ERWYN || THE STAKE

The boiling water of the thermal spring dragged the ache back into Erwyn's muscles with slow, deliberate cruelty. Steam curled through the cavern in pale ribbons while the last traces of daylight filtered through cracks in the mountain above, striking the wet stone and buried veins of crystal. At this hour, the cave glittered like something sacred. Or perhaps cursed. With dragons, the distinction had always been cosmetic.

Erwyn leaned deeper into the water with a low exhale. His head tilted against the black stone behind him while strands of silver-white hair clung to his chest and shoulders like molten silk. Flying across the kingdom of Palpua had never exhausted him. He had crossed entire continents before humans had even learned how to shape iron properly, and distance meant nothing to creatures like him. Nothing about this wretched little kingdom did.

What irritated him was the persistence. The arrows. The catapults. And of course, the breathtaking, almost admirable depth of human stupidity. The desperate little soldiers scattering below like ants every time he descended from the clouds to collect what had been promised. Insects playing at war. Erwyn smirked, removing a silver lock from his shoulder: perhaps in a hundred years, humans will finally be worthy of being mildly inconvenient. But he doubted it. He had been doubting it for several centuries now, and they had yet to prove him wrong. Over the past twenty years, the kingdom had tried to outsmart a pact older than their entire bloodline, and older than the bloodlines that had rotted into soil before theirs. Every five years they offered a woman at the altar, and every five years they attempted to kill him before he could leave with her. As if making a pact with a dragon was a promise that could be forgotten and undone by creatures who barely outlived their own grandchildren.

Pathetic. Genuinely, profoundly pathetic.

His pale eyes drifted lazily across the cavern until they settled on the newest offering curled near the far wall.

She looked less like a woman and more like discarded linen left in the corner by a careless servant. Small. Motionless. Damp from the mountain air. When he had torn her from the altar and climbed into the sky, she had not screamed or fought. Most of them did, at least for a while. Some begged. Some fainted before he even cleared the palace towers. This one had simply gone limp from terror and altitude, and he found he could not even muster contempt for it. Contempt required a baseline of expectation, and he had none left for her kind.

That, more than anything, was disappointing.

The steam from the spring slowly crept across the cave floor toward her unconscious form. He had placed her close enough to the heat that she would not freeze to death before he decided what to do with her. Because contrary to human folklore, dragons did not enjoy spoiled meat, and he refused to let their incompetence rob him of even that small standard.

The mountains outside groaned beneath the wind. Ancient. Immovable. Indifferent. And almost soothed by that ancient and reliable song, Erwyn closed his eyes briefly.

A pact was eternal. That was the point of a pact. Dragons understood this because dragons understood permanence. Men, however, treated promises the same way they treated forests and rivers and each other. Useful until inconvenient, and disposable once used up. They were, at their very core, a species of consumption. They consumed the land, and consumed each other, and consumed every good thing extended to them, yet somehow still had the audacity to erect temples and call themselves civilized.

He found them revolting.

A quiet cough broke the silence and the dragon's eyes opened instantly.

The young woman stirred weakly against the stone wall, her fingers twitching before she slowly lifted her head. Her face was pale beneath strands of tangled hair, and confusion clouded her expression for one fragile second before memory returned to her.

Erwyn watched the transition with quiet pleasure. Confusion to recognition to terror, swift and total and entirely predictable. A universal expression, and the only honest one humans ever wore.

"Well," he drawled, his voice echoing through the cavern like distant thunder, "the offering survives." The girl's eyes widened. She stared directly at him and then quickly looked away, as though eye contact itself might provoke him into violence. Smart enough, at least. Smarter than the last three. She swallowed hard. And before she could implore and repeat the same hollow words as her predecessors, or pray to the same useless gods as those who had knelt in this same cave before her and received no answer, he interrupted her. "Humans always begin with begging," he said, tilting his head with slow disdain. "As though mercy is something owed to an inferior race by a superior one. As though I should feel pity for the livestock." Her trembling gaze flickered back toward him, lingering on the sharp black horns curving from his temples. Confusion crossed her face before fear swallowed it again. Erwyn noticed immediately. And smiled. "Oh, this is wonderful." The woman stiffened. "You did not know," he said, and something in his tone sharpened with genuine delight now, cold and bright as the crystal in the walls. "They sent you here without even teaching you what a dragon is. They dressed you in white and placed flowers in your hair and sent you to me, and they could not spare a single breath of honest information." His smile did not waver. "So they waste your life, and they waste my time, and they still manage to be boring about it." She said nothing. He straightened slightly in the spring, golden water sliding down the pale planes of his chest and shoulders. Even in human form he looked fundamentally wrong. Too tall. Too still. Like something wearing the shape of a man without fully understanding the assignment, or caring to. "You expected scales?" he continued, his voice dropping to something mockingly gentle. "Claws? Wings folded inside the cave? Four legs and fire?" His lip curled. "Gods, your kingdom grows more ignorant with every generation. You breed faster than you think, and that is saying something, for you do not think very much at all." "I... I did not know dragons could..." Her voice faltered as she glanced nervously at him again. "Look human." At that, Erwyn barked a sharp laugh, and the sound ricocheted off the wet stone walls with no warmth in it whatsoever. “Human?” he repeated with visible disgust. “Careful, little thing. Insult me again and I may reconsider warming you by my spring.”

She immediately lowered her head. "Of course you did not know," he murmured, settling back into the water. “Your people spend centuries building statues in my honor and still understand nothing.” He exhaled slowly through his nose. "You are a species of remarkable, tireless error." Silence settled again. The girl drew her knees closer to her chest, trying unsuccessfully to appear smaller. Erwyn studied her for a long moment before sighing with the particular weariness of someone who has been repeatedly failed by the same source for several hundred years. "They truly become less beautiful every generation." Her head lifted slightly in startled offense, and he continued mercilessly. “The women offered to me a century ago looked like celestial creatures. Regal posture. Grace. Intelligence in their eyes.”

His gaze swept over her tiny, shivering frame.

"Now they send me frightened little birds who faint halfway up the mountain and arrive already half-dead from altitude. Your kingdom cannot even manage adequate tribute anymore. It is, frankly, insulting."

Color rose faintly into her cheeks despite the fear. Good. Anger was better than paralysis, and slightly less tedious to watch. Outside, thunder rolled somewhere beyond the peaks. Erwyn leaned back into the steaming water at peace with the storm, for the storm at least did not pretend to be his equal, and closed his eyes once more. "Do not look so miserable," he said lazily. "You are still alive. That already makes you more fortunate than most creatures who enter my mountains, and considerably more fortunate than you deserve, given the insult of your kingdom's preparation." The young woman stared at him uncertainly, trying to decide whether any part of that was meant to comfort her. Judging by the faint smile that curved Erwyn's mouth, it absolutely was not.