Dragon(s)layer
16
"There isn't anything wrong with admitting that you want to stay."
There were two of him again. It had only been a matter of time. His Conscience had probably been chomping at the bit to get ahold of him the first second he could since that little fling with Spyra.
"Isn't there really? I have other responsibilities to other people." The Fallen shook his head, dumping the bucket over himself with an echoing splash. After puffing drops from his lips, he continued. "This was done on purpose. While I highly doubt Malefora and her Dark Army were part of our enemies' plans, attempting to stick us in our own personal nirvana was certainly the intent."
"Oh I know, but, if you decided at any one moment to walk away from your old life and start anew here, what would really be so horrible about that?" Conscience was relentless as he sat on one of the shore rocks, grinning mockingly at his host over the amber water. "The only reason you promised anyone in the past anything was because you were forced to in the moment! It's all been circumstance and desperation. Even these pacts you've bound yourself to over Nasu and Leha. The rest of their people hate you."
The Fallen paused as he lifted the sponge to his arm. The river babbled in a whisper around him as he thought over what his own mind was telling him.
Had it really reached that point? That he was starving himself of purpose for other beings that weren't even in the same fold of reality?
He was a portaljumper. That was supposed to be part of the risk that came with the occupation. His job wasn't to be a transdimensional immigrant, but a traveler. The sights weren't supposed to stop, and what with the battle developing with his enemies outside of Spyra's World, could he really live with himself abandoning all of that and just staying here?
And most of all, why was his Conscience trying to convince him to do exactly that?
"By the way! You never told me how it was." Conscience kicked his legs playfully. "How tight was the magnificent durg-puss?"
"…Are you serious? You're… you're me." The Fallen paused.
"I still want details."
"Actually… I think I need someone of flesh and blood to talk to now." The Fallen said, etching away the dried blood and dirt as reams of soap fell down and into the water. Conscience was frozen for a second, like someone had conjured a remote from their ass and slapped the pause button.
As spontaneously as ever, the duplicate leaped into motion with a clap of his hands.
"Alright there, crusader, I won't keep you." Conscience slipped off the rock and landed in the water himself, submerging up to the knees with a childish snicker. "I'm just trying to remind you that it's all about choice! Everything's under your control. Think about it."
"Brain telling you to think? That's… a paradox, I'm pretty sure…" He uttered, his head suddenly hurting.
"You mumble to yourself a lot." –Said a third voice.
The Fallen glanced over at Spyra, seeing the purple dragon smile at him. He laughed at her in turn, taking glee in seeing that hot blush make itself known on her snout.
"What's so funny?" She shuffled closer and hip-bumped him.
"You look like the abominable snow dragon."
Spyra was drenched in soap suds. Mountains of bubbles created white foam all down her azure tinted body. When her wings flexed, little snowflakes of suds rained down everywhere, and the bubble-mounds ridging down her spiked back jostled with her laughter.
She splashed him with amber water and returned to sitting on her haunches as she scrubbed.
"I'd rather be that than a hideous swamp gal." She spiraled another sponge over her paw wrist. "It's a great thing my mad charismatic badassery got me on Ignitia's good side. I didn't think she'd give us the soap bars any other way."
With how that dragoness was crinkling her nose, we probably could've cowed her into it, just because of how bad we stunk, the Fallen thought.
Days of traveling, camping in caves and groves and fighting had taken their toll. He and the purple beastess had reeked by the time they got back from their excursion. When they had first found the River of Amber, they'd been able to water-wash, but without soap, getting all the matted sweat, dried blood and grime out had been impossible.
As it happened, Spyra wasn't the only dragon who had a self-appearance complex. Turns out it was pretty common of her kind here to keep up with an extraordinarily high level of personal grooming. Dragons were like that everywhere, mostly. The Fallen felt himself sinking into a pattern of familiarity, and this world was becoming a little less foreign every day.
"When I was a hatchling, Cometcu and Lightnux had the village help in building me a tub out of wood cuttings. It was like, this big." Spyra demonstrated with her paws in a loop, sending sud-flakes falling everywhere. "And they used to have to help me scrub. It felt weird, having two little people flitter around and rub all over me. I guess I was tiny, so privacy didn't really matter."
"Someone loved bath-time, I'm imagining." The Fallen leaned down and started to use his nails to work in the suds down her back. Spyra smiled with a satisfied hum and leaned against his legs as he worked. "Dragonflies have soap?"
"Funny thing about that… Imagine having to bathe a giant." Spyra held up a paw and made a pinching motion with her talons. "The whole village didn't have soap, for like, a week. They had to ramp up making it. Basically, once I hatched, the soapmakers had orders to fill for an entire second village. I went through soap like it was goin' out of style."
"It explains why your scales are so pretty all the time." He observed, using water in his palms to slide some of the soap off.
"Where's flattery gonna' get you after I already let you under my tail?" Spyra giggled. "I was kinda' afraid fucking with you would make things awkward, but this is… this is pretty nice. I'm not complaining. Now I get a bath-time partner."
Spyra sighed as he rubbed down her hips for longer than necessary. Her scales had a nice sheen, now that all the battle-fatigue was running away downstream.
"Ya don't mind if I drabble a bit while you're preoccupied."
"Shoot." He started scooping up water and rinsing the lather off. She was an amethyst core slowly being revealed by slithering trails of white suds sloping down her flanks.
"It's hard to be who you are when you're in such an enclosed little space of people. I ain't one to look a gift horse in the mouth or nothin', but I'm still kind of wondering half the time when I'm going to wake up and realize that life doesn't really work like this. Every time I get up now, it's like the dream isn't ending, and I'm getting a bit of vertigo, past-tense. It shakes up everything I understand.
