Princess

The gruesome sight made me throw up.

And I thought I got used to seeing corpses and other nasty things at this point, but this was new. The Saipole wizards were mangled and dismembered, with their insides scattered around in the jungle-like forest.

"You all right, Elizabeth?" Cath asked me, holding up my hair.

"Do I look like I'm all right?" I grumbled, before vomiting again. I already felt sick because of stress and fighting this deity inside me, but this was the last drop in that cup. "Ugh, I haven't thrown up this much since those beasts poisoned me a month ago."

"That's not what I heard though." The paladin giggled, but turned back into her gray, or rather, blue self, looking apologetically.

"Aoi Sama, we must turn back." The gladiators argued with our heavy-handed expedition leader. "Whatever did this to the wizards, they were our main firepower, and none of them seem to have survived this. We would not stand a chance either. Let's just barricade the entrance instead."

"No, that won't do. We can't desert our capital like Baran was abandoned." The blue-robed princess protested but also struggled with the sight of his comrades. She didn't have issues with the massacred penal squad, trying to act threatening at the time. "Fine, we turn back for now and try it again later. But since our mission failed, I won't let you off the hook yet."

That last part was aimed directly at me, but I expected that much. Geddu hinted that she wouldn't let us go either way, especially now that she possessed my body now and then. As enthusiastic as I was about a deity answering my prayers before, now it seemed a major setback I had to fight. And it was a losing battle, just like the one these wizards fought.

There were a few monster carcasses, but it seemed like a one-sided slaughter, just like when the harpies attacked us. The penal squad was expendable from the start but these wizards were the elite.

Still, I was glad to hear we'd return to the surface, even being thrown back to our cells seemed like a better deal than suffering the same fate as these guys in the dungeon. The only one trying to protest it was Gadurien since she could not take over my body anywhere else.

"Don't be so sure about that, sweetheart." Her voice appeared in my head just to prove me wrong. "It would be much easier to do it here, yes. More convenient too, if I don't have to fight the Inquisitorias over it, but it's not impossible by any means."

Gods were truly terrible. Especially the ones I looked up to. Geddu would try to tempt me with stories from the Second Great Continental War, and how Hetlir and Hemmlir committed tremendous atrocities against other human ethnicities to further their own goals.

Compared to them, Smiling Kisserleng and Remmol were indeed saints who helped, healed, and defended people. Gadurien's example showed that they only saw us as expendable tools, as the Saipole princess did with the penal squad. I had no idea how I could get rid of her.

"You can't. I might decide to abandon you, but that won't be your decision, Princess." The voice told me, and I threw up again.

"Okay, get yourselves together, we will head back the same way we came, and leave for now," Aoi announced, didn't bother burying the dead. I soon found out why though. "Oh, purifying flames, cleanse their bodies from sins of failure, and take their souls to the other world."

She almost sang it like a prayer, but those didn't work down here. The flames spontaneously appeared regardless, engulfing the mangled corpses, and taking down most of the vegetation with them in the area. The jungle was rather wet, resulting in a choking thick smoke, no matter how fast we tried to leave the premises.

"This way the bastards can't reanimate those corpses." One of the gladiators explained, trying to act friendly towards us, the survivors of this disastrous expedition, but I was more interested in that strange spell she used. He didn't talk about that though.

Aoi practically sang that chant, while to my knowledge, spells didn't need to be announced. They only needed to take shape in the wizard's mind, and mana was channeled through them.

"She is using the elven method they reverse-engineered." Geddu came with the explanation. "It's what their bards use at least. It's rather potent for the amount of magicules it uses, but not as reliable as traditional casting."

"Looks still better than relying on deities like you," I mumbled quietly, but Cath still heard it, glancing at me curiously. "Nothing, just Geddu told me about her singing. It makes her magic more potent or something."

"Cut the chatter, and remain on high alert. Whatever dealt with those wizards can still come for us on our way back." The blue-robed princess ordered, looking quite stressed herself. It was unsurprising, she decided to join this expedition on a whim just to piss me off, but it quickly turned into a disaster, and she couldn't expect praise from his father after returning. And I could feel no pity for her.

