Dragon(s)layer

4


The Fallen


{Halo Wars OST: Best Guess at Best}


A rock rolling down one of the slopes made her yip and jump in her own scales. This, of course, aggravated the gore-wounds on her flank. Spyra hissed and nursed the bloody gashes before continuing on, limping on her right side.

She had been scaling down through the crater for the last fifteen or so minutes. It hadn't looked as flat-sloping as it had from the overhead view she'd enjoyed on the summit. The asteroid had completely wrecked everything. The earth was splitting, there were patches of smoldering glass, and jagged debris was everywhere.

But as Spyra wormed and limped closer to the crater's heart, her cares for all the other inconveniences melted away.

"…Woah…" She breathed, staggering through her injury over a collection of rocks. She now stood just a few feet away from the metallic sphere that was sticking from the crater's center. It was unbearably hot here, and the air was wavering with ghostly heat fluctuations. Spyra was perfectly fine with the temperature only due to her fiery inner workings. She limped through the banding air without so much as a flinch.

Speaking of her fire… that black dragon, Cynder. She should've had her face turned to toast. Her elegant, pretty, erotically-tattooed and slender face...-

Spyra snorted and spat an ember into the dirt.

That prissy bitch tried to rip her throat out. Fuck her outstanding looks. She was a dirty liar. Nobody was invulnerable to magic.

Once Spyra got a hold of the obvious mother fucking alien that just smacked down in the middle of their two-dragoness war, she was going to use its mind powers to break Cynder and kick her bodacious ass back to wherever she'd sauntered up from.

It had to be an alien, right? Like her stupid, fathead brother always used to tease her about when she was little. Could he actually have been right about their existence?

She wasn't doubting anything right now. All in the span of an hour or so, she'd been introduced to Apes, another dragon, and a meteor shower. Nothing was beyond reason anymore.

Spyra crunched glass underfoot as she stopped just beside the rounded rib of the great sphere. Up close, it looked even bigger, despite its contrasting tinyness in comparison to the rest of the crater.

The sky was so clogged with soot that very little sunlight dappled through to touch about the landscape. Instead, it was the amber from all the embers and the fires crackling about the ground the reflected dimly off the sphere. Wiggling serpents of caramel color danced up and down the lead surface.

Spyra glanced up at the top of the object and blinked when only smoggy clouds circling above met her gaze. She staggered on her wounded side and craned her neck about, trying to pierce the veil with her purple eyes.

"….Hello?" She muttered, not really willing to call out and possibly alert whatever had crawled out of the sphere. She looked back at the object and started to limp around its flank, searching for any kind of opening, or doorway, or porthole. She found nothing and stopped after a few struggling hops on her hind leg.

She hissed and leaned over herself to examine the damage. Cynder's horns had ripped three good, deep, bleeding wounds into her purple side. If she didn't get them covered up soon, she'd bleed out, or they'd get infected.

Without medicine back home, either way, she was going to die. This certainly wasn't the first time she had hobbled back home to her mom with a broken bone or a few gashes, but this felt a little more extreme than the results of falling out of a tree or tripping over an errant mushroom.

Yeah, mom, I may need a really big band-aid, I almost got killed by the first dragon I've ever met and her army of monkeys.

Spyra shivered, imagining how wide Cometcu's mandibles could gape.

Right as she was fiddling with one of the loose flaps of flesh dangling from the cringe-worthy wound, Spyra realized that the only reason she was still standing was because of her draconic toughness. No dragonfly could've sustained the damage she had and still press onwards.

Still hurts like hell.

She sighed and leaned back onto her front legs.

She noticed something standing in the smog right between her and the asteroid. She looked up and blinked, and a pair of white, drab-iris eyes blinked back at her.

Spyra squealed like a startled pig and scrambled onto her back, kicking, panicking, forgetting about the pain in her ribs as she clawed through the glass and ash on the ground to get away from the thing.

