Dragon(s)layer
10
Lines Blurry
"There isn't anything wrong with admitting that you want to stay."
There were two of him again. It had only been a matter of time. His Conscience had probably been chomping at the bit to get ahold of him the first second he could since that little fling with Spyra.
"Isn't there really? I have other responsibilities to other people." The Fallen shook his head, dumping the bucket over himself with an echoing splash. After puffing drops from his lips, he continued. "This was done on purpose. While I highly doubt Malefora and her Dark Army were part of our enemies' plans, attempting to stick us in our own personal nirvana was certainly the intent."
"Oh I know, but, if you decided at any one moment to walk away from your old life and start anew here, what would really be so horrible about that?" Conscience was relentless as he sat on one of the shore rocks, grinning mockingly at his host over the amber water. "The only reason you promised anyone in the past anything was because you were forced to in the moment! It's all been circumstance and desperation. Even these pacts you've bound yourself to over Nasu and Leha. The rest of their people hate you."
The Fallen paused as he lifted the sponge to his arm. The river babbled in a whisper around him as he thought over what his own mind was telling him.
Had it really reached that point? That he was starving himself of purpose for other beings that weren't even in the same fold of reality?
He was a portaljumper. That was supposed to be part of the risk that came with the occupation. His job wasn't to be a transdimensional immigrant, but a traveler. The sights weren't supposed to stop, and what with the battle developing with his enemies outside of Spyra's World, could he really live with himself abandoning all of that and just staying here?
And most of all, why was his Conscience trying to convince him to do exactly that?
"By the way! You never told me how it was." Conscience kicked his legs playfully. "How tight was the magnificent durg-puss?"
"…Are you serious? You're… you're me." The Fallen paused.
"I still want details."
"Actually… I think I need someone of flesh and blood to talk to now." The Fallen said, etching away the dried blood and dirt as reams of soap fell down and into the water. Conscience was frozen for a second, like someone had conjured a remote from their ass and slapped the pause button.
As spontaneously as ever, the duplicate leaped into motion with a clap of his hands.
"Alright there, crusader, I won't keep you." Conscience slipped off the rock and landed in the water himself, submerging up to the knees with a childish snicker. "I'm just trying to remind you that it's all about choice! Everything's under your control. Think about it."
"Brain telling you to think? That's… a paradox, I'm pretty sure…" He uttered, his head suddenly hurting.
"You mumble to yourself a lot." –Said a third voice.
The Fallen glanced over at Spyra, seeing the purple dragon smile at him. He laughed at her in turn, taking glee in seeing that hot blush make itself known on her snout.
"What's so funny?" She shuffled closer and hip-bumped him.
"You look like the abominable snow dragon."
Spyra was drenched in soap suds. Mountains of bubbles created white foam all down her azure tinted body. When her wings flexed, little snowflakes of suds rained down everywhere, and the bubble-mounds ridging down her spiked back jostled with her laughter.
She splashed him with amber water and returned to sitting on her haunches as she scrubbed.
"I'd rather be that than a hideous swamp gal." She spiraled another sponge over her paw wrist. "It's a great thing my mad charismatic badassery got me on Ignitia's good side. I didn't think she'd give us the soap bars any other way."
With how that dragoness was crinkling her nose, we probably could've cowed her into it, just because of how bad we stunk, the Fallen thought.
Days of traveling, camping in caves and groves and fighting had taken their toll. He and the purple beastess had reeked by the time they got back from their excursion. When they had first found the River of Amber, they'd been able to water-wash, but without soap, getting all the matted sweat, dried blood and grime out had been impossible.
As it happened, Spyra wasn't the only dragon who had a self-appearance complex. Turns out it was pretty common of her kind here to keep up with an extraordinarily high level of personal grooming. Dragons were like that everywhere, mostly. The Fallen felt himself sinking into a pattern of familiarity, and this world was becoming a little less foreign every day.
"When I was a hatchling, Cometcu and Lightnux had the village help in building me a tub out of wood cuttings. It was like, this big." Spyra demonstrated with her paws in a loop, sending sud-flakes falling everywhere. "And they used to have to help me scrub. It felt weird, having two little people flitter around and rub all over me. I guess I was tiny, so privacy didn't really matter."
"Someone loved bath-time, I'm imagining." The Fallen leaned down and started to use his nails to work in the suds down her back. Spyra smiled with a satisfied hum and leaned against his legs as he worked. "Dragonflies have soap?"
"Funny thing about that… Imagine having to bathe a giant." Spyra held up a paw and made a pinching motion with her talons. "The whole village didn't have soap, for like, a week. They had to ramp up making it. Basically, once I hatched, the soapmakers had orders to fill for an entire second village. I went through soap like it was goin' out of style."
"It explains why your scales are so pretty all the time." He observed, using water in his palms to slide some of the soap off.
"Where's flattery gonna' get you after I already let you under my tail?" Spyra giggled. "I was kinda' afraid fucking with you would make things awkward, but this is… this is pretty nice. I'm not complaining. Now I get a bath-time partner."
Spyra sighed as he rubbed down her hips for longer than necessary. Her scales had a nice sheen, now that all the battle-fatigue was running away downstream.
"Ya don't mind if I drabble a bit while you're preoccupied."
"Shoot." He started scooping up water and rinsing the lather off. She was an amethyst core slowly being revealed by slithering trails of white suds sloping down her flanks.
"It's hard to be who you are when you're in such an enclosed little space of people. I ain't one to look a gift horse in the mouth or nothin', but I'm still kind of wondering half the time when I'm going to wake up and realize that life doesn't really work like this. Every time I get up now, it's like the dream isn't ending, and I'm getting a bit of vertigo, past-tense. It shakes up everything I understand.
"Up until now I never decided what I wanted to do with my life, and nobody besides two or three dragonflies were ever really interested in what I had to say. What really is there for me without you showing up with a dangerous mission and all the risk around it? This swamp is fun, and it's a big place, but I've explored so much of it that I'm… tired, not physically, I mean.
"I know my parents love me like my egg was theirs, and I know they're probably distraught right now wondering where I am, worrying, fearing the worst that could've happened. I'm wondering myself: how can I tell them that nearly dying has opened my eyes to a whole new aspect of life? That it's introduced to me the idea of really being a dragon, unlocking my elemental ability, my thirst for fighting and growing to be smarter.
"…When you fell, you told me; it isn't your problem, and I get it, dude, you're a complicated kind of guy. I get now that there are things at work here that could end me if I got close. But would it shock you if I said right now that I didn't care? And that I didn't foresee myself changing from that at all even with more experience?
"My old life was empty. I'd risk dying to keep what I found, like a true dragoness hoarding her treasure. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want to believe my treasure that I've found is…. kinda' you, a-and… and shit…"
Spyra clammed up for a second. The Fallen alleviated by finishing off her haunches, and subtly craning over to the front of her body. He ran his hands down the soft, golden plates of her breast, and kissed her on the purple cheek.
"I like you too. Cheese and all." He sniggered.
"You're not a romantic type, aren'tchya?"
"Not in the slightest. I'll woo you, don't mistake me, but once you ask for roses? No, I normally gift my women stuff a lot more complex than that."
"Gimme' an example."
"I'll show you one," He gripped her plump backside and squeezed, making her gasp and press into him with a lurid look in her eye. The dragoness showed him her teeth and tried to crane her wings around his torso. A constriction around his leg told him where her tail had gone. "but there's a war in the way, I'm afraid."
"…I-I can wait." Spyra nuzzled the back of her head into him, water plopping as she instinctually spread her rear legs and wedged his thigh into the crevice under her tail. He grunted, the dragoness melting with an expression of frowning lust as she wiggled over him. "…Lemme' get another taste of human, stud. Just for kicks."
He obliged her. Probably at risk of getting seen by literally anyone inside the temple, or anything wandering in the surrounding area.
He was too blinded by lust-haze to even give a shit.
How could one deny hot, literally golden-rimmed durg-pussy?
As wet as they were, Spyra's bubbly backside flopped against his glistening hips as he drove into her from behind, a hand steadying the back of her tail almost painfully as he peeled it forward and draped it past her wing. The Fallen turned their copulation into a duel against himself of all things.
How long could he keep his cool before the inner-animal drove him to relentless abandon this time?
It lasted a little while, the happy dragoness growling and yelping as her human drilled her into the pond floor. Luckily, the water was shallow enough that there wasn't any risk of her submerging her own head. The water was up to her chin, and it caught the heavy dollops of drool swinging around from the tip of her long tongue as it drained into the surf like a slippery eel.
"-Y-Y'know, a-alien man- Oh~! –if we're gonna' keep this up, w-we're gonna' have to determine who's on the dominant side of this little- Ah~! –thing…"
He answered her by gritting his teeth, letting go of her tail and gripping her purple hips. The dragoness moaned in one long note when he started to piston so hard into her cunt that her cheeks wobbled. Spyra dug her paws into the shallow bed of rocks on the pond floor in agony, looking past her wing at him.
I'm the dominant one, she could practically see written on his concentrative face as he screwed her.
Two could play at that game.
"-That's right, you dirty little monkey, fuck your dragon." She moaned to him, giving the most pleading expression she could think of, remembering years of practice of begging for what she wanted to manipulate Cometcu when she was a hatchling.
Please, can I have one more sweet?
Please, can I go out after dark?
-Usual questions for a hatchling. At least Spyra liked to believe.
This kind of begging on the other claw…
"Breed your dragon~! Stuff me full of your whelps…~" She sang, grinning in knowing as she turned away from him and let him have his way with her. The Fallen growled and started hammering her even harder, his skin clapping against her scaly hide with fervor. "…Fallen…~"
She wouldn't dare. Not again.
"…Oooohhhh, Fallen…~ …Gimme' it… Give momma-Spyra your hatchlings…~"
Fuck.
His hips started to burn as he rode the conjugal train to the very limits.
Was it possible to break bones doing these kinds of things?
"…Yes, yes-! Ooooh, fuck-!" Spyra squeaked, and then, in a very assured, sultry voice, she purred: "Spurt in your dragoness' egg-hole…~"
Son of a-
The world went white. Somehow, this climax felt even harder than the first one at the battlefield...
-She was still laughing at him long after he dismounted her and begrudgingly resumed their bath, now set back to a certain degree by their activities.
"You sounded like a dying elk." She giggled. "Is that your usual idea of wooing females? AwwOOOoonaAAaaagaauUUU~!" She mimicked, whale-like.
"…Shut up." He quietly mumbled, suddenly feeling sheepish as he scrubbed his dick free of her essence and his own.
Damn that dirty talk she did.
It was a weapon, just as much as her talons and her fire breath and this electricity thing she'd been rocking. He'd have to be on his guard much more.
"…There's so much that I wanna' talk with you about." Spyra resumed pleasant conversation as he knelt and took his attention to her underside, washing away any leftover evidence of their rutting. She bit her chop as the human lifted her tail and worked out the suds. She loved his fingers. They were so soft and much more delicate than her talons. They found her more sensitive regions just like before, though he was tame this time around and just focused on bathing her.
"So talk." He said, still sounding a little defeated.
