Dragon(s)layer
11
Historic Ghosts
To say the Funguswood was dark was an understatement. Twisting thickets of mushroom encapsulated shadowy and claustrophobic tunnels. Stalks that interconnected and dumped out among one another further added to maze-like qualities already there. It was a nightmare only outdone by the fact that the Apes had snared a road right through it.
"They must use this trail to get all the wagons through." Morinth brought her snout low to the ground. "See? Wheel lines are all over the place."
"Stick to the foliage." The Fallen quietly reminded, several bandoliers of dynamite tethered over his chest. "We'll be spotted if we stay on the trail."
Warhorns were going off in the distance en masse. The party had to hunker down in the dark several times as trains of Apes lumbered back down in the direction of Forlorn. A few of them had carriages stocked with crystals and demolition equipment.
"Cynder's cleaning house." The Fallen said. "She's trying to regroup every Ape she has to defend the tower."
"How is this gonna' work if they know we're coming?" Spyra asked. "I'm all up for a bottom-out knock-em-dead brawl, but I'm not suicidal. There have to be hundreds of them at the tower, maybe a thousand."
"Gunpowder's a great mediator of numbers." The Fallen patted his bandoliers.
"-I-Is this why I'm being tortured-?!" Corrinthol snarled through grit fangs. The red drake's legs quivered as he hefted a colossal sack of explosives upon his back and between his wings.
"No, you're being tortured because you sir, are a coward and a scoundrel." The human patted one of Corr's wingtips reassuringly, smiling when the soldier wheezed and his knees threatened to lock. "And I happen to passionately dislike you, but don't believe that my decisions will ever be impacted by my personal inhibitions. Take one for the team in style, my crimson friend."
Spyra started laughing with Morinth, and even Taliopia was muffling a giggle behind her paw. Corrinthol was humiliated, and could only respond with a pained mewl underneath all the dynamite. Nearby, Torrdonal calmly walked by with a large sash of the explosives secured over his chest. He smiled cheaply at his fellow and tried to remain comment-less.
While they trekked, Ignitia had so far refused to cease glaring at him, silently brooding over something swirling around in her experienced mind. The Fallen tried to alleviate the stress with a cheesy smile, but the Fire Guardian wasn't having any of it.
"Maybe I could shine yer boots?"
And then there was Palmet, who had refused to stop offering all manner of services to appease the Purple Dragoness and her human companion.
"Sort out yer ration pouches? Oo! Maybe, I could carry some of the red lad's boom-sticks and lessen the load!"
"O-Oh, thank you!" Corrinthol happily laughed, staggering off his path to move towards the Ape. The Fallen whisked in with the speed of a bullet. Before poor Corrinthol knew what was happening, a heel was crunching into his forepaw and twisting. The poor drake yowled in pain and fell on his face in the mud, the sack burying him under its weight.
"No, your duty as pack-mule is sacred." The Fallen jammed a finger at Palmet. "Suffer twice his punishment if you interfere, Bananas."
"B-Bananas? Now that's just racist that is." Palmet sneered with distaste. "It's a common missyconseptshun that Apes love bananas so much! Why, I'd fancy myself a lover of roasted meats and veggietabobbles befer anythin else!"
"Who cares? Move or I'll roast your legs with a side of veggie-ta-bobbles, you fuckin' freak." Spyra jammed a horn into his back, and the poor Ape scurried ahead with a squeal. "We're deep in the Funguswood now. No turning back."
The place did look awfully mysterious. Shadows ruled here, alongside purple shimmers from mushroom caps taking up the canopy above. Vines twisting together made odd and frightening arachnid shapes in the ambient glaze, and the only sounds of wildlife were toads, and the single hoot of a distant owl.
This landscape reeked of dark energy. The Fallen had seen many places like it. There was a cancer beneath the dirt that poisoned the trees and made animals sick. Malefora had done something underneath Forlorn, and he was certain it had to do with this Pool that Palmet had mentioned.
"What's the artifact that the monkey mentioned?" He drew alongside the larger form of Ignitia.
"It is a Vision Pool." Ignitia said, glancing at him. "They are magical wells used by dragon wizards and witches to commune with one another across vast distances. There are very few of them left. One is in Warfang, at the behest of the Dragon Council, another lies in the academy, where myself and the other Guardians can consult for important messages."
"One of them is in the Dark Continent?"
"Malefora's Vision Pool. It is a bastardized copy of the structures dragons have built, a fake, if you will. The one beneath Forlorn was built by Stormwatch immigrants when they first settled the swamps. Now, it has been corrupted by Malefora's pool to serve her Dark Army. We should destroy it the moment we find it, Malefora could bewitch us through its stone." Ignitia explained. "Cynder is a fearsome witch, but you have not seen power until you have witnessed the Dark Master and her foul tricks. It is those very powers that made Cynder who she is today."
"Why did Malefora go evil anyhow? Especially if she was the first Purple Dragoness?" Spyra asked.
"She was greedy, and power-hungry, envious of others' creativity to such an extent that she became consumed by malevolence and hatred. She wants to destroy the world so that she can reforge it in her own image." Ignitia doted on her as they walked. "It is a fate that I was destined to protect you from, when you were still an egg. If I hadn't put you in that basket, I fear what may have happened instead."
"I do love a woman who thinks on the fly." The Fallen sighed. Spyra growled and hit him in the head with a tossed twig.
"T-This place is scary." Taliopia swallowed, hiding under Morinth's wing.
"It's just shadows and frogs, nothing more." Harad snorted, proudly walking in the center of his ragtag Wing with his helmed head high. "I do not fear a forest of giant fungus stalks. I do fear being underprepared in this raid of yours, Fallen."
"Don't get your tail in a bunch, this is by far not the craziest move I've pulled." The Fallen reassured. "A wiser man once said to me: Bring down that which seeks to impose. Now I'm no hippie, but I am quite certain we have what it takes to bring Forlorn crashing to a late grave."
"If we succeed, this victory will be bittersweet." Ignitia smiled. "Forlorn is one of the oldest draconic structures in the south. We're destroying a piece of artwork that can never be remade."
"Significance isn't worth lives." The Fallen chimed. "I've seen many people who learned so the hard way. But enough about that, we have a job to do, and we'll get it done."
"Fallen, where do you come from if not from this world?" Morinth cautiously matched her pace with his and gazed at him. "Did you come from the Eternal Moons?"
"I came from a portal." He shrugged, earning even Harad's attention. "It's my job, to see the Multiverse. You can take it from my lips, that at least you all know now that you aren't alone in the grander scheme of things."
"What are these other worlds like?" Taliopia's eyes looked starry. "Are they scary? Or nicer? Pretty? Ugly maybe?"
"Everything." He grinned. "Everything in-between. It's… complicated."
"Deja-vu." Spyra huffed. "Well those places don't matter right now. You're here, with us, with me, and that's what's important. Right, guy?"
"Right." He raised a brow when the purple she-dragon trotted closer and wrapped her tail possessively over his wrist. He let her yank him along.
"You lot don't argue as much as the boys." Palmet observed. "Apes would usually be at each other's throats several times by now, and a few teeth would get knocked out. It's all good fun though. Violence ain't damagin if ya keep it on the recreational level."
They found the tower after a short while of walking and navigating the twisting thickets.
The party emerged into a clearing lit with purple luminance from a large mushroom overhead. Yellow-eyed critters of some sort chattered as they spread out into the foliage penning the lot in to watch them silently from the darkness, giggling to themselves and scurrying about under the cover of thickets.
Forlorn was a gothic spear erupting from behind a few ringing plateau mounds stuffed with mushrooms. It spanned tens of stories into the cloudy day sky, holed through, crumbling, but mostly intact.
Black reams of soot dragged from the mouths of smokestacks poking out from the atrium bubble making the tower's coliseum-like base, and the distant, monstrous hoots of Apes were common and echoing.
"…I-I don't wanna' go in there." Taliopia became a quivering wreck and balled up under Morinth's wings, proving unreachable even as the black dragoness soothed her with a series of little coos and whispers.
"I thought it was bigger." Spyra sounded disappointed. "Y'know, this'd be perfect to say Cyndy-Two-Shoes is compensating for something, but… she's a chick, so…"
"I've met things I thought were chicks only to realize the horrid truth." The Fallen shuddered, shouldering his bandoliers. "At least we know Cynder isn't like that. Are you all coming?"
"What has the Terror of the Skies done to it?" Harad hissed, he, Torrdonal and Corrinthol (the latter with difficulty past the sack) all craning back to look up at the structure. "It's the headquarters for an entire army! We need to turn back."
"When you're done soiling your diaper, tell me if your shit is the same shade of green as your scales, will ya', Haggardness?" Spyra called back, following the Fallen closely up a vined hill.
Harad's snout turned as red as a cherry.
"….I think both of you have a point." Torrdonal attempted cheerily.
Twigs snapped as Corrinthol finally gave under the weight and the sack compressed him to the earth with a mighty thud. Some dynamite sticks rolled away as he wriggled helplessly.
"-Ahhh~! My leg! It's bending! BENDING! OW-Owowowowow-"
"Tali', my deeaaarrrr, you need to stop crying so we can disembowel the bad guys…" Morinth sang, lapping at the tear-stricken medic's horns.
Ignitia slapped a paw over her face and sighed.
"This is going to be a disaster." She muttered.
{🐉}
They came across what Palmet called a 'Spika-Cannon' just up the ridge.
A lone Ape sat in its cramped, rectangular confines, head lazily resting over a pair of handlebars inside the operator square. The Spika-Cannon had a crudely carved metal barrel sticking out the front, and according to Palmet, it could rotate on its base and fire razor-sharp spines of steel.
