Wow! I forgot how heady it is when you start a new story and people like it! :D Your reviews were amazing! Thanks everybody so much for not just your encouragement but your excitement to see what happens! Yay!
So here's chapter two, and can I just say how much I love Lily? Because I do. Just so much. ;3
Hoarded
-Two-
Dragon's Keeping
Red eyes burned into her.
Levy couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Her quill was still gripped in her hand, but without a plan it was useless. She was useless.
Like a princess in a tower.
The stray thought snapped Levy out of her paralysis and she pulled in a deep breath just as the bear spoke. "Now Gajeel, think before-"
"Thief..."
The word rolled out of his wide, fang-filled mouth on a wave of heat that could have melted glaciers. The smell was oppressive, stealing Levy's breath again, but it wasn't the fetid stench of decaying meat she'd always imagined. Instead it was molten copper and steel, of hot iron and liquid metal trapped in a too small space.
It so distracted her that it took Levy too long to comprehend what the dragon had called her. "Wait, I'm not-"
Sound jumbled in her throat as the dragon slammed first one foot, then the other, on the free space between columns. He could have skewered her with the bare tip of a single claw.
Levy scrambled behind the pillar, heart starting to pound as she heaved in oxygen with a vengeance. What- what do I do? There's a dragon! St-staring at me. I was just looking for books!
Then it struck her.
She'd been looking books.
Books that the dragon thought she'd come to take.
Stealing...from a dragon...is a very...bad idea...
All the stories agreed on that too.
"Why are you hiding, thief?" That voice rolled through the stone around her, snagging on the creature's teeth as it went. "Didn't expect I'd be home?" The curl of sarcasm made Levy frown.
"Didn't expect you were still alive," she called out before she could thick better of it.
A sound like rocks starting to fall down the mountain made Levy shudder before she realized it had just snorted at her. "Because grave robbing is so much better."
She scowled at the pillar, too afraid to stare at him directly. "Well I didn't think you'd be buried here."
A head the size of the palace stable leaned around and pinned her in the spotlight of one, great eye. "And what did you expect, short stuff?" he growled at her, upper lip curling over his teeth.
Levy nearly swallowed her own tongue. She sat there, shivering on the floor, so dumbstruck she couldn't even comprehend his question.
"You idiot!"
Levy jumped, leaving the floor entirely only to meet it again hard, scraping both her hands and sending an ache up her backside to her spine. She looked around, finding the bear, but he wasn't talking to her.
"She wouldn't have seen you if you'd stayed down there." He narrowed his orange-hued eyes and crossed his short arms over his chest. "The one day you don't waste all your time sleeping..." he grumbled.
The dragon narrowed his eyes at the bear and Levy held her breath for the poor creature, who looked so at ease she started to wonder at his intelligence.
"Shaddup Lily." Levy blinked at the archaic word, a perfect match to the out-of-place spell on the door. "And what're you defending a thief for anyway? I don't like humans touching my stuff." His head swung to Levy again, black smoke wafting out between his teeth. "Don't touch my stuff!"
Levy rocked back an inch, gasping through her nose. She would have curled into a ball and never moved again if his sheer childishness hadn't made her pause. "I- I didn't-" She felt the words leave her throat, but the roar of her pulse in her ears made them sound like a mumble.
The dragon huffed, enveloping her head in black smoke. Levy coughed, swinging one noodle arm to try and clear the air. When that didn't work, she rolled to her feet and stood up, keeping the column between her and the metal-plated dragon. Her head barely cleared the haze, and she blinked back tears as the acrid cloud stung her eyes and throat. She didn't pay as much attention as she should have to their argument as she waved away the cloud, dispelling it with a small breeze.
The bear was talking when she started listening again. "-overreacting Gajeel. Have you even thought this a quarter of the way through? It won't end well."
"Well it won't end any better if we don't do anything either, will it? Something's got to be done about this." The dragon narrowed his eyes and Levy felt every inch of her skin prickle. "I won't stand for this sort of thing."
The bear rolled his eyes. "And when you forget to feed her? Or lose her between your scrap heaps? It will be ten times worse."
The dragon forgot Levy again and snorted at the bear, more smoke rolling out to swallow his small body. The bear just unfurled his winds and flew above the suffocating cloud, getting an annoyed rumble from the beast.
"Well do you got any bright ideas? Knowing what'll happen if those dent-heads in Oak Town find out we're still up here? You want to deal with that outcome, huh?"
The bear kept his mouth shut.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." He lifted one of his clawed forearms from the side of the central shaft to leave, bits of stone falling free to tumble down to the bottom. The dragon swung his far wing out, testing the distance, but the gust it created was still enough to push Levy back a step.
