A Dragon's Taboo

Balerifon was very particular about how things played out that evening.

At the campfire, he had brought out a particularly old bottle of wine and poured everyone a glass. A toast, he claimed. A toast to their success. He spoke to how the gold they’d won could surely fund whatever insane plans they had.

Everyone but Dora immediately drank deeply from their cups. Dora dipped a claw into her drink, finally imbibing when she saw the claw come back out the same color. Seconds later, Lavender slumped to the ground unconscious. Not from any drug in the drink, but from a powerful deception spell to trick her into thinking she’d already slipped into bed.

“You’re not a very trusting person,” said Balerifon to Dora. With a wave of his hand, Lavender’s body lifted into the air and floated back towards one of the tents.

“I don’t trust anyone offering me a free drink,” said Dora. “The first lesson I learned in my education.” Quite literally – anyone who accepted their offered drink upon being accepted into the Assassins’ Guild spent the next sixty seconds choking on the last lesson they’d ever learn.

It proved a good way to weed out the gullible.

The dragon nodded. “A wise policy. Though I’ve never experienced the negative consequences. Dragons are practically immune to poisons of all kinds.”

“Now, you promised me answers.”

Balerifon tossed a large log into the fire and set it ablaze with a single breath. “What I am about to tell you, I ask that you will not speak to Lavender of it until I have.” He poured himself another drink and sipped. “You know most of the story. The Emperor gave her to me ten years ago, and told her that she would not leave until her true love came to rescue her. I cared for her in that time. Fed her. Clothed her. Gave her an education. And in all those years, not a single person came to rescue her.” 

Hazel winced as she remembered the conversation she had with Lavender the day they were reunited. Suddenly, her interest in why people bothered to write romance took on a different tone.

“Before we continue, there is something you must understand.” Balerifon’s face was stoic. “Are you familiar with the concept of mana density?”

He was not surprised at Robert not having a clue. Nor was he shocked that Hazel’s haphazard education left her without an understanding. It was a niche concept.

That left Dora to challenge him. “I know.”

----

One of the lesser-known parts of being trained as an assassin was that you learned about medicine. Knowing how the body worked gave you a better understanding of how to stop it from working – or in rare cases, how to keep it working long enough to bring the target back alive. A novice assassin sneaks poison into their target’s drink. An expert keeps them drinking while they poison themselves.

In the rare cases of having to keep a target alive, assassins learned about blood transfusion – giving their blood to another. They could activate the dormant magical power in their own blood to overpower any issues with differing blood type without consequence. This was because of mana density. Humans, orcs, elves, beastkin, most sentient species had identical levels of mana present in their body.

That made magically-assisted transfusions amongst common folk safe. And it was why the story Balerifon was about to tell shocked Dora to her very soul.

----

It was a year into Balerifon’s guardianship of Lavender. He had been careful to follow the Emperor’s command. To take no action that would cause harm to befall the child.

He had a terrible stomachache from what miserable attempt at cooking she’d made. Balerifon knew it was a poor effort. But the girl had clearly put effort into it and it wasn’t like he could die from food poisoning.

That didn’t stop him from wishing he could.

He clutched his stomach and knocked on the door to Lavender’s room. He’d cheated a little by giving himself his wings in human form but trying to climb the stairs in his current state was asking for trouble. He knocked on her door. “Kid? Listen, maybe tomorrow I teach you a thing or two about…”

The door swung open from his knock. Lavender’s room was a mess of old children’s books and sheets. Cleaning up after herself wasn’t a learned habit yet. But what concerned Balerifon was the pile of pillows arranged under the covers in a crude facsimile of a sleeping child.

She was making a break for it. How long had he left her unattended?!

He immediately dove out the window of Lavender’s room and reassumed the form of the dragon in all its glory. A titanic reptilian beast covered in black scales, with two horns shooting out from the head and great thin wings stretching out from its back.

Balerifon gnashed his pointed teeth together as he flew out the top of Drake’s Peak and began to search the slopes for the child. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and descent the untamed peak. He was convinced she had to follow the road.

The closer he got to the tree line, the more he grew concerned. Because there was a large ravine running down the side of the mountain and there was a section that hadn’t had a bridge in years. The only way across was –

There. Trying to balance across the branch of a dying tree over the ravine. The child.

“Lavender, stop!” His voice carried loud and far as he began to descend upon her. “You’re going to fall and die!”

The girl froze at the sound of his voice and looked down into the ravine. He saw the branch she was standing on give way and she began to fall.

He would never make it in time, not even with his speed. Not at such distance. All he could do was dive towards the screaming human child as she plunged to the earth and be shattered upon the rocks below.

Death was not something a dragon escapes. The length of their life, the brutality of it at times. But that did not mean Balerifon took pleasure in seeing the broken girl lying still on the ground. Spending her final moments far from home and anyone she knew.

In a dark moment, he realized something terrible. She was going to die through no fault of his own. He had been distracted and unable to react in time. Through a cruel set of coincidences, he had navigated his way to a loophole in the Emperor’s command. Balerifon could finally be free from his grasp.

All he had to do was to let a human child die. All he had to do was nothing and he could defy the Emperor.

He stared at the body of the child. One whose greatest sin was being a poor cook. Resuming the form of a human, Balerifon stared at the palm of his hand. His fingers were still covered by his scales and tipped by his claws.

His kind would never accept what he was about to do. But he could not live with himself if he did not.

With a single motion, Balerifon plunged one of his claws deep into his palm. The pain, his grunting reflex, temporary. The blood pouring out of his wound must not be wasted.

He reached his bloody hand to one of the open wounds on the dying child’s body and placed his palm on it. “Blood of my blood,” he chanted, “scale from my hide, claw from my paw, tooth from my maw.” He squeezed his hand into Lavender. “I give you my blood, and with it my blessing. I swear unto you this Oath: that as long as I may breathe, my hand shall guide yours. My wings shall lift you up. And in time, your steps may follow my own.”

The girl beneath him started to convulse. Screams of pain escaped her bloodied lips as her limbs snapped into place and her wounds sealed themselves. It was a pity she had to pay the price for his choice.

He kept his hand on her, keeping her where she was until her voice grew hoarse from the screaming and the tears escaping her eyes grew dry. When the last tremor in her body went still, Balerifon finally picked her up in his arms.

“Come along, whelp. You’ve much to learn.”