Dragon(s)layer
6
Apebane
{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: Swamp Tense}
Grappling with Cynder was one thing, becoming so startled by the sudden shriek of noise was another entirely. Both dragonesses paused in a final, bone-crunching halt in the dirt. Spyra looked past her opponent's flank and Cynder gazed down her slender spine, both seeking the origin of the horribly loud sound. It had all the grace and volume of thunder and the roar of a cannon. It was the device held in the scrawny human's hand.
The weapon kicked whilst a millisecond of white light bloomed from its muzzle. A flickering, bronze casing rebounded off to his flank. The gun bucked and one of the Apes running down the slope tossed head over heels, a liquidy trail of crimson globules cartwheeling from a wound that had appeared in the center of his skull.
If perturbed by the ferocity of the thing pointed at them, the other primates didn't show it. They trampled their fellow's corpse and advanced on the human, swinging axes and swords. Cynder was initially impressed with the fearlessness of her soldiers.
"God, they're stupid." Spyra grumbled underneath her, wiping the pride off Cynder's face in an instant as she was reminded of the sick truth.
"Your mysterious ally will perish shortly." Cynder reapplied pressure through her forearms promptly, the purple dragoness squeaking as her biceps quivered. The two were locked at the paws. Cynder was trying to bring the merger down and crush Spyra under her weight. "Where my minions falter in quality, they assure victory in quantity."
"Mountains of shit will still burn." Spyra grit her teeth, buckling under the duress. Despite her size in comparison to Cynder, she was still a dragon. Their kind possessed a strength that could outdo most. Cynder would have no easy time flattening her. "If this is the best you can do, then you need some help, lady. Do they have war-coaches where you come from? Your tactics suck."
"Shut up." Cynder snarled. "How dare you pelt me with your lowly mewling. Insults all screamed from the foul mouth of a plebian and muck-swimmer. You don't even understand how far you have set back my campaign by destroying all of those Mana Crystals in the cave."
"Y-You think that was me?" Spyra shut her eyes as the pain in her arms became unbearable. She pinched her an eye open, seeing her alien jogging backward, the gun in his grip kicking again and again and again as he poured the weapon's fury into the advancing mob of Apes. To Spyra's horror, after the eighth shot, the weapon clicked and ran dry.
She heard him curse as the first Ape stormed over the bodies of its comrades, an axe raised over its ugly head.
"Do you know what Apes do to those who put up a substantial fight?" Cynder leaned closer, licking her teeth right in front of Spyra's sweat-drenched nose. "They eat them."
"That's alright, I was gonna' eat him myself a few minutes ago." Spyra grunted. "Guy kicked me down a ledge."
Cynder raised a brow as her quarry continued on with such conversation despite the… circumstances.
It was that pause that threatened to undo everything. Cynder barked and reeled from her murderous efforts. Spyra had slipped her rear legs out and drummed them on the larger dragon's breast until belly-plates started to crack. Cynder had no more than a second before a purple blur smacked into her chest, and again they tumbled.
The human's endeavor, meanwhile, wasn't so straightforward. Needless to say, as the axe came down for his head, he could at least admit that this wasn't the first time death had tongue-kissed him. While the prospect of dying didn't always seem so foreign, something about letting a monkey end his journey didn't sit well in his gut.
He jerked to the side and let the axe slice past him. The Ape- with a look of bewilderment –turned his head and howled in frustration.
The human responded by pistol-whipping the barbarian right on the nose, breaking it with a muffled crunch. The Ape screamed and tossed back, holding his muzzle and dropping his axe at his attacker's feet.
It's better than nothing.
The human ducked and a club run-through with rusty nails sailed over his shoulders. He dropped the empty pistol and grabbed up the crude axe in his hands, rising up as rushes of stinking fangs and screaming baboon throats surrounded him.
The Apes came as a foul-smelling tsunami of unkempt fur and muscle. His new axe was weighty and required two hands, its original master leaving his mark as damp palm-sweat upon the handle.
The human grit his teeth as a very familiar rush overtook his veins and drowned his senses. He brought the chiseled heft of the axe in an upwards swing, his thin arms bulging whilst he buried it to the hilt in an Ape's guts.
Blood stringed out and stained the dirt and his jumpsuit, the human twisting with a vicious cry leaving his lips. He shouldered into the Ape's muscular form and tore him from the axe's teeth. Another blade cut vertically down his back in the pause, opening his jumpsuit like paper, and panting everything from his center spine to his waist in his own blood. The cut was painful but thin.
The human screamed and looped around, burying the axe in his assailant's throat with a cracking swing. He fell with the corpse and the Apes piled on. What followed was a series of whoops, hollers and warcries. Flesh squelched and bones cracked.
"-Kill 'im!" –One of the Apes yelped, before a spear lodged through his eye socket and punched out the rear of his skull.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
Didn't they outnumber this pink, fleshy thing, like, twenty to one?
The monkeys couldn't quite process what was occurring, as, after all, what chance did a single, scrawny little runt like that have against a mob of tough fellows like them?
"What are you lot doin'?! Just pin the thing down and cut it-" –The Ape officer tumbled back with a sword lodged in his guts. The human followed him down, snarling like a dog and twisting as entrails erupted around the shanty blade-like torrents of syrupy magma.
"My Mistress does not fear you, and neither do I." Cynder's tail slapped across Spyra's belly as she made to leap, cutting off the maneuver to send her rolling across the dirt. "You will be crushed by the might of the Dark Army!"
Spyra was like a cat. It was almost impossible to keep her down. Still, Apes that strayed from the engagement with the alien were not against trying. A cluster of them descended on her the moment she gained distance from their mistress, like carrion birds on a freshly dropped corpse.
Spyra tumbled through the dirt when an Ape swung a chipped cleaver- missed –and instead opted to bear-hug and tackle her. Her newer opponent was obviously less graceful and less hygienic. Spyra gagged as his furry abs brushed her snout, and his filthy gods-who-knew-where-they've-been paws grabbled and tugged at her throat. The Ape's face was twisted in this ecstatic moment of excited screaming.
"Strangle-strangle-! Oooo-Ahhahahahahaaa~!" –He laughed maniacally, getting her eyeballs to bulge as he found a good grip on her neck and compressed, cutting off the dragoness' breath.
Spyra gurgled some horrible insult aimed at his mother. Her rear legs doggy-paddled across his stomach, the talons adorning her toes shredding flesh easily.
The Ape's laughing turned into horrible, high-pitched shrieking. Still, his paws didn't let up off her throat, so she kept slicing and kicking. Something leathery ripped, and it felt like someone had dumped a bucket of warm water across her belly and hips. The Ape's fanged mouth was ajar as he died on top of her, panicked wheezes fading into an obscure pattern of hacks that eventually fell completely silent.
She kicked the corpse away, cursing as she looked between her legs and stared in horror.
Her feet were entangled with the dead fucker's intestines!
She'd really let herself go.
Never piss off a 'ness.
She was peeling the limp sausage-like wads away when two more Apes surrounded her. Spyra gasped as clubs sailed down for her prone form.
However, they never connected. Something blurred right over where she was and tackled the monkey-warriors before they could even process what was happening.
Animalistic yowls echoed from the Apes. Spyra sat up and saw the alien, the human, with his hands wrapped around a stolen machete blade. He was bobbing it in and out of an Ape's stomach, ruining the fleshy structure there until fountains of blood spattered his chest and his victim's chainmail.
Her jaw dropped.
Their fight before hadn't looked anything like that.
Are all of his people that vicious?
Cynder's mighty paw gripped her throat, ushering out a squeak from Spyra. She was lifted off the ground and hoisted into the air, her eyes bugging as she saw the black dragoness standing on her rear two legs, her curvaceous body entwined in a quadruped stance. Cynder's face portrayed an expression of wanton hatred.
