Dragon(s)layer
8
Pathfinder
"This development changes everything. Our new enemies have proven that their reach is far, and that it runs deeply. I am not so quick to detract from what you are doing, hatchling, lest I be impertinent. But what has occurred has demonstrated to me that you are in need of aid."
Cynder blinked moisture from her eyes as she passed through the strain of copper clouds. The fluffy wall of flesh left in her wake was parted, leaving a quickly resealing gap daggered by the length of her wingspan.
She tucked her nose lower and breached the current with her breast and shoulders, lowering altitude, to gain a sweeping view of the Frontier Sea as it extended far and below her.
"Reinforcements travel to the Forlorn Watch as we speak. Your hailing for help was most proactive. I am… pleased with your intuition. Forget not; your service, for all its faults, was never marred by so fickle a blemish in its entirety. You are my champion in this ordeal. I have only ever gifted to you what I have deemed the bloodiest of alleys in need of reorganization. I do not level what I am about to make you do out of punishment."
The ocean was almost a blood-red, caught in the tidings of late evening. This far below the brown cloud level just over her horns showed the blurred, burning girth of the setting sun. The colossal ball of dragonflame gradually hid itself over the lip of the oceanic horizon. It emblazoned an upside-down pyramid of golden caterpillars inch worming down the center of the sea in parallel with her line of sight. Cynder's white eyes reflected a golden tint as she dreamed mid-flight.
Being airborne was in a dragon's blood. Yet somehow, she always found her thoughts becoming loftier every instance she leaped from the earth and took a prolonged journey to another landmass.
She supposed she'd been stuck mourning in that wretched tower for so long, that she had forgotten the pleasantries of foreign air and diversity.
Luckily, her wings were powerful enough that she could easily halve her own flight time and be in the accursed Dragon Realms within the same day.
"The war has been shifting while you were away, hatchling. The Daragon Coast is your destination, home to the town of Oversight, Queen Lillith's realm that she arrogantly forgets in her hours of botanistic withdrawal inside Castle Crownhorn. My generals are already overseeing the assault to crush the Northerners' 'Kingdom of Vines'. The siege stalls, but you are not there to influence that."
Cynder eyed the west as she flew, Malefora's words replaying themselves as ghostly echoes in her mind. The Frontier Sea was too vast to view the Ancient Sea from this distance. By extension, the Dark Continent, and the volcanic home of her Mistress were hidden miles and miles away over the horizon. But Cynder could practically feel her gaze. The growing aura of unnatural shadow emerging over the west was growing every day. If the invasions over the waters had already started, that meant that Malefora was going for broke.
She wanted Warfang. And she was willing to kill and burn her way across half the Dragon Realms in order to reach the holy capital of their kind. The Dark One had spent the better majority of the last few years gathering her forces. Cynder had united the Ape tribes beneath the chieftain kings, and Malefora had forged the new Dark Army. Four strongholds of shadow.
Monkano, Forlorn, Concurrent, and the Dark Continent.
Warfang was outnumbered four to one. The end was coming.
"Behold. I send you to find this one. He is cunning. He is dangerous and he has never failed me. He blends shadow with speed and accuracy. The perfect assassin. Find him in the wartorn Daragon Coast. Our hold in the south depends on it."
Cynder felt belittled by it all.
Being forced to seek help.
Not even hours after Malefora had violated her mind for the first time in years in an attempt to dispel the Fallen's enchantment.
-Which was still fucking eating away at her to this moment. She had relented from saying anything to her Mistress after the horrid 'treatment' she'd been subjected to. But she had an inkling that Malefora knew it as well.
What else was there to do without risk of killing Cynder? She'd toughen the enchantment out. She'd been dealt far worse.
If it even is an enchantment.
The copper sea and sky made her reminisce this strange feeling. A pattering sensation, like a colony of moths nesting in her gut. The human's form and physique. But most of all the sensation of his un-scaled skin brushing her hide.
Cynder needed to feel that again. She'd already determined that she wanted the Fallen alive, and had been pained being forced to tell her soldiers to capture him either or. If she'd made her fascination too obvious for Malefora… there was no telling what the Dark One would do.
Cynder had poured through her little library in the Forlorn Watch's observatory. She ripped through stolen books, historical records, tomes and scrolls, and not once had there ever been a mention of anything called a human throughout the Old Kingdom's history. Even predating Malefora herself and the foundation of the Guardians. Nothing at all.
This otherworldly being escaped her literary reach and her emotional.
Gigaw's proddings being dismissed: Cynder desperately wanted to talk. Sheerly because there was no one in her life to ever have done so with. These issues eating her insides made her quick to anger, irritable, and constantly seeking the attentions of another.
Even though the crazy simian had stabbed her, Cynder couldn't rid herself of his fingertips. Soft little skin-nubs that had glazed over her majestic, crimson plated breast.
She had never allowed another to touch her in her life. But Cynder was prepared to let the Fallen touch her like that again, if only just to remember what the sensation had felt like.
I could've encountered him in the swamps myself during a patrol, captured him, bound him and carted him back with me. I wouldn't have brought him to that crumbling ruin. No, Forlorn wouldn't have sufficed. I'd have brought him to Concurrent. To my home.
Cynder shivered, flapping her wings to gain her altitude back. Her body felt like it was being coursed by a pleasant little tingle of electricity. At the mere thought of such a fantasy.
Her castle was dark, and shrouded in mystery, but most of all: it was private.
High in the floating crystal islands of Concurrent Skies, hidden away in the magically conjured Blue Hurricane that had been concealing the cavernous airborne landmasses since the first ages was her fortress. The thought of dragging the Fallen inside, binding him over the tiled floors, hanging him from chains, letting him mount her…
Cynder wasn't even hiding the infatuation from herself anymore. She could rant and get angry all she wanted and it wouldn't change the facts.
The Fallen had done something to her with his touch, some kind of effect that followed him wherever he went, and only impacted beings of her type and construction.
Cynder was going to capture that pristine, vitalic alien male. And she was going to kill that little purple bitch that was currently starving her of his company. He would be all hers.
But first, she needed to fulfill her master's wish.
No matter how much she loathed doing so.
Land came into sight. It crawled over the sea and started to shield the dropping sun. Coastal cliffs and skiffs of creamy sand swathed out to the far east and throated in the north. The black shapes of warships bobbing in the surf were ant-sized dots as she gained altitude. It was impossible to tell the identities as naval units hung back and waited for night to pass before resuming hostilities. The crude constructions of Ape dreadnoughts contrasted the rich crimson and gold-trimmed steam-ships of the moles, the dragons' ancient allies and protectees.
Larger ships made of molten earth and pulsating crystal emerged in greater numbers from the west. The Dark Army's navy.
The crone of warhorns etched out in the backdrop, as did the occasional, hollow report of an explosion and whoosh of fire. Tiny dots that resembled spiraling flies over the coast signified the presence of aerial combatants on both sides. Though this ambiance bled across the entire coast like a macabre blanket of interspersed happenstance, it centered thickest over and around Oversight.
Oversight was an artificial sprawl on the otherwise natural coastline of the Dragon Realms. The walled draconic town had black soot rising in towers from many a place. Fires brewed on the beaches its cliff walls overlooked as engines of the Dark Army- destroyed in the initial landings –continued to burn. Every so often, a broiling fireball, launched from a catapult or a mole cannon would careen in the respective angle, leaving behind a black arc of soot, and would land in a muted whump~! –that would thunder up and down Daragon.
Cynder's inner turmoil was briefly silenced as she considered indulging the warrioress side of herself by engaging in combat with the Northerners. But this theater wasn't hers. At least not yet. She needed to find her goal and get out of this war with him. Get back to her tower and finish her war first.
Cynder swept low and fledged out her wings, making sure to keep them daggered, with the brunt of the wind beating off the spines instead of the membranes. She didn't want to be known in her excursion. The last thing she needed was her own trademark scream echoing across the beach and letting every eager dragon champion loyal to Lillith know that the Terror of the Skies had entered the scenario. This needed to be quiet.
The surf bucked against the coast with white foam against rocks and sand. She slipped over it and a pair of wrecked hauler ships that had been used to disgorge friendly soldiers. These dark transports lye as black, mangled corpses interspersed up and down the beach, their bellies cracked open and their masts collapsed. Some of them were burning.
Impact craters and rock fields mostly after that. Bonfires ringed with shuffling little ants, skeletal siege engines and dispersing bat-like fliers. Cynder targeted the nearest campsite, offering the overhead visage of Oversight's cliff-topped walls a disdainful sneer.
She landed and readied her heels in sandy, dead grass, her white eyes narrowing as clinks of steel, surprised grunts and mournful groans symbolized the presence of others.
Armored, cloven heels crunched in the grass on all sides as she was quickly surrounded. Cynder preened her wings and then concealed them to fold. She gave an austere crane of her neck, and grunted when a motley assortment of black shapes- ones slightly larger than even her –shuffled closer.
"Mistress," Droned a gravely, deep-seated voice. "we almost mistook you for a dragon seeking honor-death."
"It would've been the last mistake you made." Cynder chanced a second-long smile, answering the attempt at humor with a darker side of her own.
"My lady."
The creature sacrificed a knee and bowed its crocodilian, armored head, a double-handed battle axe sticking into the grass butt-first. Nearly twenty other examples of this hideous, gangly creature followed suit, all kneeling in a ring of worship around the black dragoness.
Orcs.
Cynder snorted and reached up to shove her brooch into her snout.
Mushrooms, Apes, death, Orcs. There was always some offensive odor to do battle against, forget the fucking war.