"He speaks the truth." Ignitia whispered as they hid behind a clump of entangled stumps. "We've faced Ape contraptions such as these in the past. Those spikes can punch clean through plate armor."
"Me and my boi' can handle it." Spyra grinned manically, nudging over to elbow the Fallen, and gasping when she realized he had vanished. "Fallen?"
There was a gurgling noise up ahead. The dragons all peaked over the stumps to see the Ape's limp body rolling out the side of the cramped cannon and into the grass. The Fallen wiped his machete blade off on the turret rim with a few sparking swipes and waved them over.
"Showoff." Spyra leaped onto his chest and playfully sank her teeth into his shoulder.
The layered plateaus leading up to the flank of Forlorn were heavily defended, and from the distance, they could see the main ramp to the tower's gates.
A pair of stone shortwalls guarded what had once been a flight of grand stairs. The Apes had flattened the flight for their wagon trains, and had installed Spika-Cannons along the tops of the crumbling walls. At least eight of the machines silently stood vigil there. There were gun emplacements spread sporadically up the plats, hidden in brambles, behind overturned tree logs and in crevices.
Lumbering patrols of Apes numbering twos and threes were easily dispatched. Ignitia, Harad, Morinth and Spyra bloodying their talons many a time. The Fallen took care of most of the guns, prior experience in radically different warzones than this allotting him the needed expertise to take them out.
An Ape at one point managed to escape being silently murdered and had sprinted away, tugging a warhorn off his belt. The Fallen nearly broke his neck climbing a dried embankment to get height's grace, and shoot the runner in the back with a crossbow bolt.
The whole time, the fantastical landscape of the Funguswood sprawled like a pulsating ulcer of black blood around them, only mediated by the bright rays of sunshine piercing the cloud cover in glittering bundles.
"See that?" Ignitia flapped her wings as she and Spyra jumped a plateau level and landed on the mossy flat above. She nodded for the horizon, where Spyra gasped at what she saw.
She had only ever heard stories of the arctic seas to the south. The purple beastess had never beheld an ocean in person.
The gray slick of endless mass was a blanket vanishing at the focal up to the north past a dull shore riddled with sharp coastal rocks and basalt stacks. Ignitia was nosing for a crumbled disc of architecture that was half sunk in the surf. It looked like a saucer of gray that had been swallowed partially by the sand, and drowned in dismal water. Spyra could pick out the toothpick-thin masses of a few towers sticking out of the water a mile or so in.
"That was once Stormwatch, mightiest dragon castle in the south." Ignitia said, keeping a distance when the Fallen sidled up beside them and knelt to observe the sights as well. Ignitia tested the air and eyed him suspiciously before draping a wing over Spyra and nudging her closer to herself. The purple dragon barely noticed, being so fixated on the view.
"What happened to it?" She whispered.
"Nobody knows." Morinth said behind them, the sunlight making her appear as if she was sapping light from the surrounding landscape with her darker hide. "It's destruction predates the Dark Army and the war. Some say Stormwatch was done in by its own title, the largest and most violent hurricane ever witnessed centuries ago."
"Many scholars believe it was a landslide. Stormwatch was constructed on uneven and soft terrain. As it developed its ports, its discus foundation became unbalanced and slipped into the surf." Ignitia looked back at Forlorn. "Our own history is dying all around us."
The Fallen sighed, meeting eyes briefly with Harad, who seemed almost embarrassed to take in the distant coast. He cleared his throat.
"We have to move quickly." He guided Spyra towards the tower. "I'm sorry." He uttered to Ignitia.
"Born from Mana, return us through the end to earth and stone." Ignitia quoted an ancient draconic warrior's saying.
"I always thought that fing was an ancient, giant toilet-bowl or somethin." Palmet teetered as he sat on a boulder nearby. Someone threw a rock that smacked off one of his eyes and made him howl as he rolled to the ground.
"-I-I can't raise my neck." Corrinthol complained, straining with the heavy bomb load.
"You aren't missing much, Corr'. It's really sad." Torrdonal shook his head and preened his wings.
"There it is." The Fallen surmounted the empty box of a Spika-Turret, ignoring the bloodied operator lying dead at his feet inside as he pointed for the tower's base.
Nestled among a small wood of entangled giant mushrooms, the foot of the massive atrium was broken in a space for a grated hatchway at the base of a smashed-open stone pipe. There was a spanning thicket locking the whole thing in from above, and a soupy, gray miasma rose from its interior.
"Shit's Creak is right." Spyra stuck out her tongue. "I can smell it from here."
"Yeah, well sacrifices must be- ow- hey!" The Fallen pinched an eye shut as Spyra jumped onto his back and hugged him around the shoulders, hanging there like a big, scaly, purple backpack beside his crossbow. "What are you doing?"
"Be a gentleman and carry a 'ness, would ya'?" Spyra brushed back her fiery head fins and winked at him.
"What makes you think I'll be reduced to a pack-mule like Corrinthol? I have a higher standard th-"
"-I'll let you bust a nut all over my face after we win."
"Off we go, keep all tails, wings and talons inside the vehicle at all times." The Fallen secured her forepaws and marched onwards, Spyra giggling maniacally as he hiked his tailbone and jostled her in her makeshift seat.
The smell had already been bad at their distance, but as they got closer to the edge of the thicket grove the aroma became loathsome.
To the dragons, it smelt of death. The Fallen could more accurately describe it as an ajar cesspool left unpumped for over a month.
The zone was a wound in the boggy, moss-ridden earth of the plateau ring. It imbedded downwards in a great slice completely overgrown with toadstools, mushroom caps and dead-looking ferns. Several smashed barrels, pieces of crates and a few bones lingered on the muddy shores surrounding the little basin.
The water itself was full of mirth and murk. You couldn't see through it at all. The Fallen grimaced, forcing himself to breathe out his mouth, as he leaned forwards and examined the hideous liquid. Mosquito larvae were wriggling in clusters down there. Hopefully, there weren't leeches to go along with it.
"Blegh~! That's fucked, dude." Spyra hacked, cupping her paws over her nose. "Good thing I brought my boy-stilts with me."
"I went through all that work to get you clean, woman, and this is the thanks I get…" The Fallen grumbled. "-Ah well, I've swam through worse."
"N-No way." Corrinthol struggled to shake his head, rolling over the massive sack until it pinned his left wing, but freed his torso at least. "I am not going into that."
"There isn't an alternative?" Harad shivered, the question being forced through his pride. Behind him, Taliopia had turned green and had rushed off to a bush to vomit. Morinth, contrastingly, didn't look too bothered, and when Torrdonal quizzed her on this, she grinned morosely.
"When you spend your childhood living in sewer tunnels, you get used to other people's shit." She shrugged with her wings.
"But it's water." Torrdonal gasped. "Water!"
The Fallen- broken briefly from his wanderlust over the purple thang on his back –cringed.
He'd been to worlds where the slightest scent of weakness was met with overwhelming brutality and force. Places that could kindly be labeled hell, with all the fell horrors, secrets and monstrous spawn it could entail. After all that, now he was standing in front of a pool of sewage listening to a bunch of dragons try to hype themselves up for the dive.
Sheltered. –These people didn't understand war, even when it was happening all around them.
He decided that he liked this world. But then again, he'd decided that a few days ago. It was pretty nice here.
Minus the toxic sludge.
Ignitia gasped and turned her nose up at the little bog with an offended snort. She was only cowed for time when a pair of Dreadwings screeched overhead in a near pass. They needed to do this soon if it was going to work.
"I could carry you too." The Fallen leaned over smartly and flexed his brows at her. He laughed when the fire dragoness went wide-eyed, and turned away from him with a little 'Hmmph!' –under her breath.
With care, she placed a talon in the disgusting soup, shivering down to the core of her scales when she sunk to the ankle with a hideous shllurrpp~! –noise bubbling out past her arm.
"Ancestors." Ignitia grit her teeth. "Allow me a moment to… to acclimate."
"I can't go in water!" Torrdonal cried, surprising the Fallen with his sudden decisive tone. "I'll drown!"
"-I-It's your element, you idiot!" Corrinthol howled under the dynamite. "You literally can breathe underwater! You'll never drown! EVER! Even if you tried!"
"Just like you'll never be the man you aspire to be, you red, ugly little girl." The Fallen smiled warmly. Corrinthol made a muffled, piercing noise as some of the linen bunched over his snout. It might've been some kind of feminine shriek of frustration. The world would never truly know. "It's either the disposal grate, or, I humbly ask for any volunteers to knock on their front doors and ask for sugar."
"I could try, M-M-" They all glanced at Palmet, who was stammering as he tried to force out the human's new title. He'd been having trouble addressing him as such since the battle, probably due to his Ape-pride resurging after the adrenaline had taken a hike. "-Master." Palmet swallowed. "I could try ta get in thru the front. Maybe dey wouldn't recognize me. You've been killin so many of Visigoth's boys that they must have put replacements from the north there."
"And what about the rest of the Wing?" Morinth chimed. "Apes don't take prisoners, they eat dragons trapped on the ground. We couldn't fool them."
"I am actually going to be forced to do this." Ignitia placed a second claw into the disgusting pool. She tried to ignore the wriggling mosquito larva fleeing all around her wrists, and forced a smile. "The t-temperature is just lovely." She beamed, her eye experiencing a twitch.
"Trust me when I say these things go quicker with action. Just hold your breath and walk to a point." The Fallen slipped up to the knee into the horrid liquid, his face convulsing underneath practiced straightness. It was tough even for him. "Move quickly."
Harad grunted, steeled himself, and casually strode into the sewage, unblinking as the foul liquid slothed up to his breast and bubbled. He waded like a large, green iguana through the pool, keeping his wings high and out of the water's clutches.