My brother was right! Aliens! An alien! And it's gonna' eat my brain and play jump rope with my spine and- and…. and…. wait, holy crap, it's… it's not moving.

Spyra held a paw over her breast, panting as she gazed at the towering creature. The figure was upright, similar to the Apes she had encountered, but it didn't lumber as a hunchback, and it certainly didn't have the same offensive odor or ungainly edge to its shoulder line.

It was very meek, and it didn't make a sound. It had an almost cherry-shaped face, wreathed in pale flesh, lacking fur, scales, leathery coverings or chitin. A mop of fuzz topped its peculiar head, dust black, and a long nose-bridge decorated the space between its rather small eyes, at least, small in comparison to her big, dinner-plate dragon eyes.

Spyra struggled to her feet as the thing kept a distance from her. Her jaw was slack as she examined it, her eyes tracing down creamy white skin that wrapped quaintly around a curled, obvious ribcage. That sloped into a pair of stern shoulders and arms almost as thin as hers. Tiny dabs of hair ran down its forelimbs like miniature black forests. Two legs supported narrow hips, a bit of a gut beneath a lean pack of quad muscular abs decorating the front of its torso. It looked like an organism designed to be quick, and agile, and hit hard.

Kind of like her.

"…Uhm-" Spyra coughed as her own phlegm caught in her throat. She blinked drunkenly and staggered on her heels. "…uhm, ….yeah, so… so that was some… uhm… route that you took in your…."

Spyra meekly glanced back up at the sky, and then down at the creature again.

"-in your landing."

The alien didn't say anything and didn't move. Spyra blinked.

"...Uhm, hold on, my brother told me what to say a long time ago, if I ever met aliens... Oh, yeah, ehmmmm: I come in peace."

...Nothing.

Had the impact rattled its brain or something? Spyra awkwardly bit her lower chop as the alien merely stood in the wavering heat fuzz around the metallic sphere it had ridden in on. Its eyes were glazed in a similar state of disorientation as hers, and for just a moment, it teetered, and Spyra was caught between edging forwards to catch it and staying away from it for obvious reasons.

Yeah, I doubt first contact relations would go over well if in trying to catch a falling alien, I impaled him through the arse' on my horns.

Speaking of, that brought up an interesting point…

Did this thing have a gender? Did it have a name? Could it speak? All the other things that had popped up and tried to fuck her up today had those.

But judging by the way it was looking at her, this creature looked dumber than a pile of bricks. It still hadn't moved. All it needed to do was bend over and eat some grass and start chewing like a cow.

She supposed there'd be no mad mind powers for her to take advantage of after all in her battle against Cynder, wherever that psycho bitch had fluttered off to…

"…Another dragon…" Spyra looked off into the smog to her south, back the way she had come. There was a strange resentment in her heart for not being able to see Cynder in the sky, flying proudly, and independently. "...Well, whoever or whatever you are, you showed up just in the knick of time. I thought I was a goner."

Spyra yipped and grabbed her wounded flank, shivering.

"-Ah! I might... I might still be a goner at this rate... shit."

Suddenly, a creamy skinned hand appeared in her peripheral vision. Spyra squawked and jumped back. The alien had stepped closer- eerily silently as well –during her daydreaming. Its face mimicked an expression at least that she could read. It looked… concerned? Agitated? Maybe she really didn't know.

"Hey." She growled, bearing her teeth when it stepped forward again and reached for her flank a second time, its eyes skimming over the wounds raking down her side. "Hands off the merchandise, alien scum. For all I know, you could've shorn through the clouds just to find some innocent, unsuspecting female to take advantage of and- ohmygodthatsadick…"

Spyra gawked when a wisp of smog blew away on the wind, revealing a white, flopping organ that bounced between the alien's legs, dangling limply, and loosely, right over a very exposed, un-sheathable scrotal pouch. All of it was covered in a curious dusting of black pubic hair.

