Dragon(s)layer
5
Metal Reminders
"Hold out your paw. Just like that. Now watch." Firefly said, before he slapped a glob of something warm, slimy and wet into Spyra's palm.
"-Eew." She crinkled her snout and leaned in closer to gaze through the darkness. "You know that if this is an Anteater turd, I'll drown you in the swamp."
"You can see in the dark!" Firefly laughed, his wings resonating like paper caught in the wind as he zipped down to the floor and scooped up another handful. "What does it look like to you?"
"Mud."
"C'mon, sis'."
"I dunno', kind of like…" Spyra squinted and sniffed at the strange goop, snorting at the rubbery scent. "…amber? It looks like sap."
"Dingdingding! We have a winner." Firefly treated the material like he was packing a snowball, mashing it between his chitinous little fingers with sordid plops. What was a pinch of the stuff to Spyra was a whole armful to him. "Legends have been going around the village since before even mom or dad were born. Other dragonflies say that the sap of the Moon Trees is blessed with healing energy and possessed by the spirits of animals."
Spyra noted his pause, and just when she opened her mouth to ask him what he was waiting for, the darkness of her brother's chamber began to recede in place of an eerie, white light.
"Woah." She whispered. The sap was glowing, reacting to the warm touch of a living being, or, perhaps merely being handled. It began to change from a syrupy hue of orange-brown to a vibrant, hollow, almost milky cream. The dragoness stared down at the mushy, dripping wad of sap, smiling.
"Spooky, huh?" Firefly sounded very pleased with himself as his own batch began to light up. "When I grew out of nyphhood, the pond I was in had tens of Moon Trees feeding off the reservoirs in the mud. They leaked sap every time a twig or limb fell off. I used to crawl up the trunks and let it run down my fingers."
"Aren't you just the little librarian." Spyra chortled, letting the pile wiggle on her palm like a stack of gelatin. It made the light playing around her bounce and dance, like she was rotating a crystal globe that was reflecting the cast of a torch. "How did you know it would glow?"
"Oh I didn't!" Firefly shook his head, his antenna whipping. "I never really noticed it when I played with the stuff during the day. But I did it at night and wham! Glowing sap!"
"What did you do?"
"I fell out of the tree of course. No wings back then, remember?"
They both laughed, hushing and hissing at each other so as not to disturb their parents in the next chamber over, who were sound asleep.
"I love exploring." Spyra breathed when they finally calmed down. She doted on the sap in her claw, letting it drip from her talons to leave speckles of embering white on the black floor between them. "We always find the coolest stuff out here, like giant bugs and those nasty Toadwort thingies."
"Yeah," Firefly shivered, casting a small cloud of glowing gold dust from his wings involuntarily. "all the cool only somewhat-terrifying stuff that may or may not haunt me until my dying day, I hear you."
"What was it like being in the pond?"
"Like, as a nymph?"
"Yeah." Spyra's eyes melded from the glowing, jiggling sap onto her adoptive brother. "It had to be scary, right? And a lot different from being able to fly."
"Being in the water was a learning experience." Firefly sort of blurted out from nowhere, earning a surprised blink from the dragon. He must have looked awfully wise in that moment to the hatchling, but he was sure to keep it all hush-hush that he was only repeating what his own father had said to him when he'd asked the same question. "It teaches you about not being permanent in your lifestyle."
"I don't understand." Spyra cutely pushed one of her little paws into her cheek scales, squishing it around her knuckles as she blushed and giggled. "What's that got to do with anything, bro'?"
"Everything changes." Firefly shrugged. "Sticking to habit isn't productive, and life isn't really interesting or growing if things always stay the same. Imagine if that egg we found you in ended up with… uhm…"
Firefly clicked his mandibles as he worked around a comparison, his larger draconic sibling cocking her salamander-like head as she waited patiently. She was so pudgy as a hatchling. Her horns hadn't even grown in yet, and were still two, barely burgeoning little pegs of bronze on the back of her skull.
"…with Moon Trees!" He snapped his fingers, gesturing to the sap. Spyra looked down at it and sniffed it again, snorting. "Imagine if trees raised you to be nothing but a tree! And all you did all day long was sit around and try to catch the rays of the sun. That would suck."
"….that would suck…" Spyra mumbled in fascination. "…no more exploring? If I was a tree?"
"Never for as long as you lived. –Or, grew, I guess."
"That's terrible." Spyra shook her head and smiled at him. "I couldn't live without being able to move. I'm gonna' be an adventurer, bro', and figure out this whole swamp. I'm gonna' go out there, and find new things, just like you found this sap."
She flicked it at him, and Firefly chuckled as the glowing goop flecked on his wings and his narrow chest plates.
"I'll do it, even if it kills me."
{🐉}
{Halo Wars OST: Flollo}
Spyra's eyes snapped open. She gasped and clenched at her ribs, her vision bobbing, a sloping, creamy colored back with dried rivers of blood running down it taking up everything below her chin.
I remember that stupid sap. I thought Firefly had slapped shit in my hand back then.
"Are you still awake?" –Droned the human's voice from behind her. "How are you feeling?"
"I feel-" Spyra's cheeks bulged and she hinged over his back, vomiting loudly as the white-colored, bile-like contents of her stomach plopped wetly on the ground right behind the alien's calves. She wretched until her gut was empty, and even then, dry heaves hoarsely kicked afterward. They aggravated her flame-glands, and caused sparks to lick past her teeth.
"That good I see." He grimaced.
"…D-Did I fall asleep?" She blubbered, watching as her pool of puke gained distance from them whilst her carrier jogged through the grass.
"You were talking just fine a few seconds ago." She felt his cool cheek pressing against her flank as his jaw moved. She craned past her elbow and watched the black matt of hair capping his head, her mind swimming as the brief dream replayed itself in her mind. "We're almost there."
"…Don't you worry about me, asteroid-man, you've got your own problems." Spyra winced as the skyline above their heads echoed with another nearby shriek that reverberated across the entire swamp.
The trees and mushroom stalks hanging over them loomed like ill-intending specters, shielding them as doubly as blinding them as to the whereabouts of the Cloud Ripper. Cynder had never stopped the chase, and every time a twig snapped, or the canopy shifted, it seemed that she was getting closer and closer to finding them.
They could hear the Apes too, gutturally screaming and hawing out into the marshes. A war horn etched its death-like trill through the trees, and the howls of the Apes seemed to double in number.
"…That's what I get for trying to follow through with childhood promises." Spyra snorted, wristing snot off her snout.
"What?" He grunted, climbing over a mushroom patch, and scattering the swarm of lantern bugs that had been nesting underneath the caps. Spyra chuckled as she tasted blood, and watched the luminescent, fire-glowing abdomens of the fist-sized insects. They scattered like an upwards traveling colony of snowflakes, vanishing into the canopy above.
