A/N: I blame the SF boys for this profanity. It's all their fault, they've poisoned Connor. Not me. Honest.
"I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning."
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
Christine knew him for what he was the moment she laid eyes upon him.
"Y'know, I really don't like being chased out of my own eyrie," the dragon sighed, standing in front of her desk with arms folded across his chest. The human guise he wore was of the most unremarkable sort, but it made no difference. He had appeared seemingly from thin air once she was alone in her office, waiting for Captain Becker to report back to her, and for the first time in her life, Christine Johnson didn't know what to do next. She couldn't fight him, she couldn't flee.
Wilder burst in, drawn by the fearful call of his High Priestess, only to have the dragon turn on him. "Oi, didn't your mummy ever tell you to knock first?" he said irritably, flicking his fingers; the door of the office slammed shut. Wilder started to approach but halted when Christine made a 'stand down' gesture with one hand.
She glanced towards the windows of the office. Her suspicions were confirmed; the soldiers walking past noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The dragon had masked his presence. Only she and Wilder could see him, at least for now.
"Okay, where was I? Oh, right." He turned to face Christine fully. "Repent, motherfucker. The end is near. For you, anyways."
"Beg pardon?" she asked tightly, digging her nails into the edge of the desk.
"You've gotten a bit too big for your knickers, there, Ms. Johnson. Not a good idea. Really. It's not. So here's how it's going to be. You are going to leave. You'll call off whatever coup you're trying to pull, and you're going to slink back to whatever street corner you left in the first place. The ARC and everyone in it? Off limits. Period. And if I find out that you've so much as been talking shit about them, I'm gonna put my foot so far up your tight arse that your mouth won't have any room left for sucking dick." He cast a glance back at Wilder, who was still rubbing his hand furtively. "Except for maybe his. He doesn't need much room."
Wilder's face turned an impressive shade of plum, and his eyes burned animal amber. Hands flexing in claws, he took a step forward.
The dragon rumbled a low growl that was more felt than heard, and she watched as a long, scaled tail curled back and forth behind him, a set of great dark wings unfurling until they seemed to fill the room, though his glamour changed nowhere else. The control he had over illusion magic was unbelievable. "You want to cut your teeth on me, cublet?" he warned.
The captain was almost frothing at the mouth, but he backed down.
Christine fought to regain some ground. "The treaty has held for―"
"We can go right fucking now," the dragon cut her off sharply. He leant forward, hands splayed on the desktop. His fingers were long and tapered, like the hands of an artist or a jeweler, so it was not so noticeable that his nails were dense and narrowed to points at their tips, narrowly missing being claws. "You got any friends? Call 'em up. Let's go." He snatched a mobile from the pocket of his waistcoat and held it out to her, flipping it open with a flick of the wrist.
Christine dug her nails in the arms of James' chair. No, her chair, it was her chair now, damn it.
"Thought so." The dragon closed the mobile, setting it on the desktop between them. "I hope we understand each other, Chris. I really do. If not...well, I could probably make some kind of morbid joke or a thinly-veiled threat that's really just overkill, but the punchline is that you die. Slowly. And painfully. Preferably burning and screaming. And until I'm watching your arse walking out that door, I'm going to be on you like the motherfucking KGB, so don't even think of trying to pull a fast one on me. I'm faster." He straightened up and smoothed out his waistcoat imperiously. "Be seeing you, Chris," he said. "You too, Captain Tic-Tac."
And he was gone. Dragons could split the earth like no other, the sneaky fuckers. She exhaled heavily, slumping back in her chair.
"Are we going to leave?" Wilder asked after a lengthy pause, as if waiting for the dragon to reappear.
Christine opened her mouth.
"If you know what's good for you, you will," said the dragon's voice from behind her, making her jump halfway to her feet. He leant forward over her shoulder and snatched up the mobile that he'd tossed on her desk earlier. "Almost forgot." His breath was warm and smelt of woodsmoke against her cheek. Just like that, he was gone again.
She remained rigid in her chair, wondering whether or not he was waiting to reappear and startle her again. When he didn't, she looked back at Wilder. "Have you ever heard of anybody fucking with a dragon and walking away intact?" she asked.
He audibly ground his teeth together. "No," he gritted out.
"Neither have I."
She exhaled heavily, realising with slow horror that all the hard work she had put into this was for nothing; everything she'd tried to do was coming down around her ears. To face a dragon alone was folly, especially one that was so utterly and obviously mad. In this situation, even Wilder was less than useless. It would take an entire coven of witches to even think of pestering a dragon. She was powerful...but nowhere near that powerful. The treaty had held for millennia and would likely hold for millennia more, but the lines became a touch blurred every century or so, in some country or another, a small tremble that soon stabilized. Despite the quaint metaphor, being in the middle of a 'tremble' could very easily be fatal.
Dragons were fire made flesh. Their wrath was a terrible, burning thing, and their retributions could move the earth itself. Most could go their entire lifetime without ever seeing a dragon in the flesh and be grateful for it.
Christine had seen the dragon. She did not want to wake it.