"…Well, like…" Spyra craned her neck back and pressed her snout into his chest, inhaling the new soapy scent rising off his clean skin. "…how was it?"
"How was what?"
"Me? How was I?" The dragon chirped, her nerves making her fidget under the water. "I don't have a whole rush of experience to work off, kinda' being new to this whole mating thing… So was it… y'know, nice?"
"…..."
"Oh don't be such a baby, putting aside me showing you up like a whale interpreter."
"…Did you like it?"
"Fuck yeah, I haven't cum that hard around my own paws ever."
"Then it was nice. I'd never pass it up myself, even when you tease." The Fallen held aloft one of her feet as he carefully worked her onto her back. He scrubbed her taloned toes as Spyra giggled and spread her legs in the surf. "You into foot massages?"
"Never had one before now either." She grinned, looking off at the steps of the Dragon Temple looming just nearby the grove. "…I thought you killed more of those Bulb Spiders than I did, shouldn't I be rubbing you?"
"I'll admit defeat, just like at the spar." He shrugged, working out knots in her scaly, leather pads. Spyra hummed in approval and spread her wings to float out like lily-pads in the amber surf around her. "What else is on your mind? Besides the war."
"Cynder's tower, how we're gonna' stop her, how my village is doing, how worried Cometcu and Lightnux and Firefly are and-" Spyra blushed when she realized her own tumble. She used her horns to keep her muzzle propped out of the waterline and tried again. "…what I'm gonna' do with you."
"You don't have to feel awkward asking for sex again, that's for sure." He wriggled her larger toes with his thumbs. "Your feet are adorable."
"Rawr~." She teased, making a swiping motion with her other foot at him. "Weapons: everythin' on me."
She felt different after the last few fights. Killing giant bugs and Toadworts throughout her young life had felt too much like pest control.
But now, Spyra had killed people. Apes! No matter how barbaric and stupid they were, they were the first sentient beings she had ended in numbers. Tens and tens of them, garnered through all the patrols her and the Fallen had massacred to get to the Temple, and now from the battle in the clearing earlier.
It didn't necessarily bother her- her morals were always pretty up for consideration, based off her own opinion anyhow –it actually felt good. It was an accomplishment. She'd beaten other people in combat, several times. She was pretty high on a cloud right now.
I even have an alien giving me a foot massage. Just call me Queen Spyra.
They chatted absentmindedly throughout the rest of their time in the reservoir, the runoff waterfall muttering in the backdrop, and their only company being the large dragon statue sticking out of the pond's center.
Spyra did most of the talking. She was ravenous, chatting off his ear about anything and everything, probably more than she'd ever talked to her own adoptive family. Plants she knew how to identify around the swamp, pranks her and Firefly had played on other dragonflies back home, her belief that the Shrine of the Mayfly was haunted, and her expectations of other dragons she'd had as a hatchling.
She told him about the Moon Trees that grew along the rear banks of the nymph pond back home too. Mentioning her brother, though, did also cause her mood to drop somewhat.
"We'll find him. You'll get to say goodbye before you journey north." He reassured her. "I promise I'll get you back to your folks."
Spyra made a splash as she hopped back around and kissed him, holding his shoulders for leverage.
"Ya' ready for some cheese?" The she-dragon chuckled. "You make me feel better about all of this. A-As in, every day is easier with you here…"
The Fallen's smile slowly slipped off his face. Spyra nudged into his lap in the water and sat on him, doting on his chest as she played with her talons under his neck.
"…I'm afraid to ask you." She finally uttered.
"Afraid?" He gawked.
"Terrified, actually." Spyra shuddered, draping her wings possessively over his arms. "There's so much goin' on with me right now. I… hurt inside, every day, and I don't know what it feels like to not have that happening to me. I've forgotten how to breathe, even for just a few seconds, and with you, I feel like I can breathe all the time."
The Fallen cupped her cheeks and lifted her head up so they could look at each other.
"You're still a jerk, and all that…" She bopped her snout on his nose and snickered. "…Like, a colossal jerk, but..."
"Uh-huh."
"Stay with me," Spyra clutched him closer in the water, calmly merging their foreheads, and boring into him with her reflective, purple eyes. "-please?"
He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a silent exhale.
Spyra was searching his face for answers, her huge pupils darting around at every little crease or detail. When he still couldn't speak, she sighed through her nose and muzzle-kissed him again, licking his teeth.
Bzt~! "-Ow." –The Fallen jerked back when a little spark of electricity snapped over his lips. Spyra giggled and meshed her head into his neck.
"Sorry, handsome, I'm still learning to control that." She chortled. "I know you talk so much about this whole other world you come from, but… think about it?"
The Fallen hummed and kissed the top of her head.
"At least do me a solid and hold me for a little bit." She tiredly said, dozing against his chest while her body deflated in a sleepy breath. The dragoness slapped her chops and settled in his lap, her wings becoming wet, orange blankets. They listened to the slap of the water. "…Please don't leave…"
"I'm not leaving-" The Fallen blinked and looked down. Spyra didn't answer, and a quiet snore let him know why. The dragoness looked like she was in recovery from the worst hangover thought possible, her tongue sticking out a little and limping on his chest like a pink eel.
He stroked her neck and adjusted in the rocky shallows, staring daggers at the overhang of willows and mushrooms penning the little temple's valley via picturesque marshland nature.
Even though this place was a bloody swamp, it still had areas where it was beautiful. His curiosity about other geographies here was only fed more by this.
"I'm not leaving." Yet. –But he didn't add that last bit as he whispered to her.
Finding Spyra a place to sleep off the last day was easy. She normally wasn't such a heavy sleeper, but he supposed, once you banged with someone, your body encoded their company with a kind of familiarity that just made it easier to let your guard down around them. He had the experience to back that up, for whatever it was worth now.
He deposited her in a temporary nest he'd gathered of straw and large frond leaves inside the temple. After robing in his ripped, but now cleaned jumpsuit and boots, he was off to walk the hauntingly still halls. The Dragon Temple was actually a lot bigger than it looked like.
Winding halls gave off gothic vibes with a strange, fantastical undertone of mystery. Chandeliers whose black limbs sported glowing chunks of amber gems hung interspersed down the tunnels. Creepers and mushrooms overgrew patches of the cobbled floor, and an overall air of peaceful silence resonated wherever he went.
"Afternoon." He inclined his head.
Torrdonal barked in fright from where he'd been examining an unlit torch on the wall and fell on his own haunches. The poor water dragon watched the human with suspicion in his strolling.
"A-Afternoon…"
The Fallen hummed to himself, impressed. He hadn't expected a response.
Going deeper inside, he eventually found the Egg Chamber, and decided to stop in.
Now Ignitia had already repeated what she had said to Spyra to him, and he admitted that it was a lot to absorb. That was just a piece of the greater puzzle eating up his mind, however.
He lazily trekked over the dais plates and stood in the center of the ancient room, examining the cracked amber sunroof with a thoughtful look. He blinked through the beams of sunlight dappling in through the glass and took a moment to just go over everything that had happened so far.
Apes. Cynder. Swamp. Evil tower. Dragons. Blood. Pain. Lust…
…He should've started making a freakin' checklist.
"Back from your rounds, Fallen?"
The human frowned and looked through the archway to see Harad trotting inside the chamber, an austere and constant scowl adorning his snout. The silvery armor covering his body clinked in the quiet din as he trotted closer, spreading his thorny wings, no doubt in an effort to appear domineering.
"Indeed, Captain Harasal." The Fallen smirked. Asshole.
"It is pronounced Harad." Harad frowned, stopping a few feet away from him and sitting. "Why are you here?"
"I needed a minute to myself. I thought you and your squad were getting ready to depart back to Warfang?"
"The Wingleader hasn't humored the idea as I have." Harad's face barely moved when he talked. The Fallen acquainted his appearance in likeness to- ironically –a rock. The very thing that matched his Earth Element. "…I'm sure you can appreciate politics, wherever it is you come from."
"Politics: a noise to most, a weapon to few. Most people can't make it both." The Fallen lamented. "I'm probably too familiar with them."
"Fascinating." Harad inched a brow with disinterest. The Fallen matched his expression, realizing a tad too late that he was still in friendly talker mode, something that Spyra had earned the right to see. Harad didn't.
"What do you want?" The Fallen grunted, his words echoing around the chamber.
"To confront you. But as I've observed, you're very quick to let bygones be bygones, so I'm willing to let it slip that you tried to feed me an explosive." Harad said matter-of-factly. "We were both doing our jobs."
"At least you assume something correctly." The human crossed his arms. "Go on."
"Your pledge earlier this afternoon worries me. I see what you are doing to that hen." Harad darkly flexed his wings, his browline lowered to impossibly make his features look even more aggressive. "You've proven extreme capability in combat. If it weren't the case, I'm sure you're aware that I would've dealt with you to expediate our leaving this marshland hell."
"Because you're such a charitable kind of guy, right? Is there a point to this, or did you come in here to stamp and whine like a toddler?" The Fallen shrugged. "Man to man, Halal; just say you don't take losing well."
"It's Harad." The Captain snarled.
"Look, you can continue checking over your shoulder for something that isn't there, or you can get down to brass tacks. So let me remind you of something; I haven't even been here for more than a week, and even I can see that your people are losing the fight. You're outnumbered in the field, and your desperation to keep Malefora's forces off your beaches, has left you blinded to the rest of the world.
"While you've all been fooling yourselves with a false sense of security, the Dark Army has been transforming what were previously worthless territories into fortified manufacturing plants and staging grounds. All of that, I have no doubt is partly because of these politics you probably yank out your ass daily as an excuse.
"Do I have ulterior motives? Ones you don't understand? Certainly. Of course I do. I'm an offworld traveler from a place beyond your scope as a little, mortal, green lizard with wings. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by lying about that.
"What I will answer truthfully; is that currently, my goals intersect with yours, in that our working together gets us both what we want. Spoil for your fight with me again, Captain, but don't expect me to betray Spyra, or that hen as you call her. She has my loyalty. She wants to go to Warfang? She wants to kick Cynder and her Apes out of this swamp? Then that's my war."
Harad was livid. The big green dragon looked like he was about to pounce.
"Ignitia wants to know why there's a monkey tied up on the observer plat!"
Both Harad and the Fallen glanced over to see Morinth standing in the archway this time. Her emerald eyes briefly flickered over Harad and locked on the Fallen.
"What am I telling mam, sir? Fallen?"
"That was the second reason I came in here." Harad growled, baring his fangs at the human. "Your excursion proved fruitful?"
"Oh yes, we've certainly made progress, in ways others haven't attempted or just were too shorthanded to try." The Fallen looped around him and marched dutifully for the arch.
"You are a quip-mouthed bastard." Harad slammed his tail into the floor.
"I'll check you later, sweety, leave your number at the desk and I'll get right back to you." The Fallen presented two middle-digits (purely because he knew Harad didn't understand the gesture) and backtracked into the hall beside Morinth, who looked eager to be away from her fuming officer.
The Fallen laughed quietly and kicked a rock down the hallway, looking over at the shorter, dark dragoness as the latter struggled to keep her gaze off him and on the floor.
