I slamd the head of the dragon with my palm, right where its scales were torn by all the bashing into the bars of its cage, and released the electric charge.
〔Critical hit! You deal 35 damage!〕
〔The chicken dies!〕
There was a loud crack and I felt the slls of ozone and cooked at. The dragon opened its jaws in a silent cry and twitched. Instead of landing gracefully from its pounce, it heavily fell to the ground, crushing sparse trees and raising clouds of dust.
The inertia rolled the heavy body for a few dozen ters farther before it stopped, not even twitching. The dragon was definitely dead.
Then the human soldiers caught up with it and stabbed it at least ten more tis before they realized that the creature was dead.
The dragon was definitely... much less deader.
’There isn’t enough left for any autopsy... Or even for a spicy wings bucket,’ I thought, watching this.
"Father, are you unhard?" Agent Convincing exclaid, flying up to . She looked absolutely wrecked by anxiety and sha. "Oooooh, I can’t believe you were attacked on my watch! By creatures my team was supposed to keep in check!"
I was glad to see that Convincing wasn’t caught by a swipe of the dragon’s wings, but this really was exactly like she said.
"Don’t cry here—direct your people, Convincing! They should kill the rest of the beasts before they get out of their cages and at least try helping the guy who got wounded. How the hell had this chicken broken free, anyway?"
Under dark glares of the protectively hovering around bodyguards, Agent Convincing hurriedly organized the human soldiers and the Agents. Within minutes, the still caged dragons were dead, and the wounded soldier’s wound was tended. His comrades still treated him like he was a dead man, and his declining health confird it.
At the sa ti, they gathered their hook-like fingers in praying gestures, singing awed praises in their thoughts. They just saw kill a demon with a touch, even if their eyesight wasn’t good enough to determine the details.
Now they were thinking about my rumored legendary sting and how it can kill anything and anyone.
Within another half an hour all the cages were carefully examined—bees literally looked at every inch of them.
At first I thought that the chicken was just smarter than anyone in Convincing’s team expected and opened the lock with its tail or claws. But the lock wasn’t a simple latch—those were actual padlocks with keys carried by one of the human soldiers.
The chicken was intelligent for a beast, but it wasn’t smart enough to pick a lock like that.
Instead...
"The door’s hinges were simply broken by force, Father," Agent Convincing reported. "Except... There are strange marks on them, not like they were simply bent. More like—as if they were chewed. My Agents found similar marks on hinges of other cages, although fewer of them. They are too small for humans to see, but we can make them out."
I frowned.
"Sothing... chewed the hinges? But they are made of steel! They aren’t just rusted?"
"No! Not at all!" Agent Convincing shook her head so hard that I feared she might break sothing in her neck. "It makes no sense, exactly! Just look at yourself, Father. I fear... Well, hostile beasts and monsters can evolve all sorts of abilities, just like you, isn’t this true, Father? Could one of them have evolved an ability to eat steel?"
I shuddered.
This was a terrible prospect!
"I must look at these chewing marks. Did you sll anything out on them?."
"No, nothing—if sothing had left these marks, it was probably not recently and the stench of dragons and their blood has replaced the scents of whoever did it."
When I went to the cages to check the hinges, I could imdiately feel the truth of Convincing’s words. The dragons (that didn’t escape) were killed right in their cages for safety, and now everything there slled like their blood.
The marks were still clear. They really looked a bit like bites of insects—uneven half-circles the size of my fist. But the tal around them darkened like sothing corroded it.
There weren’t enough of these corroded marks to break the hinges entirely, but enough to weaken the tal in what already was a weak spot.
By fresher scratches, scrapes and a layer of dirt I could tell that the corroded marks were at least a day old, probably more. Sothing has left them, and precisely on hinges, with only a few visible on random parts of the cages.
Perhaps more was hidden by all the blood—yuck!—but this ant that whoever did this was disturbingly purposeful.
"This wasn’t an accident. Soone *wanted* these creatures to escape and attack. Perhaps even now. Perhaps even ," I said, leaving the cages and approaching the anxiously waiting Agent Convincing.
"Really? Then... Then you should return to Hive Supremo imdiately, Father!" she said.
I nodded.
Perhaps I was being paranoid, but my true enemies—the gods—were all-seeing, all-knowing! They *could* send soone to target like that. Although before their thods were more direct, perhaps one of them decided to change tactics.
Could this have been to throw my Oracles off the trail? They would’ve warned if there was a high chance of being attacked today, but they didn’t.
"Agent Convincing, you and your team will co with ," I decided. "Perhaps there’s sothing in your mory that might clear this situation up if we just find what it is."
"Yes, Father—what about our humans?"
I shrugged.
"They should bury or burn these dragon corpses, then return to wherever they were stationed until now. They have a human leader—they can report to him by themselves. Go, tell them that they have my blessing and gratitude for helping out."
The humans were awed again by this, and happy that they could finish their long mission in another country and return ho.
And my dragon rider finally forced her dragon to land so I and everybody with could ride it to Hive Supremo.
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