~ 21 ~

A Promise to a Monster

It took a lot of guts from us both—pun not intended—to touch each other again. I pressed my bloody claws together, and though she struggled to climb aboard, she eventually did so, as I lifted her out from the stomach.

Once she was situated at the center of my claw, I rose, cupping her view for a moment. I didn't want her to see As'gar's corpse. Would she be touched that I went so far to save her? I shook my head at the thought. He looked like roadkill, now. I felt a mixture of pride and disgust, and I wasn't sure which of the two was the most powerful.

But I blew a warm breath within my clasped claws, warming the princess up, coming to step toward the cave. Beginning sunlight washed toward the entrance, the sun looming on the watery horizon.

We stepped out into the slow morning.

"H-Huh..." Words sounded between my claws, and I held up the one holding the princess. She sat cross-legged, eyes closed, enjoying the breeze. "I... never thought I'd feel the wind again." She basked in the morning sunlight, and I did the same, losing myself to the bliss of the coming winds.

We enjoyed the peace.

For the moment that it lasted.

"I-I... I take it... take it that..."

I closed my eyes and nodded. "He's dead. He... won't be hunting you."

"Is that—"

"I did it for more reasons than that," I said. "I was going to save you, no matter what. Now I just have to deal with... the repercussions of that."

Astria hugged her knees to her chest, laying her face across them. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"But if I hadn't pulled you into this mess—"

"I'm a dragon," I replied. "Eventually, something would have happened, and I either would have died... or been forced to live by any means." I smiled without meaning to. "If it weren't for you, I might have done the first instead."

Astria breathed heavily. "Still. It feels like running away brought on more trouble than I expected."

"Of course, it would," I answered while looking at the rising sun. "You wish you went through with the marriage?"

"Of course now," she replied. "Even without... what we learned. I... I just wish I didn't have to do all of that to get away from my father. I wanted him to be able to save face. To ensure peace on the island after I left."

She hugged her knees tighter. "But all that did was get you involved, awaken that scum, and forced... a-all of this to happen." Astria exhaled shakily. "I know there's nothing I can do about it now. But still."

I glanced down. "I'm glad you did it."

"H-Huh?" Astria looked up from the center of my palm. "Why?"

"Because my life wasn't much before you arrived," I told her. "And even though I've awoken something... that I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with... at least it's something. I'm developing. Becoming more. And that only comes from going through what we went through."

Astria hummed at that, lowering a hand to my scales, tracing across them. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you have to be willing to make a few mistakes to truly learn from them." But then she huffed, trying to see between my digits to the kingdom below. "Though we're not finished here. Those weirdos wanted me for power—and I don't have a clue about what they're talking about."

I chuckled. "After we rest up, we can always go down and knock up a few skulls."

"Not that the offer isn't tempting," Astria began, "but we don't know what kind of magic they're packing. Plus, anything we do... gives them more right to attack my home." She groaned and thought some more. "Though that dragon had some things to say about you. He made it sound like you just got here—but you've been here for a while, haven't you?"

My expression dropped at that. "Somewhat. It's... complicated."

"If it's for you," Astria started, tucking away a wet lock of hair, "then I'm willing to listen."

I smiled at her. "I'll tell you about it. I promise. I just... have to work out a few things myself before then."

The disappointment was evident on her face. But she nodded it away, smiling. I looked back into the cave, the various treasures and weapons, glinting from the sunlight. I turned to face it all. "Y'know, though. It would be a shame to let all of this hoard go to waste."

Astria clocked my gaze with a smirk. "Thinking of adding to your own?"

"I feel like your family is at a bit of a disadvantage with their neighbours," I replied. "It sounded like, marriage or not, war was going to break out between them again. The Ancasters hired a dragon to help them out." I glanced at her. "Who says the Laleens can't do the same?"

Astria blinked. "Y-You mean like... go back to them?"

"You said it yourself," I ventured. "You've got some unresolved stuff with your father. Plus... we've gotta tell them what the Ancasters are plotting. And me? I'm too banged up to take another hit from a cannon." I lowered my muzzle so I could be next to her. "But if you come back with treasure and truth, then at the very least, you can help your family out before you leave."

I waited a second.

"So, how about it?"

Astria looked downward. Silent for a few moments, she sighed, shaking her head. "Alright. Yeah, yeah. You're right." She looked into the cavern. "But if we're going back into that cave, you can't hide me away from him. You got that?"

My mouth inched open. "It's... not a pretty sight."

"I don't doubt it," Astria answered. "But I won't think differently of you for it. It doesn't matter what you did. You're still Cole to me."

The confirmation felt hollow to my ears.

But I had no choice but to agree.

"Alright," I answered. "I'll show you what happened."

