The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today-Chapter 41: A Dragon’s Sister, A Witch’s Scowl (And a Bedroom Bargain) (1)

"Satisfied, Dragon?"

A smile tugged under the white hood, the ghostly visage hazy under the pure moonlight that threatened to be reddened. The hooded Dragon bowed with her waist down, fingertips pressed together near the hem of her robes, as if in a silent pray for the gods, a gesture not shared by the prideful Sky Dragon, a gratitude not appreciated by the honourless Peacekeeper, and a respect to the disgraced druid for lending her arts of mana for her own research.

"I thank you sincerely for your patience, The investigation is complete, and more data for how vampires integrated fully with Alice's mana has been acquired. The wooden vampire is a perfect sample for how another's mana would be jammed beneath the undead's nerving systems, and it would seem only Manasseh the noble remains an excellent exception." A calm, elegant tone from the Dragon was drifted along the flowerly wind, Adil found her pairing nicely with the scenery, had it not been the creepy, black abyss that is the basement behind the hooded Dragon.

"It would seem that for all that you have conspired behind my back, what's left is your admiration for that last merchant vampire's resilience." Lady Adil narrowed her eyes, her slinting gaze piercing through the white facade, yet it always reached short, a foggy cameo that hindered perception itself clung to the girl. It would seem she wore a special artifact, preventing presence from the scent of her body to the earthly devastation that is her mana from seeping through her body.

"For all intents and purposes, Merchant Manasseh's betrayal was...undisclosed to me." The hooded figure rose and straightened, the sanctity of a dragon unbelied under the white robes that ceased all life's breaths. As the wind brushed through, the garden hummed, charged with warnings older than words, a whisper against Adil's spine, a presence that did not give permission for doubts.

Yet the unyielding, short druid groaned. The old hag glared at the dragon as she retorted, "letting Manasseh in my town to trade for your materials is a mistake. At the end, everything turned out in your flavor, didn't you?"

The Druid's mana flared, the garden's warning nodding away with the blaring gusts, non-spoken words of an ancient, old tribes for the living roots coursed below the garden's ground, the veins curling beneath the Dragon, ready to pounce outwards the moment she was sensed of a lie.

The hooded Dragon didn't flinch, didn't cower, didn't shiver in anger and humiliation for Adil's suspicion. Instead, she glanced upwards for the sky, as she reached out for the white moon that once sung of the Sky Dragon's era, era of the tyrant, to the era of the merciless, dishonourable Queen.

"My sister....do you know why she treasured humanity, and detested the undead?"

The veins pulsed as it scratched beneath the surface, as Adil frowned towards the Dragon. The question was as light as a petal fluttering in her garden, a betraying weight like her own families' underrestimation of the weak Vampires' treachery. With a leader's wisdom upon looking at another, Adil spoke.

"It's simple. The Peacekeeper desired peace, the demons' invasions threatened it, their beastly instincts unchecked, so they have to be purged."

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"And yet, are demons not humans too? They breathe...they hate....they weep just as we all do." The hooded Dragon tilted her head, her question as innocent as a curious child for a fairy tale admist the flowery surrounding.

"If so, they should have chosen diplomacy, not bloodshed and violence." The druid seethed her teeth, before her rage boiled and calmed itself once again, the honed control of a protector for Rouen as natural as the veins beneath her grasp, and the Druid's lasting senses have not dulled even her sanity, despite her cruelty towards the undead.

"....indeed. Demons' sins of invasion rooted back to the age of gods, their hunger for feasting upon any and every living's mana soured over their very morals. A tragic being capable of only snuffing out ashes of growth, not creating them."

Then, as if entranced by her own very words, she beckoned over to Adil's side, each step told of an untouched grace that her dead sisters in heaven would weep for forgiveness. Adil's eyes followed her just as the veins below the bare, scaled feet of the Dragon, the soils trembling with the snaking veins, comforted by the light steps of the predator.

"I think, however, differently. And Manasseh is my perfect lab rat."