"We were informed by Lord Urukal that you would bless us with your presence. You seek our pathfinder." The same Orc righted himself before the others, a snarled excuse of a grin developing on his underbitten, hideous jaw. His fangs were disorganized and yellow. Cynder found it a miracle the abomination could manage speech so fluently, especially seeing as Orcs were some of the more brutish of her master's earthen-borne creations, known to be even more barbaric than Apes.
"Yes." Cynder said, her eyes sizing the Orc up. "You are an officer?"
"Indeed, my lady." The Orc chuckled. "Taskmaster Gulukai, overseer and director."
"You will take me to my charge."
"Right away."
Gulukai parted his squadron of armored Orcs with but a wave of his claw. The beasts' labored, ragged breathing was the only ambiance for a while as he led Cynder through the mob.
They all stared at her with a strange mix of adoration and hunger. Tens of beady little red eyes gleaming in the evening dusk underneath triangular, horned helmets. Cynder had to let go of her brooch to walk and immediately regretted it.
These Orcs stunk. Like feces and corpses. She peered over several of their shoulders and witnessed a mangled elk stuck through a spit and charring over the burning timber. A trio of green Grublins chattered and wrestled over a discarded bone in the sand at one of the Orc's feet. The whole encampment was like this. The beach had become infested, just like Malefora had intended.
"The siege has lasted a month. In that time, we were repelled from the shores six separate times by dragons attacking from the air. Naval bombardment was nearly ineffective. Only a Wing brought in from the Dark Continent, and the actions of our champion pathfinder were able to secure a beachhead for the invasion to commence." Taskmaster Gulukai relented, edging his hideous, reptilian mug past his shoulder at her. "The champion pathfinder you seek, I might add. Lord Urukal is most anxious about having him removed from combat, especially when Daragon is so close to falling."
"Urukal will survive such a surgical relocation." Cynder rolled her eyes, disinterested in maintaining the conversation.
"Of course, my lady." Gulukai said. "I am not a conduit for his concerns, understand, but as Taskmaster, Urukal has placed in me a set of responsibilities that warrant my asking."
"You have been promoted?"
"Upon the death of my predecessor, yes." Gulukai's black tongue swiveled about his teeth, and he spoke with a wet burble of musing. "Taskmaster Lukpom met an unfortunate end at the hands of mole riflemen. He was blown to tatters and stringed into the surf as soon as he leaped off the carack."
"Unfortunate."
"Very much so. The Northerners drew first blood in cauldrons, but our superiority in numbers and quality saw the day. The dragons felled were appropriated by the Apes for ceremonial feasting. I was most tempted to join them."
Cynder answered that with silence. Strangely, despite everyone in this conversation being a practiced killer, the idea of her regal kin being eaten by her army…. disturbed her.
A cannon shot landed not too far off in the campsite. The explosion was like a crack of thunder. Over a hill rise, fire bloomed and the flaming carcasses of Grublins and an Orc or two hurled themselves down to the ground below. When bones became blackened by heat, they tended to crumple like cheap charcoal when subjected to trauma. Listening to their spines crack was like hearing a thin woodland stick snap.
Gulukai didn't even take notice as he jogged to the other side of the camp. The walls of Oversight were high overhead, up the spanning maze of cliffs. Cynder sneered as she hunkered lower and used her enhanced, draconic eyesight to sweep the tops of the defense palisades.
Moles, armed with crossbows and flint rifles, scurrying everywhere like the rodents they were. Brass, floor-mounted cannons topped with barrels carved to resemble dragon heads. One belched occasionally and rained another comet of death on the beach below.
"Taskmaster, time is not an ally for either of us." Cynder hissed as they reached a patch of thin foliage. "Where exactly do you think we're going?"
"Forgive the detour, mistress." Gulukai breathed, pointing at the brush. "But our pathfinder does not reside within the garrison."
"Then where the hell is he?" Cynder laughed sourly.
"Engaged in reconnaissance at the edges of the enemy walls. He's been observing Oversight's defenders for the last week."
"And his general location?"
"By the copse of trees, there, several yards from the farthest cliff face beneath the walls."
Cynder kicked her wings and blared past Taskmaster Gulukai faster then the Orc could blink.
"Beware the woods, my lady!" –His ragged shouts met her in the distance as she vanished into the shaded woodlands. "Enemy scouts are in there too!"
The woods at least offered some degree of quiet, if you didn't mind the staccato ring of siege weapons dully firing overhead. Cynder quietly slipped across the foliage on all fours, ringing trees.
Only when she reached a small clearing did she pause, her breath heavy from the exertion of the sprint. Some crickets chirped nearby, and the trees oversaw everything in a glossing canopy of dark browns and blacks. The sun was almost entirely gone by this point and the forests around Oversight's lowlands were getting swallowed by shadow.
Cynder sniffed the air. Finding the usual scents of pine needles, wood, soil, grass…
But death too. Spilled blood, relatively fresh. There was no mistaking that metallic tinge. Not even here in this hell.
Cynder examined the clearing for a short while before casting an accusatory glance to her flank. She crossed some distance and swept aside the snapped hulk of a fern, crinkling her nose when she revealed a corpse underneath the branches.
It was a Mole, still wearing his black and gold combat armor, and a set of little spectacles that crookedly remained on his nose even in death. He'd been slashed open from shoulder to hip. The puddle was starting to become part of the ground.
His handiwork no doubt.
Cynder looked up. The little alley through some trunks showed the scene of a massacre. At least eleven more Mole warriors, elegantly carved swords and crossbows haphazardly loosed next to their cadavers. Two of them had been decapitated. Organic gruel created now crusting trails that linked the cleanly sliced stubs of removed limbs and heads to the torsos they had come from. Some of the blood was black. There were maybe six or seven Grublins and a pair of Orcs meshed in with the pile. The Orcs were of a thinner build, with red plated armor.
Archers. One of the two breeds of their kind solely created for war. Cynder wondered if one of them was her quarry. She'd almost be relieved if such was true.
Footprints, and an unlinked trail.
Cynder was careful not to touch any of the dead as she traipsed through the thicket. She bent lower and viewed the carnage wrought upon the bloody grass. A clear indicator of movement showed footsteps and broken twigs leading to an edge in the fighting. Black blood dripped in interspersed globules between steps.
A little groan caught her attention. Cynder looked down at one of the 'corpses' and sneered as the Mole twitched, lying face-down in the dirt.
The black dragoness stepped closer and rolled him over with a poke of her bladed tail. The rodent gasped, his arms flopping across his ruined chest as he was forced onto his back to view the darkening sky.
He had a pair of mechanical goggles strapped over his eyes. Cynder could hear the lenses inside whirring as they focused on her face from below.
"…T-Terror of the Skies." The mole whispered hoarsely, blood flecking over his chops.
"Indeed. Your target appears to have escaped you, rat-man." Cynder looked back at the dead Orcs. "Which way did he go and how many of you are left?"
The Mole gurgled, the proud, crimson and gold helmet on top of his diminutive little head rolling off to lay still just over his scalp. He slouched and the tense muscles in his neck relaxed. Cynder sighed in annoyance.
They always had to die when it was inconveniencing.
Metal clashed and someone nearby shouted. Her wings flapped and she shot through a pair of trees, leaving the site of the battle.
The commotion was coming from one of the subsidiary cliff faces, the steps leading up to the foot of Oversight's walls. A single Orc battled a trio of Moles wielding glaives. Cynder readied herself to join in the engagement, but found there was no need.
The Orc- despite suffering slash wounds across his breast and left leg –flipped, head over heels, in a backwards roll. He carried himself from the slashes of the Moles and righted atop a boulder, a crossbow readied in his one claw. The weapon kicked and a Mole screamed with a bolt sticking out of his furry throat.
Another closed the distance and swept at the Orc's feet. The Orc jumped, landed beside his attacker, and brought a dagger in his other claw across the smaller warrior's face.
The Mole screeched like a mouse caught in a trap. He tossed back with an incision opening him from his jaw-hinge to the brow on the opposite side of his head. When he fell, the Orc had already reloaded a second bolt, and the last Mole died when the round punched between his eyes and sent him sprawling.
Cynder landed on the edge of the plateau and preened her wings, staring across the bodies at the Orc with her soulless white eyes.
For a moment, the Orc paused, his breathing labored as he reloaded his crossbow again, slipping the bolts from a bandolier wrapped across his painfully narrow waist. He regarded her with little red eyes under his helmet, his yellow teeth bared in a constant snarl.
"Zargos the Pathfinder." Cynder greeted.
The Orc closed his mouth, and snorted up a trail of blood that was leaking. He remained silent.
"I bring word from the Dark Mistress." The black dragoness said. "You're being reassigned."
Zargos sheathed his dagger, swaying a bit as he stood to his full height and continued his staring. Cynder was expecting the usual gruff voiced, overzealous and cocky barbarian that all Orcs inevitably wound up being. Instead, when Zargos spoke, his voice was just an octave above an agonized whisper.
"M'lady." He belatedly uttered, bowing his head slightly.
"I need you to come with me." Cynder folded her wings and nodded back towards the beach, now in view from their height on the cliffside plateau. "Word comes through me from the Dark Continent itself. Malefora requires your talents."
Orcs had trouble with any other kinds of facial expressions besides contemptuous sneers and angry frowns. But Zargos looked like he wanted to say something. The battle fatigue was still draining from his system. He merely closed his jaws and gave a little bow again.
"M'lady." Was all he parroted.
{🐉}
Zargos said nothing when Cynder brought him back to the very beach he had fought so hard to take with his erstwhile kin. Malefora had been prepared. There was an Ape carack waiting just off the rocks for him, and a small dingy was beached with a trio of the simian warriors lumbering about to transport him.