The bear flew over the edge, straight up to the dragon's eyes, forcing him to look at him slightly cross-eyed. "Fine!" he shouted, pointing a stern paw at him. "But don't expected me to feed her when you forget she's still here!"
Levy inched forward around the pillar to hear better and saw the dragon roll his eyes. "Let her feed herself then cuz I'm not gonna do it. Just keep her out of my way."
A very bad feeling pinched at Levy's stomach. They were talking about her. About feeding and walking and keeping her like she was- was some sort of pet!
He's not going to let me leave...
Her feet were moving before the thought had fully settled. She tripped over her still dripping boots, stubbed her toe against a divot in the stone and went crashing to the ground, catching her weight on her already bleeding palms. She didn't feel the pain as she pushed herself up again, scrambling for the exit. All she felt was the cold seeping across her chest and that fist around her heart squeezing as she ran as fast as she could for the still-open door.
...
Panther Lily watched the woman catch herself before running past the line of support columns on nimble legs, her bright blue hair easy to follow in the dark of the unused passage. Her sudden desperation was a palpable weight in the air, but he didn't try to stop her. She would need to see the truth for herself.
He sighed, already knowing the door was closed and sealed by a magic he couldn't touch even if he was so inclined, and then scowled up at Gajeel. They'd been friends a long time, longer than most human lifetimes, but his patience with the iron dragon was wearing dangerously thin.
"There," he snapped at him. "Now see what you've done? Has all your sulking killed off whatever brain cells you once had?"
Gajeel fixed his red eyes on him, a growl vibrating in his chest, but Lily's fur didn't even twitch. "Say that to my face, cat."
"I just did. Or are you deaf as well as dumb?" Lily told him, then threw out a small arm as his frustration demanded some kind of outlet. "Did you forget this is what you keep me around for? To handle nosy treasure hunters and thrill seekers? Just because we've gone undisturbed the last few decades doesn't mean I've lost all of my professional capability. I had the situation handled!"
He showed the tips of his own white teeth in indignation before he could stop himself. Embarrassed by the unexpected slip, Panther Lily drew himself up to his full two foot, three inch height, and crossed his arms over his chest again. He would be calm, collected. Because every celestial spirit in the sky knew that Gajeel was incapable of it.
The heat rose in the enclosed shaft, finding little outlet through the pillars to the spiral walkway. Gajeel hadn't been this active in a long while and the heat was pouring out between his scales like he'd swallowed an active furnace, and with the outside air turning more and more frigid, Lily had closed the ventilation shafts to try and keep comfortably warm as the cold summer air turned winter-frigid. With sweat starting to make his fur gather and stick under his coat collar, he wished he'd waited a few more days.
"Did you even think that she might not be alone?" he pressed when Gajeel didn't do anything but fume, smoke drifting up from his nostrils behind Lily like the precursor to a volcano boiling over. "That someone outside will miss her and come looking for her? If you'd waited five more minutes I could have gotten her out and she wouldn't have been any wiser to your existence."
Gajeel eyed him, suspiciously quiet. Lily could count from memory how many times he'd heard the dragon admit he was wrong, but mostly he just sat there quietly until he could think of a way to change the subject.
Lily wasn't about to give him one, not if they had to literally live with the consequence this time. "And what about when she tries to escape? She will try it, any sensible person would. How far will you go to keep her here, huh?"
Gajeel didn't speak. He would have looked away if Lily hadn't all but invaded his line of sight.
"You don't run away," he finally mumbled.
"I chose to be here, you idiot. That's a big difference."
"Yeah, well," the dragon drawled, wings rippling in a draconian shrug. "She'll just have to learn to live with it then, won't she?"
The fur between Lily's shoulders rose as his frustration grew. "Don't pretend to be callous."
"I'm not pretending." He let go of the wall and dropped, wings arched out from his back. He fell in a spiral, gliding back down to his nest at the very bottom with more grace then all his armor would imply.
Lily followed him, flapping hard to catch up with the iron dragon. "It will only get worse the longer you keep her. Perhaps it would be best if you tried to explain-"
Gajeel snorted, a dry and sarcastic sound. "Explain what? That she can't tell anyone there's one dragon left in the world because every wannabe dragon slayer will turn out to try and run me through? And then all those parrot-voiced minstrels will start screeching about it, but hey, that'll be your problem since I'll be a head on a castle wall. Tch. Pathetic."
Lily wasn't sure if he meant the knights or himself, but decided it wasn't important at the moment. "You can't just keep her here. She won't stay," he tried again.
The metal ridges above Gajeel's red eyes twitched together. "She can't leave." He craned his neck around to snap at him. "What d'ya think will happen when itsy bitsy up there runs back screaming she was almost kidnapped by a real live dragon, besides the knights and the two-bit ballads? There's always someone that believes the crackpots, Lil. Word'll get around."