"Up until now I never decided what I wanted to do with my life, and nobody besides two or three dragonflies were ever really interested in what I had to say. What really is there for me without you showing up with a dangerous mission and all the risk around it? This swamp is fun, and it's a big place, but I've explored so much of it that I'm… tired, not physically, I mean.
"I know my parents love me like my egg was theirs, and I know they're probably distraught right now wondering where I am, worrying, fearing the worst that could've happened. I'm wondering myself: how can I tell them that nearly dying has opened my eyes to a whole new aspect of life? That it's introduced to me the idea of really being a dragon, unlocking my elemental ability, my thirst for fighting and growing to be smarter.
"…When you fell, you told me; it isn't your problem, and I get it, dude, you're a complicated kind of guy. I get now that there are things at work here that could end me if I got close. But would it shock you if I said right now that I didn't care? And that I didn't foresee myself changing from that at all even with more experience?
"My old life was empty. I'd risk dying to keep what I found, like a true dragoness hoarding her treasure. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want to believe my treasure that I've found is…. kinda' you, a-and… and shit…"
Spyra clammed up for a second. The Fallen alleviated by finishing off her haunches, and subtly craning over to the front of her body. He ran his hands down the soft, golden plates of her breast, and kissed her on the purple cheek.
"I like you too. Cheese and all." He sniggered.
"You're not a romantic type, aren'tchya?"
"Not in the slightest. I'll woo you, don't mistake me, but once you ask for roses? No, I normally gift my women stuff a lot more complex than that."
"Gimme' an example."
"I'll show you one," He gripped her plump backside and squeezed, making her gasp and press into him with a lurid look in her eye. The dragoness showed him her teeth and tried to crane her wings around his torso. A constriction around his leg told him where her tail had gone. "but there's a war in the way, I'm afraid."
"…I-I can wait." Spyra nuzzled the back of her head into him, water plopping as she instinctually spread her rear legs and wedged his thigh into the crevice under her tail. He grunted, the dragoness melting with an expression of frowning lust as she wiggled over him. "…Lemme' get another taste of human, stud. Just for kicks."
He obliged her. Probably at risk of getting seen by literally anyone inside the temple, or anything wandering in the surrounding area.
He was too blinded by lust-haze to even give a shit.
How could one deny hot, literally golden-rimmed durg-pussy?
As wet as they were, Spyra's bubbly backside flopped against his glistening hips as he drove into her from behind, a hand steadying the back of her tail almost painfully as he peeled it forward and draped it past her wing. The Fallen turned their copulation into a duel against himself of all things.
How long could he keep his cool before the inner-animal drove him to relentless abandon this time?
It lasted a little while, the happy dragoness growling and yelping as her human drilled her into the pond floor. Luckily, the water was shallow enough that there wasn't any risk of her submerging her own head. The water was up to her chin, and it caught the heavy dollops of drool swinging around from the tip of her long tongue as it drained into the surf like a slippery eel.
"-Y-Y'know, a-alien man- Oh~! –if we're gonna' keep this up, w-we're gonna' have to determine who's on the dominant side of this little- Ah~! –thing…"
He answered her by gritting his teeth, letting go of her tail and gripping her purple hips. The dragoness moaned in one long note when he started to piston so hard into her cunt that her cheeks wobbled. Spyra dug her paws into the shallow bed of rocks on the pond floor in agony, looking past her wing at him.
I'm the dominant one, she could practically see written on his concentrative face as he screwed her.
Two could play at that game.
"-That's right, you dirty little monkey, fuck your dragon." She moaned to him, giving the most pleading expression she could think of, remembering years of practice of begging for what she wanted to manipulate Cometcu when she was a hatchling.
Please, can I have one more sweet?
Please, can I go out after dark?
-Usual questions for a hatchling. At least Spyra liked to believe.
This kind of begging on the other claw…
"Breed your dragon~! Stuff me full of your whelps…~" She sang, grinning in knowing as she turned away from him and let him have his way with her. The Fallen growled and started hammering her even harder, his skin clapping against her scaly hide with fervor. "…Fallen…~"
She wouldn't dare. Not again.
"…Oooohhhh, Fallen…~ …Gimme' it… Give momma-Spyra your hatchlings…~"
Fuck.
His hips started to burn as he rode the conjugal train to the very limits.
Was it possible to break bones doing these kinds of things?
"…Yes, yes-! Ooooh, fuck-!" Spyra squeaked, and then, in a very assured, sultry voice, she purred: "Spurt in your dragoness' egg-hole…~"
Son of a-
The world went white. Somehow, this climax felt even harder than the first one at the battlefield...
-She was still laughing at him long after he dismounted her and begrudgingly resumed their bath, now set back to a certain degree by their activities.
"You sounded like a dying elk." She giggled. "Is that your usual idea of wooing females? AwwOOOoonaAAaaagaauUUU~!" She mimicked, whale-like.
"…Shut up." He quietly mumbled, suddenly feeling sheepish as he scrubbed his dick free of her essence and his own.
Damn that dirty talk she did.
It was a weapon, just as much as her talons and her fire breath and this electricity thing she'd been rocking. He'd have to be on his guard much more.
"…There's so much that I wanna' talk with you about." Spyra resumed pleasant conversation as he knelt and took his attention to her underside, washing away any leftover evidence of their rutting. She bit her chop as the human lifted her tail and worked out the suds. She loved his fingers. They were so soft and much more delicate than her talons. They found her more sensitive regions just like before, though he was tame this time around and just focused on bathing her.
"So talk." He said, still sounding a little defeated.
"…Well, like…" Spyra craned her neck back and pressed her snout into his chest, inhaling the new soapy scent rising off his clean skin. "…how was it?"
"How was what?"