Spyra felt her flame-glands light up and shoot into the roof of her mouth, and she broke into a slight cold sweat. She didn't want to admit it, but the sight of that thing, that… very obvious penis flopping around was reminding her of her earlier mental thoughts in the swamp.

Boy dragons. But this isn't a dragon, it's… an alien, or something. A boy alien.

Spyra's snout suddenly felt flushed, and she coughed, pawing at her face to hide a very evident, strikingly pink blush.

The alien's gaze rose to her, before he followed her eyes. His expression turned into something fierce before he glared up at the sky, muttering something under his breath.

"-W-What?" She croaked. She had to crane her neck to make eye-contact with him. He was over two feet taller than her in her quadruped stance. "Did you just speak?"

The alien paused and hugged his arms about his chest. A self-protective gesture, if nothing else. The dragoness felt her heart leap when his lips parted, revealing two rows of stubby, white little teeth.

"-Find her! Scour the wreckage and find that dragon! And find whatever fell!"

Her and the alien both glanced to the south through all the smoke and soot. It was Cynder, her trumpeting voice was echoing over the crackle of the fires and the din of the heat boom. Spyra hissed as her wounds flared. She almost lost her balance and started to teeter. She yelped when a pair of cool, soft palms fell on her other side.

There was a jolt of something foreign, some unknown energy swirling around in her guts. All at once, on contact with the alien's cool, fleshy palms, Spyra experienced a swell of emotions, all of them bubbly, fluttery and awkwardly toasty. Shivering at the embarrassingly pleasant sensation, her big purple eyes met the alien's as he steadied her, and then, his lips brimmed into an expression she understood.

He was grinning, and opening his mouth to speak.

"-There's somethin'!"

On a nearby ridge, an Ape pointed with his axe as he and a cluster of fifteen or twenty more warriors climbed down behind him. Spyra saw movement overhead and noticed a series of Apes working their way in an orderly line down the rim of the blast crater. They held strange, triangularly shaped devices in their paws. One of them raised it in his palms, and the air cracked as he pulled a small trigger on its handle.

Fww—pKKKK! –Her and the alien's heads whipped over to see a crossbow bolt sticking out of the dirt right beside the latter's naked foot. The alien mumbled something again, his voice crawling like gravel.

Still being touched by him, the very confused dragon looked down at the hands on her scaly waist, and then looked at him, her pupils dilating despite the evident danger.

"What did you just say?" She asked dumbly. He didn't answer her immediately, and Spyra yelped when the alien knelt down, and before she knew it, there was a cool-skinned, hairy arm sweeping under her belly, and curling around her shoulder.

She gasped as he lifted her off the ground with a pained grunt and hauled her over his shoulder. He turned and started sprinting, his face contorting as his heels crunched through the smoldering glass. He ran at a quickened, strange pace, on two legs, bounding strides one footfall after another. Even the Apes didn't run like this. They didn't run so… athletically.

"I've got you."

Spyra held onto his fleshy back, and her breath hitched when his voice crawled up to meet her hearing-holes again. This time, she understood him.

A spear smacked into the earth just behind them. Two more of its kind sailed to their right and left . Spyra struggled as her side stabbed her repeatedly with swells of agony. She supported herself on the alien's shoulder, looking up with bleary eyes as spears and crossbow bolts appeared through the very ash cloud over their heads, raining down on them like hail. The Apes were trying to turn the crater's heart into a kill zone.

The dragoness was just searching for things to gawk at, all to distract herself from the fact that she so was terrified she felt her bladder threatening to void itself in her lap and on the alien's chest. Cringing at the idea, she bobbed with his movements and struggled to get a glimpse at the side of his face.

His features were odd to her- despite all that was happening –they were stubby and round. Soot blackened his otherwise blemishless cheeks and his eyes were as wild as hers, and entirely focused on the direction he was running. He staggered over rocks and vaulted crags in the soil. She couldn't have moved this fast, what with her flank eating her up.