"Hey," He nodded. Morinth jumped a bit with a squeak and looked up at him with wide eyes. "what's up?"
"N-Nothing." Morinth squeaked, hugging her wings to herself closer. "I was sent by mam to find you and the Captain about-"
"You said your name is Morinth, correct?"
"…Yes. I am Morinth, soldier of Warfang." Morinth sternly responded, turning her nose up at him as she corrected her walk to look more official. "You are the alien creature who nearly killed my CO and wiped out half my squad. Regulations state that you are an armed and dangerous threat, and that we merely enjoy a temporary truce."
"I just pledged service to your city a few hours ago. Why is that not enough for any of you people?" The Fallen shrugged, sighing adamantly. "I know I stuffed a stick of dynamite in your Captain's throat and wished him dead, but the rejection is a little extreme."
Morinth broke her façade as she bit her chops and struggled to suppress the beginnings of a snicker.
"W-We can't be too careful around suspicious and violent strangers." Her muzzle twitched and her eyes were very wide as she stared ahead.
"You have really pretty eyes."
Morinth cringed and glanced at him with disgust.
"You were getting somewhere, and you decide to follow up with cheap flattery?" She scoffed.
"Actually I was just making sure you weren't a dumb bimbo spreading her legs for every suitor." He scratched his chin. Morinth gasped and a fresh blush was shown through the black scales covering her snout. "-I'm kidding. Well, kind of kidding. I prefer a female who can think for herself and snap just as poor an insult as she's dealt. Hit me."
"A jar of my own talon-clippings would make a better suitor than your very rude person." Morinth harrumphed.
"Ha, there it is. Alright, I've gotten a green light."
"Do you talk to females of your own kind like this?"
"I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any in months. Besides, I prefer stepping outside my own species for such kinds of things." He said. Morinth was blushing harder, and gazed at him with a taken-aback expression. "There aren't people here who are a little weird?"
"I-I do not frown upon diversity." Morinth quickly stuttered. "If you're seeking… whatever it is you're seeking from me, then you'll have to look elsewhere, I am spoken for."
"Mm, no doubt by that white girlie, what's her name? Taliopia?"
"Indeed. There's something in common we share- the only thing –we both seek the same gender for our partners."
"I am the last guy you'll find judgment for in anything." The Fallen held his hands up as they rounded a corner. "I'm happy for the two of you."
"Thank you." She puffed through her muzzle with disinterest.
"So how long have you been in the army?"
"Five years."
"Five years? Shit. Did you join right from the nursery or something?"
"You're quite the talker. Let me guess; you're too polite to assume a woman's age?" Morinth daggered a brow, smiling.
"Right on the mark with that one. May the lady tell me?"
"Twenty five, if you must know. Is that the age of that feisty dragoness you found in the swamps? The purple one? I'm betting you did not realize her significance to everything that's going on…"
"She's close to it, she doesn't know herself. She's been raised by dragonflies." He said, ignoring Morinth's shocked blink to him. "And her name's Spyra, Harad refuses to use it, I'd appreciate if you didn't follow his example. By the way, you look younger."
"I thought we'd established I'm beyond cheap flattery." Morinth shook her head.
"But not beyond decent conversation. I'd like to introduce myself properly to you, if you'd allow me."
Morinth laughed nervously and stopped in her tracks, marveling at the human's anatomy as he fell to a knee, and offered his hand to her politely.
"I am known as the Fallen here, my title is my name, for I am nameless. And you are?"
"Morinth." She said stuffily. He cleared his throat and eyed her paws. The dragoness looked down at them herself, and awkwardly placed one in his fingers. The Fallen gently lifted it to his mouth and kissed it at the wrist. The reaction was immediate. Morinth shuddered, gasped, and tore her paw away quickly, trembling.
"It's a beautiful name for a beautiful dragoness. You must excuse my earlier behavior, but I cannot deny in informing you; you are prime material. My inner knight flutters at the fullness of your tail, and the rife inner velvetine feminity you carry. I would plunder your hoard any day, wingmaiden of Warfang." The Fallen paused to watch Morinth's jaw flap like a fish's, before he ended it with: "Maybe one evening you'll let me breed you a better opinion of my golden sword."
Fwoofff~! –there went the wings. Morinth froze, her pupils shrinking to the size of peas, and then she exploded.
"Gah~! Go away! Goawaygoawaygoaway-! Talliiiiii~! W-Where are you?! I neeeeed yoooouuuu-~!" Morinth danced away in horror, her voice slipping inadvertanely into its usual singsongedness.
She shielded the mad blush on her face with her wings and dashed on her hind-legs down another hall path. The Fallen watched her go, chuckled manically and continued on his way, alone.
{🐉}
"…I don't mean to trouble ya there, lass, but ya see, it's my first time bein captured and all, and I've got an orrible itch that's rakin my bum. It always happens when I lose my nerve. My arse starts ticklin and I start to stammer over my gobbin words. I know ya won't untie me, b-but… aw, nuts abou wot I'm askin… c-could… could ya scratch me? P-Please? Just a little around the rim of my leg right ere."
Palmet must have been trying to pull off his best doe-eyes for the mighty flame dragoness.
Instead of appearing cute, he resembled a braying donkey. An inbred, braying donkey that had been run over by a truck and resurrected by an errant Necromancer for use as a footstool, latrine jockey and occasional beating stick dummy.
Ignitia cringed and turned away from the hideous Ape, refocusing her attention on the horizon past the railings.
The Southern Swamps extended as far as the eye could see in every direction from up here, on the temple's cliff face topping observation plat. Connected to the elemental training room, a brief flight of arched stairs led to this circular outcrop. In earlier ages, this place would've been serene.
She supposed it still was, but now fungus cloisters overgrew the stone flooring, cracks and damage marred everything, and half the railing stakes on the plat's upper bar ring were missing.
A little breeze whistled faintly overhead. Ignitia ignored the pained mewls of Palmet as he struggled against the rope the Fallen had tied him up in. Her eyes displayed an emotion she'd been resonating all too frequently the last few years:
Sadness.
Ignitia was sad about everything really. The spiraling depression had started after the destruction of the very temple she was currently standing in. All of those eggs…
Spyra's egg…
The Guardian stroked her chin fin and sighed.
It was hard being a female to begin with. Being a female with authority was doubly biting, and made everyday interactions just a tad more difficult than they should've been. The unmistakeable voice in the back of one's horns reminding them of something aloof and different on the air everytime they worked in a team.
Above all that, the knowledge of having an egg to call your own, and losing it.
Ignitia remembered long evenings spent in inconsolable tears. Thirty years in the Realms, and not another living being had ever witnessed her crying. She had refused to make herself that vulnerable for anyone, not even the other Guardians.
Not even for Volteera! And Volteera was the one who had come up with 'Study-Buddy' events at the Academy for students. Ignitia had never told anyone that the lonely lightning dragoness had only tortured every dragon there in an effort to try and force someone into conversations with her, during what were supposed to be schooling hours.
That was the unfortunate mechanic with the Guardians. They were sworn to the teaching of elements to all dragon younglings of Warfang, living almost like monks, forced into abstinence, the banishment of recreational substances, and the training…
The constant, constant, constant god damned training.
Ignitia had been sharpening her abilities to manipulate fire for over twenty five years. Straight from the nursery, it felt like. Everything had always had its place, and a day of her life hadn't passed without rigid structure and lectured discipline. She had barely known her own father, hated her mother, and had mostly been raised by her paternal granddragons before she had joined the pseudo-religious organization of dragons convening at the Shrines of Warfang. There she had tirelessly pursued the study of flame, her biological element, alongside twenty six other aspirants, three of them being a very young Volteera, Cyrila and Terradora.
Once, they had been like sisters, the four of them.
Now, times were very different.
Cyrila and Volteera were still relatively close to her. Though the latter was poorer at shielding her emotions on a day to day basis. Ignitia had inner pain herself, but Volteera was the one who had been interred in the hospital wing three years ago for that 'accident' that had happened with the banner pole outside during lunch hour.
"…Unaminously, fantastically and exuberantly fastidious, our occupations are in these halls!" She had said, Ignitia sitting on her haunches by the nest side in the medical chamber. "Marginally and greatly of the tongue speaking however; things are so restrictive, and tight, and small and-"
"Get to the point, Volteera."
Ignitia mouthed the words as she sat on the balcony, and smiled, still, sadly.
Volteera had paused for a very long while, her beautiful, spined and yellow face caught in a constant and manically chipper grin. But the dragoness' amber eyes were the things that were always wailing. Ignitia could hurt herself for not ever seeing it sooner.
"…b-but, with all the marvelous and boisterous and wonderful things we are gifted, that I am gifted to live and have known, I must observe the shocking and drastically low number of other dragons that wish to listen." Volteera's chin quivered. She had looked to Ignitia for help, and Ignitia had brushed her away.
"We'll get your wings wide and you'll be back on your paws before you know it. You should be more careful, sister."
"…Yes, indeed, quite, indubitably so… I shall persevere," Volteera- still smiling –had stared at a wall for what felt like hours. "…I shall regain my footing, to live a life of long prosperity, and of remaining unbearable to any outside those forced to keep my company in any walls I might dwell within."
Ignitia huffed. Palmet, in the background, was grunting in effort as he fought the bonds.
"I fink these binds are cutting off circulation." He stammered. "My paws are turning bluer than those berries Glomrok ate when he keeled over and vomited his own intestines up at lunch yesterday."
Ignitia rolled her red eyes.
Good, maybe they'd fall off. Fucking Ape. It was because of them this place was like this.
It was because of them that Ignitia had become obsessed with this temple, constantly journeying to it to recover records, even shards of long smashed eggs.
Trivial crap that no dragon gave a fucking rat's ass about.
All for what?
To relive some kind of hard-tacked glory days that only she and handful of females in the city could barely remember?
So she could relive the memory of what successful motherhood felt like? All in her bids to run away from her own life and push away her friends that desperately needed her help.
Like Volteera.
Nobody else would help that hen.
Terradora was too busy trying to be the general in the army she'd always wanted to be. The three of them hardly knew her anymore.
And Cyrila hated Volteera. Ignitia doubted that even if Cyrila wasn't such a pompous bitch on the worst of days, that the icy hearted dragoness of the glaciers could be bothered to understand a deeper reason for Volteera's mouth anyhow.
Truth be told, there was a lot of hatred going on.
Ignitia hated Terradora for her choice to vanish. Ignitia hated Cyrila for hating Volteera. Ignitia hated Volteera for being a scatterbrain.
She hated herself for wasting her own life and losing all of those eggs. What right did she have, advocating for this long blasted thing called hope to other dragons when she herself had none?
What did one do when the world left them behind? When you had no one who could hear your screams and understand what they were for.
God damn it.
Ignitia decided that if she got back to Warfang, and the war slowed down, she'd find Volteera, and she would embrace her as a sister.
Cyrila…
She'd have to think about how to approach that.