Ignitia soon duplicated him, taking a breath through her mouth and holding it. Morinth went next, up to her knees, and held a paw for Taliopia.
"C'mon along, my sweet, we'll get nowhere dawdling any longer."
"B-But that water is disgusting!" Taliopia gasped. "A-And that tower is scary! I-I don't wanna' go inside! There's bad people in there! And more of those Deadwings."
"Dreadwings, honey."
"Dreadwings! Yeah…" Taliopia swallowed, pinching her snout. "…Morri-poo… I think I'm going to sit this one ou-"
Morinth snatched her by the tail and dragged her into the murk, humming pleasantly as the poor medic shrieked, flipped and rolled, casting wet globs of filthy sludge in every direction. The screams and splashing made it sound like someone was getting mauled to death by an alligator.
A drop splashed in Corrinthol's face, making him snarl as he trundled closer with the huge bag of explosives weighing him down.
"If you all want to die inside that place, then be my guest! I've got better things to do with my valuable life than throw it away on the haphazard plans of a sky-man. You hear me, Fallen? Your plan isn't going to work! I know it isn't. You're gonna' fail, and all of you are gonna' die, including the Captain, and then I can take his job and lead my own Wing! Just like dad said I would one day. Captain Corrinthol. I like the ring of that. My talents will finally be recognized, and I'll be a war hero! Surviving the battle even the Purple Dragoness couldn't! But hey, that Purple Dragoness could always walk away and become the lawful mate of such a hero at any time!"
"In your dreams, asshat." Spyra snapped half-way from the pool. "I don't hitch up with pussies. I already have one, I don't need another."
"Goodness." Torrdonal blandly said beside him, watching Corrinthol's jaw go slack. "That's okay, Corrinthol, there's plenty of fish in the sea."
Torrdonal's supportive grin died, and his eyes crossed.
"A-And there's… water…" He shuddered.
Corrinthol growled and rolled the massive sack of dynamite onto the earth, grabbing the edge of the neck with two claws.
"Stop embarrassing yourself and take this end with me! Help me tug." He snarled as the Fallen waded through the now waist-deep sludge. "…I hate that alien thing."
"Ya should see him when he gets pissed ya should."
Corrinthol cried out in surprise to see Palmet beside him.
"Awright! Don't go hollerin at me or nuffin, I'm just tryin ta make decent conversationz and whatnot." The Ape danced back with his paws up. "Dis is all so new to me, Northern Militareh Service and such. Do you fellows have a information pamphlet I could get my grips on at some point? Or free access buffets for prolonged deployment? We didn't get a whole lotta benefits workin with Cynder, she's a bit of a slave driver and all that..."
Corrinthol grabbed his bronze horns and yanked until it hurt. He swept a wing out and smashed Palmet across his ugly face, sending the poor Ape rolling down the turf where he splashed into the sewage with a heavy plop.
{🐉}
Across the pool there was a burst stone pipe sticking from the base of the massive atrium foot of the tower. Half of its length was open at the top and creepers overgrew it everywhere. Mist seeped from between the bars of a wrought-iron grate cap sealing the deeper section of the tunnel. A little stream of sewage-piss babbled through its lower half and dripped into the pool below like hot batter through a strainer.
Taliopia had resorted to dry heaves by this point. She'd vomited at least three times, and apparently had nothing left in her stomach. The Fallen actually felt bad for her. That was hard to come by, especially with strangers for him. But watching the dainty, white dragoness cry silently as she leaned on Morinth for support, her mouth open and reams of saliva leaking from her, he allowed a frown to befall his features.
Maybe he'd buy them both dinner somewhere. Did Warfang have restaurants?
He opened his mouth to ask, but thought better of it.
They were knee-deep in monkey shit. Who the hell wanted to talk about food?
"This actualleh ain't so bad." Palmet said, picking chunks of something horrible out of his arm fur as he waded through the sludge. The Ape didn't look in the slightest bit disturbed by his surroundings. They were truly disgusting creatures who lived in filth for business and pleasure. Walking rats, really. "Before you two fried Drulop to a crisp, my whole mob was a collective piss-show of complainin sods. I was actually plannin on given myself a promotion."
"How does an Ape promote oneself? Don't you need Cynder to do that?" Torrdonal asked, his teeth bunched around the end of the sack he and Corrinthol were floating through the muck behind them.
"Don't collude with the enemy." Harad half-heartedly muttered, grimacing at his sludge-stained breastplate.
"Nah nah, Cynder don't handle civil affairs like that. Ya get promoted if ya knife your current CO in the back and live to tell the tail. Once you do that, all the other boys listen to ya cause you're obviously stronger and more intellectual." Palmet plucked a thumb-sized fly out of the air and popped it in his mouth, crunching loudly as he talked. "That's how Ape society functions day ta day, understand. It makes things a lot more simple and less complicated-like."
The Fallen was listening to this with amusement written all over his face. He'd read Cynder and her little army like an opened book. Evil warlords were all the same, maintaining this complicated network of treachery like it was a gigantic spiderweb. Those things never lasted.
"You guys must not have healthcare either." Spyra crinkled her snout as Palmet swallowed, and offered a hideous belch. "I've got the table manners of a cow, but that's just gross."
"Nah, Cynder never even put out a proppa retirement plan. Usually, when the boys get close to the right age for something like that, someone takes advantage of their old, feeble limbs during a feast, and shanks em! Steals their poultry too." Palmet made a stabbing motion with his wrist. "Did that to my father! Good ole' paps. He blubbered like a fish when I stuck him right through the left lung."
Taliopia's wheezing silenced as she gaped at the Ape in horror.
"-Y-You killed your daddy?" She squeaked.
"Yep!" Palmet nodded enthusiastically. "Stabby-stab! Buncha times right through the rear muscle, here, unda da pit. Works best ta keep the victim from screamin."
"He's not wrong." The Fallen said.
Taliopia vomited a fourth time. Poor Morinth had run out of patience and could only softly rub circles between her wing joints.
"We can't use dynamite on the cap." The Fallen hiked up the dripping pipe's ledge at knee-height, standing in the ten-or-so feet that the pipe's interior offered. "Ignitia?"
"Gladly." The Guardian flapped her wings and hopped from the sewage, shivering as she glanced down at her drenched forepaws and feet. "*huff* I will never be able to get this smell out of my coat."
"Still smells like a bakery to me." Spyra sniffed at her, snorting. "Y'know, a bakery with its latrine overflowing in the back, but a bakery nonetheless."
Ignitia sighed in defeat and trotted to the grate. Harad came up next, then Morinth and the very sickly Taliopia. Harad had to turn around and help Corrinthol and Torrdonal heave the dynamite sack from the water.
"If I live to see the end of today, I will never complain about cesspit duty ever again, for as long as I live." Harad admitted, looking down at Torrdonal, who was shivering uncontrollably. "What is wrong with you?"
"W-Water. It's all over me. It's everywhere! It's going to drown me!" Torrdonal shrieked, his eyes wild and- somehow –staring in two separate directions. He looked like a dog having a nervous breakdown as it watched its master throw out the whole bag of treats. "I need my happy place!"
"Here's a happy place." The Fallen stomped over and yanked one of his horns, snarling in his ear-hole: "I'll break your neck if you don't pipe down."
Harad growled and shouldered the human back.
"That second test of meddles gets closer every moment you're around us." The earth dragon glowered. "I was just about to discipline him myself."
"I'm too decent a guy to deserve being stuck in this hell." Corrinthol dryly said to no one as he doted on his explosives sack, his tail thumping on the stone of the pipe. He didn't bother to help Palmet as the Ape scrabbled on the edge of the pipe's lip, falling back in a number of times before finally slumping onto the walkway inside, dripping, like a wet mop.
"I survived!" He proclaimed in a sputter. "Don't nobody worry none."
"Shame. I was kinda' hoping he'd of drowned." Spyra laid an elbow on the Fallen's head and tapped her talons on her chin with a heavy sigh. "Fallen, could you drown your new butler? He sucks."
"Drowning!" Torrdonal shrieked.
"Depends on his concierge and waiter service. Do you know how to prepare a martini, Palmet?" The Fallen raised a brow.
"The bloody crap is a mar-teen-niez?" Palmet blinked like a moron.
"Ha! I can already see all the bubbles." Spyra wiggled her fingers.
"Captain," Ignitia closed her mouth and cut off a wavering pillar of fire. The whole grate cap was glowing orange, the air around it wavering like the surface of a sun. Nobody had even heard her superheating the metal. It looked like an illuminated checkerboard in the dark. "the floor is yours."
Harad cleared some space and tucked into a ball. There was a crack of earth and a magically conjured boulder of green rock materialized around his body, pressing the whole party to the edges of his proximity. He rolled and smacked into the grate with a clash of sparks, ripping it free to flatten beneath his girth.
"Get inside." He called, the boulder turning to dust as he reappeared on the other side.
"That'd be a lot cooler if he wasn't such a dick." Spyra whispered to the Fallen. "You think I could learn how to do that?"
"Indeed you could." Ignitia warmly interjected, sidling beside the human as they passed over the crushed, cooling grate. "As the Purple Dragoness, Spyra, you have the ability to more quickly adhere to elements than other dragons. Most of our kind never are able to cast another power outside of their birth element their entire lives."
"I tried to learn fire once." Torrdonal mouthed over the sack as he and Corr' tugged. "I accidentally set my sister's nest aflame."
"You have sisters?" The Fallen went bug-eyed. "Please tell me they're single, and twins."
"You are disgusting." Harad paused up ahead.
"And proud."
