The instant that Logan flicked the Temporary Body Restoration Card white light in his body came, visible to him alone, like a personal miracle.
And there he was alive, all right.
Energy rejuvenated his extremities. He no longer had his muscles trembling with each breath. The suffering was muffled to a remote buzz, as of the noise in the background that he might not hear.
Of course his skin still resembled an experiment for a barbecue gone wrong, with his cratered scales smoldering and peeling off, blood streaming through deep cuts, but he could move. He could stand.
The system had not been fooling around. This wasn't healing. This was an extreme time-constrained resurrection buff. An ultimate frenzy of life, then the crash.
Logan made a couple of steps forward, limbs still somewhat unsteady, but a great deal more so than the twitching fuss he had been before. Now he could at least stop face planting at least every time he tried to breathe.
Although he had completely integrated himself in the memories of Vorthras, there was still the strange detachment between mind and body. To be a dragon was not limited to four legs, but wings, tail, weight distribution and balance. It was all a struggle to ride a bike with six pedals and no handlebars.
It made him think of getting up an old MMO after years of not doing so. You recalled the hotkeys, sort of. You recalled your rotation, in a way. But as soon as you touched the mouse with your fingers something was not quite right. Then you came back, and the game must have added a new whole skill bar in your absence.
Nevertheless, muscle memory got into action in a short time. In a couple of strides his movements became smoother. The scrambling came to a grotesque staggering, and the prowl was made easy and leisurely. In a few minutes he was maneuvering freely in the cave.
However, he took another look at Aurelia.
And something was within him.
Something queer and hot, like a pulse, with nothing to do with magic or systems or living.
It was... attraction.
raw, visceral, and totally out of place.
She reminded him, ridiculously, of his earliest college love, how soft-spoken, delicate, that type of girl is, who causes you to want to treat her tenderly even when you do not realize how.
Her features were pale, all right, but porcelain-pale, not ill. The type of skin which seemed so that it would have been pleasant to feel cold against, soft as silk. Her tiny, delicate feet were bruised, scraped, and yet resembled those of a sculpture of ivory. Even the chains on her ankles carried something strange and forbidden to the picture.
Her eyes were bright, and the lashes long and trembling. The tip of her nose was petite, and the lips were dry and pink, but a little way apart, drawing in small, shallow gasps.
It struck him as though a spring wind—warm and dizzy, and all out of place.
His heart thudded. Loud. Heavy. As some remote thunder on his breast.
An instinct of primal uprising swept him, and usurped his ideas.
No. Nope. Absolutely not.
He brought his claw and hit on the bridge of the nose.
Hard.
The shock brought him to himself.
Get it together, man. You're a dragon.
And not any dragon—a big one. Certainly, dragons were not particularly subject to reproductive taboos, but even by the standards of fantasy, this would be monstrous.
At least, he had to be capable of returning to the human shape.
Or, you see, you had better see that the girl did not die before.
He read a few novels enough to know how the dragons operate. At the time it had all appeared rather humorous, strange folklore, hot side-plots. But now that he was living it?
Not so funny.
Particularly upon drawing his eyes down and beholding how huge his present anatomy was.
Yeah. That would surely kill somebody.
Logan drew a long breath and pushed the thoughts away and locked them in a mental box marked Do Not Open Without Consent and a Miracle.
Rationality returned. It was the human element in him that scrabled its way up to the surface.
He looked at Aurelia again. She stood there shaking, huddled up in herself, breathing little and hardly at all, in the cold cave air.
He looked around, seeking something, something, to furnish some assistance.
At last, in the farther corner of his small, dark cave, he saw something: a bear pelt. Old, but mostly intact.
He went on all fours, carried it back to her in his jaws.
And then, very tenderly as a dragon could possibly have done it, he threw the pelt across her small shivering body.
Aurelia was curled up in a heap, and gripping with her a metallic fragment of stone as though it were a religious prize. Her legs were pulled close against her bosom, her skinny arms clasped round them, shaking. The ice was eating away at her and the iron shackles on her wrists and ankles were not helping her-cold, hard, relentless.
Then she heard it.
The clawing of the stone—slowly, painfully, nearer.
The dragon was coming.
Her breath caught. The useless piece of stone was clenched between her fingers. It was not even sharp to slice a loaf, much less to protect herself. But it was all she had,pitiful and useless.
Is this it?
Is he finally going to eat me?
She wanted to fight. She really did. But her body was too weak. The disease had shriveled her and the cold had completed the work. She was unable to even raise her arms, in order to run.
Aurelia shut her eyes, gearing up to die.
But in its place, teeth, or fire, was a something warm and heavy, which came into rest upon her shoulders.
She flinched.
Then blinked.
A bear pelt?
She rose looking up, startled, and stared the dragon full in the eyes, those deep crimson eyes that were smouldering faintly in the darkness. His huge head poked over her head, frightening and foreign, but... he was not assaulting. He wasn't even growling.
He was... pulling the pelt round her?
Aurelia's mind reeled. She looked up at him, and her eyes were opened wide, and then she quickly bent her head down, and then as though it were a deer in the crossfire of a gunman.
She spoke in a whisper of a tremulous and uncertain voice.
D-Dragon... sir... are you... you are getting me warm so I will be good?
Logan: "..."
Well, with so little of her, he was clear about there being much difference between raw and roasted.
Well, he felt a moment of hunger to peep at her, and dragons were omnivores, but it was not excessive. Not such as the other, more harmful impulse he had just just barely suppressed.
Black dragons, and especially young ones, had no chance to be choosy. They ate what they could get. But just at the moment Logan was not interested in eating her.
He lifted his huge head after which he stretched out his clawed forelimbs—wings half-folded to support them, and with a kind of fumbling he took hold of the bear pelt and wound it still more closely round her little body. Then he gave her a small nod.
He did not understand her language, and she certainly did not know dragon-tongue, so this was as good as he could make it.
The pelt yet retained some of his body heat in the past. It was a little, but it was sufficient to relieve the cold. He read it already——she had stopped shivering, and her breaths came a little more steadily.
Aurelia looked up at him, bewildered without being frightened any more. She was observing his face and his eyes and his movements.
He hadn't hurt her.
He'd helped her.
That in itself was sufficient to rock her world.
She had grown up in the Silverwood Grove of the elven enclave in the forest. Then came the raiders. The slavers. The sickness. She was sold like cattle, transported across frontiers and lastly sacrificed to a monster.
And now the monster was... tucking her in?
She had hardly spoken, and had struggled to do so, glimpsing him as she raised her eyes.
"Th-thank you, great dragon... I'm not as cold now."
A low whistle was ringing in the brain of Logan:
DING! Favorability +50 of Aurielia Hathaway.
Current Favorability: -30 (Awed)
Logan blinked.
Wait, that counted?
He looked at the system prompt with some slight puzzle. Awed was still negative? Shouldn't awe be a good thing?
To the system he threw the question.
DING! Present prevailing emotional state fear.
Thus, Favorability is also negative.
"Ah. Got it."
Even admiration was not positive in case she was too scared mostly. However, in case it was transferred to respect or trust, then the figures would reverse.
Nevertheless, fifty points just for a bear pelt? A payback of that nature.
Logan's mind raced. She had said earlier that she was hungry, had she not?
He shook his head upon her, and then indicated with his claw at the ground—keep still.
Aurelia shook her head, evidently not knowing what he referred to, but made no movement.
Good enough.
And, without a reply, Logan walked off, and headed towards the cave door. He had no time to justify himself, and his time was very short.
He possessed half an hour of borrowed power.
And at this moment he had to seek food.
Fast.
...