"It's nothing. So tell me why the sky is falling, alien-man." Spyra nudged his face with her tail. "First you, and then what? You said there aren't more of you, and you said there aren't any big alien monsters following you. What was in the second rock?"
"They aren't rocks." He rebuked. "They're… ehm…"
"Explain it however you like, man, it's not like today can sound any weirder than it's already been."
"They're containment units." He specified awkwardly, finding a natural pathway, he wound between some trees and passed under the shadow of an immense mushroom rising nearly twenty-six stories into the gray sky above, it shielded them in dull shade-hue and its base was swarmed with dancing clouds of lantern bugs on early mating flights. "I'm not supposed to be here at the moment, or really at all. I'd tell you that it's a relief to me that they dropped me someplace with sentient life, but after what you've been through…"
His attempt at humor transformed into him merely letting the sentence hang out there. He cleared his throat, wincing as he waded, bare-foot, through a shallow reservoir drift. The green water made him wary of leeches and other marsh-born pests.
"-It doesn't matter, and it isn't your problem."
"Nu-uh, it is my problem now. You didn't hear what I heard. I spied on those Apes before you came. They're going after my village when they're done chasing us down and hacking us into tiny dragon-giblets and alien cutlets." She adjusted on his shoulder.
"Well, that isn't my problem." He darkly reminded, and she caught just a glimpse of his drab-irised eye as he glared at her.
"So, like, what, you're gonna' take me to this second rock-thing, fix me and then leave me out here?" Spyra gawked.
"You know this swamp better than I do." He said. "You have your war and I have mine."
"War? Who said anything about war?" She snorted. "Is that what this is all about? You're from the North, aren't you? You work for the dragons up in Warfang and are here to fight these people."
She snaked her tail in his face when he ignored her, catching his attention as he hissed in annoyance.
"What is it like there? How many other dragons are there? How many other races live in the Northern City? I've never heard about hu-mans being there. But what do I know? I'm just some hick caught in the center." She nagged. "Do the other dragons there look like me?"
"I've never been to anywhere called Warfang." He grumbled. "I've never been anywhere on your world before. Places like it? Sure, once or twice, I guess before those assholes tossed my route into whack when I went through that gate."
"Did you forget that you have a second party over your shoulder?" She sighed tiredly, wincing at more pain from her flank. "You're ranting."
"I'm not affiliated with any north, south, west or east or any other direction or place or thing here. I'm here by accident. Or by really, really foul play. When I mean foul, I mean particularly foul. Foulness from something beyond either of us, that you would be wise to stay away from the moment I heal you and send you off." He explained sternly.
"You're making this sound exciting." She shivered. "So once we reach the crash site, then what?"
"Then nothing. You go home, and I lead these monsters away from your family and friends. You live the rest of your days soundly in some mud-hut and I go off and fight the boogeyman." He said. "There is no what. There is you go your way, and I go mine. Yes, I apologize for almost coming down on your head in a fiery death rock-"
"I thought they weren't rocks, stellar-boi'." She chided like a venomous feline.
"-A fiery containment pod." He corrected. "-But alas, I have very powerful, evil things trying to kill me across way more worlds than just yours, and frankly, I do not have time to get tied up with natives."
"Ooo, natives, says the alien. Speakin' about us like we're some primitive, spear-chucking savages who draw murals with our own crap and fuck our mothers to produce incestuous bastards." Spyra rolled her eyes. "And yes, I know I just described ninety-percent of the only organisms you've run into so far during your brief stay in my swamps, but not everyone down here is like that!"
"I suppose you're proof."
"Hell to the yeah I'm proof, dude. I'm the finest proof you are gettin' around these slimy parts." Spyra creased her lower chop, slapping him on the side of his head with her tail and making him grunt. "Proof enough of intelligence and perception."
"Really perceptive of you to dodge whatever gored you." He scoffed, grinning at her over his shoulder and her shapely dragon-thigh.
"Dick move, man, real dick move." She guffawed, watching his butt cheeks below her as they wiggled with each step he took. Spyra developed a muzzle-grin. "I've been wondering what dudes look like naked for a long time."
"Mm-hm." He grumbled dejectedly. "Can you stop staring at my ass, please?"
"But it's so perky~." She said sweetly, reaching down and copping a feel on his left cheek. "-Honk."
"Stop!" He barked, his movements faltering as he began to break a sweat. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to carry you without you messing around?"
"Shut your face, buddy! I'm a very pissed off female with hormones and virginity." She tail-whipped his face again. Thwack~! "-Besides, a feel is the least you could give me after almost knocking my block off with a fucking containment unit from sky-hell."
He cleared a copse of trees and immediately, the two of them noticed a rise in the temperature. The crackle of flames became louder, and he had to walk around several fallen trees and the incinerated, liquefying remains of a huge mushroom that had been split down its side and blackened.
Spyra craned over to watch as he slid down the embankment of a similar crater to the one his asteroid had made farther behind them. This impact crater was much smaller, not even a quarter of the size. But that was only in relation to the smaller stature of the object embedded in its heart.
"That's a containment thingie' too?" Spyra asked as he carefully stepped down the ruined, glass-covered earth towards it.
"Yep." The human frowned, his eyes scanning over the lead-colored wad of metal that was half-buried in the crater's pupil. "You okay to walk now?" He asked, his legs trembling.
"Yeah, I can hobble-" Spyra gasped as he slid her down immediately and deposited her on her good side, stepping over her and towards the object without even a glance. "…Are all hu-mans such assholes?" She called back, her serpentine tongue flicking out the tip of her snout in agitation.
"Only the smart ones." He mumbled, stepping over some crushed glass. The pod was only half the size of the first one. Without fear, despite the wavering presence of heat-bands dancing up and down the metal, he bent lower, and touched his fingers to the unit, running them along its smooth surface, remarkably unblemished despite the atmospheric breach and impact.
The dragoness squeaked in pain as she scooted around to watch him feel-up the asteroid. Laying in the scorched dirt, Spyra raised a brow and sighed, her patience wearing thin as she gripped her chin and tapped her talons.
The human swept his palms everywhere, stepping around to the asteroid's flank, searching for some unseen groove, hole or whatever on the leaden metal.
"Bleeding to death over here." Spyra sang.
"I realized." He quipped back. "I'm working on it."
"…aren't we all?" She muttered, scratching at the frond-bandages he'd made her, and beating her tail in the dirt with displeasure. She looked down at herself and sighed in defeat.
Her beautiful golden belly and breast plating! Ruined. It was cracked all over the place, their edges each rough and hewn from the punishment she'd taken at the black dragoness' claws. She was covered in dirt, Ape blood, her blood, sweat and mud. Her wonderfully saturated purple hide was now dulled and spattered with faint staining and speckling. Lacerations and cuts were everywhere, dabbed among the greater soiling like islands of destruction in a sea of mirth.