"You little bitch." The Cloud Ripper sneered as Spyra squirmed, clawed and flapped her wings.
"-Aaaaaaaahhhhh~!" –Screamed the human. A pink-fleshed blur impacted Cynder's midsection and sent her and her attacker careening. Spyra flipped once and landed on her backside in the dust.
"-Hey~! I had it under control! She was done for. I didn't need your help-" Spyra coughed. She swung her gaze about to take in what appeared to be a field of bodies.
Tens of Apes, no less than twenty, lie in various states of uneasy sprawling and tumbles. Blood decorated the dust in spattered highways and veins. Mouths were ajar and dribbling ruby rivers. There was an Ape in the back of the ruination that had died standing up, his own spear having been run through his chin and out his temple.
"Holy shit." –Was all Spyra could say.
"Get off of me, worm~!" Cynder howled, striking madly and kicking at the smaller humanoid entangled over her crimson chest. "Someone help me get this-"
Cynder faltered as she looked up for aid. She saw her Apes and her struggling lowered.
"Nobody," The breath left her when a hand gripped the bridge of her snout and dipped her lower, the human smacking their foreheads together as he glared. "is coming to help you."
Cynder coughed, her white eyes locked with the human's drab-centered and smaller ones. Her teeth chattered as her gaze lowered down the hand and arm holding her face. It stopped at the alien's other arm, where he had buried one of her Ape soldiers' blades deep into the armored flesh of her once unmarred and beautiful breast.
The blade was longer than his forearm, and it was embedded halfway to the hilt, rich, draconic blood bubbling out around the metal and running down her purple-black rib scales in tiny canals.
A terrifying grin spread across her muzzle. The human snarled as she gripped the back of his hairy head, and shoved their faces together. His arm quivered whilst she clenched over his fingers and began a slow, agonizing process of sliding the blade from her flesh, unnatural energies birthed from their contact swirling in her guts. She moaned sharply when the metal slugged free of the ragged welt in its wake. It dripped with vital gore from where it had punctured her great sternum, ripping muscles aside and glancing bone.
"How fearsome~." She whispered in agony. Her wings flapped and she kicked him free, him landing in an unsteady stagger.
Cynder wobbled to her feet with a pained whine, still wearing her insidious smile as the alien and Spyra stood side-by-side before her.
"We'll talk later about that short-stuff comment." Spyra grumbled to him.
The human didn't respond. He had wild eyes now, and they were locked on Cynder. She possessed the blade he had stabbed her with. The she-drake clenched it awkwardly in her larger paw, her fingers never designed to mesh with the crude craftsmanship of her Ape warriors.
Cynder stared the human down with an essence of glee about her. She had almost forgotten about the purple nightmare just standing off to the side. She brought the blade to her snout and dragged her impossibly long, serpentine tongue up and down the metal sheathe until it was cleaned of her blood.
"I like you~." Cynder pointed the weapon at him. Spyra looked repulsed. The human was unreadable.
"You think you were the first one he stabbed with that thing?" Spyra slapped her chops with distaste, glancing at the various dead Apes decorating the dirt around them. "I hope you get herpes."
"You were not here before the purple dragon and I met." Cynder spoke between exhausted breaths. Again, one could've stared in awe at the display of draconic endurance. She was completely oblivious to the torrents of rich blood pouring like thick syrup from the gaping wound in her chest. Covered in grime, sudor and blood, both of the reptiles gleamed no less beauty than they had unspoiled. "You are a creature of the sky. Tell me, where do you come from and how did you summon the power of a comet?"
"I've been askin' the same questions for hours." Spyra sneered at her, pacing beside the human to look up at his face. He was really twisted, sporting an expression little different from that of Cynder's earlier. It was just… hatred. She coughed, remembering all the bodies. "…Where'd you learn to fight like that…"
"Your companion isn't the only one thirsty for answers." Cynder huffed. "Speak, foreigner! You possess great ability and you will give to me your skill whether you want to or not."
"You want what I got?" The human spoke suddenly, making them both blink. He took a step forward, and Cynder stepped backward. "All I gave you is a scratch. There is nothing stopping you from coming right back to me."
Spyra backed away too. This was… darker than she had initially viewed him as. Was this always how he was? How he really was? Had everything from the landing site until now been a façade?
"Magic." Cynder observed quietly. She bowed her snout and dropped the knife, letting it clatter on the dirt. Her white eyes darted from his face, to his chest, and then- oddly –to his… legs.
Or, maybe his crotch?
Spyra gawked.
What the fuck is that all about? She quirked a brow.
"You're possessed by some kind of magic." Cynder sounded redundant as he advanced on her. She could feel something brewing inside her, something from him touching her. It was a feather in her bloodstream, minute and growing by the second. "How are you doing this,? I was raised from the egg as a living weapon. I am immune to magic, my mind is tempered for it."
"You can't temper me." He specified angrily, standing before the dragoness, right between her front paws. Cynder was frozen, and Spyra was captivated by the sudden strength she could feel in the very air itself. What in the world was happening right now?
"What are you?" Cynder gasped, her voice changing, her body quivering as the human reached out a hand. "D-Don't touch me! Get away from me!"
"Make me." He growled, his palm compressing to the plate that he had stabbed. Cynder jolted and a cry left her, like someone had compressed a hot iron to her flesh. The Cloud Ripper hunched and curled her long tail between her legs, her mouth opening. Tremors rolled down her limbs and the sweat glistening off her scales only gathered in volume. The energies from his touch broiled like a tsunami inside her body.
"Y-You," The black dragon stammered, swallowing. "-are a violator!"
The human looked up at her, right into her eyes, and he laughed sharply.
"I like you too." He placed a second hand on her chest. "How about I stab you in your dragon-canal next, but this time with my special blade?"
Wat.
The purple dragoness had heard enough.
"-Hee-yah~!" Spyra's foot flung out and connected with Cynder's face.
There was a crunch and the black dragon roared in pain, reeling. Spyra landed next to the startled human and laughed.
"Nice job with the mind games." She complimented.
"...Thanks." He glumly muttered, appearing disappointed.
A Poison bolt zipped at them, and both companions barely avoided its blast as they rolled out of the way.
Cynder thundered the ground between them and hoisted onto her rear legs. Her wings spread and what started as a low whistle of wind turned into the howl of a tornado.
The black dragoness spun gracefully sideways, as if she was turning in a translucent tube over their heads. A vortex of white, stark Wind began to form around her like a giant dust devil.
Spyra hollered as she was sucked off the ground and swung through the air. The human clawed at the dirt but was similarly swallowed by the vortex. They each swung around the center cone twice, their senses whipped and vertigo taking hold in their guts.
Cynder shrieked and the vortex dissipated with a crack! -of magical sound. The human rolled through the dirt and Spyra landed on her belly.
"Heel, worms." Cynder righted herself, snarling between the two of them. "I will not be toyed with."
The black dragon turned her snout to Spyra.
"You have no idea what it is you have started."
The human snatched an Ape's blade, and fire spewed from Spyra's mouth. Dust kicked and dirt crumbled. Cynder's wings flapped and she shot into the gray sky above, vanishing just as quickly as she had appeared.
One of the dead Apes shifted and rolled onto his face from the breeze. But after that, all was still, and the battle was concluded.
Spyra forced herself to tear her eyes off the human's back. She watched Cynder gracefully fly off to the west, parallel to where they had originally been fleeing to. She could see that the black dragon was looking past her bleeding chest back at them.
"…Yeah…" Spyra cringed, not knowing what else to say. "…that's right, run, run in fear. So, uhm… w-we showed them, huh?"
