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Rosen Flame B1 — 2. Resignation
🕑 Added 2023-09-14 07:29:48 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Malik (Our MC and Humanity's Hero!)
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The salted wind of the night air picked up as Malik took the lead, guiding Rose across the white sandy beach. The cool breeze did little to stop the sweat gathering on his brow with the disguised dragon’s hand in his, fingers still throbbing from the pressure she’d squeezed them with. In the distance, he saw smoke plumes from chimneys, the earliest of risers making preparations for the morning activities.
Glancing at the semi-curious, pink-haired woman beside him, panicked thoughts began racing through his mind. What if they did go get a drink, and she went on a rampage? No, that was stupid; her resistances could no doubt handle hydra venom. What if he just made this quiet town a target? He couldn’t get drunk! How could he prevent a tragedy if plastered?
Malik slowed to a stop along the beach, heart thumping a million kilometers an hour as he prompted the dragon to do the same. His [B-tier Night Vision] gave him a clear view that was practically daylight under the starry sky, showing him the easily flammable forest above the bank, and second thoughts raced through his brain.
It wasn’t as if the sea even mattered when it came to Rose’s flames; if she breathed out an ember, it could spread to the entire ocean if she so desired, coating the entire world’s atmosphere in superheated steam. What chance did the barely hidden town further up the coast have?
“Why are we stopping?” Rose asked, making Malik sigh as she glanced around for what human activity they were supposed to be doing.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Malik pointed at a log further up on the beach, steeling his nerves; she could smell a lie somehow, so he had to be genuine.
“We need to have a talk about this human ritual in a bit more detail. There are…a lot of steps and rules that come along with courtship—its challenges.”
A suspicious crease came to her sky-blue eyes. “I hope my teleportation just now showed you I can get to you anywhere. You promised me a challenge in this female experience, the courtship ritual, and a child as a mammal creates them to bring a powerful True Dragon into the world for me to face.”
She withdrew his hand, her dubious stare making his stomach queasy under her scrutiny. “Do you intend to wiggle out of those commitments? Perhaps I should perform a soul-pact on you since humans tend to be so unreliable. I have been told they are most reliable when fearing for their lives.”
Malik’s jaw slackened, all the tension knitting his body deflating from his lungs; that solved everything. “You can do that?”
“Humph!” Rose brushed her hair to the side as if he’d insulted her. “Any demigod can make a pact with a mortal. Did you think it was a right only reserved for gods or your precious Titania?”
“No, I just… Does that work two ways?” he swiftly pursued, making her lean away uncomfortably at the eagerness in his voice. “If I make this soul-pact, can I make my own stipulations to the nature of our pact?”
“I…suppose? I am a dragon!” she scoffed. “You would doubt my word?” she followed with a growl, a pink, flaming aura igniting around her, the rumble literally shaking the ground as her vibrations generated a small earthquake.
Trying not to piss himself, Malik held up his hands and threw his words to the wind, voice shaking with the message treatment. “I, uhh, willll enterrr iintoo a mutualll agreeeement!”
The quake abruptly ceased with a haughty huff. “I suppose you have no experience with dragons then—the ignorance. I could compel you to do my will! Why must I give you any say in such a matter?”
Taking a second to find his voice as he stood and tried to find his shaky legs, Malik forced a laugh. “A proud dragon—would resort to such cowardice? A courtship is a union, and mutual. You would be wiggle out of the—”
“Cowardice?!” she shrieked, the shockwave blowing him into the sky and ripping up the beach as she shot to her feet.
Malik only barely had the time to activate his defensive Feats—it saved him from being stripped naked—yet she clearly had tempered it just enough to merely knock all the wind out of his lungs. One second, he was on the ground, and the next, he soared through the air; an instant later, he was forcefully teleported back, coughing and choking at her feet as she released a low, vicious laugh.
“Heheh. Fine. If you think I am a coward to compel you instead of facing this…this challenge, then you best make it worth letting that insult pass and not burning your very soul to cinders! Impress me with your craftiness, Malik.”
He winced as he was yanked upright by unseen hands, her draconian features becoming more pronounced in her rage as she stared into his eyes with a fire that could melt the planet.
“Name your conditions, and I will name mine, lesser man thing. Know that if you deviate from them in the slightest, you will experience such torment that a mere second will feel as if your soul is being flayed for millennia!”
