Book 2: Chapter 85 (1/2)

The matriarch was at a loss as to what to do. The flames that she had spent days stoking were dying down with every tussle between her and Vur. Any injuries she inflicted on Vur were instantly healed by forces she still hadn’t discovered. If she retreated now, she’d be leaving behind her eggs which she was unwilling to do. But there was no way for her to win. She tried burning the potion that Lulu kept providing Vur, but he always managed to drink it before she could. And every time Vur drank the potion, his attacks would become more unbridled. Her holy area had already been devastated by the time Vur flew through the ground, thinking he was in the air, and it was only due to luck that he avoided the area with her eggs.

“Dragon!” the matriarch shouted. “I surrender; please stop!”

The spinning blue ball stopped rotating, revealing Vur’s upside down figure. His head twisted around, followed by his body. “Huh?” Vur asked, his head lolling to the side. His face was flushed, causing the scales around his cheek to take on a purple hue. “Surrender? You’re going to let me eat you without a struggle?”

The matriarch shuddered. “You want to eat me?” she asked. “I, I thought you were just passing through.”

“If you knew I was”—Vur’s brow furrowed before he shook his head and grunted—“was passing through, then…”

The matriarch waited while holding her breath. Vur’s eyes had a faraway look in them, and there was a faint smile on his face. Only the sounds of the crackling flames in the sky could be heard. The matriarch tilted her head to the side. “Then?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Then? Then what?” Vur asked, raising his head to glare at the matriarch. “What are you looking at? Do you want to fight? Is that it? I’ll give you a fight!” He charged at her while snarling, his body no longer snaking through the air like a fish through water. His movements were more akin to a hippopotamus charging through a shallow river.

The phoenix’s eyes bulged as she flapped her wings and soared into the air, narrowly avoiding Vur’s jaws. “Stop!” she said as an ocean-blue tail smacked into her, dispersing her into a puff of flames. Her body reformed a second later with a crying expression on her face. “Let’s talk things through!”

“The time to talk,” Vur said as his body whirled around to face the matriarch, “is in the future. But we’re in the present right now, so we fight!”

The matriarch let out a strange whimpering sound as she dove towards Lulu. “You’re a holy dragon,” she said. “You should know how to calm him down, right? I just want to talk!”

“What does being a holy dragon have to do with knowing how to calm a drunk dragon?” Lulu asked and tilted her head to the side. She sighed when the matriarch made a pained expression. “Fine, fine. You promise you won’t attack us and will do your best to negotiate as the losing party, right?”

“Right,” the matriarch said as she dodged a random claw from Vur. “But there’s a few terms I won’t agree to. I want to guarantee the safety of my eggs. And I don’t want to be eaten.”

Lulu scratched her head. “I think that’ll be fine,” she said with a nod.

“Great!” the matriarch said as she landed by Lulu’s side. “Now stop him, please.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lulu said wrapping her paw around the matriarch, “about that…. Go fight with him for another ten minutes.”

The matriarch’s eyes widened as she was flung towards Vur. She glanced at Lulu, but the silver dragon was whistling to herself while scribbling on her stone tablet. Ten minutes later, the flames in the sky had died down, barely blazing above the tree tops. The matriarch sighed as Vur disengaged from battle to fly towards Lulu. “Potion!”