Lucky Prodigy

15: Homeward Bound

^^ Jerrod's Human Form ^^

— Jerrod —

The streets of the Human Capital on the North Continent were as always jam-packed with people running back and forth, always in a hurry.

I liked walking these streets, I was familiar with them. I had journeyed here with a caravan when I'd turned eleven, and my father had declared me fit to leave the Clan, because I was better than him at magic, by then. I'd even taught my younger friend, young Zoken, who was only three when we began, how to use basic magic, and in just two short years, he gained and subsequently Maxed the class Magician, all the day he turned Five.

His father had been overjoyed, that he evolved the day he turned into an adolescent, but he became a Weak Oni, instead of a Kijin Pureblood. A powerful Evolution Path, but his body wasn't able to handle the type of war that his father deemed appropriate. He couldn't move quickly, or for very long, or his lungs would give out. I took him to the Holy City, with my Father and his, and then split ways once we were sure he wasn't dying. It was a long caravan trek, almost nine months, but I arrived, and maintained my human form the entire time.

I looked like a human from the Eastern Continent, the Monster Lands, with honey-like golden-brown skin and hazy, gorgeous steel-blue eyes, just below my luxurious chocolate-brown hair. My skin was flawless, unmarked, and my clothes were always extravagant and colorful, like a wizard's should be, after all. My face was beautiful, and very feminine, by human standards; I had full lips, long lashes, and fastidiously plucked and shaped eyebrows, -amongst other things,- and long golden earrings dangling from my earlobes, with another golden ornament holding my thoughtfully braided beard in place.

I had always been, like all dragons, extremely vain.

But I took this form every time I was in the city, and I was even well-known for my many tricks I played for the children, such as making the neighborhood bullies' trousers two-sizes smaller, making their shoes come untied, dropping crickets and frogs down their shirts, and other little mischievous tricks. I loved the children of the city, though I knew they would fear me, and revile me, if they knew I was a Dark Dragon, a Dangerous and Demonized dragon in their church's tales of evil monsters and pagans.

This time, however, I had to carry three grown men, and make it look like I was struggling to do so; very few men could carry three others over one shoulder without so much as a puff or two of effort, after all. Luck be kind, I found an abandoned cart in an alley, with a broken wheel and axle, and threw them in the back, fixing it with a snap of a finger, stealthily. Magic that wasn't done by Priest's was very illegal here, after all, and though I had a license, I didn't have it with me today. Best to just not deal with that today.

I pulled the cart along, waving to a few people who recognized me, and winking at a few children who giggled at me, flipping a few some copper pieces I always carried with me for that purpose. I stopped in front of the main gates to get into the Vatican, and smiled at one of the guards flirtatiously. "Well hel-lo handsome! I've got a delivery for the Cardinal? Do you mind letting me in?" I recognized him, as we frequented the same male brothels often enough to have a knowledge of each other, though such information was never spoken of, least of all in this city.

He cleared his throat, rubbing his face to hide his blush. "Ah, well... we don't usually let people inside... and especially not with carts full of clearly drunken men... but that man- OI, that's the Hero!!! Is he ill?!?" He abandoned my flirtations like a dropped hat, which made my eye reflexively twitch in annoyance, rushing to the cart and shaking the man.

"What? Yip... Uhm a he-ro, yip!" The idiot hero tried to stand up, hiccuping comically, and then fell out of the cart, directly onto his face.

I sighed. "Well, I brought them to you intact, so please let the record show, he did not already have a broken nose when I arrived?" I announced to the other guard.