The pipe was relatively short, walking only took a minute at the most. The air immediately changed to a warmer, glummer sort. The smell was horrid, but they had been traveling through it long enough that a kind of sick familiarity had set in.
The pipe disgorged into a large, egg-shaped dome chamber that was otherwise dark, save for the green glow around the waste pool making its center. Ancient brickwork and chiseled walls were overrun with vines and shrooms. The ceiling was too high up to perceive through the shadows, and what had once been an amber crystal chandelier had fallen and was gathering rust in the center of the waste pool just ahead of them. The gems were reacting to being submerged and were actually making the pool glow its native color.
Green.
Even the miasma of mist wavering over their heads was the same shade.
"This place is a dump!" Spyra cried. "Did the ancients enjoy shitty floor-plans, or were times that different?"
"The ancients did not do this. You can thank the Apes for such lovely redecoration." Ignitia swept her snout about with displeasure. "Over there, do you all see those doors? The orbs all must be lit for them to open. This must have once been a disposal chamber for Forlorn before it fell. Look for switches or runes."
They waded out of the shallow mirth and stood in the greater chamber beyond. Corrinthol and Torrdonal dragged the dynamite sack out and let it rest, both of them heaving against its side for support.
Taliopia flopped on the nearest clear patch of stone flooring she could find and closed her eyes, occasionally spitting to rid herself of the taste of her own puke. Morinth sadly doted on her and picked at her sopping paws.
"Alright." The Fallen tore his gaze from them and turned to the doors as Spyra hopped off his back. "Looks like it's up to us, Spyra."
"Ain't it always?" She hip-bumped him. "I think I see something over there! You check that corner, I'll check this one."
"While you lot figure how to open them doors, just watch out for the Sewer Moana." Palmet slithered out of the muck and shook himself like a dog. "That's why the boys always lock the doors when they're done dumpin the latrine pots! That fing will eat us."
The Fallen paused as he checked a pillar nearby.
"I don't see anything." He shrugged. "There isn't enough space for something that powerful to hide. Unless, don't tell me: the Sewer Moaner is an errant gnome or something? It would not surprise me, I've found stupider."
"Spyra, you have expertise on the local fauna." Ignitia called across the chamber, feeling up a wall for any hidden switches. "Any suggestions?"
"…Ahhhhhhmmm…" Spyra sheepishly let her tail sway. "…Can't be Bulb Spiders, they'd have jumped us already. No giant mosquitos, just a lot of regular ones…"
The Fallen slapped his neck roughly nearby, cursing.
"…Badgers, nah too picky, Toadworts, no too stupid, Growths, can't be they're too fat… That leaves…"
Palmet screamed, and a terrifyingly morose wail echoed around the whole chamber. It sounded like a strange blend of a person in agony and a dying ox. It was wholly disturbing enough to turn even the Fallen's head.
"What, the hell, was that?' He muttered.
"It's da Sewa Moana!" Palmet shrieked. "Run fer yer lives!"
The goop flooding the pool made a popping noise, and something the size of a small dog flew out with the speed of a bullet. It opened, like a dark hand, fingers and all, and latched onto Palmet's back with a wet slap~!
The Ape tossed onto the ground and hollered.
"-It's eatin my spine!" He screamed. "-Eeeelllllpppp~!"
The Fallen cleared a boulder patch in a single jump, landed next to the Ape and clapped a hand over the organism pulsating on his furry back.
Another wail blared out from the mass of glistening, black and slimy flesh. It uncurled from the Ape's hide and latched onto the Fallen's wrist like a vice. He grunted and stepped back, instinctively swinging his arm in a wide arc to try and dislodge the horror.
"Fallen!" Spyra barked, bounding over, her mouth ajar as flame broiled past her teeth. "I'll roast it!"
"Like hell you will!" The Fallen barked, now wrenching the afflicted limb away from the angry dragoness. She'd surely torch the monster and his arm. He couldn't win a war with a stick of charcoal for a prosthetic.
One last swing saw the Fallen's wrist smash into one of the boulders lying around. There was a crunch! –as the little beast's tentacled form met the stone harshly. This time, it produced a shrill kind of squeak, the Fallen grunting as it unclenched from him and slapped onto the floor like a used wipe.
"Little fucker." He simmered, rubbing his wrist as he backed away from the writhing mass of limbs wiggling like a black stain on the ground. "Now you can torch it."
"What is it?" Morinth recoiled in horror.
"It's- It's-" Taliopia took in a massive inhale, and shouted: "-EVILLLLLLL~!"
-The poor girl had had a rough afternoon.
"Alright ya'll," Spyra gave a little tang and spit an ember before winking. "step back, the dial's cranked to eleven!"
Just then:
"meep."
….Everyone paused.
"…Did anyone else hear that?" Spyra still had flames licking past her chops as she spoke, her golden breast was glowing molten. She coughed. "-Agh~! Jeez, heartbu-!"
"Wait a second." The Fallen touched her wing. Spyra went cross-eyed and her cheeks bulged. The poor human cringed and held his arms up. "-Jesus Holy Christ, don't hold it in like that!"
"Bleeegghhhh~!" –Spyra keeled over a rock and belched a plume of fiery backwash. It rushed like an elemental breeze and singed a cloister of mushrooms into ash. "-*cough-cough* -Ouch~!" Spyra wailed, rubbing her own throat and hacking. "-Son of a bitch, it's like I swallowed a whole spicy burrito entirely wrong! I take it back! Those Mana Crystals are horrible, wretched- *cough* -creations of hell!"
"I'm gathering it's normally not that… voluminous." The Fallen carefully placed a hand on her purple back and patted.
" No-!" –Was all the poor dragoness could choke.
"Has everyone just forgotten about the spine-eating thing that almost took the Fallen's arm off?" Morinth quirked a brow.
"Too bad it didn't." Corrinthol tore away from the sack. "Hold on, guys, let the professional handle matters here…"
The red dragon's breast lit up, just like Spyra's, his flames highlighting his toothy grin.
"MEEP!" –The black hand-shaped abomination darted off the floor and attached itself across Corrinthol's face, sounding like a suction cup adhering to glass.
sssSSHCLP~!
Corrinthol started screaming. But they all could hear was one, muffled, continuous and shrill note. The red dragon tossed around in agony, clawing ineffectively at his snout as he rolled on the chamber floor with abandon.
"Don't all of you just stand there and look at him, help him!" Harad barked.
"I'm not touching that thing." Morinth crinkled her nose, doing exactly that, watching Corrinthol toss around like a ragdoll as the thing most likely chomped on his face like a fucking midday snack. "Plus some casualties aren't exactly crippling."
"Morinth!"
"Hold on, Corr', I'll save you!" Torrdonal hurried over and slapped a claw wetly on the center of the black iris spreading over his comrade's snout. "Gotchya!"
"meep!" –Squeaked the little thing. It looked like an octopus this close up, with eight tentacles spreading out from a goop-covered, inky and round center body. Torrdonal gasped when just between two of his talons, a big, gaping, terrified and yellow glowing eye blinked back at him.
"-It's looking at me." The water drake froze.
"Stick a- bleghhhhhh~!" –Spyra fire-vomited again, sending an even bigger jet of flames traveling across to the pool in the center. "-pin in it! Oh- gawd-…."
Ignitia trotted over, pinning Corrinthol by the breast with one of her paws. The poor soldier grunted in pain through the tentacles of the creature, his stomach rising and falling rapidly in panic. The inky octopus-creature wriggled as Corr' gripped two of its tentacles, unable to pull it off.
It blinked at Ignitia, giving off another innocent-sounding- "Meep!" –this one sounding almost excited, like the sound a kitten would make after first tasting milk.
"A curious creature…" Ignitia hummed, leaning down lower to squint at it. "…but completely harmless."
"What?" Harad stormed over and looked down at Corrinthol in horror. "Ancestors, you call that harmless? It's eating his face!"
"Not so much eating as simply attaching." Ignitia noted the suction-cups lining the creature's tentacles as they wriggled over Corrinthol's face. The young dragon's eye was exposed for a second, rolling around in panic before locking on Ignitia with a pleading expression.
Back in the academy, Corrinthol had done nothing in her classes but stare at her backside and giggle like a preschooler. That wasn't including all the incidents involving parchment spitballs, or that one time a fire had started in the cafeteria.
Needless to say, Corr' was the one with a problem here, and Ignitia was obligated to solve jack shit.
Besides, examining the stinky little tentacle monster was entirely fascinating.
Dare she even say…
"It is actually sort of… cute." Ignitia giggled, poking the little creature's black body. It squeaked and jostled, apparently very ticklish. Ignitia snorted and pinched her snout. "And very poorly smelling. It must live in the reservoir here."
"Huh," Palmet had collected himself off the ground and knelt to peer at the little thing. "-so dat's the Sewa Moana? It ain't so scary."
"As I said, it is harmless." Ignitia carefully stroked around its yellow eye, and the tiny octopus shivered in delight.
Corrinthol's jaw flexed and a muffled sentence drew out. Probably something along the lines of: bitch, get this thing off my face. Ignitia ignored him and tickled the monster's flank, giggling when it chirped like a bird.
"Not dangerous at all, bearing semblance of intelligence, and…" Ignitia ran a claw through the air in a series of loops, watching as the yellow eye tracked her paw. "…cognitively well developed. I'd say the noises we were hearing earlier were a defense mechanism, nothing more."
"…So can we kill it?" Spyra slapped her chops as she hobbled from the rocks, leaning on the Fallen for support. "Remind me to never hold in flames like that again. Nevva'."
"Mentally noted." The Fallen rubbed her wing. "Do we know what it is?"
