Traveling across the continent was a dangerous affair.
Monsters, rogue knights, and wars accounted for eighty percent of travelers’ deaths.
Even on relatively safe routes, the time consumed was enough to make a dragon, accustomed to soaring through the skies, feel like a mere crawling insect.
Frostsilver did not keep company with insects, but she lacked the strength to fly across vast distances.
She disdained flying, finding even that too slow.
She used teleportation, relying on costly arrays set up in various cities as her nodes.
In just two days, Frostsilver returned to her ancient family’s domain—the County of Champagne.
It was late summer.
Frostsilver stood on the balcony, gazing at the plains.
The plains remained a lush green.
Frostsilver liked this terrain, like a shepherd seeing fertile grasslands, driving the flock to eat and drink their fill, growing fat.
Her subjects were her sheep.
They tirelessly generated gold coins for her, a strict order ensuring they automatically filled her treasury.
There was no need to fly about like a dragon, searching for the glint of gold, sweating and bleeding to seize it piece by piece.
As I survey my domain, I feel supreme confidence and superiority.
Frostsilver’s thoughts stirred.
Every so often, looking over her lands, she brimmed with confidence and pride.
Her only dissatisfaction was the row of gallows on the hill, standing empty without a single corpse.
In Frostsilver’s eyes, the bodies of the condemned were like fertilizer for the fields.
They ultimately swelled her treasury’s gold.
They were also lubricant, smoothing the gears of her rule, making it flow effortlessly.
Each time a new Count of Champagne inherited the title, there were always those who dissented, those who tried to bully the young lord.
Their corpses always became fertilizer and lubricant.
But generation after generation, the volunteers for fertilizer and lubricant grew fewer.
Should I issue an order to hang a few bodies on the gallows, to add some color to this beautiful view?
Frostsilver pondered.
“Roar!”
“Boom!”
A tremendous noise came from behind, though the balcony only trembled slightly.
Frostsilver’s thoughts snapped back to the present.
She remembered the urgent matter that had brought her teleporting home.
Turning, she walked step by steady, elegant step back into the mosaic hall.
In the vast hall, the adamantine dragon cage was no longer empty.
Two adult silver dragons were trapped inside, furiously trying to destroy the cage, but only producing noise.
“Frostsilver!” the older silver dragon bellowed, baring gleaming silver teeth.
“You despicable, shameless dragon! Release us at once!”
“It must be you—you killed your brother! Why else would you trap us in this cage?”
Frostsilver didn’t respond.
She merely extended her hands, framing the two silver dragons in the cage with her thumbs and forefingers.
She muttered to herself, “So many buzzing flies around my brother.”
It had only been a few years since the Dread Dragon’s death, yet dragons were already tracking her down to accuse her.
Don’t dragons usually sleep?
How did they find me so quickly?
It only means one thing—my brother had too many lovers.
With enough of them, a few shameless, depraved dragons were bound to find me.
Fortunately, none were her match.
Watching their furious expressions, Frostsilver wanted to kill them slowly, making them suffer, their blood pooling on the floor.
First, I’d slit their bellies, cook or pickle their eggs, and feed them to the lowliest insects—if they even have eggs.
Frostsilver stepped closer, declaring loudly, “I’d love to strip your hides and crush your bones!”
“If you want your domain reduced to ruins!” the elder silver dragon shouted. “Before I came, I told my boyfriend—a gold dragon!”
At the thought of a gold dragon’s complex, ironclad social network, Frostsilver’s head ached slightly.
“Such depravity! Shameless!” Frostsilver spat. “You silver dragon sisters, swooning over a red dragon?”
The elder silver dragon snapped, “What’s it to you?”
The younger silver dragon chimed in, “It’s romantic love. Proof that even dragons as different as fire and water can unite.”
Frostsilver opened her mouth to retort, but the elder silver dragon cut her off.
“Never been touched by love, have you? Tsk tsk, no surprise—you’re his sister but nothing like him.”
The younger silver dragon added, “So ugly.”
So thin.
Frostsilver didn’t appear angry, at least not outwardly.
“Hmph, you’re courting death. When I slept in the same nest as my brother, you weren’t even flitting about bedding elves and humans. Pathetic insect-lovers.”
The elder silver dragon said, “So you killed your brother?”
The younger silver dragon echoed, “Must be jealousy. Poor thing. Sister, we should pity her.”
The elder silver dragon said, “Yes, off playing house with the insects she despises.”
Frostsilver said, “Keep talking, and I’ll kill you.”