"-S-So," She called over the din of the apocalyptic haze around them. "-fall from the sky often, buddy?"

The creature hefted her over his arm and started clawing at the rim of the crater, digging his fingernails into the tumbling soil. He started to crawl up the rise, grunting, turning beat-red around his face and sweating as he heaved her. She started to slide off his shoulder at one point, and she inadvertently scrambled on his back, her wildly flailing claws ending their journeys by driving their talons into his exposed flesh just beneath his scapula.

"Oops." She winced. The alien barked and snarled, scrabbling up the dirt like a desperate rat.

A spear stood out of the dirt right beside them, and soon the rise of scorched earth resembled a pin-cushion as the Ape's lack of accuracy took hold. Spyra opened her mouth and illuminated the air over both of them with reams of golden flame as she incinerated any spearhead or bolt that was aimed truer.

"Don't people know how to climb where you come from?!" Spyra called, hissing and belching another plume of fire. A spear that would've driven right through his back vanished in a lick of black ash, the cindering head smacking painfully, but uselessly off his skin. He barked again, and Spyra cringed as a blackened, crimson welt started to bloom upon his very delicate flesh. "And jeez', you're like a piece of glass, guy."

The alien snapped something and elbowed her in her good flank.

"-Ouch~! Rawr! You, little-" Spyra's jaw dropped as he mounted the summit.

What kind of noise had that been that came out of her throat? She'd never growled at someone like that before. But something about that rough contact just made her… she didn't know, antsy? Rowdy?

Her hips felt warm against him and that flush was coming back across her face.

What the hell was this alien doing to her?

They both cried out as they tumbled roughly over the lip of the crater, more spears following after them and clattering uselessly off the soil and rocks. Spyra barked as she rolled her gore-wounds in the dirt, then landed on a blackened tree trunk, hard enough for the bark to crack, and of course, right on her new bloody holes.

"-Augh~!" She screamed, writhing like a snake. "-Hooomygawd that fuckin' hurt~!"

"Get up."

Spyra's agony was washed away by his voice again. He scooped her off the tree and slung her over him like a sack of potatoes. Overhead, the air whooshed and the angry cry of a draconic beast echoed across the landscape.

"Find that dragon!" –Shrieked Cynder distantly, the beat of her wings drumming through the smog. "Spread out and find her!"

"Since when was I this popular?" Spyra snuffled, snot running down her nose to mix with the tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. "We gotta' move, alien man. You don't mind if I call ya' that, do you?"

Looking around frantically, the pink creature ran for the nearest line of trees that hadn't been wrecked by the shockwave. They were forced to sprint and hop over a grim outer ring of fallen willows, twisting roots, jagged soil and flickering fires. There were so many fallen logs that the horizon appeared ribbed, like the ridges of a dune.

The whoops and bellows of Apes rushed to meet them. Spyra saw gray furred, lumbering shapes materializing over the bend from whence they came, the Apes rolling, sliding and falling over the debris like a swarm of encroaching ants, tens and tens of them.

Spyra was normally the one who would've chided out some comment about how she could've taken them.

But she'd come to terms with the fact that she was just a tad in over her head as of late. She was quick, but good reflexes wouldn't help you if you were getting swamped by nearly forty monkeys who each had the strength of two of you.

Her alien savior/carrier seemed to have a similar mindset to hers. He exhaled loudly and redoubled his efforts to get away, grunting and kicking with her draped like a limp, purple noodle over his flank.

"I know that this isn't the best time to say," Spyra cried. "but I have a load of questions!"

He ignored her. More crossbow bolts whipped over their heads and planted into logs and boulders and mushrooms that hadn't been vaporized.

The ash cloud lingering like a misting of blood over the Ape army parted and revealed what Spyra at first thought was a massive bat descending towards them. However, as soon as she flexed her crimson wings backward, diving, Cynder's identity became all too apparent.

