there was something to be said about meeting it head on.

With her runt trait, she had never really stood a chance of making it all the way to seventh-tier where she would then receive the Call. Now that the Monsters who had once been confined to the very deepest depths of Creation had found their way to the surface of Astresia, her already slim chances of reaching old age had just shrunk dramatically. But even being centuries too young for the fight she now found herself in, she could recognise that it was what she was born to do—to lead the less fortunate species to victory in the never-ending war against the Monsters. It was her duty to kill them—or die trying—and having finally faced one in combat, a part of her craved to do it again.

“What a strange creature I am,” Typh mused to herself as she lay flat on her back in her uncomfortable cot.

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“You’re not that strange, at least not to me.”

Typh turned her head to see Arilla standing there in her tent. The action, like so many others, was not strictly necessary, but the mannerism was distinctly human, something she enjoyed to no end, deviant that she was.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” the dragon lied.

“Really?” Arilla asked, with a quirked eyebrow. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk since we got back to Rhelea. Gods help me, we’ve barely even spoken since you came back.”

“No, not really,” Typh admitted, “and you’re right. We haven’t talked. So what was that with Lord Traylan? I expected him to be the toughest to get on board, but apparently you’ve already settled things?”

“We had a long discussion last night while the bards played. The short of it is he’s agreed to set our issues aside for now. In exchange, he challenged me to a duel—after all this—and I accepted.”

“You’re actually going to duel him? To the death I presume?”

“He didn’t specify, but yes, I assume so,” the warrior shrugged.

“Why in the depths would you agree to that? He may be old, but he’s got more than 30 levels and about a century of practice with a sword on you!” the dragon exclaimed.

“It felt right.”

“What do you mean ‘it felt right’?!”

“Typh. I killed his son.”

“I’d have killed him if you didn’t. Galen was a contemptuous little shit.”

“He was, but no parent should have to bury their child. Just let it go, odds are both of us won't make it through this alive, and this way the matter is settled. Right now, just be happy that Traylan is on our side, at least until the Monster is dead in the ground,” Arilla said.

“We both know the peace we earned today lasts until they catch sight of my banners,” Typh replied.

“That’s entirely up to you. You could play nice.”

“I could. I could also bend over and let Lord Melias have his grubby little way with me, but I won't do either of those things because I’m not an idiot, and I don’t enjoy being fucked in the arse.”

“I don’t think those two things are the same. Trusting humans not to screw you over the first chance they get is hardly comparable to offering yourself up to that greasy swine.”

“So you saw it too?”

“Of course I did, the man practically licked his lips when he talked about putting us in chains,” Arilla said with a shudder.

Typh laughed, and after a moment's hesitation the warrior joined her. The dragon wanted to let the moment stretch on forever, but it was a seductive thought she no longer had time for.

“I think I’ve decided to stop pursuing you,” Typh declared.

“What?” Arilla asked, an edge of something fragile in her voice. 

“You clearly don’t want me, or at least, you can’t bear to let yourself want me. Not with my history of killing your kind,” Typh said, letting that sink in. “The Great Wards are failing, and there's a system-damned Monster only a scant handful of miles away from us. There are bigger things going on than love, and I can’t allow myself to be distracted pining for you when I have a duty to fulfill.”

“You’ve changed,” the warrior said softly.

“Are you talking about me accepting myself as a woman?”

“Maybe that has something to do with it, but no, more than that. You’ve grown.”

“Perhaps I have,” the dragon said feeling wistful as she looked around her tent, another lie to hide the fact that she knew the precise locations and values of everything that surrounded her. “I haven’t offered you a drink. How rude of me, I’m not sure I have anything that isn’t alcoholic…”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve had about as much snowmelt as I can handle,” the warrior smiled.

“Right.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you sure that you’re done pursuing me?” Arilla clarified.

Typh’s heart skipped a beat. The possibilities contained in those eight words were endless, they contained everything she wanted, along with everything else she was afraid of. Already her resolve weakened, fantastical thoughts raced through her head, while her stomach did a quiet backflip. She had to clamp down on the lovesick daydreams hard, lest she let herself get hurt again.

“Yes, I’m done,” Typh lied, reluctant to try and vocalise how she really felt. Lies were easier, safer, and when it came to Arilla, the dragon had always been weak.

“Can you try one more time? For me?” the human asked with an insecure smile perfectly framed by the freckles on her cheeks.

“Arilla… I can’t go back and forth with you over this anymore. It hurts too much.”

“I know, and I’m sorry that it has taken me this long to figure out what I want. I’ve had a lot going on, and it's made me a little selfish. I understand why you lied. I get it, and I’m sorry how I reacted, and how I’ve acted since that moment, but if it's not too late I want to hear it.”

“It?” Typh asked, confused.

Arilla smiled. “The speech you had prepared all those months ago.”

The dragon laughed.

“I’m afraid that I’ve completely forgotten it,” Typh apologised, her memory drawing a blank on the words she had once rehearsed back when Creation had seemed so much safer.

“That’s okay, we can agree that it was heartfelt and compelling. If that’s alright with you?”

“I don’t know if I can do this. How do I know this is real? That you’re not going to change your mind in the morning?” the dragon asked.

“You want a commitment.” Arilla clarified for her.

“I do. I want an oath, not forever, just that this is real. That you’ll give it your best shot,” Typh explained.

“I don’t have that class anymore, my promises aren’t backed up by the system.”

“I know that, but I trust you. If you promise me that you mean it when you say that you love me, I’ll believe you.”

“Are you sure that’s enough?”

Typh smiled.

“Are you sure I’m enough? You know what I am. I won’t change for you, but maybe if you’re willing we can continue to grow together,” the dragon offered.

“That sounds good to me,” the human responded.

“Do you promise?”

“I do.”

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