"Not in the slightest." Ignitia stood back as the creature eased off Corr's face. The flame soldier gasped as tentacles slapped off his chops and his nose, allowing him to breathe.
"Meep!" The land-octopus chirped, using its limbs like spiderlegs to traverse down Corrinthol's breast to the ground. It crawled towards Ignitia, holding out two tentacles. "Meep! Meep!"
"Dafuck is it doing?" Spyra blinked.
"I think it wants you to pick it up, mam." Morinth grinned, nudging the Guardian with her wing. "Up-Up, mummy, see? What it's doing with its little tentacles? Cheeky that, it smells like a corpse, but the little bugger's adorable."
"Meep!"
"Oh! Me? No, nonono that's not necessary…" Ignitia stepped back quickly. "Besides, we have no time for this! We're in Cynder's Tower, for Ancestor's sake…"
"Dat's awright there little fella, come ere." Palmet stepped in and scooped the stinking land-octopus up in his furry arms, cradling it as it squeaked and chirped, blinking at him with its glowing yellow eye. "Dawwww look at im, he's got these little eye-dimples right on the sides ere. He's a ripe beaut this one, got everyone with them wailing sounds, he did. Everyone in the camp's terrified of a little black dot! Believe that?"
The Ape wiggled his finger under its eye. The octopus batted at his finger playfully with its limbs.
"Can I keep im?" Palmet hugged it protectively to his chest.
"I think I am going to be ill." Harad shut his eyes and huffed.
"They both smell the same at least, just one looks like a donkey that got bashed by an ugly stick, and the other's a tar-ball." Morinth shrugged. "Perfect fit."
"Yeah, he does have a little bit of an ursine-like curve to his eyeball right ere don't he?" Palmet giggled.
"Does being this stupid require a lot of effort for you? Like, is your retardism a strain, or do you just do it? Like breathing?" Spyra shook her head incredulously.
The amber gems embedded in the closed gateway doors suddenly lit up.
"I found the switch." The Fallen called over, reclining from a rusty lever sticking out of the archway frame.
"I'm gonna name him Meep." Palmet grinned. "He's got a Meep-ish look abou him."
"Meep!"
"Dah-haaa! Dats right, little Meep, I'm right ere."
{🐉}
"Oi, watch yer trail."
"Sorreez."
The Ape on the left nudged over a step and adjusted his urine stream from the other's foot. He hadn't gotten much sleep, fooling around with one of the camp whores last night, so every time he stood still he started to lose focus.
Side by the side, they drained their furry lizards into one of the many refuse puddles gridding the wrecked courtyard surrounding the gates to the drainage room, the one leading to Shit's Creak. They had their backs to the doors.
"Is it normal ta piss this long?"
"I dunno, maybe yu got a disease or somethin."
"But you're pissin dis long too!"
"Well, maybe yu infected me, you rotter. Somethin's wrong with your Willy."
"There ain't nothin wrong with me Willy ya uncivilized baboon! Maybe it's your Willy that's got something wrong with it!"
"Figur dat, chum?"
"Mine's definitely bigga."
"No. Mine. See?" The other lined them both up, piss streams now flying everywhere. "I've got at least an inch and a half on ya, ya little tree-simian. What'd you use dat spear for, pleasin a squirrel?"
"Yu bastard! I oughtta-"
The fight didn't last any longer. A blade opened the first one's throat, and a pair of talons raked open the other's. The two Apes choked and gurgled, collapsing when a shoulder and a pair of horns sent them tumbling into the puddle with two muted splashes.
"…W-Were they…?" Spyra whispered with a terrible cringe.
"I don't want to know." The Fallen shuddered.
"Psst~!" Morinth waved them both over to a towering mound of rubble. "Guys, look at this!"
The atrium of Forlorn was immense. To the Fallen, it resembled the size of a football stadium, completely closed in with a gothic-carved, hole-ridden roof. Just ahead of them sprawled a massive chamber littered with Ape camps, makeshift highways for wagons trawling about and gantries crisscrossing the walls penning it all in like veins on skin.
Bonfires were glowing balls of light among little ponds of tents and huts. The Apes charred impaled corpses of Giant Anteaters, giant mosquitos, Bulb Spiders, one fire had another Ape roasting over it. Poor slob must have pissed off an officer.
"There's hundreds of them." Spyra mumbled in wonder, ducking down when the Fallen caught her mid-rise and compressed her back.
"Easily a thousand plus change." Harad grimly noted, his drab eyes scanning the campsites. "This is definitely where Cynder has been basing her entire army. There's enough Apes in this tower to cover a small front."
"Morri-poo? What are you all looking at over that ridgeline? Lemme see too! Scootch!"
"No, wait my love, I don't think-"
Taliopia's wide grin left her snout. She took one look at the atrium floor and fainted on the rubble, her pink eyes rolling back in her head.
"…Oh." Morinth pinched her brow in defeat. "…The things we dooooo forrrr loooovvvveeee~…."
"It's looking at me again…" Torrdonal cringed when the octopus- now affectionately named Meep by Palmet –blinked at him over the latter's shoulder.
"Meep!"
"You can only keep that thing if it's quiet." The Fallen growled.
"Sorry, boss." Palmet sheepishly patted the octopus until it burrowed into his back hair and settled with a contented little squeak, scattering the variety of fleas that had been nesting there previously. Torrdonal looked sick.
"The first part of your plan has so far proven successful." Harad said the word tentatively, like he was breaking the sentence apart to search for imperfections. The Fallen grinned at him and nodded. "What comes next?"
"Ignitia?" The Fallen gestured for her.
"There are support pillars that make the backbone of Forlorn's structure. I remember reading of them in several design specifications from the academy's library. There are three of them, located there, there, and over there." Ignitia used a talon to point to three separate, massive pylons built into the atrium's rounded walls. One was to the west, just a short distance away, another to the east, a fair distance, and a last to the north, on the complete opposite side of the massive chamber. "The dynamite we have gathered should be ample enough to bring down all of them, thus causing the central dais over the chamber's heart to collapse in on itself, causing the entire chute and all thirty to forty stories of stairs and amphitheater cells, including Cynder's lair at the very top, to come crashing down into Forlorn's center."
"And there's hot forges and dynamite caches lying around like hard candy." Spyra observed several of the scrap-towers linking networks of forge stations to smokestacks poking through the atrium's roof. "When the chute smashes its way in here the reactive burst is gonna' be, like, epic. Mushroom-cloud epic. It'll ruin that emo dyke's day for sure."
"We'll have to rely on smuggling the dynamite to each pillar foundation." The Fallen explained. "Once the first goes off, me and Spyra are going to cause a fight, a real big fight, one that will draw in the majority of the tower's garrison to one point. It'll be up to Ignitia and Harad to lead the Wing and get the explosives to the other two foundations while we hold them off."
"No." Ignitia quickly laid a claw on Spyra's shoulder. "I will not rely on the Purple Dragoness as a diversion. Spyra is not expendable."
"Who said anything about expendable?" Spyra scoffed. "I'm the bee's-knees, lady, those Apes can't even control where they put their nasty fingers, forget stopping a fully armed dragoness and her alien-boi'."
"Wait." Morinth pointed. "What about them?"
"….Oh." The Fallen mumbled, following her gaze. "God damn it, I forgot about them."
"The prisoners!" Ignitia dragged a claw down her face.
Nearby a troupe of Moles, stout, freakishly short rodent people bedecked in rags were led by a pair of larger Apes wielding whips. They were carrying brooms and cleaning equipment of all sorts, being escorted towards the center of the massive atrium.
There was a large double flight of stairs that wound into a hurricane-like chute up into the eye of the atrium's roof. One set went up, the other descended into a railed alcove going to the tower's basement level. The Moles were being brought back to the latter.
"Aye, dat's where the Moley peepol are being held." Palmet reached behind himself to stroke Meep. "And it's awfully ironic that yer bringing down the observatory on all dis. Literally a paradox that. Usin Cynder's knowledge to bust up her own house! Yu guys are a trip."
"Cynder's knowledge?" Ignitia glanced at him.
"Oiaye, all her knickknacks and such, loads-a-books and scrolls and all other kinds of doohickeys that none of the lads could even read. Me included. It's all written in drag script."
"The Library of the Temple!" Ignitia squealed, gripping the little sash bag on her hip with a gasp. "That's where all the records they didn't burn or lose went! Cynder has been hoarding them this whole time."
"That explains why the temple is so devoid of relics." Harad snorted. "Malefora's gift to her errant champion. Those records belong to Warfang."
"Certainly," Ignitia popped open the sash and shoved the burnt, ancient scraps she had inside into a corner, revealing a large portion of room inside. "-I'm sure Cynder has all manner of storage apparatus in that observatory. I can recover the library in a single move."
"It isn't worth it." The Fallen darkly said. "Baubles are not equal to your life, Ignitia."
"What you may call baubles is in fact a collection of some of the oldest, original records written by the Ancestors themselves." Ignitia said with offense. "Pre-dating the settlement of Stormwatch, the texts that all dragons have studied in our history since our nation's conception. The founding documents of who we are. I will not let the enemy steal them from us again."
"I knew a man who had a choice once," The Fallen straightened up, grinding his teeth. "between saving his entire world, or the people born on it. He was given the option of preserving one, but not the other. Do you know that he actually hesitated?"
"Who wouldn't?" Harad blinked.
"I wouldn't." The Fallen snapped. "The person who stepped forward and made that decision for him was me. I watched a world die, but I kept its people from meeting a similar fate. No object, place or thing, no matter how sentimental, is worth sacrificing innocent or good life for. Let it go."