The Cloud Ripper appeared to be very angry with them if Spyra didn't know any better. Her white eyes were narrowed with this blood-rage that made Spyra shiver inside her own coat.

"There you are!" Cynder sang, she spread her wingspan and buffered her approach, her mouth opening with a fanged smile, as more energy billowed in the back of her throat. When the arms of her wings pierced the air, it created a shrill, echoing shriek that could be heard for miles.

Terror of the Skies...

Her element she was brewing wasn't red this time. It was a sickly, very bright neon green.

Poison!

"Duck!" Spyra choked.

Her alien obeyed as he leaped over a burning willow trunk. A glistening, green projectile flicked right over their heads. It hit a tree, and immediately began to eat away at the bark as the triangular object exploded and was reduced to a syrupy pile of running acid. Steam rose whilst the wood liquefied.

"This bitch could probably pull keys out of her ass…" Spyra hissed as he ran with her, her side leaking blood down his naked back. "Hey, guy? I'm sorry about the blood."

He grunted and swept underneath a mushroom cap. No sooner had he done so did the mushroom implode into a cluster of spores and flipping, poison-covered chunks. The Cloud Ripper zipped ever closer, only seeable as a quick black shadow as she peppered their path with poison-bolts that burst like green misting grenades.

"I have you now!" Cynder screeched, unfurling her rear talons and dipping her breast lower to catch her prey like a hawk would a mouse.

Spyra's face dropped as she watched the encroaching talons threaten to close around her unprotected face.

Just then, her alien tripped over a root.

She and him fell with a duo of startled cries, and Cynder roared in displeasure as her metallic claws snapped together through empty air. She bucked her wings and left marks all over a willow's flank, flying into the swamp-tree blocking her flight path.

Cynder roared.

She'd lost them!

Spyra and the alien tumbled down a muddy estuary dry-up, rolling, bouncing and pressing together as they passed rapidly between trees, boulder formations and creeper nets that shaded the air over their heads.

She hit a mushroom cap and sprawled over it tiredly, gritting her fangs as the giant bulb of fungus caught her belly. Pwccskkkk~! –went the mushroom. Her talons dug into it and bled white trails of shroom-juice as she dug in and nearly ripped the stalk from its basing. She deflated against the cap and panted in suffering.

At least it had stopped her.

The purple dragoness glanced over and saw the alien tumble over a patch of tall grass and roll to a halt right beside her fungus-stop. Covered in lacerations, bruises, and with trails of her drying, rich dragon blood running down his arm and back, he scrambled to his feet, still naked, and hurried over to her.

If it wasn't for all that had happened, Spyra would've sworn that the day was suddenly going as they always did here. Despite the distant boom of the crash site and the faint crackle of flames, the only thing off was the blackness clogging the skies.

The trees here in this clearing were unaffected and still quite healthy. Methane wisps clouded the humus-blanketed ground and frogs croaked quietly in a nearby green-watered sump. The sun was threatening to breach the edges of the apocalypse cloud looming just behind them.

Cynder's distant, echoing roars were quick though to remind her of her peril.

"….Not afraid of anything…" Spyra chortled quietly, suddenly feeling a whole lot guiltier than she was used to feeling.

The alien's cool hands running down her flank jolted her back to reality. She growled like a startled dog, and swatted one of his wrists with a loud, scale-to-flesh clap~!

The alien quipped something that sounded like an- 'Ow' –and stepped back, gazing at her in confusion behind his drab and white eyes. She had to cough a few times to clear up her throat before speaking.

"-I appreciate the help, buster, but like I said- *cough-cough* -hands off the merchandise…" She snarled, peeling her golden plates off the mushroom. She produced a wet clap as her haunches hit the mud. "...And not for nothing, you could give a 'ness a second to catch her breath. It isn't every day some random, undocumented species runs away with you over their shoulder..."

She clicked her tongue and ran a paw over her gored side, looking down at her cracked, breastplates, where they were now stained with milky-colored mushroom paste from the impact.