Frostsilver loathed the silver dragons’ carefree, irreverent nature.
Yet that very nature made it easier to trap them.
A small rumor, a well-placed clue, and they’d walked right into her trap.
The elder silver dragon said, “Go on, say it.”
The younger silver dragon added, “What else is there to say? To a crippled dragon with only one horn, more would be too cruel.”
“You!”
Frostsilver rose into the air without wind, her golden eyes glaring at the caged silver dragons.
The younger silver dragon whispered, “Did we hit her reverse scale? That’s too mean.”
The elder silver dragon said, “Better carve a will. Say, ‘Obus, I love you.’”
In the chilling wind, Frostsilver’s furious spell took shape.
A floating array appeared, unleashing a torrent of lightning that flooded the cage.
The vast hall blazed as bright as midday, as if a white sun had risen within.
“Aaaaah!”
“Obus, I love you!”
The two silver dragons writhed and danced in the lightning.
Trapped, they would eventually die in the electric flood.
Frostsilver’s head began to ache.
In the lightning’s glare, she saw a vision of the first time.
The first time I tried to kill one of my brother’s buzzing flies.
Back then, they were young.
Her brother had caught her, hooking her tail with his to stop her escape.
His wings flapped furiously, hovering midair.
His foreclaws slapped her head wildly, his hind legs kicking fiercely, as he roared, “What are you doing?! What are you doing?! Gah! You tried to kill her!”
It was his ultimate technique—four-limb frenzy—used against her.
It left her foaming at the mouth, teetering on death’s edge.
The lightning ceased, the blinding glow fading.
The two silver dragons collapsed together, leaning on each other, utterly spent, like mortals forced to run a marathon.
Frostsilver pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Well done. You’ve earned your lives.”
The elder silver dragon said, “I knew you wouldn’t kill us.”
The younger silver dragon said, “Still a successful raid.”
Frostsilver said, “Not only will I not kill you, I’ll release you in seven days.”
The elder silver dragon said, “Seven days? Make it seven years—at least we’d get some sleep.”
The younger silver dragon said, “Too short. A blink, and it’s over.”
Frostsilver said, “For these seven days, you must tirelessly test the cage’s strength.”
“Who listens to you?”
“You have no choice,” Frostsilver said with a cold smile, turning to leave.
The silver dragon sisters watched her, unsure of her intent.
They kept watching as she crossed the vast hall in human form, reaching the door before clapping her hands.
“One buzzing fly.”
A warped blue light appeared in the cage, forming a wormhole.
“Roar!”
A female black dragon tumbled through.
The elder silver dragon said, “Ugh, smells like a rotting swamp.”
The younger silver dragon said, “Where’d this skeleton dragon come from?”
On the black dragon’s back was a note: “I am Obus’s depraved lover.”
Frostsilver clapped again.
A female red dragon fell into the cage, followed by a blue dragon, then a gold dragon.
In moments, the cage was packed with a riot of colored dragons, nearly bursting.
If the cage weren’t so small, Frostsilver was confident she could gather all five chromatic and metallic dragons.
At the doorway, Frostsilver trusted her brother’s strength.
These dragons would likely start fighting the moment they saw each other.
Confined in the cage, quarreling and brawling soon filled the hall.
“Brother,” Frostsilver glanced at the dragon skull hanging high above.
“You troublesome fool.”
With that, she stepped out.
The massive stone door closed behind her, muffling the clamor.
Those buzzing flies would test the cage for her.
If it broke, it wasn’t strong enough to hold the Red Dragon King of Kings.
If it held, Obus would remain trapped forever.
Everything was going according to plan.
Frostsilver felt once more that the world’s chaos fell into order under her scheming hand.
“Boom!”
The brawling reached a crescendo.
Lost in her plan’s success, Frostsilver misstepped and fell flat onto the marble floor.
“Pfft!”
The marble’s embrace made her want to cast Stone to Mud or turn the floor to dust.
She tried several times before scrambling up, cursing, “Who left a dent in the floor? I’ll see them hanged!”
The floor was smooth and pristine, silently proclaiming, “I am flat.”
“Seeing isn’t believing.”
Frostsilver cast a spell, silver light bathing the floor.
If there was a dent, it would show as shadow.
The light covered the marble, revealing no shadows.
Frostsilver’s face was cold as she walked slowly, silently.
The noises from behind the door grew louder with each step.
It took her a full half-hour to reach the lower levels, where her servants awaited.
Her servants secretly praised her elegant, steady gait, quietly mimicking it.
I think she’s a bro-con