The Dragon stopped, her tall stature belying of a silent holding over the short old hag, as she bowed her waist, this time not of humility or gratitude, but of...an uncanny observation, her neck tilting just right enough to settle, just wrong enough to unsettle, the grace of a predator and the curiosity of a researcher melting as the emerald puils dilated, the depthless abyss sucking in every micro-expression from Adil, who naturally glanced up with a tired, frowning gaze to meet hers.

"She is a surprise of twice outside my perimeter, a variable I could not forsee when I provided you the materials to carve the sacred runes. If only I had known she would hide the processing method for the runes to be furthered into something...augmented, alien to even me, I would have respected my sister's obsession with peace instead and chosen not to tap into her potential, but rather...contain it within my cage for further examination."

The emeralds narrowed as if casting a curtain over an unspoken regret, the monster behind it berating herself for allowing another monster let loose. Adil scoffed at the ridiculousness of it all. She knew a deal with the greedy dragons with histories of pillages could never end well, but the tremors of the veins below her protested, the old druid's control collapsing, their tendrils that obeyed her every whim cowered in fear, in favour to be gazed upon by the Emeralds in front of her.

"That festering potential was a sour wound for the Town of Rouen, Dragon." Her grip over her sceptor tightened, as if misbehaved children beneath would listen to an old hag's struggle, yet the old druid's eyes were surface-calm, the garden's fragrance and its sweetness on her pale lips reminding her role as the protector of the town she watched.

"I understand. It is unfortunate, but an escaped rat is of more harm to me than good. Do as you please."

The veined roots beneath, as if carrassed by a gentler mother after a night's trip to an old auntie's witch house, swirled around the hooded dragon, as her gaze followed behind Adil, above her hagged shoulder, the familiar scent of tyrant in the air sprouting a deep-rooted nostagia, the ash-choking pressure threatening to wilt the flowers, the beauties and the serendity of the night.

Centuries of deep forests. Centuries of heated mazes. Manas of both warped the garden into a turmoil between frenziness and discipline, the playfulness of drifting gusts now seething in the wind and crawled ants down the old Druid's spine. The cloaked, hooded Dragon leaned away, the silk gently brushing against the soil, the children of woods giggling in her ears as she smiled.

The Dragon of Wood didn't hurry to stoke the fire, as her bare steps tapped the loving soil, her eyes never leaving the amber eyes she has played with all these years. The eyes she has cherished, hoped that would be granted happiness trembled not in confusion, not in rage, as they fluttered like butterflies lost amongst a sea of rotted beauty, the disgust apparent in the flames that flickered within.

Her guided steps with the tendrils paused, the hood billowing yet the silk's cloak remained clinging, the perception of her sister, of the world still hindered beside her. It wasn't that the peacekeepr, Adrei, couldn't sense...feel someone right beside her, but that familiar scent that coiled in her guts as the tyrant's blood screamed for mercy, for revenge, for a rebellion...evoked only a nausea to tear apart her own 'family', one that she did without hesistation against her kind a not long ago.

The hooded Dragon smiled. Her head peeked over her shoulder to the steadfast Druid in peace with the confrontation between beings that could tear her city apart with a swipe of their tails. The emerald-eyed dragon nodded her head, her gratitude laced with an apology that she knew her sister will clean up for her.

"We both wish for the same peace, Lady Adil. Allow this dragon's pride to cradle the petals, and I will promise a flavor of a newfound home."

A newfound home. Indeed. The garden of Adil's new life busted and startled as Adrei the peacekeeper's sharpened claw swiped beside her, the fire trailing the air as the veined roots from below shot out and grasped her wrist, a living desperation to protect their newfound master. Adrei hissed as the flame blotted out the roots like dust, crumpling for their failure like wailing infants.

As she glanced back, the vague presence that should not have been here now felt...empty, as if once again erased from the nightly canvas, the howling winds once again quieted down for a commotion lost, the flowers peeking up on the brief exchange that lasted all too short.

Growling, her frustration now led her bloodlust toward Lady Adil, who remained a silent audience. Her furrow on the peacekeepr's bursting mana was not of fear, but at the carelessness of scaring the whispers of plants surrounding the old hag.