Napoleon of Another World!

Chapter 4 - The Dragon

All my life I had known nothing but suffering. I had never known my mother – she could have been a slave or the descendant of people who followed the Dark Lord.

Like most slaves, I had been born on a reservation where monsters were selected and mated as breeding animals, and it was only by chance that while still small – at least by my standards – I had been destined for the same ghetto where my father too was imprisoned.

Even if you're a half-blooded dragon who ages ten times slower than a man in the ghettos, you're bound to grow up fast.

"You're just a slave!" the first guard who had punished me had shouted at me. "And you will remain one for life!"

But I was not like the others. I was a fighter.

The first time my father caught me trying to learn to use a sword he scolded me harshly. He said that the humans' hatred towards us was not entirely unjustified, given what they had suffered because of us.

But I didn't agree. What was our fault? That we had never even seen the Dark Lord, or for what our ancestors had done five hundred years before?

Every day I went to the sawmill or in the woods to cut trees, and in the evening I came home exhausted, and started over again the next day.

It had been like this for a hundred and sixty years, and deep down I was convincing myself that it would never change.

Then, suddenly, a ray of light entered my life.

Dad and the others had practically mauled me the night they saw me return to the ghetto with Daemon in my arms – a name I would have chosen myself – and it had been hard to convince them to keep him.

I've often wondered why someone like me, who hated humans with all my heart, would go out of her way to save one of them. To put it simply, when I found myself in front of that abandoned wren in the forest, I no longer understood anything – as if I had an invisible voice whispering in my ear.

Obviously, Lori had been the first to support me in convincing everyone to adopt him, for how strongly that cow was burning with repressed maternal instinct, and our fights to win his attention when he was little had almost become a comic show for our companions.

But it hadn't been easy. Not at all.

It was hard enough to fend for ourselves, let alone having to raise a human child while keeping him hidden from the rest of the world.

The idea of creating Mr. Haselworth's alias had come from old Passe, a kobold who always knew one thing or two, while that of obtaining money and provisions had come from the old lizard Bonbi, who was never caught stealing food scraps from miners' kitchens to feed her beloved nephew.

Through it all, my father had always kept an eye on us, despite his skepticism of our decision – and even though he was too proud to admit it, he soon grew fond of Daemon.

Sadly, I have to admit that Daemon didn't do anything at first to prove that he deserved the sacrifices we were making for him.

Perhaps we had spoiled him too much, perhaps it was simply his natural disposition, but for a long time the idea of committing himself and making sense to our efforts hadn't even crossed his mind, and he spent all his time skipping school, running in the woods, or making trouble in the village with his companions.

Then suddenly, four months earlier, he radically changed, and from one moment to the next we almost seemed to be dealing with another person, even too mature and responsible for a ten-year-old boy.

I was a little sorry that I didn't always have to worry about my little human brother's head-butts, just as I was a little sad that suddenly Daemon had started to prioritize study over training with the sword.