"What right have you to make decisions for worlds not of your own?" Ignitia defended. "This is our realm, our existence, our politics and our war. You breathe our air and fight on battlefields consecrated in our blood. I will not tolerate you speaking to me in such a pretentious matter on things beyond your obligations! The papers are our responsibility."
"And doing the right thing is mine." The Fallen shook his head.
"I thought this war wasn't your problem?" Spyra asked. "Remember what you said to me? When you first came down? When did that change, big guy?"
"I…" The Fallen turned on her with a dark look in his eyes, but faltered, cutting himself off with a winded breath. "…I spoke out of turn. I was angry. There are missions I was on before I crashed here. But they aren't going anywhere, and they can wait. I'm here now, whether I want to be or not. I'm not going to just let you do this."
"And why? Pray tell? Because your decision making is more important than ours?" Ignitia scoffed.
"Yes!" The Fallen barked. "Yes it fucking is! I've traveled to too many worlds just to watch people tear themselves apart because of hubris, ignorance and half a truckload's other shit that in the long run is meaningless. Territorial disputes, hatred because people sound or look different, anger from trivial things of little to no impact, the needless preservation of objects and material wealth. Yes I do know better than you, because I have bore witness to entire civilizations who have signed their own death warrants for pieces of paper. Get it out of your head: your library burned with all those eggs you lost. Just like you can't resurrect the dead, you can't save everything."
Ignitia began to shiver as a terrible, terrible rage befell her. Soot rose from her nostrils and between her fangs as she leaned dangerously close to the human.
"Eggs? You speak of e-eggs?" She choked, her voice trembling. "H-How dare you. How dare you! Do you not-"
Ignitia cut herself off and cupped a paw over her snout, a shrill, high pitched sob muffling past her talons. She batted furiously at the first batch of tears and snarled, shaking her head rapidly.
"No, no I will handle this efficiently, and in the way it is meant to be handled, the way my destiny saw it as so." She jammed a talon at him. "You talk of arrogance, when you know not of what you speak. You are a reckless, instigating, and pig-headed little hatchling who has an ego as large as ten of these towers, and I will not stand idle as you lecture me about pain beyond your scope of comprehension."
"My comprehension shouldn't be underestimated." The Fallen got in her face, sneering. "You think I'm basing this off of assumptions. How morosely narrow-sighted of you to say."
"…I think we're losing touch here just a taadddddd~…." Morinth sang. "Boys, girls? We have a tower to destroy."
"That's right." The Fallen didn't break eye contact with the Guardian. "So everyone's gotta' pull on their big boy and big girl pants and get to work. The library is not our directive. Our goal is to bring Forlorn down, and wipe out Cynder's army all in one place, so we can end the southern occupation. This is happening- and, read my lips –it's happening to-day."
"What about the slaves?" Spyra chimed in. "-Shit, I just upped the difficulty meter, I can already feel it."
Ignitia looked like she wanted to rip the Fallen in half at the hip. Her eyes portrayed it all. Still, he tore his gaze from her fiery staring and glanced at Spyra, then the stairs off in the distance.
"…I have a plan."
"Yippee, lemme' take a guess. Or, you could just spit it out." Spyra nudged him with her snout. "Tell me."
"You're not going to like it." The human said. "But it has to work."
He glanced back at Ignitia and Harad.
"I hope you people can work quickly."
{🐉}
Before he killed his victim, the Fallen had to wonder:
What the hell was with the feathers?
He had a perplexed expression even as the blade sunk through squelching flesh and caused a beating flow of crimson to spread down the Ape's chest like a stain on linen.
The soldier gargled on his own vital fluids and collapsed into a twitching heap. He was wearing a collection of string necklaces tethered with all kinds of feathers and dried, tropical-looking leaves. Several patches of fur had been shaven off his arms to display tattoos depicting runic symbols of an alien alphabet, and a vest made of red leather cure was underneath his usual Apish attire.
"These ones are from the north." Torrdonal specified. "Ape tribes in the north, under leadership of Jute the Boisterous, decorate themselves with fern leaves and parrot feathers. The Dragon Council thinks it's because they view those things as luck charms, or the like. My history is a little fuzzy since the academy."
"He isn't called the Boisterous, it's Jute the Terrible." Corrinthol dragged the sack with difficulty. "Professor Cyrila had a hard spot for those lesser monkeys. I think she said it was because she fought against them more than any of the other Guardians."
"She is a very strong kind of lady." Torrdonal smiled dreamily. The Fallen cringed and kicked the corpse at his feet away.
"The both of you are like a pair of degenerate, hormonal boys." He muttered. "Bring the dynamite over here. We're about to begin the act…"
"What would a trickster like you know?" Corrinthol let go of the sack and sat on his haunches. "I noticed that you can't seem to beat any of us dragons without buttering us up before swooping in for the kill. Is that what a brave warrior like yourself does? You lie, and bluff without actually doing anything to back it all up? Who's pathetic now? Huh? Huh?"
The Fallen stepped over to the sack and gingerly slid a bandolier of sticks free from its contents. He smiled pleasantly at Corrinthol for a minute, hugging the sticks to his thin, suited chest.
"Did they have vision tests at the academy?" The Fallen asked politely.
"Oh of course! The military is very keen on health examinations to make sure its soldiers are in prime shape for aerial maneuvers and-" Torrdonal babbled to silence when the human slowly turned to face him, like a tortoise emerging from its shell. The Fallen's smile frightened him. It was a predatory smile. It probably had something to do with what had transpired just a little while ago… "…I-I can stay quiet, if that works better for everyone."
"I like you, Torrdonal."
Torrdonal yipped when the Fallen clapped a hand on his blue, scaley shoulder and squeezed.
"You know when the shit is about to hit the fan, and when you're stepping in other people's business. Barring that, allow me to give you an example of what happens to folks who are less blessed with perception like yours." The Fallen dropped the dynamite back into the sack, and wrung his knuckles together, cracking them, before serenely adjusting himself. "I ask about the vision tests, because I question something about you, Corr': are you blind?"
"Do I look it, hoo-man?" Corrinthol exposed his fangs and sat up on his haunches, actually coming to half-a-head taller than the Fallen as he leaned over the boom-sack and snarled.
"Do they look like I buttered them up with trickery and bluffs before I fucked them?" The Fallen swept a wrist around the chamber. Flipped wooden tables hid only some of the dead, and arterial splashes decorated many of the cold walls with stylistic spatters and clashes against stone and wood.
A whole cadre of maybe thirty or forty Apes acted as macabre décor for this barracks now, several of them loosely draped over whatever furniture they had smashed through, blades, spears and crossbolts jutting from their bleeding cadavers like pins and needles on porcupines.
Corrinthol was silent for a moment, but the Fallen picked out his umber wings twitching behind him. The human smiled, not intimidated in the least.
"You really don't have a clue about just who I am, don't you?" He chortled.
Corrinthol opened his mouth to answer, but the Fallen cut him off.
A hand clasped the drake's throat and squeezed, making Corr' wheeze out dramatically, his limbs flailing in a jolting singular movement. He resembled a frightened frog being yanked from the fresh bucket by an eager Frenchman.
"Thank you for volunteering!" The Fallen sang, stomping over the bloodstained floor towards a shanty wooden wall. "You get to make us an exit!"
Corrinthol swiped at the Fallen with his vicious claws, but by then it was far too late.
The Fallen heaved, his thin arm muscles bulging as he loosed Corr's weight, and chucked the fire drake right through the wall.
Smash~! –the poorly stapled lumber splintered into a million pieces and rained down on the muddy aisle below.
{Halo 2 Anniversary OST: Heretic, Hero and Zealous Champion Remix}
Tens of Apes lumbering about ceased their treks, noses upturned to watch a screaming, flailing, crimson lizard tumble two stories from the barracks block.
To give him credit, Corrinthol at least tried to unfurl his wings. He landed on a storage cart before he could get a single flap in edgewise.
And the cart was stuffed with Toadworts, evidently, ones awaiting butchering to feed the Apes' rampant appetites.
The cart flattened beneath the dragon and splinters, Toadwort limbs and globs of leaking meat-juice flew everywhere in a cloud of dust.
"Is he going to be okay?" Torrdonal shivered as he peered around the Fallen's flank.
"I dunno' know if any of us are going to be okay by the end of this." The Fallen grunted as he shouldered the lessened sack of dynamite, grinning at the water drake with a cheap look. "What say you that we give things a spin and see where it takes us?"
Torrdonal swallowed. The Apes in the campsite below started bellowing and hooting.
"Is this where things go boom?!" Palmet shouted, jumping up from where he and Meep had been looting the corpse of a disemboweled officer. He pointed at the back wall of the barracks, where a massive, cracked, stone block made up the rear spine of the shanty building's makeup. The Apes had basically encrusted the first pillar's base with it, after all.
"Oh yes." The Fallen snapped a fuse off a stick and tossed it over his shoulder, the hissing dynamite clattering quietly among a stacked pile up against the stonework. "Boom."
The Fallen jumped with a wild cry, and Torrdonal gasped as he spread his wings and leaped after him. Palmet wasn't far behind, hooting whilst he followed his new companions out the fresh breach.
The weight's a problem.
The Fallen landed on his heels and rolled through the soggy earth, cleaver slipping off his waist and into his grip.
But I can manage.
"It's in my mouth!" Corrinthol whined, scrambling from the cart's remains in disgust. "It tastes like mud and stuff!"
"Dem Toadies be considered fine cuisine round these parts!" Palmet cradled Meep in one arm and shook a fist with the other. Some of the other Apes were blinking at him in confusion. "Sorry lads! The gettins were good on the other side."
"Get your heads down!" The Fallen slashed an Ape from the midsection, the sack slung over his shoulders swinging like a gigantic tumor as he killed. "Fire in the hole!"