The human lowered his arms and snorted. He stepped to one of the bodies, nudged it over with his foot, and picked up the expended gun that was lying underneath it. He shoved the pistol into the hem strap of his lower jumpsuit, which was now torn, stained with dirt and blood. It was ragged too, exposing several creamy strips of his body and limbs underneath. He took out one of those regen-injectors and deposited a drop via a quick jab on his wrist.
"I'm glad you're on my side at least." She grew sheepish when his gaze fell on her. Spyra shrunk back as the human stepped up to her, looming over her silently in the din of the dirt canal around them. "…You're still on my side, right?"
"I'm sorry that I kicked you." He reached down and wiped a speck of Ape blood off her cheek with his thumb. She winced from the contact and shied back, her tail whipping up a frenzy. "Come on."
He spun around and started walking back towards the treeline ahead.
"Wait a second, aren't you gonna' try to stop me again? Throw me in another ravine? Bury me alive, or, anything?" Spyra didn't follow him. "Aren't you gonna' use those murder-moves I just saw you wipe out an entire battalion with on me?"
"I tried to stop you, you came anyway." He turned around, walking backwards, and shrugging at her. "I would never use 'Those moves' on someone who isn't my enemy. You wanted to see what I'm all about? There's a taste. You still want the complete package?"
She opened her mouth but faltered, no answer coming forth.
Soon, he was far enough away that he had to call to her.
"It's your choice." –He said, leaving her with the corpses.
As soon as he breached a few thickets and merged back into the woodlands, he heard plants rustling right behind him, and something heavy traipsing through the undergrowth.
Smiling, he glanced over his blood-speckled shoulder and watched as Spyra cautiously trotted to stand even beside him, walking on all fours as always, but with her head bowed, her purple eyes fixed on his boots.
"You good?" He asked. She nodded a little bit. "Good."
Patpatpat- went their heels in the grass and weeds. It felt like forever had gone by before she spoke again.
"What did I do to get you to pop into my life?" Spyra asked, looking up at him with her inquisitive gaze.
"I dunno'." He shrugged, wiping snot from his nose as the adrenaline started to fade from his system. His muscles hurt, but that was a problem easily dealt with over time. At least neither of them were seriously injured. "Do you fancy yourself a Bible-thumper or a sinner?"
"What's a Bi-ble?"
"A load of shit." He noticed her curious gaze and shook his head. "-Just, nevermind."
"Aight'." The dragoness meekly nodded and stared at their feet again. She eventually nudged a little closer. "Hey, human?"
"Yeah-"
She reared back her front arm and punched him square in the crotch.
"-Pff-ooofff~!" –He grunted, doubling over and falling to a knee in agony. Spyra rasped through her chops and rolled through the weeds, laughing hysterically and spitting embers. "…God-damnit-thatfuckinghurt-" –He snarled through grit teeth.
"That's for kicking me into the mud, and calling me short." Spyra zipped to her feet, bumping his sweaty temple with her lizard-like head. "It'll take a lot more than some dead monkeys to scare me away. I'm not afraid of anything."
"I was right," He breathed, rubbing tenderly at his groin as she pranced past him like a happy deer. "you're out of your mind."
"And you aren't? Mr. Blood-fetish-with-the-evil-dragoness?" She shot back. "What was that, dude? You like… used psychological warfare on her and shit. Do you… do you really have magic channeling through you?"
"No." He said, struggling to his feet and dusting himself off. "But you people are the reason I was sent here. At least that much I know now."
"So, is that like a bad or a good thing?"
"It depends on who you're asking."
{🐉}
{Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon OST: Small Valley}
The warhorns didn't stop even as the afternoon morphed into the evening. Apes flooded into the swamps from the Forbidden Funguswood.
"Part of me has always wanted to go in there. My family spends a lot of time telling me to stay away from it, and that all kinds of bad things are happening underneath the mushrooms." Spyra said. "I've never actually gotten proof of anything before though. Cynder flew off into that mess, and that's where the Apes are coming from. I bet if there's a camp, or a village or even a fortress that the bad guys have around here, it's there."
"Have you ever gone into the… what did you call it? Fungus-wood?" He asked, swatting mosquitos from his face as they trekked through a depression filled with stagnant water. Spyra's scales kept her safe from them. But despite his apparent badassery that he had in melee combat, the human had way too many soft points for the overeager insects to possibly resist trying to get a meal. Their conversation was intermitted with wet slaps as his hands swatted over every limb and tear on his suit.
"Not deep inside, nah. It's too dark, even for a dragon. Well," Spyra gulped and glanced at the darkening sky, remembering Cynder. "-almost any dragon. Where are we going anyway?"
"I was going north."
"And now where are we going?" She smiled smartly.
"We are going north."
"North~?!" Spyra shrieked, jumping in front of him and placing her front paws on his chest, her tail wagging like an excited dog. "We're going to Warfang? Please tell me we're going to Warfang."
"You said that's the only city around here anyone talks about, right?" He quizzed, leaning his head back from how close her snout was. "Where there are cities, there's people. Where people congregate, is where they keep the best technology and the brightest minds. Off we go then."
"I get to meet the dragons." Spyra gasped, plopping back down from his chest and staring at him with wonder. "I get to meet the dragons!"
"You are a dragon." He raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, but I'm a lonely ass hick dragon who's always been by herself!" Spyra cheered. "Not anymore! I get to find my people! And, I got a crazy bad-ass alien to walk me all the way there."
"I'm human, not an alien."
"Alien to me." Spyra bumped him with her purple hip, chuckling. "But anyways alien, we make an awesome team, you and me."
"Yeah, awesome." He sniggered. "You want to help us find an awesome shelter for the night?"
"There's a cave right over this hill, it's hidden in a clearing." She pointed with her wingtip. "C'mon, I'll show you!"
"Why is it always a cave?" He sighed.
"You don't like caves?"
"I hate caves." He shuddered, tossing his looted Ape blade into the air, letting it spin, before he caught it by the hilt. "Rarely have good experiences in caves."
"I love caves." Spyra countered musingly. "You can find a lotta' cool shit in caves. Glowing fungus, glowing bugs, giant bugs, earthworms the size of your leg and Poisonfly maggots bigger than dragons that eat carrion and small animals."
"Sounds peachy." He grumbled. "Under normal circumstances, I'd never complain about the opportunity to shoot stuff, but… this is an exception."
The trees around this fringe section of the swamps were thinly spaced. Though vines still twisted like fingers above their heads in the dark, earthen peninsulas leveled the surrounding landscape like walls of towers and clouds of torchbugs lit up the darkest recesses and groves.
The cave was tall enough for another of the human to stand atop his shoulders, and it was fanged with hanging creepers and stalactites, giving it the appearance of a creature's maw in the dark. Crickets started to overwhelm the caws of crows and the croaks of toads. The cave was luckily not very deep, and so worries about potential guests arriving from the recesses were cut off at the head. A bed of mushrooms bigger than him clouded up the very rear of the cave, their caps glowing shades of luminescent, spotty azure.
Spyra curled up regally among some rocks, sighing as she stretched her cat-like limbs and flexed her orange wings.
"Can't expect a dragon to go without pampering." She grinned at him. "I'm still feelin' a little peeved about that ravine thing..."
So he spent a good while gathering wood that hadn't been wetted by all the peat ponds dotting the area (which was a whole other kind of battle) and returned with them in a pile. When he went to leave to find a flint, Spyra held up a talon and pinched the bridge of her snout, appearing suddenly to be in distress.
"What?" He asked, pausing in the mouth of the cave. "What's wrong with your face?"
"….Ah…. AH-ACHOOO~!" Spyra sneezed, and a ball of fire whipped across the ground and smacked into the timber pile. It went up like he had coated it in gasoline and flickered proudly, illuminating the interior of the cave amber. "Ack~! 'Scuse me."
"Someone did that on purpose."
