Dragon(s)layer

28


An End to that Which is Good


It rained over the city again.

So no fireworks. Again.

However, Morinth's attention wouldn't have been stolen by the celebrations even if they had actually occurred: because Taliopia's silence was beginning to get to her.

After the condensed disaster that was their interaction with her mother and father last night, the normally meek nurse had taken to locking herself away inside the nesting chamber of their commonhouse suite. Taliopia transformed herself into a quivering ball of blankets, sheets and pillows as she rolled up everything around her, like she was a big linen magnet, and then settled among it all to brood. All the while, she refused to speak with Morinth.

The nurse- over the course of several hours and always when Morinth's back was turned -gathered up possibly every stuffed animal she owned and had them sprinkled all over the nest around herself, like they were charms meant to ward off a mob of circling demons. Stuffed cats, stuffed dogs, lots of stuffed dragons, dolphins, rabbits, birds, and even a lobster.

Morinth didn't even remember where Taliopia had gotten that one, but it was there, oddly enough, staring up at her with lifeless, button-eyes every time she came into the nestroom to get something out of her dresser, or to dig a book out of the splitwise shelf ahead of the nest's frame.

Any efforts Morinth made to get Tali' out of the bedding were met with hollow sniffles and shuddering sighs. Being fed up, she tried once to yank Taliopia physically out of the blankets, but that just made her cry. Morinth never followed completely through with it when the sound of her doctoring dragoness' sadness drove her to tears as well. Taliopia had scurried back into her cocoon, like a terrified mouse, and Morinth had fled into the foyer similarly, the unwilling battle becoming a route on both ends.

While it was true, Morinth's venom was aimed completely at Taliopia's family and their dreadful behavior, there was another part of it being directed at herself as well.

She felt like complete and utter shit, and the scary part, was that the depression was awfully familiar. Ironically: it echoed the times that Meraleethe was so judgmental of from her past, when Morinth had been an orphan in the wake of a doomed love affair, and had been forced to live literally in the drainage runs beneath Warfang's streets, scavenging, and stealing, to survive.

She never talked with Taliopia much about her "old life" –as she sometimes put it. There was a lot there unspoken and hidden, many things that haunted Morinth's dreams at night when she was feeling particularly down, which was fortunately hard to achieve.

And how couldn't it be?

Morinth had been dealing with segregation since the day she was born. She was resilient, because the world had stacked so much against her, and she had been forced to operate among the treachery, hate, and judgmentality since she had been a baby.

If it wasn't enough that her father was a damned Nightkin, and she had been labeled a half-breed, her past as a gutter-runner had caught up to her more than once, and had further earned a multitude of dragons' scathing displeasures. Her mother had essentially abandoned her, she had lived out her childhood literally swimming in other people's shit, and she had never had a social circle larger than three or so individuals at a time.

Plus, she was gay.

Or perhaps bisexual now, in the wake of the wonderous fuck-beast that was the Fallen.

Regardless, the denizens of draconic society had proven that they didn't cope with being gay so well, or, rather with having people oriented as such in their presence. When Morinth had first started leaving the tunnels, long before she met Taliopia, the word "bigot" –tended to fly out of her snout a lot, and she had used it with conversational promiscuity to the dot.

She'd tried to reason with herself that taking all of that anger out on the whole world was unreasonable.

But when days like these happened, and it all came crashing down on the more vulnerable of the two, she found herself struggling to not give in to the fervent rage that had been building in her chest for years.

It wasn't like she could just push the incident from her mind either.

She loved Taliopia too much.

And in addition, their entire home was modeled in a way that made such impossible. Sometimes, she regretted that joyous afternoon when they had first moved in, where she had agreed to Taliopia's decision to stylize the suite entirely off of their scale colors.

"It'll be so cute, Morri-poo!" –She had exclaimed. "It'll be our little house."

And so, everything was black and white, literally, or brown for the walls and the wooden floors.

There were two dressers and two nightstands on either side of the nest: one pair was painted black, one white. The nest itself was a blend of black and white sheets and cushions. The bookshelf against the northern wall had been a craftsy project, and Taliopia had painted it split down the middle, one half dark, the other light, each side respectively stocked with that dragon's taste in reading material.

The sprawling alchemy station that took up one side of the whole suite was also a big honking flag in her face. All the little vials and tubes that Tali' experimented with, mixed elixirs with, giggled over when plumes of rainbow-colored dust popped out from their necks...

…The only way Morinth could get her mate out of her mind was to leave the commonhouse. And against her better judgment, she decided to do just that.

When she went for a brief while to walk in the rain, it gave her time to think as she prowled the drizzling streets of Warfang.

Now that she was giving the issue some attention, she realized that she felt guilty. All of this time, she hadn't been exerting the same amount of worry over Spyra and the Fallen as she had over Taliopia.

They were the ones on the front lines right now. Didn't they deserve the good wishes more than her and the nurse's melodramatic familial spat? Sure, a relationship that mattered more to Morinth than anything was at stake, but her and Taliopia had argued in the past. It was just a phase.

Right? She swallowed as she walked.

"-Come quickly~!" –A dragon's booming voice suddenly echoed through the tapping rainfall down the street. Morinth and a few nearby pedestrians stopped in their tracks to follow the sound with their eyes.

"It is true! It's been done!" –A Mole cried.

Gradually, murmurs rose up and a small crowd gathered on the side of the street, even a passing carriage driver yanked his horses to a halt so he and a trio of Mole passengers could hop out and eavesdrop.

There was a Warfangian scout at the center of the crowd, still dressed in very damaged armor, he sported dressings on his front limbs and his neck. As Morinth wandered into the rear ranks of the crowd, she had to balance herself on her hinds to get a good look at the drake.

She gasped when the full details of the damage wrought to his form hit her.

"News from Oversight." –Another dragon by the messenger's flank waved around a tie-bound scroll like it was some sort of trophy to behold. "The siege has been broken!"

Gasps and cheers rippled through the little gathering. Nearby in some distant blocks, more commotion could be heard as another crowd received their own news. A trio of dragons zipped over the rooftops high on the wing headed for Castle Wyrm, and suddenly, Warfang seemed abuzz.

"General Caulnos and Councilor Starbrun are organizing the relief trains as we speak." The messenger announced to the crowd, preening his wings for emphasis. It was just then that Morinth noticed that half of his tail was missing from the midpoint up, the stump sealed with wrappages of cloth. "At such a high price, the days west are dark, but it cannot take away from what we should be celebrating: which is that the city has been liberated."

Morinth was deaf to the subsequent rounds of light applause and cheers. A few heads over, an overeager Fire Drake reared his head back and spouted a bubbling plume of flames into the air like a makeshift close-to-ground firework display. People seemed genuinely relieved at such news.

But Morinth was too busy having a hard time breathing.

Oh Ancestors, what had happened over there?

"-W-What news of the Purple Dragon?" She cried, trying to rear her long neck back as far as possible to be heard. "Has anyone any idea what has happened to her during the battle?"

The cheers quieted down and several of the bystanders began to nervously switch gazes to Morinth and then the two dragons in the center of the congregation. Morinth ignored the handful of sneers she received and remained stern.

Yeah, it was widely known what her heritage was to several dragons. But it was also known that she was a soldier just as much as that messenger up there.

The subject matter stepped past the announcer who still clutched his scroll, almost like it was a precious sculpture of glass. The messenger gave a nod, addressing her over a series of horned heads.

"She and the Fallen are the ones who broke it. They drove off General Urukal himself and saved Crownhorn Castle." He explained. "Both of them fought bravely, and were recovering inside the castle when I last laid eyes upon them."

More gasps and muttering.

"T-They…. They broke it? B-By themsel-?" Morinth was cut off when someone else in the crowd shouted.

"What of Lady Cyrila after her kidnapping! Where has the Guardian of Ice gone?"

Agreeing cries and proclamations roused in the wake of such a thing, drowning Morinth out and shrinking her back to the same monotony she had arrived with. The messenger held up his wings for calm.

"The Purple Dragon and Lady Ignitia are leading a party deep into the mountains, to make a rescue attempt." He said. "Lady Terradora and the Fallen have joined them."

Now, the crowd was buzzing like a swarm of locusts. Morinth clicked her tongue as a few pushes went her way, and she was squeezed out the back of the pool of dragons and Moles.

"Do you know anything else?" She tried to holler, but the commotion was too much, and the messenger was too embroiled in a conversation with a small group of other dragons for her to be heard.

Taliopia would've sulked off at being ignored.

The problem was, Morinth wasn't Taliopia.

Suddenly, a tail and the thorny ass it was attached to were shoved in the dragoness' face, making her sputter and curse.

"-Ouch-! Bloody hell, rude much?"

"Watch where you're going." A large Earth Drake grunted, despite him backing into her on his own volition.

Morinth ground her fangs, spread her night-black wings, and gave them a mighty pump. As soon as she lifted off the street, she used the drake's head as a springboard, and catapulted herself over the whole crowd in a clean glide. The drake's face nearly ate the street as he tumbled onto his belly.

"-Hey-!" Her impromptu victim distantly barked. She sniggered under her breath and landed loudly right behind the messenger, who spun around in startlement to face her.

"You came directly from Oversight," Morinth swatted at the scroll-reading dragon with her tail when he opened his mouth, keeping the floor to herself. She stepped forward and raised a brow. "yes?"

"Yes, I did." The messenger nodded stoically. "I flew the western route, over the edge of Southern Avalar."

"Cheeky good." She flashed a grin. "Now, what else do you know about the party going into the mountains? The battle must have concluded quite up-and-up if you all are comfortable enough to let them outside the walls…"

"The battle was won completely. Urukal's army was annihilated to a man, or, rather a Grublin, but…" He glanced back at the bandaged stub capping his tail and sighed. "-the cost was quite great."

"Casualties?"

"…High." Was all he muttered, staring at the street. "The Orc bastard General himself escaped capture or death, and the majority of Chieftain Saxony's fleet was able to get out of the blockade pocket, but Oversight is ours again, either way."

"And the party?" Morinth was almost in his face, causing the poor drake to back up a step. "Have you heard of anything else? Is the Purple Dragon wounded? What about the Fallen? How badly?"

"Why is this such important news to you I wonder?" The scroll-holding dragon commented by her flank, his eyes trailing down her arm judgmentally. "I didn't think Nightkin would ever applaud the Dark Army's so reflective failures."

"I am not Nightkin." She snapped at him, her emerald eyes burning holes into the drake's forehead as a canid growl rumbled in her chest. "I never was, and never bloody well will be. We've all got a little mud in the veins I'd rightly say, at the end of the day. Even you." She pointed a wingtip at him.

The drake sneered, and her inner-soldier quickly picked out how his chest muscles bundled in the classic draconic-preparations for a feral leap.

