"S-so, so you're—"
As much as Konrad decided not to think about anything but the fight ahead, he couldn't help it.
"Yes," the dragon said, reading the rest from his mind before he could even find his voice. "And now I suspect it wasn't the Green Mage who made me forget my original name, either."
Which was Lilith, as he had also found out mere minutes ago.
Not only was his first wife a greater demon, but she started life as a dragoness.
And now he charged into battle on her back—one he was sure he'd lose.
Or rather, on his lover's back in her past form. Which was uh—a bit distracting.
"Keep your head in the game, bossman," Maple warned as she climbed over the clouds.
Yeah, he still called her Maple in his thoughts. What a complete and utter mess.
And she was right, too.
Facing Maou Midori like this would've guaranteed his loss, even more so than seeing the duel in a vision. Because thinking back now, there was a future that looked like this very situation.
One of the instant losses he had, and he flew towards it regardless.
Why didn't he turn back when he knew? It was weird how the future worked.
"Head. In. The. Game," the dragon snapped, turning into a steep dive. How the hell were they already over the Halaima Pass?! Flying sure was fast, and he was nowhere near ready yet.
The riders of the king's guard looked like ants from this high above.
And when the wyverns attacked them, they were the size of flies. Wait, hold on a second—
"What are you doing?!" Konrad demanded, grabbing on for dear life as they picked up speed.
This dragoness had no saddle, and he had no experience riding her, either, except in bed.
Which was a very different situation, and the way he understood that was also her future self.
Nope, no, not another distracting thought.
He went through the whole rollercoaster before Maple even had a chance to respond.
"They are too close to the Green Mage's envoys, got to slow them down a bit," she explained.
Thank the spirits, she ignored all that he had thought before, though he was sure she still read his mind. She always did when Konrad let her, and he was in no shape to block her out now.
It was already difficult enough to focus on the present.
"Why aren't you attacking the nomads instead?" He asked, leaning even closer to her neck to avoid the wind. They must have been going near the speed of sound at this point.
His fingers froze solid, and it was hard to breathe.
Yet he could still smell a familiar scent he had never associated with the dragoness before.
Yes, it was definitely Lily's sweet cinnamon scent.
"I don't know," Maple said with a shrug—or rather, flapping her wings. "The king was kinda mean to you after putting in all the effort to save his shitty country. He had it coming."
While he had always found the dragon chaotic, this response could've been his first wife's, too.
Way too many similarities. How the hell did he miss this until they spelled it out for him?!
"You'll fall off if you think too hard, bossman," came another warning.
And at this point, the only sharp difference he found was how the two versions called him.
Lily was much cuter. That silly cattish talk, the pet names she had used—
"Ugh, I'm serious, stop it," Maple protested, not that he asked her to read his mind. "You'll have to wait a few thousand years until I'd pick up that cringe meowing and call you names."
Konrad was in the mood to argue, but the yells from the ground finally reached him.
The wyverns crashed into the royal guard without bleeding out their momentum. If he wasn't sure about it until now, this made it obvious how pissed the dragon was at them.
Thus, he decided not to test her patience.
"Smart," she noted, her head swiveling around. "And looks like we're on our own now, too."
"What do you mean?" Konrad asked, trying to figure out where she was even looking.
The camp they had come from was a tiny dot at the edge of the horizon, but it was obvious.
"This might be the knights' lucky day," the dragon sighed. And before he could ask, the wyverns disengaged to rush back towards the camp in a straight line. "They'll protect my body."
When his mind wasn't in the gutter, he put the puzzle pieces together fast.
He still remembered all the times when Lily passed out. No warnings, the mighty little ginger ragdolled right in front of him, and Welf didn't even bat an eye.
And she'd later claim to have visited higher planes. It no longer sounded like chunibyo bullshit.
After the chaos they had caused, the dragon's worry was fair.
"Try not to kill anyone," Konrad pleaded. "Even if we were to win here somehow—"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be gentle," Maple promised, her draconic mouth curling into a strange grin. It was not a smile he'd trust. "Glad you're thinking about the important stuff at last."
True. His brain shifted gears, and now he was making plans to win again.
As if that was possible. The royal guard stopped, having suffered no losses, but boxing their king in a tight formation. He spotted the approaching envoys, too, finally getting close.
"And he's not here," the dragoness groaned. "But you'd better hold on because we're going in."
He didn't have the time to ask who she meant. It wasn't hard to guess anyway.
They finally breached the sound barrier, whipping across his entire body hard. Had he not erected a defensive barrier around himself, his eardrums would've exploded.
Good thing his head was—as Maple had put it—finally back in the game.
It didn't stop him from complaining, though.
"Consider keeping me alive until at least the fight begins," Konrad shouted. The ground raced towards them at a neck-breaking speed, then the dragon's wings spread wide, and—
How the hell did they not snap off?
They stopped dead in the air, his insides continuing down for another split second.
He thought flying was fun, but this had to be the most painful and terrifying experience he had.
'Sorry,' Maple purred into his mind, then landed as light as a feather. Her thoughts didn't sound sorry at all. If anything, she was enjoying the torture. 'Shook you up a bit?'
Did he piss her off, too, somehow?
'Please never do this again,' Konrad thought, and he was serious. Serious and shaken to the core.
He was half-dismounting, half-falling off her back, legs shaking. And when he looked up, he stood right in front of the nomadic envoys as the king closed in from his other side.
Maple arrived so fast that neither side had time to stop—until now.
"Konrad von Halstadt?!" the king exclaimed, his horse recoiling.
"The infidel king betrayed us," the envoys shouted, too. They immediately turned their mounts around, but couldn't have gotten far. Maple was still a dragoness after all.
She didn't hesitate to breathe fire, and Konrad almost fell as the flames engulfed them.
But somehow—
They never actually reached them.
He wasn't the only one creating magic barriers after all. Nor the one figuring out portals.