"Me? How was I?" The dragon chirped, her nerves making her fidget under the water. "I don't have a whole rush of experience to work off, kinda' being new to this whole mating thing… So was it… y'know, nice?"
"…..."
"Oh don't be such a baby, putting aside me showing you up like a whale interpreter."
"…Did you like it?"
"Fuck yeah, I haven't cum that hard around my own paws ever."
"Then it was nice. I'd never pass it up myself, even when you tease." The Fallen held aloft one of her feet as he carefully worked her onto her back. He scrubbed her taloned toes as Spyra giggled and spread her legs in the surf. "You into foot massages?"
"Never had one before now either." She grinned, looking off at the steps of the Dragon Temple looming just nearby the grove. "…I thought you killed more of those Bulb Spiders than I did, shouldn't I be rubbing you?"
"I'll admit defeat, just like at the spar." He shrugged, working out knots in her scaly, leather pads. Spyra hummed in approval and spread her wings to float out like lily-pads in the amber surf around her. "What else is on your mind? Besides the war."
"Cynder's tower, how we're gonna' stop her, how my village is doing, how worried Cometcu and Lightnux and Firefly are and-" Spyra blushed when she realized her own tumble. She used her horns to keep her muzzle propped out of the waterline and tried again. "…what I'm gonna' do with you."
"You don't have to feel awkward asking for sex again, that's for sure." He wriggled her larger toes with his thumbs. "Your feet are adorable."
"Rawr~." She teased, making a swiping motion with her other foot at him. "Weapons: everythin' on me."
She felt different after the last few fights. Killing giant bugs and Toadworts throughout her young life had felt too much like pest control.
But now, Spyra had killed people. Apes! No matter how barbaric and stupid they were, they were the first sentient beings she had ended in numbers. Tens and tens of them, garnered through all the patrols her and the Fallen had massacred to get to the Temple, and now from the battle in the clearing earlier.
It didn't necessarily bother her- her morals were always pretty up for consideration, based off her own opinion anyhow –it actually felt good. It was an accomplishment. She'd beaten other people in combat, several times. She was pretty high on a cloud right now.
I even have an alien giving me a foot massage. Just call me Queen Spyra.
They chatted absentmindedly throughout the rest of their time in the reservoir, the runoff waterfall muttering in the backdrop, and their only company being the large dragon statue sticking out of the pond's center.
Spyra did most of the talking. She was ravenous, chatting off his ear about anything and everything, probably more than she'd ever talked to her own adoptive family. Plants she knew how to identify around the swamp, pranks her and Firefly had played on other dragonflies back home, her belief that the Shrine of the Mayfly was haunted, and her expectations of other dragons she'd had as a hatchling.
She told him about the Moon Trees that grew along the rear banks of the nymph pond back home too. Mentioning her brother, though, did also cause her mood to drop somewhat.
"We'll find him. You'll get to say goodbye before you journey north." He reassured her. "I promise I'll get you back to your folks."
Spyra made a splash as she hopped back around and kissed him, holding his shoulders for leverage.
"Ya' ready for some cheese?" The she-dragon chuckled. "You make me feel better about all of this. A-As in, every day is easier with you here…"
The Fallen's smile slowly slipped off his face. Spyra nudged into his lap in the water and sat on him, doting on his chest as she played with her talons under his neck.
"…I'm afraid to ask you." She finally uttered.
"Afraid?" He gawked.
"Terrified, actually." Spyra shuddered, draping her wings possessively over his arms. "There's so much goin' on with me right now. I… hurt inside, every day, and I don't know what it feels like to not have that happening to me. I've forgotten how to breathe, even for just a few seconds, and with you, I feel like I can breathe all the time."
The Fallen cupped her cheeks and lifted her head up so they could look at each other.
"You're still a jerk, and all that…" She bopped her snout on his nose and snickered. "…Like, a colossal jerk, but..."
"Uh-huh."
"Stay with me," Spyra clutched him closer in the water, calmly merging their foreheads, and boring into him with her reflective, purple eyes. "-please?"
He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a silent exhale.
Spyra was searching his face for answers, her huge pupils darting around at every little crease or detail. When he still couldn't speak, she sighed through her nose and muzzle-kissed him again, licking his teeth.
Bzt~! "-Ow." –The Fallen jerked back when a little spark of electricity snapped over his lips. Spyra giggled and meshed her head into his neck.
"Sorry, handsome, I'm still learning to control that." She chortled. "I know you talk so much about this whole other world you come from, but… think about it?"
The Fallen hummed and kissed the top of her head.
"At least do me a solid and hold me for a little bit." She tiredly said, dozing against his chest while her body deflated in a sleepy breath. The dragoness slapped her chops and settled in his lap, her wings becoming wet, orange blankets. They listened to the slap of the water. "…Please don't leave…"
"I'm not leaving-" The Fallen blinked and looked down. Spyra didn't answer, and a quiet snore let him know why. The dragoness looked like she was in recovery from the worst hangover thought possible, her tongue sticking out a little and limping on his chest like a pink eel.
He stroked her neck and adjusted in the rocky shallows, staring daggers at the overhang of willows and mushrooms penning the little temple's valley via picturesque marshland nature.
Even though this place was a bloody swamp, it still had areas where it was beautiful. His curiosity about other geographies here was only fed more by this.
"I'm not leaving." Yet. –But he didn't add that last bit as he whispered to her.
Finding Spyra a place to sleep off the last day was easy. She normally wasn't such a heavy sleeper, but he supposed, once you banged with someone, your body encoded their company with a kind of familiarity that just made it easier to let your guard down around them. He had the experience to back that up, for whatever it was worth now.