Malik’s nervous laugh came out, sweat slicking his body in her controlled, radial heat. In his career as a certified hero, he’d met a lot of frightening creatures, but the livid dragon in front of him made every other threat laughable. In a way, it helped him brush it off. If she wanted him dead, he’d be dead.
“Ack! Wow. Give me a second! I’m still trying to, uh—you protected my ears—huh… That’s unexpected.”
Rose stared at him for several seconds as if he were insane before her all-encompassing magic dropped him to the ground in a tangled heap. “Of course I did. It would be meaningless if you couldn’t hear me. Speak!”
Malik picked himself up, beginning to feel much better after the controlled show of force. She wasn’t quite the loose cannon he’d first taken her for. “Okay, I will. Umm. What will happen to you if, say…you don’t live up to your end?”
Rose’s scowl began to crack as a pretty laugh bubbled out of her chest, and she doubled over, clutching her belly. It was really something extraordinary to Malik. This creature was something absolutely out of horror stories, masked in an avatar so lovely that the pink-haired young woman could outshine any gorgeous woman on the planet with her perfect features.
“You have courage; I will give you that, little human! I have not felt so much emotion in quite a few cycles. If I were to make a soul-pact and break it, my soul would shatter, and all my mana would erupt out of me as my spirit was split into five petal fragments. It might be amusing to see what kind of restriction you would set for your side to hope for such a ridiculous outcome. Let’s hear them.”
Rubbing his throat and trying to get the sand out of his eyes, Malik dusted himself off to buy time to think. “What is with the rush? Jeez. I thought dragons were the patient species. Can I sit down and process this? You rushed me off here without a moment’s notice. Can we chill?”
The dragon frowned, glossy lips pulling in and pushing to the side as she stared at the choppy sea, beginning to settle after her tirade. “I am a tad worked up. Much of this is new to me… Have your time to think, then.”
She returned to the log, sitting and leaning against her. Malik watched her for a moment as she opened up some kind of cosmic map to scan through what he presumed to be their solar system, zooming in on specific phenomena near what looked to be a black hole.
Fixing his clothes, he sat down beside her, running his hand through his hair while pondering his next move. Rose was shockingly compliant thus far; one minute, she was melting the planet below the Darkvein to bathe in a potent ley line for some reason, and the next, she was sitting beside him, looking beautiful and semi-bored. He had one goal, though: convince her not to destroy the world or the humans in it.
Malik stared out at the ocean; the local residents were probably terrified by the sounds and tremors she’d caused. There was likely structural damage that would need to be repaired, but he could probably make a donation for that later. Right now, he had to protect the world from having bigger problems, and if it meant playing house with a dragon, why not? It was way better of an option than anything he had going before. A quest to save the world was a quest, no matter how weird this quest sounded; perhaps Titania was the only god chaotic enough to think of this route of beating a demigod.
“So…is this contract similar to what the devils do?”
Rose sniffed and shot him a rather cute pout. “Not like the demons do. How ignorant. A soul-pact is far more binding and final; it isn’t based on some fancy word trickery but a mutual desire for both parties to achieve what they want. Hah. Let me guess, you want me to destroy myself.”
He scooted away a little as her dangerous tail flicked the sand up with her agitation; if she was already this temperamental before pregnancy hormones got involved, not to mention that she hosted power that could presumably crack the planet like an egg, he was in real trouble. Although, his thoughts stuck to one weird admiration she’d just made.
“Hold on. By a soul-pact’s nature, it is mutual and not one-way… Then why did you get mad earlier when I asked you about it and act like I’d just insulted you? Wait a minute…” Malik’s left eye creased as Rose stared right at him. “You pivoted away from the soul-pack to compulsion because you realized it was mutual after I asked, didn’t you?”
Rose’s vision narrowed, muscles tightening. “I’m not scared to do a soul-pact.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You double-spoke, as humans do,” she accused, her stiffened, ruby-like tail fin suddenly at his throat; it wasn’t quite as threatening anymore. “Do not lie to me!”
If he were to take bets, she was only a demigod when he had met a high goddess, which was like being a speck of dust to the universe; he trusted Titania.
