Chapter 109: Helping Out
It had been a week since they’d hauled her out of her cozy, sun-drenched cottage, her hard-won peace of six years, and deposited her... here.
Where was here?
A fucking Dragon Castle.
Walls of seamless stone that humd with latent power, windows looking out onto cloud-wreathed peaks, and an atmosphere so thick with raw mana it made her alchemist’s senses prickle like static.
"How are you faring today, Angel’s Baby?" The woman asked gently in the vast, airy chamber. She appeared, as she did every day, in a dress of transparent, flowing blue-white silk that seed to hold captured mist and moonlight.
Angel’s Baby. It had to be a codena. A tag Angela had used to categorize her in whatever vast, secret ledger she kept. The fact that this woman used it ant Angela hadn’t given her real na.
Perhaps it was a layer of protection, but it still felt strange, like being called by a childhood nickna only your most dangerous relative rembered.
That’s what the angel called her investnts? Bess’s mind circled the thought again. The way La Vixenette Princesse labels her rescued chicks, her sleeping favors, scattered in little cottages and waiting for the call?
It was a strangely tender term for what was, at its heart, a transaction with a blade hidden in the folds.
"I am... alright," Bess answered. She was alive, unhard, and working at a... quite normal pace. That qualified as ’alright.’
The woman in blue-white nodded, her gaze sweeping over the rows of shimring, completed gallons that lined the cavernous workroom. "I see you’ve created seven hundred gallons of this recipe in just a week. You work... exceptionally well."
"It’s a straightforward and effective formula," Bess replied, her professional pride nudging aside so of the bewildernt. "The synthesis is elegant... frankly, it’s leaps and bounds beyond anything being peddled by the modern guilds. It’s revolutionary."
She still couldn’t pin down who this woman was. She had claid the favor ant for Angela. That made her soone with direct, privileged access to the imprisoned princess.
But Bess found herself less wary of the connection to a rebellious princess, and more stunned by the connection to dragons.
Angela... the princess... was connected to dragons.
The man with the horns was clearly one. This fortress, accessible only by a vertical flight to a peak no human could ever scale, a journey she’d made clinging in terror to his scaled back, was proof enough.
This woman, though... If she told Bess she was also a dragon, Bess would believe her without a second thought.
There was this gravity to her. And that hollowness in her chest... her alchemist eyes told her she might be closer to gods than humans.
Now, as an alchemist in a dragon’s aerie, taking orders from a woman who might well be sothing just as ancient, all to pay a debt to a princess in a dungeon, her life had officially left the realm of the comprehensible and entered the territory of epic ballads.
"Uhh... when can I go ho...?" Bess ventured.
"After you finish three hundred gallons more," the woman casually answered without missing a beat.
Bess was skeptical. It was that easy? Just a production quota?
"Then... the favor will be paid in full?" she pressed, needing the terms cleared.
The woman shrugged, a fluid, elegant motion. "That depends. Do you want money, or the favor paid?"
"Money?" Bess’s eyes widened. This ethereal, possibly-draconic being was offering... paynt? On top of clearing her debt?
No. Focus. She’d tasted six years of freedom. She’d hidden, she’d worked the land, she’d earned every silent sunrise and every blister on her palm. That life was hers. Bought and paid for with her past.
"I want to pay the favor," Bess stated, her voice firming with resolve. "After that, please leave
alone. No further contact."
"Okay," the woman nodded, accepting the terms as simply as she’d stated them. "After you finish one thousand gallons, I’ll tell my husband we’re bringing you back."
A thousand. Forget it. She’d known, in her bones, this day of reckoning would co. She was trapped. There was no running from creatures who lived above the clouds.
The bitter lesson of her life reasserted itself. Nothing was free. That princess, her ’angel,’ hadn’t saved her. She’d just sold her from one master to another, far more terrifying set. These monsters would keep her forever, a convenient elixir-factory chained to a mountain.
Even if they did drop her back at her cottage, what guarantee did she have? They could snatch her back anyti. Or worse, fly her out to the middle of a frozen sea and drop her, silencing the only soul who knew their precious recipe. They were dragons. The rules of fairness didn’t appl—
Three days later, Bess stood on the familiar, sun-ward path in front of her own cottage. The herbs in her window box were a little wilted, but alive. The door was still locked with her key.
"Alright, goodbye," the woman in blue-white said, offering a casual wave. She turned and walked toward the tall, horned man waiting at the edge of the courtyard.
HUHHHH??
"So, we go to the next asset?" the dragon’s rumble carried clearly on the quiet country air.
"Yep," the woman replied, her voice cheerful. "Next is ’Angel’s Sweetheart.’ They live to the east." She sighed, a sound of mild inconvenience. "Ahh... I hope this ti they want to get paid... instead of just paying up the favor..."
Wait.
Wait, wait.
Bess’s mind stuttered. There were... more like her? More ’Angel’s Babies’ and ’Sweethearts’ scattered around?
"I didn’t know that friend of yours collected alchemists in her free ti..." the dragon mused.
"Hehe," the woman giggled. "Angela loves to collect talented humans the way I love to collect husbands."
And the princess just... let them call in these favors? Hand out her rescued people like a directory?
"You want more?" the dragon asked, a thread of dark amusent in his tone.
"I’m kidding! I’m kidding!" the woman laughed, playfully swatting his arm. "I don’t want to die from gang bang."
Wh—what kind...
This woman, this dragon—!
"Excuse !" Bess’s voice cracked as she called out, surprising herself.
The two figures paused and turned back, looking at her with mild curiosity.
Bessa took a deep, steadying breath, the scent of her own soil filling her lungs. "Uhh... how much... would you pay? For this kind of job?"
The two exchanged a glance, a silent conversation passing between them in an instant.
"A-as long as you bring
back here after each batch is done," she stamred, her heart hamring against her ribs, "I-I-I’m fine with helping out... occasionally."
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