He deposited her in a temporary nest he'd gathered of straw and large frond leaves inside the temple. After robing in his ripped, but now cleaned jumpsuit and boots, he was off to walk the hauntingly still halls. The Dragon Temple was actually a lot bigger than it looked like.
Winding halls gave off gothic vibes with a strange, fantastical undertone of mystery. Chandeliers whose black limbs sported glowing chunks of amber gems hung interspersed down the tunnels. Creepers and mushrooms overgrew patches of the cobbled floor, and an overall air of peaceful silence resonated wherever he went.
"Afternoon." He inclined his head.
Torrdonal barked in fright from where he'd been examining an unlit torch on the wall and fell on his own haunches. The poor water dragon watched the human with suspicion in his strolling.
"A-Afternoon…"
The Fallen hummed to himself, impressed. He hadn't expected a response.
Going deeper inside, he eventually found the Egg Chamber, and decided to stop in.
Now Ignitia had already repeated what she had said to Spyra to him, and he admitted that it was a lot to absorb. That was just a piece of the greater puzzle eating up his mind, however.
He lazily trekked over the dais plates and stood in the center of the ancient room, examining the cracked amber sunroof with a thoughtful look. He blinked through the beams of sunlight dappling in through the glass and took a moment to just go over everything that had happened so far.
Apes. Cynder. Swamp. Evil tower. Dragons. Blood. Pain. Lust…
…He should've started making a freakin' checklist.
"Back from your rounds, Fallen?"
The human frowned and looked through the archway to see Harad trotting inside the chamber, an austere and constant scowl adorning his snout. The silvery armor covering his body clinked in the quiet din as he trotted closer, spreading his thorny wings, no doubt in an effort to appear domineering.
"Indeed, Captain Harasal." The Fallen smirked. Asshole.
"It is pronounced Harad." Harad frowned, stopping a few feet away from him and sitting. "Why are you here?"
"I needed a minute to myself. I thought you and your squad were getting ready to depart back to Warfang?"
"The Wingleader hasn't humored the idea as I have." Harad's face barely moved when he talked. The Fallen acquainted his appearance in likeness to- ironically –a rock. The very thing that matched his Earth Element. "…I'm sure you can appreciate politics, wherever it is you come from."
"Politics: a noise to most, a weapon to few. Most people can't make it both." The Fallen lamented. "I'm probably too familiar with them."
"Fascinating." Harad inched a brow with disinterest. The Fallen matched his expression, realizing a tad too late that he was still in friendly talker mode, something that Spyra had earned the right to see. Harad didn't.
"What do you want?" The Fallen grunted, his words echoing around the chamber.
"To confront you. But as I've observed, you're very quick to let bygones be bygones, so I'm willing to let it slip that you tried to feed me an explosive." Harad said matter-of-factly. "We were both doing our jobs."
"At least you assume something correctly." The human crossed his arms. "Go on."
"Your pledge earlier this afternoon worries me. I see what you are doing to that hen." Harad darkly flexed his wings, his browline lowered to impossibly make his features look even more aggressive. "You've proven extreme capability in combat. If it weren't the case, I'm sure you're aware that I would've dealt with you to expediate our leaving this marshland hell."
"Because you're such a charitable kind of guy, right? Is there a point to this, or did you come in here to stamp and whine like a toddler?" The Fallen shrugged. "Man to man, Halal; just say you don't take losing well."
"It's Harad." The Captain snarled.
"Look, you can continue checking over your shoulder for something that isn't there, or you can get down to brass tacks. So let me remind you of something; I haven't even been here for more than a week, and even I can see that your people are losing the fight. You're outnumbered in the field, and your desperation to keep Malefora's forces off your beaches, has left you blinded to the rest of the world.
"While you've all been fooling yourselves with a false sense of security, the Dark Army has been transforming what were previously worthless territories into fortified manufacturing plants and staging grounds. All of that, I have no doubt is partly because of these politics you probably yank out your ass daily as an excuse.
"Do I have ulterior motives? Ones you don't understand? Certainly. Of course I do. I'm an offworld traveler from a place beyond your scope as a little, mortal, green lizard with wings. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by lying about that.
"What I will answer truthfully; is that currently, my goals intersect with yours, in that our working together gets us both what we want. Spoil for your fight with me again, Captain, but don't expect me to betray Spyra, or that hen as you call her. She has my loyalty. She wants to go to Warfang? She wants to kick Cynder and her Apes out of this swamp? Then that's my war."
Harad was livid. The big green dragon looked like he was about to pounce.
"Ignitia wants to know why there's a monkey tied up on the observer plat!"
Both Harad and the Fallen glanced over to see Morinth standing in the archway this time. Her emerald eyes briefly flickered over Harad and locked on the Fallen.
"What am I telling mam, sir? Fallen?"
"That was the second reason I came in here." Harad growled, baring his fangs at the human. "Your excursion proved fruitful?"
"Oh yes, we've certainly made progress, in ways others haven't attempted or just were too shorthanded to try." The Fallen looped around him and marched dutifully for the arch.
"You are a quip-mouthed bastard." Harad slammed his tail into the floor.
"I'll check you later, sweety, leave your number at the desk and I'll get right back to you." The Fallen presented two middle-digits (purely because he knew Harad didn't understand the gesture) and backtracked into the hall beside Morinth, who looked eager to be away from her fuming officer.
The Fallen laughed quietly and kicked a rock down the hallway, looking over at the shorter, dark dragoness as the latter struggled to keep her gaze off him and on the floor.
"Hey," He nodded. Morinth jumped a bit with a squeak and looked up at him with wide eyes. "what's up?"
"N-Nothing." Morinth squeaked, hugging her wings to herself closer. "I was sent by mam to find you and the Captain about-"
"You said your name is Morinth, correct?"
