POV Alesia:
The dragon that she learned was called Vesuvius lay on the ground in a massive cave chamber, with black volcanic stone covering its walls. The dark electrifying smoke emitted by the dragon was rising towards the ceiling, where it entered a hole, safely leaving the cave. Everything was dark except for orange light flickering from massive torches in the corners of the chamber.
She jumped up as the cold voice spoke to her and immediately stopped looking around her, “I want you to engrave runes onto my armour, claws and scales with you becoming runic enchanter working for me, and in exchange, I will give you my blood. You will gain power and immortality.”
Alesia’s heart started to beat faster, her eyes trying to pierce the thick smoke around the dragon to assess her material. Her hands began to tremble, just thinking about her job. Dragon materials were always of the highest quality, and that was after a dragon died, making them lose a portion of their magical qualities. ‘I will be the first runic enchanter in history to engrave on a living dragon, and with them dying out, most likely the last one too. I will forever enter history and create a new branch of runic enchanting! Wait, there is also that blood as a bonus!’
Unlike humans, elves were long-living species giving them enough time to reach their goals, so they weren’t as desperate to gain eternal youth as humans. But no one in their right mind would reject the such offer if it was right in front of them, ‘To live forever would give me unlimited time to reach the peak of runic enchanting. Also, I heard dragonkins have much more potent mana, which would make my work much easier.’
‘Is this one of those life-changing encounters?’. She was excited and wanted to jump and squeal in excitement at such an excellent opportunity to improve in her art. She even partially forgot her anger at getting kidnapped from her shop.
But she quickly remembered the terrifying beast in front of her and calmed down. She opened her mouth, hardly controlling her mixed emotions of fear, respect and excitement, “I will do it!”
The dark smoke around the dragon moved away, revealing an outstretched scaly hand with glowing blazing claws covered in streaks of gold that could easily tear her apart. Inside it was a small pool of thick red liquid with a slight gold lustre glowing in dim red light. Her blue eyes fixed upon the fluid, her whole body wanting to drink it, sweat moving down her temple, and her pulse reaching dangerous levels. She felt like a drug addict looking at a dose of their favourite drug.
Without even knowing it, she took a step forward, her eyes still glued to the blood in front of her. She made another step and then another. The searing heat radiating out of the dragon started to burn her skin, making it turn red, but she didn’t care and continued walking forward.
The heat kept intensifying as she walked toward the dragon, and the dark smoke in front of her moved out of her way, revealing the beast in its full glory. His reptilian eyes watched the young elf move towards him, her skin burning. The red glowing hot stone under her kept injuring her feet with each step, but she continued as if in a trance.
She was only one step away from her goal, looking at the bubbling hot liquid and the blazing hot, heat-radiating hand that it was pooled in.
She stuck her mouth to it and gulped down a mouth full of scalding hot liquid. The liquid moved down her mouth with her flesh and innards burning away.
“Ahhhh!” she fell to the ground screaming in pain as her sanity returned together with the perception of pain. The blood was getting absorbed into her body as it burned like a fire. She punched with her fist towards the ground, feeling regret, wanting to travel back in time to avoid such pain.
Her sight turned dark as she fell unconscious from the pain.
POV Vesuvius:
Vesuvius kept looking at the elf thrashing on the ground, not expecting such a violent reaction, ‘The players can’t feel pain, and wyverns are much more sturdy, and they were already draconic species, so changes weren’t so violent.’
A new smooth and pale skin started slowly growing around her body, replacing her old burned skin. A set of long curled horns that looked like blazing hot iron with blue electricity crackling around them slowly grew out of her skull, joining the pair of pointy elven ears.
Ding!
//
Congratulations, the first NPC joined your faction!
Congratulations, an artist NPC joined your faction: Runic Enchanter
Your faction unlocked runic enchanting…
Updating faction resources…
Keep it up! You are close to upgrading your faction!
//
‘Alright, I will keep up!’ Vesuvius chuckled to himself while speaking to no one.
Suddenly the elf opened her eyes. One of them was a beautiful blue eye of an elf, while the second was a vertically slit eye of a dragon, slightly glowing in the dark cave. She sat down on the ground, unbothered that it was red from the blazing heat.
The small elf with horns turned her head at the dragon, her heterochromatic eyes looking straight at him, “Your draconic highness, do you wish something specific.” her voice suddenly turned a little bit more emotional, “Or you wish to leave it on me.”
‘Now that I think about it, I don’t know what specific runes I want…’
“I will leave it to you. Just make my scales most resistant and absorbing as possible while I want my claws as sharp and hard as possible. Also, don’t forget to preserve their mana conductivity. Rest is on you. Start with my claws.” The dragon splurted out a list of his requirements after a few seconds of thinking.
Of course, Vesuvius wasn’t a fool, allowing her to start immediately with his scales, which were much more critical and harder to regrow than his claws. Or with his armour as that would be useless as he would have to shed it later to allow her to engrave runes on his scales.
The dragon pointed his tail to the corner of the cave chamber. There was a box filled with various instruments, ‘I wasn’t wrong. That guy with the weird punk haircut is at least capable enough of grabbing her tools. That would be a big fail if he didn’t grab them, and now we would have to find new ones.’
The elf became quiet for a moment, looking as if she was hesitating about something. After a few moments, she opened her mouth and spoke, “Ehmm, your highness, it does not work like that… I need time and paper to create schemes.” her voice was turning quieter and quieter as she shuddered. “I can’t just engrave runes without any planning if you want the best possible result. Runic enchanting is complex art…”
Vesuvius interrupted her panicky blabbering, “That is enough. I understand. It is your art, so I will respect your professional opinion.”. His voice was cold, without any emotions. However, his opinions of her secretly rose by a large margin, ‘She dared to speak against me to guarantee high quality of her work. That is something I respect.’
(AN: Thanks for the idea of putting runes on the dragon. It was originally something about him eating runic weapons to absorb them and gain their power, and I refined this idea into this form. I don’t remember who said it, but thank you. Maybe I will make some auxiliary chapter with something like a chamber of honour for people that help me to find typos or throw me an idea that I use later.)