Dragon's Tale 85

Anger was a potent weapon, with the ability to deal an incredible amount of damage. However, despite its great capabilities, it was also an unwieldy weapon, with the potential to hurt its wielder even more than its target. 

It was a lesson I had learned many times growing up as an orphan and as a bastard noble, target to the subtle insults and jeers of everyone from other nobles to servants. And, after many painful lessons in the form of beatings and worse consequences, I had learned to keep my anger down. 

Yet, there were times I was unable to constrain my anger. The current moment was one of those exceptions. 

The moment I had noticed the Spear of Scipio, the ancestral weapon of our family, something had snapped in me. My heart started to thump furiously, and even worse, my magic started to react, turning into a storm in my chest. 

“Keep your magic down, you’re not fully cured. If you start casting, it’ll start resonating once more, and it’ll kill you,” the healer warned me even as she was busy trying to cast a ward of her own to protect us from the soldiers about to arrive to reinforce the mages. Luckily, she was aware to use a simple spell to keep her voice masked so only I could hear that, as that particular piece of information was too critical to be revealed. 

I wanted to listen to her words, but my core seemed to disagree with that, thumping in my chest as it resonated with my rapidly beating heart, pumping magic into my body. “You better stay away,” I warned her even as tried to control my flaring magic, an attempt that turned out to be in vain as the big dragon heart on the platform started resonating. 

A crackle appeared on its surface, one that turned into a lightning bolt, followed by several… 

Yet, I couldn’t pay attention to that, not when a sensation of crawling on my arm, a glance down revealing scales climbing up my arm, while my fingers started to get sharp. It wasn’t the first time I had seen my arm transforming, but it was the first time I felt that same warm sensation crawling on my shoulder and my back, even creeping up my neck. 

It wasn’t alone, because I could also feel doubt creeping in about whether I would be able to survive my own magic. 

I would have done my best to retreat if the circumstances were even slightly different, hoping to use the distance to limit the resonance while I suppressed the mysterious transformation. 

Unfortunately, the middle of a hostile patrician estate was hardly the location to linger. 

I needed to kill my opponents before it got too late — the opponents that formed dangerous a defensive formation in front of me to delay me from doing that exact thing. The four of them created a square, ready to defend themselves from any direction, while the fifth one stayed in the middle, ready to support in case one of them faltered under a determined assault. 

While fighting against a defensive formation was hardly the easiest thing to achieve while fighting against the time, I was still glad about their lack of initiative, making them miss the best window to kill me easily.

Though, things would have been more convenient without the anger burning in my chest, forcing my core to pump more magic, quickening my transformation even more. I tried to suppress the flow, but with limited success. 

Yet, even as my body took a monstrous nature, I couldn’t help but glance at the ancestral weapon of my family resting on the wall like a trophy. 

I wished that using the Spear of Scipio was an option. With the great abilities, hidden in its incredible potential, I would have been confident in victory without risking self-destruction by using magic. 

My confidence was certainly not baseless. Patrician Weapons were mysterious weapons, more figments of legends than simple weapons. Their abilities were secretive, and their origin was shrouded in an even deeper mystery, one that went to the very founding of the City of Rome. 

Yet, apart from their existence being linked to the founding of Rome, there was no agreement about their origin. Some said they were forged by Mercury himself on the orders of Jupiter, ordaining the Rome as the rightful dominion of Earth, while others claimed that they were forged by Remus and Romulus, from the corpse of a magical creature with the potential to destroy half of Europe if it had been alive, and used the power given by the weapon to establish the city — before ultimately using those weapons against each other, ending up with Remus’ untimely death.

Though, their source was not very important at the moment, not against the immense potential they represented. I knew just how potent they were from direct experience. 

I had the misfortune of sparring against the Spear, wielded by my Grandfather. I still remembered the painful ease he had defeated me without using the smallest bit of his own magic despite forcing me to cast to the limit, easily batting away and cutting through my spells with a lazy swing of it. 

And I still remembered him gleefully informing me that a bastard like me would never touch it while he used many abilities of the spear against me in quick succession — not that he needed them to win against me, but to drive his message deeper. 

Those training sessions were particularly painful, making me fantasize more than once about the merits of throwing myself onto the spear, hoping to end them permanently. 

Needless to say, I managed to survive those sessions, just like I was going to survive my current challenge.

Even if I had to fight against five mages armed with Patrician weapons and dragon hearts, while my own body and magic betrayed me. 

My survival was not optional! 

Of course, I wasn’t delusional enough to think that I had any chance of victory in a fair battle against five of them under the current circumstances. 

Luckily, I didn’t believe in fair battles. 

There was one thing that was not in doubt. My biggest advantage lay in their impaired decision-making. I didn’t know the details of the method they had been subjected to enhance their loyalties, but one thing was clear, it had damaged their decision-making significantly, forcing them to react extremely poorly to unfamiliar situations even with their advantage, forcing them to stay reactive. 

I needed to abuse that, I decided and flared my magic to the limit. Normally, if I used that much magic shaped in a spell, I had a good chance of defeating them, but even under the best of circumstances, forming that much mana into a singular spell was a veritable challenge, requiring absolute concentration and a lot of time. 

The less said about my current control, the better. 

Releasing it without a form had no offensive benefits, at least, no direct offensive benefits.  Yet, it simulated the unique chaotic environment of Mount Pyrenaean, blinding the magic senses of everyone, and since I had lived in such an environment for several months, it gave me the initiative to act. 

More importantly, it wasn’t the only benefit of that move. It had released the growing pressure of magic in me, giving me back the ability to use magic. I was still not at my peak, of course, but I was no longer helpless either. 

But that move didn’t come without a cost. The first disadvantage was naturally the expenditure. By releasing such an incredible amount of magic at once, another sorcerer would have drained himself and collapsed unconscious, maybe even dead. With the unique nature of my core, I was able to avoid that ignoble fate. My core was already pumping more mana into my body… 

Which only sped up my transformation further. I could feel my left hand turning into a claw while my legs started to grow scales. 

And the disadvantages were not limited to that. By filling the room with my mana, it only quickened the resonance process between my body and that biggest piece of Dragon Heart, the lightning covering its surface thick enough to hide it from the view. 

I could feel a bond slowly appearing between us as it started to tremble badly. 

Yet, my eyes widened as I poked that mental connection. It wasn’t the only connection I felt, but one of four. I couldn’t help but look at the other pieces of glowing crystals that were on the table, feeling the chill of death. 

Handling just a piece of dragon heart was mortal danger. Four of them at the same time were just death, inevitable. 

Yet, as I looked at them, I didn’t see any signs of a resonance. No lightning, no trembles, not even an increased glow. 

Ironically, that mystery didn’t last long, because I had noticed three other objects flying toward me. Three weapons. For a fleeting moment, I had assumed it to be an attack, ready to throw myself to the side, only to abandon that tactic for two important reasons. 

First, the weapons slowed down as they got closer rather than getting faster,  showing they were not an attack. 

 Second, and more importantly, I recognized one of the floating weapons. 

Spear of Scipio!