"…Yes. I am Morinth, soldier of Warfang." Morinth sternly responded, turning her nose up at him as she corrected her walk to look more official. "You are the alien creature who nearly killed my CO and wiped out half my squad. Regulations state that you are an armed and dangerous threat, and that we merely enjoy a temporary truce."
"I just pledged service to your city a few hours ago. Why is that not enough for any of you people?" The Fallen shrugged, sighing adamantly. "I know I stuffed a stick of dynamite in your Captain's throat and wished him dead, but the rejection is a little extreme."
Morinth broke her façade as she bit her chops and struggled to suppress the beginnings of a snicker.
"W-We can't be too careful around suspicious and violent strangers." Her muzzle twitched and her eyes were very wide as she stared ahead.
"You have really pretty eyes."
Morinth cringed and glanced at him with disgust.
"You were getting somewhere, and you decide to follow up with cheap flattery?" She scoffed.
"Actually I was just making sure you weren't a dumb bimbo spreading her legs for every suitor." He scratched his chin. Morinth gasped and a fresh blush was shown through the black scales covering her snout. "-I'm kidding. Well, kind of kidding. I prefer a female who can think for herself and snap just as poor an insult as she's dealt. Hit me."
"A jar of my own talon-clippings would make a better suitor than your very rude person." Morinth harrumphed.
"Ha, there it is. Alright, I've gotten a green light."
"Do you talk to females of your own kind like this?"
"I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any in months. Besides, I prefer stepping outside my own species for such kinds of things." He said. Morinth was blushing harder, and gazed at him with a taken-aback expression. "There aren't people here who are a little weird?"
"I-I do not frown upon diversity." Morinth quickly stuttered. "If you're seeking… whatever it is you're seeking from me, then you'll have to look elsewhere, I am spoken for."
"Mm, no doubt by that white girlie, what's her name? Taliopia?"
"Indeed. There's something in common we share- the only thing –we both seek the same gender for our partners."
"I am the last guy you'll find judgment for in anything." The Fallen held his hands up as they rounded a corner. "I'm happy for the two of you."
"Thank you." She puffed through her muzzle with disinterest.
"So how long have you been in the army?"
"Five years."
"Five years? Shit. Did you join right from the nursery or something?"
"You're quite the talker. Let me guess; you're too polite to assume a woman's age?" Morinth daggered a brow, smiling.
"Right on the mark with that one. May the lady tell me?"
"Twenty five, if you must know. Is that the age of that feisty dragoness you found in the swamps? The purple one? I'm betting you did not realize her significance to everything that's going on…"
"She's close to it, she doesn't know herself. She's been raised by dragonflies." He said, ignoring Morinth's shocked blink to him. "And her name's Spyra, Harad refuses to use it, I'd appreciate if you didn't follow his example. By the way, you look younger."
"I thought we'd established I'm beyond cheap flattery." Morinth shook her head.
"But not beyond decent conversation. I'd like to introduce myself properly to you, if you'd allow me."
Morinth laughed nervously and stopped in her tracks, marveling at the human's anatomy as he fell to a knee, and offered his hand to her politely.
"I am known as the Fallen here, my title is my name, for I am nameless. And you are?"
"Morinth." She said stuffily. He cleared his throat and eyed her paws. The dragoness looked down at them herself, and awkwardly placed one in his fingers. The Fallen gently lifted it to his mouth and kissed it at the wrist. The reaction was immediate. Morinth shuddered, gasped, and tore her paw away quickly, trembling.
"It's a beautiful name for a beautiful dragoness. You must excuse my earlier behavior, but I cannot deny in informing you; you are prime material. My inner knight flutters at the fullness of your tail, and the rife inner velvetine feminity you carry. I would plunder your hoard any day, wingmaiden of Warfang." The Fallen paused to watch Morinth's jaw flap like a fish's, before he ended it with: "Maybe one evening you'll let me breed you a better opinion of my golden sword."
Fwoofff~! –there went the wings. Morinth froze, her pupils shrinking to the size of peas, and then she exploded.
"Gah~! Go away! Goawaygoawaygoaway-! Talliiiiii~! W-Where are you?! I neeeeed yoooouuuu-~!" Morinth danced away in horror, her voice slipping inadvertanely into its usual singsongedness.
She shielded the mad blush on her face with her wings and dashed on her hind-legs down another hall path. The Fallen watched her go, chuckled manically and continued on his way, alone.
{🐉}
"…I don't mean to trouble ya there, lass, but ya see, it's my first time bein captured and all, and I've got an orrible itch that's rakin my bum. It always happens when I lose my nerve. My arse starts ticklin and I start to stammer over my gobbin words. I know ya won't untie me, b-but… aw, nuts abou wot I'm askin… c-could… could ya scratch me? P-Please? Just a little around the rim of my leg right ere."
Palmet must have been trying to pull off his best doe-eyes for the mighty flame dragoness.
Instead of appearing cute, he resembled a braying donkey. An inbred, braying donkey that had been run over by a truck and resurrected by an errant Necromancer for use as a footstool, latrine jockey and occasional beating stick dummy.
Ignitia cringed and turned away from the hideous Ape, refocusing her attention on the horizon past the railings.
The Southern Swamps extended as far as the eye could see in every direction from up here, on the temple's cliff face topping observation plat. Connected to the elemental training room, a brief flight of arched stairs led to this circular outcrop. In earlier ages, this place would've been serene.
She supposed it still was, but now fungus cloisters overgrew the stone flooring, cracks and damage marred everything, and half the railing stakes on the plat's upper bar ring were missing.
A little breeze whistled faintly overhead. Ignitia ignored the pained mewls of Palmet as he struggled against the rope the Fallen had tied him up in. Her eyes displayed an emotion she'd been resonating all too frequently the last few years:
Sadness.