"Oh, perfect." She snorted. "I don't look any better than a starved weasel right out of a carcass' guts... or my brother after that Toadwort coughed him up."

She huffed and flicked her wings, casting droplets of heaven-knew what all over the area, some of them flecking onto the creature's bare ankles, which appeared to make him frown.

"It's true, my brother ended up just like this a little while ago, and I laughed at him for it." Spyra picked a leaf from behind the crease of her nostril and blew it from her fingers. "These are my swamps. I'm supposed to know everything that goes on in them."

The alien lowered his hands and raised a hairy brow at her, panting, with sweat glistening off his form. He was evidently still winding down from all the running. Spyra couldn't say she blamed him, taking a long moment to examine him in the quiet din of the marsh. The skin covering his body glinted in the dull light and was sheened with perspiration. Chords of tight muscle wound beneath the flesh of his limbs, leaving him narrow-waisted, but obviously built. The dragoness slapped her chops and discovered herself ogling.

"-Uhm," Spyra blushed and turned away. "-sorry, I don't normally stare at people."

And she normally didn't apologize so readily to anyone outside her family. Today was weird.

"At least we got away." Spyra nursed her side and looked around. "I know where we are too. This is one of the natural causeways just on the edges of where I make my rounds. Cynder shouldn't be able to see us from the air down here, the canopy's too thick."

She looked back at the alien.

"But now how the heck am I supposed to explain you?" She said, pointing a talon at him. "Maybe you're a hallucination! I must be going delusional or something. Too much time around the mushrooms, just like uncle Ditterweight used to say..."

Her otherworldly companion made to open his mouth, but a sharp, manic cackle from the shivering dragoness interrupted him.

"-Haha~! Ha!" Spyra hugged herself, rocking on the ground a little bit. "Ohmyfuckinggod… I am losing my miiiinnnnddddd~…" –She moaned.

"-Uhm-" –Crawled from the alien's throat.

"-And that isn't even the worst of it! You dig this? That big, evil goth-slut back there knows about my village! She knows about my family! My home! And now I… I'm stuck out here… too far away to warn them…" Spyra's fetal rocking stopped, and the dragon appeared to deflate, almost melting into the earth. Her long tail curled ominously over her ankles. Her purple eyes dilated as she suddenly felt very cold. "…I… I probably just killed my mom, and my dad, and my stupid, fat-head brother and I… I can't save them…"

Nothing more had to be said. Spyra stewed in that silence, staring at the muddy ground, covered in blood, dirt and ash. She felt all of the last hour or so crash down on her in one rushing advance. She shivered from paw to horn, and a single tear broke through the barricades of her resolve to wander down her purple cheek.

The alien took a step closer but faltered. He was left shifting on his heels, a defeated sigh escaping him as he held a hand out and then retracted it. The two of them didn't move.

"…For an alien, you're awfully quiet." He blinked when Spyra spoke again, running a knuckle over her snout and leaving a slug-trail of snot on her arm. "What's the matter? Asteroid impact got your tongue? Oh, gimme' a break, who am I kidding? For all I know, you came down here to kill and eat people."

"-Uhm-" –He started.

"You couldn't get an easier meal, alien man." Spyra winced as more blood leaked out her gore-holes. She was lightheaded now, her vision blurry on the edges of its sphere. She had a headache and felt very thirsty. All she could do was slap her dry tongue and cough. "Go on. Use your mind powers and fry my brain or something… I'd probably deserve it after what I just did, or… what I didn't do."

She made eye contact with him from the ground, snorted, and then looked down at his crotch.

"…Wait a second, don't tell me; you came down here to do that to people instead of eating them, didn't you?"

He gasped and snatched a large frond-leaf off a fern. It at least shielded everything below his hairy navel.