The barracks building became a miniature sun.
The explosion was deafening, and Apes lumbering several camps over could feel the reverberations of the blast in their heels and hearts.
A mushroom cloud crawled from the gradually vaporizing corpse of the rectangular scrap-structure as it literally came apart board for board in a singular millisecond of lethal hyperactivity.
Bannnnnngggg~! –the air quivered and the shockwave knocked down tents for over forty feet. The great pillar marking Forlorn's first rib began to crack, giving off thunderous reports across the whole of the atrium.
Spider limbs worked their way up the several stories making the mighty buttress' length. These cracks ended at the very top, where the dome ceiling itself moaned, and buckled over a triangular wedge extending to nearly half a kilometer.
Chunks of the ceiling fell with hideous snaps, crushing unlucky patrols of Apes, shantytowns of tents, and one of the forge stations. It caused a secondary explosion. One of the smokestacks poking through Forlorn's atrium roof snapped and caved in under its own weight, showering the entire area in a choking tsunami of masonry dust.
Torrdonal, who had been circling overhead, shrieked as the windblast took him by surprise and sent him cartwheeling back down the walkways of the Ape slums below.
The Fallen ran rampant through the confused Apes that had been surrounding them. The dust blinded them and he swept in under their axes and arms, killing at will.
"That was A-MAZING~!" Palmet hollered, he'd been thrown a fair distance back and had smashed through a hut's drywall. He was deaf, and so his volume fell upon nothing for him. Meep was doing a strange, tentacled jig atop his head, dust clinging to his slimy, black body in reams. "Let's do it again!"
"Torrdonal, Corrinthol, collect yourselves!" The Fallen snarled, slicing an Ape bent over his knee across the throat. He slouched the corpse over and heaved the rest of the dynamite, pointing to the east through the dust. "We're going for the second pillar!"
"-Y-You…. YOU-" Corrinthol hacked, stumbling from the brown and gray haze ringing the area in, he collapsed in a smoking heap just behind the Fallen's boots, his wings singed from the backwash of the explosion. "-you're out of your mind."
The Fallen kicked his head back and laughed.
"How do you think I've survived for so long, Corr'?"
"There's a whole squabble of my former lads coming from thatta way!" Palmet jogged over, pointing down one of the dirt aisles. A wave of furry flesh trundled down in their direction, officers mixed in with the rank and file. "Holy shitberries, they look angreh. Ooo! Look! There's another mob that way! And another over there! And there, and-" The Ape blinked, and Meep squealed as he hid inside his mane. "-bloody hell, we're all about ta get swamped."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." The Fallen snatched a stick out of his bag. "Palmet, you don't have any reservations about racial traitorism do you?"
Palmet scrunched his nose and peered at the human, waving dust from his face. The world looked like it was in the bowels of a sandstorm at the moment. In the resulting pause, an entire block of huts nearby created a metallic crunch as a piece of the ceiling the size of twenty men fell down and crushed them all in a shattering blast. Palmet didn't seem deterred in his consideration.
"Are yu insinuatin, that I am to be armed with my peepol's own explosives, to in turn hurl said explosives at them and decimate their numbers? All unda the order of the same hoo-man who nearly took my head off just a few hours ago?"
"Hey, at least I let you keep a pet." The Fallen smirked, wiggling the stick at him.
"Ya make a fine point there." Palmet grinned at Meep, who blinked and squeaked. "Alrite, handitoverhere-!"
"Atta' boy."
"This is fer years of bein forced to abide a cast system I ain't evva goin back to!" Palmet struck the fuse and hurled the stick into a crowd of encroaching Apes. "The lot of you bottomfeeders can fuck yerselves!"
Bang~! –dead Apes went airborne everywhere.
At least today was turning out to be exciting. But, the Fallen wondered, as he charged through the swirling dustbowl invading the atrium's floor…
…How was Spyra doing at the moment?
{🐉}
The Fallen was right. Spyra didn't like this plan at all.
It meant they had to work separately. She hated it. Somehow, killing bad guys just felt… emptier without the human bellowing beside her.
That was probably just foolish, youth-borne attachment to the alien that now owned her virginity, but she didn't exactly see that as a bad thing.
Frankly, it was surprising nobody else had pieced the taboo act together yet. Or maybe they had, and they just weren't saying anything.
She had come back to the temple with a trail of blood going down her thigh. But it had been easy to pawn off as an Ape's. Maybe Morinth or Taliopia had an inkling, the latter was a healer after all…
Nah, Spyra decided as she wrenched her horns back. Nobody's got a clue.
The Ape she'd impaled slid down the stone like a used wetwipe. The purple dragon flicked blood off her wings and turned to watch Morinth clearing another hallway linking to hers.
There was a rush of flame that erupted, shattering a wooden doorway to cindering splinters along with a trio of Ape corpses flapping among the detritus. Morinth rolled out as a black ball among the chaos, huffing flames through her teeth as she worked her deadly dance, her tailblade flecked with dark gore.
"Any survivors, luv?" The dark dragoness huffed.
"Nah." Spyra looked around at all the mounded Apes she'd barreled through. She had been a bullet through paper. "Buncha' lightweights these ones. What about for you?"
"Just cheeky." Morinth sighed, nursing a light slash wound across her haunch. "They're slavers, these ones, not warriors. I don't think they were expecting competent resistance…"
"Darned shame." Spyra flicked her tail. "Where's Taliopia?"
An Ape came screaming from another archway, it hit a wall and its neck snapped with a sickening crrkkk~!
Talopia trundled after him, panting heavily.
"…I…. I…." She panted. "-I got one, Morri-poo."
"Way to go, Tali'!" Morinth's soldierly attitude vanished as the dark dragon swept her up and hugged her. "I'm so proud of you."
"Really?" Tali's rosy eyes lit up. She was still wobbly from all the vomiting. Spyra had to give her credit, a kill, after all that? Maybe she wasn't such a pussy after all.
"C'mon, this way!" Spyra pointed down a tunnel. "I hear more Apes, and something else too."
"Moles." Morinth confirmed, putting Taliopia down. "I'd recognize those nasally little voices anywhere. We have to save them!"
"Let's do it, sister." Spyra winked.
"It's the purple drag!" The largest slaver-Ape hollered when they cleared the next chamber. He cracked a whip, sending a cadre of smaller Apes scurrying ahead with knives and clubs. "Kill her!"
Spyra answered him by bathing the whole lot of them in a beam of stark electricity. The dark catacomb tunnels flashed white, like it was day, and the Apes' hoots became shrill cries of pain. After that, it was all sizzling flesh and collapsing cadavers. Spyra snickered sparks over her fangs as she glided over them.
"H-How did you do that?" Morinth was flabbergasted. "Nobody taught you a second element!"
"I got mad skills or some shit." Spyra wing-shrugged. "It's through this door, here."
Spyra checked the wooden door off its hinges via an affectionate kiss of her horns. Leaping through the dust, she was forced to skid to a halt, nearly running over a shuffling pond of what at first appeared to be giant rats.
Spyra blinked, and a whole mess of Moles blinked back. There were women, children and men, all emaciated, and clothed in rags and loincloths. One of them fell to her knees and pointed at the dragon.
"It's the Purple Dragon!"
Gasps wrung out across the crowd, Spyra swallowing as she backed out of the cell. The Moles all shuffled closer to get a better look at her, one of them reached out with his grubby little paw and tried to touch her. She hissed and reclined from his reach.
"The fuck is it with people? Why is their first reaction to put their nasty hands all over me?!" Spyra snapped, shoving Morinth in between her and the awestruck slaves. "Mediator! Help a lost foreigner out here and talk to these people!"
"Settle down, please, everyone! Oi! Stop shoving and listen up!" Morinth announced, spreading her wings and tilting them for silence. "The soldiers of Warfang have come to liberate you, but we need your help! Tell us where the others are being kept! At any second now, our comrades on the surface are going to start destroying the tower, so we can escape in the confu-"
The whole underground rumbled with a staccato boom of thunder. Dust fell from the gothic arches and ceiling, and some chains hanging off the cell walls riggled loudly. Some of the infant Moles began to cry, their mothers shushing and rocking them in panic.
"-right, cheeky that of them to just give it a whirl…" Morinth snarled at the ceiling, and hoarsely shrieked. "-WHILE WE'RE STILL DOWN HERE!"
Paw-falls bounced off the stone outside. Spyra turned and saw Harad bounding down the way they had come, he had a cluster of five Moles flanking him, they were wielding Ape blades they had looted.
"Is that another cell?" The Captain breathed, peering at the crowd inside. "Cynder has been cramming families in that tiny chamber?"
"Look, these people could make thimbles the next cost-effective gauntlet, buddy, they ain't usin' much space…" Spyra rolled her eyes. "If the Fallen's detonated the first pillar, we still have two to go. Alright everyone, rats, Moles, mice, whatever the hell you identify as, swing yo dicks and sprint! This whole tower's gonna' come down and ruin Cyndy-Two-Shoes' fuckin' day, and I don't want to be right under it when it happens!"
{🐉}
Cynder outpaced Visigoth and Jute. It was pretty impressive, seeing as Jute's mount, the armored, infamous Dreadwing named Charlee had been picked for the Chieftain purely because he had been the most vicious member of his brood, and the fastest. Stupid name or not, Charlee could beat a northern wind. Visigoth had seen it, back when his tribe was still heavily intermeshed with the northerners.
As the war had gone on, their differences had done nothing but further separate the clans. They operated as entirely different entities most years now. Flying alongside Jute on a lent Dreadwing brought back memories. Some of them weren't so pleasant.