"Bugga! I can't scratch my fleas… Wait a gob, who's dat over the-GAH! N-Not you! Leave me alone!" Palmet shrieked, rolling and wiggling away on the floor like a panicked worm. "I won't letchya take me! I'll wiggle off the side! I'll doom myself to preserve the Dark Master's name!"
"…You can't climb over the short wall." Ignitia gawked quietly, boredly watching the Ape squirm and inchworm across the cobble on his chin and belly towards the rim of the plat. "Oh, forget it."
"I appreciate you keeping my prisoner company, but it wasn't needed." The Fallen finished jogging down the stairs and stood before her under the last arch. Ignitia turned to him and examined him from head to toe.
Curious creature, hairless too. I wonder where he comes from where people don't require protection from any sort of elements.
"Ah, Fallen, just the alien organism I was looking for. Uhm," Ignitia ran out of things to say. So, she smiled pleasantly, as if she was offering the Fallen a plate of cookies, and pointed to the wriggling Ape on the floor. "Explain."
"He's our ticket inside Cynder's tower." The Fallen grinned back, stepping over.
"Oh, that is quite a marvelous idea." Ignitia politely sat and watched with a raised brow. "If only so many other dragon officers had not thought the same thing and stood where you are to this date…"
"You didn't strike me as a dragoness who liked sarcasm." He pointed at her, and bent down to roughly snatch Palmet's shoulders. "Sit up you fuckin' furry freak."
"I surrender! I'm unarmed and subdued! Don't you lot have some kinda laws for the treatment of prisoners of war? I'm protected by the rights of the international court! Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech! Freedom of-"
"Shut the fuck up." The Fallen decked Palmet across the jaw and sent spittle flying. The Ape howled in pain and slumped onto his side. The Fallen placed a kick in his gut and made the Ape curl in on himself like a dying spider.
"-Ave mercy!"
"That doesn't sound like a word in your kind's vocabularly. Say I'm wrong?" The Fallen gripped the Ape's scruff and hauled him onto his ass.
"Well, not exactly, no." Palmet cringed.
"You people like sandwiches though, right?"
"Ooo! Sure, pork and ant-gut sandwiches were the rage with the lads back at the tribe in-"
"Here's a sandwich for you." The Fallen punched Palmet right between the eyes, causing a loud thwack~! –to echo around the plat. Palmet squealed and collapsed in a heap. "I should rip your legs off for what you and your little friends tried to pull on me and my dragon…"
"I hardly see how this is helping anyone. Unless you captured one of them purely to release some pent-in rage." Ignitia called over, unimpressed. "And who are you speaking of as your dragon? Do you mean Spyra? So you've claimed her as property now, haven't you?"
"It's-!" The Fallen spun on her and then paused. "…it's…. complicated."
"Well with how adamantly she speaks of you, I could not doubt it." Ignitia trotted closer, and the Fallen blinked when the distinct scent of cinnamon wafted in his nose. "Is this what you and her did when you left earlier? You hunted down a rogue, lone Ape and captured him? What if you were seen?"
"Seen?! Lone Ape?!" Palmet hacked on the ground. "These crazy loons attacked my whole unit in broad bloody daylight! And that was before poor Drulop called in for reinforcements from Sylak's boys and their Dreadwing! I fink his name was Cuddles. The lads loved that one, he was a good boy, only ate one or two handlers before they got him good and in order, and you bastards broke his face on a tree ya did! Shame on you! Sham-"
The Fallen snarled and kicked him in the head to shut him up.
"A Dreadwing?!" Ignitia gasped. "You and Spyra were attacked by a Dreadwing?"
"A Dreadwing and a whole cadre of them." The Fallen pointed at Palmet. "What do you want me to do, lie to you? Just think, you were so worried about how I treat Spyra, well there it is; I fought an army to keep her safe, and we won. I'd love to see any of your soldiers do that in a day's work…"
"You're wreckless and irresponsible." Ignitia snapped.
"We both are! Why do you think I get along with her so well enough that she let me roll her over and stick my-" The Fallen slapped a hand over his mouth and waved a palm at her. "-Just forget it. Let me do my work so I can win your war, and we'll be done with it."
"Do I get a say in this?" Palmet's tail twitched.
"The only thing you're going to tell me is how to breach the defenses of Cynder's tower. Talk!" The Fallen kicked the Ape onto his back, whipped out the machete blade on his hip, and pressed the tip onto Palmet's paw. "Tell me what I want to know! Or I'll start slicing your fingers off one by one, you piece of shit."
"-I don't know nothing about that tower! I'm just an expendable, like the rest of the lads! Good in a bunch and on the road in a mob! That's my job!"
The Fallen snarled like a dog and grabbed Palmet's mane. He lifted the Ape to his knees and then slammed him face-first back onto the floor, nearly dislodging a tooth.
The Fallen knelt and smashed a knee into the side of Palmet's long face, causing him to choke out and start wriggling. He used the machete to flatten out the right set of his paw fingers, and then rotated the blade's point to run right along the creases. He started to press downwards.
"No! STOP!" Palmet screamed, muffled by the human's knee. "I'lltalk! I'LLTALK!"
"Tell me how to get in that fucking tower. Right. NOW. Or I swear to god I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will kill you slowly." The Fallen drove his knee in with a growl.
"I never even liked the Mistress anyway! She's so stuck up and- and nasty! She swats us around like we're cat toys and uses us like minefield clearers without the shovels! Apes are bettah than dat! We weren't meant to be servin anyone but ourselves anyway! You want in that tower? That orrible, stankin tower? Fine! I'll tell ya everything I know! JUST DON'T URT ME!"
"And thou'st doubted me." The Fallen chuckled, going to nudge Ignitia, and frowning when she stepped back and avoided any form of contact. "All you need is one weak link."
"Or a gullable interrogator." Ignitia narrowed an eye.
"While true, this interrogator isn't about to let you all down." He said. "You know, one time, I had to strongarm the location of a hidden fortress out of a guy named Ulas Dellecamee. He was a fanatic who would've sooner died than betray his own brothers. Me and my allies had been engaged in a guerilla campaign for over three months in a limestack mountain range that they called 'Ai'Nussa Toco'nom, it means Blood Peaks of Pain in their dialect. I saw a lot of people die, heavy stealth equipment with no overhead or strategic support was common. But I got that fortress out of Ulas' head. It just took some unexampled solutions to pry it from him like a hot coal out of the brazier, but I did it."
"How long did it take you to break such a foe?" Ignitia smiled patronizingly; not believing a word.
"Two weeks." The Fallen's expression dropped, and he paused over Palmet's form with a sudden darkness shrouding his eyes. He blinked and stepped around to his other side. "Listen, I'm not trying to boast. But I've… hurt people before. I've hurt them very badly, and I've struggled with myself to understand that I've gotten very good at it. Just let me do my job."
Palmet was a chatterbox for a prisoner. The Fallen was thankful, only because it wasn't a second Ulas.
"The inside of the tower is sealed off, cept for the entrance gates. That was one of the furst things the first Apes who took the place did, I hear. They flattened out this uge flight of drag steps ta make a ramp for all the war wagons and supply trains. That's how the Mistress gets her Mana crystal-fingies so easily inside. Most of the boys watching the place answa to Chieftain Visigoth, just like me! But Chieftain Jute is the one who handles transport, he has his Dreadywings carry the shipments ovva the oceans to the Bad Place. Sometimes riders don't come back." Palmet explained, rocking absentmindedly as he sat tied on the floor.
The Fallen listened to him whilst in a constant pace, his eyes locked on the mushroom-grown horizon.
Just faintly, one could see the very top of a tower far off in the backdrop, behind reams of tightly interwoven, and hauntingly dark mushroom forests that he knew was the Funguswood itself.
Ignitia didn't excuse herself, and she too listened to the Ape's tales. The Fallen at one point, as he sat on the shortwall and kicked his legs over the terrible drop off the plat's rim, turned and noticed her scribbling notes with a charcoal stick and a parchment booklet from her hip pouch.
"The Mistress keeps the place locked up like a jewelreez box. Only one way in and out from the ground, and dat be the front gates. We rigged Spika Cannons along the rims of the step flight, and Visigoth's got a Warr-Wagon sitting somewhere inside, but he doesn't tell anyone wher. Other den dat, there's the tribes' camps and the weapon forges takin up most of the centa." By this point, Palmet could almost be construed as casual in his tone, even as he snorted up a ream of blood dribbling down his muzzle from the prior kickings. He was talking on air pretty much, examining the look of his own toes wriggling past the rope constricting his chest. "The Mistress has got a purtey little observatory on the top, she always sticks up there and rots. She likes to look ovva everyone she does. I always reasoned it had somethin to do with a bad youngin's upbringin, that. Or a superiorness complex."
"Tell me more about this Bad Place." The Fallen chucked a rock over the railing and watched it tumble into the swamp below. Ignitia's scribbling ceased, and the fire dragoness looked at the Ape expectantly.
"Dat's where the Dark One lives…" Palmet shuddered. "We're nevva told much about that place. Any Ape armies shipped ovvaseas always end up attackin the drags' coastlines, they nevva go to the Bad Place. The Dark Mistress has her own armies to protect her there. We're not allowed, and nobody's signing up! Our Mistress keeps a relic underneath the tower that she uses to talk with the Bad Place, it's a pool or somethin. I ain't evva seen it myself, I only heard some of the slaves being kept down there for cleanin purposes in their hushed whispers. They say the pool talks and the lot."
Ignitia looked thoughtful as she paused before jotting down another line on the fresh page.
"Does this sound like the Dark Continent?" He asked her across the plat.
"It matches the descriptions as well as this creature could recollect." Ignitia nodded thoughtfully. "Tell me, the slaves being kept by Cynder, what are they and how many are there?"
"A buncha dirty Moles them." Palmet paused. "-…Uh… N-Now before ya get angry, I only evva heard rumors that drags and Moles were good friends and I ain't assuming nothing-"
"Focus on the question." The Fallen reminded calmly.
"Moles, abou a hundred of em or somefin. The Mistress uses em to clean out the catacomb tunnels underneath the tower, so she can use the chambers as storage cells for all the Mana Crystals, before they're broken up by the same slaves and shipped out on Dreadywing. Other then dat, she uses em to sweep her observatory every now and then and ta fashion fuses for the boom-sticks."
Ignitia was scribbling up a storm again, parchment slipping as she turned pages and started a new text block.
"It's a pain in the tail ta get rid of all the refuse from so many rodent-peepol, ya hear. That's why the offices have the janitas dump all the runoff out the drainage sump at the base of the wall-"
"Tell me about that." The Fallen bolted upright and knelt in front of the Ape, his eyes narrowed. "Drainage sump? Tell me everything about it."
"The bloody ell do ya want to know about where everyone shits for?" Palmet blinked.
The Fallen clenched a fist and the Ape squealed.
"-Alrightalright! Jus calm ya gob!"
"Speak plainly."
"The sump's a drainage run, that's off to the east of the main atrium floor! It lets out into a little mushroom grove that the lads call Shit's Creek! There's a bar-cap sealin it off on account of everyone bein afraid of the Sewer Moana!" Palmet ranted. "Ya could probably use all your supa-powas you used on my lads to get in through it! Now jus don't hurt me!"