The messenger glanced between the two of them, coughing and scratching at his crown. Morinth was relieved to see someone with no vested interest in what many would call her 'condition' –but he also seemed disinterested in siding with her, as well.

"The only thing I know of the party, is that they are facing a force led by the Cloud Ripper." He told her, bowing his head. "Information has been scarce beyond that, as my unit nor any of the others possess enough wyrms to aid them at all. I only bear all of what I was given. I apologize if this wasn't… enough."

"No, no, it's not your fault." Morinth huffed defeatedly.

"If you'll excuse me, I am weary from much fighting and travel…"

Morinth was already turning away and trotting around the fracturing center of the dispersing crowd. She made sure to shoot the scroll-holder a hateful glare as she blended back in with the usual late-hour foot-traffic of Warfang's streets. The messenger took to the wing off in the direction of Castle Wyrm. With the way he looked, she was surprised he had even bothered to carry out distributing his message like his CO's had no doubt ordered.

For such news, the city looked relatively bleak. Everything was colorless, even the bronze and gold trimmings on all the architecture. The rain had mitigated into an only barely-felt drizzle that moistened the scales on Morinth's black coat. Her thoughts swam madly around what she had heard as she altered her route to go back to the commonhouse.

So, Spyra and the Fallen had really done it. They'd proven just how integral they really were in all of this. Morinth couldn't say she was altogether shocked, what with everything she'd witnessed them do already…

But now, that esteem would become official for way more people than just her.

So many developments.

So much to do, too.

So much to take the Fallen's attention away from her and Taliopia. Which of course, was now an anxiety she was experiencing.

"Well, shit." She mumbled, looking down at her paws as rain dripped from the tip of her snout. "I see now why Spyra's so attached to him."

Wet stone suddenly clicked, and a puddle in the walk-divet behind her splashed. Morinth lazily sifted a wing over and peered at an approaching shape separate from any pedestrians.

Immediately, that growl she had sported earlier started to rev back up.

"Rava," She spat, turning fully around, making sure the Lightning hen saw her talons slip out of their sheaths. Soot crawled from Morinth's snout and her chest glowed a faint amber. "unless you well want two black eyes, a missing fang and a snout more obtuse than a cheeky triangle, I'd recommend backing off. I'm not in a good mood today."

"G-Good afternoon, Morinth." Rava quaintly stopped a good distance away, and even offered a sheepish little smile. "Uhm… I didn't mean to upset you."

That was… pretty disarming, actually.

But Morinth knew Rava better than probably anyone.

Mostly because the two of them had spent their academy years beating the piss out of one another. It was hard to flinch against someone whose bodily fluids had been all over you, whether that be blood or something else, it remained irrelevant.

She could tell when the Electric Dragon was up to no good just by giving a brief whiff of the air around her. Rava stank of the shit she behaved like.

Still, she'd never entered a battle-plan for confrontation by being apologetic. Not even mockingly, Rava would never have done it. She was more the female who greeted someone she disliked by punching them in the mouth.

Her nails slid back just a bit, but Morinth relaxed little in her combat pose, ready to take a strike at any second.

"What do you want?" She sneered. "And before you start chalking up some little scheme to get at me, just know that I have lo-" She swallowed, choking off her sentence.

Should she say it?

….Eh.

What harm was there? It wasn't entirely a lie anyway.

"I have loved ones in Oversight at the moment. I just might bloody well kill the first loudmouth I meet. Especially if their breath happens to have Lightning bolts in it."

"S-Scheme? No, Morinth, I didn't come here to scheme, or to get at you, or… why… H-How dare you assume that-!"

Rava shuddered, like she had stuck her foot in a bucket full of ice-water.

Right there was just a flicker of the dragoness Morinth had so hated when they were both younger. That dagger-voiced, angry bully who had to get loud, and put her paws on others to solve her problems. But just as quickly as that ugly face appeared, it vanished.

Rava coughed and sat back, closing her eyes as she practiced a few calming breaths.

Morinth blinked.

Wow.

Bitches could learn anger-management, she supposed… it was just crazy to see someone who had actually mastered it.

"No, Morinth, I didn't approach you just now with ill-intent, and that I can assure you." Rava tried another smile. It was evident that it was an expression she wasn't used to or even good at making. "Soldier's oath? Cross my wings, really."

"Mmmm, that would be really low even for you to go against." Morinth narrowed an eye. "What are you even doing out here?"

"I was passing by when I heard the messenger give news on Oversight. It's relieving, is it not?"

"It's nerve-wracking." Morinth shivered. "Not knowing what the state is of my friends at all, not being there to make sure they're okay? Bloody terrible, that. With all good news comes the weight it rode in on."

"Did you have any friends in the units deployed there?" Rava asked.

"Who?" Morinth smiled savagely. "Me? Come around back to reality, dearie', you're looossssinngggg meeee~."

"…Blood isn't everything." The Electric Dragon swallowed.

"That's a compelling argument alone, much less that… that thing you keep doing with your face. What the hell is that?"

"W-What? I-I'm… I'm smiling, see!"

Morinth cringed when Rava put even more effort into it, and made it tens times worse. Her snout looked like it was distorting.

"I've changed since we last spoke, so much too. Really, I've been working hard to make myself more-… presentable, and sociable. Aren't dragons supposed to smile when they approach a friend?"

"Maybe some do, but cheeky that: we aren't friends." Morinth reminded coldly. "And I don't see a well right reason to change how that is. Look, there has to be some reason you've bothered to hunt me down out here, and if it isn't to start a fight, I can't imagine what else it could be."

"-Morinth, that's part of why I'm here, I…" Rava stammered. "-I wanted to say that I- I-I'm-"

She gave off a pathetic, defeated huff, slumping onto the street and bowing her head as her wings wilted.

"Damn it." She brought a fist down on the cobblestone with a tiny splash. "…And I knew this would happen, and I tried anyway. I knew I wouldn't be able to say it to you. Not to you or to Taliopia. The others were easier, but not you two."

"Rav'," Morinth couldn't believe it when her muscles started to relax, and her back stopped hunching. It was a slow transformation, something someone would have to focus on to notice its happening.

"I-" Another huff. Rava couldn't even look at her anymore. "…I'm really messing this up."

"Rav'," Morinth sat down in front of her and cocked her head. "what exactly have you been saying to other dragons? What are you trying to say to me?"

"….*sigh*… I didn't want it to sound manufactured." Rava chuffed tiredly, looking off at the street by their side as a wagon trundled through the light drizzle, the horses neighing and galloping cleanly. "I had gone over it again and again in my head, just so that I didn't sound like I had written a card I sent to twenty dragons in the interest of time. I wanted it to be genuine, and-"

"So then be fucking blunt with me already."

Rava looked at the sky and then settled her golden eyes on Morinth's. She took a breath.

"Morinth, I want to apologize for how I treated you and Taliopia during our time in the Academy and immediately after it. It was inappropriate of me and baselessly abusive. I was judgmental, and I allowed that to take over my behavior, and I took my problems out on the two of you. Taliopia didn't deserve that, and you didn't deserve that."

The street pattered under the drizzling shower, and it even beat off of both dragons' wings, each drop giving off muted, tiny thumps, like water bouncing off the side of a canvas tent.

"…Yes, I'm sorry." Rava coughed, her tail whipping as she played with her paws to avoid eye-contact. The proclamation had obviously been difficult for her to get out. She was turning pink, and her breathing was tight. "Yes."

"…."

"-…Well? Aren't you going to say something? Huh? Anything, c'mon, Morinth!"

"You might have to give me a minute to unpack all that, luv." Morinth was looking past Rava's crown, locked in deep thought. "I have to give it to you, if this is one of your cheap shots, it is the most intricate one I've ever seen you pull."

Rava deflated with a huffing laugh. Her wrist trembled as she clenched the bridge of her snout quickly and took her paw away. It looked like she was fighting to keep tears back.

Holy crap, the world must have been coming to an end.

…Well, technically, it was already.

"I just need you to say you believe me. I'm not asking for forgiveness, or even for you to understand. But I… I need to know that you know I'm being sincere." Rava chanced taking a step closer, and lowered her voice. "Please, Morinth, I don't think I can take another day knowing that I haven't mended my biggest mistakes in some way. Please, just let me have this, and I promise, I'll never bother you or get in your way for anything ever again, I-"

"Do you have any plans this afternoon?"

Immediately, something bloomed in Rava's chest that she couldn't quite explain. It was a broiling heat that cindered painfully against the inside of her skin and cooked her tongue.

She stared at Morinth as their roles of silence switched completely. Her mouth was hanging open with a general glaze of sparking stupor.

"…Rav'? Uh… Rava? Raaaaa-vaaaaaa~ …?" Morinth sang lightly, waving a paw in front of her snout. "Oh my god, Rava, are you alright?"

"-Y-Yes-!" Rava yipped, licking her chops and pawing at her face. The Electric Dragon glanced around nervously and cleared her throat. "-I didn't expect you t-to ask something like that. No. No, I don't have any plans. Windshear isn't on duty today, and, a-as you can imagine, I'm not exactly popular in the barracks cliques."

"Ah…. Good." Morinth awkwardly reclined. At least there was some genuine amusement behind the following smile. "I know a bakery a few streets over that serves brew along with the usual pastry stock! And let me tell you, the brew is deeee-lisssshhhh~!"

"O-Oh, great! Yes…" Rava must have been expecting a much worse outcome, because she was way off her game now. Her wings bounced a bit, and to Morinth's slight worry, she looked like she was at risk of fainting. "That sounds very nice. I just happened to miss my own morning pickmeup today! Thus… good. So just… just you and me? As in who's going, I mean..."

"Duh, who else?" Morinth chuckled.

"What about Taliopia? How come she isn't with you? That apology was meant for her too…"

"She's a bit under the weather at the moment." Morinth sighed. "Last night was a bit rough due to… er, family issues."

"Oh, poor dear."

Morinth felt her heart skip a beat.

Since when did the local block's dirtbag bruiser ever sound like a fretting nursery nanny? The Rava she had known for so long would've sooner pissed on someone's grave or spit in a baby's cereal. Though, it did fit the current apocalyptic outlook of the last month, she supposed.

After all, a chunk of the sky had already fell, and to boot, Morinth had wound up having sex with the alien man inside said chunk.

Which if the constant burning background-libido told her anything, she was almost desperate to reexperience for a second time…

"...Anyway," Morinth hummed uncomfortably, suddenly noticing a slight cold drip in the center of a flare of intense heat under her tail. "here, follow me. This place is amazing, I mean really good! And you will become addiccc-tteeddd~! To whatever they have as the daily-special. My treat!"