Jute had the title: the Boisterous, for reasons Visigoth had no desire to meddle in or understand. But then again, the Moles also knew him as the Terrible, so at least there was something redeeming about his deviancy and troublesome habits…
Visigoth snarled and rung the reins of his mount, the monster shuddering underneath him as the wind whipped his unkempt mane into a flame-like frenzy behind him, exposing his ripped musculature to the breeze.
Cynder was a black dart in the sky, bloody wings flapping. He stared at her for a moment as they beelined back to Forlorn.
His throat still ached from the temple. Visigoth grit his teeth. He hated dragons.
Jute called out over the wind and pointed over Charlee's horned helm. He couldn't understand what his fellow warlord was saying over the draft, but the meaning was clear.
Forlorn was just ahead, a towering spear sticking out of the Funguswood.
Just then, black smoke burst from one of the atrium's corners. A smokestack collapsed into the structure, and soot began to rise from the crumbling gap.
He couldn't have hoped to hear Jute or himself, but he heard Cynder.
She roared.
And it echoed across the whole swamp.
{🐉}
Fighting in the dusty hell certainly was one way of covering his tracks. He didn't think better of it before the moment, but he'd be lying if he said it was some kind of daring guile that had led him to use it on the Apes.
Purely circumstantial. A happy accident. The Fallen didn't mind.
Besides, he had more up-front matters to worry about.
Clank~! –he broke the blade off in an Ape's ribs, casting the hilt away like a piece of trash.
"Damn it."
An explosion lit up the swirling dust clouds surrounding him on his flank, Apes were hurled everywhere, and Palmet's maniacal laughter echoed out from a nearby tent.
At least arming his new helper with bombs was drawing a lot of the Apes off of him, just enough for him to cleave his way to the next pillar.
But this was a heavyweight fight.
They just kept coming, no matter how many he killed. He sliced, stabbed, lost weapons, got new ones, slashed, kicked, punched, got punched back, and hacked. His ribs hurt from when an officer had shield-bashed him across the breast, and he couldn't feel his left hand over the weapon he held there.
There were only a few regen-injections left on his suit's hem. He needed to use them sparingly. The pain was tolerable. He had to press on.
There was so much at stake if he failed…
The fate of a world, Ignitia, Harad and his Wing, Corrinthol's ugly face…
-That prime derg-puss that he'd lost himself in railing earlier today.
The Fallen laughed as he cut open an Ape's face and sent the body crashing through a tent. An officer hurried over and used his shield like a club, backhanding the Fallen off his feet like a ragdoll.
Something snapped in his torso, but he kept on laughing, rolling through the dirt, jamming a blade through the officer's foot and pinning him.
How many worlds had he done this on now? Waging war for a woman? It was a repeat pattern that never failed to amaze him.
Hadn't he crashed here looking for the fastest way out?
Not anymore.
The Fallen gripped his blade with one hand on the tip and effectively sawed through the officer's neck, like it was a tree trunk. He ignored the flailing limbs and hoarse screams, gritting his teeth as hot blood spurted in reams from the ragged welt he drew until the metal started to rattle against the Ape's vertebrae.
The officer gurgled before his head popped off like a bottle cap and rolled away. The Fallen slapped his twitching paws away and shouldered the corpse to the earth, advancing without a word, but indeed with a slight limp.
This tower was huge. If only…
He glanced up and saw Torrdonal flapping along above all this mess. Ape crossbowmen were shooting at him through the dust to little success. It was because he was so jittery, the Fallen could hear him shrieking in panic every time a bolt whipped past his face.
Too bad the only amicable guy in the Wing was a complete frump. The Fallen might've offered him a job otherwise.
Focus.
Corrinthol was comfortable to let the human clear a path for him. He stayed in the absolute rear, advancing only when the Fallen did, and far behind him. If the Fallen wasn't so preoccupied with more important matters, he might've cared about the limping, crying flame dragon flopping around in the dirt after him like a panicked caterpillar.
I wonder where Palmet went.
Banngg~! –a hut imploded, sending wreckage everywhere. Palmet came running around a corner of stockades waving a lit stick of dynamite over his head like it was a bouquet he'd caught at a wedding. Meep was standing in his back fur, swinging his tentacles in a sort of mocking arc.
So much for a fearsome sewer beast.
The air crackled, and a barrier of fire erupted in the Fallen's path, trapping him between a cluster of tents and a sloping hut structure to his flank.
Standing in the dusty slum street, the human caught his breath and adjusted his explosives sack over his back, squinting when a huge Ape Commander lumbered on the other side of the flickering flames.
Magic, the human thought, eyeing the flaming claymore jutting from the Ape's burly paw. He was wielding the normally two-handed blade like a knife.
"You've got gutz ta come inta our toweh, hoo-man!" The Commander barked over the fire's roar. "Apes will crush you! Then crush your bones! Then crush dust! You be nothing!"
"Twirl, you cunt." The Fallen flipped him the finger.
The Ape hacked the air with his claymore and rattled out a battle cry. The magical flame barrier parted briefly, and a Dreadwing glided through the haze and landed with a crash in the center of the pathway. It shrieked. The Fallen groaned.
What were a few more bruises in the name of progress?
The Dreadwing's scream was abruptly cut off by the bundle of dynamite jammed in its mouth going off. Blood misted everywhere, and the headless corpse thundered onto its back, crushing its howling rider alive with a minute snap of bones.
The flames spawning from the dirt lowered, and a bellowing Ape Commander came rampaging out. He took longer to kill, but was ended nonetheless.
The Fallen twisted, and tore the machete horizontally, ripping open his furry abdomen. A tumbling landslide of intestines spilled onto the ground, and the Commander fell to a kneel, his jaw quivering as he reached down and rubbed his own stomach lining.
"…I-I…" He stammered. The Fallen slit his throat impatiently and ran around the corpse.
There it is.
The second pillar was close now. He scanned the airspace inside the atrium and was surprised to see a lack of subsequent Dreadwing reinforcements.
He turned and looked back at the path he'd carved through the entrenchments and campsites. Quite a number of the beasts lye dead among all the smaller cadavers gridding the earth like sprinkles.
He hadn't killed that many, surely?
In the backdrop, his confidence suddenly became overridden. The front gates of Forlorn swung ajar, and on a current of shrieking wind, rode a black, lithe creature into the atrium floor.
It was Cynder.
And she looked pissed.
Huh, the Fallen slide down a stockade stairwell and slashed an Ape running up the steps to meet him. She's even hotter when she's angry.
Cynder's white eyes spiraled around the chaos invading her headquarters. She reared back and shrieked like a hawk, her predatory cry echoing around the whole atrium.
Definitely hotter.
"Burn my charge, and suffer death, Purple Dragoness!" Cynder howled, her wings flapping as she swooped over the destruction and glided towards the center stairwell. "I come for you~!"
"Actually," The Fallen called out, ducking and beheading an Ape with a quick slash. "-I'm the one who made the mess. And F.Y.I: I am anything but sorry."
Cynder had keen hearing, even for a dragon. Brakes practically screeched as she formed her membranes and flapped to a hover just before the stairs. Her elegant snout darted in his direction, across the whole distance, and Cynder sneered over her fangs.
"Fallen!" She roared, zipping over with gusto. "I should've expected such meddling born from your mind!"
"You can't stickle me for my creativity." He leaped onto a palisade plat overlooking a nearby swathe of campsites. The ramshackle scrap structure moaned underneath him as Cynder slammed into the opposite side and preened in a combat pose before him, her body splayed, all her blades readied for action.
"Fallen." She rumbled, her brooch jittering around as her crimson breast heaved from the exertion of flight. "We finally meet again, face to face, and alone, no further interruptions."
"My only regret is that it's over a rushed schedule." His eyes darted between her, and the fat, stone base of the very vulnerable second support pillar. It was just a few feet away, its foundation settled in a depressive dirt-pit that the Apes had stored barrels in disorganized piles around. "How fairs the lady this afternoon? Sorry about the tower."
"I hate this tower. You rid me of a blemish in your quest." Cynder spat, trotting cautiously to begin circling him, her white eyes drinking in his bloodied, bruised and lacerated form. "How is it that you are able to almost effortlessly cut through my men with such abandon? Your skills in melee combat are… formidable."
"Is that an admirative compliment I hear?" The Fallen chuckled, his gore-slicked, stolen blade spinning in his fingers. "What I don't hear is an answer to my prior offer. What say you, black dragoness? Care to give the hominid meat-train a spin with those hips of yours?"
Cynder made a snorting sound and puffed steam out her snout.
"You have possessed me with some form of bewitchment." She hunched lower, her tail curling behind her in mesmerizing loops. "When I am finished transforming you into a vegetable, I am going to force out every morsel about how to undo it from your flesh. After, I perform personal experiments…"
She licked her chops.
"No male of any species has ever sparked my interest and lived."
"Listen," The Fallen grinned. "your banner's red, blue, white, black, whatever, you don't have to beg, female."
Cynder crooned at the challenge and swayed her hips, crimson energy brewing inside her maw.
"You're mine." Her voice undulated, like there were six of her talking at once, no doubt an effect from the pure Fear element flowing through her teeth.
"Okay." The Fallen blinked, a bulge forming in his suit's crotch. "Behold, she-drake! I wield the blade that is the breaker of draconic vaginas across the Multiverse! Challenge me, and accept that your hoard shall be plundered with impunity! ….In laymen's terms: you can run, you can hide, but my fleshly warhead will seek you out, and then-"
The Fallen itched his groin idly.
"….well, then I get to motor-boat your delicious buns." He raised his blade over his head. "For the wyrm's-bountiful-snatch~!"
Cynder shrieked and leaped at him.
The Battle for Forlorn had truly begun.
{🐉}