Tearing back from his captive, the Fallen turned to start jogging up the steps.
"…Buggas, he's scary…" Palmet shivered, his monkey-tail whipping as he collected himself on the floor. "…Listen, abou that scratch I asked for, miss, I wasn't tryin ta sound suggestive or whatnot-"
Ignitia clapped her little booklet closed and ran on all fours after the Fallen. Palmet blinked as the large gate-doors slammed shut, and his only company was the whistle of a slight breeze this high up.
"…Oi," Palmet daggered his brows, lifted a leg and farted in the cobble. "who knew da enemy was so rude?"
{🐉}
When she first broke through the shell, she had been blind. All dragonlings were blind when they hatched.
Cynder fumbled out of the ragged trench she'd created and flopped onto a cold floor, her scales (new and soft) itching up a heated storm as she struggled to comprehend everything around her.
Unable to shout, or form sentences, the little reptile was reduced to muted chirps and squeaks. She had no memory of what she looked like back then. But she remembered feeling the stubs that would become her horns, and the nubs she had for feet that pattered around as she rolled and played on the stone.
Most hatchlings were terrified when they first came out of the egg, and were in dire need of a parentdragon to swiftly scoop them up, groom them of amniotic fluid, and comfort them with purrs and rumbles. It was a mother's job, to fawn over her new prodigy, purr for them, heat them with her belly scales and nurse them until sight came.
Cynder never had this. But the nightmare always started with an innocent tract. It was the same every time.
Blind, alone, and oh so tiny, the infant squealed when something rough, cold and metal encapsulated her tiny paws, and lifted her without effort from the ground.
Chains clinked, metal locked. Cynder felt weightless as she was suspended in midair, her stance matching a crucification in form. Her forelegs were out and extended, and her rearpaws hung limply below her.
"See." Commanded a wraith's voice. "Open your eyes and see."
Cynder did, her face contorting in horror.
A hatchling's first sights were supposed to be of the things she loved the most. A loving mother, a protective father, a den stocked with food, warm air and treasure with which to roll and play with her siblings in.
Cynder did not have that.
Her first sight was the Pool.
It was a vortex of swirling purple fire and shadow. It resembled the arterial drainage of some inky bloodline, or perhaps just darkness, mottled with sapphires.
Convexity was a fifth element barely understood by most. Cynder herself could not control it to this day. She only knew incantations to use it for summoning her master's attention, and even then, it was only droplets…
The nightmare replayed the past. That little hatchling had been drowned in Convexity. It wasn't just a drop.
Panicked squeaks were met with no mercy as the chains lowered. If Cynder had been old enough then to cry, her tears would've been in freefall. She had no doubt the Convexity would've lapped them up greedily, like a vampire bat sapping blood after a long period of starvation.
Tentacles of terror slurped from the pool and encased her defenseless body. Her very skin felt like someone had set it aflame. Her scales darkened, grew and hardened. Little bones snapped and reformed into stronger, warped and mutated forebears. Infantile squeaks became developed, feminine howls of agony.
Cynder was transformed into what she was. The Terror of the Skies. Cloudripper. And no one could hear her suffer. Malefora had been laughing too loudly the whole time.
Still, the nightmare didn't end. It shifted.
Cynder found herself standing in a dark chamber, the dual Eternal Moons of the world hanging highly over her head, and bathing her in a pristine, deep pink haze.
In her forepaw was a glass sphere, a very delicate thing. Cynder didn't know where it ever came from. It had always just been there.
In the dream, she was smiling sadly at it, wriggling her talons on the sphere, listening to the keratin clink against it silently.
"Justice." –Her dreamself said.
Then, she let the sphere fall, and it shattered sharply on the dark floor.
Crash~!
-Cynder awoke with a horrified cry.
Cold sweat matted her nesting. The dark dragoness heaved as adrenaline bled from her like a melted cancer. She swept her snout around the observatory for a long while and sighed when she realized what had happened.
Damn it.
Papers riddled with notes and map markers idly ticked and brushed from a breeze blowing through the chamber. They were stacked on little end tables and shelves, with reams of scrolls and books, most of them stolen.
Cynder unfurled from her nesting and started the new day with a brewed cup of tea. There was a cauldron she kept up here for such things, one of the only pleasantries she'd been allowed in her time here. In the wake of the nightmare, Cynder stirred the boiling contents idly, keeping an eye on the twin giant pods sitting in the room's center the whole while.
Fallen. I wonder how an alien starts the day.
She reviewed her accumulated writings inside her study, teacup in one paw, the other idly flipping to a new page or sheet with every other sip.
If Cynder could've seen herself, she would've been appalled at her appearance. Bags were under her eyes and her cheeks were sunken. She had been getting little sleep, dedicating most of her time to drabbling notes, scouring the swamp from the skies or racing to areas where her patrols disappeared.
None of the prior ever worked out to do anything more than further defeat her.
The patrols did nothing. The swamps were so massive and overgrown that the air was proving more of a hindrance than anything else. She couldn't have spotted the Fallen if he was on fire, jumping and screaming.
An apt fantasy.
She smiled at that.
Then she frowned.
If he burned, he couldn't….
Crsk!
-Cynder jolted, her empty cup suddenly shattering in a fist she didn't realize she'd clenched. She ticked her tongue and took the time to procure a fresh cup, newly filled.
She sat back at the table and slapped her chops groggily.
Where had she been?
Oh yes! Going over why those three options had proven to suck.
Flying was out. Next was note-taking, which she supposed worked well to kep her preoccupied, but did jack shit otherwise. She'd written all kinds of personal entries throughout her life due to the lack of people to talk to. Many of those more recent pages had centered around her lack of understanding of the pods in her observatory, the way it had felt when the Fallen had touched her, and her desire to understand his biology.
In more ways than one- STOP.
Cynder put enough tea in her mouth so that her cheeks bulged before swallowing.
Ah, yes.
Finally, there was sending her armies into the swamp, and basically waiting for someone to die so that she knew where the two of them were, before promptly racing over.
This had only happened a handful of times, though. Most of the time, her patrols would simply vanish. A few of them hadn't even turned up as a field of bodies slain with stolen Ape weapons and dragonflame, as they so often did.
When Cynder had heard an errant alarm horn or sentries returned with news, she was quick, and torturous on her wing muscles to get there.
Those all ended with her examining the place for clues, which weren't there, and her stomping around having a hissy conniption.
Cynder's lower jaw trembled.
She never recalled feeling this useless. She'd engaged them, and had either been outpaced, or had fled because she was outnumbered.
If Malefora ever found out… No.
More distractions were needed.
She sat on her haunches on the plat outside, a fresh clay cup brimmed with scalding tea, sipping its minty contents dryly, her eyes skimming the mushrooms below.
She…. still felt useless. Huh, normally gazing down at the filthy woods put things into perspective.
The Fallen and Spyra were like cockroaches. They struck out and destroyed a unit and then vanished before she could bring the full might of her army against them. Cynder was used to her enemies coming to her, or being really bad at hiding.
Malefora must have known on some level that the Purple Dragoness was here before she had found her outside that cave. Cynder was spotty on a lot of the details of the war predating her conception. She knew that Visigoth had destroyed the Dragon Temple, smashed all the eggs he could get his filthy paws on and had driven the Northern Armies back. Cynder always had her suspicions that her egg had been part of that clutch, that Visigoth had been the one to oversee the ritual of corruption. But Malefora had never admitted it directly. There was little else in explanation. Cynder was no Night Dragon. She was a half-breed.
Not that it mattered where she had come from. Malefora had said it herself: nature abhorred her existence. She was a breathing crime. If she had parents, they were probably dead anyway.
Fuck them.
Cynder needed nobody in her life.
Nobody.
She was staring at the pods again when the heavy flap of wings sounded out in the quiet morning air. A Dreadwing landed on the plat with a heave of shrieking breath. Its head was obscured by a snarling, solid metal headdress, and necklaces of ribs and leaf fronds hung from its bristled neck.
The black dragon didn't even flinch when the larger monster hunched its back and screeched at her, altering the course of the steam wafting from her teacup. Cynder glared dejectedly at it, and craned an eye mid-sip to the saddle.
"I fail to remember your steed being so badly mannered." She droned, voice muffled by the clay rim of her cup.
"Aw, it ain't much so, m'lady, Charlee's just excited ta see ya he is! Ain't that right, boy?" Came a gleeful, cockney voice from the beast's back.
Charlee screeched and wriggled his own bristles like a dog shaking water from itself. Cynder growled and her tail thwacked on the cobble in annoyance.
"Your presence is reassuring, Chieftain, but for Ancestors' sakes, silence that wretched thing. I have a headache."
"Aye, as ya say." Chieftain Jute yanked on one of the Dreadwing's horns and snarled into its mane- "control yerself, boy, or I'll burn ya."
The steed snorted and lowered its shoulder. The massive Ape, bedecked in furs over his wide shoulders, with tropical-looking fronds hanging off layered necklaces hopped down with a cheery laugh. The flamboyant warlord earned a derisive sneer from her as he exaggerated a step forwards and a theater-esq bow.
"My flights are at ya services, m'lady. We missed ya up north! It's a darn shame that an assault on ye person was what was needed ta bring us down. So, what's all this ruckus I'm hearing about a hoo-man fingie fallen from the sky and kickin Visigoth in the balls?"
Cynder sputtered in her tea a little, quaintly mustering her etiquette to subdue a chuckle. She nodded over her wing at the pods in the back.
"See for yourself, Chieftain. It seems the gods have intervened and sent the Northerners a champion. My men have so far proven incapable of stopping him." She said. "I assume your forces have already joined the search efforts?"
"Aye that, they're unda-way." Jute had a horrendous underbite, and his teeth were exposed as he gawked at the pods, his little baboon-eyes lighting up in wonder. "-Rightly reportin casualties as well."
"Really?" Cynder paused mid-sip.
"Yep. Missin a Dready from one of me wings." Jute gestured over the landscape ahead of them. Screeches echoed out as a cluster of Dreadwings flew out from the northern edge of the sky, lowering altitude to land at the front gates of Forlorn. There were at least fifteen or twenty of them. "I brought my fastest fliers. Had to leave my bloody ground legion back at Tall Plains and the northern coast. Couldn't get em past the geysers."
"Of course you couldn't." Cynder had been hoping the Apes would've just done what they were best at: forgetting all strategy and running through obstacles like sociopathic battering rams. The casualties were acceptable if it meant more men quicker. But then again, the Fallen and Spyra seemed undaunted by numbers. "Was your Dreadwing working with a large fellow? Really hairy, barked a lot, and he had quite the arm for an axe wreathed in unholy electricity?"
"Ya just listed off a quarter of the officer corps ya did." Jute pointed. "But yeah, I fink that was the guy. Sy-somethin, real aspirant dat one. Boys are saying the drag and this hoo-man roasted him like a chestnut."
"Of course they did." Cynder manically giggled, her eye twitching as she sipped her teacup daintily. "Have I ever told you how much I passionately despise you all?"