Cynder had never fought beside Zargos the Pathfinder before, but from what she had heard about him, his prowess was certainly a spectacle as was her own.
Zargos had been fighting since the beginning of the war. He was reputedly one of the oldest Orcs in the Dark Army and had survived earlier campaigns where the Dark Army had secured holds on the mainland and had summarily been driven back. He had lived through more battles than even Lord Urukal, and Urukal was Malefora's most decorated Orcish general in her entire army.
Zargos had very little to say as the black dragoness told him everything that had been happening in the southern swamps. The prophecy of the Purple Dragoness being born. The flaming asteroids from the sky. The rise of the Fallen. Zargos didn't speak, but she could tell when his interest piqued due to the inclinations of his crocodilian head. He would raise his chin whenever Spyra and the Fallen came into play.
When Cynder was done, they had reached the dingy and stood before one another, 'ness to Orc, before the end of their brief meeting.
"The flow of Mana Crystals from the south is dependent on my tower. The Purple Dragoness doesn't just threaten our source of soldiers, but the very foundations of the Dark Continent." Cynder spoke. "We both toil to find her and limit the inevitable damage she will deal."
Zargos made a small grunting sound, and looked off towards the carack bobbing in the waves past the beach. Even the Apes by the dingy looked intimidated by his presence. He was covered in scars, his armor was ancient and worn and the red color was starting to fade. He was missing a finger on his left claw, and one of his cheeks had a permanent divet carved into it from a past blow to the face.
"Do you have any questions regarding your quarry?" Cynder allowed herself a brief smirk. "Given their unique nature and status."
"The stories that the dragons have spun." Zargos' voice sounded like magma bubbling, or like there was tar in his throat. "They were true all of this time. I believed our Commando teams were being wasted, lingering in the tombs of the dead and the warrens of your kind's soothsayer monks."
The Archer paused.
"Why haven't they been gifted my new task?"
"Malefora practices compartmentalization." Cynder reminded glumly. "One messenger is rarely aware of another, least of all whom they travel to meet. I'm quite certain your comrades have been selected for due quests themselves."
"The Lady of the South is no mere messenger." Zargos narrowed his beady little eyes. "The Dark Mistress rarely acts so brashly. If the situation is as grave as this suggests, I'd beg of you to tell me."
"It isn't like I was swept away to maintain transport coherence at the foot of the volcano." Cynder sighed. "The Daragon landings apparently leave little wiggle-room, so to speak, for any others. Malefora believed you should hear it from the next best thing to the source. The flight was not long."
Not that Zargos had any inclination to give a shit. Cynder was small-talking.
"Your reputation precedes you." Zargo said out of the blue. "I was curious when I saw you land before me, freshly covered in blood from victory. I almost was convinced that the end had grabbed me in my absence of thought, and I was hallucinating. But, nevertheless, the Terror of the Skies herself has gone out of her way to collect a lesser savant of the Dark Continent. Me."
"Whether it is for better or worse I am all too real." Cynder huffed, snorting at her brooch as the sea-salt started to grate on her nerves. "My Mistress told me you have repeatedly refused positions as an officer. I can read your talents in your speech. Why do you do this to yourself?"
"Why do any of us do what we do, m'lady?" The Orc chuckled. "I live for the hunt. The Dark One bids me to draw blood for her, and so I shall. Such is one's born purpose. I shall take my leave."
He started to stomp towards the dingy. Cynder held up a wing and stopped him.
"Wait." She choked, still deciding whether to speak aloud by the time she said it anyway. "There is more."
"M'lady." Zargos paused.
"I discussed to you compartmentalization. There is an addendum to these instructions of yours, Zargos, and it is one that I have no doubt will complicate things for your inner mind." Cynder breathed, and said very quietly. "The Fallen. I want him alive."
"Has the Dark Mistress not instructed his death?"
"I have instructed his capture." Cynder said dangerously. "And it is the closest word you are to receive above all else. Malefora punishes, but so do I. Do I make myself clear?"
Zargos remained silent for a second. Then, there was another little bow of his head.
"Yes, m'lady."
"Good. Bring to me the Fallen alive, and bring my Master the Purple Dragoness' head mounted on a pike. Leave the excuse for the Fallen's disappearance to me and me alone." Cynder nodded for the boat. "My men will start you on your journey. You are on your own from that point on."
"Understood." Zargos bowed. "My hunt will reap fruit."
"See to it that it does." Cynder's claw extended, and when her talons opened, Zargos stared at a small black pearl clenched in her palm. "Take it."
Zargos pinched the little stone and put it in a sash. He bowed lower. Cynder took one last look at Oversight. The walled town would hold yet, and the towering triple spires of Castle Crownhorn sat vigilant over all the soot and the night sky, now highlighted silver by the rising blue moon.
"We'll be in touch." She stated, before her wings kicked, and she was a black strip vanishing over the sea's horizon.
Zargos watched her go and sneered at the beach.
Inner politics made him sick. But as long as it meant him getting out of this fucking meat grinder, the Orc was all in for any assassination contract he could get. He'd hunt down Mistress Cynder's quarry. He did better alone anyway.
"Those look like sum nasteh bites those do." One of the Apes lumbered closer, examining the blade-wrought wounds fresh on Zargos' body. "Ya want a bandage or sumthin, boss?"
"That isn't necessary." Zargos looped around him towards the dingy. "And I am eager to leave."
{🐉}
The flight back felt quicker. It was probably because some kind of weight had been lifted from Cynder's wings.
At least she knew there was some preservation of her ideals from someone other than herself.
She landed back at Forlorn's observatory, and, preening her wingspan on the balcony plat, she gave a pleased hum as she saw a pair of metallic objects seated in the center of the observatory chamber.
A pair of lead-colored pods, swept and roughly egg-shaped. Both the size of large wagons, sitting ominously on the tiled floor.
The pods. The ones that had fallen from the sky. Tinker must have had them delivered up the flight of steps. Cynder hummed again, this time, considering the difficulty of lugging the obviously very heavy alien objects up an entire tower's chute of stairs.
The black dragoness stepped off the nighttime balcony and into the chamber, her eyes glazing over the alien pods. She ran a claw down the flank of one, marveling at the slick, perfectly smooth metal. It was far beyond the capabilities of the Dark Army or the Northerners to construct something so… streamlined.
It confirmed as much as everything else just how alien the Fallen, and wherever he came from, really was.
Cynder didn't understand where he would've gotten inside the unit. There were no visible openings or buttons or latches anywhere. She tried picking at it with the tips of her talons, the blade of her tail, and at one point (though she glanced around before doing so to keep face) she did nibble on it a bit hoping for her teeth to answer the question.
Shit almighty. She was like a quarreling little monkey fawning over the technological brilliance of a god.
"You fall into our world, wound my mining operations, stir up the pot of my lordess and her lieutenants, and you slaughter a cadre of my soldiers…" Cynder sat on her haunches and leaned into one of the cool pods in defeat. "…You ignite a fire in my body."
Cynder traced a talon over the space where the sword wound used to be on her breast. The markings tattooing her body flared in the dark, barely illuminating themselves with colors of dark blue to match her shadow element.
Cynder sighed as she worked down from the stress of the last few days. Her body was so tired and yet so desperate at the same time.
She couldn't even describe the void she was suffering right now. There was an emptiness that bit her and clawed her. Her paw wandered down her breast and she slid lower onto the floor of the observatory.
"Ah~." She grit her teeth and hissed, peering down as she moved a shapely, feral leg out of her path.
She knew the temperate air would only make it worse. The swamp's atmosphere was a mood killer, to be sure. But being so close to her homeland had allowed all kinds of things to wander in her mind, and her hormones to free themselves up.
In the darkness, partially illuminated by her body artwork runes and the blue shimmer of the moons outside, her draconic slit glistened. Its folds were puckered, and the delicate, pink lips protecting its exterior were puffy. The red scales trenching it in at the sides were flushed with blood, and arousal dripped in a handful of wet beads that fled down the length of her labia.
Cynder breathed through her mouth and stared at herself with admonishment.
Damn it.
She chanced a look at the closed doors leading down to the chute. The distant sound of forges and Ape hoots told her that company was an unlikely occurrence. Neither of her Cold Legionaries or her Orderly were here either.
Gigaw must have wandered down to inspect the forges again. Or, he had appropriated an overseer's whip and was tormenting the slaves in the lower catacombs. Again.
"….O-Orderly?" Cynder asked in a whisper, just to make sure. No response. Biting her lower chop, the dragoness looked back down at her loins and sighed.
It had been a while anyhow. No time anymore these days.
Slipping off the alien pod, Cynder rounded it and headed towards the back of the observatory. Through an arch, her makeshift study stood bathed in blue light from the little window. Maps of the swamp with red X's drawn through all the tombs and ruins she had recorded lie sprawled on an end table beside her scroll shelves and the bookcase. Her nesting was beyond that, made from piled furs, rolled carpets and a ring of fine polished stones.
She laid in it and immediately fell to her side, spreading her hind legs again to dip her talons gingerly in the culmination between her thighs.
Two talons spread her lips and another two sank into the warm folds they were protecting. Cynder sighed as she wriggled her fingers in a circular motion, working herself over with her tail curling slowly underneath and ahead of herself.
Cynder was in debate about a suitable partner to fantasize about. Her immediate reaction was to picture a strong drake wreathed in some kind of cooler shade of scales. She always did like males colored in contrast to her darker hue, and while Night Dragons tended to be thinner in their constructions, Warfangian Northerners had bulk and girth on their side. Males from the North were always filled out more and with handsome sculptures making their finned facial details.