"That would be my luck, getting saved by a space-rapist alien." She rolled her eyes, doting on the frond and for some reason wishing he'd take it off. "Is that what you do? You invade from the heavens and make off with unwilling victims? Just tell me now, it'll make the impact easier."

"…No."

Her head peeked as he spoke, his tone sounding indignant, meek, for its strange form. It was deep, but moderate, slightly gravelly and… tuned all at once. Where the Apes were guttural, dragonflies were squeaky, and she was daggered, feminine and gruff, he was… average. He sounded mediated.

"No, I'm not here to rape or eat anyone." He mumbled in plain common, Spyra watching as his quaint lips moved and he pressed the leaf tighter to his junk.

"So you can talk though." She cocked her head.

"Of course I can talk."

"Well how am I supposed to know? You almost crushed me riding down from the sky's axis on a mother fucking asteroid, dude."

"It wasn't-" He cut himself off, fiddling with the leaf as he sighed again. "-it wasn't supposed to happen like… like the way it did."

"I dunno', how do you muff up an atmospheric impact?" She shrugged with her wings. "What are you?"

"Alive." He grumbled, slapping the mud as he sat on the ground in front of her, his shaking hand clenching over his forehead as he tried to relax. "I'm alive and that's all that matters to me right now."

"I'm so happy that you're at least this comfortable right now." Spyra sifted closer to him in fascination, her terrified eyes wide like dinner plates as she scrutinized him. "…Erm, I didn't mean to claw your back earlier, or bleed on you and stuff, I… uhm… and thanks, for, ya' know, carrying me to safety and…"

"Where am I?"

"Pardon?"

"What world is this? What is the name of this land?" He let his hand slide down his face, his eyes questioning.

"The world? What other world is there? And, what, you mean the swamp? It's the swamp. It's all I've ever known." Spyra rattled out a tiny groan of pain. She gripped her flank. "…I… wow, I don't… I don't feel well…"

"Your wounds." He startled her by slapping himself on the forehead. He scrambled around her and knelt in the mud, leaning down to examine her purple flank. "Let me see them."

"It's just a scratch." She drunkenly swatted at him, groaning as he gripped her warm hide and nudged the dragon over to expose more of her ribs and her golden plated belly curve. "-Stop it. See? I knew it. You're a fuckin' rape alien."

"You've lost too much blood." He raised a hand from her flank and grimly stared at it. His palm was glistening crimson. "I need to fix you."

"…So you do have mind powers…" She smiled toothily as he hoisted her up on his shoulder again.

"Nope." The man grunted. "Just some wisely applied expertise from minds broader than mine."


{🐉}


{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: A Swamp Hide and Seek}


Spyra's throat flexed as she drank the refreshing swill of water. At her direction, the alien had found a clean reservoir lane leading into a dumpoff at a nearby sump. The water trails that flowed from the Forbidden Funguswood were always safe to drink where the ponds and stagnant sumps weren't. His pink fingers clenched the underside of a clamshell that he had found and cleaned on the side of the rocks. She coughed as some of the water went down the wrong pipe.

"Better?" He muttered, taking the shell back and returning to his work.

"Tastes like stone." She slapped her snake-tongue wetly, craning over her shoulder to coo in interest at what he was doing. "What's all that stuff, alien man?"

He was skinning the vein of a frond leaf with his fingernails and a stick he had acquired, scouring the vein like it was a corn cob until it was relatively streamlined.

"Fern leaves." He shrugged, tying the vein around another of its kind, glancing worriedly at the gore-holes. The brook running down the rocks just beside them babbled and slapped quietly over their words.

"Way to go, genius, there's no pulling the wool over your eyes." She huffed.

"It's just to stop the bleeding." He was talking with his mouth full. He spit out a wad of chewed root pulp and stuck the mushy, gross substance over the center hole. He saw her rearing back to yell at him and shook his head. "Relax."

"You just drooled all over me!" She whined in displeasure, her wings unfurling and spreading out behind her. "That's gross!"

