Chapter 39: The Ballad of Jolie Dragon (2/2)
“I… I am tempted but…” Knight Kia shivered at both her mount and Vainqueur’s glare, but her species shameful obsession with dragon riding prevailed. “Under one condition.”
“Yes!” Jolie answered.
“NO!” Vainqueur roared.
“I do not want to be subservient to someone else, so… I will become your chief of staff if you become my squire… and let me ride on your back.” Knight Kia’s griffon let out an angry roar at the betrayal. “I’m not abandoning you, Twilight! I will still ride you, I swear!”
Squire? Vainqueur remembered where he had heard that word, back in his first adventure with Manling Victor. “A squire is a kind of minion!”
“So, you will become my minion, if I become your minion too?” Much to Vainqueur’s horror, Jolie actually considered the terrible, insane offer.
“That way, our relationship shall be that of equals,” Kia said. “We become partners, instead of master and servant.”
“And by becoming a squire, she could take levels in a Knight class,” Minion Victor said, making his master aghast.
“Minion Victor, do not encourage her!”
“What? Now that the cat is out of the bag, at least she should choose a good class.”
“No niece of mine will ever become a minion!” Vainqueur insisted. “Jolie, if you let this… perversion of our ancient dragon institution happen, I will stop gifting you princesses for your Bragging Days!”
“But, but…” Jolie began to cry. “But Uncle…”
“No uncle, young dragonling,” Vainqueur resisted this attempt at playing on his feelings. She would thank him for this when she grew up and matured. “The minion, or the princesses.”
Jolie tearfully looked at her uncle, then at Knight Kia, and finally back at her uncle.
Hopefully, she had seen reason.
“She lets her ride on her back,” Vainqueur said, crestfallen. “On her back, Manling Victor. Like a wyvern.”
He watched Knight Kia ride his niece like a horse, as the two dragons flew through that damn desert searching for the dungeon. The sight of Jolie wriggling as Knight Kia raised her blade under the sun, reveling in her perversity, disgusted him.
“My niece…” Vainqueur kept complaining. “My niece, ridden by a manling…”
“Which you never allowed me to do,” Manling Victor complained, following his master.
“And never will!” Vainqueur roared back. “See, this only encourages that kind of unreasonable comment!”
“Your niece is truly the Rosa Parks of dragonkind,” Friend Victor replied, although Vainqueur did not understand the reference.
“The world must not know,” Vainqueur ordered his minion. “You will keep this… this… this, quiet, until I can convince my niece to see reason. I trust you not to reveal this secret, alongside that of dragon mortality.”
His chief of staff shrugged, as a great structure came into sight; Vainqueur briefly mistook it for a hill before approaching it further. Half buried into the sand, a twisted pyramid of black stone loomed over the dunes, dwarfing the Castle of Murmurin in size. A crimson crystal, which Vainqueur recognized as fairy work, shone at the tip of the structure.
The dragon may have considered this place as a nice lair, if it didn’t smell of fairies, dead elves, and ghosts.
“Here is it,” said Manling Victor, paling at the sight. “The Tower of Sablar.”
“Manling Victor, this is not a tower,” Vainqueur replied. “This is a pyramid. I can tell the difference.”
“Maybe the builders had a different name for it, I cannot say,” his chief of staff replied, while Jolie and Knight Kia circled the pyramid looking for an entrance. ”I heard it reached the stars at its height.”
Another manling lie. That pyramid did not even reach the clouds.
As he watched his lackey fly, a thought crossed Vainqueur’s mind. “Manling Victor, since you have wings and a tail, can you now breathe fire?”
“I never could figure out how,” Manling Victor replied. “I think I may need more levels in [Monster Knight] before I can achieve it.”
“Guys!” Knight Kia shouted at them, Jolie having stopped flying in front of the pyramid’s left side. “Look!”
Vainqueur followed, and squinted. His niece faced a huge, dragon-sized hole in the pyramid. “I’m pretty sure this is recent,” Knight Kia said.
“This is concerning,” Manling Victor said. “A monster escaped from within? No, the stones point to something getting in.”
“See, Jolie,” Vainqueur taught his niece. “This is how I conquered the castle of the evil Furibon; by making a path instead of playing by the lich’s rules.”
“My minion read me your book!” Jolie said happily. “The wealthy always win!”
“Indeed we always do,” Vainqueur replied, flying into the hole to enter the pyramid.
Whoever had gotten there had done it the dragon way; crushing anything its path, smashing through walls, tossing marble elf statues to the ground, leaving only ruins in its path. Mosaics representing scenes of slaughter and mass manling sacrifices had been defaced, pillars overturned…
As he landed on the dusty ground and observed the chaos, Vainqueur couldn’t help but frown. The one responsible had demolished the decorations like a savage beast, even those which would complement his hoard. Reptilian and corpse-like creatures, whom the dragon assumed had been the minion keepers of the area, had been frozen in blocks of ice and stuffed on display.
“Wow,” Manling Victor said, as Kia climbed down from Jolie to join them. “I think we’re late to the party.”
“It must have happened yesterday,” Kia replied after examining the scene closely, frowning. “Wait, have I missed a big battle again?”
Frozen minions… a beast with absolutely no artistic taste...
Vainqueur’s eyes widened as he realized who caused this. “No!” he shouted, rushing through the destroyed pathway while ignoring the others. “NO!”
Within seconds, he reached a large, rounded vault, which must have been the treasure room. The invaders had stripped it of everything of value, of every last coin; leaving only dust, a bandaged corpse, and a message painted on a wall in old dragonian.
‘Guess who got here first and grabbed all the gold?’
‘With love,
Your social better,
Icefang.’