Spyra wiped her nose and stuck her tongue out at him, laughing girlishly when he blinked at it.
"So you've seen… other people like me, right?" She asked later on, chewing on some raspberries that he had gathered from a bush on one of the hill copses. Raspberries and cranberries were in abundance this far on the fringes of the swamp. They tended to grow at the feet of willow trees and in areas with ample shade at night and sunlight during the day. "Other dragons?"
He paused for a long while, his jaw working quietly on the fistful of berries he'd popped in his mouth. After swallowing, he coughed, mulling over his response as he sat cross-legged on the dirt floor on the opposite side of their fire.
"…Sort of?" He shrugged.
"What does that mean?"
"Yes, I have, I'm just trying to minimize how broad this all must be to you. We have a term called culture shock. It happens when people are brought from one kind of reality, or world, or place into another that's radically different." He explained. "The difference in technology, or appearances, is too much for some people. Things can go ugly real quick if the transition isn't moderated, and slow."
"Well, what, man, you afraid my head's gonna' pop or something?" She giggled. "I'm a dragon, I can deal with anything."
"Even dragons have limits." He smiled, shaking his head. He honestly found her… cute, at least, when she wasn't paying him back rightly for kicking her off a ravine.
"Tell me more about this place you come from." Spyra stuffed more berries in her face, chewing with her muzzle open as she pointed for the empty handgun lying by his side. "And what's that?"
"A gun." He looked at it sheepishly. "It fires projectiles called bullets at targets. They're pretty common on a lot of worlds, especially the one where I came from."
"And where did you come from?"
"I… I don't really know." He admitted uncomfortably. "I know where I was before I was on the pod, but, where I was born? I've never known that. I've never wanted to. It couldn't have been so well if I can't remember it."
"Gee', been in that boat, man." Spyra nodded sagely as she gorged herself on the berries, staining her muzzle, cheeks and paws red with the juice. She didn't seem to mind though. "I never knew who made me, or if they were the ones who sent me down that stupid river. I guess they had to have. Who else would've gone through all that effort for an egg that wasn't theirs anyhow?"
"Your adoptive family." He pointed out.
Spyra swallowed a berry wrong, coughing, and punching her breast until it went down. She belched so loud that it rang around the whole cave, making him snicker.
"You're like a tomboy." He chuckled.
"That's what they always say." Spyra rolled her eyes, licking her fangs and talons clean. "My dad's a hard ass, and my mom's a bit of a stoner. I love 'em both, but, being away from home has always been my kind of hobby. Being with them is just… too stuffy. I love my brother too. He's at least fun to hang out with sometimes, even if he's a total pussy."
"You should be thankful you have a family to begin with." He said.
"You really don't? Nobody?"
"Some people." He stared into the fire quietly. "Nobody by blood though, no. But some people that I probably won't ever get to see again."
He noticed her looking at him for details eagerly.
"No." He shook his head. "I will not be talking about that."
"M'kay, guy, jeez, don't get all defensive." She held up her paws and wiggled them at him, stuffing another wad of berries in her mouth. She chewed wetly as she spoke. "Buh yu ave tu undehsah my cooreosed. I meah, yu di almose it me wi a faalhn rok."
"I was in a… a temple. It was a warrior's temple, really far away from most folk." He waved a hand dismissively, even though her eyes widened with pure intrigue. "I was training under a very bright man, and a very bright woman. It was a community based on martial principle and nature."
"So you're a warrior." Spyra leaned closer, placing her head in her paws, her purple eyes stuck on him like glue. "Wow~…"
"Not… exactly?" He scratched the back of his head. "It's a little more complicated than that. But that's where I was before all of this. I was training to better myself."
"Who was training you? Was it a dragon?"
"No, no," He laughed. "his name was Nasu R'ha. He was… extraordinary. He still is. They didn't take him too, they only took me, because they always take me."
"Who's they?"
"Everybody." He threw a stick in the fire and sulked a little bit, his mood diminished. "I have people that I need to save, and evil, evil assholes that I need to stop. But now I'm here, with you."
"Lucky guy." She smirked, throwing a berry at him that bounced off his shoulder with a wet plop. She rolled onto her back, bringing another dripping paw-full of raspberries to her belly to cradle them and munch leisurely. "At least you know how to keep a 'ness happy when you're put to work. Better than dragonflies ever could do, I'll tell ya'. You pick loads of food, you kick ass and you got the talk."
"I've got the talk." He parroted, blinking. "Huh."
"Huh, yeah man." Spyra grinned, exposing all the ruined raspberries clinging in between her fangs. "I never thought I'd ever get a reason to run away from home. Looks like I found him."
"And what about when I reach Warfang?" He asked. "What are you going to do if I go off and leave you behind? What will you do then, I wonder? So far from home, and that family that obviously cares about you?"
"I can find my way back." She shrugged. "I've been navigating the swamps my whole life. I can navigate an ocean."
He guffawed and sat back, marveling at the ignorance of this purple beastess. Granted, she was brave, braver than most. But she was foolhardy, and all that would wind up doing was getting her and possibly him killed.
For all the benefits Spyra entailed with her presence there was plenty she needed to learn. Teamwork, ironically, was one of them. He could smell it on her, that hubris.
Smell.
His nostrils flared and he coughed. There was that perfumy smell again. It was inside the cave and it drew his attention. Blinking his eyes in what appeared to be fatigue, he glared when his nose pointed him in the correct direction for the smell's origin point.
Spyra.
The purple dragoness was humming as she crammed the majority of the raspberries he had spent over an hour picking into her mouth. She saw him staring and started, causing some of the berries to roll out of her paws and down her golden stomach.
"Aw, hell no, dude, don't go pulling that shit that you did to Cynder on me!" She whined worriedly.
"Sorry." He cleared his throat, looking away and into the crackling fire. "…What do you know about Cynder?"
"Nothin' much." She growled, collecting her fallen berries. "'Cept that she's a murderous bitch who was blowing up caves and talking about my village."
"Blowing up caves?"
"Mana Crystals. Her and the monkeys were blasting them out of the ground to collect them." She rolled a wrist. "I've never really interacted with the things beforehand, but they're pretty common underground around here, and sometimes above ground. They're green and they glow in the dark. The dragonflies think they're toxic, but the Apes were touching them all over just fine."
"Are they magic?" He asked.
"Sure looks like they are." Spyra said. "Her and this Dark Army want them for… whatever reasons."
"Weapons." He told her. "Anybody like that, that's picking up lots of magical items is weaponizing them. Is Warfang fighting anyone?"
"I guess them?" Spyra shrugged her wings. "I dunno', man, the north is just a big old mystery to me and the dragonflies. We know there's a war of some kind, and that the Dragon Realms are being attacked by somebody. But until today, I had no idea who. I guess it's a bunch of shit-flinging monkeys who all smell like my great grandmother's ass."
"Being led by Cynder." He murmured. "Or someone above her. I get the feeling it's the latter."
"Not like it matters anyhow," She smirked. "-I mean, we've got you. Cynder, or some other crazy maniac, you'll rip their balls off and make 'em eat them."
"I'll certainly try, if I have to." He yawned.
{🐉}
It took him a few minutes to realize that it was all a dream. A byproduct of everything he'd seen meant that even the lowest forms of mental imagery came out in frightening detail. Things minute to many were stark for him.
Many a soul had quoted that as elegantly powerful. He even remembered somebody very important saying that it was beautiful: the gift of picturesque foresight.
He didn't really know what to say about it, most of the time, anyway. Before the portals, he'd been a more talkative fellow. Cold, hard and painful dosages of reality (or at least other realities) had branded in him a taste for silence and observation. The end result, when you threw a talker into an emo-branded depression chipper was, well, him. A strange hybrid of the two, prone to changes in attitude on the drop of a hat.