I wasn't sure how the fuck to feel that I was showing someone, effectively, the corpse of someone that I had torn apart. It's like exhibiting to your sister someone you've murdered. You could say that they were a terrible person and that the killing was both to save someone and an act of self-defence.

But then you walked into that cave, saw the bloodied pool around the slashed dragon, and found more flesh than scales on him. As'gar's jaw kept open—like he had died in the middle of his final laugh.

That was another thing that terrified me.

His laughter at being torn about. Of feeling his insides being pulled outward. It enthralled him. Offered him a delight that came with dying alone. Did he not fear death? If you live only to torture for pleasure, then I imagine your connection to your mortal coil isn't strong.

Had it been he'd always wanted to die?

Then he would have done the job himself.

Maybe the desire for death was there... but he wanted it to happen amusingly? That stuck more truth with me. When it comes to others' deaths, you tend to think that it has to be dramatic—that it has to be something more.

Because it's scary when someone just stops breathing. When death is something quick and ordinary. There always has to be an extra touch to it. Some sort of flare. You'd think that taking someone's life would be this huge thing that looms inside your head.

But the truth was, at least for me, that it wasn't anything grandiose. His ghost didn't haunt after me, and I didn't find myself fundamentally changed. When I looked at his corpse, all I saw was a dead dragon.

In a world like this, you'll find that things die easily and that death is nothing special. It's an ordinary function. It's due to the fear around it that so much is placed around it. But that is the truth of the matter

Something didn't seem right about that statement.

But nothing was outright wrong.

"Could you let me down now?"

The voice had come from my claw. I set it down on the ground, letting her hop out. I rose and watched her from above. She stood at the edge of the lake of blood, looking out to the sprawling beast. Seeing where his scales had collapsed inward, and the many openings that allowed viewing inside his body.

"Wow..." Her voice faded into breath, and I winced for whatever her reaction might be. "You could nearly use his carcass as a cottage."

I blinked. My brain stopped working for a moment. The words What the Fuck flashed through my mind, and my expression reflected as such. With a forced smile, I glanced at the princess and, speaking my mind, I said: "What the fuck?"

"Like what they do in the north! Deep in the tundras." Astria stepped into the lake, splashing red from beneath her feet. Some of it flicked upward, catching to her legs. "If a group becomes lost during a hunt, and they're unable to find nearby shelter, sometimes, they'll crawl inside of their biggest kill for its warmth and safety."

I squeezed an eye. "So, what? You're trying to get the fuck back inside of him?"

She squeezed her face as her head recoiled. "Fuck no! Do you know how fucking gross it was in there? You don't really tend to notice it at first on the count of fear and panic, and holy shit, I was just swallowed, and I'm going to melt inside this nightmare zone."

It was hard to fight the logic on that. "It did look like a really putrid swamp."

"You're fuckin' tellin' me." The princess waves her arms about, despite being cleared of any remains. "It was, like, so gross. Dunked in that water and"—she gagged—"trying to climb aboard some of the floating pieces that... nope, nuh-uh, none of that actually happened."

I looked up as I thought. "Y'know, when word gets out that you've been eaten by a dragon, you'll have to make sure you rumour the dragon it happened with. Or else I'm going to start getting more torches and pitchforks. And one crazy lady."

Astria rubbed the sides of her arms. "Gosh. I don't know how that woman from your story could ever want to be swallowed."

I shrugged. "The fantasy of something tends to beat the reality. Who knows? Maybe she'll find a dragon willing, and the stench of it all will completely ruin it for her. Or... she could die happy inside that dragon's tummy."

I slapped a claw over my face. "But honestly, I have no clue... and I hate thinking about it."

"I'm sorry for screaming at you, by the way."

I pulled the claw down to look down at Astria in the lake. She stood with her hands behind her back, twisting. "What now?"

"Back when I was still in his stomach. You... beat him up something fierce. Knocked me around a bit too." She looked down at her feet, not disturbed, despite being a princess, of being in the middle of a stretch of blood. "I hate myself for becoming that terrified. But... that's the thing. You can never really control how you'll react in certain situations."

"Dude," I started, "you were swallowed and tortured by a dragon. I would have developed worse than a phobia after that."

Astria shook her head. "It's not so much that… that I'm ashamed of. It's just... I don't like how I screamed at you." Her hands clasped tighter together. "I knew it was you, out there, beating him. Doing whatever you needed to. I was so conflicted inside of him, and also when he had first kidnapped me."

I watched her wordlessly.

"I knew that I pulled you into something I shouldn't have," Astria continued. "I felt more like a brat that's run away than a princess plotting her proper escape. I thought that I could take on the world, that I could handle curling up on the street, starving to death, or be picked up as prey from whatever monsters lurked out there in the world."

