What do you mean I wrote "six" in a previous chapter when I meant "four"? Don't know what you're talkin' about, friendo. (A typo has been fixed. Female Skeksis do in fact have four boobs.) Also, check out the new cover, friendos!

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SkekSa scowled as she sniffed the strangely familiar scent around her, shaking her head in annoyance. Her eyes fluttered open, a feeling of weakness pervading through her muscles while she blearily looked around. The Suns were up, but not too far along the sky. She was laying in the sand, but far from the beach, somewhere closer to the middle of the small island. She tried to push herself up, but all her arms were tied together at their wrists by wet, purple vines that looped back around to her front. Similarly, the same sorts of vines bound her ankles around the tip of her tail and secured themselves to her wrist bindings. Other than her bondage, she was completely nude, her four breasts uncomfortably squished against the ground, but at least they were trapped against sand rather than something more firm.

"Captain!" The Mariner swung her head around to the source of the shout, seeing that Lanar was also nude and tied up in seeping, purple vines. He was breathing unsteadily, as if he too suffered from a feeling of weakness, and then skekSa began to focus her mind on the points of contact with the vines. Her skin was numb in those places. Something from the vines was seeping into her, making her feel this way. It would not be enough. She spread her knees and pushed, managing to lift herself out of the sand despite the bad leverage with a shuddering groan of effort. All around her, and holding tightly onto Lanar, were creatures she half-recognized.

"Gruenaks?" They were certainly similar in appearance to the supposedly-extinct Gruenaks, but those people had been skilled technologists, advancing their craft rapidly enough for skekSo to feel threatened by them. These creatures were biologically related, but culturally separated, it seemed. None of them wore any clothing or used tools of any kind as far as she could see, and they were all hunched over with more pronounced teeth and sharper, viciously curved claws. "Gruenots, more like," skekSa corrected herself, shaking her head.

Seeing her calm expression seemed to ease Lanar's worry somewhat, and his voice wavered less when he called to her again. "Captain, what do they want with us?"

"Do you expect to talk your way out of this, Matey? I doubt that they can speak your language or any I know. As for what they want..." skekSa narrowed her eyes at the mound of boulders, shells, and other primitive trinkets in front of her, something she'd mistaken for a plant before beginning to move. It was the tail of a serpentine monster, not dissimilar from some of the flying beasts that skekSa vaguely remembered from her home planet: a dragon of some sort. It had a long snout with rows of long, sharp teeth meant for tearing flesh. It was armoured with blubber rather than scales, and had gills near its face, with four fins and four legs spaced evenly along its length. Its thick flesh had several scars that the Gruenots could have caused, their claws clearly unable to cut deeply enough to cause real harm to the sea dragon, and its blue-green coloration would help it blend into the waters.

It roared its approval and began to descend toward skekSa, it's fins flailing uselessly in excitement, the limbs meant only for swimming. Smirking, skekSa answered Lanar's question. "I believe we are, obviously, sacrifices to placate this beast. It seems that I have the dubious honor of going first." Lanar had a shocked and horrified expression on his face. The Gruenots were stomping their feet and chanting words their prisoners did not recognize. The creature hissed sadistically.

SkekSa laughed heartily and ripped her arms free of the vines, having worked them over with her claws since she'd woken. While everyone was gawking in confusion, including the dragon with its head tilted, she sliced through the vines on her ankles as well and leapt to her feet. She was free. "Poison vines? Pathetic. If you wanted me to lose, you should have killed me while I was asleep! Hahar!"

The beast finally understood that its meal was trying to escape and lunged, its head tracking skekSa as she attempted to leap out of the way. Its jaws snapped shut over mere air, skekSa's powerful legs having carried her beyond the reach of the twisting neck. The poison from the vines was still slowing her down, but the dragon she faced had grown fat and lazy with frequent sacrifices, and The Mariner was still much faster.

Instead of trying to cut through all the blubber with just her claws, skekSa bit the dragon's fin, the beast flailing and falling over from the unexpected strength of its prey's jaws. SkekSa seized the opportunity to climb up its body and over its back, clinging to the blubber of its neck by the time it righted itself. She used her new vantage point on top of the dragon to look over the heads of the Gruenots, her sharp vision quickly locating the pile of clothes and weapons her primitive captors had left in the bushes to toy with later. Then, she dug the fingers of all four of her hands into the beast's gills and she ripped them with a squawk of bloody triumph.

The dragon wailed in anguish, and skekSa started to beat the back of its thick skull with her fists, but the dragon was quick to adapt. It began to roll over as if to smash skekSa into the ground beneath it, but the avian Lady leapt off the moment it began to shift its weight. She hit the ground running, headed straight toward Lanar. The Gruenot holding the Gelfling leveled its claws at Lanar's throat as if to threaten him, but Lanar threw his head backward into the Gruenot's lip and began to thrash his weight around to keep it off balance.

SkekSa grabbed Lanar's shoulder and then punted the Gruenot away with a firm kick, her tail lashing at the others nearby to keep them back. In the same instant, her three other hands were rending away all the vines on Lanar's flesh and he was soon as free as her, if a little unsteady on his feet due to the poison. SkekSa screeched at a particular cluster of Gruenots, the lot rushing off every-which-way and clearing a path to the items they'd pilfered. "I'll keep it busy. Retrieve my sword." SkekSa instructed in a rush, and then the pair sprinted off in opposite directions, Lanar stumbling as he went but not letting that stop him.

