To the Victor Go the Spoils
4/25Before DawnDrusilla La Salle was not a woman who often slept soundly, so when she heard shouting from outside her room she was awake almost instantly. Her staff was in her hand in a moment, and she pulled on one of her simple hooded robes and a pair of sandals. She didn’t know what was going on, but obviously people were upset. If there was an assault, she needed to be ready to aid in the defense.
As she moved to begin summoning her imp, she heard shouting from outside. Her name was being called out, accusing her of a theft. She’d toyed with the idea, yes, but she hadn’t actually done anything yet and likely wouldn’t have for quite some time. She turned quickly, abandoning the ritual, and retrieved a satchel containing her valuables, a few sets of traveling clothes, a grimoire, and a few days worth of food. If they were calling for her specifically, it was unlikely they would give her the benefit of the doubt.
As she turned back towards the door she felt a hot, flushed sensation spread across her whole body. She nearly fell over with dizziness. She steadied herself against the wall one handed, and as she tried to focus and dispel the dizziness, her hand seemed to smooth out. Over about ten seconds, her hand went from the bony hand of a woman of nearly fifty to the soft, slender hand of a woman in her early twenties. As the feverish sensation left, she realized it took all the little accumulated aches and pains she had picked up over the years with it. She felt amazing.
She pulled a hand mirror out of her things and stared at herself for several long moments. She didn’t look like the aging witch that she was expecting. She was looking back at the pretty young conjuror who had served in the second war. The one who hadn’t ruined her body channeling fel magic. Also, she realized, the one who looked quite a bit different from the aging warlock that the whole abbey was currently looking for.
(By NovelAI https://imgur.com/a/Ul50y2X)
She needed to talk to Erich Lewis. She wasn’t sure why, and that made her a bit wary, but she felt on a deep level that he would be able to explain what had happened. She wasn’t even sure where she had heard the handsome young man’s name. Was he the trainee priest Anetta had started gushing over? Yes. She could picture his face.
The only thing to do at this point was to pack a few more things into her bag, and then see about joining the groups of trainees searching for her. She could leave, pretending to be a dropout perhaps, once she had cleared it with Erich. No real use in clearing her name at this point, not if she could just walk out unrecognized. Far more important to find out what happened to her.
Erich had a lot of explaining to do. As she left into the hallway thinking of him, it occurred to her that she hadn’t gotten laid since before she had started studying the dark arts. Did she really need to get back the libido of a teenager along with the rest of it? Ah well. Erich seemed like a strapping young man; she was sure he’d take care of her needs if she asked.
••••••••••
Lividia sat in the rain, pondering her destiny. The dragon whelp, a few years of age now, knew her ultimate fate of course. She was Mother’s favorite, so she would be groomed and trained until she was ready to be her right hand. It would take time, as she was still quite small, but it was almost her visage day. Soon she would be ready to take on a mortal form and walk among them as mother did.
It always seemed to be a bit silly, in Lividia’s opinion, that mortals didn’t simply kneel before their betters instinctively. Sadly they were stupid, so she would need to give them a human face to worship until they were ready for the real thing. She had already chosen to be a beautiful onyx haired human noblewoman, as that was the closest thing a human could be to her true magnificent splendor. She would have preferred an elf, like Grandmother, but her Mother had decided that humans were the target for now. Mother was always right. Lividia hated that it was true, but it must be so until she was powerful enough to outshine even the mighty Onyxia.
For now though, she was guarding the road between Goldshire and Lakeshire. Mother wanted the two towns to remain connected for now, and that meant that gnolls could not be allowed to impede the humans traveling along the path. Lividia had been placed here because she was the strongest of her brood, except for Obsidia, who was a stupid brute that didn’t count. She was also the smartest, except for Insidion, who didn’t count either as Lividia had beaten him in wrestling matches seven times in ten, so he was basically irrelevant.
As the obvious best choice for the job, Lividia knew it must be very important, but it was so boooooring. The gnolls knew better by now, and the red masked humans served mother unwittingly, so they rarely required correction.So when she heard the sound of a human setting up to sleep in a tree off the side of the road, she was sufficiently bored to watch him at work. It was competently done, she had to admit. She’d hidden in that very tree before, and the land bound had hardly any chance of seeing him from below. Perhaps this one would have been an acceptable minion, if she knew how to make dragonspawn.
He ate a simple meal of nuts and dried meat, then tried to sleep. Lividia kept watching, but it was no longer a simple matter of entertainment. Not entirely, at least. She had noticed that he had a particularly large and full backpack. Humans with very large backpacks frequently had interesting things in them. If he slept, she could have a look. The road wouldn’t be suddenly blockaded just because she took a few hours off. This was important. He could have things of great value to her. Like a cured ham, perhaps.
••••••••••
A few hours and a careful extraction later, she sat at the foot of a tree nearby examining her prizes. A few bottles of golden dust were set aside for her stash, a few bags of marbles examined and discarded, that horrid unspiced wolf jerky humans sometimes subjected themselves to was tossed out on the ground as soon as she saw it, and quite a few random odds and ends were dismissed almost as quickly. In time she cleared out the whole bag, setting aside a bit of gold and silver, but smelled magic in the bag. Sniffing and delicately cutting into the bag a bit at a time led her to finding a concealed pouch.What she found inside put her into an immensely good mood. So good that she decided on the spot that she would leave the useless things on the ground where the human could find them, rather than burning them for her own amusement. He had unwittingly performed a great service to one of his betters, and she was willing to be generous.
The string of pearl sized green crystals was beautiful. Exactly, Lividia thought, what a fine lady from Stormwind might wear, and she could easily integrate it into her chosen visage. They also smelled sweetly of magic; some kind of intricately woven arcane power. She didn’t know enough about enchanting, a task she would some day have servants to do for her, to know exactly what it did, but it seemed designed to empower its wearer.
Lividia was sure that human’s whole existence had been leading up to this day, where he got to deliver such a prize to the future leader of the Black Dragonflight. She would not rob him of that. She put it on immediately, not noticing as the knot serving as a clasp melted away the moment she did.