Speaking of hats….
His dream-self reached up and patted around the empty space on the top of his head. The dream may have been taking place before his astrally linking object had been born, but that didn't mean he did not miss its reassuring presence.
Of course, it was normally on top of a helmet.
But that was beside the point.
Normally, missing his hat was something he'd deem a nightmare. Nothing too dark had happened yet for him to label it that. His mind could treat him to some dark shit, and frequently did in his bids to catch desperately sought sleep. Right now it was being appreciable. Merciful, dare he say. But not too subtle.
Nasu R'ha wouldn't be caught dead trying to instill in him such things so delicate as feelings. When a saurian tried to break open your head to expose all of your weaknesses, pleasantries usually weren't the highlight of your relationship with them.
So, hearing his old sensei refer to him as a son almost made him choke on his tea.
His dream-tea, anyway.
"You have been gone so long, that I began to fear I would never lay eyes on you again, my son."
Dream-Nasu didn't even blink when his student sputtered mid-sip of his dream-cup and spattered dream-tea all over his dream-robes. He just kept this icy and… frankly creepy expression of joy woven on his cloven face.
Maybe it was the mandibles. Who the hell knew? When your mouth looked like a vagina, it was as if nature had designed you to never to be able to grin like he currently was.
Nobody ever said evolution wasn't a complete bitch. Especially him. For all the respect real-life-Nasu had garnered with him, he would never lie and say that the saurian wasn't uglier than an elderly lady in lingerie.
At least the creepy expression and the whole son thing let him know it was all in his head sooner.
"Nasu would never say that." The warrior wiped his lips and scowled over his now half-empty cup. Even if the tea wasn't real, he'd be damned if he wasn't going to enjoy its crisp, minty taste. Just like how they made it in real life… He sipped his meager fluid left and spoke again. "Actually, I don't think there's anybody alive in anywhere I've been that would ever refer to me as something like a son."
"You do not really believe that." Dream-Nasu chortled, his elderly mouth-pieces quivering as he lifted his own spot of mint-tea and took a ginger sip. "I am as I appear to be. I am your sensei, Fallen. I am the one who pulled you out of the ash and taught you what it means to shed your own blood for a purpose. Are you not relieved to see me? After your ordeal, I felt that any familiar face would put you at ease."
"I was trying to forget what the other worlds were calling me." The human grumbled.
"Fallen." Nasu chimed. "There are some things I am bound to never let you forget."
The Fallen harrumphed and edged his lower lip, digesting what had been said as he looked down at the dream-tea stains on his robes. He sipped again and smacked his chops, giving a relieved- 'Ahhhhh….' –to let the minty after-taste on his breath linger.
"You're full of shit, bitch." He chirped after a full and healthy pause.
"...You really are not any fun." The imposter sighed, still using his old master's elderly, edged voice. The mighty, seven-foot-tall alien placed his now empty cup between his folded legs and reclined on the prayer matt beneath his knees. "Should I just drop the guise?"
"Yes. ButImean- …before you do, just a little creative advice?"
"Oh, certainly. I shall lend you my ear." The alien leaned forward and cupped a four-fingered claw over the little hearing-hole capping the flank on the side of his neck. No ear to speak of. The ruse was in the shit now, if it wasn't before.
"You need to make it more convincing." The Fallen rolled his hand in the air, seated across from him on his own prayer mat in the stone, cold and quiet chamber. "This is why we were never good at being con-artists. You lack the emptiness of apathy. You need to be cored on the inside, able to fit a new sleeve at a moment's notice, if you really want to trick people. The key to deceit is improvisation."
"Spoken like a true master." The imposter chuckled, rolling its mandibles. "…So can I take it off now?"
"Take it off." The Fallen waved fingers at him. "Who wants to have a-"
"-face that looks like a blooming cunt anyhow, eh? Eh?" They both said in unison, lifting their eyebrows too in exact duplication, just to make the point.
"No, seriously. Get it off yourself. It doesn't suit me." The Fallen glowered.
"You mean it doesn't suit me."
"It doesn't suit us. Just take it the hell off and get on with whatever you feel the need to say."
There was a flash of light, and where dream-Nasu had been seated a second ago, was now another pink-skinned, hairless ape just like himself.
Another Fallen. Two Fallens in the same space. Fallen One nodded at Fallen Two with a slight grin, and Two (he was the subconscious, the inner-voice, remember that) picked his cup back up and sipped it again, this time with lips, and not freaky alien mouth-parts.
"Conscience." The Fallen nodded.
"Greetings from your mind!" Conscience saluted. "Alright, after quick pleasantries, and a little sight-seeing." He gestured around the meditation chamber, exactly like how they both remembered it being before they had left.
Prayer mats, little incense sticks jutting out of copper bowls. A hole in the roof with streaming moonlight coming through and dappling off the gloriously depicted and sculpted alien statue taking up the northern wing of the room. The alien warrior was eternally caught in a battle poise, double-pronged blade raised above his saurian head, mandibles splayed in lust for blood.
"I think it's a little off. Nasu kept the place in better condition, and I've been away from the incense for so long that I can't remember how it smells." The Fallen snorted, noting the baseless odor in the air. "But none of that's important anymore, I guess."
"Are you ready to start talking about what I brought you down here for?" Conscience smiled, looking hopeful. The Fallen abhorred his own facial features for a second and sighed, sipping on the last of his tea.
"Yeah, just keep your pants on." He chided. "Seeing Nasu is always a pleasure. I suppose even old farts have their methods of making their way into your heart."
"Fart-heart." Conscience snickered childishly, playing with his fingers in the air. "What good fun! This world that we're in right now is chock full of stuff like that, fun stuff. Anywhere that has monkeys with bomb authorizations must be a trip!"
"I'm not like that."
"You never let it out, boy!"
"I don't want to. Just one last thing and we'll get on with the therapy session. You have Nasu, you have the room, do you…" The Fallen trailed. Conscience smiled sadly and held a hand aloft, beckoning him.
"I won't stop you from asking." He sympathetically said.
"…Do you have a picture of her?" The Fallen asked.
"We swore an oath not to see her until we saw her. You know that, I know that, we know that."
"That's all we do is show up, screw up the order of things, and make empty promises." He swirled a few drops of residue in his little cup, staring down at it with indecision. "It's the Grand Quest, I know, but it is… pretty soul-sapping."
"Something you're gonna' have to get by if you want to survive in this new and dangerous world, my friend. You fell out of the sky, you've lost your gear, your weapons, your bitches, but none of it permanently!" Conscience wagged a finger, smiling devilishly. "Certainly not the hat either, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, sir."
"Don't do that." The Fallen winced.
"Right! Therapy time! Doctor is in the house and is taking orders."
The meditation chamber vanished and was replaced in a flash of white with a small oak-walled office. An abacus ticked on a cherry wood desk, and now Conscience was regally dressed into a tuxedo, complete with a black bowtie. He sat in a lavish, freakishly plush red chair and extended white-gloved hands in invitation. The Fallen blinked and looked down at where he was sitting, or, rather lying. A patient's futon. How quaint.
But, uhm…
"-the fuck is with the penguin suit?" He pointed accusingly.
"Don't doctors need to keep up appearances for their patients?" Conscience sounded like he was advertising a sale's pitch. When his patient simply drummed his fingers on his belly and stared at him blankly, he conceded with a bow of his head. "Fine fine, next time no tux'. But I'm keeping it for now."
"Whatever."
"Tell me all your problems." Conscience whipped out a notepad and started scribbling with a little pencil.
"I'm trapped in a place I know was meant to bait me." The Fallen explained, leaning back into the futon and staring at the ceiling. He just noticed the fine oak paneling. His mind could really go the full mile for details, he'd give it that. No blurriness, dream-like surreality or anything to boot.