"Uhhhhh, several times, but not recently." Jute grinned, evidently taking it as a joke. Which it wasn't. But fuck, Cynder's bad mood always could take a backseat. Couldn't it? "I'd love ta see this Purple Drag and her alien sky-man stop my airborne warriors. Visigoth may have gotten a good deal with the infantry, but if ya don't mind me sayin: the way to crush the toughest is ta come at em from the direction they'd least expect."
Jute jabbed a thumb at the sky.
"Up top!"
"I concur, Chieftain." Cynder put her empty cup down and preened her wings, her headache still pounding. "I concur."
{🐉}
Visigoth growled and slipped his dripping length out of the smaller female. She didn't give much of a reaction aside from a rapturous shiver and wheeze, her little furry tail pitifully trying to wrap around his huge waistline in futile swipes.
The Chieftain stepped back and snatched a rag off a table, getting to work with cleaning up the mess as his chosen whore of the day staggered to her feet and knuckles. She had this dumb look on her face as she tied up the wrappings concealing her little teats and filthy fur.
"Your company is no longer needed." He specified without making eye contact. The other Ape cooed, bowing submissively as she attempted to edge closer and hold out a paw to him. "I said get out." He barked.
The Ape shrieked and scurried out of the tent. Visigoth grumbled some sexist obscenity under his breath and turned around to find his armor and weapons, stacked haphazardly like a pile of detritus in the back of his lair.
His mood was grim the last few days, since Tinker's potions had fixed his teeth and his tail. The defeat he'd suffered at the hands of the purple dragon had humiliated him and it was sitting in his gut. His men were failing, as they prowled swamplands and got their tails handed to them by the errant hoo-man Fallen and the prophesized savior of the realms.
Things couldn't be going worse. All they needed was the Forlorn to spontaneously explode or-
"-Chieftain! Capital, have I brought to you the most outstanding of news, I-" Tinker burst through the entryway with a rush of cloth, his overjoyed expression falling off his face when Visigoth's still messed malehood flopped in his direction like a sopped, veiny noodle. "-Good heavens! I'm blind!" The mechanic shrieked, paws slapping over his face.
"Shut the flaps." Visigoth snarled, snatching a waist belt and a loincloth off a chest. "Was it not enough that I was bested by a purple hell-beast in front of a whole unit? Now, you would see me indecent before the entire camp?"
"Respectfully, sir, that unit at the cave suffered over ninety-eight percent losses." Tinker pointed out with a free paw, the other still held over his eyes as he stepped inside.
"Tinker!"
"Rightright, yes, of course, jolly good, dropping the subject would be a healthier alternative altogether. Besides, today is a mighty well day indeed! For we have received reinforcement from-"
"Wher's me landlocked, brutish and egg-smashin brother at?!"
Tinker squealed as the flaps he was standing before were smashed aside, sending him tumbling into a stool nearby with a hideous crashing of wood. His monocle noticeably flipped through the air and bounced off Visigoth's mighty chest.
"….Oi," Chieftain Jute's dumb grin faded as his eyes melded down Visigoth's nude body, and settled on his laxed spear. "…At least let me buy ya a bleatin drink first."
"Jute." Visigoth sneered, whipping the loincloth and securing it over himself before trotting over to where Tinker was lying on his face. "You've never enjoyed the boundaries of privacy up in those ziggurats of yours, haven't you?"
"It's hard ta get a moment when everythin's open-floored, with the Dreadywings and whatnot." Jute chuckled, rubbing his shoulder furs as he stepped fully into the tent and extended a paw. "I came ta win yer war!"
"You're still not funny. And you almost killed my mechanic." Visigoth humorlessly quipped, reaching down and plucking Tinker from the dirt like he was a weightless ragdoll. The Ape hooted as he dangled in Visigoth's grip, eyes quickly checking the loincloth on him as he sighed in relief.
"Who?" Jute blinked.
"This one, you aerial oaf." Visigoth shook Tinker in his face, ignoring the panicked cries and curses.
"P-Perhaps this is a poorer time-! L-Let me excuse myself, my chief-" Tinker howled as Visigoth threw him away with a horrid crash of refuse.
"Some menial abuse is essential, given it all…" Visigoth growled under his breath, taking Jute's paw in a firm clasp. "Brother, news from the north might just save my heart from bursting."
"Good fing too! The Mistress looks like she's ready ta hurl herself off the Forlorn's plat." Jute jammed a thumb over his shoulder. "I brought ya a whole flight of Dreadys. Me and you are gonna find this Purple Drag and the Fallen and teach em whatfer. How are ya, Visigoth?"
"Alive and in charge." Visigoth drawled, pulling on some leather padding and a single pauldron before nodding for the tent flap. He ignored the pained mewls of Tinker in the back. "Tell me what you must, Jute, but outside, let us walk."
"Ya always pace whenevva someone's got gob to say." Jute laughed. "Tall Plains must've made me fuzzy, cause I was lumbering here and I couldn't rememba a single face, aside from yours."
They drabbled as they came outside and meshed with the busy insides of Forlorn's atrium. Apes left a wide berth, hurrying around with weapons, tools and chunks of Mana gems. The boilers were hissing in the backdrop, and now the roars of Dreadwings were echoing around as riders ushered their mounts into makeshift stables made out of rubble rings, scrap hangars and collapsed pylons.
"Cynder's really turned the tower into a proppa bastion she has." Jute observed. "Even if it smells like the inside of a volcano. She means ta turn Forlorn into a second Monkano? I don't fink the Conducta and that crazy lady he's always tryin ta please are gonna like the competition. Didya hear about Daragon by the way?"
"Of course I did." Visigoth's mind was elsewhere, but he humored the discussion nonetheless. "The war is escalating. I have no doubt that the Warfang-dredges are going to try and get this Purple Dragon back to their city if they find out about her. I fear we must watch for some kind of an incursion."
"Not if Daragon keeps undoin itself the way it has." Jute cackled. "The Realm-a-Vines is about ta get ska-washed! Like a bug. It's all that Orcy-fellow's doin, and the Night Drags!"
"I think we need to focus our energy where it matters most." Visigoth said. "Here, where we can kill that purple abomination before it takes root."
"Chieftains! Spotters have an eye on the drag and the hoo-man!" An Ape hurried over, flailing his arms. "They're at the tempol!"
"Ha-ha! I shoulda known me sense of good-luck woulda rubbed off the moment I landed." Jute punched Visigoth in the arm. "Send a whole flight of Dreadys!"
"And a contingent of my men." Visigoth butted in with a growl. "Crush them with a wall of flesh. We will arrive to reinforce shortly."
{🐉}
"So, in Warfang, people just… fly everywhere? No walking?"
"There's some walking, mostly from folks whose wings are a little strained, and the Moles, but plenty of flying. No shortage of it, actually. We are creatures of theeeee skyyyyy~!" Morinth sang, preening her neck as she gave her wings another kick. "Really! You should see it on weekdays, especially when the markets first open? The heavens might as well be a cheeky little swarm of locusts. But you won't have to worry about that, mam, me and Tali' will show you all you need to know."
"Spyra? Can I ask you a question?" Taliopia shyly nudged closer, her wings folded outwards to maintain a constant glide. The three dragonesses were flying in a circle around the temple, quite low, to see the surrounding area.
"Yeah, shoot." Spyra was flying between the two of them, distracted by gazing at them both one after the other over her shoulders. She could hardly believe she was flying with other dragons in the first place. To Morinth and Taliopia it was common, basic, not special. Spyra marveled at them.
"You've been living in these swamps your entire life?" Taliopia looked down at some willow trees. "How did you not get hurt?"
"I got hurt loads. Clawed, bitten, fell in ravines, tripped, broke a few bones…" Spyra listed off, flapping her wings to keep altitude. "Didn't fly a whole lot before now, though. My folks always told me to stay away from Mana Crystals, apparently, never knowing I needed the things to gain super powers!"
"Super-powers?" Morinth laughed. "But this is what dragons are meant to be able to do all the time! Mana Crystals are keys to life for us, mam, gifts from the Ancestors, people say."
"There are stories that when the first dragons died, they embued their souls into the earth of the world, to keep regenerating strength for future generations." Taliopia proudly recited. "I read that in a book."
"My Tali-wali is a bit of a nerd." Morinth risked butting Spyra in the head for how close she had to lean for the whisper to get through the draft.
"Morri-poo! You're embarrassing me…" Taliopia clicked her tongue and turned away.
"Why do you talk like that all the time? It's weird." Spyra crinkled her snout. "Don't tell me you lot are like a buncha nuns or something."
"Nooo-hooooo~!" Morinth sang. "Me and Taliopiaaaa are an iteemmmmm~!"
"An item? I…. wait… oh." Spyra coughed, tucking her forepaws to her breast. "…That's, uhm…. different. T-To all their own, huh?"
"I couldn't have said it better myself." Morinth chirped. "Seeing as you're supposed to be the savior of the Dragon Realms, you know Spyra, drakes are going to throw themselves at you. En masse. You're quite the eye-fetcher, if you'll excuse my saying."
Taliopia gave off this manic, giggly-sounding noise, frowning and swallowing a visible lump down her throat as she flapped to fly over and around Spyra, to get to Morinth's other side.
"Morri-poo…" She dotingly whined.
"Oh, hush, my dear, you're the only one in my eye." Morinth hummed. "Spyra? Why do you look like that for? Flying making you a bit ill? Let's land for a bit and take a break."
"Sure thing." Spyra glumly sighed.
The three dragonesses found a ridge and set down with a few wingflaps and kick of paws. Taliopia had an embarrassed flush on her snout as she sidled up to Morinth and nuzzled into her flank. Spyra trailed from them and stood on the ridge's cracked edge, looking down at an assortment of peat-bogs and reed swells below.
"My wings needed a good stretch." Morinth idly summed, wriggling her membranes in a pruning flap. "One thing I must warn you of, dear, is the flight over the Frontier Sea. Horrible thing. Always takes too long and makes your joints stiff."
"How long is that flight?" Spyra asked, not turning away from the view.
"A few hours with good navigation. You'll have the Wing with you, Warfang's finest. We'll get you there safe and sound." Morinth nudged Taliopia along and soon the three dragons stood side by side. "How's it like, living with dragonflies your whole life?"
"Boring. Everyone around you is a dwarf, you can't eat normal food, you're a spectacle in school, and socially you're an outcast. Oh, and it's lonely. Everyone either doesn't understand you, is afraid of you, or dislikes your company. Except for my family. They're awesome." Spyra dryly listed.
"That sounds rough." Morinth admitted, still with her usual sing-song voice.
"Ya' don't know the half of it." Spyra puffed, whipping her tail.
"Actually, I know a fair deal about being ostracized. My father was a Night Dragon, everyone shunned my mum when she came back from the war, preggers with me." Morinth explained. "I had to go to the academy, and everyone hated my guts. Hatchling of the enemy, they'd call me, Traitor-Child too. When I joined the army, my mum had died of a broken heart and I literally just had the wings on my back to keep me going."
"Ouch." Spyra winced. "…Look, I didn't mean ta' sound like the edgy bitch in the corner or nothing, it's just…"
"Life is hard." Morinth soothed, laying a wing on Spyra's. "But we all find our songs."