Lily closed his eyes, worry etched deep between his eyes. "I know," he muttered.
"Once it does it'll be a matter of time before the old man hears."
"I know," he repeated.
"Moving's not an option anymore either-"
"I know," Lily stressed. He slit one eye and peered at the dragon as they entered the shadowed depths of the nest. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."
Gajeel snorted. "Then don't, but quit yer whinin'."
He landed with an armor-plated crunch on the built-up section of the floor where he usually slept, adjusting his wings before folding them against his sides. Much to Lily's surprise, he didn't turn around and go back to sleep, but stretched his forelegs out, twisting so that his spine stretched and popped.
"Look, do whatever ya want, Lil," he said as he straightened himself out and looked around at the lower most level where he lived. "You know what's at stake. Feed her, walk her, braid daisies in each other's hair, I don't care. Just don't let her go runnin' her mouth."
He stepped off the dais, his metal scales sliding against each other in a rhythmic scrape-and-slide as he made his way deeper underground. Lily stayed where he was, hovering above the built-up mound. He was as curious as any cat, and Gajeel liked to think he ran this roost, but they kept out of each other's way more often than not. Gajeel stayed out of Lily's space, and the Exceed had always repaid the favor, so Lily didn't try to follow him now.
He hadn't moved though when Gajeel turned back and called over his shoulder, "And keep her out of my way!"
...
He found the woman not long after, curled against the base of the main entrance, the one that had been sealed tight since before Lily had come to live under the mountain. Her small light had gone out, and even Lily's feline vision couldn't make her out in the complete blackness, but he could hear her. Her cries were uneven and muffled, her face covered by her arms or her hands, something to hide her from the eyes and the smoke and the teeth.
Lily paused. The teeth did take time to get used to.
He reached out and found her in the dark, touching a paw to her arm, startling her. She shrunk in on herself, arms rising up, and a pinprick of yellow light flared to life at the end of her hand. Lily caught a brief glimpse of her face, wet and red, and some kind of blue feather clutched tight in her hand, before his eyes closed against the bright light. It wasn't so glaring when he opened them again two seconds later.
Fear did not adequately describe what he saw in her eyes. Or maybe it was just too many fears to easily name. Fear of the dark, if the way she clutched at her glowing feather was anything to judge by, fear she would never climb out of it, that she would never see the sky or the sun or know anything but the inside of this dark and depressing mountain. That she would never see her loved ones again. That she would be trapped down here, alone, forever.
With Gajeel.
All her fears were rising up at once, drowning out her sense and turning her into this red-eyed, weeping prisoner trying to make herself as small as possible in the dark.
She knows too much, Lily thought. And she's smart enough that it terrifies her.
She tried to breathe through her nose with no success and wiped at the wetness streaming from it and her eyes. "I-i-it's ya-you." He could barely understand her. "Y-you live w-wi-with-" Her eyes were drawn to the end of the main pathway, where they could just see the glow of the torches Lily hadn't finished lighting. Faint scuffles could be heard even way up here as Gajeel occupied himself down at the bottom.
Lily opened his mouth to tell her that he wasn't so bad once you got to know him, and then closed it quickly. That was a stupid thing to say to someone your partner had just decided to hold captive for the rest of her life.
The little woman didn't see him hesitate in the dim glow of her blue feathered quill. Her eyes overflowed and she quickly wiped them, for all the good it did. "I- I just wanted to read the ba-books," she said through her sobs.
Yes, she'd said something about books before. "I know," Lily told her. He wondered how many more repetitions he had left in him.
"I did-didn't even w-want to take them with me! They'd crumble!" Her eyes were wide and earnest.
Well, he hadn't known that. Lily patted her hand. "How...unselfish of you. For a thief."
A wet, mucus-riddled laugh choked out of her. It slowed her sobbing, and for a long time she sat there, huddled against the wall, sniffing every once in a while. She couldn't stop shaking though. He could feel it in her fingers where she gripped his paw.
"He's a dragon," he eventually heard her mutter thickly.
Lily nodded in the dark. "Yep."
"But- but all the dragons are dead. Everybody knows they're all dead!" From the sound of her voice, she still half believed it herself.
Lily closed his eyes, the darkness of his eyelids not much different than that of the mountain, and sighed deeply through his nose. Possible scenarios of the near future ran through his head – legions of knights, out to defend people from the dragon, families of runaways crying the dragon must have stolen their children away, thieves and rogues – real ones, not pocket-sized, book-loving, possible-librarians that thought to match their magic quills to the color of their hair – slipping past the cracks and selling the secret ways in and out of the nest to those with the deepest pockets.
And it always ended with black wings coming to overshadow them all...
Lily squeezed her fingers, a shiver of his own running down his spine and fluffing out his tail. At least the dark hid that as well.
"I know that too."
