Chapter 12 - The Scantily-Clad Woman and Human-form (2)

They were all intriguing, but what made me the most inquisitive was the door labeled in black writing: Other Miscellaneous. Before I could head for the door I had chosen, I heard a blood-curdling scream come from behind one of the doors. I quickly looked for the source of the disruption and found that the transparent door labeled M Slaves had been dyed red with blood.

Then I heard a deep, inhumane voice, feminine in nature, shouting loudly. “How do you like the taste of your own medicine, you dirty, fucking pig? Oh wait, you cannot even taste it anymore, since you are dead.” That inhumane, feminine voice suddenly turned into giggles, which sounded quite insane to me.

I only realized then that I was now in danger, as I was the only one outside of all these doors, and the M Slaves door was quite near me. I knew that the slave, however insane it had become—judging from the giggles—was going to flee this place, and the only way it could was through the plain, black door behind me.

Quickly, I turned around, and just as I was about to open the plain, black door by pushing the knob, a furry hand with five digits, ending in sharp talons, tore through my back and out of my stomach. Then, just as quickly as the talon hand went through me, it pulled back out at the same speed.

The agony and pain did not hit me until I fell to the soft, carpeted floor with a thud, and blood spurted and flowed from the hole in my stomach, dying the carpet from brown to red. I could feel my consciousness ebbing away slowly, and I could only see in a daze, almost as if I was dreaming, but less faint.

There was a shrill laughter coming from beside me, and I turned a little to see the source. It was a faint image of a female humanoid monster with curved talons on both her furry hands and feet; she also had what appeared to be feathered wings jutting out from her back. A graceful, yet cruel creature with an insane look on her face. “And now another pig is dead.” The bird-like humanoid let out another shrill giggle.

Slowly dying on the floor with a demented bird monster hovering beside me, I saw a person wearing a simple black robe that almost seemed to flutter unnaturally come inside through the plain black door.

With an index finger, the black-robed person scratched at his scraggly black beard, looking at the scene in front of him as if it were a common, everyday occurrence. Then, with his free left hand—the hand not scratching his beard—he pointed his palm, fingers curved slightly inward, at the insane “M Slave” hovering beside me. Tendrils of blue light shot out from his palm, and the monster beside me was instantly encased in ice, a look of frozen terror forever captured on her feminine face.

Without even missing a beat or stopping to see what he had done, the black-robed man pointed at the hole in my stomach and shot out another of his blue tendrils of energy. This time, it was aimed directly at the gaping wound. The injury started closing at an extremely fast rate, but at the same time, I felt myself getting even weaker. Then I fainted.

When I opened my eyes and realized that my consciousness had returned, I could see the black-robed man still standing before me, his right index finger scratching his scraggly black beard. Strangely enough, I felt a little annoyance. It was a curious emotion, given my reaction to that little action. I rarely, if ever, felt annoyed unless it was something truly horrendous and, well, annoying.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” the man said in a deep, baritone voice. “I am truly sorry that you had to experience such a thing as an escaped and untrained harpy, but no harm done, eh?” The black-robed man gave me a small smirk, as if nothing had ever happened.

I nodded apathetically and looked down at my stomach to find that the hole had healed. My tunic had torn around the area as well, and I would have to buy another. “Thank you, I suppose,” I said, nodding to the man—no, the mage.

I had only heard of magic but had never seen it firsthand, as there were very few people gifted in this aspect. They were treated very preciously, and kings coveted them.

“Since you had to experience such a thing due to our incompetence with one of the cages, I will compensate you with a slave,” the mage said. “I do hope you will find nothing remiss and harbor no grudges against this fine institution.”

That was how I, at fourteen years old, obtained a slave. More about her later, along with my father's reactions to it—I mean, her. Thus, I left that “institute” after choosing a slave, thinking to myself that it had been an intriguing day.

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“So, my young Verath, how do you like your human form?” the eldest asked.

I nodded at his words—or was it her words?—a little excited at not having to stay in my wyrm form anymore. I could never tell the true gender of the eldest, even after I had turned two and a half years old. I was finally in my dragonhood and, at the moment, was supposedly a thirteen-year-old human child.

As if guessing my thoughts, the eldest said, “You will look about twenty-six years old, or around there, in your human form once you are a full-grown dragon at five years old, and stay that way for centuries.”

The reason I could not determine the gender of the eldest of our clan—I still did not know his name even now—was that on the second day of the excruciating training, he appeared to me as a full-bosomed female, entirely naked, pale, and hairless except for her head. Then the next day, the eldest appeared before me as an eleven-year-old girl with hair as red as blood, this time wearing only a see-through silk gown.

This went on and on, with the eldest appearing before me in many different forms, some not even humanoid, which, quite frankly, scared me a little. Each day, however, I showed no reaction to his—or was it her?—pranks. A strange personality, I thought, for a being of such ancient age.

From the first time I had met the eldest in his human form on the throne, I had a lingering suspicion that it was either a dragon ability or perhaps magic. He had enlightened me on that subject by telling me that it was dragon magic, which I, a wyrm, had no right to use; it was restricted to gifted Astlan dragons of the old generation.

The eldest was quite patient and, unlike my mother, had allowed me to ask all kinds of questions, satisfying my growing curiosity. I suppose with age comes patience, especially when you are more than a thousand years old. He had never told me his exact age, only hinting at it, and I had never dared to ask. Since I was quite unsure of the eldest's gender, I would just conclude it was male.

The eldest, back in his “original” form like the day I had first met him, looked at me with his ancient brown eyes, no longer dyed red by magic. “So, are you ready for your second tribulation? I assure you that you will at least half-die, for my tribulation is different from the normal one.”

Right then, even with my dampened emotions, I could feel a tinge of fear. I could remember his excruciating training lessons, where I had fainted many times from overexertion and horror. Since this was inevitable, I took an amusing count of how many times I had fainted.

The tally, so far, was seven hundred and ten days, including the five-day break...