Fuck, he was a scary human being.
If he could even be called that anymore.
"Ah! So the issue involves Little Fallen." Conscience pointed erroneously at his groin. "This is good, it's good progress, really."
"It's the smell."
"That smelly-smell?"
"It's the smell that we know is coming off of… of…" He trailed, and looked over at the desk, jumping when he saw Conscience had discarded the notebook and was hunched over the desk's top menacingly, drool dripping from his tongue-slathered lips. "…Uhm… Are you-?"
"Say her name." Conscience blabbered hungrily, like he was starving, and his patient was about to bring out a fresh steak dinner. "Say it you fool! Say it!"
"But I-"
"SAY IT~!"
"…Spyra."
Conscience rattled the whole office with an orgasmic cry as he deflated on top of the desk, a pool gathering underneath his cheek and chin.
"…That's the girl…~" He moaned, fingers clawing and scraping across the desktop with effort. "The Dragon-Pussy! The Grand Quest! YESSSS~!"
"….Uh, yeah." The Fallen weakly pumped a fist in the air, grimacing at all the saliva. "Woo-hoo?"
"Yes of course, boy! We knew our enemies would utilize our ultimate weakness against us at somepoint." Conscience snapped back to attention, all the drool, discombobulation and whatnot having vanished. He was scribbling on that notebook again. "They did the same thing with that Nordic child! …Oh, what was his name… Brain-Fart? Burp? Chester-the-Molester? Oh! Wasn't it Martha? Something with an 'M' I think. But it was his steedette we porked into the sunset that I'm speaking of."
"Not even close." The Fallen pinched his nose-bridge. "But yes, that was where it all started-"
"The addiction, you mean?"
"….Yes."
"Right right right…" Conscience was scribbling furiously. "So how do you plan on tackling the problem? Abstinence?"
"Fuck no." The Fallen scoffed.
"Excellent! Any other answer is worth a death penalty for one such as yourself. Though I must inquire, the containment units. Aren't they your key?"
"They're part of it." He settled into the futon, doting on his own bare feet past the robes. "One of them has our weapons, one our suit, one our blade of righteousness. One has the key out of this world. We combine all that, we get back to our friends, we get back to our place. We can keep going from there."
"With all the possibilities for conquest, poon and gold rife for the taking!" Conscience smacked a finishing dot on his notes and looked up from the pad with intrigue. "…Wait a second, I know that concentrative look…"
"I'm not making a look."
"Holy crap, you're reluctant to leave aren't you?!"
"Think about where I am," The Fallen held his arms open. "a place where no judgments from the past exist. A fresh start. A new world. A clean slate. Villains to defeat, lands to explore…"
"I hope you're not talking about that fine piece of Goth-ass that we got to eye-up at the river corpse." Conscience pointed with a pencil.
"Cynder's with Spyra."
"Delectable~!"
"Yes, I am a little reluctant to leave. Realistically; isn't that the original purpose of our Grand Quest? Were we not supposed to bridge the gap between the worlds, seek out our glory and make everyone fear us, love us, hate us, everything in between?"
Conscience looked bored all of a sudden.
"You want my professional advice? Learn to just say you came out here to get a pussy in every color of the rainbow." He stood up from his plush chair and rounded the desk towards the futon. "I am a doctor, you know, finely dressed and aware of all your needs!"
"That was part of it." The Fallen slurped up his own lips and twiddled his thumbs like an asshole as his subconscious got closer. "I haven't even gotten out of these shroom-swamps yet, and look how deep I am, Conscience. The pheromones are already getting to work. Now we know it works between realm barriers, and it'll follow me with every one I meet! We've just… you know, gotten into this whole business of jumping, and I have the beginnings of something concrete, something immaculate, and… and really big. …Why are you looking at me like that for?"
Conscience sat on the edge of the futon with a stupid grin on his face.
"You sound like such a nervous little virgin." He chirped.
"…You can burn in the worst kind of hell and I will smile."
"Your problems run deep! But, I have the solution," He held up his notepad with a giddy expression on his face. The Fallen leaned forwards and quirked a brow, narrowing his eyes when the prior started to snicker loudly. "…yeah? Yeah? YEAH?!"
"Yeah." He nodded, appreciating the crudely drawn stick figure of what was clearly another firearm piece, but this was one alight with all kinds of scribbles denoting electrical currents. A badly lined beam shot forth and connected with a similarly badly-lined stick figure. A stick figure with a dragon's head. Sporting two, large, ovaloid masses on its upper torso and another two on its lower rear section.
"And of course, don't forget the guns meant to kill people too, don't get me wrong." Conscience threw the pad over his shoulder and held up his palms defensively as he rose from the futon. "But as is, take the recent loss as an opportunity of chance. The Grand Quest never tires, and that durg-puss be fresh, sir. Did you see the innocence glinting in that baby-girl's magenta eyes?"
He leant down and cupped a hand over the Fallen's ear.
"Draconic virginity, man!" He hoarsely whispered. They both shuddered. "It's all part of the plan! Yep! Yep. Yeah… just, you'll also have to go through a little native quest while you're at it. All realms have their own problems."
"But where do I start?" The Fallen asked. "Spyra's unwilling to go back to her village, this city, this Warfang is across an ocean to the north! None of the other pods have come down, and now an army's after us."
"Well, what if we put all of that in a better light, stick a bow on top and call it pretty?"
"wat?"
"Start small!" Conscience extended his arms overhead in a complete contrast, like he was gesturing to a giant light-up sign. "Search the local area! It may be a shit-hole, but even swamps have secrets! How about the river, the one that Spyra's egg ran down all those years ago? Someone at the head of that river, had to put her there! Someone possibly… loyal to Warfang. Ah? Ah?"
"That's one goal."
"Tell me another, brave one!"
"The Forbidden Funguswood." The Fallen snapped his fingers. "Wherever these Apes and Cynder are based. Hit something at the heart and kill everything around it in one precision strike, like we did to the San-"
"Quiet now. Quiet. You have to wake up now, I'm sorry." Conscience shook his head, and the office started to fade into a black miasma, a soup, from which it would not return for a good while. "But I think this was a wonderfully productive session. We should set a follow-up appointment. How about, on a This-World's-Fate-for-You-Day at, oh, say… twelve-o-clock…?"
{🐉}
{Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Soundtrack: A Swamp Hide and Seek}
His eyes snapped open immediately, reigniting his senses, and making him feel the warm, scaly, and soft body entangled with his.
The Fallen snapped down to look at himself as he lay on the cave floor. A pair of wide, draconic, purple eyes rose up to meet him.
"…Uhm…" The warrior faintly uttered, watching with shock as all color drained from the reptile's face, making her look albino. "…did I miss something?"
"Goodmorning-~!" Spyra shrieked. Her claws clapped over her snout and she jolted.
She was lying in a sprawl all over him, seated atop his pelvis, spooning the human for all he was worth.
Though, technically, isn't it a little more than spooning if she's on top of you? He wondered, not at all minding, given what his dreams had just revolved around.
When Spyra didn't say anything- but also didn't move –he made her start when a large grin erupted across his face.
"So," He chuckled, placing his hands on her thick hips. "how are ya', girlie?"
Fwooooffff~!
Spyra's wings had preened, like an airbag erupting from a steering wheel. She was sporting such a hot blush that literal soot was wafting through her nostrils and into the air over their heads.
The dragon sputtered something unintelligible, suspiciously sounding like- 'Mhmha-HA-Cupcakes-~!' –before leaping back off him like a cat.
"Nothingthatjusthappenediswhatitlookslikeitis-" Spyra pointed a talon at him and gulped. The human laughed and started to stand up.
"Looked like someone was getting frisky to me." He teased.
