Maple crashed, hard.
It hurt her pride more than anything—even leaving a crater in the rocky ground did nothing to her robust body. But who would attack a dragon out of the blue and why?
She never expected a strike from above.
And those talon-strikes.
They couldn't penetrate her scales—as strong as adamantite—but they stung.
"Venom?! You mother-loving wyverns," she screamed, blowing fire into the sky.
The audacity of those things.
Half a dozen wyrms circled above, with long, spiky necks and tails. They were only half her size but flew twice as fast, their colors ranging from angry green to toxic orange.
They lacked the intelligence of a dragon and her extra pair of limbs—but they were ballsy.
"I'm way outclassing you, bastards," Maple raged, but they didn't listen. She had to shield herself from their diving attacks with her wings—and the scrapes kept coming.
The venom was the worst part.
Not deadly for her—like bee stings for a human—but they itched.
It distracted her from the fight, and she had to put these monsters in their rightful place.
"Looks like I'm the last dragon around 'cuz you should've known better." She huffed, kicking herself into the sky. With a single flap of her wing, the wyvern's formation changed.
They scattered, keeping their distance, much more nimble than her after a full day's flying.
She was somewhat rusty, too—and pissed. Oh, so very pissed.
"Come at me now. Don't make me chase you if you dare to attack me first," she taunted them.
Did they even understand? These were nothing more than ordinary beasts.
The peak of what nature had to offer, sure—but they couldn't come close to her power.
They still tried, one diving on her with a shriek, but it changed course when she breathed fire at it a little too soon. How did she do all the combat thing again? It had been so long, she forgot.
She tried to catch up with them, but was too slow.
Fire did nothing if they were too far.
If she focused on one, two more circled her to attack from behind.
It was like a bunch of kids bullying an adult without hoping to defeat her—but they were sure annoying. And with each passing second, Maple got more and more frustrated, too.
"The hell is wrong with you all?!" she screamed from the venom's burning sensation.
It might have even started to take hold over her massive body, her wings becoming sluggish.
Imagining a bunch of wyverns immobilizing her, she knew she'd never live the shame down.
She had the advantage—in brains and power—so she had to calm down, ignore the burn, and focus. She used her mana to enhance her senses and get a better feel of the space around her.
One strike from behind.
This time, she was ready for it, spun around—sluggish as she was—and breathed fire into the ugly monster's face. The wyrm retreated with a scream, its scales charred but still attached.
Another tried to dive down on her—but a quick spell altered the wind, throwing it off course.
Two decided to gang up on her from both sides. But now that she was aware of their tactics, she had no problem slapping one off the sky, and the other changed its mind.
"Now we're talking," she huffed, flapping her wings to rise above the chaos.
She had to get rid of the venom, but proper healing magic needed her full concentration.
The wyverns had to go down first, but they seemed eager to keep attacking instead.
"Listen, you little shits, I'm minding my own business, and don't want your territory," she tried to reason. "Unless you're guarding that silver mine I was looking for, because in that case—"
A wyrm flew too close, and she blasted it with her dragonfire.
Its buddies gathered in her blind spot, trying to attack all at once, but they couldn't fool her senses now. Even then, she was too slow to turn around and had to tank their charge.
The best she could do was to grab onto two of them.
But being the superior creature she was, she had a pair of hands that the wyverns did not.
She dragged them into a steep dive, crashing them into a boulder. Those long necks were too flexible to break, but the sounds of bone-cracks were music to her ears.
That was two down—in the most literal sense of the word.
She burned two more, and the last two were still circling above.
Their screeches didn't sound like a call to retreat, and she had to reassess their stupidity.
But so did her own—
"Fuck, you don't understand language," she almost slammed her forehead. The adrenaline fought against the strong venom in her system, but it seemed to have made her dumb, too.
She tried telepathy—should've done that from the start.
Opening a channel to the largest monster's head was so trivial, yet she hadn't thought of it.
'Stand down and bow to your ancestors,' the dragon demanded, projecting force. 'I'm—uh—Maple the Red Dragon, and if you want to keep your pathetic lives, you'll serve me.'
She picked that name because it was cute, but it didn't exactly sound awe-inspiring now.
If only she could remember her real one—but this also did the trick.
The wyvern seemed to have shuddered, screamed, but obeyed.
Its wing fluttered as if it could no longer hold them in the air.
That was Maple's mental control wrestling with its sanity.
A dragon wasn't the absolute peak predator because it could defeat every other animal.
Sure, they could. But it was because of the control they could assert over them.
Well, if they had a will strong enough, and the beasts could see reason. But after bruising them, their leader finally yielded, landing with desperate screeching.
Bowing its long neck, it stretched flat against the ground.
"That's more like it," Maple nodded.
She let go of its unconscious pals, watching the remaining three copy their leader as well.
Right about time, because she was half-paralyzed from the venom by now.
"Let's pretend this never happened, and you'll be my scouting buddies from now on," she announced. Imagining Konrad's face when she returned with six powerful monsters—
No, she had to neutralize the venom first. And heal the wyrms she burned.
But even before that, she linked her mind to that of the beasts. It was the fastest way to learn the geography from their memories. And indeed, she was the first dragon they've ever seen.
"What did the world come to in my absence?" she muttered to herself.
Apart from falling into the Green Mage's trap, who sealed her away for a century—
She was all alone now in the whole country.
Or who knew—could have been in the entire continent. These wyverns, only a decade old, flew and explored far and wide, but never saw any of Maple's kind.
A depressing thought—but also an opportunity.
If she were the only dragon, nothing but the saints and ancient spirits would've been above her in the food chain. And—of course—Lilith and Gabrielle.
But extra-dimensional beings didn't count.
The next century could have been her personal era if she wanted to.
A tempting thought—but only after she neutralized those toxins, at last.