"I-I feel like I'm still looking, all the time." Taliopia leaned into Morinth and sighed. "…But you're supposed to save everybody, Spyra, how can't you have all the answers?"
"It doesn't feel like I do." Spyra creased her chops, thinking about the Fallen. "…but that human found me, boy-oh-boy. We're in the shit now."
"O-Oh, h-him." Morinth cleared her throat, her tone suddenly losing all its semblance of confidence. "Yes, cheeky that, he's a peculiar sort of creature, isn't he?"
"He kind of scares me." Taliopia shivered, and then slapped her chops. "…b-but he seems… nice."
"Really? He does?" Morinth gulped. "I-I mean… I think he's a little rude…"
"He's a complete asshole." Spyra shrugged. "But he's the best asshole I've ever met, and I'm stickin' with him. He's gotten me this far."
"….Oh no." Morinth swept out her wings suddenly, yanking the two dragonesses back from the ridge edge and behind some thickets. "Sssh! Stay down!"
"Dafuck?" Spyra sputtered, spitting a black wing-joint from her snout and swatting at fat frond leaves. "Stay down from what?"
"Eep~!" Taliopia slapped paws over her own mouth and shivered in the shade. There was a screech overhead and the heavy flap of wings.
"Aw, crap, not more of those things…" Spyra groaned.
A Dreadwing sailed over the ridge, flying westward, the Ape on its back had his eyes scanning the very same foliage they were in. The Dreadwing was flanked by two more of its kind, and together, the howling monsters flew off over the swamps, their cries echoing and becoming distant.
"They had to have seen us." Morinth's inner-soldier was coming out, and she sounded stern as she pointed with her tail back towards the way they had come. "We should get back to the temple."
{🐉}
"No, you idiot, it doesn't work like that. What do you want her to do, laugh at you and swat you in the face with her tail?" Corrinthol cringed. "Knowing you, with that glass-jaw, you'll be all over the floor and crying for your mommy."
"What's wrong with taking a gentle-drake's approach?" Torrdonal asked innocently. He cleared his throat and repeated again: "Professor Cyrila, I'm a former graduate of your class two years ago, and I must say, that your intellectual study of the elements of aquatic nature has stuck with me. I wish to implore you: might I buy you lunch this afternoon?"
"You're such a pansy." Corrinthol scoffed. "Women don't want honesty, they want you to lie to them. They want to hear what they want to hear. You're not being assertive."
"But I wouldn't want to be rude…"
"Professor Cyrila is the def-i-nition, of rude, you simpleton. One day, I'm gonna' have to educate you on the ways to a dragoness' heart. I learned from the best, after all: my good ole' dad. He's an officer in the corps."
"I know." Torrdonal nodded. Corrinthol was always threatening people with that knowledge, how could one forget? Like that one time at the watering hole when he'd gotten in that fight and started screaming at all the other dragons involved about how his dad would crush their windpipes. "I just think that females need to be treated with a little more… respect than you'd offer some other males. Like ones you would tell about your pa."
"No, no that's… not how it works. Damn it, Torrdonal, water dragons are supposed to be transparent, how'd you end up with such a thick skull?" Corrinthol sneered. "Don't tell me: your dad's an earth dragon ain't he?"
"No, my-"
A screech on the wind cut them both off. The dragons stopped on the edge of the temple's fall pond and looked up just in time to see a Dreadwing flicker over the horizon above. Torrdonal's jaw dropped and Corrinthol squealed.
"-D-D-D-DREADWING!" –He stammered. "MOMMY!" And hurled himself into the water with a loud splash.
Torrdonal shrieked when some of the water speckled his forepaws, and he danced into a thicket before tumbling through the leaves and crying out something about him not drowning.
Nearby, the Fallen, Harad and Ignitia hurried through the smashed front doors of the structure and gazed up at the receding Dreadwing shrinking over the forest line ahead.
"We've been spotted." Harad growled, whipping an angry glance at his fumbling soldiers in the pond outside. "I'm going to tear their heads off."
"It was only a matter of time before we were detected." Ignitia sighed. "This plan of yours, Fallen? It seems we've reached an need to speed its actioning. We need to get going if it is to work."
"I doubt this." Harad vented. "Still, I advise against suicide, as shocking as you might find that, Fallen."
"The only thing shocking here is your astutely ugly looks and lack of faith in those more enlightened, Hrafal." The Fallen raised a brow.
"It's Harad, you son of a bitch!"
"Stop yelling, Haggrid, I'm thinking…" The human turned away and ripped the crossbow strapped to his back off. "We're about to get hit. You two know how to fight, yeah?"
Harad sputtered over his own tongue, and Ignitia rolled her eyes.
"Someone had to thwart you both in the lobby, and it certainly wasn't those two." She pointed her tail at Torrdonal and Corrinthol. "You might be correct, however, holding off the initial assault in a defensible position would be advisable. Where are Spyra, Morinth and Taliopia?"
"There." The Fallen nodded to three growing shapes overhead. "…Ignitia, Fallen, we saw a…."
"Ignitia! Fallen! We saw a Dreadwing!" Spyra heaved, landing roughly with a scrabble of her claws on the stairs besides Morinth and Taliopia. "They were flying back to Cynder's tower!"
"No doubt for gathering reinforcements." Ignitia said. "Fallen, I've been riveted with tales of your ferocity in the field. Would you care to demonstrate?"
"Anything to please a lady." The Fallen winked.
Just then, the ground trembled, and a blast of dust took up the front of the ancient, overgrown steps.
The purple and black mass of a Dreadwing rose from the impact zone, and its horrid screech pierced all their hearing.
"I hate these fuckin' things." Spyra cringed.
The air whooshed, their feet quivered.
Crash~!
Crash-Crash-Crash~!
Crash~!
Dust and pebbles flew everywhere. Six Dreadwings surrounded the stairs, their yellow eyes glowing through the humus to stare directly at them.
"Yah~!" One of their riders screamed. The beasts howled and stamped their wing-joints.
"But they just love us." The Fallen chuckled.
{🐉}
{Halo 2 OST: Peril}
Today had been a rough day for Palmet. First, he'd caught a bad wind of fleas on top of the infestation he was already suffering. Next, that rash on the back of his left leg had started to flare up, and he'd spent so much time scratching it until it bled this morning that he'd missed gruel-hour back at Forlorn. After that, he'd been paired up with an Ape that couldn't stop messing himself the whole patrol. Then, his whole unit got wiped out, and an alien being who had fallen from the sky had royally fed him his own ass, bound, gagged and beaten him up.
Now he was tied up on the floor. And it was cold because of the breeze this high up.
It really couldn't have gotten much worse.
Then he saw the Dreadwings flying overhead, a whole cluster of them, riders whooping as they whipped and kicked their ferocious mounts into frenzies.
"-Oi~! Lads! Eeeellllpppp~!"
Palmet had screamed himself hoarse by the time the last of them had finished crossing over the temple, and the sounds of due fighting had echoed across the air.
Wheezing, Palmet rolled onto his feet, still tied up, and tried to waddle to the stairs leading up to the temple's rear doors. Halfway up the flight, he tripped, and rolled like a loose turd back all the way he'd come, a fragrant miasma of horrid curses leaving his throat, annunciated with each kick and thwack until he reached the bottom and lie there, twitching.
He tried again and managed to stumble to the doors themselves, using a furry shoulder to nudge one ajar so he could squeeze his bound form through.
Inside the temple, the battle sounded hollow, but the distinct ambiance of slashing metal, exploding dynamite and dying Apes was still apparent. Palmet grimaced at the mighty dragon statue in the center of the elemental training room, making sure to skirt around it as he hobbled for the temple's deeper portions.
"…A'course I ain't bloody navigated some doomed, spooky, ancient drag ruins befer for prior reference…" His mumbles echoed down the empty, mushroom-overgrown halls as he wandered. "…Why'd my patrol have ta be the one? What about Gruloog's lads? They're the ones always stealing the jerky strips from the cauldrons round the camp. They got enough karma rearin behind em to outdo the arse on a basilisk! Bloody simian ancestors of yore! Ya'll ain't good fer nothing, and I ain't nevva preyin to ya on a whim again!"
The Ape passed the egg chamber and paused in the doorframe, offering the toppled shelving units a contemptuous snort before resuming his trek.
Dragons were no good airborne newts anyhow.
The world would've been better off if all those presumptuous perfume-letters and gluttons dropped dead.
He found the lobby gallery next, and, stumbling over drifts of rubble and around pillars, Palmet gasped when sunlight blared in through the smashed front doors.
The dead spider was still there, a bloody mess. But beyond that, was a fair commotion of warfare that caught his interest.
The Fallen was swinging around a pair of cleavers like it was nobody's business. Palmet gave his best face of monkey-borne intrigue as he witnessed his brothers getting sliced by the bushel.
Apes flew from him in pairs as he hacked and slashed and cut like a madman, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Morinth and Taliopia were out there too, the latter crying loudly as she was chased in circles by a larger Ape officer with an axe over his head, the prior singing some kind of opera-note as she ripped her tail-blade from the innards of a dying Ape soldier.
The cindering corpse of a mighty Dreadwing was draped over the stairs' flank, sliced, burned and roasted to oblivion. Another Dreadwing screamed as combined trails of fire incinerated its skull, Ignitia and Spyra advancing side-by-side and drowning the beast in their elemental hell.
There was an explosion and a scream of pain. A Dreadwing flopped onto its back with its ribcage blasted ajar, the Fallen latched onto its head and screaming all kinds of obscenities. There was an Ape trying to crawl away, whilst also stuffing his own organs back into his gut. Another was making a run for the woodlands holding his own severed arm. There was an officer trying to rally the troops. The Fallen chucked a stick of dynamite into his open mouth and showered the surrounding area with chunks of brain and globs of blood.
Hell on earth, that shit.
Palmet shrugged, like he was looking at the most common thing since sliced bread, and immediately scampered out the doors, past the steaming corpses, and to one of his own fallen comrades.
The Ape was still twitching when Palmet giddily kicked him over and unveiled the cleaver sticking from the bloody mud.
"Sorry there, lad, it ain't like ya need it anymore itself."
Palmet winced when a nearby explosion sent an entire troupe of Apes cartwheeling in various states of dismemberment. One of them landed nearby, howling his head off as he held the bloody pair of squirting stumps that had been his legs. Some of the blood speckled onto Palmet as he lined his binds underneath himself with the blade.
"-Oi! Watch yer jam! I'm workin here, ya filthy monkey!"
Sshksshksshkssshksshk
-He started to saw the rope tying off his lower half and wrists against the cleaver. He grinned when the lines started to snap one by one, agonizingly.
"…Just a little more dere…"
An Ape Commander wielding a flaming warhammer leaped over the mounded cadaver of a dead Dreadwing and swung at the Fallen in an overhead strike. The human rolled under the fiery sweep and planted his heel right underneath the chainmail skirt and into the Commander's crotch, effectively crunching his orangutan-oranges.