"Shut up, dude! Just- just shut up…" Spyra simmered, mimicking the stereotype of a pouting girl as she fell on her haunches and crossed her paws, doing her best to focus her attention on the cave wall nearby instead of him. The blush had turned hot red now and was invading her entire face. "…It was cold last night, and… and you're really… y'know, warm and shit…"
"'Course. Maintaining your own body-heat's essential I guess, to surviving." He sniggered, and winked, which she saw out the corner of her eye. He didn't think it was possible for her to burn up even more, but viola, surprises every friggin' day, right? "What time is it? We should move."
"E-Early morning." Spyra coughed, watching him as he moved to the mouth of the cave, wincing whilst reams of bright blue light flooded in from outside. "The weather cleared up a bit. Serves us right, we deserve some sunshine after yesterday, A.K.A, the worst day to ever happen."
"I don't like your optimism." He muttered jokingly, stepping out onto the dirtway outside the mouth to look around the surrounding swamps. "Beautiful day."
"I just said that." Spyra plopped herself beside him and yawned, stretching her wings and her tail and flinching when the tip of one of the prior touched his arm. She looked away again and squished her cheeks with her paws, trying to hide the still present flush. "-S-So what's the plan for today, sky-man?"
"I actually have one, believe it or not." He sighed, hands to hips as he surveyed the horizon. The smoke was gone from the crash sites. He could still see them though, through all the shrooms and the trees, they'd made big enough clearings to present them as holes, wantonly wanting from a distance. "You remember that river you told me about?"
"Which river? Yesterday was a blur, dude, I can barely remember my own name, let alone anything I blabb-" Spyra jolted, and paused. "…you don't mean my river, do you?"
"We're going to it." He told her, walking back towards the cave. "I'll collect some food we can use as rations. We're staying low and moving in the shade. Get ready, 'cause I'm leaving with or without you in ten minutes."
"But there isn't any freakin' reason to go there! I thought we were going to Warfang? Why are you going to my basket-river? Hey~! Don't you walk your sorry ass away from me, come back here and answer me!" Spyra lunged and hugged his ankle. He grunted and dragged her belly on the stone floor for two tugging steps before she growled and held him in place. "I'm a dragon! I have the strength to part the oceans and smash boulders, damn it! I said for you to answer me, and fuck, you're answering me~!"
He looked down at her and squinted.
"Besides, not telling me is just rude." She fluttered her eyelids at him, smiling cheaply. "And you wouldn't wanna' say no to a lady, would you? If yes, then you're a dick."
"I've told off more ladies than you think." He raised a brow. "Think about it; someone put you on that current. Dragons only live in the North, right? Why would someone not from the North, have your egg? And try to save it?"
He could practically see the gears turning. Spyra scrunched her snout and hummed.
"…Someone from Warfang." He said.
"Oh….OH! Oh, wait, shit…." Spyra let go of him and stood up. "-That means, if we find something, my destiny has literally just been an evening stroll's distance from my home this whole time."
"Could be." He shrugged, gathering up their little campsite with a few bends and swipes. "Who said anything about destiny though?"
"W-What else would you call all this?" The dragoness pointed a wing tip at the sky, as if the script awaited him in the clouds. "It literally came from the heavens!"
{🐉}
He stuck to his ten-minute warning. In that time, he took stock and saddled up for their move. Some of the rubbery material from his jumpsuit torn off the arms made excellent tie-up sacks for fistfuls of raspberries. Spyra found a cranberry bush not too far from the cave mouth, and so they at least had some variety with their singular rations. The empty pistol was a downer. Of course, the pod he had looted had not been stuffed with spare magazines, and after that fight in the river corpse, the gun was dry.
Though, he supposed bashing an Ape over the head with it as a blunt object couldn't hurt. Plus, if more of the pods came down, there was no telling what sorts of ammunition would be siphoned from the rather disastrous trip that had brought him here. More rounds for the sidearm was likely. He shoved it on the little strap hem of the jumpsuit, along with their food and the stolen Ape-crafted blade, his only true weapon.
It was right as he was stepping into the clearing outside the cave that Spyra ran up to him and said-
"If we're gonna' do this, you need to teach me how to fight."
The human stopped mid-walk and glared at her. For a moment, only the drone of day-active swamp fauna in the backdrop marked a disturbance. Spyra smiled as wide as her snout would allow her to.
"Pwease'?" She gave him puppy-dog-eyes.
"You already know how to fight." He reminded. "The river corpse? You tackled curvy, emo and bladed without any help from me."
"-And you took out, what, like a bajillion guys all on your own. Unarmed for a minute, too. You have shit going on, dude, and I want in." Spyra blinked and mumbled in additive- "-and she wasn't that curvy…"
"Ugh, we need to-" He gestured ahead, and then sighed. "…Alright, what is it you want to know?"
Evidently, that meant a spar.
The whole thing was working up to a spar. How did they have time for this? Hell if he knew, but the feisty, purple dragoness was dead-set on it, probably because she still wasn't satisfied with her nut-crunching revenge for his kick-maneuver that he had pulled on her yesterday.
He didn't think spite could run so deeply, long and subtly in such a creature.
But then again, she was a dragon.
Must have had something to do with the unnaturally long lifespans or some shit. Not that he had the patience to find out.
"We can fight here." Spyra swept her nose in appraisement over a mushroom copse off the clearing. There was a pit, reachable by winding footpaths lined with large mushrooms and creepers. Enough of the shrooms as large as trees held overhead that their crimson undersides cast reams of dappling, bloody hues into the pit below, where sunlight penetrated the caps.
"I thought we were sparring." The human grumbled, looking down at a disturbance by his foot. A millipede with large, yellow eyes and cute, tiny mandibles was crawling up his leg. Problem was, the millipede was at least a foot long. The insect had eyelids. It looked up at him and blinked with a tiny chitter. He grimaced and kicked it off, seeing it to roll away with a minute squeak.
"What's the difference? It's beating the daylights out of someone on an official listing. It's a fight, but, ya' know, one with regulations. No killing and all that." She was still looking around the pit, only now gazing up at him. "What's that look for?"
"Sorry, the stank of bullshit is rife." He rolled his eyes.
"What's wrong with what I said?"
"Fighting is different from sparring. Sparring sticks to a regimen of a certain style in repeated procession. It's like boxing, but it might not necessarily be that exactly. A fight is something you wage against your enemies. A spar is between two opponents mutually seeking improvement in each other's technique." He quoted his sensei for once. He didn't do that enough, but the dream last night had been enough of an incentive.
Among other things… His eyes strayed down her curvy, feral back. Waitaminute. No. Focus.
"You sound like a boring old school teacher with a tumor in his hip and thin blood pressure." She arched a scaly brow. "You forget your walking stick in the cave, gramps?"
"Stow it, you flying newt or it's gonna' turn into a fight." He chuckled, grabbing and shoving her horn playfully as he stepped past her and hopped down into the pit. "Keep it clean, and I'll humor you. But only for a round. Time is wasting and we gotta' move soon." He called back, pausing in the center of the makeshift ring. He grinned and asked: "-How about a grappling match? First one to wrestle the other to the dirt wins the day."
Spyra's eyes lit up at his behavior.
"Bring it." She smiled, opening her wings and gliding down into the pit. "You sure we can't go for best two out of three?"
"No." He shook his head, reaching down to his hip and casting aside the blade and the food pouches there. He cracked his knuckles and spread his arms wide.
Spyra hummed approvingly and started to pace around him in a slight, quadruped jog, her chin bashfully lowered, and her eyes only glazing over him once in a while with a lidded heaviness.
C'mon, monkey boy, gimme' an opening…
"You do know your shit." She purred, finishing a full circuit around him. The human adjusted to keep facing her the whole ring, grinning at the tension. "So, you were trained and stuff, right? You had a… a… whatjyu' call him?"