"I'm sorry." He said, sticking more of the chewed pulp around the wounds before applying another leaf- one not skinned –and lightly compressing it until it stuck.

"That wasn't your dick-leaf was it?"

He smiled and sifted his knee aside a little bit, revealing the same frond he'd used earlier, much to her relief.

"Sit up, I need to secure this." He ordered.

She complied, and the reptile immediately whined when his cool hands slipped under her waist and snaked the long tethered line of frond-veins he had turned into a series of makeshift ropes.

She supported herself over the ground painfully, waiting for him to loop it once, twice, and then a total of four times around her lithe torso. On the last bend, he lightly pushed her back down and began to tie the two halves together, yanking them tightly, so that the frond covering her ribs crumpled loudly against four separate compression points. He pressed his palms against it for a moment and held it there.

Spyra breathed out of her mouth, her eyes dancing over the pink, fleshy hands and arms of his form. They settled on his face, and the dragoness felt her wings preening in a response beyond her own volition. She swallowed, breathless at the mysterious creature touching and helping her.

"If you're not gonna' tell me what you are, can I least have a name?"

He glanced at her, conflicted, as he made to speak.

"I'm human." He said.

"What's a hu-man?"

"Human. Two legs, two arms, upright, soft skin, hair in all the right places." He chuckled. "Too many of us to count too."

"Really?" She blinked, her tail flapping on the ground like an interested cat's. "There's more of you coming? The same way?"

"No." He answered quickly. "No, not at all. I'm… I don't know what I'm-"

Spyra cocked her head when he silenced himself and took his hands off the frond.

"…I don't have many answers about this myself." He finally relented. "Look, we can talk more about this later, but right now, I need to get you serious medical treatment. This isn't going to work for long. You said you had a village somewhere out here? I need you to lead me to it so they can help you."

"We're too far away." Spyra swallowed. "We'd never get there this close to the Forbidden Funguswood before nightfall. And now all those monkeys, those Apes are looking for us. I can't risk leading them back to my home, back to my family."

"Other dragons?" He asked, bending and aiming a hand at her underside. "Hold on."

"Dragon-flies~!" –She yelped in pain. He hoisted her with a grunt over his arm, and as he turned, she was swiveled to face the brook stream. She watched it slap over the rocks as he started stepping away from it.

"Dragonflies?" He grunted.

"I was raised by them... you and that black dragon chasing us are the first people I've ever met who were the same size as me..." Spyra clutched him tightly, kneading her paws in his skin experimentally. "-And how do you know I'm a dragon if you aren't from here?"

"It's complicated. Which way?"

"You're walking in it." She sighed in defeat. "I can't lead these bastards back to my village, alien man, human man, whatever the hell you are… I kindly request that you set me down and let me croak instead."

"None of this makes sense." He was muttering to himself, his eyes scanning the clear gray sky above as he hiked over the rocks. "I shouldn't have been the only one to come down. They must have sent the others in-"

Bckkmmmmmmm~! –another, very familiar break of thunder.

"Aw shit, you liar." Spyra watched as another comet, a smaller one, careened farther to their flank. It shot through the sky and impacted due west with an earth-shattering rumble and flash of distant amber. "There are more of you."

"Not quite." He altered his course and started trekking in the newest arrival's direction. "But at least we just got a new, and closer solution to your little bandage problem."

"Closer solution? What are you talking about!" Spyra cried, beating her fist into his back. "This whole day has gone down the latrine-pit! Something make sense!"

"Shush. You're gonna' bring your smelly friends and that red and black piece of ass back here in a hurry." He chuckled.

"I can't hear you when you're mumbling, hu-man."

"Forget it." He cleared his throat. "Just sit tight and let me get you in working order. Then, I can figure out where the heck I am and how I can fix all of this."

"The alien says so simply." Spyra groaned. "-I think I'm gonna' barf."

"Hold on." He started running. "Just keep awake and hold on."


{🐉}