Saphide's soap bars would have a hard time rectifying this unholy mess.
Spyra's serpentine tongue snaked out of her mouth as she briefly considered leaning in to groom herself. One look at all the dirt and swamp-piss about her made her reconsider.
Look at me! Dirty and bloody. Dragons are supposed to be regal and elegant! This is beneath me.
Was it ironic that she had just gotten her soap bars earlier today? Now she couldn't even get to them.
"Found it." He called over. The asteroid suddenly jolted in its placement, making her jump.
Earth crunched and metal slid against metal. Spyra- hissing as she nursed her bandages –went slack-jawed as the asteroid unit opened, like a blooming flower.
Previously unseen division lines materialized along its smooth surface. The sphere-like chunk popped ajar, exposing a dark interior as four separate plates folded upwards, down and to the sides, like trap doors. The human clapped his hands and knelt as he dug within the asteroid's contents. As he did so, the leaf that had been clinging to his groin fluttered off in the heat waves. Spyra stared at his junk as he dug into the unit.
Why the hell is it so floppy for?
Why the hell are you, a buxom maiden of the skies, reducing yourself to sizing up an animal? An alien one, no less.
Spyra darted her gaze away immediately.
An animal? Perhaps not, but… she was a dragon. Dragons were beings of supremacy. They were not meant by nature's design to be stricken in such personal matters with lesser creatures.
Not that she had been thinking about anything of the sort. It was just… curious, was all. She'd never seen the opposite sex before, not ones the same size as her. There were dragonflies, sure, but as she had reminded herself of before, she'd be dead before she tried to hook up with a bug.
"Damn it." –The human grumbled as he leaned out of the unit, casting a glare back at its interior whilst he stepped away. "Alright you, stand still."
Spyra gasped as he approached her with a strange object in his hand. It was tube-shaped, with a sharp point sticking out its nose and a curious, blue-colored liquid sloshing around inside its glass contents.
"What is that?" She scooted backwards as he knelt before her. He took her paw in his hand, making her momentarily freeze at the contact.
"It'll fix you." He cryptically grumbled, lining the syringe with her wrist.
Being quadruped, Spyra's one paw was taken up balancing her on the ground and he had the other. So, the human didn't exactly know how to react when he went blind, as four fat, soft digits pressed cooly into his brow, nose and cheeks. He froze.
She had stuck her purple foot in his face and held him back.
"No." She shook her head. "What is that?"
Brushing her toes away, he snorted and blew a leaf off his lips, lowering the syringe and leaning back from her.
"Healing solvent, inside a regen-injection." He said, jiggling the blue liquid inside the tube at her. "It's almost like a… a potion. You people have those down here, right?"
"Only the elders back home." Spyra eyed the syringe wearily. "Potions are magic. I've only seen dragonflies use magic a few times in my whole life. It's a rare and dangerous thing."
"So, what, you're a sage now?" The human held out his hands in appall.
"What? No. Fuck off with that, dude, sages are old, wrinkly and smell like mothballs." Spyra stuck her tongue out. "I just wanted some clarification before you go sticking something inside me."
He actually fucking snickered.
So the alien had humor. Big whoop, for how it had sounded. Though, she supposed that she'd been giving him lip this entire time and it was due course for it to spin back around.
Still, Spyra gasped, a wild, pink flush spreading down her muzzle as he bent his head and chuckled on his knees. She went to raise her paw and back-claw him, but in doing so, she rammed the needle into her wrist with a tiny boink~! –like sound as it pierced the thin scales there.
"Ow." She uttered, looking down at the syringe as if she had forgotten it was there. He pressed the hammer down and a small portion of the blue liquid vanished as it pumped into her. "Asshole."
"Who? Me or you?" He grinned, sliding the syringe back and patting her wrist. He nodded at the makeshift bandages he'd made her and stepped back towards the opened unit. "Give it a few minutes and don't move."
"Yeah yeah yeah, I got it the first time…" The dragoness huffed, tenderly padding her wrist in her talons. She watched him delve back into the pod and waited curiously to see what would happen. "…So what's this war that you're in that doesn't involve Warfang?"
"None of your business." He called over the din of crackling fires nearby. There was so much smog clouding above them that she couldn't see the sky. The crater was bleeding up into the atmosphere. They would need to move soon, as undoubtedly Cynder would see that from her place in the clouds. "God damn it."
"Why do you keep saying that?"
"There's… things missing." He rolled his wrist, items clattering around inside the unit as he doubled over and shoved everything from his mid-back and up into the darkened space within. Clunk~! –wrapped his head against the roof. "-Son of a-!"
The dragoness' wings fluttered and she giggled at him. Suddenly, a cool feeling running down her flank tickled her. She reached over and grimly peeled the leaf bandage off herself, wincing as coagulating, brown blood clung to it and her scales. She inhaled sharply when she saw what was underneath.
The wound was gone!
"-What the- h-how-?!" She stammered, kicking her rear legs and reaching over to run her paws over the purple scales there. Stained with blood as they were, the ragged holes had vanished. It was like nothing had happened. And she felt better too. Still sore, still woozy, but undeniably better. "-Magic…" –She whispered in awe.
"It's not magic."
Spyra gawked as his dark form stepped away from the asteroid unit. She blinked. His creamy skin was now covered in a black sleeve of reflective fabric. A pair of heavy rubberized boots with heel plating obscured his feet, and he held in his hands a device that was unlike anything she'd ever seen.
"W-What's that?" She gulped, nodding as she rose to her feet.
The human yanked back the bolt and squeezed his gloved fingers on the handle of the black weapon. It was vaguely ribbed, curvaceous, forming into a runic L with its longer sheathe pointed up for the sky.
Ch-chung~! –went a mechanism inside, making Spyra yip.
"Technology." He confirmed with a tiny grin.
{🐉}
{Black Mesa Soundtrack: Black Mesa Theme - Mesa Remix}
"If this were three years ago, and I had been told by an outside party about what I have witnessed here today, I would have scoffed that party with jubilant laughter and quite personal insults. Rue the day, though! Because guess what I saw? Inconceivable. Damn and blast. Do you know what this means, sir?"
Tinker stared at his chieftain with a wild expression. The mechanic was on the verge of drooling, his excited rants bouncing around the willow trees without pause or concern. Such was his impassioned, very vocal consideration, that he was completely ignorant to Visigoth's disdainful glare.