Ignitia was sad about everything really. The spiraling depression had started after the destruction of the very temple she was currently standing in. All of those eggs…
Spyra's egg…
The Guardian stroked her chin fin and sighed.
It was hard being a female to begin with. Being a female with authority was doubly biting, and made everyday interactions just a tad more difficult than they should've been. The unmistakeable voice in the back of one's horns reminding them of something aloof and different on the air everytime they worked in a team.
Above all that, the knowledge of having an egg to call your own, and losing it.
Ignitia remembered long evenings spent in inconsolable tears. Thirty years in the Realms, and not another living being had ever witnessed her crying. She had refused to make herself that vulnerable for anyone, not even the other Guardians.
Not even for Volteera! And Volteera was the one who had come up with 'Study-Buddy' events at the Academy for students. Ignitia had never told anyone that the lonely lightning dragoness had only tortured every dragon there in an effort to try and force someone into conversations with her, during what were supposed to be schooling hours.
That was the unfortunate mechanic with the Guardians. They were sworn to the teaching of elements to all dragon younglings of Warfang, living almost like monks, forced into abstinence, the banishment of recreational substances, and the training…
The constant, constant, constant god damned training.
Ignitia had been sharpening her abilities to manipulate fire for over twenty five years. Straight from the nursery, it felt like. Everything had always had its place, and a day of her life hadn't passed without rigid structure and lectured discipline. She had barely known her own father, hated her mother, and had mostly been raised by her paternal granddragons before she had joined the pseudo-religious organization of dragons convening at the Shrines of Warfang. There she had tirelessly pursued the study of flame, her biological element, alongside twenty six other aspirants, three of them being a very young Volteera, Cyrila and Terradora.
Once, they had been like sisters, the four of them.
Now, times were very different.
Cyrila and Volteera were still relatively close to her. Though the latter was poorer at shielding her emotions on a day to day basis. Ignitia had inner pain herself, but Volteera was the one who had been interred in the hospital wing three years ago for that 'accident' that had happened with the banner pole outside during lunch hour.
"…Unaminously, fantastically and exuberantly fastidious, our occupations are in these halls!" She had said, Ignitia sitting on her haunches by the nest side in the medical chamber. "Marginally and greatly of the tongue speaking however; things are so restrictive, and tight, and small and-"
"Get to the point, Volteera."
Ignitia mouthed the words as she sat on the balcony, and smiled, still, sadly.
Volteera had paused for a very long while, her beautiful, spined and yellow face caught in a constant and manically chipper grin. But the dragoness' amber eyes were the things that were always wailing. Ignitia could hurt herself for not ever seeing it sooner.
"…b-but, with all the marvelous and boisterous and wonderful things we are gifted, that I am gifted to live and have known, I must observe the shocking and drastically low number of other dragons that wish to listen." Volteera's chin quivered. She had looked to Ignitia for help, and Ignitia had brushed her away.
"We'll get your wings wide and you'll be back on your paws before you know it. You should be more careful, sister."
"…Yes, indeed, quite, indubitably so… I shall persevere," Volteera- still smiling –had stared at a wall for what felt like hours. "…I shall regain my footing, to live a life of long prosperity, and of remaining unbearable to any outside those forced to keep my company in any walls I might dwell within."
Ignitia huffed. Palmet, in the background, was grunting in effort as he fought the bonds.
"I fink these binds are cutting off circulation." He stammered. "My paws are turning bluer than those berries Glomrok ate when he keeled over and vomited his own intestines up at lunch yesterday."
Ignitia rolled her red eyes.
Good, maybe they'd fall off. Fucking Ape. It was because of them this place was like this.
It was because of them that Ignitia had become obsessed with this temple, constantly journeying to it to recover records, even shards of long smashed eggs.
Trivial crap that no dragon gave a fucking rat's ass about.
All for what?
To relive some kind of hard-tacked glory days that only she and handful of females in the city could barely remember?
So she could relive the memory of what successful motherhood felt like? All in her bids to run away from her own life and push away her friends that desperately needed her help.
Like Volteera.
Nobody else would help that hen.
Terradora was too busy trying to be the general in the army she'd always wanted to be. The three of them hardly knew her anymore.
And Cyrila hated Volteera. Ignitia doubted that even if Cyrila wasn't such a pompous bitch on the worst of days, that the icy hearted dragoness of the glaciers could be bothered to understand a deeper reason for Volteera's mouth anyhow.
Truth be told, there was a lot of hatred going on.
Ignitia hated Terradora for her choice to vanish. Ignitia hated Cyrila for hating Volteera. Ignitia hated Volteera for being a scatterbrain.
She hated herself for wasting her own life and losing all of those eggs. What right did she have, advocating for this long blasted thing called hope to other dragons when she herself had none?
What did one do when the world left them behind? When you had no one who could hear your screams and understand what they were for.
God damn it.
Ignitia decided that if she got back to Warfang, and the war slowed down, she'd find Volteera, and she would embrace her as a sister.
Cyrila…
She'd have to think about how to approach that.
"Bugga! I can't scratch my fleas… Wait a gob, who's dat over the-GAH! N-Not you! Leave me alone!" Palmet shrieked, rolling and wiggling away on the floor like a panicked worm. "I won't letchya take me! I'll wiggle off the side! I'll doom myself to preserve the Dark Master's name!"
"…You can't climb over the short wall." Ignitia gawked quietly, boredly watching the Ape squirm and inchworm across the cobble on his chin and belly towards the rim of the plat. "Oh, forget it."
"I appreciate you keeping my prisoner company, but it wasn't needed." The Fallen finished jogging down the stairs and stood before her under the last arch. Ignitia turned to him and examined him from head to toe.