"Sensei. Yes, awhile ago." He nodded, still keeping up his spread stance on the move. "He didn't teach me how to fight, he taught me how to refine the energy I use to fight. All crafts need a directive, and he helped me find mine."
Can't let him draw me in. Focus, Spyra! You've wrestled every bug, scav' and critter in this swamp. You can take a spindly sky-man like him…
"Where'd you pick up your moves before the old guy polished 'em off?" She stopped half-way through her next jog-ring and started stretching in front of him, locking her front paws and lithely spreading her torso out behind her. The bent-over position did work to distract him. "Hey, alien-boi', my hips don't have eyes."
"Yet they're so fine to stare at." He winked.
W-Waitasec-! Oh-! OhFUCKMYLIFE-BLUSH-
Spyra chirped like a bird and clapped her paws over her cheeks.
He bounced off his heels like he had been standing on a springboard. Spyra didn't even have the chance to blink before the human was sailing right into her.
Sucking in her breath, the dragoness slipped like liquid from his arms, and he found himself hugging air. Grunting, he dug a heel into the dirt and swiveled west, arms open as a purple mass bounded once, twice, off the side of a mushroom, and hurtled at him from the flank like a missile.
Jesus Christ she's fast!
Spyra slammed into his ribs and took him down to the ground. The human and the dragoness rolled to and fro, arms interlocking, fingers meeting talons, palms to paws in a bid to hook and wrap one another.
Every time he reached forth to ensnare her, she countered with a swipe of her claw. His legs went for her hips? Nonsense! Hers were much wider and armored. She broke the lock and instead trapped his waist in the grove of her lower half.
Being a dragon had its benefits. She was able to twist and bend in ways human anatomy was never meant to. A fine cloud of dust swirled from the pit's interior as the fight went on. A small band of millipedes had gathered at the top rim of the pit. One of them was squeaking, its front leg-nubs clasped around a leaf that others were tossing pebbles, bits of shells and exoskeletal shavings in for decent bets.
"-I guess I should be impressed or something-" Spyra smiled through grit fangs, flipping him onto his back and hooking his legs with her thighs. One paw pinned his wrists to his throat, the other had gripped a wad of his dark hair and yanked his head back painfully, jutting his chin up at the mushrooms overlooking the pit. "-You're no drake, and look at how long it's takin' me to win. You crashing into my life may just be the best thing that's happened to this 'ness yet, ape-boi'."
She leaned in close and bumped him on the cheek with her snout.
"-Beg-" She said.
"-WHAT-?!" He choked.
"-Beg, hu-man. Tell me to end it-" She grinned daggers, adventure and something else lurking behind her purple irises.
"-You sound like Cynder-" He gagged, wriggling like a tortured worm.
"-Oh, I bet you'd like that wouldn't you?-"
Did he detect a scowl?
Now they both were smiling. The warrior bent forwards as best he could, meeting her eye-to-eye with the most unnerving grin he could muster.
"-Y-You bet I would. Having all those soft, black curves up against me. Cold steel that could slice through rock just inches away from me? Talk about hot-" Spyra's brow twitched and her grip faltered. He ripped a wrist free and grabbed her by the horn, earning a suspiciously toned, loud moan as he yanked her reptilian head up and away from him. "-I normally don't go for the girls out there to kill me, 'specially after we just met, but you have to admit; that bitch is sexy enough that I'd be willing to let it slide-"
"What does she have anyway?" Spyra spat, he tore another wrist free and curled around her shoulders, but she didn't even notice. "She's not even that pretty looking! She's-"
Her world spun and she ate the dirt. Spyra puffed in pain as her neck and breast were compressed to the ground. He yanked her arm behind her and gave it a slight curl. A knee to the small of her back planted her.
"-She's the perfect ruse." He finished for her. Up above, the millipedes erupted into a miniature ruckus as betting scraps flew everywhere. One of them became so enraged at his apparent loss that he tackled the leaf-holder. "And she's also a perfect example of why you should never let an opponent distract you. You want me to train you? First critical feedback; you monologued yesterday and it almost got you killed."
"OooooOOOoooyou, you're just a dirty, dirty little cheater-" She hissed into the soil.
"If playing on weakness is cheating, then arrest me on the spot." He grunted, lifting his knee from her and releasing her arm. "The first rule to fighting is that there are no rules. You want an advantage over the people trying to kill you? Play dirty. Play as dirty as you can."
"-Sure thing~!" The dragoness wormed and spun underneath him. He lost his balance and fell. Spyra wrapped his pelvis in her legs, straddled him, pinned his wrists again and kept him there with her weight in the blink of an eye. He was hogtied. The dust was still settling when she leaned close. "-I'll keep it in mind, tough-guy. Play dirty. You found the right swamp 'ness for that, I'll tell ya'. And hey, I thought this was a spar, sens-eye, not a fight."
"It's sensei, you uncultured pleb." He growled. "If I say you won, will you let me go so we can get on with today?"
"Mmhmm, yeah~." She cutely nodded her snout, resting her chin on his chest to dote on him with her puppy-eyes again. "Then you gotta' tell me I'm prettier than that mushroom-squatting whore."
When he remained silent, she tightened her grip, making him grunt.
"Hit me, human boi'." She licked her chops. "And a one, two, three, go~."
"You win." He grit his teeth, swallowed, and got out: "-and you're prettier."
"Oh? Of whom do you speak of? I need to know who I'm prettier than." Spyra giggled, squeezing him, eliciting a pained bark. "Humans really are brittle when you get past the defenses. I bet I could shatter this bone right here if I sneezed and clenched by accident!"
"…you're prettier than Cynder. Now let me get up."
"Nu-uh, you gotta' say it my way."
"For god's sake, what the fuck is wrong with you, woman?"
"Say it."
"OUCH~! Fine! Fine, just…" He composed himself. "-You're prettier than that mushroom-squatting whore."
"And I have fuller hips, like, totally, yeah?"
"Well-"
"Say it~!"
"-OW~! Ouch! Alright! You have fuller hips. You're curvier! You're thick as fuck! You're bodacious, and you have wicked breeding hips!"
Spyra made that chirping noise again. Up went those paws to her cheeks. He kicked her off in a heap and leapt to his feet, rubbing his wrists tenderly.
"…*huff* -This isn't a spar anymore, and we're out of time. Get up, and let's get moving before somebody really gets hurt." He snapped, bending down to pick up his belongings. "Did you hear me?"
"I heard everything, dude." Spyra was sprawled on the ground, drunkenly staring at something only she could see through the mushroom caps above. Her eyes were locked on the small sliver of blue sky birthed between them all. She thought for a minute, and he huffed impatiently.
"Spyra." He grunted.
"You came from the sky." She pointed up. He followed her direction, and then looked back down at her. "From up there, see?"
"…Did you hit your head on the way down?"
"Fuck you, man, I'm just thinking." She crossed her paws over her tummy and tapped a talon.
"Well, when you're done thinking, get yourself out of the pit, and let's move." The human turned around and hopped up one of the winding pathways, scattering the crowd of millipedes that all crawled and rolled away back towards the woods-line atop the pit's walls.
"You know what I'm gonna' call you?" Spyra shouted when he gained some distance.
No, don't say it...
"I'm gonna' call you the Fallen. Has a nice ring to it."
He shut his eyes.
"…Of course it does." He muttered, staring at the sky hatefully, knowing all too well of the presence out there no doubt mocking him coldly at this very second.
It was as the dream had gone. All worlds had their stories. That didn't mean he couldn't change this one. Certainly, that didn't mean he couldn't change Spyra.
The notepad was in his thoughts as he stepped away, and, despite being tackled and hogtied like a bitch, a pleasant grin found its way on his face in the coming minutes.
Change was a'comin.
{🐉}