"It means that I garner shame." The massive Ape rolled his tusks, grimacing as one of his ugly assistants dressed the various claw-borne lacerations mottling down his muscular breast. In total, five other tribesmen were scurrying about with rags, buckets of cleaning water and bandage wraps. The fifth primate was meticulously unbolting and unhooking the various plates and chainmail skirts making Visigoth's attire, cooing in wonder at the baubles its lower caste hopelessly excluded it from ever owning. "That creature took me completely by surprise."
"Surprise indeed! Did you see how fast it moved? It was like greased lightning." Tinker breathed. Visigoth gnashed his cracked teeth and growled.
"Do you have your salve or not?"
"Ah, yes of course." Tinker jumped and snatched a bottle hanging from one of the many belts tethered around his waist. The teardrop-shaped glass contained a clear, foul-smelling liquid inside that bubbled and popped, like seltzer water. "Capital that the beakers were cleaned properly just this morning. It's a fresh batch too! No stagnation whatsoever."
Visigoth used a thumb talon to pop the little cork off, before tipping his head back and draining the entirety of the contents with a few sordid gulps. He rumbled and dropped the bottle uncaringly at his feet, where Tinker scurried over to collect it. The Chieftain would never admit it, but he hated what was happening to his body. He was old. The oldest of the various Ape tribe Chieftains. He was being forced to rely more and more on Tinker's homebrew potions and elixirs.
"Well?" Tinker drummed his fingers expectantly on the glass, eyeing his lord like a chef awaiting a customer's word on his cooking.
Visigoth could feel the flesh reknitting as the elixir worked its literal magic. Tinker was the only Ape in the tribe who could forge potions, and Visigoth was the only Ape important enough to enjoy their benefits. Some of his assistants gave off tiny coos of wonder as they cleaned and groomed him, watching cuts seal themselves on their own accord.
"And the other?" The Chieftain rolled his jaw, tongue running over his shattered fangs.
"Here, sir." Tinker sounded a little disappointed as he unclipped a little vial from another belt. "You'll have to rinse this one around quite a bit, just enough to gather in every effected recess."
Visigoth tipped the vial's contents in and started to use it like one would use mouthwash. He snorted when actual steam started to build in his mouth, and his gums began to tingle. Tinker quickly waved a hand and mouthed- 'You have to keep your chops closed!' -before stepping back.
The old Chieftain waited a moment and then swallowed. He ran his tongue testingly over his fangs.
Not a crack or break detectable.
"You work wonders, Tinker." Visigoth admitted quietly, nasally puffing away the last lick of steam. "However, restitched flesh and regrown teeth do not suffice for my shame. I was beaten in singular combat by a dragon."
"Shame for encountering a beast of legend?" Tinker's yellow fangs were hidden just a second later as he realized the depth of his jocular intent. His monkey-grin was eviscerated when the look of an opened, overfed metal forge swam upon Visigoth's face like a writhing leech.
The Chieftain was so quick that the Ape died and Tinker didn't even know what had happened. The neck bones were always brittle, despite their species' bulk. The poor fellow never would understand that his life was ended purely out of Tinker's value. Crack~! –and the body that Visigoth had snatched and lifted three feet in the air jolted outwards, the worker's limbs extending like he'd been electrocuted.
Visigoth snarled and opened his fingers, letting his subordinate's corpse crumple at Tinker's feet like a strewn sack of scrap. The remaining four labor-chimps leaped back with startled hoots and screeches, their eyes wide with panic as they focused on their terrifying leader.
"Your mind is worth more than my pride." Visigoth trembled, him struggling to maintain any semblance of composure whilst he towered above Tinker. The defeat earlier today had driven him over a proverbial edge. Even the meekest slights were liable to drive him to kill. "So it is deemed by the Dark Mistress, voices with more sway than my own. But I swear on the lineage of our ancestors, Tinker, if you so much as humor a snicker over my ordeal, I shall rip your spinal column out through your rectum."
"A-As you will, my lord." Tinker's monocle fell out and pattered somewhere on the dirt. He held up his paws and shrunk back, his filthy fur bristling like a startled cat's. "My sincerest apologies. I meant no offense even in the slightest. The weight, you see, of what we have uncovered has made me delusional and-"
"Speak." Visigoth howled, causing every Ape surrounding him to leap a foot in the air. The four workers tried to ignore the twitching corpse of their fellow and set back to work.
Tinker swallowed and chanced a final glance at the body. The worker's face was alight with surprise, over anything else. His fanged teeth were revealed in a silent, eternal cry of shock, his eyes open and wide, locked on the gray, soot-filled heavens above.
"Your patience is too gracious to remain with me." Tinker smartly admitted, forcing himself to look his master in the eye. "I will forgo any further unintended elongations of lore. But sir, this intruder that we have met today is a very unique sort of dragon."
"Obviously." Visigoth hissed, cleaning rags whispering against his fur. "Faster than most, and slippery. Quite content with life as a swamp-rodent. The creature is skilled at avoiding larger prey and striking where her foe is most vulnerable."
Visigoth grimly muttered with his ashen voice, his eyes running down the Ape he had murdered that lay between him and Tinker. He dared a painful smile and snorted laughter. "She is so much alike to the boar, my Beast of Rite as a pup."
"Your first step to chiefdom, my lord." Tinker bowed very low, until his palms were upon the dirt. "Over the course of fifteen nights and days you trekked the cold forests and brought home the largest bull ever slain in the history of our people. A mighty fight that you overcame through your grandeur and strength."
"Strength." Visigoth curled back his lips, snarling at his own hand as the mechanic's words sunk in. "Something that cannot falter in the face of a new enemy. Back then I had never encountered a boar the size of fifteen Apes, and while I failed many a time as I tracked that animal, I still succeeded. I nearly died."
"So too must the unfortunate trials of first contact, as they say; prevail." Tinker nodded enthusiastically. "You shall flay this dragon of her own skin during your next encounter."
"I have not tasted dragonflesh in weeks." Visigoth cast a loving blink towards the massive shoulder pauldrons that were polished by two of his servants nearby. Their vaguely elongated stances shown them as draconic pieces of armor. The open-faced helmets of two mighty Warfangian champions that Visigoth had beheaded each in individual combat. Both of those kills had been career heights since his people's tribes had been inducted into the Dark Mistress' armies.
It had been longer than the last time he had actually feasted on dragons stuck through spits. It was culturally significant for Apes to ritualistically eat the remains of fearsome foes. It was why Ape units in Malefora's armies had no such thing as the word 'prisoners' in their already limited vocabularies. Might made right. Those who lost to the stronger would nourish their betters. As was the way of nature and ultimately the way this world should be resculpted.
"Tell me of this dragon." Visigoth said. "What significance do you claim to know?"
"She is purple." Tinker stated, and Visigoth raised a brow. "It's the color of her coat. Northern legends all speak to a time of prophecy, where there might be a purple savior to spell the end of this war and rid the realms of evil."