Cynder huffed as she finger-fucked herself, rich draconic fluid running in translucent trails down her groin to pool around her anus and the thick base of her tail. She arched her back to present her breast, one of the most erogenous zones on a dragoness past the treasured valley beneath her tail.
She was a prime hen, she'd always been. The mutations that had grown her from the egg had been keen on following a set of- perhaps –too perfect a female model.
Cynder was heavy in the rear, lithe at the waist and front limbs and fat-thighed. Somehow through all of that curvature, her muscles had been appropriately distributed. She still had the strength to crush rock. It just was distracting sometimes that while she was powerful, she was also a freaking sex symbol.
Part of her knew Malefora had done that on purpose.
Maybe it was a mockery through flesh of the North.
Look at what I've done to your gene-stock. A deadly, but breedable little hen that I've created to doom you all.
Cynder git her teeth and upped the anty. She dug practically her entire paw into her cunt and spread out her talons, gapping the quivering, dripping trench walls inside with a tiny moan slipping past her fangs.
She gyrated her hips in the air and fucked her own fingers, trying to sink them to the palm into her own canal as juices continued to leak in torrents from her. Bit by bit, she worked herself closer to a rising plumage of heat building up in her thighs and her inner core. Sweat glistened her black limbs as she worked herself into a fervor, humping up from the nest with little growls coming out of her throat.
The imaginary male was looming over her, stabbing her mercilessly with his draconic member as it punctured her defenses and dug deeply into her trench. The little ridges running along the rod's length ground against the tight velvet sealing it in, advocating fertility to cycle through and prepare her womb for the insertion of his genetic gift.
Cynder heard a paper rustle somewhere inside the room as she masturbated. She pinched an eye open and gazed around the study.
It had just been a draft from the observer plat outside. The night was cool tonight and the wind was acting up.
But looking around tore her from her fantasy when she laid eyes on the leaden pods sitting in the lobby.
Her chest lit on fire and Cynder's mental imagery started to shift.
Now, instead of a vibrant drake rutting her, she envisioned the creamy-limbed Fallen. The human had stripped his torn jumpsuit and had mounted her belly, using those thin fingers for leverage on her hips. He pistoned into her and plunged his member inside Cynder's flower with a rugged ruthlessness that she felt wasn't even in her own mental making.
Cynder growled possessively as she orgasmed, her tunnel quivering over her talons as slightly milky ejaculate blended with her drippings. She made one hell of a mess. Squelches echoed around the room and her eyes opened in a sort of drunken stupor. The ceiling shifted as a bubble of euphoria slammed into her skull, and she rode out the torrential downpour of her sexual satisfaction.
Flapping her wings and whipping her tail, Cynder moaned quietly and let her horns sink into the bedding beneath her.
Fuck all, she needed that. She'd needed it badly. You could never argue that rubbing one off at least temporarily undid the daily hazard of living.
She still felt alone, however.
Cynder sighed and slipped her paws away from herself, rubbing the exterior of her now slightly sore vent. She brought up her talons to her beak and idly lapped at the nectar drenching them. As she ate herself, she got down to thinking, staring at the pods while she did it.
I wonder if the Purple Dragoness has experienced the same effect as I have. If this Fallen has poisoned her mind as well as mine.
In all likelihood?
Probably.
Cynder understood magical potency. One went for all. And if that human was walking around able to impact hens just by touching them….
That Purple Dragoness was probably ready to eat her own legs.
Cynder grinned as she finished licking her paws clean. She curled like a feline in the nest and draped her blood-red wings over herself.
This was supposed to be a war.
So then why did she feel so excited?
{🐉}
Technically, this wasn't the first time a woman had slammed her ass in his face. But with the force of the blow, and the gradually developing black eye smearing his left side, it certainly felt like a fresh and painfully new experience.
He had an urge to tap a finger on the wound, but he couldn't even manage that.
The line of rope that the other dragons had tethered him up with didn't make moving in any kind of way an approachable option.
At least he could still wiggle his toes….
….But fuck all else.
They'd even taken all his nice new toys. A pile of Ape weapons, his empty pistol, their rations, and a handful of his regen-injections sat in a pathetic pile nearby as if to mock him.
"'Scuse me there, Sally," The Fallen croaked, slapping his tongue about his dry mouth. Why couldn't one of those fleabags I shanked have dropped a canteen? "but I have a really bad itch on the bridge of my nose right here."
"Ha! Yeah, right, nice try, alien." Corrinthol laughed. "Nobody's falling for any stupid tricks like that."
"That's its nose?" Torrdonal gasped quietly under his breath.
"Maybe if we could at least reach a point where I'm not an it but a him." The Fallen suggested with a defeated sigh, slumping against the rope.
"Not a chance." Corrinthol lowered himself and grinned wickedly at the Fallen. It seemed that no matter what expression the cocky fire dragon held, much less an antagonistic one, that he always broadcasted the words shiteater. He had a shiteating face and a shiteating grin.
Everything about him was a capital class douchebaggery alert on big, red legs with banners high and flying. The Fallen didn't even bother trying to take anything farther than it went with him. There was no point.
"It does sound masculine." Torrdonal said impartially, stepping up beside his more aggressive comrade to peer at the Fallen inquisitively. "Basic respects might be due where they're due, Corrinthol."
"I like this guy." The Fallen harrumphed. "I should have been talking to you from the getgo."
"You see what he's trying to do? He's trying to manipulate you, Torrdonal!" Corrinthol swatted the water dragon upside one of his horns. Torrdonal clicked his tongue indignantly and stepped back with a paw on his head. "I've heard tales about people like him. At the academy, professor Cyrila always yapped about it. Cold-folk up in the mountains, Apes, but with no hair! Apes that could reason and didn't answer to the Dark One over the Ancient Sea."
Corrinthol looked triumphantly down at the Fallen, whom, for his own part, was raising a brow at what he was hearing.
"He's from the tundra. He's got to be." Corrinthol smirked.
Shiteater.
Torrdonal sat on his haunches and opened his mouth to say something. It was probably geared up to be a complaint about the unneeded swat of his headwear, but halfway through he paused, his eyes looking the human over.
"….I don't know." Torrdonal scrunched his chops in thought.
"Oh come on, look at him! That… thing he's wearing on his skin? It's probably enchanted to deal with extremely cold temperatures."
It was the Fallen's turn to pause with the proverbial finger in the air. Technically, the shit-eating fire-breather wasn't wrong, the discussion he'd had with Spyra the other night came to mind.
He used to like to joke that his gear only lacked the pleasantries of a cupholder.
Used to. Before the pods, and the crashing and… getting tied the hell up by a bunch of dickhead reptiles.
"Well that means he isn't with the Dark Army." Torrdonal didn't say this hopefully. He was a very impartial and neutral party in pretty much every discussion that happened around him, the Fallen had observed. "I thought one of the tenets of the Northern Military was advocating for the freedom of choice."
"Did you record that word for word?" The Fallen blinked.
"Silence, prisoner! And that only applies to other dragons." Corrinthol brushed it off. "Except Night Dragons, they're exempt on account of betraying the first Guardians during the Ancestral Great War millennia ago. But I only know that because everyone at the academy never shut up about it."
"It sounds like you have everything figured out." The Fallen creased his lip. "You do exude a sort of tactical wildness about yourself… what was your name, Corrinthol? I'm speaking plainly off my own opinion, but, sir,"
The Fallen's ropes creaked as he leaned as far as possible with the lowest voice he could manage.
"-you could probably do your Captain's job a whole lot better."
"….Uh, Corrinthol?" Torrdonal bit his chop.
This look was blooming over the fire dragon's face. And it was a look that made Torrdonal extremely nervous, and the Fallen extremely hopeful.
Corrinthol was smiling.
"Could I now?" The flame dragon sat on his haunches, scooting closer to seat himself in front of the human. Torrdonal gasped when a slight hissing of scales against the cobblestone floor sounded out. Corrinthol's palm was to his shoulder and was very slowly, but deliberately, pushing the water dragon soldier away.
"What are you doing?" Torrdonal asked.
"Say, Torr', give me a minute with the prisoner, would you? It's rare that you find a fellow of similar taste, even if they're an alien." Corrinthol finished pushing and made a shooing motion with his paw.
"But, what about the prisoner potentially manipulating-"
"Go play in water or something."
Torrdonal shivered and gave off a tiny panicked gasp. The water dragon rose to his feet and quickly padded off back inside the temple lobby, leaving Corrinthol and the Fallen alone.
"What's up with him?" The latter nodded.
"Figure a water dragon terrified of water." Corrinthol scoffed sourly. "He's been terrified of drowning since he was a baby. At least that's what he tells anyone who asks. Anyway, that's not important. I appreciate you seeing things in a greater scope. How it really all works? You know I'm saying?"
The Fallen was smiling, but in his head he had already conjured a make-believe hammer and had murdered this dragon sixteen times with it. Headshots made things quicker, so he aimed for knees and elbows first.
Corrinthol was waiting for a response, confidence riddling and dripping from his grin like thick syrup.
Shiteater.
"Of course I do." The Fallen nodded enthusiastically. "You were so fast when you expertly mounted that ambush tactic from the ceiling. I have military training too, you know, and as an offworld traveler, I've seen quite a lot."
"So you aren't from the tundra?" Corrinthol sat back, his tail curling.
"Unfortunately not." No you stupid, ugly, inbred sack-a-shit. I'm going to find your family, decapitate your siblings, burn your crops, and find your mother before I bend her over and- "-But where I can offer praise in your technique. Your execution of melee combat shows much promise and development. You have to tell me what this academy back in Warfang is doing to produce such top example soldiers."