{🐉}

You know those moments where something so unexpectedly whack-ass happens that you cannot process it, even as it's in motion right in front of your face? Morinth and Rava covered it up pretty well, but both were really beginning to wonder if this was a dream.

This wasn't to say that they were fluent. Morinth's normally bubbly behavior was muted the majority of the time as she traveled beside the Electric Dragoness for a few streets. She had now listened to Rava normally speaking for the longest string of sentences she had ever heard from her in her entire life. There hadn't been much room for talking in the past, when all the punches and insults had flown.

In fact, Morinth was quite sure she hadn't held an actual conversation with Rava once over the entire decade they'd known of each other.

It was a challenge, trying to be sociable with this dragoness who she literally knew nothing about and had spent a long time hating.

Not that she was naïve enough to let her outlook on Rava change just on the snap of some talons. Morinth still kept her guard up in case of some impending jab or springing of some trap. Rava either legitimately detected this or faked her reactive sadness. She couldn't actually be that bothered by how things had been left, could she?

What happened to the spiteful bitch from the female dorms?

Morinth wasn't believing that this was the same wyrm. They were obviously a shapeshifter, who had done away with the real Rava and was now trying to impersonate her normally foul mood with a contrasting meekish one.

"Where did they first deploy you once you cleared the last rounds?" Rava asked her.

"Rearline, of course." Morinth chuckled. "17th Flight under Captain Berogas, 7th Wing. That cheeky bastard was a loon. He liked to call his squad the Seven-Sevens, and he even carved the little number on the dish-edges of his pauldrons. I think he got all the rookies that the logisticians didn't have the patience to sort through rightly."

"Things were messy for a while," Rava agreed with a little shrug. "I just think the officers were afraid of creating a meat-grinder for children."

"Did they really avoid it though, Rav'?"

"You don't believe they did?"

"The average casualty is two years younger than me." Morinth tried to ignore the traumatic heaviness weighing in her gut. She shakily sighed when the memory of her own guts hanging out sprang back into her mind. If she wasn't walking, she would've raised a forepaw to cup her stomach self-consciously. "That makes it feel so bloody unsightly, really: why should the older not take such a place, I wonder? Isn't that what nature intended?"

"I can't answer that." Rava huffed, looking off to the side of the road. "How old are you anyway?"

"Twenty-two. Yourself?"

"Twenty-four." Rava turned back and blinked at her. "You always sounded… I don't know, older. You're really younger than me?"

"Some wake up faster than others." Morinth cringed a little as soon as the words left her snout. She stealthily craned an eye over at Rava to see her undoubtedly flushed and angry reaction.

Instead, what she got was a bit of a sulking hang of the dragon's head, and a very deep frown.

"Yes, I… I guess you're right." Rava mumbled. "Morinth, back then-"

"We're here."

Rava almost face-planted into the door, and Morinth almost fed it to her when she swung it open and held it for her former enemy, using it as an excuse to end the ugly conversation before it could even take root.

The little bakery was built below street level, carved into the foundation of a large commonhouse sprawling above, and accessible only via a little alleyway diverting from the street and going down. It was dark, and lit by low-bloom candles on every little table, some windows at foot-level of the street above let in blindingly stark towers of angled light.

Morinth hopped up into her chair first and played with the mixer in her brew as she waited for her unusual companion to come back with her own order. She crinkled her snout when she noticed that Rava hadn't even bothered with any cubes from the little bowl between them and was sipping it black.

"Eeeee-EEWWWW, Ravvv'~" –Morinth sang musingly, tailtip pointing at her mug. "At least put a little something in it."

"You're the one who said the brew here was the best." Rava wing-shrugged and took another sip. "I think it's good enough to be on its own. Besides, I normally don't have it like this back at the barracks."

"Ugh, they mix nasty diarrhea in mugs at the barracks." Morinth stuck her tongue out.

"That's why I add cubes to theirs. I don't even think it's real brew."

They only realized they had shared a collective, very girlish giggle after the fact, and thusly both dragons went very quiet for a moment.

"So, this was why you were so eager to get our ears the other day." Morinth stirred her cup, and watched the brew spiral inside. "To patch up old wounds. That's just cheeky, Rav'."

"To right old wrongs." Rava corrected sheepishly. "It hasn't sat well in my stomach, who I was. I've been trying to find everyone, and, as you can guess, the ones I have found haven't all been so forgiving."

"I hope you didn't jump in expecting otherwise."

"No! Not at all…" Rava sighed. "…But Ancestors, those freaking hurt. I think the real mistake I made was forgetting the viscosity of it all."

Rava looked up at her, and Morinth blinked when the face before her appeared in a shade of misery that hadn't been present on the street outside.

"I… I threatened to hurt Taliopia, many times." Rava muttered. "There are nights where I haven't slept."

"Ancient Lords, this really does bother you." Morinth realized now that Rava actually looked terrible. Color had drained from her facial scales and her eyes were a bit sunken. "…Though I can't well say it doesn't bother me too, and while I'll be humble here at this table with you, I also want to say that I don't rightly or unrightly fancy letting it all go to pasture. You really hurt my Taliopia."

"I know." Rava buried her snout in her brew, shivering as she sighed. "And I hate it. I hate it so much."

"Mmm, well…" Morinth struggled to find the right words. "…well I hate it too."

That seemed to make Rava want to shrink into her chair even more. The Electric Dragon shut her eyes and chewed on her lower chop.

"Sooooo~," Morinth sing-songedly switched the subject after taking a bite out of her pastry. "-where did the stuck-ups drop you off after?"

"4th Flight." Rava said lowly. "We were in rearline for a month, and then we had our first skirmish in the northwestern forests, far from the wall."

"It sounds like something happened."

"Do you remember Nera?"

Morinth clicked her tongue as memories flooded back through her horned head.

Nera had been a beautiful Fire Dragoness who had been friends with Rava throughout the academy years. For all that beauty, though, her attitude had been one of the ugliest, broiling sacks of crap Morinth had ever laid eyes on. She'd always join Rava's little gang to torture the other smaller females, and in particular before Morinth had broken her nose one evening with a café-plate, Taliopia.

"Cheeky that. 'Course I remember pretty Nera." Morinth smiled humorlessly. "She didn't look so pretty after I broke her face with that tupperwear, though. Wasn't she the one that got caught mating behind the classroom building?"

"I-I wasn't involved in anything Nera did outside my friend-circle." Rava took a tiny bite out of her own pastry. "But she was in my Wing for that deployment, the only dragon I recognized."

"Ah, I'm sure you two had a blast taking out all of that ungodly, hormonal-rage upon the enemy."

"…N-No, she, uhm… she died." Rava cleared her throat, still refusing eye contact. Morinth's wings twitched in surprise. "She actually died in my arms."

"…Oh." Morinth swallowed. Nera? Dead? That was so unreal, just like this whole situation. Nera had been a complete bitch, but that didn't warrant her death by far. "How?"

"She got into melee combat with an Orc." Rava said. "She disarmed it, and it still killed her. It fought like a rabid animal. They tore each other's throats out. She bled to death before a healer could reach her. I had never seen so much blood in my whole life."

"That's terrible." Morinth grunted. "So, is that the cheeky tale? The witnessing of death showed you the limited time we all have?"

"Yes." Rava growled, suddenly sounding a little angry. She looked at Morinth straight and spoke with real conviction. "Seeing Nera die opened my eyes. Before the skirmish, when me and her reunited, I remember what I said to her, and how I treated her. I treated her like she was still my toadie, back in the dorms, and I belittled her, and called her names to assert dominance, and she took it, because she was afraid of me. I see her face every single night now. She wouldn't look me in the eyes as I held her, with all her blood gushing over my arms and my chest, I think because she really did hate me, deep down somewhere, and I think she was angry that I was the last dragon she saw."

And do you blame her? –Morinth almost spat at her.

Last night still had her so mightily pissed off, and the opportunity to take it out on someone with such devastating effect was almost irresistible.

Morinth instead shoved the entire rest of her pastry down her throat to shut herself up, her scaly cheeks bulging as she struggled to chew the huge bite.

Rava took a moment to collect herself with a shivery breath before more quietly continuing, reverting back to her prior more timid self.

"I needed to change the way I behaved and how I lived my life. Because yes, Morinth, life is too short, and I have no desire to waste my time with others anymore, by getting into fights with them, and saying horrible things to them, to make myself feel powerful." Rava sipped the last of her brew and smacked her chops. "I know some other dragons have scoffed how dramatic I am over my apologies-list, and even Windshear sees it as a waste of time: but it isn't to me, Morinth. I see it as the only meager thing I can manage to repay, to give back something for the last hours I spent with Nera, and for all the pain I caused before that. It's a truly sour thing to know that it's my last impression with so many dragons, but, after today I can say that list is just a bit shorter."

Rava glowered at her cup, glancing up at Morinth's empty mug and then back into her own again.

"Life sucks." She concluded.

"Mm, I hear that." Morinth swallowed a last mouthful, and pushed her empty plate away. "I lied earlier: Taliopia isn't sick at all. She's furious at me and chronically depressed over my less-than-shining descriptions of her shortcomings I said when I ranted at her parents. They resent their own daughter because she's a dyke, and I believe they legitimately wish for my untimely death every night that they cheeky well go to sleep. It's a bloody shame my mum was such an arsehole' and threw me down a storm-drain after my father ran off to who-knows-where. At least me and Tali' would have some in-laws, or some relatives and family at all, who could give our relationship some support. But, oh well, eh? Life sucks."

"Aye." Rava growled. She looked at their cups again. "…Does this place serve anything spiked?"

"No, why?"

"You wanna' go get drunk?"

"…Hm, actually" Morinth slid off her chair and pushed it in with her tail, giving Rava a clean smile. "that sounds won-derr-fuuulll~."


{🐉}

"Meep!"

"Nownow there, yu put dat bak where you done and rightly foun it, ya ear me? Bad Meep!"

The little sewage-apus pouted with a narrowed eye, only replacing the little dragon figurine on the shelf when Palmet brought up a finger to wag.

"No more pillagin fer dis Ape there aint. We's all turned round and rightly! Takin up some sorta new-leef, I fink the expressionlissness be. Oi, c'mon then my little Bucket-Buddy, it's break time."

Palmet itched a disturbance by his asscrack and held down a broad, furry arm for the little creature to scuttle up. Meep deftly scrabbled to his wide shoulders and settled with a tiny purr into his mane.

Palmet collected his mop and bucket and tossed them in his new room (the same he obliviously hadn't realized was a closet) –and took a moment to lumber down the halls of the Guardian Temple, picking up a plate of food left by the front doors for lunch.

