“I guess I’ve got a cold,” I said to myself as I shivered, holding my hands up to the fire.
Having lost my salmon to the ordeal of my escape, I had begged the dragon girl for something to eat. Eventually, she let me have a single rabbit paw. More accurately, I managed to swipe it from her pile of leftovers. Once my stomach was full, I rummaged through my pockets then remembered that the scale was no more.
As things stood, the dragon girl’s talent for manipulating essence far surpassed that of the other children. While her own skills might have played a role, there was no denying that the secret to the amount of essence she possessed lay within her draconic biology. Her scales had the innate ability to store essence, supporting how she was able to exude vast quantities of the stuff. That said, storage was all they could do. They couldn’t increase the essence she was able to draw out of herself, though the essence she gave out during one meditation session far surpassed what I produced in a whole day. Dragonborns couldn’t just store essence; the amount they expelled was abnormally high too.
“The wolves are trying to figure out our movements,” I said, intending to continue with a warning to be careful until I realized the dragon girl looked totally disinterested. She could probably figure out what that meant for herself.
I picked up my knife and a piece of bamboo and carried on crafting. The extra-sharp blade shaved away at the plant’s surface with ease. My knife-handling skills were visibly improving as I continued doing this work daily. My rule for this life was to give my all to everything I did. Crafting seemed like a time-killer, but I was sure the practice would come in handy one day.
I turned the crafted bamboo into an arcane tool with increased durability, and I was now able to do that with fewer and fewer hiccups too. When it was done, I rubbed it down with oil from these walnut-like nuts. I placed my finished work on the log next to the dragon girl like it was an offering.
“A comb,” I explained.
She looked at it in confusion and then back at me, as if to ask, “So what?”
Actually, she probably didn’t know what a comb was in the first place. I’d made it so we could brush out the bugs that clung to our hair. In this environment, the physical and psychological harm that bugs could cause were potentially lethal but particularly the latter. Even the discomfort they caused that led to sleeplessness could put your life in danger when it came to survival. Or so I heard anyway.
I picked up the comb and walked around behind her as she watched me warily all the while. Taking one tuft of her shiny, moonlight hair, I ran the comb through it slowly. Her hair was a mess—we didn’t have much time for personal grooming during survival training—but it only took a few runs to make the strands neat.
That silver hair that grew just beyond her shoulders, her golden reptilian eyes that seemed to hint toward a curious strength, and her youth all came together to make her whole existence exude mystique. Maybe a part of her otherworldly appearance made the boy within me all but worship her. Maybe the reason I didn’t hold the same blind devotion was because of her savagery and ill manners.
Once I finished combing her hair, I gave the tool over to her and got back to scraping bamboo. I tore off a long, rectangular strip of bamboo and sharpened it to a point. I was making an awl, which I would imbue with extra penetrative power. Given the base material, there was a limit to how much I could improve it, but it should be good enough to stab through an eye or to kill a human who wasn’t defending themselves with essence. It also had use as a tool for disarming traps.
As I carved, she meditated, combed the fur of her tail, and eventually settled to sleep.
✦ ✦ ✦
The morning sun cast its light over the thick green of the forest. A girl raced through the vegetation, keeping close to the ground. Her footsteps barely made a sound, the result of her commitment to training. Perhaps the most striking aspect of her appearance was the bouquet of flowering plants atop her head. They weren’t just placed there but were actually growing. It made one sympathize with an adult male flower fae whom such a feature might not suit.
For some reason, the flower fae girl was snooping about our surroundings. I used a silent walking technique more effective than hers to sneak up behind her. Though my steps made no sound, she seemed to detect me when I was inches away and turned around.
She was still too slow.
Shoving her to the ground so she was face-down, I looped some wire around her neck like the reins of a horse. They were from the traps I’d disarmed.
“Don’t move. No essence.” I only needed to cross my hands for the metal to dig into her neck. With a bit more force, it would slice clean through to the other side. “You realize I can have your head off if you even twitch, don’t you?”
She froze. I understood completely—she didn’t want to die, and neither did I.
“You’re allowed to talk, but that’s it. Got it?”
“Yes,” she replied after a gulp, accepting her place. She was what every kid should aspire to be.
“You’re after the dragonborn, aren’t you?”
She paused. “Yes.”
Her tone was too even for me to be sure if she was telling the truth or not. She was adept in these kinds of situations compared to the other children. Her behavior reflected the most human parts of Sister intensified. In short, she was incredibly devout. She was also one of the kids who had punished the dragon girl. I needed to be on guard. Maybe killing her was the best option.
“I came to negotiate,” she said, as though sensing where my thoughts were headed.
Given she had also sensed my approach, she was showing curious perceptiveness. I remembered Konji mentioning that flower fae were able to read minds, so maybe that was it. Maybe that was also why she was so much more impertinent than the other kids our age.
“Negotiate what?” I asked.
“The dispatch of that arrogant dragonborn. He wants her dead too. As do you.”
She was completely clueless.
“You’re constantly regarding her with murderous intent. Fear not, you are not alone. We have a great power on our side,” she continued.
I guessed she was referring to Sister. Also, that the murderous intent she sensed did not come from me but the boy. This conjecture lined up with what Konji said—that flower fae could only read what was on the mind’s surface. She could tell the size of a stone by the ripples it sent through the lake but not its color. It wasn’t within her capabilities to perceive the source of my emotions. The only thing visible to her was my maddening envy, not what caused it. She had no reference for that, so she compartmentalized it as the closest thing she understood: murderous intent.
I knew what she was after. I bet she had come expecting her mind-reading abilities would give her the upper hand in this “negotiation.” She was probably here alone so she wouldn’t be seen as a threat and because she was confident she could sway me. We were enemies. Chances were high that her side would come after the dragon girl and me once this training session was over. Here, I had a prime opportunity to kill her.
I would do it. The question was how. I had to make effective use of the life before me for the sake of my survival. I would absorb the marrow from her bones, her soul, to sustain my own life. Perhaps that urge came from the all-too-familiar philosophy from my previous life: Finish what was on my plate. Waste not, want not. I was sure of it.
The flower fae’s mind-reading ability was incredibly annoying. It made it difficult to catch her by surprise. Then there was the fact that I was probably part flower fae myself. I might have been using the same abilities without even realizing it. I wanted to know more.
I swung my knife into her ankle, cutting through her Achilles tendon. She cried out and started thrashing, so I tied her wrists with the wire. That was enough to render a child powerless, with very few exceptions.
I marked her body with several shallow cuts. There were already tears in her eyes, probably from fear and rage. She squirmed and writhed like a caterpillar as she tried to escape me. Giving her a small smile, I dangled my knife in front of her to deepen her despair. Now and then, I took an exaggerated step that made me look like a clown.
She whimpered, and I whistled a tune to add to my performance. It wasn’t that I was enjoying myself, but if I wanted to practice reading minds, it would help to heighten her emotions as much as possible for my first attempts. Hopefully she would start wanting me to learn too before her dignity crumbled completely. I would certainly be giving it my all.
More whimpering. I raised the knife.