Corrinthol made a pleased- "Ahhhh." –sound and settled in on his haunches for what would most likely prove to be a prolonged, and agonizing discussion.
"You have to know, I don't really try a whole lot, it's in my nature, to outperform." He explained. "I've always told myself that I have to hang back, especially with all the nice tail walking around. Being average on purpose raises morale. You're not letting the others down too much by making yourself applicable to their level, you know what I'm saying?"
"Oh, certainly." The Fallen scooted closer himself, straining the lines of rope. "I know we don't have any writing utensils out in the wilderness like this, but, you have to draw out for me your technique. How about on the dust right here, by my foot? Ancient ancestors won't care about some floor-doodling this late stage in the game, amIright?"
{🐉}
"Believe it or not, my journeys here were purely out of a concern many would call evanescent." Ignitia hummed, motioning with her snout to a little sash bag hanging from her hip. "To protect the records of the ancestors and the Old Guardians. Every time we canvas the site of the Dragon Temple we always recover some small piece of our own history. The Dark Army is rarely thorough in their razing, and so I have been leading the intermittent journeys to rebuild our own history piece by piece, as it is the only real option Malefora's occupation has left us with."
"…Yeah, that's real swell." Spyra looked around herself nervously, in particular, glancing back at Morinth. The black and silver dragoness who was to be her escort.
A.k.a, the one with a wing open ready to snatch the purple beastess should she try to scamper away, like a disobedient gerbil.
Morinth smiled at her uncomfortably when she made eye contact. The dragoness reminded her a little bit of Cynder. She was darkly scaled, slender, had emerald eyes and similar-looking horns, even though there were fewer. Spyra never remembered being this self-conscious before about her own and other people's appearances.
But then again, her entire life had gone by up until now in the company of sentient insects small enough to fit in her palm.
There was a lot off about that, but it was unimportant in contrast to here and now.
She had asked the sky for dragons. It had given her that and more.
"Are you well, Spyra?" Ignitia's matronly voice snapped her out of it. The flame dragoness was looking at her with a doting kind of expression. Frighteningly, and much to her guilt, that reminded her not of Cynder, but of Cometcu.
Mom. Spyra didn't want to admit wishing she was here right now.
"I'm just a glamorous ray of fuckin' sunshine, lady." Spyra grumbled. Behind her, Morinth gave off a heavenly laugh.
"Cheeky that! I like her. She's got some moxy to what she has to say. Not enough women these days with that kind of outlook back home." Morinth winked at her. "Maybe once we get you acclimated, me and Tali' can show you the ropes."
"Acclimated? What's she on about?" Spyra turned back to Ignitia, the larger female huffing as she came to a full stop in the center of the chamber.
"That is just one of so many questions I know you have." Ignitia gestured around the large chamber, one leading off from the lobby where the fighting had occurred. It was dome-shaped, with a roof made of cracked, but mostly intact amber glass that showed the sunlight through brilliantly. "But before I can answer all of them, I must ask you something; do you know where we are?"
A sad sigh from Morinth lowered the energy of her smile. She wandered a step from the interaction and gazed around the empty room dotingly. Spyra followed her eyes and tried to pick out a clue.
Old, curvy shelving units once lined the full length of the walls all around the chamber. Many had fallen down in sections and were gathering dust in pieces on the cobbled floor. A quad of dais plats centered the room with ancient-looking symbols engraved on their surfaces. The remains of a mural depicting a spheroid shape marred the northern wing's wall. The entire structure bled with draconic architecture.
"….If I answer wrong, like, what, are ya' gonna' slap me or something? Let's just establish the boundaries before I get into anything." Spyra raised a brow.
"Certainly not!" Ignitia had a lovely laugh. It was very lady-like. Composed. Spyra had a feeling she'd seen some shit. "Try to take a guess. I'll give you one, and then I will tell you."
"…A ballroom?" Spyra sniggered like a juvenile, pointing at the mural in the back. "Get it?"
Morinth chuckled dryly and fully sauntered away, stepping before one of the shelving units to seemingly bask in its presence, suddenly very thoughtful. Spyra switched her gaze between the two other dragons and shrugged her wings.
"Don't tell me it was a bread pantry or something."
"No." Ignitia smiled sadly. "It is not a ballroom or a pantry. Though with the latter, it is wholly similar. It was wholly similar."
The Guardian sat on her haunches and curled her tail around her ankles, nodding gently for the floor in front of her, and patting it with the leaf-like splay of her tail's tip.
"Sit." She beamed, her expression bright and calm. "We have time before anyone chances a look at this place. I want to tell you a story."
"…Storytime? Pfft, now?" Spyra jokingly grinned, looking back at the arch frame they'd walked through, and then at Morinth, who herself no longer looked amused, but somewhat concentrative. "Holy shit, you are serious. Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but you have my friend lassoed to a pillar in the other room and have pretty much refused to let me leave since the lot of you ambushed us in the lobby. I'm sorry if your friends list is so small that you've turned to such aggressive tactics, but me and that alien have stuff to do."
"Would you have me leave, mam?" Morinth asked, ignoring Spyra's rant.
"I think the Purple Dragoness has proven herself a civil conversationalist when all misunderstandings are put aside." Ignitia smiled pleasantly and folded her wings. "If you would be so kind, Morinth. Also, do inform the Captain that we will be making return preparations soon, please."
"Yes, mam." Morinth smiled at Spyra and then walked out, her talons clicking on the cobble until that noise too left them completely.
"I realize that in keeping you here and binding your traveling companion, we might have come off as a bit… forceful." Ignitia cleared her throat. "But you must understand that we are locked currently in a time of war. Battles rage in the north, and they claim many lives. We must stick to caution before assumptions. Not thinking proactively can get people killed."
"Sure, I get that, being prepared, I've been exploring these swamps since I learned how to talk." Spyra edged a brow, seating herself a little farther from the Guardian than she had affectionately suggested earlier. "Hazards leave no room for error. But this is a little different. I'm gonna' take a wild guess and say you've got a decent clue about that crazy dyke with the runes branded on her ass who's trying to blow this place up. Me and the Fallen are on a quest to stop her and save my home. You're interfering with that."
"Then perhaps we might start the conversation off with a bit of a compromise." Ignitia eagerly scooted a bit closer. Spyra didn't like how the older dragoness was looking at her. It looked like Ignitia was holding herself back from something, like she was desperate to… to hug her. "We both are risking very much for things very important to us. We both have friends and families, it seems, and we both are chancing fate by putting trust in others to keep them all safe. All I ask, is that you allow me to tell you something."
"Tell me what? What this stupid room was for?" Spyra rolled a paw around and huffed. "Lady, I can't even think about that right now with everything that's happening. Like, ka-blamm~! Complete mind-fuckery level stuff I'm talkin' about. I mean, I almost had an alien that I'm strangely sexually attracted to crush my face with an asteroid, despite the fact that he kicked me into a mud ravine a few days ago. Then a bunch of monkeys tried to skin me, and then I got showed up by big-ass up in the Tower of Doom, and now I'm being held hostage by the first good-guy dragons I meet in some ancient, runic fuckhole."
Spyra might as well have not have spoken. Vulgarity and insults included, it all brushed right off Ignitia's face fins. She was still smiling warmly, like she was regarding a child, sitting on the floor, gradually getting closer and closer as to elicit physical contact.
Spyra's eye started to twitch. She immediately backflipped and went to curse the broad out. She was silenced with a startled grunt as Ignitia's tail wandered over and curled protectively around her flank.
"…And I was scared of the Fallen molesting me…" Spyra pinched an eye shut and grit her fangs. "Back off, lady, you're giving me the creeps."
"What? M-Molest- NO! No. Nononono… oh no, never… never anything like that to you…" Ignitia held out her paws apologetically, but she inclined her snout and lowered them respectfully. "…I apologize. I have been living for a very long while under the assumption that you were dead. That the only egg I managed to save had not survived. To see you now? Well, healthy, and so vibrant! It's… so overwhelming."
"You? It was you?" Spyra was upright, her tail lashing behind her as she gazed at Ignitia with huge, purple eyes. "What do you mean it was you? We're talking about the same thing, right?"
"I placed your egg in the basket." Ignitia smiled, stifling a cry. "I was the one who floated you down the River of Amber. I was the one who tried in the only way I could to keep you safe."
"…Well, how long were you gonna' wait to drop that fat one on my head?" Spyra plopped back onto her ass and blinked at the floor. A long while passed before she spoke again. This time, her expression was lofty, and she looked back up at Ignitia in wonder. "….wait… so…?"
"Yes, Spyra?" Ignitia couldn't scoot any closer now. Spyra's nose might as well have had a pair of cinnamon sticks shoved up each nostril.
The purple reptile quivered as she held out one of her paws, and quickly- perhaps too quickly –Ignitia reached up and cupped it in her own, an expression of joy written on her face.
"…T-That means…" Spyra's lower chop quivered.
"Yes?"
"….M-Mommy….?"
….
"WHAT?! Oh, no. No. No that isn't- Oh, shit-" Ignitia stuffed a fist in her mouth and reclined backward, blushing at her own French. "…Uhm, Spyra, I… I think we lost each other, somewhere down the way… I…."
"...yeeaaahhhhh this isn't horrendously awkward at all." Spyra slowly put her paw down and scratched at the back of her neck. "…You just made it sound-…. I thought-"
"Goodness no." Ignitia giggled, cupping a paw over her snout as she rolled her eyes for the ceiling. "That's one question I cannot answer for you, unfortunately. I just saved your egg, little hatchling, I did not make it."