"You're telling me that this she-drake is the foretold Purple Dragon of yore?"
"Capital! I could not have described it better myself." Tinker nodded. "Yes, sir. There is no such thing as a dragon with purple scales that is of any insignificance. My library is vast, much of it pilfered, and so it is not only my word, but the word of our enemies and our more elusive allies."
"The wyrms up in the volcano." Visigoth nodded. "They all bear the same blood. Cynder has to know."
"Undoubtedly she already does, sir." Tinker stepped closer, cringing as he moved around the dead worker, and leaned close to Visigoth's imposing form. "The Mistress' fascination with the destruction of her foes was withheld! Did you witness her hunger? Madness, that! She'll tear this entire swamp apart before she allows the Purple Dragon to escape her clutches. If anything is to be said of prophecy, it is that that dragon will spell not only the Dark One's doom but hers as well."
As if on cue, the ground trembled and a blastwave of dust washed from the clearing nearby. The atmosphere cracked under a high-pitched screech of indignant anger. Wood snapped, and Tinker flinched as a willow tree snapped at the base and was cast further into the swamp, like it was a weightless toothpick.
"Ah." Tinker reached down and plucked his monocle off the ground, squinting as he fixed it back over his eye. "The Mistress is upset."
"What gave that away?" Visigoth sighed.
"A Purple Dragon~!" Cynder ranted, her black form sweeping into the clearing like a shadowy serpent. Her wings were extended, her breast pumped outwards, and a general appearance of flustered horror was present all down her body. "The largest hoard of Mana Crystals found in one spot, the closest I have come to possessing an instantaneous key to leaving this wretched swamp, was foiled by a Purple Dragon!"
Cynder paused, heaving.
"I was breathed upon in lesser-fire by a Purple Dragon~!" She screamed hoarsely, making Tinker wince.
"Ah, the crystals." The mechanic muttered lowly, earning a growl from Visigoth. "In all my excitement, I seem to have forgotten the original reason we had come here for."
"Hey, guys! I found a piece!" –Called an Ape warrior nearby. He lifted his arm, a small, glowing green Mana-shard clenched in his fingers.
Pffffttt~! –a flash of magic and a rush of Cynder's Wind element sent the Ape flipping listlessly through the air, before he bounced raggedly off the flat of a tree trunk. The impact sounded like the very low, hollow report of a cannon.
Cynder's chops quivered as she dropped her combat stance and whipped around, resuming her pacing and snarling.
"I was unable to apprehend the creature, Mistress," Visigoth immediately voiced aloud, bowing slightly. "I have failed and suffer full responsibility."
"Forgo blame and dispatch your entire tribe." Cynder ignored him, her bladed, thick tail flicking as she made eye-contact. "And send a runner to Chieftain Jute. Tell him to send reinforcements and to sweep his horde through the southern border."
"My lady," Visigoth lowly growled. He hated Jute and his backward bottomfeeders of Apes, but that wasn't his intent to voice. "the upper reaches of this bog are littered with geyser formations. Jute is a miscreant, but he won't risk bringing any of his infantry through."
"I don't need Jute's infantry." Cynder spat. "I need his Dreadwings. Your tribe is woefully understaffed in riders since the Dark Army was last ejected from the Dragon Realms."
"True." Visigoth begrudgingly nodded. His tribe had not faired well in the last attempted conquest of the forces of order. Being the tribe that specialized in infantry production had its tradeoffs. Malefora and Cynder always deployed Visigoth's boys as shock troops, and that usually entailed higher casualties.
The Chieftain barked, and a nearby Ape soldier scurried away on all fours to carry the order out.
"Are our intents to comb the entire swamp? The Dark One will be displeased if we depopulate the front lines. And, do we not have to seek out the insect villages further towards the arctic waters? We need more slaves to process the crystals we still have faster."
"Don't you think I know all of that?" Cynder grumbled. She kept pacing, snorting furiously at the brooch hanging from her neck. "That attack from the sky, it had to be the Purple Dragoness' doing." She cast an accusing glance at the rising, black smog coming from the asteroid impact site just nearby. Ashes were still raining everywhere and the sky was almost black as night. "My Mistress will charge me with her destruction the moment she learns of her existence, if she is not already aware."
"To cut what is foretold at the neck. Fortuitous!" Tinker chattered. "The prophecies never specified what would happen if their divine savior met with a premature, unfortunate accident."
"That is precisely what we must aim for." Cynder nodded. "The Dreadwings will allow us support from the air and will drastically aid in scouting. This swamp is so overgrown that my infantry formations might as well be wading through waist-deep mud."
Visigoth growled at Cynder's choice of words. Her infantry formations. Pah. They were his men of his tribe. One day, Cynder would realize that very clearly.
"I will continue to search from the skies." Cynder eyed the blackened atmosphere for just a moment before her gaze sagged, and she appeared glossy. "… Chieftain Jute's flights will allow us to crush this little insurrection quickly."
"Yes, mistress." Visigoth grit his teeth, suddenly feeling like he was being compared.
Cynder's foul mood was breached with a silky laugh.
"Clean yourself up, Chieftain, and rally your men. Spread out the search and sweep the entire swamp until the Purple Dragoness is found. Oh, and have your engineer there assemble a work team to unearth the sky-object from that crater. I want it back at the Forlorn so that I may examine it more closely."
The black dragoness swept into the ash above and vanished in the blink of an eye.
"…She wants the asteroid?" Tinker drooled. Visigoth shook his head.
"Aye, and that is a prize your baboon fingers will have no place prying." He said. "Bide your patience, Tinker, one day Cynder will become so blinded by hubris that she'll make herself easy prey. Apes belong to Apes."
{🐉}
{Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion OST- Peace Of Akatosh}
Spyra hopped on her leg, purposefully putting more pressure on it as she watched the sinewy muscles underneath her azure hide ripple and flex. She was prancing, like a pleased deer on her toes.
"I don't know how you did it," She tisked, smiling inanely at where the bloody gore-wounds previously had been. "but this leg feels good as new."
The dragoness giddily turned her gaze on the alien as he moved beside her.
"Spyra likey~." She growled playfully, making him glance at her for an unusually long time. "…What?"
"Nothing." He shook his head, kneeling behind a tree. He pointed the weapon he held- this gun that he spoke of –past the tree's flank and scanned the peat bogs ahead. He noticed her staring at him.
"What are you doing, dude?" She sniffed, standing in the open path.
"Hope we run into more of them and I'll show you." He stated.
"Hell yeah, I can do with some payback time." She nodded, following him in a zig-zag between the peat puddles. He stepped near a fat toad, and the animal croaked, kicking mud flecks as it hopped its burly mass away from his foot in panic. "Hey, you know, you never told me your name."