Ignitia had organized Bilou to drop off meals for the curiously located Ape twice a day when she was out and about with Spyra and his Master, the Fallen. Luckily, the jumpy, chronically ill assistant hadn't caught sight of Palmet himself, and had been lied to that the food was really for a, in quote- 'New substitute janitor who was really a dragon' –and somehow, Bilou had bought it.

"-Eh-! Greens!" Palmet stuck his speckly tongue out as he pinched a wad of broccoli off his plate and held it away, like it was the rotting, separated limb of a carcass. "Da horror! Wat are dese drags tryin ta do, kill me?"

"Meep?"

"Wha? Yeahyeah sure, here ya go." He handed the cluster of veggies to Meep, who curled his tentacles under his discus-like body and slowly nibbled on the plumage with the beak-like mouth centered down there. "Aye, I'm guessin I can't be takin it too personal like: that blu fellow still finks we're a bloody drag ourselves he does! Maybe Ignitia will be a lass and let us organize some sorta menu checkin-off-listy-fing. …Eh, but den again, the blu fella would jus probably sneeze boogers all over it he would."

"Meep." The land-octopus crunched his broccoli quietly as Palmet sat down and gnawed on some mutton. "Meep? Meep."

"Ha~! Dose be sum fightin words, young masta! Be somewhat cautiously and humble-bumble there tho, not everyone's got a setta ballz dat big they dont." Palmet glanced around the decorated foyer of the temple, taking in all the banners, the carvings, the exquisite metal-work. The Ape sighed. "Iz a good fing I got ya here wit me, Meep. I fink I'd go rightly mad without the companeez and likewise. Everyone needs a good un to talk tu, aye?"

"Meep."

"Yeah, I find ya inspirin and literarily competent too. I've nevva had a bettah Bucket-Buddy in my whole days I haven't. But, Meep, didntya evva get the feelin yous was a little… homesick?"

Meep paused in his crunching, his eye looking around as if in search of an answer to his question. Eventually, all the little creature did was shrug two of his tentacles, and jam the rest of the green stalk in its beak.

"I ain't complainin about the employment opportunes and whatnot from da Master, he's a way bigga and bettah boss then the Mistress evva was. But this whole shiny and glory-fying feel jus don't feel normal tu me. Maybe some good shroom-trees growin out of the ruined walls, or some sludge-stank might make it more homey. I like it here, but I miss dem swamps a tad." Palmet grunted as he ate. "Eh, maybe I'm jus goin stircrazy. Ignitia wont lemme clean any of them Guardian's rooms, and all the dust on the floors is makin me bonkers it is! I see it all the time! Passin by in them hallways, and it makes my eye get a twitch it does! Bloody maddening. I guess it's all makin me talk nonsense. We don't need no swamps! Or uvver Apes, cuzz we gots the Master now."

"Meep!"

Palmet's grin slowly meandered off when Meep took his eye away. Though his words were spoken with conviction, their meaning was a bit hollow deep inside his guts.

He was a foreigner, in the country of a group of peoples he had been reared to hate for his entire life, in a society that valued completely different things. Might made right with the Apes.

But here, there was… culture.

And even though Palmet considered himself a reformed simian, he did admit that the stuff clung to everything like some nasty-ass stench and was a bit overpowering at times.

Figuratively speaking, at that.

It certainly wasn't his ancestral tribal geography.

"This place woulda probabs been funner ta blow up then clean, now that I fink abou it."

"MEEP~!" Meep became exasperated, dropping the few shreds of his veggie-meal left.

"Oi, calm ya suction-cups there, I wasn't bein serious!" Palmet laughed. Not entirely, anyway.

They wandered around the temple to pass time aside from that. Occasionally, Palmet would stop at one of the lower-lying windows and gaze around longingly at the campus island sprawling outside, and the colossal spires and castles of the dragon city layering the horizon beyond in all directions.

He remembered when his fellow Apes used to gather around bonfires and tell each other stories and rumors. The officers who were the more chatty of their file would relent news from the fronts or go over targets they were to prioritize on the field.

So many of them had talked about Warfang and how it was the ultimate prize their Mistress and the Dark Master both wanted to burn.

Palmet had never been a talker, and so he had always been a quiet listener in the backs of the crowds, gnawing meat off of bones and staring at his clawed-feet whilst a commander's bellowing voice rebounded over the crackle of flames.

He was used to seeing mushroom trees and fields of fetid vegetation, or the endless rows of scrubland and geysers up north of the swamps where he'd been born.

Warfang dwarfed everything he had ever seen in his entire life. The overwhelming scale was too much for him to take in at times. It made him muse: none of his fellows out in the brush had had any idea what it was they tried to rouse one another into hoping to take on.

His people had no chance against this.

Cynder used them like expendables. Her army was a gigantic gang she had accrued because Malefora would never have given her Grublins and Orcs of her own.

"Evvalastin poweh-struggle it is." He mumbled to himself. "I fink I'm appreciatin them quietness more than home tho, aye?"

"Meep?"

"Whatchyu mean 'broken'? Wot are yu on abou now-"

Palmet blinked when he followed Meep's tentacle pointing down the hall.

There was a window just a few rows down.

It was shattered.

Palmet hurriedly jogged over, arms wide in confused readiness as he swept his gaze over the glittering carpet of glass shards that covered the floor in a wide circle.

The panes had broken inwards, which only meant one thing…

"Meep!" Palmet hissed, causing the land-octopus to squeak when he squeezed the poor thing tightly to his chest, his eyes darting around. "-We gots a burglar on the premises we do!"

"Meep!"

"Well wot bloody use is dat?! We cant call no onez we cant, nobody out dere knows we're in here cept Ignitia and the Master! And they be halfway across da werld!"

For a moment, a pit of true dread nestled itself inside the Ape's guts.

What if the intruder was a murdering psychopath?

What if they were arsonists?

What if they scuffed the floors he had spent all-day waxing?

Suddenly, Palmet began to growl and grind his tusk-like fangs together as a curtain of indignant rage descended over him.

Nobody undid his janitorial work.

"Nah… nah! We don't need no Master or Ignitia ta help us!" Palmet snatched a decorative vase off a nearby table. He smashed it against the wall and took up one of the jagged pieces as a weapon. "C'mon Meep, let's show dis wanker what-for."


{🐉}

It took Taliopia a long while before her sobs started to die down, and by that point, the sheets for the nest were utterly soaked with tears.

The nurse hiccupped and sniffled as she fell into a maidenly sort of routine: hanging the sheets out of the suite's window balcony to dry, fetching fresh ones from the cabinet and changing the nest, putting all her stuffed animals back in their proper piles on her side of the bedding.

She even went so far as to sweep the whole floor, and dust.

Really, it was anything of any monotonous nature that was intended to take her mind off of how upset she was about last night.

After she had left the table and ruined her dress with her crying, Morinth had attempted to console her inside the hen's restroom. The memory was still fresh in her mind, a source of much anguish and anxiety.

"Taliopia, please, I didn't mean anything I said like that!" Morinth had started to tear up herself, as if the gall couldn't have higher! "I would never try to hurt you, or insult you! Y-You're… You're my Tali-wali…"

"Yeah! Yeah sure!" Taliopia sobbed, angrily turning on her mate with a scowl daggering down her snout, her vibrant dress becoming disheveled. "I'm your Tali-wali, Morinth, you're Tali-wali who's terrified of inanimate objects and can't take care of herself! That's your Tali-wali right?!"

"Taliopia, no, please," Morinth sniffled, her crown and the decorative loops dangling from it seeming to droop as tears began to rain from her emerald eyes. "-I didn't mean it like that."

"You made me sound like I'm a burden." Taliopia wailed. "A-And I guess that really is what I am. A burden. T-That's why my parents kicked me out of the lair, that's why you always sigh, and huff whenever I get overwhelmed, and t-that's why both of us want the Fallen!"

"No, Taliopia…" Morinth tried to hug her. "-I-I love you! I would ne- Tali', please come back, Taliopia-!"

She'd burst out the doors and started stomping for the building's exit, ignoring the looks she got from startled onlookers as she beelined for an escape.

"Taliopia, there you are." Leetol appeared, and he blocked her path. "This rubbish is completely unnecessary. Come back to the table, please, your mother just-"

"I hate you!" Taliopia shouted, jamming her snout nearly into his and growling at him in the most aggressive, foul look she could muster across her pale face.

Leetol staggered back, his eyes wider than the dinner plates on the tables around them.

"…W-What…?" He stammered.

"I hate you!" She screamed. "I hate you both! All you've ever done to me was rub my failures in my face, and be disappointed in me because I didn't grow up to be how you wanted me to grow up! All I've ever wanted was your approval, and for you to smile at me, really smile at me! Y-You can't even do that! M-Mommy can't even look at me, a-and, s-she can't- *ssnnrff* -t-tell me I look nice and-!"

Her rant had devolved into hushed bouts of crying after that, the hostile energy she was so unused to harboring burning out as quickly as it arose.

Leetol was stunned enough that she was able to quickly spring around him and take off into the air out the restaurant's doors.

Taliopia could probably declare herself a master of the art of crying, seeing as she did it so much.

But when she got home, she positively bawled.

Neighbors from all over the commonhouse had gathered outside the doors, originally intent on complaining about the noise, but when they heard how upset the frail nurse was, they all simply wandered back home with sheepish cringes on their faces. Taliopia cried so much that her eyes got all puffy, and she couldn't breathe out of her nose.

She eventually fell asleep in her tear-soiled dress, exhausted after the long episode she'd been inflicted with. When she had woken up in the morning, Morinth was there, passed out on her side of the nest, still wearing all of the jewelry and the pauldrons she'd gone out with. Her cheeks were still moist from her own crying.

After that followed the phase of hunkering down and weathering the day under the sheets, surrounded by her army of plush, button-eyed guardians. Taliopia didn't respond to her mate's attempts to talk and didn't move far into the evening, only emerging when Morinth left the flat, and she was alone.

Now, with any and all chores expended and their use as distractions caput, Taliopia could find little else to do beside sprawl out on the guest futon in the foyer, and stare at the paneled ceiling.

The enchanted lanterns that usually lit the flat up at night were turned off, and none of the candles were lit, thusly plunging her little home into the utmost of darkness.

Her rosy eyes glowed pinkish-crimson in the shadows, and so too did the slight illumination given off from the membranes of her wings. Sometimes, she gave the latter a few flexes, and watched with bored fascination as the light dappled strangely off of her surroundings.

Morinth still hadn't come home from wherever she had gone.

…That was…

That was okay.

It was probably best, that they have some time to themselves each anyway.

Taliopia sniffled, and crammed a wad of salted seeds in her snout from the tin by the futon's side. She chewed quietly and continued to singe holes through the roof.

She wished the Fallen was here. And Spyra.

