Some times later:
POV Tanya:
The young woman sat on the cushiony seat of the carriage that was shaking from the bumpy road under it.
She nervously sat there, still unsure what to do, her fingers playing with her long hair.
‘The road feels different. We are not going into my residence.’ She looked out of the window, but there was only darkness outside.
The slight waves of magic were pulsing through the whole cabin of the carriage, making her realise that the situation was even worse.
‘Some kind of magic? Likely to keep me from escaping.’
Soon a faint aroma entered her sensitive nose, tickling her sensitive sense of smell and making her sniff. Her gaze immediately turned hazy, with her head slightly spinning.
She clenched her fists, her robust superhuman metabolism quickly burning away the sleeping drug.
‘They are quiet about this. Does that mean that maybe it is just some rival? No, that isn’t certain. It wouldn’t be weird for the kingdom to try and keep it a secret that they are traitors between them, not to warn of others or cause public panic.’
The carriage was shaking increasingly, making Tanya realise they weren’t moving through the main streets. She still couldn’t decide what to do.
She put her palm on the carriage doors, the magical vibrations from the enchantment entering her palm.
She closed her eyes in focus as she tried to study it and find out if she could break through it.
Soon a smile formed on her face as she realised she could overpower it just with her sheer magic potency.
‘Haha, they likely thought that my body, as that of a mage, would be weak and unable to resist their drug. Such a miscalculation. It is always easiest to escape during transformation.’
The blood in her veins ignited, with her veins glowing under her pale skin with immense energy flowing through them.
Mana passed through her body and entered her palm. A bright light erupted from her soft, pale palm and enveloped the doors of the carriage.
The magic passed through the whole structure of the carriage, but there was no change.
Tanya’s brows furrowed as she focused more, her eyes igniting in the golden light with her veins glowing even brighter.
Cracking resounded through the carriage, followed by the sound of shattered glass. The darkness outside of the window vanished, revealing an empty street.
Tanya pushed with her hand against the carriage doors, and loud cracking resounded before the doors fell off their hinges, crashing against the stone road.
Louds shouting echoed through the empty street.
“Don’t let her escape!”
“Catch that traitor!”
POV Vesuvius:
The verdant green grass kept rippling in the weak summer breeze. The sky was pristinely blue with only a few clouds on it.
Suddenly a strong wind rose, and the whole sky turned dark as the giant dragon appeared.
His massive black body with glowing purple lines slowly descended, closing towards the large city surrounded by two layers of thick and dark walls.
He temporarily gave up on trying to become a dragon lord, ‘Now is not a good time when I am in the middle of a war. Who knows how long it would take? What if I get stuck in for years, and in the meantime, my kingdom will burn down.’
He simply couldn’t risk it during a war. Even a single month could turn victory into defeat or the opposite.
The dragon awkwardly descended towards a large citadel in the centre of the city, feeling awkward with his colossal body, ‘It is great, but it feels so bad not to be able to enter my own city. I should really find a way to turn temporarily smaller.’
POV Alesia:
The young elven girl stood in the middle of a small courtyard in the central citadel, looking at the unconscious horned man lying on the stone altar.
Even though it was the middle of summer, the tall walls and towers were throwing a comfortable shadow over it.
She was no sadist, so when the alchemist came with a strong drug to put her subjects unconscious, she gladly used it, ‘Finally, there is no screaming.’
Suddenly a powerful wind gashed over her, her dress and hair waving behind her. She smiled and lifted up a vial containing a golden glowing semi-liquid material.
‘I wonder how you will work now that the master is even stronger now?’ luckily, there was no longer a need for the messy way of digging through the thick layer of flesh and scales. Instead, they started to dig it from her master’s jawbone, which was much more accessible.
‘Who would believe me back home if I told them I was in the dragon’s mouth and survived.’
She walked straight towards the unmoving man, her two eyes glowing.
“I am ready, your Majesty! We can start immediately, as I already did all of the preparations by turning him into a dragonkin.”
“Proceed.”
Alesia gripped a shiny black dagger covered in runes from her waist and lowered it towards the man’s leg.
With one swift motion of her wrist, the dagger cut through the skin and flesh and made a deep hole in the bone.
Blood immediately leaked out, staining the black blade.
She stuck her small hand into the wound and removed the spongy innards of the open bone with her fingers. Then she raised her hand out of the wound. It was fully covered in red blood.
She frowned and wiped her hand into a piece of cloth. Finally, she grabbed the bottle containing golden semi-liquid bone marrow and poured it into the open bone.
She held her breath, feeling the two golden eyes on her back as she hoped everything would go well.
Her two eyes watched the cut leg in silence as she waited, slowly counting seconds in her mind.
The golden marrow bubbled and glowed inside the bone, but there were no other changes.
‘At least there is no explosion. That is good for now.’
The silence kept going for longer and longer as she waited. The only sound was the quiet breathing of the bleeding man and the flapping of the wings above her head.
She nervously squirmed, realising that it took longer than with goblins.
Suddenly an aura of fiery energy erupted from the man as his body spasmed and flames enveloped him whole.
Alesia quickly retreated backwards, watching it with wide eyes. The man’s body was burning away, his old skin and flesh turning ash.
The flames were becoming more intense, with the stone altar under him melting into a puddle of magma.
‘Was it a fail?’
As she already started to fear that it failed, the burning white skeleton started to bend, its bones changing and prolonging.
The skeleton kept growing and growing until it reached more than two meters in length.
The skull disintegrated into dust only for a new horned dragon-looking one to replace it.
More and more bones kept sprouting out, forming a massive wing-like structure and tail on the back.
The whole skeleton was brightly glowing in a golden light as it was turning denser and more powerful.
“It works, master!” Alesia beamed as she curiously watched the process, her heart pounding.
Soon red mush burst out of the skeleton, flowing and mixing with the flames. It moved along the skeleton, turning into muscles, tendons and organs.
The flames turned so bright that Alesia couldn’t even see what was going on through the blinding light.
“Haha, the first draconic knight was born!” the loud laughter erupted in the sky, shaking with the whole citadel.
Soon the flames subsided, revealing a large bipedal dragon-shaped being. Its body looked like a small bipedal dragon with massive horns, a long black tail ending in a sharp red crystal spike and a pair of massive black wings with fiery veins.
Its head was crowned with two red crystal horns on the sides of its head and one on its snout.
The scales were perfectly black and even shinier than these of high kobolds, with a slight red lustre.
The magma flowed between the scales, and lightning crackled along the spike on the tail, horns and long claws on its hands.𝗈𝗏𝗅xt.𝗇t
Armour-like plates of metallic-looking black material covered a significant portion of its body, with the rest covered in shiny black scales.
The flames burst again, even brighter than before, enveloping the monster with the sound of cracking bones. The black monster was shrinking and turning back into a muscular horned human.
“Huh? Did it fail?” Alesia looked at the unconscious man with a confused expression on her face.
‘Huh, I thought that he had already transformed. Why did it revert back?’
“No, my minion, it didn’t fail. Instead, it is a phenomenal success. You can call it transformation power. The power to draconify at will.”