[TLD] Chapter 4 - Debt

Chapter 4

Debt

Azratheon woke to distant birdsong.

The thought came slowly, sluggish. Birds meant daylight. Daylight meant he’d slept longer than intended.

He opened his eyes. The forest canopy filtered pale sunlight through leaves. The fire had burned out completely, leaving only cold ash and blackened wood. The air had warmed considerably since the night before, not that it had been cold this close to the volcano.

Movement in the corner of his vision drew his attention. Golden script materialized, hovering in his awareness the way it had the first time he’d discovered it. After giving it some thought, he decided it must be some kind of training aid developed by transcendents. He’d ask the cub later.

—

[System Quest: A Debt Repaid]

Status: Ongoing.

The little cub fades. Her body fails where her will has not. Without intervention, she will not see another sunset. 

Your birth and freedom would not have been possible without her. There is a debt. And dragons repay their debts.

Objective: Feed her dragon blood to save her life.

Reward: Debt cleared.

—

Azratheon considered the quest carefully. The first quest had been oddly named, and remained incomplete despite the storm no longer hovering overhead. It also lacked a clearly defined objective like this one.

This second quest was also odd. It knew things he did not. Spoke to him, almost as if it understood him. Understood dragons.

Azratheon dismissed the notification with a thought and turned his attention to the cub.

She lay on her side near the dead fire, exactly where she’d settled the night before. Her breathing was shallow. Too shallow. Each breath seemed to take effort, her small chest barely rising.

He pushed himself upright and moved closer, stumbling only once. His control over the new body was improving.

He crouched beside her, balancing on the balls of his feet. His tail curled behind him for stability. The position felt awkward in this body, but it worked.

Dragons didn’t spend much time studying other beings. Appearances were irrelevant compared to strength and usefulness. But the quest demanded he assess her condition, and he couldn’t do that without looking.

She was small. He’d noted that before, but now he measured it properly. Standing, she barely reached his chest height, and he wasn’t particularly tall in this shape. Perhaps equivalent to a tall human. White fur covered the backs of her arms and hands, the back of her neck, and grew behind her human ears. Bear ears sat atop her head, round and furred. Her hair was black, matted and dirty. He remembered golden eyes from the night before.

That gave him pause. He wondered what color his own eyes were. His hair. What he fully looked like, in either form. He shook his head and returned to the examination.

The white fur followed similar patterns to his scales. Backs of limbs and neck, then down from her shoulders in a V-shape that ended at her collarbone beneath the shirt. He filed that observation away. Perhaps hybrid forms shared common traits.

Her clothes were ragged at the edges but mostly intact. Dirty, like her fur. The white had dulled to gray in places.

With the initial assessment complete, he turned his attention to the actual problem.

Azratheon reached out and slipped one claw carefully beneath her arm and turned it over.

Humanoid fingers. Small bear claws at the tips. Paw pads on her palm.

And burns. Red and angry across the pale skin of her hands and inner forearm.

He used another claw to slide back her sleeve.

More burns. Serious ones. The skin had split in places, weeping fluid that had dried and crusted. The white fur on the back of her arm was singed in patches.

She made a sound. A groan, still asleep. The cloth pulled away from one wound and it began to ooze again.

The smell hit him then. Infection. Rot trying to take hold in living flesh.

He released her arm carefully and sat back on his heels, using the tail to balance.

The burns covered most of her arms and probably her legs too. The treasure hunters had dragged her up the volcano, down through the hot tunnels, and into the core chamber where only their cultivation had held the extreme heat at bay. The wounds were almost a day old, untreated and festering.

Add the starvation and the exhaustion, along with the obvious toll her life had taken on her.

She was dying.

Azratheon considered. He could end it. Quick and painless. She wouldn’t even wake. It would be a mercy. He suspected her life had been nothing but suffering. And more suffering likely waited ahead even if she survived.

Why prolong it?

He watched her breathe. Shallow and labored.

Then he thought of her tentative questions the night before. Her careful movements. Her struggle to collect the beast core and how she treasured the little prize. The way she’d gathered firewood and tried to make warmth. Comfort. The acts of someone who wanted to continue existing.

The quest’s words surfaced in his mind. Your birth and freedom would not have been possible without her.

He didn’t understand how. But then he remembered the chamber. The shouting. Accusing.

She’d led them to his egg. That much was clear. And then the leader, screaming at her:

“Useless mongrel! You were supposed to warn us!”

“It’s gone because of you!”

She’d stayed silent. Let the egg fall into the magma. Let him escape their greed.

The debt existed whether he understood the full details or not.

He didn’t need the memories to know what came next. Dragons repaid their debts.

Azratheon looked down at his palm. Something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. He turned his head slightly.

Dark veins branched beneath his skin where it met the red scales of his shoulder, trailing down the inside of his upper arm like cracks in stone. He tilted his head, examining them.

He didn’t know what they were. He prodded at them with the back of a claw. No pain. He recalled his status information saying he was ‘corrupted’; perhaps that was it.

Then he shrugged. He was a dragon. It would be fine.

Azratheon extended one claw and drew it across his palm. Blood welled up immediately, hot and dark. He reached forward with his other hand and slid it beneath her head, lifting carefully.