"I don't… have one." He shook his head, cocking his chin as they reached the foot of a large incline of earth. It rose almost three stories up in the air, a cliff face riddled with hanging creepers and pockets of mushrooms sprouting from aged peninsulas. There was a willow tree the size of a castle growing from the far western flank just over their heads, it curled in the air like a big black vein and spread like a gigantic arboreal cloud at the tip.
One of its roots snaked as a natural walkway down to the peat bog they trekked. He put one foot on it, holding out his arms as he slowly started stepping up the wood plates and towards the surface above.
"So, let me just rewind everything I have on you so far;" Spyra sat on her haunches, watching him with lowered eyelids. "No name, no home, no reason for a falling out of the sky, and a member of a race nobody has ever heard of. Did I miss anything?"
"Sounds quite on the mark." He muttered, halfway up the twisting, man-thick root. "And I told you the reason I fell out of the sky. It wasn't my choice."
"That's stupidly cryptic." She called up to him.
"People are dicks." The human shrugged. "Especially those who have power."
"Yeah, I know~." She purred. "After all, you must get so much attention wherever you're from to just brush off a dragoness in her prime such as myself. You know, other species are supposed to be in awe by us and shit." She pointed to herself with her tail.
"Awestruck as I am, I'm afraid this is where I bid you ado, Ms. Spyra." He reached the top, hopping off the root and looking back down at her from the top of the ridge. He looked almost regal, caught in the glare of the gray sky above from that height. "You seem to be walking quite chipper, and I have to be on my way now."
"You're not just leaving me here." She sweetly smiled. "If there's one thing I can take to heart about what my brother used to tell me: it's that I'm as bad as a rash, and proud of it."
"While that may be," He pressed the gun to his forehead and saluted her off, spinning around and walking north. "-sorry about the crash landing, but I have an army of evil monkeys to lead astray, so if you don't mind, I'll-"
Grass crunched right behind him. He glared over his shoulder as Spyra furled her wings back up and trotted alongside him wordlessly, still wearing that cocky muzzle-grin.
"So," She happily looked up at him, her curvy body postered in confidence. "where to first?"
"Are you stupid?" He asked.
"Hey, fuck you too, homeslice." She winked. "So what are we doing to lead these people away from my home?"
"No. No. Nonono. You're not doing anything." He waved his hand at her, gesturing with his gun back the way they had come. "You're going that-a-way. Now go. Shoo. Buh-bye. Nice knowing you. Just be sure to skirt around the slavering mob of monkeys."
"Ya' think we should blow something up? I love explosions." Spyra hopped on her own heels, licking her teeth. "We could use the methane pockets deep underground! 'Cause I don't know if you noticed, but, uhm…" She coughed, and he jumped as a lick of fire swept past her teeth and highlighted the area for a brief second in brilliant amber. She smiled wider. "-I gots the spice for it. You dig?"
"You're not mentally stable." He pointed.
"Look, I get you're not on the market for a traveling buddy, but I've been searching for a reason to get outta' this swamp since before I knew how to count." She stood up on her hind legs, surprising him as her front paws clasped his shoulders. The dragoness held herself up, her snout inches from his nose as her peculiar, spicy scent wafted in his face. "And now, you're the closest thing I have to answers as to what I'm going to do about a literal army, that's coming after my family as a side dish. If you think you're walking away from me, you've got so much more coming."
The human appeared indecisive. For a moment, he considered pointing the gun at her, but, then again, she didn't know what this thing did, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her or worse. She wasn't his enemy. Far from it. He supposed the help they had afforded each other so far warranted at least some minute ratio of trust value...
But still, as was evident in everything he did, he could never go anywhere without the situation becoming astronomically more complicated.
….So…. what the hell did he do now?
Spyra sighed animatedly when indecision wracked his face. She tapped her talons on his shoulders and leaned back, scrutinizing him chin to forehead.
"The least you could do, after almost landing on my face in a death-rock, is take me with you." She raised a scaly brow.
"What about your village?"
"As long as we get those Apes away from them, they'll be fine. I'll find them later." She smirked. "Besides, they know me. I'll reappear when it's best to."
He didn't know what that meant, but, his options were limited anyhow.
"How long have you been living out here?" He asked.
"Too long, dude. I told you, since I was born." Spyra rolled her eyes, hopping off of him, her claws clicking back on the dirt. She looked over the rise they had crossed back at the peat bogs. From this height, a few miles of the lowland swamp were visible. They could see the crash site. It was a glowing, amber pustule in a sea of browns, tans and greens.
A black shape zigzagging through the forest canopies showed the identity of Cynder as she fanned out to find them. They could hear more Ape war horns drawling out on the wind.
"See over there? Past those foothills? My village is hidden in a valley on the far southern coast, but I've never actually seen the iceberg seas. After that, well…. nobody knows, not even our elders."
"And north? This Warfang you lot keep mentioning?" He looked down at her, adjusting himself to view the scenery.
"That's where the Dragon Realms are supposed to be. I've never been there."
"You were born out here?"
"Not here, no, but, ehm…" She gestured to a small breakage in the canopy past the foothills. The winding presence of what was very obviously a river snaked up northeast. "…my parents found me on that. That river, when I was in my egg, carried me downstream for miles until I washed up on the edges of my village. I was just in a basket."
"You were given up." He said sympathetically.
"I dunno'." She shrugged with her wings, snorting, and looking down at her paws. "-Anyway, none of that matters. I want to see the world and you can help me do that." She locked eyes with him. "If I have to beat an army of Apes to start that journey, then that's what I have to do. And besides, who else are you gonna' get so easily as a guide and battle-buddy?"
"Battle-buddy." He scoffed, shifting on his heels when she bumped him with her fleshy, scaly hip. "Have you ever fought before? In an actual battle?"
"I love fighting!"
"That's a no." He smiled grimly, looking down at his sidearm. He ejected the magazine and counted the rounds inside. It certainly wasn't enough for any prolonged fighting, even for the tech-difference he enjoyed. He slapped the gun back together and sighed deeply. "Well, seeing as I have so few options available to me…"
Spyra sauntered up to his side and went to say something.
Then, he kicked her square in the chest. His heel made a thundering thwack~! –like sound as it rebounded off her golden plates.
Spyra tumbled clean off the cliff face, panicked, and couldn't get her wings in order fast enough, and plowed face-first into the swamp muck at the base of the cliff.
Splat~! –the dragon looked like a splayed-out, purple squirrel that had been run over by a car. Her tail daggered up from her ass like a lightning bolt, and her wings spread into the mud like two orange flaps of paper.
The human watched just long enough to see her twitch, before he took off in a sheer run.
I'm sorry.
Patpatpatpat- went his heels on the grass. Now that he wasn't obstructed by a mouthy dragon over his shoulder, or being followed, he could truly put to use his speed.
