The Dragon Lord's Aide Wants to Quit [BL]

There was misery, hopelessness, despondency.

Then there was despair.

Anguish.

But even all of those compounded together probably wouldn’t have equated to the feeling of reality itself simply shutting down.

It was as though Rhazira had heard one sharp, deafening tone that effectively cut her off from existence, because no part of her wanted to believe what her barely functioning eyes were showing her.

He...

Khan... he...

She couldn’t even finish the thought.

Because the only thing that managed to rise above the emptiness consuming her was the sudden, overwhelming realization of how unfair it was that she hadn’t died with him.

As a halfling and a wyvern who’d long since been turned into some sort of pseudo-dragon, even in the end, it seemed fate still wanted to mock them.

They didn’t even share the same kind of fated mating bond. There was no tangible proof that their love, no matter how strong it had once been, was something that would bind them together forever.

Instead, she was left alone.

Alone once again!

Her beloved had protected her, only to be taken away right when they were finally about to be together.

Tears of blood welled in Rhazira’s eyes as she gripped her chest, feeling a pain that somehow far surpassed even the agony of being burned alive.

No.

She couldn’t do this again.

She’d vowed never again.

If this was going to be their end, then so be it.

Desperate to end it all, Rhazira immediately attempted to detonate her own core.

But just as the volatile process began, her entire body suddenly jolted.

"Urk!"

A quiet beat passed.

The strike had come so quickly and so completely out of nowhere that even Rhazira herself needed a moment to register that she’d just been stabbed.

"...!"

Slowly, as though trying to understand what had just happened, the Wyvern Queen lowered her gaze toward her chest.

The jagged edge of what could only be an extremely sharp tail was protruding clean through her torso from behind.

Blood immediately gushed from Rhazira’s mouth as a violent cough tore through her, splattering red across the ruined ground beneath her.

And through the relentless ringing in her ears, she heard an unfamiliar voice coming from somewhere behind her.

Along with it came a strange mana signature she couldn’t quite recognize.

"Sorry. This insurance took longer than expected."

...What?

"And I-I... Haa... I never thought I’d ever have to do this, but in exchange for the lease of life I’d been given, I’m here to tell you... t-that until the very end, he made plans for the two of you to be together."

Rhazira’s bloodied eyes widened as if uncertain of what she was hearing.

"And if I’d done this fast enough, you wouldn’t have even had to see him die without you."

What?

What was she talking about?

Rhazira wanted to fully turn around.

She wanted to demand an explanation, but her failing body was no longer responding properly enough for her to do anything but listen.

Thankfully, the person holding what had to be a preserved piece of the Primordial Dragon’s tail seemed to understand her silence.

"...H-he was adamant that you don’t taint your core, you know?"

The suddenly numb halfling froze.

"Because if you could just leave that alone, then you might just see each other again."

Her breath caught.

"Haah... Woman, I really hate you enough to wish I’d never had to see you again," the voice continued between exhausted breaths. "So do us both a favor and go to him."

The woman behind her sounded just as disheveled and weak as Rhazira felt, panting heavily as she continued holding the tail buried through the Wyvern Queen’s chest.

"You may be a bitch," she muttered, "but you sure as hell were a beloved bitch."

Rhazira could barely see anything through the bloody haze clouding her vision.

But she somehow heard every word.

Only this time, instead of resisting... instead of baring her fangs, she stopped.

Tears of blood continued streaming down her face as what remained of her hand slowly reached for the tail embedded through her torso.

Then she pulled.

The woman behind her seemed startled when Rhazira deliberately dragged herself farther down the jagged tail, forcing its sharpened edge through more of her chest until it sliced straight through the core she’d long since repositioned somewhere safer inside her body.

*Crack.*

That was all it took.

There was no grand explosion. No final burst of power or desperate resistance from someone who’d spent countless years refusing to let go.

It was far quieter than anyone might’ve expected.

A moment more mundane than speaking, yet somehow more freeing than breathing.

And just like that, the Wyvern Queen—no, Rhazira—ceased to be.

Yet even as the light disappeared from her eyes, her hand remained tightly wrapped around the tail, holding it as though it were some precious final gift rather than the weapon that had killed her.

Only when her grip finally slackened did the panting woman behind her pull the tail free.

She staggered a step backward and struggled to catch her breath, wheezing through her own pain as she watched the last traces of life and mana disappear from Rhazira’s body.

But she didn’t leave immediately.

Instead, after taking another deep breath, the woman reached forward and gently touched the preserved tail one last time.

Then she quietly watched.

The disfigured, admittedly almost unrecognizable figure of that poor woman slowly began crumbling away.

Her ruined body turned to dust, scattering across the cavern floor until what remained of Rhazira finally settled alongside her King.

__

The disoriented woman almost felt weak at the knees, but she still managed to turn around and check on the honest-to-goodness elephant in the room.

Suspended in the middle of the cavern was the figure of someone undergoing a draconic shift, except it was happening in a way that even she, a golden dragon in her own right, had never seen before.

If she hadn’t received those unusual instructions from the late Wyvern King of all people, she definitely wouldn’t have been nearly as calm about the sight of someone practically weaving leylines into the shape of a tree from his own body.

Only now, the glowing fibers were no longer curling around this dragon.

Instead, the strands stretching from his body plunged straight toward the ground, disappearing deep beneath the ruined cavern floor like newly formed roots. Above him, countless others continued reaching higher and higher, every translucent fiber seemingly drawn toward the heavens as the majestic tree they formed grew impossibly taller with every passing moment.

However, that wasn’t the real problem for a being as insignificant as her.

As someone who should’ve died but had somehow survived because things were apparently so bad that an insurance policy had been necessary, she still had more work to do.

The woman scrambled forward through the dust, careful not to use even the slightest bit of mana.

Especially not the mana she’d been given.

Unless she wanted to drop dead on the spot, that was.

Eventually, she reached a high pile of collapsed rock and immediately started digging through it. Without relying on magic, she used nothing but her unusually high but currently handicapped physical strength to shove aside heavy slabs of rubble one after another.

And beneath all that stone were two people she honestly hadn’t thought she’d ever see again.

Two undoubtedly golden dragons.

One was in terrible condition, battered beyond recognition in places and completely unconscious.

The other wasn’t that much better.

The golden dragoness appeared to have lost consciousness while desperately shielding her son from the blast, her body still positioned protectively over his despite everything that had happened.

The woman sniffled and furiously wiped at her nose before throwing herself back into clearing the rest of the debris burying them.

Just as the Wyvern King had said, they should be alive.

Keyword being should.

"Auntie! Auntie! Wake up!"

Shaking her didn’t work.

And panic was starting to set in fast.

The woman raised her palm, fully prepared to slap the normally poised dragoness across the face if that was what it took to wake her.

But before she could bring her hand down, a pair of sharp golden eyes suddenly snapped open.

Cirila reacted on pure instinct.

Her body tensed, her gaze immediately turning lethal as though she were prepared to tear apart whoever had been stupid enough to approach her while she was vulnerable.

Then the woman kneeling over her finally registered.

Lady Cirila froze.

Her expression shifted from hostility to complete disbelief.

"I-Ilyss?"

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