We were now seeing how an undead army would work. The first two groups were small in numbers, at least compared to the group we’ve been fighting. Around a hundred with the undead giant and several hundred with the next group of generals, but this was where the undead were truly terrifying. Their sheer numbers. Sure, we were strong; all of us could kill hundreds without breaking a sweat… But what about thousands?
What about tens of thousands? That’s where the undead got you. We’d have been buried in sheer numbers if we weren’t using hit-and-run tactics. Fighting for eight hours in a row before retreating back to one of our safe zones to get an hour or two of sleep. That was what the next few days devolved into, and this was where another group would have failed.
I think the Western army, combined with the Adventurers' Guild, could have handled these undead, but what if the generals were still alive? Not everyone had the same endurance we had, and they’d be run down by the unrelenting undead. It wouldn’t be bad at first, but every one of the opposing armies' deaths would fuel the numbers of the undead, and that wasn’t even getting into the mental aspect of killing someone you’d just been fighting side by side with for hours.
I lost track of how many undead we killed, but it was certainly enough to overwhelm every single dungeon and make it to our territory… Well, it would have been, but after constantly reducing their numbers, I doubted the ones still trying to push through would even make it halfway before they were wiped out. Eventually, the undead would overwhelm them, swallowing the entire country up before moving on to the northern and eastern regions. Well, if we weren’t here thwarting their plans anyway.
I dumped a bucket of water to wash all the blood off Silk’s back after I washed her off. The white rag had already been dyed red from all the blood. None of us was injured; if we were, it would have healed by now, but the worst toll on us was mental. The matter-of-fact reason was the monsters fucking stunk, and no matter how careful you were, you’d get some blood on you eventually.
We were already out of clothes; the shirt I was wearing was barely a shirt anymore, ripped and torn, all our enchanted equipment absolutely soaked in blood, and some of the enchantments even failed. I had gotten the worst of it so far, though, as I hadn’t brought many changes of clothes with me. I wrung out as much water as I could from my pants before putting them back on; they were still slightly damp, as I couldn’t go much harder without risking tearing them.
Just as we finished up and put on our clothes, Delilah yelled out. “We’ve got incoming!” I could only sigh. This was getting old real quick.
…
Mara’s Point of View
I just gave birth, choosing a dragon egg instead of a true hybrid between us because… Once I had a child who truly was a split of our genetics instead of mostly mine, it would kill him once he reached adulthood. With a dragon, it would buy him at least a hundred years, which other children would push him over the threshold and into cascading failure, and not mine.
I barely knew him. Besides the incredible sex we had, there wasn’t much talking over the past decade, so… Why was I so worried about him? Why did I want him to live instead of doing the selfish thing… Doing the normal dragon thing. I didn’t know myself. Something drove me to want him to live, and if I were more foolish, I’d assume it was love.
I was too old… Too smart to know that's why, but there was a collective feeling that his dying would be a bad thing. The world needed him alive for some reason, the glitch that he was, and it seemed fate was guiding his path, and I was tangentially aware enough to notice and work around the situation. With my child being an egg, I didn’t need to babysit it, though… And I could finally go and claim my revenge against my rival.
I couldn’t help but smirk, thinking about our fight now that we were no longer on even terms of capabilities. The only reason I had to retreat last time was that she injured me in a sneak attack. Now the tables would turn, and as I flew over mountain ranges, I couldn’t help but feel anticipation for her death. For killing her, eating her heart, perhaps killing her children, and looting her horde.
Not all red dragons were evil, but Draconis certainly was. We had fought several times, and only because I didn’t see her as a real rival, because I was always the superior fighter, did she live. Because if it were the opposite, she’d have killed me far earlier, and once she got the upper hand on me, she immediately acted on it.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I approached. If she were inside the cave, it would have been an uphill battle or a long wait for her to finally leave, but for some reason, perhaps because of how comfortable she felt having taken care of her rival recently(me), the only dragon in the mountain range that could face her. She felt safe enough that she was sunbathing.
I would have laughed if I didn’t think it would give me away; even the fucking sun and wind were in my favor. Having high luck was utter bullshit. Flying down to ambush her, she wouldn’t know I was there until I was landing on top of her, and that’s exactly what I did. *WHAM!* I finally let out a cackle as I felt her body break under me. Claws dug in, tearing flesh as my sheer weight broke her bones. With dragon fights, it always takes forever, most of the time leading to a chase with one dragon attempting to hide from the other, especially if they were of a similar level, because they knew that leaving that enmity would be a mistake.
And Draconis thought she had time to gloat, to live comfortably while I recovered and planned. She had proven herself the stronger of the two of us, and with the time it took to recover, she assumed that the better resources she was consuming would keep her ahead of me until I finally returned decades, if not centuries, later for my revenge, but she was wrong.
Even with the insane sneak attack, she hadn’t died. The sheer shock of seeing me, her rival, appear in one of her most vulnerable moments was something I’d remember for the rest of my life. The way I landed was specifically targeting her wings; she had no chance now, and as she began to take in a breath, to at least try and do some damage to me, I acted again.
A satchel appeared out of the storage necklace I had, big enough to fit in my dragon's hands comfortably as I tossed it into her mouth. The beginnings of her flame breath were enough to open the satchel as hundreds of pounds of pepper poured down her throat. It wasn’t how dragons fought; a dragon would never think to employ a human for a method to stop a dragon from breathing fire, but this is what they came up with. And as she struggled to breathe, my own breath completed and breathed into her face as she kept coughing; I couldn’t help but notice how effective this was.
The fight didn’t last much longer after that. She was already heavily injured before she was weakened further by the pepper and my breath attack. It only really showed the sheer resilience dragons had. Even dropping another dragon on an unsuspecting one, perfectly countering her most effective attack, and landing one just as powerful, wasn’t enough to kill them. But eventually, I did. She couldn’t last forever, and now, it was time to reclaim my home and see what spoils this bitch left me. Hopefully, she didn’t have any little kids I needed to kill, but a decade was more than enough time to get knocked up… I was proof after all.
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