"Alright, are we okay to just pretend that the last minute, y'know, didn't happen?"
"Of course, dear."
"Right. So… woo! Uhm…." Spyra coughed into her paw and paused, gesturing to the chamber around them again. "…so what's the bread pantry for?"
Ignitia hummed musingly, casting a glance around the room, as if she had forgotten it was all there.
"This was the southern Egg Common Room for the frontier." The Guardian smiled. "Before the decline of the New Kingdom, hatchlings were considered especially sacred. Dragons had turned so much of their lives to the study of science, magic and lore, that more and more decades were passing without the conception of young. Mothers and fathers were older, and more spaced apart. To protect the eggs from the dangers of the swamps, they were sealed away here, and kept cool, and comfortable, to await the day of their hatching. I-"
Ignitia choked on her own words, still smiling, and forced herself to gain a semblance of composure yet again.
"I was one of those who was chosen for nursing capability here."
"…So this is where I was, as an egg." Spyra blinked at some of the toppled storage shelves nearby, their newfound meaning haunting her for her previous mockeries. "…How many others were there?"
"Hundreds. Maybe a thousand." Ignitia explained. "The exact number was recorded in script, but so many years later, its exact count eludes me. It was the first real sign of hope for the development of civilization in the south, the Untamed Frontier. A new generation of dragons were destined to inherit this fresh land, where they could grow, become wise, and unearth its secrets and wonders."
"The dragons left afterward." Spyra said. "…But why? What happened to the eggs? What happened to me? I don't understand, Ignitia."
"Malefora happened." Ignitia lowered her head, burning holes in the floor. She realized her own appearance and quickly stomped it out, huffing and regaining the arch of her back. Her cheek-scales were turning bright red, Spyra realized it was becoming increasingly difficult for the flame dragoness to refrain from crying. "The temple was the most sacred site in the newly settled frontier. In an effort to stymie the growth of the Dragon Realms, Malefora preemptively struck against the fledgling southern settlements.
"Many assume Cynder is the one who unified the warring tribes of the Apes, but it is the Dark Mistress who ultimately first created the union of chieftains you currently see today. The tribes of Chieftains Visigoth, Jute, Saxony and Vandal, the fiercest of their kind. They predate even the Terror of the Skies as the first Ape Kings. They are the ones responsible for being the hammer that fell upon this land. Visigoth's armies, however, were the ones who besieged the temple that night. The night that I…"
Ignitia thumbed a tear from her eye. Another huff. Another hiding smile.
"Earlier, when I said I was chosen? It's not entirely true. I was the Guardian who volunteered to oversee the eggs. It was my job to tend to them every day. Fix their nesting, polish them, keep them warm through the use of dragonflame when night fell. I used to read to them too, e-especially you. The one lone purple egg. I took special care of you always."
"That explains a lot." Spyra shuffled away uncomfortably when that red, luscious tail started to brush against her flank for the second time today. "Well, the parents had to come in to drop the eggs off, right? S-So my parents, my real parents, had to have showed up at some point to drop me off! You didn't see them?"
"I did not encounter most of the dragons who brought young to us. I was not the only caretaker here. Other nurses were on duty in rotations, along with temple guards and groundskeepers…" Ignitia shook her head. "Anyway, I apologize, I'm straying. When we found the purple egg in the rest of the batch, we were dumbfounded, awestruck. Nobody could recall who had left you here, or even how. You just appeared one night, right over there, wedged behind a corner on that shelf."
Ignitia pointed a wingtip at one of the collapsed shelving lines in the rear of the chamber.
"But I didn't care where you came from. I vowed to see you through to becoming a hatchling. I wasn't about to let the first purple egg in such a long time go without a Guardian overseeing her. Without me overseeing her." Ignitia said. "The other Guardians said it was best. They all came to see you. Oh, so many came to see you, and you would be amazed at how terrified they all were to even risk touching or moving your egg. You were treated with reverence. Like you were made of the finest porcelain. None of the nurses would let anyone but me handle you."
"I guess I owe ya' one for that." Spyra cringed when Ignitia touched the side of her snout with her paw.
"Please understand," The Guardian sniffled. "I loved you like you were my own egg. You were so special. It wasn't just because of the prophecies, those were piecemeal to me."
"Prophecies? What the- No, no wait, don't tell me, it was foretold!" Spyra mimicked in mockery, wiggling her talons in the air.
"It was!"
"Knew it."
"You were the first Purple Dragoness in over a hundred years. It has been said throughout the realms, in more annals and tomes than I could ever record, that the savior of the world as we know it, is you." Ignitia rested a palm over Spyra's heart. "It is a Purple Dragon who is supposed to banish darkness forever and defeat the Dark One. Restore order to all Mana and all dragonflame. For so long, we thought our last hope had perished, and yet here you stand before me, right where it all started."
Spyra at least managed a legitimate smile, and it broke Ignitia's resolve. The Guardian made a happy cooing sound and surged forwards all at once, as a big, red, finned and cinnamon-smelling mass. Spyra's eyes bugged as she was squeezed like a squeaky toy to Ignitia's breast.
"I'm sorry!" Ignitia giggled when she started to struggle, and released her. "I am normally not this clingy, I'm just so happy that you came back to me! On such short notice and coincidence too. If you had arrived but an hour or so later, me and Captain Harad's Wing would've departed for the North."
"Yeahyeahyeah, I'm known for my speed, it matches my finesse. You can ask the alien." Spyra stuck her tongue out teasingly. "Speaking of…"
"Alien? Do you mean that creature?" Ignitia pointed a talon at the arch frame behind them. "The one with pale skin that attacked the Captain?"
"Hey! Him and his dickhead space-cadets are the ones who attacked first!" Spyra defended. "Me and the Fallen were coming here for answers anyway, to see if we could determine who had floated me down the amber river before we went after Cynder. It was just to look for clues about Warfang." Spyra nodded at her. "Guess we found a whole lotta' clues."
"And this Fallen, what is he?"
"Hu-man, hooman? You know what I mean." Spyra waved a paw. "Though, ya' kinda' don't. He's a human, he says. He fell out of the sky in a flaming rock of doom and nearly knocked me and Cynder's block off. He took out a whole cave of Mana Crystals that the Apes were digging up. Kablooosh~!" She demonstrated the explosion with a preen of her wings. "Huuuuge explosion! It was awesome!"
"You've already met Cynder? She found you, and you survived?" Ignitia gaped.
"I couldn't have done it without him." Spyra nodded. "He's the one who got me out of the blast crater after Cynder wounded me. He healed me too! With this weird poky-thing that he stuck in my arm… Made all the damage go away. It was kinda' creepy, but I wasn't complaining. He can fight too. Like, really fight. He took out a whole cadre of dudes when Cynder chased us back down by the river corpse and tried to rip our heads off, but that was after I got attacked by Chieftain Visigoth, and I smashed his ugly teeth out of his fat head and char-broiled his ass."
"V-Visigoth? You battled Visi-"
"-Hell yeah I did! Guy was a pussy. Didn't have a fighting bone in his body methinks. I span circles around him like it was no tomorrow, bled him good too! He said he was going to skin me alive or something, but I was like pffft~! Bitch, get in line." Spyra let it all roll off her tongue like it was yesterday's gossip. With each tumbling sentence, Ignitia's face twisted into more and more extreme poses of horrified stupor. "After that, the Fallen stabbed ole' Cyndie-Tootles in the boob and sent her packing. He does this thing to dragonesses when he touches them, I personally can't get enough of it-"
"What." Ignitia leaned very close now, her nostrils flaring as she tested Spyra's scent. "He touched you? He did something to you? Explain yourself this instant."
"…I-It's not a big deal… Me and him are bros. Well, dude and dudette. He's awesome! He's got moves I've never even seen before. He's strong, and he's fast, and he roughhouses just the way I like to, and he's fast, and he's strong and-"
Spyra didn't seem to notice as she continued to snowball her reverie. Ignitia was examining her from top to bottom. Pinching her wings open, peering at the shoulders, turning her head (while she was still obliviously babbling about the human's salty skin-smell) and checking behind her horns.
"Spyra. Spyra." Ignitia shook her a little bit until she stopped talking. "What did this Fallen character do to you? Did he use magic? Was it an enchantment? If he's hurt my- Imean! –our Purple Dragoness, than action must be taken."
"He didn't hurt me or use magic or anything like that. He helped me! And he can help you too."
"How?"
"Me and him are gonna' find where Cynder's fortress is, and we're gonna' walk in and kick her ass back to wherever she came from." Spyra stated. Ignitia's jaw dropped.
"WHAT-?!" The Guardian shrieked.
C-shhhhh…. C-shhhhh…. C-shhhhh….
-Both dragons turned to the archway of the egg chamber to the sound of something being dragged against the cobbled floor. Someone was making a series of horrid gagging sounds too. It was as if the subject in question was retching. Spyra was reminded of her brother before she had been sucked up into this whole fiasco.
A moment later, and the Fallen stepped into the chamber. He had a line of rope wrapped around his fist and forearm, yanking it occasionally as he dragged dead-weight tied-up behind him. A forceful jolt of his wrist, and Corrinthol made another choking wheeze as he was dragged unceremoniously out from the hallway outside via a leash, the rope that he and Harad had tied the Fallen up in was secured firmly around his throat like a cattle's guide.
Too tightly, of course. The human's smile was forced through an expression of grave piss-offed-ness.
But also, he appeared very wild.
It was the same expression he'd held when he was slaughtering Cynder's Apes.
"Took you long enough." Spyra chortled. Ignitia gasped.