She sat here beside him, participating in this weirdly hostile/non-hostile way while dressed like a human and talking to him like a human; there was a lot more to this lizard than just her titanic power. Rose did want something, and in her vast cosmic experience, she’d caught something that had intrigued her.
“Hmm. No lies.” Smiling, he reached up to carefully push the sharp blades away by the base of her tail, decorated by a scrunchy-like accessory. “All I want is for you to be peaceful, and not eat people or cause trouble—accept the challenge of trying to live as a human.”
Rose’s bladed tail lifted again. “And engaging in human courtship and child making?”
Shit. She won’t let me out of that, will she?
Resigning himself with a slow puff of air, Malik nodded. “Yes, that too. Parenthood, and eventually—whenever that time comes—taking your grown-up, powerful kid with you to some planet out there in space to have your epic showdown. Is that too much of a challenge for you? I really can get you another reincarnator for—”
“No!” Rose shot a side-long glare in his direction before fidgeting with her accessories and dress again, seemingly not accustomed to wearing clothes, was Malik’s guess. “The way you phrase things is quite aggravating, but I can see you trying to appeal to my pride as a dragon and manipulate me.”
“Well, damn,” Malik snickered and sat back with a wry smirk. “I suppose you caught onto my devious plans to orchestrate your demise!”
“…Orchestrate my demise?” she whispered, wiping away the vision of the solar system with a casual flick of her wrist while a thoughtful glint sparkled in her eyes. “I am seeing the appeal to these little games you lesser beings play. My demise,” she repeated with a short giggle.
“On another note, I am intrigued by the notion you posed of human birth being of such hardship; your lives flash by so swiftly that it is like the blink of an eye to a dragon, much less a True Dragon, such as myself. In addition, your claim of a worthy offspring to offer me a thrilling fight is a tempting one since the fire in my blood has dulled over the ages…”
The most dreaded words in history straightened Malik’s back as the dragon tilted her hungry, slitted irises toward him. “I. Am. Bored.”
This can’t be real! Damn, Titania, did you know she was going through some kind of crisis and sent me to put some kind of challenge in her head?
“Oh, there has to be something out in the universe to fill your time!” Malik returned, a panicked laugh strangling his intestines. “Go read a bunch—travel the solar system—do something else besides rolling around in the dirt on Felthran!”
The woman didn’t even seem to acknowledge his desperation, scratching at the base of her curved horn and glancing toward the town, hidden behind the coastal line and forest. Rose sighed, leaning forward to stare out at the sea before absently tracing some complex pattern in the air, creating a seal.
“Let’s list them, then. What will get my blood pumping? Enlighten me, Malik.”
Heart rate increasing again, he spouted off the first things that came to his head.
“Fight the gods!”
“Hah.” She rolled her eyes, lazily continuing her arts and crafts. “I asked to get my blood pumping, not engaging in suicide. Next.”
“Explore the cosmos!”
“Done it. Mmh. There are some noteworthy places, but battling nightmares in my mind, spending another few centuries in Hell poking fun at Archdevils, or kicking in the doors of Heaven to challenge the Angels to singing contests has lost its appeal.”
“Singing…contests with Angels?” Malik mumbled, unable to see the dragon in that light. Hell, sure, but not Heaven.
“Any other bright ideas? You believe I can be challenged and feel my heart pump again in this restrictive life of complex monotony that is the mortal experience. Is there any other idea you have to counter it?”
Malik’s eyes darted across the devastated beach as the sun started to brighten the sky. “I…guess I don’t.”
“A pity.” She breathed out a depressed stream of air that reflected her emotionless life. “In short, make your points, and I will amend them and make my own after; make my blood boil, Malik. It would be a shame to go this far only for me to squeeze the last bit of feeling you can provide me in the form of frustration before incinerating your spirit. I want to see this challenge to human pregnancy that your soul seems to insist on.”
Sucking in sharply, Malik fell onto his back in the sand, cloak draping around him. “That’s it, huh? You’re really going to force me into a soul-binding pact to ease your boredom. What a quest. Hmm. I guess it could be worse, and I’m not trying to lose.”
“That’s the spirit, Hero. And much worse,” Rose dully grunted, still twirling her finger to create the intricate design. “Are you done sulking and trying to wiggle free from my tail?”
“Haaa. Fine. It’s out of my control.”
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