Spyra was so beautiful. Taliopia couldn't hide it from herself that she was almost as attracted to her as she was the human warrior. A sick, dirty fantasy started to unravel in her mind about her, the Purple Dragoness and the Fallen all being inside that medical wing's room together, on the same cot, touching each other's-

Taliopia shut her eyes and shivered.

Her and Morinth had never even thought about having an open relationship with one another before. She knew some other dragons who did practice their lives in such a manner, and had never seen the appeal in it for herself.

But after the Fallen had… been with her, in the way he had, it was now all she could think about.

The human's delectable, thick, pointy, twitching, salty-tasting, musk-stinking, lightly furred junk.

She shivered again, harder this time.

Why did depression and arousal go so claw in claw? She didn't understand it. She was supposed to be angry, and hateful and sad right now, so why the fuck was she so horny too?

Maybe it was because she desperately just wanted someone to hold her.

Someone with pale, scaleless skin…

BMBMBMBM

-The nurse hen yipped, and fell off the futon with a clatter against the floor.

Someone had knocked on the front door.

"-Taliopia?" Leetol's voice muffled through on the other end. "It is your father. Please open the door."

Taliopia bit her tongue and clenched her jaw, trying to stop the overwhelming wave of fresh tears that threatened to burst out of her. She curled up on the floor and quivered, shielding herself with her wings in the dark.

"Taliopia, please, I just want to talk to you. I…. I did not tell your mother I was coming here." Leetol could be heard shakily sighing. "Last night, I didn't even have the chance to speak about the end of your journey, and what plans you had now. I did not get the chance… t-to tell you how brave I thought you were, and how proud me and your mother really are of you."

"Liar." Taliopia croaked through a sniffle. Her father heard her.

"…We just want what is best for your health and future, Taliopia."

"W-What's b-b-best for my future, a-and my health, i-is if you go away." She hiccupped. "I don't want to ever t-talk to you again."

"I know you do not mean that."

"-I-I haven't ever meant something so m-much, ever." Taliopia sneered. "-I-I meant it…"

"Taliopia-"

"I hate you." She snarled raggedly. "I never want to speak with you or M-Meraleethe again. I'm tired of being treated like this, and I'm tired of trying to get you to be nice to me. Y-You're supposed to be my- my daddy, and you can't even d-do that right… I hate you."

"Taliopia-"

"I. Hate. You!" She barked. "Go away!"

The door thudded quietly, but no other words came through.

Now, thoroughly drowning in mucus, Taliopia snorted up her snot and started shoveling more salted nuts, coughing when she hiccupped and swallowed wrong.

If only she had some sweets.

Sweets always made pain go away, even if it was only temporarily.

Maybe Leetol should've brought some chocolate or some shit, maybe then she would've given him the time of day.

Alas, it was not to be, and so she suffered in darkness with the assuredness of solitude.


{🐉}

The tunnel acted as a fanged compacting agent for the mountain winds howling outside. They sang off of the icicles and stalactites dangling from the cavernous ceilings at its various heights and curved lengths. The tune it made was haunting, and beautiful all at the same time.

"…Woah…" Spyra's eyes lit up as she took in the massive tunnelway dwarfing the whole party. Reflective, glowing blue crystals fissured through glacial breaches, mounted in standing walls made of encrusted ice and black rock. Their illumination bounced around the glassy frozen surfaces everywhere, and produced an aqua-colored dapple that somehow made the chambers look even more titanic.

Artificial archways acted as buttressed struts lining down the colossal, subterranean highway as it snaked beneath the mountains. The tunnel was so big that the decrepit remains of what appeared to be a small castle stuck out from the ice and stone a mile ahead of them in the distance, its blackened spires teetering to the left after ages of shifting glaciers and moving earth.

"-Still as immense and mysterious as I recall." Ignitia smiled, coughing. "It's good to see the initial ruins untouched at least."

"Sporting pity for the coffins of our forefathers is simply a stupid thing to do." Terradora huffed, ignoring the soured glare from her fellow Guardian. "Do not let the scenery distract you all: danger lurks here as much as in the storms outside."

"So this is what all the older dragons used to talk about." Colcrus breathed. "There aren't many Ices who can say they've been to the Tombs of Chrysalis. Looks like I'm one of the rares now."

"But if this is the tomb, then, uh… where are the actual dead people?" Spyra glanced around.

"This is the Path of the Cold, the tombs lie at the very heart of the complex." Ignitia explained. "This is the tunnelway that the Ice Dragons bring their honored dead down in solemn pilgrimages. We'll have to reach the end if we're to stop Cynder. That has to be where she's keeping Cyrila!"

"Ah, yes, I am very eager to meet the third member of the Guardians after all this time. Especially if she's as curvy as the three of you." The Fallen deviously rubbed his palms together. Terradora made a sound of disgust and Ignitia blushed.

"Pfffft, puh-leeze mai-boi-toi', we all know who the curviest 'ness is in this crowd." Spyra took her gaze off of the tunnel and bumped him with her big hips. "Ain't that right?"

"I've maintained my figure quite well for a dragon of my age." Ignitia chuffed, giving an appraising look down her spinal scutes and a hop of her butt. The Guardian giggled. She still had a bit of a jiggle to her haunches. Males liked that.

She frowned a bit.

…They did… Right? She hoped so. Cynder's earlier comment of her 'letting herself go' –rang naggingly in the back of her horned skull.

Meanwhile, Colcrus coughed into his wing and tried his best to ignore the banter as a blue flush began to gather down his snout. Technically, everyone here outranked him in actual rank, and even through… well, action.

He hardly came close to everything Spyra and the Fallen had achieved on the battlefield, it being more than a little cowing.

Which was odd, because now that he was getting a good look at the latter: he appeared awfully not-muscular…

"Does, uh… anyone else hear that?" Spyra suddenly mumbled.

The shrill outcry of a Dreadwing echoed down the colossal tunnelway over the muted beating of wings. They all glanced upwards as one of the large, bat-like monstrosities passed overhead, far above them and practically straddling the great ceiling of the cave.

That Dreadwing was followed by a flight of no more than seven, the airborne pack of beasts and their riders beelining for the exact same direction they were going. It was interesting to note that Jute's abnormally large steed was not part of that congregation.

"What gives? Why aren't they attacking us?" Spyra gawked.

"Cynder must be consolidating her forces to make another attack." Terradora reasoned. "We should expect another attempt at an ambush."

"The last one was just an attempt?" Colcrus swallowed.

"We're alive aren't we?" Spyra cut off her glowering look, and gave the Ice a smirk.

"They're headed for the same place we are." The Fallen pointed with his gladius to the now distant shapes of the Dreadwings far down the tunnel. They flew past the leaning castle in the backdrop and kept flying for the very end of the catacombs. "Terradora's right."

"It's a good thing we all ate a healthy breakfast this morning…" Ignitia sighed tiredly. She smirked. "Spyra especially. My hungry hatchling indeed."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" The purple she-dragon growled like a dog. She yipped when the Fallen smacked her on the haunch loud enough that the clap echoed as he waltzed past her.

"Fat-assed, and that's a good thing." He chuckled. Spyra trailed soot from her nose from the blush.

Crsh~!

She followed through, and proceeded to nail him in the back of the head with a snowball.

"…No need for such violence, my smexy-beast, you'll scare the children." The Fallen grumbled as he wiped snow out of his hair.

At least this prolonged walk wasn't as cold, only because the blizzard wasn't pissing in their faces with concentrated streams of flurried death.

It was still chilly as hell, nonetheless. The temperature of the mountains in general only paled now that they were going underground, and not even a dapple of sunlight was reaching them. The only sources of light were a general loom of blue-gray overtaking the atmosphere, and the spaced positions of aqua glowing crystals speckling the cave.

They passed a cluster of Mana Crystals in their natural mounds growing as a bushel in the center of an icy indent. All of the dragons, even the Guardians, took some time to replenish themselves from the trying battle earlier.

"Deja-vu already." Ignitia hummed to Terradora. She stifled a cough and ground it away with a harsh grunt. "I thought I would've been sick of looking at these by the time they let me out of the medical teams' grasp."

"Does the deer tire of the lake's water?" Terradora gave her a slight appraisal in her momentary glance.

"No, I suppose it does not." Ignitia chuckled, sidling a bit closer to her fellow Guardian to nudge their scaly flanks together. Terradora went still as stone and stared at the crystal against her paw with frightening focus. "I missed you, Terra'."

"Ah-hm." Terradora cleared her throat, glancing around as she shifted on her hinds and scooted away an inch. "S-Such is observable."

"Do you ever lighten-up?" Spyra blinked at her from the other side of the Mana cluster, her bronze horns peeking around the flank of the jagged, neon green spires. "Babe', I am a complete and utter bitch half the time, and even I could pull a more enthusiastic response outta' my ass."

"Terradora practices her daily ritual differently is all." Ignitia quickly interjected. "What you should be focused on, little one, is how you are going to apply yourself to the training courses back at the academy."

"I'm betting those'll be nice and dandy." Spyra groaned, making Ignitia smile humorously. "Ya' know, now that I'm actually out here fighting and whatnot, I seem to be picking up on this elemental stuff on my own super quick. Maybe I don't need the training."

Dulled laughter rumbled in Terradora's sprawling chest. The huge Guardian glanced between the two of them and took her paw from the Mana Gems, the last liquidy bands of magical energy swirling to fruition by her elbow and shoulder.

"She is even more within Flame than you were, at her age." She mused, stalking around Ignitia's flank and trotting off. "I cannot deny your talent, young Spyra, but if you are going to become a true Purple Dragon, you will need to deal first with your own naivety, then the refining of your craft."

Spyra's eyes boggled in her head as the Earth Guardian departed, leaving only her and Ignitia.

"…Did she just say she was better than me?" Spyra bore her fangs.

"I believe Terra's point, is that you must take things slowly." Ignitia shook her head, touching Spyra's shoulder with the finned end of her tail. "Nobody saves the world in a day."

"Depends on the size of the world." The Fallen remarked offhandedly as he walked by, sipping one of the party's ration canteens. He stopped, and noticed the annoyance Ignitia was skillfully concealing under a fractured, patient smile. "-Oh, uh… if you're both having a moment, I'll just-"

"I ain't having no moment! There's no moment happenin'." Spyra fumed, wriggling her talons against the green, reflective surface of the Mana spire. "….Hmmph. Take it slow she says…. Oh yeah? Well you're chronically constipated, you big earthy-oaf-hen… what do you know anyway… freakin'…."

Any other grumbles were lost under the beastess' breath.

"How is everything with you?" The Fallen stepped closer to Ignitia.

"I get winded much faster, certainly." She hummed, her other paw opening as she draped her tail in its palm and weighted it to fiddle. "You needn't worry about me, Fallen, I've operated under much much worse and for far longer. Actually, I'm wondering,"

Ignitia nodded to the spanning tundra cave surrounding them.