He dodged around trees, slid under mushroom clusters and hopped peat puddles, clearing tens of feet in under a minute. He shouldered through a thin foliage wall and emerged into a clearing, it was a long, sweeping canal that once might have been flooded.
The gigantic earth-trench spread as far as could be seen west and east, its northern banks lower and walkable, where they vanished into the feet of a second, thin line of woodland trees. He could see gray horizons beyond them. The land dipped and sloped just ahead. The walk would be torturous, but at least he wouldn't get that purple female killed-
Wham~! –the breath left his breast as something scaly slammed into the center of his back, right between his shoulders.
"-Oooof~!" –Was all he got out, before his face ate the dirt, and he and his assailant rolled in the dust.
He flipped around, blinking, and stared up at the horrible visage of Spyra. Her fangs were exposed, and her normally pretty, femininely draconic features were now dripping with mud. She had an expression of death written on her face as she pinned him, straddling him with her hind legs and tacking his shoulders with her surprisingly strong front paws.
"What. The. FUCK. IS WRONG WITH YOU~?!" –She screeched in his face, making his ears ring.
"-tryin' to save your life-!" He kicked her in the stomach and sent her flying backward. This time, however, her wings didn't fail her.
He jumped to his feet and started running again, glancing back just in time to witness the dragon's wings spread out like a tapering kite and catch her very body on the breeze. She aligned her paws with the dirt and started to drift down serenely, like a snowflake.
But then, her eyes lit with rage, and fire seeped past her teeth as she angled her breast down, and zipped on an air current, dive-bombing herself right for him.
Shit, she's agile.
{Assassin's Creed 2 OST: Wetlands Combat}
"-I'm gonna' kick you in your dangly balls~!" Spyra hollered, missing her mark only by inches, landing right in front of his path and bracing her wings in front of her like battering rams. He skidded to a halt, heaving as he backed up. "And just when I was starting to like you, spaceman!"
"I don't need you to like me, I need you to leave me, you purple iguana!" He countered, jabbing an accusatory finger at her. "The last time I sucked people up into the madness that is my life, they all got fried, or they left with very sore souls and amputations."
Spyra growled like a dog, ripping her claw through the dirt like a bull getting ready to charge. She lowered her head and brandished the brass-colored, wicked points of her horns. He had no doubt that those heavy implements could pierce metal if she worked up enough of a run.
"Wait a minute, let's discuss this-"
"-Fuck you!" Spyra barked, barreling into a charge.
The human clenched his fists and bent onto his knees.
Spyra was going to kick his ass. All he had proven capable of was running away from everything dangerous so far. Things that ran away couldn't fight. Spyra hated the lack of challenge, but she didn't need it in the interest of revenge.
He got mud on her beautiful scales! Bastard alien.
Spyra jolted forwards, aiming for his ankles, but to her astonishment: she hit nothing!
Skidding in the dirt, the dragon looped around, wide-eyed, to see the human recovering from a spin on a placed heel. He steadied himself, facing her with his knees lowering slightly, just as before.
"Listen to me," He held up his hands. "I don't want to fight you. I'm sorry I kicked you down the ravine... I... I kind of hoped you'd be out for a little longer..."
"Some apology that one." Spyra snorted soot and spit embering mud from her chops. "Why so desperate to be alone for?"
"It's not to be alone, it's to keep you from getting hurt." He defended stoically. "I'm not even supposed to be here. This is your world, and you seemed to be doing pretty fine before I came crashing down. If you stick around me, you stick around with everything that's currently trying to kill me, and judging by those monkeys, the list just got bigger."
"I can take care of myself!" Spyra cried. "First it's my parents, my damn soap-maker and now you! When is everyone gonna' get that I'm a big fuckin' girl?"
"I never said you weren't." He creased a brow. "In fact, you're big enough for me that if I wasn't in a rush I just might make a move."
"Y-You asshole!"
A jet of flame shot out of her mouth. The human jumped and tucked into a roll as the fire singed everything just behind him. The battlefield was a wide-open space. There was nowhere for him to run or hide.
Spyra sprinted after him, snapping her fangs at his leg, but the human was quick, he yanked his limbs out of the way each time her jaws clamped or her claws swiped. At one point, he staggered back from a near hit and she took the opportunity to spring like a squirrel and latch over his chest, just like she had done with Visigoth.
Snarling, she tried to hook her claws into his jumpsuit. The human snaked his arms around her gut and her back, heaving in a trained swing as he grappled and tossed her away. Spyra flipped and skidded on her claws, growling at him.
"You've got skill, I'll give ya' that." She spat into the dirt. "Practice much?"
"Stop!" He barked, again, holding his hands up for peace. "I don't want to fight you!"
"Maybe you shoulda' thought of that before kicking me off a cliff! What the actual fuck is wrong with you, dude? You don't hit girls!"
"I-It's not a highlight of my career, I admit it." He swallowed. Spyra cried out a challenge and bounded at him again. "-Waitwait-!"
She sprung into the air and brought around her tail in a slashing move. The human tucked his knees and it went harmlessly over his shoulders. He came back with an attempt to grab her. Spyra flapped her wings and sent him flying in the resulting air-vortex. He barked as he hit the dirt hard.
He made to scramble to his feet, but Spyra was quicker. The human's pupils shrunk to the size of pins as Spyra's distant cry became louder and louder, and a shadow grew to eventually blot out the cloudy sun.
He cursed and rolled, Spyra plowing a heel into the dirt where his head had been.
"Damn it." She growled.
"I didn't try to kill you!" The human shouted, jumping to stand himself up. "Could you just calm down for five seconds so I can-"
"-Hee-yah~!"
Slap~! -she spun in midair and slashed him across the cheek with her tail tip.
"-Agh-!" The Fallen staggered back, holding his face. "-Jesus Christ, time out!"
"Don't piss off a 'ness!" Spyra snapped, lowering her stance and creeping closer to him like a predator moving in for the kill. "There ain't no time outs for instigators!"
"I'm sorry I kicked you off the ledge! I thought it would... stop you..." The human rolled his jaw and spat. "...I'm just trying to keep you from getting into something you'll later regret."
"I can make the decision of what's too much for me for myself, thanks, daddy." Spyra snorted. "Why do ya' think I'm out here to begin with? That black dragon, Cynder? Her and her Apes are up to some bad mojo in my swamps. I can't just stand by after what I saw! If something happens to the swamp, it impacts my home!"
"I respect that," The human nodded cautiously, still tensed in case she came at him again. "and based off what I've seen, I'm tempted to help you and your people. But helping doesn't mean anything if you get killed trying to go with me."
"And aren't you afraid that you might get killed?"