"I was just walking the hallways of this fine establishment, and happened to overhear a subject pertaining to yours truly." The Fallen brushed a hand over his chest. "Evidently, dragons don't know how to tie a good knot, or assign appropriate sentries to watch their prisoners. You people should be ashamed of yourselves."
"Ha~!" Spyra stuffed her paws over her snout to stifle the laughter. And the blush. "You're so fucking cool."
"Release him immediately." Ignitia dropped her motherly outlook in a heartbeat. She was up, and her paws were spaced on either side of her in a prepared combat pose, her mighty, umber wings spread threateningly, her nostrils pluming soot, her fangs bared.
"Who? Oh! You wouldn't happen to be talking about Chokesalot here, would you?" The Fallen yanked the rope and made Corrinthol echo around the chamber with a pained- 'Acchhhhhhh~!' –escaping his chops. Spittle flew everywhere, and shockingly, his already red scaly face was turning impossibly redder. He twisted and writhed on the ground, clawing at the rope tethering off his throat, his wings flapping incessantly. "That's my new name for him. It's very fitting, I believe. You all should count yourselves lucky. Dime-a-dozen dicksuckers like this bottomfeeder are rife no matter where I go, and I rarely treat stuff in no short supply with any kind of tenderness. You look like you're about to bust a gasket over it. Tell you what? You let my purple girlie and future breeding-sleeve there go, and we'll talk negotiations about the crimson-fucker with the chip in his shoulder."
"I don't want to sound like the bad guy here, but the Fallen's serious when he makes a threat. I've seen it! He goes rahhh!, and, wahhhh!, and he kicks people in the can and-" Spyra paused, gears turning so hard in her head that smoke started to form. "….waitasecond. What the fuck did you call me?" She turned back to the Fallen with fire in her eyes.
"I am Wingleader Ignitia of the City and Realm of Warfang, Elemental Guardian of Flame." Ignitia said domineeringly. She stepped around Spyra and placed herself between her and the human. "This Purple Dragon is now my responsibility, and under the jurisdiction of the Dragon Council and convene of Guardians overall. Your services up until this point are appreciated, but are no longer necessary. Leave the temple immediately, and Captain Harad's warriors will give no further chase to you."
"…Captain Harad's warriors." The Fallen creased a lip, bundling the rope in his fingers, he glanced back at Corrinthol, whose eyes were bugging out as he yanked fruitlessly on the line, nudged back by the Fallen's foot every time he crawled closer to claw and swipe at his legs. "You're placing a lot of stock in something that is pure and unadulterated shit, madame. I hardly believe this gentleman could claw his way out of an unsealed paper bag much less a dedicated fight. With all due respect; I've encountered specimens of the elderly that had more punch wielding tennis-balled walkers and catheters. Oh, and Mormons scorned. I don't think you appreciate how much it took for me to say that."
"I do not negotiate with enemies of the state. Conform or be destroyed." Ignitia stepped closer, parting her fangs. Broiling, flickering fire brewed in the back of her throat and illuminated the interior of her maw. When she spoke again, her words sounded like they were breaths from raw brimstone. "-And personally? I will be dead before I let you lay a finger on this dragon again."
"You dare stand between me and my durg-booty?" The Fallen ground his teeth. "If it's a fight you're itching for…"
"STOP!" Spyra flapped her wings and landed between the two of them. "How much more dialogue needs to droll on before you two get that we're on the same frikken' side?!"
"It's come to war! That's alright, I am quite used to the natives trying to spear me in the face." The Fallen cast aside Corrinthol's leash and whipped out one of the blades he'd looted from a dead Ape. He twirled it so that the metal glinted in the dull amber hue from above, leaning back in preparation to leap. As he smiled, a heavy perfume grazed his nose. The Fallen shuddered and his eyes wildly darted between Ignitia and Spyra. "…But I'll admit, the withdrawal I suffer from doesn't leave many of said natives in a good position for a certain kind of mercy."
"Stand aside, Spyra. I shall protect you. I will not lose you again! Not this time!" Ignitia roared.
"But I don't need protecting! And I don't need another war waged for me!" Spyra snapped at both of them in turn, causing the Fallen to blink and lower his blade slightly. "The Fallen is my friend! He's the first and only friend I've ever had! I don't care if it's only been a few days, he's important! And I feel like he's important to this prophecy all of you are getting on about as well!"
"I understand that you think you're doing the right thing, but Spyra, this creature has manipulated you!" Ignitia cried. "Now get out of the way. I have a job to do, one I will not fail in again!"
"Pity, I would've loved a red scale to add to the poon-wall." The Fallen growled.
Just then, Corrinthol reared up behind the Fallen, the leash still tethered around his neck. His eyes were wild as he heaved back a claw, aiming to swipe and slash open the human's jugular.
"-Y-You triched meeh-!" The flame dragon slurred around the rope.
The Fallen clicked his tongue, forgetting all about Ignitia. He promptly turned around and punched Corrinthol in the throat.
"-Accckkhhhh~!" –Corrinthol hacked, tumbling like a sack of bricks.
"Stay down already, would you?" The human winced, wagging his sore hand.
"Pfffffffftt-hahaaahaaaaa~!" Spyra started to laugh so hard that she was screaming. Mimicking Corrinthol, the purple reptile flailed onto her back and started to cackle her scales off, pointing at the miserable flame dragon across the room. "-D-Did you hear the noise he made-?!"
Against everyone's expectations, Ignitia herself gave off a tiny crackling noise, and a few cinders flecked from her teeth as the fire in her mouth died down.
It had been a snicker.
Before anyone knew it, her and Spyra were both laughing, and the ruckus filled the whole chamber.
Rubbing his knuckles, the Fallen sighed and sheathed his blade as the situation literally diffused itself. He glanced down at Corrinthol and grinned as the poor soldier struggled to get the leash off his neck.
"Looks like you're an unfortunate incident we like to call common ground." The Fallen chuckled. "Alright, Miss Ignitia, I'm willing to let the whole being-tied-to-a-pillar thing go if you are. I feel like I missed a whole conversation. Somebody get this guy a throat lozenge, and fill me in."
{🐉}
"…Corrinthol? I'm back. I had a little walk and I was thinking about what you said earlier. I'm not really appreciative of the way you talk to me, and I think I want a little bit more respect when you-…"
Torrdonal stopped dead in his tracks as he returned to the lobby gallery of the temple.
The Fallen, Corrinthol, and the tether of rope they'd appropriated from the rubble, were all gone.
Torrdonal wheezed in panic, blubbered something unintelligible, and sprinted to find the Captain.
{🐉}
"Ancestor's cocks, what do you mean the prisoner escaped?" Harad cried.
Torrdonal probably had rehearsed an explanation in the minute or so it took to find his CO, but all that came out between labored breaths were a few words like- 'tricked!' –and- 'Corrinthol!' –and- 'Water!' –before Harad huffed and silenced him with a wave of his green, daggered talons.
"Get a hold of yourself." He sneered down at the smaller water drake in disgust, before turning his gaze over his mighty wings to the other side of the little prayer chamber. "Morinth, Taliopia? You'll search the old egg chamber and the scribe vault, me and Torrdonal are going to check the gardens and the observer's platform."
"I told you not to leave Corrinthol as a guard." Morinth sighed, fawning over Taliopia's wing as the two dragonesses sat curled up next to and against one another in the back of the room. She used her fangs to clean the boney joints between the rose-colored membranes of the white dragon's beautiful wings. Taliopia giggled and kicked at Morinth playfully with her feet. Morinth stopped grooming her for a second to gaze lazily at her Captain. "Cheeky that the little hoopla and bugger at the market last month wasn't example enough that that male's perception could be outdone by the dead. If you want my advice, I say we let the alien have him! Aaaannnddd maaybbbeeee, Corrinthol will gettttttt…. Eaten~."
Taliopia giggled more and rolled on the floor playfully, the little healing potion vials hanging from her hip-sash jingling like a small array of ornamental bells.
"She's got a point, sir." Torrdonal gasped. Harad gawked at him like he was a moron. "What if the alien's a meat-eater like us? And he likes the taste of dragon?"
"That alien scares me…" Taliopia shuddered at the memory, crooning when Morinth hummed supportively and lapped at one of her horns.
"Luckily for you, your big strong Morri-poo is here to keep you safe and lovvveeeelllyyyyy, my deaarrrr~." The darker dragoness sang.
"This is borderline insubordination, but my patience is thin, and I don't think pursuing it will get any of us anywhere." Harad growled, whipping his mace-head tail for an archway nearby. "Morinth and Taliopia, I just gave you an order. March."
"Yessir." Morinth sprang up and dragged Taliopia with her, ignoring the medic's panicked mewls as she carted them both to their duty. "Let's go be patriots for the homeland, sweety."
"B-But being a patriot brings the risk of being a martyr." Taliopia gasped. "You have to be dead to be one of those!"
"As opposed to alive and a heroinneee~!" Morinth cheered, her black wings flapping as she took a dancing hop in her step. "How exciting! Cheeky too. I wonder what kind of medal they would award a warrior of Warfang for killing an alien? Maybe, it'll be shaped like a saucer or something."
"Or maybe we'll get whisked away because our government lies to us…" Taliopia shivered in terror. "Morinth, please don't make me go! I don't want to fight! Harad's mean, and he hates me because I got dumped in this unit. E-Ever since Tall Plains…"
"Screw Tall Plains, Tali'." Morinth clicked her tongue as they walked. Taliopia gasped.
"Morinth, language…"
"Past mistakes don't define the dragoness. If we were all bound by what we have done, there'd be no one left." Morinth waved a paw dismissively as they crossed another lobby hall, passing unlit braziers and hanging chandeliers made from amber crystal. Mushrooms overgrew much of the floor along with moss clumps and piles of rubble from walls that had failed. "Trust me when I say that the past is exactly like hatchling school. Get a good look at my chops; nobody cares."