The dragon snapped its jaws forward again, skekSa scrambling back away just in time, and the beast reared its head back and swiped with its claws while she was still stabilizing her stance. The blow connected with her left arms and sent her sprawling in the sand, but as her adrenaline began to surge from the pain and danger, skekSa found it easier to ignore the poison in her body. She rolled out of the way as the dragon tried to stomp on her, then kicked its face as it tried to snatch her up from the ground. The beast sneezed, and skekSa was on her feet after that. It went for her again, and she deftly hopped to the side, giving it a firm punch in the snout.

The Gruenots seemed dumbfounded by the spectacle, and none of them moved to recapture Lanar, but the little Gelfling was having more trouble with the poison than his Skeksis Captain. His vision was spinning by the time he reached their supplies, but he held his eyes closed and focused on controlling his breathing, focusing his body and mind, and then he started searching. He found skekSa's sword and quickly dragged it forth, scrambling back toward the battle. The blade felt massive and heavy in his hands, and his progress was slower than his previous, unencumbered run.

A Gruenot that Lanar vaguely recognized as the one who had threatened his life was running to head Lanar off, blood dripping from its nose where skekSa's foot had connected with it. The male sex of the creature was easy to note with his nudity as he settled into Lanar's path and lifted his claws, the only one of the assembled mob who seemed more interested in Lanar than the precarious fight between dragon and Skeksis.

Beyond, Lanar could see the beast snapping furiously at his friend, sweat beading on her skin and soaking into the feathers of her naked body. She could die at any moment. Lanar felt his hands tighten on the handle of the formidable blade as if of their own accord, and as the Gruenot stepped closer with his claws raised, Lanar lifted the blade with a grunt of effort and swung it at his enemy.

It was not a clean kill. The metal caught on the Gruenot's bones halfway through, suddenly feeling a lot heavier as the body slowly collapsed to the side. He was sputtering words that Lanar did not understand in his last moments, gaze unfocused. He burbled around his own blood and crumpled into the sand, but Lanar shook his head and turned his eyes away: he did not have time to watch the Gruenot die. He yanked the sword free, blood spurting out at his feet, and he ran on.

SkekSa jumped, twisted, rolled, and sprinted in short bursts to avoid the dragon, striking back when she could to deter the beast, but it was getting faster. Its heavy blubber was dragged around as it hunted its prey relentlessly, now determined to end the little creature that annoyed it so. SkekSa was being forced closer to the ring of Gruenots, who were nervously backing away, but she was sure to keep herself on the side of the impromptu fighting pit closest to her and Lanar's supplies. "SkekSa!" The shout drew The Mariner's attention for a moment and the dragon roared as it thundered forward recklessly, sure that it had won.

As soon as Lanar had skekSa's attention, he threw her sword toward her with all of his strength. It spun through the air dangerously with Gruenot blood trailing it, and when she snatched it from the air skekSa followed that spin, adjusting the trajectory perfectly as the dragon lunged for her again.

The beast shrieked in pain as skekSa's sword stabbed into its eye, and a punch to its forehead brought a preemptive stop to its potential thrashing. "Bye bye, beastie." SkekSa whispered with a voice both sweet and venomous. She ripped her blade free in a spray of mixed bloods and pieces of shredded eye, lifting it and punching the beast's head into the ground at the same time. As she had done in many a Haakskeekah in the past, skekSa screeched her triumph to the skies and brought the blade down onto the serpentine neck of the creature, which had much less blubber than the rest of it.

Strength that had often split apart stones with clean cuts did the very same to the sea dragon's neck, and blood splashed out as the whole thing was severed in the single, mighty blow. When skekSa turned around, the blood began to pool in the sand. She stepped with menacing precision to the next Gruenot, raised her bloody sword with a sneer, and then stopped.

Lanar was standing in front of her, his arms spread wide, though there was still blood on him from the Gruenot that he had killed himself. "What are ye doin' there, matey? You've turned yer back to the enemy."

"Captain," Lanar said firmly, though his body was shaking. "These people offered a sacrifice to that creature because they were afraid of it. Now that it is dead, they have no reason to harm us." SkekSa's hand was tightening on her sword as he spoke, her gaze focused past him to the Gruenot behind the Gelfling. The Gruenot was trembling in terror, and she could see no intent to harm the boy on its face.

SkekSa then smiled, letting her grip slacken just a little, gradually lowering the blade to the side. "Aye, seems true enough. Can't blame me for being a little protective of you, though, mate. Come on then: cute as it is when your eyes wander, we ought to get dressed and start carving up this kill." With that, skekSa was striding over to the pile of their pilfered belongings to don her coat, the Gruenots staring on in bafflement as they realized they were not about to be massacred.

Lanar stood a moment in contemplation as he watched her, remembering her fury, the murderous look in her fierce red eyes, the way she screamed her battle-lust to the heavens as she cut through the neck of the dragon. That such anger and power had been briefly directed not at him, but to his defense, made his cheeks burn and his heart thunder in his chest.

Lanar had never felt so highly valued in his entire life.