"Spyra," Her blood chilled when he said her name. "this wouldn't be the first time I've crashed into the middle of people fighting each other."
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" She blinked.
"You weren't." He frowned. "I'm sorry that you feel so trapped here, but I promise you that going with me to wherever I end up going is a far more perilous option. We don't even know each other!"
"You grapple well enough." She edged a brow. "Good enough of a first impression for me."
He paused for a long moment. Then, the human laughed at her.
"...Funny." He chortled.
"Ain't I just a plum?"
"Don't you mean a peach?"
"They're related!"
The smiles they each wore slowly slid off their faces when they realized they were both still in combat poses. He cleared his throat and relaxed on his heels, Spyra following suit a second later.
"I'm sorry, I really am, for attacking you." The alien stepped closer. "It was unjustified and I panicked in the moment. I've had people try to accompany me in the past, and when talking didn't dissuade them, and they journeyed me... they got hurt very badly. Some of them lost their lives."
"...I mean, I appreciate the concern and all that shit." Spyra sniffed, wiping mud off her face. "But off a cliff? Really?"
"I-" He knelt in front of her and sighed, using a thumb to wipe off some mud from her long face. "...let me at least find you some water so I can get all this gunk off you."
Spyra grumbled, but let him dote on her as she in turn leaned closer and examined his peculiar facial features. She reached a paw up and ran her thumb-pad over one of his eyebrows, smiling at the tickling sensation of its hairs brushing against her.
"What're these for anyhow?" She grinned quietly, her wings settling behind her as tension bled out of the air.
"Eyebrows." He mused. "Nobody around here has them too?"
"No." She giggled. "...huh, hu-mans..." -She rolled the word on her tongue, muttering with a fascination for him. "You ever touch a dragon before?"
"Few times." He seemed deep in thought. His eyes dilated and he snorted, quickly standing and tearing their interaction apart.
"Hey..." She sadly reached up for his browline.
"No more fighting?" He asked.
"...Wha-? Yeah, yeah no more fighting." Spyra sat on her haunches and blinked at him. "...Wow, you're like, really tall."
"Taller than you, short-stuff." He winked. Bing! And there went her temper tangent.
Spyra growled.
Then a black ball of energy landed in between them and exploded!
There was a deafening bang and a mushroom cloud of dust. Spyra screamed as she flipped backward and skidded further towards the north of the basin. The human cried out as he sailed and then landed on his back.
"-There you are~!" Cynder sang. The black dragoness landed in the embering remains of her Shadow blast, sweeping away the dust devils with but a flick of her crimson wings. "I have you right where I want you, purple thing!"
"Not you again~!" Spyra groaned from the dirt, flipping to her heels and snarling. "Get out of my way, you emo-whore, I gotta' kick that tall alien's ass!"
Speaking of ass, the human thought, his eyes bulging as he tried to sit back up, and wound up getting a full underside view of Cynder's magnificently sculpted, feral backside.
She was facing away from him- evidently, unconcerned with anything that didn't involve Spyra –and from his end, he could see the base-thick, winding termination of her tail, a pair of meaty haunches that would drive even humanoid women to teeth-gritting tears of frustration, and a belly paunch obviously pronounced for the carrying of eggs just ahead of the muscular, fatty highway of her tail's crimson underside.
Prior experiences rewound themselves in his head. One had to understand that this certainly wasn't the first time he'd found himself in such a peculiar stance with the natives of a place.
The human's jumpsuit felt very tight all of a sudden.
I always pick the worst of times.
Cynder craned her long neck over her wing to regard him, her white eyes blooming in shock as he worked to his feet and stood before her, teetering as he struggled to tear his eyes off her rear.
"Oh? The Lonesome One has a companion, I see. And who might you be, my very strange, fleshy friend?" Cynder grinned cruelly.
"Ass. AwshitImean-" He stammered, gripping his hair and tugging.
What is wrong with me? No! Not again!
A rosy smell hit his nose, his very nostrils quivered, and he staggered backwards and away from the tantalizing reptile taking up most of his vision.
It's- It's-
"Hmmph~. I shall deal with you later." Cynder swept the flat of her tail blade and swatted the human away, her eyes self-consciously gracing over her haunch for but a second.
Crack~! –went the metal to his ribs. He spun like a top and landed some distance off in a plume of dust, coughing, shaking his head and looking up, just in time to see tens of whooping, hollering Apes sliding down the canal's incline that he and Spyra had come from.
"Now, I believe you and me have unfinished business." Cynder licked a talon and started sauntering closer to the smaller dragoness. "That flame that you bathed my visage in? I do not approve."
"Aw, shove it, lady." Spyra huffed, following her example and helping to close the distance. "At least there's a modicum of respect here this time. While we're on the subject, lemme' just say that your recruitment policies suck dick, and that my great-grandma could lead an army better. And she had dust in her chitin."
"Best hen wins the day." Cynder raised a brow, leaning down as the two angry reptiles merged foreheads with a rough clack of impact, and growled at each other like hounds.
"Bring it on. I'll have them bury you with your cutting razors and mascara collection."
"Mud-rat." Cynder finally gave into her temper, pressing the merger farther into Spyra's face, her paws digging into the soil and leaving raking marks. "Dirty swamp-heathen."
"Stupid Goth-bitch!" Their horns clacked and Spyra backed her up a step, the two dragons' powerful muscles tensing as they struggled.
"Lowly peasant!"
"Narcissistic cave-bomber!"
"Scrawny little skank!"
"Tattooed sex-object!"
"Pink ground-newt!"
"-W-What~?! Rawr~! I. am. not. PINK-!"
Spyra tackled her and the two reptiles tumbled, dust flying, claws descending and teeth gnashing. Despite the fact that Cynder was nearly twice Spyra's size, the purple dragoness was giving her a run for her money. Blood leaked from slash wounds and bite marks. The females roared, howled, hissed and screamed as they tore into each other, limbs swinging, tails whipping and wings flexing.
The poor human was left to gawk at the spectacle, turning especially pale as the tussle cleared through the dust, and the pair landed at his feet with a mighty -thud~!
Cynder was straddling Spyra, both of their hiplines presented with tails flaring and raised. His eyes almost rolled out of his skull as he witnessed a pair of two very anatomically correct dragon-groins just inches above one another, one golden and the other crimson. All the exertion made both wyrms glisten with a thin coating of sudor covering their fleshy fat.
"Now I get it." Apes were running up behind him, swinging axes and clubs, but he didn't mind just yet. He cast an accusatory glance up at the sky and grit his teeth. His enemies had dropped him here on purpose. "Now I get why you all chose here."
He snatched up his gun from his jumpsuit hem, gracing the two-dragoness war a final, longing glance.
"When in doubt," He raised the pistol at the encroaching Apes. "-use a distraction."
{🐉}