"I-I know…" Taliopia kicked a chunk of debris in thought. "It's just… what happened was so embarrassing. Everything really has been embarrassing. I wasn't meant for the military. I'm only here because of mom and dad. 'Our wealth denotes a higher standard'." She quoted her own mother, before they had sent her off packing in the draft. "….I miss my mommy, Morri-poo. I never got to introduce them to you! They would love you! A-At least I think… I hope."
"Other dragons might struggle with us." Morinth kindly minimized as they peaked into several passing chambers. "But nobody ever said that what comes best comes easy. Step into life with a jolt and jump, I've always thought of it as. Not liking drakes isn't a wrong sort of mind frame…"
A moment of silence permeated the patrol. Taliopia nudged closer and nuzzled Morinth's cheek.
"Morinth?"
"Yes?"
"Is it wrong that I… we…. like other females? More than males I mean."
"Not even a teensy-tiny bit." Morinth laughed. "Society's a big ole' stickler. Conformity's nice, but sometimes it's just a stressful and unneeded shackle others like to put on everyone around them. Dragons aren't comfortable unless things are black and white." She gestured to her and Tali' for emphasis. "And are we so wrong? Besides, that doesn't just go for home. Cheeky, because I've witnessed it everywhere I've gone. But people can change. All they neeeed is the righ-high-ighhtttt sonnnngg~!"
Morinth had a wonderful singing voice. Taliopia had spent many a night lauding and telling her that she should've pursued a career in performing arts when the war was over. If the war ever ended.
Morinth had been in the army for way longer than her. She'd needed it to- 'Get her life in order' –according to her. Time and time again, though, Taliopia wondered exactly what that meant. The Morinth she knew had her priorities straight and always had a chipper attitude even when things were in the proverbial toilet.
According to Morinth, she hadn't always been the same 'ness. Taliopia couldn't picture her any different or less, and so she struggled with understanding her plight.
But a lot of that came from being half Night Dragon. Morinth's mother had been ostracized when she came back from the war, not only a widow, but bearing an egg that had the unmistakable dark tint of a Night Dragon's heritage. Morinth had never known her father, and had essentially grown up as a gutter-lizard in twisting ducts and streets of the capital megacity of Warfang.
Get through the tough to see the great! Morinth told Taliopia when she'd questioned her hatchlinghood. The pain in her emerald eyes spoke legions of everything darker she refused to voice aloud. Morinth had had a hard life. The military and its rigid structure had only seemed natural.
Now, take the homebody and timid little hen that was Taliopia, and add that in to the fact that they were scissoring when the urge overtook them, and you had a pair that pretty much every angle of society had a problem with.
But as Morinth had sang one evening:
"Fuuuu-uuu-hu-huccckkk themmmm~!"
So here they were, even in the army.
Taliopia wished the draft had never happened. But so many dragons were dying, that the survival of their very race was being brought into question. There were few able bodied males and females within the allotted age group who weren't being at least groomed by recruiters for service.
"Is it true that ancient dragons used to live here?" Taliopia gazed at one of the hauntingly still-lit gem-chandeliers over their horned heads.
"Dragons settled the swamps ages ago, but they were kicked out within memory of a lot of our parents, older siblings and grandparents." Morinth sadly smiled. "That's where I'm hearing that little feisty purple lady we picked up earlier came from. The Purple Dragoness? Can you believe it, Tali'? We might have found a prophesized champion!"
"Prophesized? But I thought all those stories weren't real." Taliopia gasped. "They couldn't be real! I-I mean… what about… what about the Dark Mistress?"
"Shush. Don't say that so loud." Morinth shivered. "What about her? She's the baddest doody-head of them all."
"Wasn't she supposed to be the first-"
"-Acchhhkkkkkk~!" –Echoed from down a nearby hall.
Both dragonesses froze, and then looked at each other. Morinth was smiling, and Taliopia was quivering in terror.
"C'mon~!" Morinth hissed excitedly.
"-Eep~!" –Taliopia squeaked as she was dragged along.
The pair bounded down a few twists and turns, hearing the echoing voices of several people. The matronly drone of Wingleader Ignitia, the flame Guardian of the Dragon Council. The boisterous potty-mouth that was Spyra. The masculine drawl that was the alien, and the grunts of Corrinthol, the latter of whom were very pained.
"Lady Ignitia, we have come to saavvvveee youuuu~!" Morinth sang as she threw Taliopia into the doorway of the egg chamber first and tumbled in after her.
"-Morrrrinntthhh~!" Taliopia howled before scrabbling over her own heels and losing her balance. The two dragonesses tumbled like a yin-yang sphere into the chamber and collapsed into a combined heap on one of the inscriptured dais plats.
"Morinth? Taliopia? Are you alright?" Ignitia gasped from nearby.
"Don't fret, mam, we're still battle-worthy." Morinth chirped, her head poking out from between a tangle of her and Taliopia's bodies. She surveyed the room and locked eyes with the human, the Fallen. "You! Escaped from your binds, have you, demon? Have at ye~!"
"Ouuuchhh~! Morri-poo! That's my footy-wooty you're stepping on!" Taliopia whined.
"Tali'! Maybe your footy-wooty shouldn't be in my freaky-peepy way-ie~!"
"The fuck do you two talk like retards for?" Spyra snapped.
Morinth growled as she helped Taliopia to her feet. The poor medic was shell-shocked, and could barely handle the rapid barrage of vulgarity that had spewed like an open sewer grate from Spyra's muzzle in such short effect.
"While that is very very insulting, my professionalism bids me to forget it was said." Morinth glumly blinked at Spyra, disappointed as she dusted Taliopia's wings with her own. "Cheeky that; technically you're still a civilian in the eyes of the army, and my job says I have to help you along like a clueless gerbil."
"These horns were made for buckin', lady, and they buzz when people piss me off." Spyra growled, turning her attention from where she stood beside the Fallen. "Feels like someone's stuck a vibrator in my ear canal right about now."
"Oh my!" Taliopia gasped, part in reaction to the foul language and part for seeing the Fallen.
The human- for his part –smiled warmly and stepped past Spyra, before kneeling before the two dragonesses, reaching down, and taking Taliopia's white, dainty paw.
"Do excuse my friend's rather brash greeting, I'm honored to be in the company of so many fine draconic females such as yourselves." He placed a light kiss on Taliopia's wrist. The medic froze up like an icicle, and she fluttered her eyes rapidly, a heavy flush flooding her snout. "And sorry about the misunderstanding earlier. I am at your service now, my lovely lady. Your name is Taliopia? A beautiful name indeed."
Taliopia shivered uncontrollably, her pink eyes locked on the human like he was the only thing seeable in an entire universe of blank whiteness. Something bloomed in the back of the medic's vision, a nebula of emotions.
Morinth looked on, horrified.
"-B-Beautifulllll….?" Taliopia slurred, her body wavering, and her previously erratic tail standing bolt straight behind her.
"Yes, quite so. Shapely, if you do not mind my eagerness." He winked at her. "You'd make a drake very happy with your company, doubtless. You're not… on the market, per-say, are you?"
Taliopia creamed her tail and passed out on the floor.
Morinth squealed in fright and hung over her in terror.
"Tali'? Tali'?! What the fuck did you do to her?!"
"I wonder that question myself." Ignitia stepped forwards, keeping her distance as the Fallen spun around and gazed at her with a pleasant grin, as if nothing had just happened. "Your touch elicits quite the interesting results, Fallen. Is there something you are not telling us about?"
"You traded your stories, I traded mine." The Fallen shook his head. "At least now we know where Spyra comes from, and we know where we have to go."
Nearby, Corrinthol was getting up, tenderly slipping the leash off his throat. He glumly slapped his chops and whined like a bitch in heat at the tenderness in his neck. He saw Taliopia on the floor and gawked outside the exchange.
"…You… You swooned her?" He went slack-jawed. "B-But I've tried that before! I- I thought she was a lesbian!"
"Stow it over there, little red whore-nugget, or I shall return and dominate you like the squealing piglet you are." The Fallen growled. Corrinthol went wide-eyed like he'd seen a ghost, and promptly shut his mouth. "…Now, you were just about to chew me out for trying to bring Spyra to Cynder's tower?"
"Indeed!" Ignitia stomped her foot. "What madness has come over you, that you saw it tactically wise to not avoid the Dark Army's occupying forces here, but drive for their headquarters? With the Purple Dragoness in tow, no less! Do you realize that she is our only hope? She has no military training! She has not seen live battle yet."
"Not really true." Spyra grinned. "He may kill most of 'em, but I've been racking up a pretty sweet monkey-kill-counter myself."
Ignitia looked like she was ready to scream.
Would the offenses never end?
"Hey, sorry about your friend there, I didn't mean to come on too strong, it's just that I have an inability to not pursue a beautiful dragoness when I see one." The Fallen swept over to Morinth in an instant. The poor hybrid dragon sucked up her own chops and reared her neck back in gall as her personal space was invaded. The Fallen reached out, and cupped the underside of her chin, caressing down her elegant snout. "And you are possibly one of the greatest ebony wonders I've yet to witness strut down a broken, mushroom-filled and ancient temple. If I win the war for you, would you be willing to let me, as your savior, perhaps… liberate you of your lonely evenings, and sample your reptilian treasures with my man-spear?"
Fwoooofff~!
-Morinth's wings preened as wide as they could. The blush was indescribable.
Spyra gnawed on her own tail in fury.
{🐉}
