Chapter 31 #3
“And then, as always happens, they came. Adventurers. Treasure seekers. Everyone willing to throw their lives away for the wealth I had both earned and stolen. Facing them gave me purpose—it gives all dragons purpose—but I still was half mad with grief and anger. Such was my wrath that I must have spoken to some of those challengers. Dragons are not usually so talkative, but I do not think I could stop myself, and soon the mountain came to be known as Mount Vengeance, for the revenge I sought on the world for taking the one I loved most from me.”
She gently closed the journal, then held it close to her chest. Ainsworth contemplated the dragon in front of him.
Recalled her warm smile, the soft touch of her hands, the skill with which she played the harp as she sang.
This was a dragon whose rage had once shaken this corner of the kingdom.
And yet, this was a dragon who baked her staff special cakes, who foraged for mushrooms, who took pleasure in seeing her ivy plants grow.
A dragon who had created a home, a haven, here at the inn for anyone who might stumble across it.
His silence must have irked her. “You need not look at me like that. I am ashamed enough of my conduct without your judgment,” she snapped.
Ainsworth shook his head. He thought of how Honey had changed.
How he had changed. How even when the world made the worst of someone, there was still the chance to step forward, to do better.
“I do not judge you, Honey. I was just thinking what a time you have been through, and what a transformation you have made to be the person sitting in front of me tonight.”
She did not acknowledge his remarks, looking away as though rejecting the sentiment entirely.
“After about half a century or so of behaving like the monsters dragons are known to be—ravaging all those who came against me seeking wealth or glory—my rage finally burned out. And I realized that I was perpetrating a vicious cycle, gifting the friends and loved ones of the people I slaughtered the same grief that had driven me mad. I transformed into my humanoid form, as I had not done for the longest time, and ran from my hoard, hurtling down the mountain. I was horrified at what I’d done and who I’d become.
Dragons shed their skin, did you know that?
I don’t know if any have ever done it in humanoid form before.
I didn’t even know it was possible. Yet something in my magic seized me as I fled, longing to cast off every part of me that I had grown to loathe.
And…so I did. It felt like a purging of my old self, as though I was physically leaving the old me behind.
” She smiled. “I believe you have several sketches of that.”
It took him a second to register what she meant. “The…standing stones and the statue? That was your skin?”
She smiled. “It was you who assumed it was a sculpture of my ‘grandmother.’ I simply…did not correct you. I admit I lied a little bit, though.”
“You spun some tale about—about the dragon making a bet with her?”
“Oh, I did, didn’t I?” she said, biting her lip. “Okay, perhaps I lied more than I thought.”
Wait. If that was Honey, truly Honey, then—
“Matron, Honey! How old are you?”
“It’s rude to ask a long-lived her age!” She swiped her tail at him and he leapt back, laughing. “I believe I am quite ancient—three-hundred-odd years?”
He did not know how long dragons usually lived, and did not want to ask.
It had all seemed fine when he thought her a tyflan, with a life span similar to his own, but he supposed it was no different from the boat he had once found himself in with Enach.
Ainsworth’s beginning and end would fit into just a part of her life, while her existence would continue long after.
That is, if she even wanted him to share her life that way…
“I was only twentyish, I think, when I met Driana. Then I lost her, then…Ach, you’re the scholar, Ainsworth! Maybe you can figure it out for me. Although I suppose you didn’t figure out that it was my history you sorted out up here, my life you neatly stacked together.”
“Ah,” he said, clearing his throat, grateful for the slight change of topic. “The diaries. All yours, I presume? You are Beatrice, the inn’s founder, then?”
“That was the first name I chose for myself as an adventurer,” she said, softly.
“I wished to return to that person, so I took the name back when I decided to leave my hoard. But…It had become difficult, physically, for me to leave the proximity of the mountain. Logically I cared little for my territory. But instinctually I was constantly anxious, restless at the thought of it being unguarded.”
Something that had been irking him for a while finally clicked into place. “Ah, your hoard…that’s why the finances didn’t add up. You don’t need money to run this place. You have it already. You’re…redistributing your wealth?”
She sighed. “Attempting to, I suppose. I feel awful about how I accumulated most of it. At the inn, I…use it to support the people who need a new life. A life that lets them simply slow down and not destroy themselves.”
“And that’s why you set up the inn in the first place? To offer…employment?” Ainsworth asked, somewhat baffled. There were other ways Honey could have utilized her wealth to make things easier for people, surely?
She looked downward at her clasped hands.
“Well, that’s part of it. I actually wanted a chance to stop people from taking on the mountain, and to talk with people who were consumed by ambition.
Why else would they come here? Even though I had left, people still sought the mountain, my treasure, the glory of slaughtering me.
Most would be killed or harmed in the attempt to do so.
It mattered little that I was not there; the beasts of the mountain had thrived under my reign, and the mountain itself is a dangerous, unpredictable territory.
So I decided to establish an inn at the foot of the mountain and try to deter guests from seeing the task through—to help them realize their self-worth, the value of their life.
That they did not need grand adventures and accomplishments to find fulfillment.
“I didn’t want people to know how old I was, due to the Dragon Pèidse rumors potentially coming back to bite me.
I’ve taken a fair few names, and I adopted the name Honey just before Ashe and Ruraidh arrived.
Within the last few decades especially, there was a period of fairly quick staff turnover and so few guests that it was relatively easy to do.
I had spent almost a century trying to convince people to leave the mountain and abandon their quest, and over time I suppose my endeavors worked too well.
The mountain’s reputation and people’s knowledge of the inn faded into memory as fewer and fewer adventurers sought the challenge.
When guests arrived each night intent on conquering the mountain, I would simply use my magic.
I spoke to them in their dreams, let them know they were worthy of contentment, of happiness, just as they were.
That they had nothing to prove. And for a while, that was enough.
But then people would come whose ambition outweighed my reassurance—their insecurities too strong, their ambition too fierce—and they would head to the mountain anyway.