"-what say you of Chrysalis?"

"…Hm, I say…" The Fallen glanced around with a grin. "It's big, cold, haunting and beautiful all at the same time. I'm assuming that Guardian Cyrila is quite versed on this place's origins."

"Her father and her uncle are buried in the cists here." Ignitia nodded. "I have no intention of letting Cynder bury her here with them."

"Yeah well, hopefully this chick isn't as stuck up as the last one." Spyra glared at Terradora's back as the Earth Guardian stood off on the edges of the exchange, talking lowly with Colcrus standing in front of her. "What is it with Earths anyway? Captain Hamwheel was like this too. It's like these dragons crank up their douchometers to eleven more than the others do."

"I thought his name was Hanlin?" The Fallen blinked at her.

"The Earths are the more militaristic of us." Ignitia admitted. "There has always been an assumption among them that they are the only true barriers keeping away anarchy, that they are the anchor of law and order in the realms. Maybe historically, they were right, but these days… Well, I'll be polite as is needed and say we simply digress on views. We all are equally capable of being brave."

"Uh-huh, just as we're all equally capable of getting yeast infections." Spyra used her hind-paw to scratch at her neck, and then glanced at the Fallen. "Almost all of us."

"We should be moving again soon. Time is of the essence, you know." Ignitia sighed. "…Oh, Cyrila, I'm so… I-I don't know…"

"We'll save her." The Fallen touched her wing.

"I'm gonna' go piss in a snowdrift, be back in a jiff'." Spyra hip-bumped him as she trotted off to take cover behind a boulder patch for privacy.

.Fallen….

The human's gaze shot past his shoulder to the flank, his ears piqued at the sudden, almost unhearable uttering caught on the air. He first thought it was Spyra, whispering to him lowly to get his attention.

But then...

Fallen.

He opened his mouth to address Ignitia, but shut it when he saw the Fire Dragoness was practically chugging one of the canteens off her hipsash. He accusingly sneered at what appeared to be an empty space right beside him.

"What?" Conscience shrugged obliviously. "It wasn't me!"

"Oh yeah? If not you, then who? Lucifer? The Converters?" The Fallen scoffed. "Could I go more than twenty-four hours without you bothering me, you unstable figment of my mind?"

"Hey, I'm not a figment, I take offense to that." Conscience pointed at him. "Who knows? Maybe you've finally cracked and there could be more versions of me to keep you company! Oh, how wonderful! It gets lonely in your skull sometimes."

"Conscience." The Fallen clenched a fist.

"Or, you know, it could be that black thing by your arm." His other-half angled his chin.

The Fallen's brow furrowed, and he quickly spun around, a hand going for the gladius on his hip.

He froze when he saw the pulsating little arm of hair-thin, undulating black that was hovering in the air right in front of him.

The girth of the projection looked like a gaping wound in the very spacetime and reality in his proximity. It was wholly blacker than night and yet somehow embued with beautiful, and yet still eerie, veins of twitching blues and purples.

The levitating hair of magic was impossibly long, and as his eyes swept over the fat little fingertip that it began at, he discovered that the winding, floating worm went out for tens and tens of feet off into the distance. It wound left, right, and vanished around the flank of a particularly large ruined watchtower sticking out of the cragged earth maybe a half kilometer from his position.

Fallen, the raspy little voice whispered from every direction at once.

A perfumy scent, a familiar one, glanced his nose. The Fallen inhaled and felt his very flesh shudder as he remembered the taste in the back of his tongue.

Oh shit…

He glanced back at Ignitia, Terradora and Colcrus, who all were locked in some debate that saw many gestures and tail-points down the massive tunnel in the direction they were heading.

Normally, the Fallen would've stuck himself into such a conversation for intel's sake, but right now, something much less tactical was gripping his attention.

A good gust of cold, subterranean wind moaned overhead as he slipped away from the rest of his party and started moving towards the forlorn ruins nearby.

Fallen, the ghostly, black fishing line of shadow whispered again. He reached out for it, trying to grasp the little bulb at the end of the string, but the immaterial construct silently slipped back just in time for his fingers to lock around nothing. The shadows bulged for a moment, seemingly from excitement in response to his efforts.

The Fallen grunted and redoubled his steps into a fair jog. The rosy smell was getting more powerful the closer he got to the crumbling castle tower.

When the band of magic vanished around the bend of the tower's base, the Fallen swung past the brickwork, and then froze as he beheld the scene before him.

There was a yawning, crumbling archway that led deeper inside the partially collapsed tower. The magical shadow-rope slipped deftly through the air, and disappeared inside the impenetrable darkness that fleshed out the interior of the structure, banishing itself from his sight.

However, where the visual aid was gone, the scent still remained.

The Fallen caught a waft of the perfume and snorted, his eyes bugging from a sudden onrush of emotions that he didn't quite believe were his own.

He could taste things in this smell, so many different sensations and emotions. The biggest one of all among the variation he couldn't quite place a singular name to.

But it was desperate.

The feeling certainly invoked a degree of starvation for its satisfaction. After a few seconds of taking that in, he had a fair idea then of what it was. But most of all, he had a fair idea of who it was.

The Fallen clenched his jaw and quickly stepped through the arch, plunging himself into a complete, but brief sense of total darkness.

As his eyes adjusted and the temperature ever-so-slightly decreased, the ice-frosted interior of the tower's ground floor revealed itself like a patchwork of detail relented beneath peeling, midnight flesh.

The Fallen glanced all around himself, licking his lips from the vulnerability he had shown simply following the literal lure.

He hadn't thought about it in hindsight.

What if this really was a trap? And the identity of the caster had been a ruse?

With a careful pause, his hand slowly slid over the pommel of his gladius, and his fingers clenched over the supple red grip and slipped the blade out of its sheathe.

"You have me where you wanted me." He croaked aloud into the shadows. "Come out."

With no attempt at concealment, slow, trotting footfalls upon the icy stone floor sounded out behind him. The Fallen turned and looked up at the large shape materializing from the black. A pair of white, glowing eyes stared back at him.

Clang~!-rngngng….

The gladius clattered onto the ground.


{Legend of Spyro - The Eternal Night OST: Dreams}


"Fallen…" Cynder whispered, the band of shadowy magic extending from her body dissipating into nothing as it was reeled back against her crimson breast and burst into a brief dusting of black. "…There you are…"

He went to open his mouth to say something-

A pair of powerful paws clapping over his shoulders stole his breath from him before he could do it.

The Fallen felt the floor leave his heels as he sailed through the air, and his back roughly hit the mass of one of the archway's buttresses. He grunted, compressing against the ancient brickwork as his legs dangled limply below him.

The large dragon had pinned him to the wall with frightening ease, her powerful forelimbs taught and immovable as the steel-sharp talons on her paws worried his skin even under the pauldrons and leather. A rumble so deep and so reptilian thrummed from Cynder's breast, and for a second it convinced him that an even larger beast of some kind was in the chamber with them.

The black wyrm craned her long neck lower and scrutinized him with her pure white eyes, the tattoos snaking down her forehead and cheeks glowing a vibrant magenta color somewhere between complacent purple and enraged crimson. The rumbling did not cease, and the talons pressing into him started to hurt.

Before the Fallen could voice an objection, the dragoness shattered the anxiousness of the scene, and darted forward.

Cynder bit him across the mouth, cupping the tip of her chops to lock his lips in the tight grip of her muzzle.

She possessed no pupils, but even he could tell that her eyes had rolled back into her head right before she shut them. The rumbling grew to the point that it caused his bones to vibrate. She twisted her long head over and flexed her mandible, undulating their mouths together as an impossibly long, slender and nimble tongue penetrated the space between his lips, and flooded into his throat.

The noise she made was something between a gasp of pure relief and an air-starved wheeze. The Fallen might've had some ambiance to add of his own making, however Cynder's tongue ensured that nothing besides the wet reports of slapping lickers and clicking fangs against teeth came out of him.

She gave off a sharp cry into the kiss, and squeezed the life out of him as she compressed her chest into his, squishing him against the wall.

"Well," Conscience strolled past behind Cynder, the Fallen's eyes locking onto him over the desperate dragon's wing. "isn't that just a fine howdy-do?" He laughed.

"-mMmmmhpph~!" The Fallen muffled. "-Mmmhmpp-Hmppp~!"

"I wish we weren't the same person sometimes," Conscience sighed. "because then all of that would've just sounded like grunting noises, and I wouldn't have really known that you were trying to tell me to go kill myself with a rusty spoon."

The Fallen couldn't have muffled out further rebuking even if he tried. His vision started to go dark and his head felt numb as the oxygen deprivation took its toll.

Just when his eyes started to flutter, Cynder smacked free from him, even with an exaggerated- 'Mwhaaa-' –to go along with it. The earth-shaking rumble dimmed only slightly in volume, and her cute little breaths hitched out again and again over it. Cynder hummed an almost mournful note and held her forehead tightly against his, panting, her tongue dripping silvery ribbons from their union as it hung limply from her beak.

"-C-Cynder-" He barely had time to utter her name, before he was flying through the air again.

Cynder crooned, and tore herself and the human from the wall. The ground shook as her colossal weight slammed into the tower's flooring. She landed on her back, ensnaring the Fallen like he was a large teddy bear in her grip. He made a pathetic choking noise as her limbs wrapped over his back and legs and constricted him suffocatingly into her soft, crimson belly.

The infamous Terror of the Skies had truly shown her colors only hours ago during the lethal ambush in the pass.

Now, she was like an affection-starved cat.

He knew that that crocodilian rumble was in actuality one of the deepest draconic purrs he had ever heard. Cynder even went the full mile, and craned her long neck down to continuously rub her face over anywhere on him that she could, almost taking his eye out when the sharp tip of her muzzle grazed through his hair, down his cheek, and buried itself in his neck. She bunted him, like a cat that couldn't get close enough.

She inhaled a huge whiff of his scent, and rocked on the stone, her tail cutting circulation off from one of his legs when it strangled his thigh in a constrictive grip.

Normally, the Fallen would've taken any suggestions of being cowed by such advances from a dragoness- of all things -as heathenry. For one prime purpose of his existence was in fact to be honorably drowned in draconic poon.

Any man of his species unwilling to chance snu-snu was something less than human.

But he realized sometimes that things, like such, were easier to say as an outside observer.

He liked being smothered by big, scaly girls.

But he couldn't breathe right now.

At all.

A few muffled cries of panic, and a hand slapping her haunch eventually was enough to yank Cynder's head out of the proverbial water.

With an admonished moan, the dragoness slumped to the floor and laid her head back, her gaze locked on the Fallen as he gasped for air.