Her head lolled in his grip, neck limp.

He held his bleeding palm over her mouth and let the blood drip in. He held it until she was forced to gulp. The process repeated several times, before he laid her back down.

A memory flitted across his mind. It belonged to the whistling blade. The human that had slain his mother. “Every part of a Primordial is the equivalent of a natural treasure for cultivators. And the blood? Entire sects would join a hunt for a single vial. For even the slightest chance to claim such a powerful bloodline.”

Azratheon understood part of it. He knew that Mythicals were born of mingling between Spirit Beasts and Primordials, much as Beastkin were born of Humans mingling with the others. Or from failing to integrate bloodlines. Knew from the fragmented memories of his mother that dragon-kind had been hunted. All Primordials had.

That was why the hunters were so excited to see him. At first.

Azratheon settled back to wait. Recovery wouldn’t be instant. It would likely take hours.

His wounds from the night before had mostly healed. The cuts across his chest and side were pink lines now. His mangled arm still ached but the torn flesh had closed over. Only time remained before even those marks faded.

He looked at the supplies scattered nearby. The storage rings lay among them, some still covered in blood. He should examine those while he waited.

Making his way over, he crouched down and reached for the nearest ring.

His claws punched into the dirt on either side of it.

Azratheon stared at his hand. The memories told him clearly how this should work. Fingers and thumb, pinching together. He had fingers. He had a thumb. The motion should be simple.

He tried again. Same result. Claws stabbed earth. The ring sat untouched between them.

He adjusted his approach. Came at it from the side, trying to grip with the pads of his thick fingers.

The ring rolled away and fell.

Another attempt. The ring slipped free and bounced across ash-dusted stone.

Again. His claw tip caught the metal and sent it spinning.

A growl rumbled deep in his chest.

He was a dragon. He’d survived his own broken hatching. He’d killed five cultivators and a Qi-enhanced beast within a day of being born! And now a tiny metal circle was defeating him.

Azratheon forced himself to stop and think.

The claws were the problem. They extended too far past his fingertips. Any attempt to pinch something drove the claw points into whatever surface lay beneath. And his fingers were too thick, too clumsy for the delicate precision required.

He studied his hand. Turned it over. Examined the claws from different angles.

Then he tried something different.

He brought two claw tips together. Not the fingers, just the sharp points. Like paired hooks meeting at their ends. They tapped together with a click. He tried again, practicing the motion. Satisfied, he reached for the ring.

The claws caught the ring’s edge on either side. Lifted it.

It worked.

The grip was delicate. Required focus. But it functioned.

Azratheon held the ring up between two claw points and examined it. A new understanding settled in his mind. His hands weren’t made for the way humans manipulated objects. His body wasn’t a perfect match to the inherited understanding. He’d have to adapt everything.

Using his new claw technique, Azratheon worked through the four basic storage rings one by one.

The first contained food. Dried meat, hard bread, preserved fruits. Enough for several days of travel. He set it aside.

The second held water skins, a bedroll, and spare clothes. Practical supplies. Placed it with the first.

It was clear that the cub had taken the time to sort the rings and their contents.

The third was far more interesting. Coins of various metals: copper, silver, gold. Spirit stones that glowed faintly with stored Qi. Jade bottles that held pills. And several thin books bound in leather.

A rumble started in his chest. Contentment at seeing the beginnings of his hoard.

He examined one of the books carefully between his claw tips. The cover showed a figure in a flowing stance. A cultivation manual. The sword-memory recognized the style. It was a basic set of techniques. Decent for developing a foundation.

But completely insignificant compared to…

Compared to…

Another memory bubbled to the surface. The cultivator, practicing. Training. Working through strange stances. His blade whistling through the air with the kind of precision only a master could even understand.

Knowledge filtered through the fragmented inheritance. Nine forms. Each one a complete philosophy of combat. The manual in his hand was a child’s drawing compared to what lived in his memory.

He recognized the irony. Within his memories somewhere was knowledge of a peak-level transcendent sword art. The kind sects would go to war over.

And he couldn’t use it.

His claws made gripping a sword impossible. The thick fingers, the points extending past where they should. The forms required specific hand positions, precise blade control. His hands couldn’t replicate them.

He looked down at his claws. Then back at the memory.

Perhaps he could adapt it. The principles remained sound even if the weapon changed. Claws instead of steel. The forms would need complete reconstruction, but the underlying philosophy…

He set the thought aside. Not now. The cub still lay dying. Theoretical technique adaptation could wait. But the knowledge remained, tickling at the back of his mind. 

He returned the manual back to the ring and placed it with the others.

The fourth ring held weapons. Daggers, swords, spears, throwing knives. Tools he couldn’t use effectively even if he wanted to. The claws made proper grips impossible.

He left the weapons where they were and added the fourth to the three rings he’d separated out. Food, supplies, coins, pills, manuals, and weapons. Everything she would need to manage their resources.

His fingers weren’t made for this kind of delicate work. But hers were.

Useful.

He turned his attention to the three rings that remained. Special. Different from the others in material and craftsmanship. He recognized them. 

They belonged to the severed arm of the cultivator whose memories had broken his inheritance.

He reached for the first.