Unconditional Positive Regard

The knights were still far away; we could outrun them. I was about to speed up when Lyla yelled, “Stop. They have mages.” She had already lagged behind, just standing in place. I followed suit. But Sabedra was still carrying on, as if she didn’t hear any of the warnings.

“Sabedra!” I yelled. She ignored me.

A grunt of frustration escaped my mouth. “Lady Sabedra, the Dragon of Knowledge!”

This time, she stopped and turned around. “What is it?” She asked in a clueless tone.

“The knights. What should we do about them?”

Sabedra shook her head with a scowl, annoyed at my question. She changed direction and strutted towards the knights.

“What are you doing?” I screamed. “They are trained to fight you!”

Sabedra spared a brief glance at me and carried on her march. “What else can I do? I wanted to ignore those worthless insects, but now that you kept going on and on about how dangerous they are…”

Neither of us said anything about danger.

Sabedra’s skin trembled like jelly; her body morphed and expanded, her dress warped into scales. She was back in her dragon form.

“I couldn’t let them challenge me like this,” she finished her sentence.

There was an uproar among the knights. I could hear them communicating about rearranging their formation, one that was designed to fight dragons.

“Now someone will die!” Even if Sabedra could defeat them, there would be casualties.

“Do you really believe that?” Sabedra laughed. Why couldn’t I get through to her?

A tornado twisting with flames manifested above the knights. Sabedra squinted at the calamity. “That is impressive. I thought none of them had enough mana for this.”

“It’s called teamwork.” If I weren’t carrying Res, I would be throwing my head in my hands right now.

Like the miniature sun magic tool, the tornado flung at us balls of inferno, but this time the projectiles were the size of yoga balls.

“Sabedra, can you redirect them?” I screamed.

Sabedra didn’t answer me. She inhaled a torrent of air, producing a resonant bellow. And she blew out a cloud of fire. The knight’s flaming orbs hit the cloud and instantly disintegrated, becoming part of the drifting mist.

Sabedra flapped her wings, generating a violent gale that rushed to the fire tornado. Upon impact, the fire tornado popped into nothingness.

My mouth was agape, and so was Lyla’s; she almost dropped Res’s notes, which she had been holding.

“I told you. They can’t beat me.” Sabedra pointed her spiked thumb at herself.

Watching a giant lizard praise herself like this was a bizarre sight. But perhaps I had witnessed too many weird things in the past week; I recovered quite fast from the shock.

“Let’s go. While they are regrouping.” I yelled. Lyla got moving right away, but Sabedra still stood in place.

“No, I won’t run away.”

This lizard…

I put on a soft voice, as if talking to an infant. “Why not? We know you are stronger than they are.”

“Either I annihilate all of them, or I tire them out. I think you won’t want me to do the former.” Sabedra spoke as if her action was entirely justified. And I realized her ears were so far away that she might not even have heard my question.

The knights were scrambling for another strategy. It wouldn’t be long before they would initiate another round of attacks. I couldn’t possibly focus on Res when danger was so close to us. No matter how Sabedra could neutralize their spells, the sense of threat would still loom in my mind. More importantly, there was no logical reason for us to stay here. Sabedra was being difficult and stubborn.

How do I convince her? She is putting all of us at risk. Why does she have to be like this?

My rage directed itself at her. I was ready to mutter insults at her. But then, a simple memory dispersed all the built-up tension. In her cave, the two of us laying side by side on a hill of garbage in utter silence. That moment painted only an incomplete picture of Sabedra’s inner world, not enough for me to understand her entire being. It didn’t establish a mental link between us. However, it was still something. A trace of an unseen sorrow.

“Sabedra,” I yelled so that she could hear me.

“It’s Lady Sabedra-”

“We need you to bring us to your cave. I need you. I want our plan to succeed. And I need your help for that.”

“I am helping you. You can’t have the knights hindering you.”

“Can they find your cave?”

“It is impossible for them to.”

“Then is there a reason we can’t get back to your cave?”

Sabedra tensed up. Smoke leaked through the gaps between her canines. “I can’t run away. I can’t.”

“I know this means a lot to you. So now I’m begging you to do it. Please. I’m asking as your friend.” When I asked myself what I thought of Sabedra, my answer was obvious. She was someone who possessed a void inside that I could recognize. It could just be my selfish imagination, but the feelings that came from this delusion, they had to mean something.

“We are not friends. How could a lowly human be friends with a dragon?” She gazed back at the knights.

“At least I think of you as one.”

“Why? Because I’m useful? Because I’m powerful? Do you know how many lowborn creatures have used the same line to trick me over the centuries of my life?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care. I just see you as my friend. Don’t ask me why I do. All I know is: you don’t have to know everything; you don’t have to be a dragon at all. And if you had been a poor human commoner, I would feel the same way. At least, I want to feel that way. I don’t want your identity and knowledge to define our friendship at all.” My throat was drying up from all the yelling, all the while my eyes were getting wet. Oh… This is such a bad time to cry.

Sabedra stared at me. Seconds of quiet passed. And she finally decided to shake her head. “Those are just empty words. Every poet could come up with that.”

Yep. This lizard is truly stubborn. A smile floated onto my face. “So, you’re saying that if I can give something else to you, you will escape?”

Sabedra’s face warped into what I thought was a smirk. “I never said that.”

I took off my fire necklace and offered it to her. “You can have this.”

“Are you serious? This useless thing?” Sabedra scoffed. But her gaze had latched onto the necklace.

“Too bad it can’t fit around your neck. Too bad.” I pretended to be putting the necklace back on myself.

“Wait… Wait…” Sabedra hastily transformed back to her human form, rushing to snatch the necklace off my hand and wear it around her neck. She even did a spin for me, hardly masking her excitement.

“How do I look?” She asked.

“I don’t want to interrupt you two but…” Lyla brought our attention to the knights. There were a few shining spots scattered among the group, looking like some of the knights were holding up lampposts on steroids. The glow intensified until the bright points released their stored energies, each shooting out a beam of distinct colors, all towards Sabedra.

When they were about to hit her, Sabedra simply flicked her arm, scattering the beams. The deflected beams ended up landing near us at various places on the grass field, leaving pitch-black char marks in place of the greenery.

“I didn’t have time to erase the magic completely, so… maybe we should retreat.” Sabedra didn’t wait for us to answer. She glided into the air, grabbing Lyla and me by our arms, and zoomed off to the forest.

I almost dropped Res amidst the pandemonium.