Curious creature, hairless too. I wonder where he comes from where people don't require protection from any sort of elements.
"Ah, Fallen, just the alien organism I was looking for. Uhm," Ignitia ran out of things to say. So, she smiled pleasantly, as if she was offering the Fallen a plate of cookies, and pointed to the wriggling Ape on the floor. "Explain."
"He's our ticket inside Cynder's tower." The Fallen grinned back, stepping over.
"Oh, that is quite a marvelous idea." Ignitia politely sat and watched with a raised brow. "If only so many other dragon officers had not thought the same thing and stood where you are to this date…"
"You didn't strike me as a dragoness who liked sarcasm." He pointed at her, and bent down to roughly snatch Palmet's shoulders. "Sit up you fuckin' furry freak."
"I surrender! I'm unarmed and subdued! Don't you lot have some kinda laws for the treatment of prisoners of war? I'm protected by the rights of the international court! Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech! Freedom of-"
"Shut the fuck up." The Fallen decked Palmet across the jaw and sent spittle flying. The Ape howled in pain and slumped onto his side. The Fallen placed a kick in his gut and made the Ape curl in on himself like a dying spider.
"-Ave mercy!"
"That doesn't sound like a word in your kind's vocabularly. Say I'm wrong?" The Fallen gripped the Ape's scruff and hauled him onto his ass.
"Well, not exactly, no." Palmet cringed.
"You people like sandwiches though, right?"
"Ooo! Sure, pork and ant-gut sandwiches were the rage with the lads back at the tribe in-"
"Here's a sandwich for you." The Fallen punched Palmet right between the eyes, causing a loud thwack~! –to echo around the plat. Palmet squealed and collapsed in a heap. "I should rip your legs off for what you and your little friends tried to pull on me and my dragon…"
"I hardly see how this is helping anyone. Unless you captured one of them purely to release some pent-in rage." Ignitia called over, unimpressed. "And who are you speaking of as your dragon? Do you mean Spyra? So you've claimed her as property now, haven't you?"
"It's-!" The Fallen spun on her and then paused. "…it's…. complicated."
"Well with how adamantly she speaks of you, I could not doubt it." Ignitia trotted closer, and the Fallen blinked when the distinct scent of cinnamon wafted in his nose. "Is this what you and her did when you left earlier? You hunted down a rogue, lone Ape and captured him? What if you were seen?"
"Seen?! Lone Ape?!" Palmet hacked on the ground. "These crazy loons attacked my whole unit in broad bloody daylight! And that was before poor Drulop called in for reinforcements from Sylak's boys and their Dreadwing! I fink his name was Cuddles. The lads loved that one, he was a good boy, only ate one or two handlers before they got him good and in order, and you bastards broke his face on a tree ya did! Shame on you! Sham-"
The Fallen snarled and kicked him in the head to shut him up.
"A Dreadwing?!" Ignitia gasped. "You and Spyra were attacked by a Dreadwing?"
"A Dreadwing and a whole cadre of them." The Fallen pointed at Palmet. "What do you want me to do, lie to you? Just think, you were so worried about how I treat Spyra, well there it is; I fought an army to keep her safe, and we won. I'd love to see any of your soldiers do that in a day's work…"
"You're wreckless and irresponsible." Ignitia snapped.
"We both are! Why do you think I get along with her so well enough that she let me roll her over and stick my-" The Fallen slapped a hand over his mouth and waved a palm at her. "-Just forget it. Let me do my work so I can win your war, and we'll be done with it."
"Do I get a say in this?" Palmet's tail twitched.
"The only thing you're going to tell me is how to breach the defenses of Cynder's tower. Talk!" The Fallen kicked the Ape onto his back, whipped out the machete blade on his hip, and pressed the tip onto Palmet's paw. "Tell me what I want to know! Or I'll start slicing your fingers off one by one, you piece of shit."
"-I don't know nothing about that tower! I'm just an expendable, like the rest of the lads! Good in a bunch and on the road in a mob! That's my job!"
The Fallen snarled like a dog and grabbed Palmet's mane. He lifted the Ape to his knees and then slammed him face-first back onto the floor, nearly dislodging a tooth.
The Fallen knelt and smashed a knee into the side of Palmet's long face, causing him to choke out and start wriggling. He used the machete to flatten out the right set of his paw fingers, and then rotated the blade's point to run right along the creases. He started to press downwards.
"No! STOP!" Palmet screamed, muffled by the human's knee. "I'lltalk! I'LLTALK!"
"Tell me how to get in that fucking tower. Right. NOW. Or I swear to god I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will kill you slowly." The Fallen drove his knee in with a growl.
"I never even liked the Mistress anyway! She's so stuck up and- and nasty! She swats us around like we're cat toys and uses us like minefield clearers without the shovels! Apes are bettah than dat! We weren't meant to be servin anyone but ourselves anyway! You want in that tower? That orrible, stankin tower? Fine! I'll tell ya everything I know! JUST DON'T URT ME!"
"And thou'st doubted me." The Fallen chuckled, going to nudge Ignitia, and frowning when she stepped back and avoided any form of contact. "All you need is one weak link."
"Or a gullable interrogator." Ignitia narrowed an eye.
"While true, this interrogator isn't about to let you all down." He said. "You know, one time, I had to strongarm the location of a hidden fortress out of a guy named Ulas Dellecamee. He was a fanatic who would've sooner died than betray his own brothers. Me and my allies had been engaged in a guerilla campaign for over three months in a limestack mountain range that they called 'Ai'Nussa Toco'nom, it means Blood Peaks of Pain in their dialect. I saw a lot of people die, heavy stealth equipment with no overhead or strategic support was common. But I got that fortress out of Ulas' head. It just took some unexampled solutions to pry it from him like a hot coal out of the brazier, but I did it."
