Chp.7: Goal reached

Haku stared at the unconscious fairy for almost a minute, to make sure that the potion had really taken effect. While according to Freyar's description there shouldn't have been any problems, it was always best to be careful. Only when he was certain that the fairy was completely asleep did he relax.

As soon as his nerves stopped being tense, a slight burning began to bother him on his right front paw. He checked and saw that several scales on it were gone, and that small cuts had formed in various places. That wasn't surprising: after all, that was where Haku landed after a nearly forty-meters fall. He decided not to care too much about it; after all it wasn't bleeding much and it didn't hurt, just a slight discomfort. It wasn't worth wasting a regeneration potion on that: he had too few to use for such small cuts. After all, dragons healed quickly: by that night any cuts would probably have healed, and within a day or two the scales would have grown back.

However, the fact that he had gotten away with only a few cuts didn't mean that the others would. Someone could have been hurt. "Are you all ok?" he asked looking at his sisters.

Fortunately, everything seemed to have gone well: none of them had obvious injuries and they didn't appear to be limping, a sign that they hadn't broken any bones. "Everything is fine!" Glausar answered him.

"Me too!" Corgorin added.

"No problem for me too!" Maldor finally said, even as she waved her left hind leg as if she tried to ward off a pesky insect.

Haku nodded, internally sighing with relief. He had taken a small risk in carrying out that plan. He had been sure that their scales would have been strong enough to withstand such a fall (after all, Haku remembered that Darbi had been able to survive with nothing broken after receiving a paw from their mother and being catapulted against a rock wall with enough force to crack the stone), but like everything, he couldn't be absolutely certain before trying. Luckily it seemed that his assumptions had been, once again, correct.

Haku knew that if they attacked the fairies directly, the dragons would have been the losing side. He couldn't say for sure, but based on the two ninjas he'd faced when he eliminated the delegation, he assumed they shouldn't be below the level gold. Even with the magical runes he and his sisters knew, there was no way they could beat a team of faeries skilled in using mana and equipped with countless weapons, tricks, and magical items. The only solution was to take them out in one fell swoop.

Haku had thought about repeating what he had done with the delegation, but he had rapidly changed his mind. Though only two months had passed since then, to a dragon's rapidly growing mind they were equivalent to years of experience. Haku had become much more cautious and wasn't willing to take such risks again unless it was absolutely necessary. After all, what if he acted as bait again and his sisters stepped in a second too late? It could end very, very badly for him. So he had decided to come up with something less risky and more effective.

From what he understood, fairies were the few flying creatures in the forest. The huge trees and their dense foliage prevented the existence of too large birds or at least any winged predator large enough to put a fairy in difficulty. Also, ninja patrols like the one they'd just shot down were tasked with looking for signs of the ogres, who notoriously stayed on the ground, not in the trees.

Consequently, why should they look up?

Even with a ninja's extraordinary magical abilities, there was no way anyone could survive if a dragon weighing over a ton leapt at them, dug their claws into them chest, and sent them tumbling from a height of almost forty meters using their enormous weight. Even the strongest warrior in the world wouldn't have been able to fight back against such an attack. And indeed, the fairy that Haku had attacked had literally lost all her bones in a matter of seconds. However, not everything had gone as he had expected: the fairy had survived even in that state. Haku had to admit that he was struck by such tenacity and ability to resist, but this certainly wouldn't have made him feel pity for her: using one of the sleep potions he had stolen from Freyar, he had put her to sleep before she could recover and attack him.

Haku looked at the spots where his sisters were. In the case of the fairies that Maldor and Glausar attacked, everything had gone according to plan: both of them had died in the crash. One of them had landed headfirst and her skull had shattered so much that it was no longer recognizable, while the other one had fallen on a broken trunk which, due to the force of the fall, had pierced her chest cleanly, killing her in an instant. As for the fairy that Corgorin attacked...

"Haku, this one survived" his sister said as she lifted the fairy's body off the ground. The fairy was unconscious and she appeared to have both her right leg and right arm dislocated, as well as several wounds and probably a lot of internal organ damage, but she was still visibly breathing.

Haku was really surprised. Not only one, but two fairies had survived? The ninjas really were elite soldiers. "Check that she has no lethal wounds, and if so, cure her with a few drops of a regeneration potion. Then give her a sleep potion"

"Do you want to keep her alive?" Corgorin asked.

"I want to keep both of them alive" Haku replied, also lifting the fairy that was attacked by him, showing her to his sisters. "I have some questions for them. We still don't know how the objects that we need work. If we're lucky we'll be able to figure it out ourselves, but if not we'll need someone to interrogate"

His sisters nodded, fully understanding his reasons. In reality, Haku aimed to ask the two survivors much more than the simple functioning of the objects that he and his siblings needed to start the fire in the ogre city, but he would have thought about it later.

He heard the crack of breaking branches and looked up. Finiar had arrived, leaping from trunk to trunk and gripping the bark with her powerful claws. Although they were quite distant, the noise they made couldn't have gone unnoticed by the sensitive ears of a dragon, and in fact his sister had immediately knew that the plan had been implemented and she had rushed to them. "Everything went fine?" she asked as soon as she reached them.