The Commander screamed like a little girl and fell to his stubby knees. The Fallen snatched his own warhammer from his paws and brought it in a two-handed uppercut into his snout. The Commander's face exploded in a fiery burst of gore, and the headless corpse flipped onto its back. The Fallen steadied the warhammer, screaming at the top of his lungs as a band of flame shot out in the form of a fireball, and smacked into a Dreadwing coming in for a sweep overhead.
The beast screamed and created a blast-skid that covered the whole battlefield from end to end, taking a plethora of Ape footsoldiers with it to the grave.
Palmet only started cutting again when he felt his mouth twitch, and a gathering puddle of urine he'd made seep into his leg fur.
"…C'mon… C'mon…. YES…."
SNAP~!
"-I'm free! Ya hear?! I'm free! Wooo~!"
Palmet threw the ropes off, ran over to a dead Ape and snatched a dynamite stick off his bandolier. He yanked the fuse lit, hauled back, and teetered forward, aiming for the Fallen.
But then the poor Ape tripped over a severed leg from one of his fellows, and the dynamite flew way off course into the distance. It landed in a bundle of Ape infantry that had reformed to mount another charge, and detonated with a resounding whmpp~! –of thunder. Limbs were still falling by the time Palmet righted himself on his paws and knees, and surveyed the carnage.
"…Nuts." Was all he said.
"Ahhhhh~!" Screeched an Ape, who hauled back with a warhammer and caught the Fallen in the chest with the hilt.
The human sailed fifteen feet and landed in the dirt right next to Palmet. The wild look in his eyes briefly minimized as he turned over and met the Ape's gaze. For a moment, the two stared at each other, even as Spyra flew overhead and roasted a column of crossbowmen attempting to retreat.
"…Ello." Palmet waved cheaply.
"You got out of your binds." The Fallen pointed at him. "I tie wicked knots, how did y-"
"Found a cleava." Palmet shrugged.
"Ah. Well, good on you."
The Fallen head-butted him.
Crack~! –went their skulls. Palmet shrieked and rolled onto his back in agony.
"For the dragon-pussy!" The Fallen hollered, jumping to his feet like a springy rabbit, and running for the nearest Ape.
Blades slashed, dragons roared, Dreadwings screamed and Taliopia cried.
When it was all over, the field in front of the temple's beautiful pond looked like a slaughterhouse.
"….*cough* -Soldiers…. r-rally to me…" Harad heaved, limping through several corpses, his mace-tail- dripping with blood –came down in a slash upon a corpse next to his haunch that was still twitching. Bone crunched, and the Ape went very still.
Ignitia came slowly from the chaos, covered in dirt, cuts and bruises, her claws drenched in gore, and soot trailing through her nose and teeth.
Corrinthol was in a fetal position on the edge of the pond water, sucking fervently on a talon as he rocked on his own bloodied tail. Torrdonal was nearby, out of all things, staring with horror at the water instead of all the viscera.
Spyra was the only one smiling, exhausted, but still smiling.
"….T-That was a workout." She sidled up to Ignitia and slapped the older dragoness on the ass, making her squeak and hop forwards. "Nice work there, babe'."
"Careful, or I might have to touch the bootay myself there." The Fallen called, limping, as he navigated past a pair of dead Dreadwings. "How is everyone?"
"Alive." Harad wheezed.
"…W-Water…" Torrdonal muttered with wide eyes.
"Mommy. Mommy. Mommy." Corrinthol chanted with each rock on his tail. Eventually, he just broke out into a long, panicked sob and nothing else understandable blubbered out of his snout.
Poor lad.
He was still a fetid, crimson cunt.
"T-Tali'? Tali'? W-Where's Taliopia?!" Morinth scampered among some of the corpses, panic-striken, looking around wildly.
"Don't mind her." The Fallen rolled his shoulder, where Taliopia's unconscious form slouched over his back. He patted the poor white dragoness on the haunch, and whispered when Morinth bounded over. "I think it was all a bit overwhelming for her. She'll be fine."
"We kicked ass." Spyra sauntered over and hip-bumped him. "Wanna' go all the way and fuck that tower up too?"
"As if I would say no." The Fallen jittered his eyebrows. "Glory be to the first man to die."
Harad honestly looked terrified of him.
"Hey! I got a live one over here…" Spyra said, nodding to one of the fallen Apes. "Waitasec, isn't that the guy who saw us fucking?"
"E-Excuse me?" Ignitia gasped.
The Fallen carefully placed Taliopia down and snarled as he stomped over to Palmet. The Ape whined as he was dragged to his feet.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't put my fist through your face." The Fallen snapped.
"Why're you even asking?" Spyra quirked a brow.
Palmet shivered as his eyes darted between the dragons and the human. For a long moment, he was silent. Then, he fell to his knees, and bowed until his face ate the bloody mud.
"M-Master." He stammered, kissing at the human's boots.
"Oh god, you gotta' be kidding me." Spyra cringed. "What are we going to do with him?"
"I never said I'd refuse an Ape butler." The Fallen shrugged. "Besides, he's kind of fun to keep around. Always makes things interesting."
"M-Master…" Palmet muttered, still kissing the boots.
{🐉}
The moment Visigoth's Dreadwing touched down, it was nothing but Jute screaming.
"SPARKLES?!" The Chieftain shrilly cried, hopping off his own armored steed as he ran through the field of stinking corpses. "Sparkles, is dat you?!"
The great northern warlord came to an abrupt halt at the foot of one of the massive Dreadwing corpses dotting the battlefield. The beast was blackened from dragonflame with soot still dancing off the bristles on its ruined back.
Chieftain Jute quivered as he fell to a kneel, and sobbed in a ball of quivering fur and snot before the felled abomination.
"-T-They killed him-" Jute choked. "-*Snnnkkkkffff*- dey killed SPARKLES!"
Visigoth fluttered his chops as he blew out a defeated puff of air, his eyes scanning the mounds of dead Apes lying around everywhere.
From the air, this clearing had looked almost black, what with the bodycount. Infantrymen were still prowling about and getting an accurate number, but if memory served, this conglomerate unit possessed around three hundred men.
Had possessed three hundred men. Visigoth nudged a dead soldier in the furry ribs and snorted. Many of the dead were killed with Ape weapons.
Fallen.
Visigoth snarled as blood-rage welled in his chest.
"This hoo-man is apparently unstoppable." The Chieftain muttered, turning as Cynder trotted nearby, her austere gaze sweeping the area too. "We need to find him. All three of us. So that we may combine our talents and slay him in a three-to-one duel. Infantry, Dreadwings, Commanders even have all proven ineffective. This needs to end now, Mistress."
"The Temple always looks so dilapidated these days, does it not?" Cynder ignored him, nodding at the sad structure just ahead. "I bet you remember first bracketing those halls, Chieftain, when someone besides me possessed your leash. Did you feel freer back then? Or perhaps less enlightened."
"I felt younger." Visigoth growled. "My Apes have already searched the temple, Mistress, they aren't inside."
"Walk with me."
Cynder was silent as the two of them trekked through the beaten lobby. Though Visigoth noted the almost dreamy expression on the black dragon's face the entire time. Cynder appeared distant, or perhaps locked in some kind of mental prison as she examined all the chandeliers, the carvings and murals, the draconic architecture matting the structure in soaking detail.
She passed into an archway, not needing to voice aloud her desire for him to follow. They entered into a large room ringed with collapsed shelves, whose floor was littered with a trio of runic dais plates.
"….Malefora has purposefully limited my knowledge the entire time I have served her." Cynder muttered, her gaze fixated on the large egg mural taking up the northern wall. Visigoth snorted and balanced his axes in his grip, looking around boredly at the shelves.
It had been a while, but he remembered. The eggs. His foot. The cracking sounds. He used to feel more alive with every dragon he killed. Now it had all become grim noise of ceaseless fashion and woe.
This temple had no nostalgic value to him whatsoever, and frankly, he wanted to leave.
"They're probably going after something important to us right now." He said, harboring a rare moment where he was compelled to speak without honor of rank. "You may choose to wallow in your own self-loathing, but I'll remind you that when Malefora seeks heads for failure, both of us will kiss the axe. Collect yourself, Cynder."
"I've killed people for less coming out of their mouths." Cynder didn't move, her wings idly levitating in a preened pose just behind her regal neck. "This Purple Dragoness terrifies you, Visigoth, enough that you're more afraid of her than you are of me."
"It terrifies you more." He snarled. "I've overcome foes that were supposed to be invincible before."
"You killed a pig and are worshipped for it."
"And you can't win favor unless it is fed to you, you stupid little girl." He barked.
Cynder was on him in a second, had him pinned to the floor, his axes flew away on clinging metal, and she presided over him with silent menace.
"Say more if you want this all to end." Cynder whispered. "You're just a breath away from it. Say it. Give me something to vent my rage upon."
"Is that was this is all about?" He choked, her claw compressing his furry throat. "You think this is all some kind of board game. That there are pieces, and that things leave the board, and they're gone from the playing square. You think in stone, she-drake. These immovable nuances you've buried yourself in are going to get every single one of us killed."
"Did my egg come from this place?"
Visigoth's expression dropped.
"…What?" He grunted.
"Did my egg come from this place."
Cynder didn't appear to have spoken, but her soulless, white eyes were locked on him with an immovable stance.
Visigoth honestly felt confused. He had been… shouting about other matters, evidently, having misread the source of her anger.
Slowly, unsure, he raised a paw and pointed to a line of ruined shelves on one of the room.
"Your egg was right there. It was pitch black. It had rolled off a shelf when the unit fell from all the vibrations outside. I was seconds away from being too late from stopping one of my men from smashing you." He held his paw up in a cupping motion, simulating her weight in his palm. "The Dark Master whispered in my mind, told me to take you specifically. You were to be the Terror of the Skies. Cynder, Cloudripper, Forlorn Lady. I made you that."
"You stole my life." Cynder told him.
"Nobody in this exchange tells false truths." Visigoth snorted. "I'm confused, Cynder, what the hell do you want me to tell you? That I feel remorse? No. I don't feel remorse for anything. I've never felt remorse in my entire life. Time is a one-way road, and we can only go forwards. This world puts up walls that are too high to climb and they must be smashed, smashed low and harshly. The strongest thrive," He gestured to himself and her. "the weak are slaughtered." He gestured to the doorframe over his head.
"Regardless of our pasts," Cynder released her claw and started to stomp out of the room. He coughed and held his throat tenderly as she abandoned him. "we're linked at the hip now, Chieftain. We're both reliant upon the death of the purple nightmare and the subjugation of that human."
"Subjugation?" Visigoth struggled to his feet and picked up one of his axes. "What is this fascination with the Fallen? You hoard his sky-devices, scribble notes on his appearance… You told the Pathfinder to take that thing alive, didn't you?"
"Mistress, Chieftain?" An Ape officer stood in the arch frame. "…All the dead have been looted."
"Of their weapons?" Cynder whipped her gaze from Visigoth to the other Ape.
"No, Mistress, their boom-sticks."
Cynder's eyes went wide.
"Back to Forlorn, with speed." She barked.
{🐉}