"How long did it take you to break such a foe?" Ignitia smiled patronizingly; not believing a word.
"Two weeks." The Fallen's expression dropped, and he paused over Palmet's form with a sudden darkness shrouding his eyes. He blinked and stepped around to his other side. "Listen, I'm not trying to boast. But I've… hurt people before. I've hurt them very badly, and I've struggled with myself to understand that I've gotten very good at it. Just let me do my job."
Palmet was a chatterbox for a prisoner. The Fallen was thankful, only because it wasn't a second Ulas.
"The inside of the tower is sealed off, cept for the entrance gates. That was one of the furst things the first Apes who took the place did, I hear. They flattened out this uge flight of drag steps ta make a ramp for all the war wagons and supply trains. That's how the Mistress gets her Mana crystal-fingies so easily inside. Most of the boys watching the place answa to Chieftain Visigoth, just like me! But Chieftain Jute is the one who handles transport, he has his Dreadywings carry the shipments ovva the oceans to the Bad Place. Sometimes riders don't come back." Palmet explained, rocking absentmindedly as he sat tied on the floor.
The Fallen listened to him whilst in a constant pace, his eyes locked on the mushroom-grown horizon.
Just faintly, one could see the very top of a tower far off in the backdrop, behind reams of tightly interwoven, and hauntingly dark mushroom forests that he knew was the Funguswood itself.
Ignitia didn't excuse herself, and she too listened to the Ape's tales. The Fallen at one point, as he sat on the shortwall and kicked his legs over the terrible drop off the plat's rim, turned and noticed her scribbling notes with a charcoal stick and a parchment booklet from her hip pouch.
"The Mistress keeps the place locked up like a jewelreez box. Only one way in and out from the ground, and dat be the front gates. We rigged Spika Cannons along the rims of the step flight, and Visigoth's got a Warr-Wagon sitting somewhere inside, but he doesn't tell anyone wher. Other den dat, there's the tribes' camps and the weapon forges takin up most of the centa." By this point, Palmet could almost be construed as casual in his tone, even as he snorted up a ream of blood dribbling down his muzzle from the prior kickings. He was talking on air pretty much, examining the look of his own toes wriggling past the rope constricting his chest. "The Mistress has got a purtey little observatory on the top, she always sticks up there and rots. She likes to look ovva everyone she does. I always reasoned it had somethin to do with a bad youngin's upbringin, that. Or a superiorness complex."
"Tell me more about this Bad Place." The Fallen chucked a rock over the railing and watched it tumble into the swamp below. Ignitia's scribbling ceased, and the fire dragoness looked at the Ape expectantly.
"Dat's where the Dark One lives…" Palmet shuddered. "We're nevva told much about that place. Any Ape armies shipped ovvaseas always end up attackin the drags' coastlines, they nevva go to the Bad Place. The Dark Mistress has her own armies to protect her there. We're not allowed, and nobody's signing up! Our Mistress keeps a relic underneath the tower that she uses to talk with the Bad Place, it's a pool or somethin. I ain't evva seen it myself, I only heard some of the slaves being kept down there for cleanin purposes in their hushed whispers. They say the pool talks and the lot."
Ignitia looked thoughtful as she paused before jotting down another line on the fresh page.
"Does this sound like the Dark Continent?" He asked her across the plat.
"It matches the descriptions as well as this creature could recollect." Ignitia nodded thoughtfully. "Tell me, the slaves being kept by Cynder, what are they and how many are there?"
"A buncha dirty Moles them." Palmet paused. "-…Uh… N-Now before ya get angry, I only evva heard rumors that drags and Moles were good friends and I ain't assuming nothing-"
"Focus on the question." The Fallen reminded calmly.
"Moles, abou a hundred of em or somefin. The Mistress uses em to clean out the catacomb tunnels underneath the tower, so she can use the chambers as storage cells for all the Mana Crystals, before they're broken up by the same slaves and shipped out on Dreadywing. Other then dat, she uses em to sweep her observatory every now and then and ta fashion fuses for the boom-sticks."
Ignitia was scribbling up a storm again, parchment slipping as she turned pages and started a new text block.
"It's a pain in the tail ta get rid of all the refuse from so many rodent-peepol, ya hear. That's why the offices have the janitas dump all the runoff out the drainage sump at the base of the wall-"
"Tell me about that." The Fallen bolted upright and knelt in front of the Ape, his eyes narrowed. "Drainage sump? Tell me everything about it."
"The bloody ell do ya want to know about where everyone shits for?" Palmet blinked.
The Fallen clenched a fist and the Ape squealed.
"-Alrightalright! Jus calm ya gob!"
"Speak plainly."
"The sump's a drainage run, that's off to the east of the main atrium floor! It lets out into a little mushroom grove that the lads call Shit's Creek! There's a bar-cap sealin it off on account of everyone bein afraid of the Sewer Moana!" Palmet ranted. "Ya could probably use all your supa-powas you used on my lads to get in through it! Now jus don't hurt me!"
Tearing back from his captive, the Fallen turned to start jogging up the steps.
"…Buggas, he's scary…" Palmet shivered, his monkey-tail whipping as he collected himself on the floor. "…Listen, abou that scratch I asked for, miss, I wasn't tryin ta sound suggestive or whatnot-"
Ignitia clapped her little booklet closed and ran on all fours after the Fallen. Palmet blinked as the large gate-doors slammed shut, and his only company was the whistle of a slight breeze this high up.
"…Oi," Palmet daggered his brows, lifted a leg and farted in the cobble. "who knew da enemy was so rude?"
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