Extra 1: The Fellwyrm and His Feelings
SUCH agony.
With a sickening concerto of cracking, his skin split and peeled to reveal row after row of obsidian scales beneath. The miasma had already snuffed out the meager few candles the room had housed, leaving him alone in perfect darkness. The fellwyrm had no idea what he was doing in such a place or why, but one thing was clear: his desire to burn and destroy miraculously aligned with the former will of whatever fool had summoned him.
I must destroy this “beauty” he seemed to loathe so.
That was simple enough. If the summoner’s wish had been anything different, he wouldn’t have responded to the call and let himself be bound so readily.
He shattered the window and sailed out into the moonless night on his newly grown wings. The mansion beneath him was stirring to life as lights took to the windows, but whatever they were attempting, it was too late. Nobody alive could stop the fellwyrm now.
But what is the meaning of this minuscule form?
The once-mighty drake looked down at its new body. His human summoner had no shortage of malice for him to draw from, so there should have been no issue with his vessel. As puzzling as that was, he also found himself drawn in a particular direction, as though it were calling to him.
Could this be a contract? With me, Ivliess? Inconceivable.
As he discarded the possibility, he arrived at a mansion surrounded by a carefully tended garden. He circled the building a few times before locating the window he was being drawn to. For some incomprehensible reason, he found the glass impossible to break. He could see a blonde woman lying on a bed through the crack in the curtain. Her face was buried in a pillow, and she was kicking her legs in the air.
He tapped at the window with his hard-pointed snout, careful not to startle her. Eventually, she noticed him and drew back the curtain to get a better look.
“What…?”
Their eyes met, and memories stirred in the fellwyrm’s head. He remembered staring at the young woman’s smile for hours on end, but never head-on. In fact, he couldn’t recall her ever noticing him before. The woman—Elizabeth, that was her name—only ever had eyes for another.
“Lord Lars?” she said hesitantly.
At the mention of that name, his heart skipped a beat.
“Queargh!” he chirped back at her.
Elizabeth opened the window. Warm air hit his iron-scaled cheek. She reached out to him, and he found himself filled with indescribable joy, the likes of which he’d never dreamed.
Why was I ever so angry in the first place?
At that moment, the fellwyrm abandoned his destructive ambitions and became Lars, heart and soul.
Or rather, he tried to become Lars. Being taken to the palace was well and good, but as soon as he laid eyes on that horrible wretch of a man, his fury flowed back with greater force than it ever had before. It was difficult to tell Lars’ memories apart from his own twisted desires. It was clear as day why he was contracted to become the girl’s guardian dragon in the first place.
He could remember a black cat that loved to sit on Elizabeth’s lap. It was the same cat she had knighted, the one who had scratched his cheek so badly many months ago. It was unable to ward off that horrible wretch Vincent, but the cat was close to her in ways nobody else could be. Becoming her pet was his goal—his very reason to live. If he did good work, she might even scratch his horns with those heavenly hands of hers.
And so, he resolved to wait and muster his mana until the perfect opportunity arose.