I Guess I'm a Dragon Now (Part 1)

Mercenaries

"Why do I have to be the one to do this... couldn't they have sent a soldier or something?!" Rae complained from the top of Ergen's head, though he could barely even hear her past the wind whistling past them. The were currently flying north, supposedly in the direction of the dungeon that they were supposed to go to. However, whether or not Ergen's navigator could be trusted or not was still up to question as she'd hardly even climbed out from beneath his horns during their entire flight in order to make sure that they were flying in the right direction. Though Rae wasn't the only one that regretted the decision as he wished that he'd have bought along someone who could read 'human'.

Looking around for any indicators as to where to go, Ergen sighed to himself before beginning to descend so that Rae could check her map. He didn't want this journey to last very long, and the last thing that he needed was to get lost and be unable to find Asal's city again. Though even if he did complain, there was at least one good thing that came out of travelling, and that was the fact that he'd finally left the desert behind him.

Now travelling over a gigantic swamp filled with willow trees, Ergen had difficulty finding a place in which to land before he finally found a decently sized body of water in which to fall into. And while not minding Rae again, he quickly dipped his head underneath the water's surface so that he could make sure that there were no gigantic predators there before he could relax, however that was difficult seeing as the water was so filthy that Ergen could only see a few meters in every direction.

"A-Ah... Ahhh!" Rae started freaking out as soon as Ergen raised his head back out of the water, and as he saw her on the end of his snout again, he internally giggled evilly as he saw that she was completely covered in slime from the swamp. Though, his body was the same as hers in terms of being slime covered, especially seeing as he was still sitting in it.

"You really do hate me, don't you?! Well the feeling's mutual!" Rae yelled as she struggled to clean the swamp moss off of herself, though she was done a lot sooner that Ergen was as even he was regretting landing in the muck. Thankfully, she at least seemed to know why he'd landed in the first place as she pulled out the map that Farell had given her and looked it over quickly.

"If we keep going the way that we have been, we should see a hill that looks like a lion's head soon and we should turn left after that. Then we just have to keep going until we find some more mountains and follow either the smell of smoke or the light from a camp full of fires... You can smell stuff, can't you?" Rae asked, and after getting an even look, she acted offended from his gaze. "What?! I'm just saying that it would be terrible to have flown all the way here just to find out that we can't even find the mercenaries."

With their course set, Ergen let the beating of his wings finish cleaning the swamps muck off of him before he and Rae were once again flying through the skies, heading towards the dungeon where apparently he was supposed to kill a chimera. But what exactly was a chimera in this world? From the movies and books that he'd seen in his previous life, Ergen knew that chimera had multiple forms which could be anything from a mixture of lions, goats and snakes to humans, lizards and slugs. Any mixed number of creatures could make up a chimera, and Ergen just had to wonder what kind of creature was able to wipe out most of the mercenaries.

Thinking of different combinations of creatures In his mind, Ergen's thoughts were preoccupied throughout the entire trip before he later found Rae tapping on the top of his head, and it was only then that he realized that he'd already passed the lion's head and turned until he was soon flying over a series of small mountain ranges that seemed more like tall hills than anything else. The mountains were completely covered in tall spruce trees, and the undergrowth seemed dense to say the least as Ergen started smelling the air for any indication of a fire.

Flying in circles over the mountains in his search, Ergen never found any traces of smoke in the air, however he did spot some lights on the ground in the distance when the sun started to set. Those lights, surprisingly, just led to some exposed magma pools on the sides of some of the mountains before Ergen finally found the dungeon itself. It was built onto the top half of one of the taller mountains and had tall rock pillars decorating it's outer reached in an almost perfect circle while creating a maze of rock pillars on the inside. On the very top of the mountain, what looked like a massive dragon's skull made out of stone made up what appeared to be the entrance of the dungeon, and Ergen attempted not to be unnerved about it as he knew it was fake. Because dragons didn't get that big... right?

With the stone skull being at least a hundred times his size, Ergen flew around the moss-covered entrance of the dungeon before finally spotting a small camp just outside of the circle of rock pillars. And as soon as he spotted it, Ergen started descending until he eventually landed right beside the camp, unintentionally making the nearby horses freak out and the nearby mercenaries drop what they were doing as they were all completely shocked by his sudden arrival.

"Hello!" Rae called out before any of them were able to make a move, and while they may have panicked at first do to a dragon landing in their camp, now all of the hardened mercenaries looked on in confusion as Rea stood on the end of Ergen's snout. "We've been sent by King Asal to help you fight the chimera!"

"W-what?" The first mercenary to recover stammered before soon all of them started to move again. "The Demon King sent a dragon to help us?"

"As expected of the ruler of monsters." Another laughed hesitantly before the rest of the twenty men in front of them started to relax.

"So? Where is it?" Rae asked immediately, apparently just as eager as Ergen was to get their task over with.

"Just up ahead in the ruins. Captain Tyse just led another group to try to kill the beast, but we haven't heard from them." The first man explained, and Ergen followed the direction in which the man was pointing before beginning to walk down the wide path between the stone pillars. Each of them had a selection of hanging moss and vines that pulled on Ergen's back as he walked underneath them. And as he walked, the mercenaries that he'd seen before started following him from a ways back, and this continued until he finally saw more more men in front of him. However, the mercenaries coming from the front were all sprinting towards them with terror stricken faces until they saw Ergen and collapsed completely.

"The dragon is the reinforcements that the Demon King sent us!" The mercenary that had spoken from before announced as he moved ahead of Ergen and towards the seven others that had been running away. They all looked beaten and battered, and Ergen was wondering just why they weren't saying anything until the mercenary continued to walk towards them and flipped the first of the men over. His skin was completely purple, which was strange seeing as it hadn't been that way before.

"They've all been infected by the chimera's poison." The mercenary said sadly, and Ergen started hoping that Rae's magic could help him against poison before he started walking forward again. With each step that Ergen took forward, the bodies of more and more mercenaries became visible past the handing moss until they eventually reached what appeared to be a large stone wall where there were a mass of corpses both new and old were gathered. Most of the bodies were of mercenaries that had recently fallen while others were merely bones, and Ergen was beginning to have second thoughts about fighting this creature after all before they all suddenly heard a pained roar from behind the wall, which was soon answered by what sounded like a woman's battle cry.