" –Gah-~! I- I-…. H-Holy shit, woman, I…." He stammered, ripping an arm free of her embrace to clutch his chest. "-I think my life just flashed."

"Fallen~." Cynder purred, dragging him up her breast so that they were face-to-face again. She smiled down the whole length of her muzzle, her tongue snaking out and lapping over his lips. "My king."

"-I don't think I could handle the responsibility of rulership, now that I think about it." He tiredly breathed, earning a rising giggle from the large black dragon beneath him. "Hello to you too, by the way."

"Were it not for this moment, I fear something beyond my own desire for the end would have claimed me." Cynder cooed. "Thief of my power, destroyer of my armies, light of my life, I have found you."

Light of her life?

…That was a little dramatic, for his tastes at least.

But looking down at the beaming portals of white that were her eyes, the Fallen could see them yielding to him in an almost perfect display of cherished vulnerability. It was easy to just up and say that Cynder was smitten with him.

Describing the true depth of that conviction, however, was something else entirely on its own level.

"I have not slept through recent evenings thinking about getting you alone with me again." Cynder admitted sheepishly, a deep purple blush working down her snout as she bowed her head to him with a sudden weakness for eye-contact. "-A-And, dare I risk it: I must express that I find myself worth the guilt of fiddling now that I have you in my clutches."

"Not that it's worth wanting any less at all." He reassured her as he sat up on her chest.

Cynder refused to let go of him despite giving him wiggle-room, her paws draping over his hips and lower back. She was still minutely undulating her body into him, enjoying the friction their contact made even if he was still in battle-dress.

"Cynder," He cupped her chin, making the black dragon moan quietly and press into his hand. "listen to me: you have to stop this. You have to release the Guardians."

"…Oh, Fallen, were it that you did not so misunderstand the goal of my actions." Cynder sighed, her tongue snaking out and licking his wrist. "The Guardians are a means to an end. When I am through with my plan, nothing else will matter but you and me."

She didn't process his frown as she devolved into her own fantasies, giggling and kicking at the air with her rear-paws as she flexed her talons on his back.

"I'll have to have two thrones in my castle." She said dreamily. "A throne of artwork, a masterpiece will be carved for my king, and nothing less! Fine carvers and metalworkers from the neutral kingdoms past the west will be the answer. I will seat you upon the greatest artwork ever seen in the Dragon Realms. ….Or…"

She leaned forward and locked him in a brief kiss before smacking free.

"…we could always just share the throne I already have. Maybe, my current one will be yours, and your lap will be mine." Cynder's impossibly dexterous tongue glided down her muzzle, and one of her paws cupped over the groin of his breaches. She gave a soft flex of her fingers and squeezed, humming in aroused fascination when she saw him wince. "Does that not sound, ah… pulchritudinous? Oh, bother it not, for it matters not. It is so good to see you."

She purred even louder and possessively squeezed him into her chest, her expression suddenly turning very serious.

"Your little friends outside," Cynder said with a sour grimace. "I highly doubt that they will tolerate your absence for long."

"Cynder, wait a seco-"

"It isn't enough time." She sighed shakily, petting him. "It isn't enough time at all. …Fallen, I have never had so many evenings where I felt this alone before. T-The mobilization of the other Ape tribes, the bargain I struck with my Mistress, the war in Oversight…"

"-Bargain? You mean with Malefora?" He sat up on her chest. "What sort of mad bargain did you make that needs you to kidnap Guardians?"

"None of that matters." Cynder swallowed, practically salivating. "My strategy gets us both what we want."

"You know that isn't true as well as I do."

"-Leave it, and be here, now." She paused, her voice dropping so lowly that it only rebounded inside the ancient, frozen tower as a diminished mumble. "…be here with me…"

"You're taking what happened at the pass outside very well." He noted offhandedly, drumming his fingers on her scaly flanks.

"…I don't care about the pass." Cynder clicked her tongue with an air of insult, though, it was worth noting the minute tremor in the back of her voice. Oddly enough, that told him more of how it really did impact her more than if she had reacted angrily. "Nothing that has transpired these hours changes what has always been."

"An Ape Chieftain is dead. I peeled his head open like it was a can of peas." The Fallen blinked. "Jute seemed pretty broken up about it, you know, just going off of the tortured howls and whatnot. Besides… Cynder, your armies are going to start coming apart. You can't tell me that you don't see that."

"…Of course I see that." The dragon frowned, her grip on him loosening slightly. She was evidently annoyed at his persistence. "How could I not see something like that? I know that my forces are on the brink of destruction. You and that purple headache have gutted my command structure. Visigoth, now Vandal as well: deceased. Jute's Dreadwings have been nearly annihilated, and the Chieftain himself has been rendered ineffective. I can only imagine the damage Saxony's fleets will suffer in their journey to Monkano for repairs…"

"And as I've said, you don't seem very bothered by all of this." He stroked the bridge of her snout. "Can we stop playing games, and just admit that you've defected?"

"I am-" She stopped, swallowing. "…I am of a position of neutrality."

"Neutrality makes you separate from either half, including the one you're supposed to be with."

"Is that really so surprising to you?" Cynder thrummed, her eyes lazily traveling down his chest and stomach. She flexed her forearms against every point of contact with him, whining under her breath when she felt those electric energies of his swimming through her veins. "I joined Malefora because I knew nothing else but pain. I had been her soldier since birth. She taught me how to fight, how to survive, how to utilize Elements none of the dragons had ever used before. She walked me through the process of… of…"

"Cynder?" He held up her chin.

Cynder shrank back from him, and he could feel her body stiffen under his legs as her wings defensively bloomed behind her back, splaying to the floor like she was a crimson angel.

"…She walked me through the process o-of bringing her back." She said in an almost-unhearable utterance. The Fallen blinked.

"Bringing her back." He parroted. "What does that mean?"

"-I-… I do not wish to speak of it." Cynder shook her head, attempting to nullify the subject by drowning him in more affections. She lapped at his chin and cupped his shoulders. "I have already suffered one failure today, Fallen, I will not fail in my attempts to find you as well."

"If you had won." He growled, his hands sweeping down her sinuous neck, making her shudder. "If you had actually wiped out everyone else and kept me alive, you know I wouldn't have sided with you."

"…I…" She stumbled, her mouth flapping a few times as the uncertainty of a response overwhelmed her. Cynder swallowed again, and this time, gave her wings a pump, and flipped them around.

The Fallen grunted when his back hit the floor, and the massive dragoness licked her chops as she adjusted her heels and straddled him.

"It matters not. You slew my Chieftain and defeated my forces." Cynder pinned his shoulders, and lowered her mouth until it was hovering just above his. Her minty, draconic breath washed over his lips. "Were you but a lowly champion from the north, I'd have eviscerated you in the most painful ways devisable. Such humiliation earns strict punishment."

"You can stop the fighting yourself." He swallowed, trying to push away the rising tsunami building up inside his gut. "-The mutations, Cynder, we can help you overcome them, prevent Malefora from killing you through them, long enough for the Northerners to find a cure-"

"They would sooner burn their own hatchlings than help me!" She shouted in his face, her tattoos suddenly morphing into a daggered crimson. It was easy to say that the outburst was a complete mood-killer. She stared down at him angrily, a snarl sealing her chops. "What do I have to say for you to understand the truth? You are not dense, and you are not dull. A figure of such standing, with such knowledge of war and space-time cannot be!"

"-Dayum!" Conscience slapped his knee from where he was sitting on a collapsed palisade nearby, rocking his legs as they were hanging over the side of the stone. He looked like a child. "That was some compliment she gave you right there! It's hard to believe you'd disagree, but, given our history, I guess I can see why."

"Believe my words when I so single-mindedly tell you: there is no other way!" She yelled, bladed tail whistling as it sliced left and right in the air behind her. "The Northerners will never belittle themselves to your suggestions, and as a matter of certain fact, there is a side within me that shant ever wish them to recant such assurances! They hate me, Fallen. And I hate them! Every single one of them should die, in the most painful ways possible! They should all be dead, and so should their families and their children! Their lives are blights, poxes on this land, almost as much as the lives of my cursed Mistress and her Dark Army! I am trapped! Nobody will ever side with me to get me what I want!"

"And what do you want?" He shouted back at her from the floor. "What Malefora wants? You want to kill everything and start over? Is that it? Do you know what that makes you, Cynder? It makes you a murderer."

"I'm already a murderer~!" She screamed, her fist coming down and cracking the very stone flooring by the side of his head. The Fallen didn't even flinch, his gaze fixed on her as he navigated the terrible storm that was now hinging its crux on the dragon's internal war, the one he had so deftly wished to stall. "The blood of hundreds covers my paws, and there is no undoing that! I can't change who I have been, and no part of me shall seek to pursue such pointless quests for as long as I may draw breath. What I want is not redemption."

"Then tell me what that something is." He gripped her wrists, earning a growl from her as he forced her back, and sat up, his arms quivering as he battled against her inhuman strength. "So, you don't want what Malefora wants, you don't want what the Northerners want, so then what, Cynder? What? I'm here with you now, and I'm not going to let you be indecisive anymore. I won't let you stew and rot without choosing a path, and not moving on with your life. Look at me, and tell me what you want."

"-I-I-! I want-!" Cynder became flustered, she tore off of him with such speed and panic, that she hit one of the support beams in the tower's center with a crumbling impact. She shrieked and spun on the inanimate object, seeing it vanish in a burst of flying bricks and dust as her tail scythed the pillar in two and sent it in piles rolling across the frozen floor. "-aaaAAAGGHH~! I came all this way to find you! And this is what you put before me? Questions? Suspicions?! How dare you! You- You insolent little man, you puny particle of flesh, you-! I'll-!"

"Forget about me, Cynder, you need to think." He yelled, jumping to his feet. "Think hard! What is it that's the end-goal here? You're still fighting for what you obviously know is the wrong side, and yet you're reacting with indifference when they lose! You still feign loyalty to Malefora, and you still order your Apes around, but you sneak out and risk the wraths of both them and the Northerners by coming to secretly see me!"

"W-Why couldn't you just let this go?" Cynder snapped, tears causing little highways of their passage to glisten in the slight ice-light of the tower ruins down her face. "Why couldn't you just take my attentions, and shut up? Why must you torture me? I, me, am the epitome of beauty in the Dragon Realms. Look at me and behold!"

Her wings creaked, and a mighty shadow fell over the much smaller human as Cynder reared back, and stood on her hind-legs, splaying her great, bloody wings out on either side of herself. In that moment, she looked as regal and terrifying as she had during that night in the swamp by the Dragonfly Village.

Poised mid-flight, an angel of black and ruby with the soulless gaze of eternity.

Death on wings, a true Terror of the Skies.

Covered in blades, wreathed in shadow and power, bedecked with curvaceousness and the physical lure of a hundred succubi.