She looked over to the beast's corpse. "But then he came, and he locked me in that cage, doing things... that I'd rather not speak about." Astria sighed, moving her feet through the blood, creating the sounds of light splashes. "I knew that none could save me but you. But I also knew that, even if you came... that you probably wouldn't win."

Astria held up a hand. "No offence, of course."

I held up a claw in exactly the same way. "None taken. I didn't want to fight him the first time we met, and I doubt that, without you, I would have stood much of a chance anyway."

The princess huffed, planting her hands on her hips. "C'mon, now! You're not giving yourself enough credit! You wiped the floor with that guy! I didn't even do anything in that fight!"

"But the fight was about you," I replied. "Had it been for my own survival or anything else... there would have been more than a few moments when I would have tapped out for good. It's only because the fight was for you that I... well, y'know."

The princess smiled. Sunlight washed into the cave, as did an idle breeze. It was refreshing, even if both were small. A confirmation that something good, no matter tiny, could enter a terrible place such as this.

"I think that was buried in my feelings as well," the princess commented. "I didn't want you to come only to see you die. Even seeing you in pain now has me... feeling like crap." She sighed. "But, in the end... despite how terrible of a person that it makes me... I wanted you to come."

The words tickled inside my head, and they prickled inside of my heart, the insides of my digits starting to dull. I turned in my great height to see the woman that barely rose above my feet. How she could stand so tall despite the monster she was facing down.

That somehow, in spirit, we were equals.

"Even when it seemed like we were going to die," Astria held back the choking in her voice, "I was still glad that you came. Not because I was going to be saved, or that any of us would make it out alive. But I... I've spent my whole life... to waking up... and people not being there."

Her head fell. "To not have met my mother and barely know of my father. To fall in love with an uncle and suddenly not have him there." She shook. "Or sisters that you would play with, and one by one, wouldn't show up to the table the next morning. Or the boys. The terrible men. The knights and heroes who lacked in everything."

She tilted her head back, looking to the ceiling of the cave. "I thought my life would end up looking like this. Finally eaten by a horrible male as the tragedy of my life had finally been written. I knew that good people could exist. That there could be goodness in the world."

Astria exhaled. "But when all you see is terribleness, day in and day out, without the slightest hope of any kind of change... you just give up. You don't know what to say or what to do. You stay alive because it's only slightly better than being dead. But, even then, you contemplate if that's the case daily."

She looked forward to the body, starting to walk towards it. "That foolishness led to me finding you. Who would have thought... that the last shred of decency on this island... would be held by a dragon?" She slowed to the hill-sized claw, which had been clenched. "You were my one hope that, if I were to go beyond my world, I would find something better. You were the first sign that goodness did exist."

Astria glanced at me. "So that, once the dragon had me, I both wanted for you to be okay... and for you to come and find me. To be the one person that I believed in. That somehow, against it all, that you would be there. I felt that more than I thought it. Because any thinking creature knew that you wouldn't have come."

I spoke without meaning to. "But I'll always be there."

Her smile grew in surprise, and for a moment, she was stunned, which hadn't been my intent. I'd stopped thinking as much and, like her, trusting more in my feelings than in my logic.

"Yes. I... I knew that even though you had no reason to come... that somehow, you'd be there." The princess nodded. "You have nothing to gain from it. You weren't equipped to fight like that. Logic told me I'd die horribly in that cage. But still. I let myself feel that, despite it all, that you would come anyway."

And her smile brightened enough to reveal teeth.

"And you did! You came despite it all... and I was so glad." Astria clasped her hands in front of her. "Even in the moments I thought that we both were going to die—I was glad that I could do so alongside you. Even when I was sloshed in that stomach, I was glad to feel your effects, to know what you were doing to save me."

Then her eyes dropped. "But once I heard the breathing around me stop... and a horrible tearing thundering all around... the stomach had opened up from above... and you were there... blood coursing from your muzzle, claws covered in remains, and the way you loomed, it..."

She lowered her clasped hands. "I'm sorry, Cole. I'm so, so sorry." Then she unclasped them. "I never wanted to scream at you like that. Never wanted to take away from my appreciation for what you did for me. You scared me at that moment. I won't lie to you about that. But I don't care whatever you become."

She held out a hand to me. "If you're blood-soaked and surrounded by the corpses of other monsters. If you're hunted by humans or the stories they'll come to tell about you. I can't promise that I'll always be there as you need me to. But I promise that, no matter what you become, so long as you always remain you—that I'll get over those transformations alongside you."

Shakily, I nodded, holding out my claw as well and, carefully, I took her small arm into my fist. I felt it, the tickle that it was. Then my digits loosened, enough for her arm to slide out. We shook without fear, sealing the promise.

But, when she withdrew her arm, it was glowing gold.