"Yes, we got them all" Haku confirmed, and then he grabbed one of the fairies by the head and dragged her away. "Now get the bodies and get out of here before another patrol arrives"

The five dragons grabbed the four fairies, both those still alive and the dead ones, they hid the traces of what had happened using dirt and foliage, and then they ran away. They traversed several acres of forest before coming to a small clearing they knew was safe. There, finally, they knocked the fairies down and were able to check their loot. "Well, let's see what we got" Haku said, starting to snatch anything that caught his attention from them.

He and his sisters stripped the fairies completely naked, even ripping off their clothes which they shredded to check for secret pockets. Haku could see that once again he had obtained many magical objects, weapons and potions, which he should carefully study later. Once they were sure they had taken everything, the five dragons searched among their loot for the ovoid objects capable of burning everything within a hundred meters and set them aside.

When they were done, they realized they had obtained sixteen of those incendiary items. "Mh. A pretty good number" Haku said. "That'll be enough. Great job, girls! Now we have everything we need. Goal reached!"

His sisters were visibly satisfied. However, there was something troubling them. "What do we do with them?" Maldor asked pointing to the fairies still alive. "The effect of the potion won't last forever"

Haku nodded. He shared their concern. "Don't worry. We'll just have to deprive them of energy, as we did with the other fairy"

"So we're going to keep them asleep again for three days?" Finiar asked.

"No, I don't mean to waste so much time. There are faster ways to deprive a living creature of its energy" Haku replied, and with a single movement of his claws he made a deep cut on the wrist of one of the two faeries.

Blood began to gush copiously. Haku's claws had cut into the deepest veins, creating an extremely rapid loss. Haku did the same with the other fairy. In a matter of tens of seconds, their skin color became much paler. "Leave them like this for another thirty or forty seconds, then heal them with a regeneration potion. Then bind them with something, they'll be too weak to break free even from a chain made of leaves and flowers" Haku ordered as he wiped the blood on his claws with his tongue.

After months of learning how to kill anything in sight, he knew that method would have worked. Bleeding was something that depleted any living being of energy, and even if the bleeding could be stopped, the body needed time to regenerate the lost blood. Time and energy. Therefore no fairy would have been able to use mana after being deprived of enough blood. And without mana, even an elite soldier had no way to defend themselves against a dragon, even if they were just a baby. Basically, the two fairies would have been helpless against him.

While his sisters took care of treating their new prisoners, Haku perceived a familiar smell in the air, and a satisfied smile painted on his face. He waited, and about half an hour later Keita and Sarpa joined them in the clearing. "You have arrived" he greeted them.

"Hello, brother. I see the hunt has been a success" Keita said looking at the bodies of the fairies lying on the ground. "Do we have what we need?"

Haku nodded. "We have it" he confirmed, then he looked at Sarpa. "Hello to you too" he said.

The ogre looked confused for a moment to see that scene, but he recovered quickly and pretended he hadn't seen anything. "Hello" he replied. "Which of my services would you like this time?"

Haku let out a chuckle. "Don't be so fawning! Come, join us. We have a lot to talk about, you and I"

Sarpa gulped. The dragon's tone was friendly, but the ogre had learned to always expect the worst of him. He quickly wondered if he'd done something wrong and Haku was going to punish him or something else. Or even worse. However, he certainly couldn't ask for further explanations, so he remained silent and followed Haku to the pile of objects, weapons, potions and so on that he and his sisters had just stolen from the fairies.

Sarpa felt very uncomfortable seeing the fairies lying on the ground nearby, both dead and still alive and only unconscious. The dragons had stripped them of everything, including their clothes, leaving their naked bodies for all to see. This obviously didn't create problems for Haku or his siblings, dragons had a basically non-existent sense of modesty, and they considered the physical need of newcomers to cover certain parts of the body almost ridiculous. However, from Sarpa's point of view this created many moral issues, but despite this he allowed himself a brief glimpse of those magnificent bodies before turning away. After all, despite ogres had other standards of beauty, he couldn't deny that fairies were undoubtedly a beautiful race. Knowing that his inattention might irritate the dragon, Sarpa tried to return his focus to him, but still he couldn't stop his mind from imagining the four fairies in not exactly chaste ways.

Haku noticed his 'interest'. "Do you want one of them?" he asked jokingly. "I can't leave you one, I'm sorry. They saw us, and I have no way to blackmail them, so they won't be able to live long. But if you want, you can take advantage of them now. Or I can leave you one of the dead bodies, they're still warm anyway"

Sarpa shook his head. "No thanks. I don't need it" he said. While he wouldn't have minded sleeping with one of the faeries, he had no intention of doing so while they were unconscious, and necrophilia wasn't exactly his thing either.

Haku shrugged. "As you wish. Sorry if I offended you, I'm still trying to get familiar with the mating rituals of other races. You newcomers are very different from animals" he said. "Anyway, we don't have to talk about this now. I had you call here for a specific reason: I want to ask you a question"

Sarpa nodded slightly, sweating at the thought of what the dragon might ask. "What is this question?" he asked.

A smile appeared on Haku's face. "Dear Sarpa, have you ever considered to become a king?"