Forgetting his prior moments of perhaps jovial reaction, in that moment, the Fallen felt a rare flutter in the very epicenter of his heart that was seldom met by the various creatures and beings he encountered across the Multiverse.

He'd known it all along, but this second was a plain, uncorrupted reminder of the fact:

He wanted Cynder. He had to have her. There would always be a part of his life that would remain incomplete should he continue to exist without her by his side.

"Look at me!" She screamed, her talons unsheathing as she bore every weapon and pleasantry of flesh she possessed to him. "I am the avatar of strength and unrestrained emotion. I am living sex. I am the Cloud Ripper of the South, Terror of the Skies in the North, the Mistress of Forlorn, Lady of the Concurrent Shadowy Veil and Doom of the Westward! There are beings in your Multiverse who would forsake everything they knew and cherished to be held by me the way I hold you."

Her voice became laced with such a conniving, evil hiss that the Fallen wouldn't have recognized her had she not been before his very eyes.

"Too long have I lived a lifeless life of servitude and solitude, and now is the closest I've come, to possessing the one key I've needed to save myself from the eternal night. How dare you question me, as the subject of my heart. I have given up everything for you."

By your own choice.

-The Fallen didn't speak it aloud.

He knew he couldn't.

For if he did, Cynder would have killed him. He was exposed, unarmed, unprepared for a strike from a direction he had so labeled as one of peace. The dragoness could've ended what so many others across the universe had tried and failed to. His life, it was in her claws, and what he said right now teetered on one of the very few times he had ever felt it in true peril.

"I'm not questioning you." He felt numb as he took a staggered step towards the huge, imposing reptile. His blood spiked coldly, and his mouth threatened to stop working. "I'm not refusing you either."

Cynder had started to huff, and her breaths were deep, dragged-out snarls that a much more monstrous organism would've normally made. Her eyes glowed with white, hungry power, and her tattoos were now illuminating the ruins in a sickly tinge of gore-red. She appeared more humanoid and hunched with aggression than he had ever seen of her.

"All I want, Cynder," He said, reaching out to her as he got closer and closer. "is for you to be free. And to be free, you need to have a will that isn't corrupted by what others want."

Cynder's huffing started to grow more and more quieted. The dragon twitched when his soft palms carefully slid over her knees and up the sides of her legs. He gazed at her, above him, rubbing her scales.

"I'm trying to save you."

Her face was so twisted. With hate. He was getting a real glance into what she looked like during those long evenings of solitude, deep in her castle. Years and years spent scheming, plotting the suffering of others, waging war, all pent up into a single dragon who had never even had the chance to enjoy a childhood. Her face was possessed of such anger, that it appeared almost impossible for anyone to unwind and soothe away such anguish.

But slowly, over the course of long moments, that stone exterior started to chip, and crumble.

Cynder transformed before his very eyes as all of that malice melted from her. Her jaw quivered, her wings drooped, and her shoulders sagged.

The Cloud Ripper bit herself trying to contain what she knew was an outburst. Wet jewels slipped from her eyes in torrents before she wrenched them shut to stifle the flow. The meekest of highly pitched, mournful whines started to build in volume towards the back of her throat. Her tremoring turned into weak, debased quivers.

"-Ew, at least get a tissue. Jesus…" Conscience shifted on his feet beside the Fallen, watching with disgust as tears and probably a few dollops of snot landed on his face and chest. "You didn't have to be standing right under her freakin' face before you poured your heart out like that. Maybe, just maybe, I should stop calling you manwhore, and settle for a nice, biased Casanova."

The Fallen glared at him, wiping some dragon-mush off his cheek with a wrist.

Cynder gave off a few pathetic peeps as the buildup rose and rose. Finally, her tattoos sighed quietly as the red slowly seeped from them, and they transformed into a solemn, glum and vibrant blue.

"Awww, you should hug her." Conscience elbowed him. "You know, I read somewhere one time that giving women physical contact releases the same chemical of love that they get with their own children! Imagine the desperation-fucking you could induce with this one!"

"You really are the part of me that is so horrible and stagnant, that it should die in a fire." The Fallen blinked at him.

The dragoness finally popped, giving off a mournful, defeated wail that threatened to deafen the poor man.

Before the Fallen could voice protest, Cynder had snatched him off his feet and smashed him into her chest, as she reared back and embraced him in a coddle usually meant for a teddy bear.

Heaving, deep sobs wrenched her breath from her and stole away any cognitive ability for speech. Her cries and babbling wails were only muted when the she-dragon craned down and used his neck and shoulder to bury her long face. Muffled, hiccupping hums rebounded, even after she fell onto her haunches with a great, thundering bang! -and rocked with him on the floor.

"-T-There i-is no other w-way-" She choked. "-I-I have t-to do-o wh-at I did- w-when I brought her back the f-first time-"

She stroked the back of his head with her claw, and her crying redoubled, so much so, that she refused to even look at him.

"-I-I have t-to use the C-Convexus- -I have to g-give myself that power- -I-I need it to g-get what I want-"

She embraced him tighter, her summary wail stifled by his chest.

"-And I want you."

"So Cyn', if you want me," He struggled to distance their faces a bit, raising her head with his hands on her chin. "-just join the right god damned side."

"It is as the Cloud Ripper already said: the North would sooner give in to its own destruction than welcome her into its walls."

Cynder tore back from him with a surprised gasp, her horrified gaze turning to one of the arched entryways to the tower.


{The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion OST: Defending the Gate}


Terradora growled ferally and hunched down to her chest, her forepaw scraping against the stone as she worried it, like a bull preparing to charge.

"Terradora." The Fallen muttered, sliding out of Cynder's weak forepaws and staggering away from her. "Terradora, wait."

"I knew you were a threat the moment I laid eyes on you." The Guardian sneered. "You stank of corruption even from the distance of the Pool. Your motives are of your own, and you are no ally of my people if you treat with abominations such as that thing."

"-H-He treats with those of their own accord and will." Cynder sniffled, a canine-esque rumble of challenge rising from her breast as she stood herself up. The Cloud Ripper hunched and spread out her paws and wings, ready to do battle. "I would hardly expect a wretch so blinded by politicking and banging rocks against their head to understand."

"You have always been nothing but an impudent child, Cynder." Terradora shook her head. "And you, Fallen, I care not for your actions against the Dark Army: you endanger us all with this betrayal. After I am through with her, you are next."

"You will not touch him~!" Cynder foamed, snapping like a starved lion as she jittered with blinding speed to place herself between Terradora and the Fallen. "He's mine~! Mine, do you hear me?! Mine!"

"-While the idea of two bombshell dragonesses dueling over me is quite a nice thought: This doesn't have to result in fighting again!" The Fallen sprinted around her, holding a hand up in each dragoness' direction. "You heard her yourself, Terradora, Cynder's on the verge of completely defecting! I realize she's guilty of crimes against your people, but you need to put that aside in the name of stopping a greater threat!"

"Terra'? Terra'! What's going on in here? I can hear you shouting from the other side of the-" Ignitia touched down and folded her wings in the archway of the tower, her color draining from her face when her eyes laid on the scene before her. "…O-Oh my god."

"Your champion from the sky is a traitor, Ignitia!" Terradora snapped over her wing. "Look at him! Negotiating with the enemy behind our tails! Perhaps not even negotiations, perhaps simply scheming."

Ignitia gazed between Terradora, and Cynder and the Fallen on the other side of the chamber.

"Ignitia," The Fallen stepped forwards, glancing when Terra' inched over to intercept him the moment he tried anything. "-you're one of the most reasonable people I've ever met. I need you to look at this without emotion. I need you to listen to me."

Ignitia opened and closed her mouth, eyes darting back and forth between the two sides again and again. She was frozen, rooted to the spot.

"Ignitia!" Terradora barked. "Take their flank and help me corner them! Keep the Fallen off me while I work on the Cloud Ripper!"

"Ignitia," The Fallen shook his head in panic. "you didn't listen to me at Forlorn."

He couldn't tell if that enraged the Guardian or made his answer dawn on her. There was an expression blooming across her face, it was just one he couldn't read. At least, he had gotten her to stop glancing at them all in frozen confusion.

"I do not know what has been going on with all of you, Ignitia, especially with you and the Fallen." Terradora glared at her. "But do not allow your emotions to cloud your heart. You have always done what is right your entire life. Do not stop now."

"Fallen! Come back beside me!" Cynder snarled, spreading her wings and flexing her talons into the stone. "We both shall deal with these witches first! Then, you and me are leaving."

"No! No that is not what is happening, Cynder-! Ignitia-! We-!" The Fallen's face sulked into a stone-fixation of grimness.

Ignitia seemed to deflate with a heavy, sulfurous breath, before she slowly trotted to and around Terradora's flank. She settled by the Earth Guardian's side, positioning her paws, angling her hips, crackling flame building in the back of her mouth.

"Oh no!" Conscience hollered nearby, hands clapping on the top of his head. "We can't screw her if we kill her! Do something, man~!"

"…I-I am… I am sorry." Ignitia hiccupped, bearing her fangs as she started shifting to take an opposite station from Terradora. "I cannot turn my back on my people, or my family. S-Surrender, Fallen, and I will ensure that they do not treat you harshly in Warfang's containment."

"Surrender, pah." Terradora sneered. "I will only claim corpses today."

"W-What are you doing?!" Conscience sprinted closer, eyes wide with horror. "Wait a minute, I'm your other half, I'm supposed to be in the loop not out of it!"

The Fallen glanced down by his flank, taking a step over to stamp his boot's heel down. The gladius chimed sharply as it spiraled off the ground and into the air. He caught it under the pommel and spun it in his fingers, readying his own poise for battle, his back to Cynder.

"Wait, just wait." Conscience jogged in front of him, blocking his view to the two Guardians. It was the first time in a long long time the Fallen had seen his alter-ego appear the way he did, panicked and unsure. "We have to make a choice here. I-I know it's one you don't want to make, but we have to do it. Consider this carefully. Look there and here."

The Fallen obeyed with two sweeps of his gaze.

"Now," Conscience shivered as he sighed. "…are you sure?"

"I'm sure." The Fallen croaked, his lower lip threatening to tremble.

"You know that whoever you don't, you'll have to-"

"Just get out of my way."

The Fallen walked straight through himself, keeping pace with Cynder as the Cloud Ripper stalked forwards.

True to Terradora's command, Ignitia had taken the suggestion, and was the one angling closer to his front as she made to keep him away from the Earth Guardian's vulnerable sides.

Cynder shrieked and Terradora roared. The Fallen surged forwards right as his opponent leaped.

He drew back his gladius with an embattled bellow, making to aim the blade's sharp point for Ignitia's heart.


{🐉}