It reminded me of my father instead. I hoped he was still well, and the Elder didn't poison him or something. If she were to help me get rid of that bitch, I was even willing to make a pact with Gedurian too, offering her my body to be possessed. The Inquisitorias were no more anyway, and the pact was off when the Goddess of Luck returned.

"See, you need me even more than I need you, so why fight so hard against me?" She asked, right as my thoughts started to wander.

"That is because you aren't planning to help me at all, you just lured me into a trap," I mumbled but caught Cath's concerned glance again. I kept forgetting that I didn't need to talk loud when conversing with that so-called goddess. "It's nothing, don't worry about me."

"So-called? I'm one of the most powerful deities of the Cranta Panteon, little Princess." The voice sounded upset. Maybe I managed to touch on her nerves. "Just because I won't grant my power to anyone asking for it, I'm the strongest goddess. This puny little Goddess of Luck of yours couldn't hold a candle to me."

"Well, you are the only one in the Pantheon." I giggled, rubbing salt in the injury. "I didn't even know you were a woman, and I dug up quite a few codexes about you during my boring classes."

"Sometimes I wish I could see inside your head too, Princess." I heard the paladin complain, but I'm sure she didn't want to see this mess. I waved her off, but before I could continue my argument with Gadurien, a large shadow flew over us, forcing our small team to jump behind cover. "Was that a wyvern?"

"Much worse." The gladiator's leader pointed at the sky. "That's an actual dragon. Didn't know they lived in dungeons as well."

"A d-dragon?" Aoi asked surprised. Her determined bossy attitude quickly broke down as the enormous beast took a long turn. "The last one of their kind disappeared from the continent even before the last Panteon wars. I never heard about them appearing in dungeons either."

"You haven't heard about the legend of the Dragon Hoard, Your Highness?" The gladiator asked whispering, but the beast must have still heard it because it aimed directly at us in his next turn. His mouth was large enough to swallow us all at once, but the worst was yet to come.

He did what dragons were most well known from the legends, and breathed fire. The one time I wouldn't have fought Gadurien if she wanted to take over my body, she remained quiet, but the blue-robed princess raised a barrier around us right before impact.

Flames surrounded us for a long moment, the heat was difficult to bear, but the ancient monster flew over us and disappeared instantly. The barrier collapsed, and we struggled to breathe.

"Where did it go?" Cath asked, anxiously turning her head, but the monster was nowhere to be found. Considering how enormous it was, and how suddenly it showed up, it disappeared just as fast.

"Don't wait until it comes back, run!" The gladiator yelled without waiting for his boss' order, dashing forward. Aoi couldn't protest before the dragon returned to incinerate the last remaining gladiators. Like they never even existed.

How could a beast this huge move so fast? Just a green flash in the sky, flames coming from his mouth, and a wide strip of the forest in front of us was gone. At least I could tell for sure, it didn't kill the wizards, because we would never find their corpses in the first place.

The dragon took off again as if it didn't consider us a worthy opponent, and Geddu's voice disappeared with it. I bet even a god would have struggled against something like this. Still, after it flew off into the distance, our girl trio survived. Cath crawled over to me.

"Are you all right?" She whispered, not for the first time today. If anything, this encounter sure made me forget about throwing up or struggling against my imminent possession or the like. All my problems, even myself seemed like a speck of dust next to that ancient monster.

The blue-robed princess left her cover sometime later, merely staggering to where the gladiators disappeared. Her fire caused a lot of smoke when she burned the bodies, this one only left a charred line in the vegetation, incinerating everything in an instant.

"Your little song and all that smoke must have drawn his attention," I told her, once I made sure I didn't hear those wings flapping anywhere. "I could easily destroy you now if I wanted to. Just a moment for Geddu to take over my body, and you are gone."

I bluffed, of course. Gadurien could even abandon me at this point, but Aoi barely held herself together. It made me oddly confident though.

"I will escort you back to the surface because you said the guards would kill everyone if we returned without you. But then you let us go, and forget we ever existed, all right?" I tried to bargain with her, but she pointed into the distance ahead. I saw the cliff face we came from, but it changed a lot since. That dragon bastard made the whole thing collapse.

"W-we aren't going a-anywhere, anytime soon." Aoi stuttered.