Dragon(s)layer
30
Three Guardians
{Mechassault OST: Tundra Theme}
Whoever said the challenge was always in climbing the mountain had obviously never traveled to the Dragon Realms. Between the time it took for the Fallen, Spyra, Colcrus, and the Guardians to defeat Cynder's army, release Cyrila, and go back the way they came, the blizzard had buried all evidence as to their prior passage from one end of the pass to the other.
The snow even buried the bodies. The tens of Apes who had been slaughtered, the Dreadwings, the bulky corpse of Vandal… all had been swallowed by winter. None were left to prove to Cyrila the viciousness of the fighting that had been undertaken in order to save her life.
Though, the likelihood of the rather snobbish Ice Dragoness appreciating these facts was quite low. She was too busy gawking and mourning over the, in quote- "Terrible atrocities" –that had been done to her hide and her beautiful scales to give anyone room or time to explain their story. The talons were a particular horror that her mind had fixated on. She was pretty upset about those specifically, and her travels were constantly hindered by aggravatingly long and frequent pit stops along the way, where the Guardian would huff, puff, and whine, studying some new and creative part of herself to mull over any damage that had been accumulated.
There were times where it got so bad, that they had had to stop walking, and nag Cyrila to keep pace, because she had stopped to gnaw at the scuffs in her nails, or to whine and moan as she plucked out pebbles and rinds of dirt.
And then, whenever she wasn't causing her complaints to echo around the peaks, she was staring at Spyra and the Fallen. She didn't even bother to acknowledge that Colcrus had come all this way in his efforts to rescue her, or that he even had survived the ambush in the Solemn Pass to begin with. Her initial interest in Ignitia and Terradora even, was waned somewhat, in the human and Purple Dragon's presences.
"This was not a proper introduction at all." Cyrila's accent was peculiar to the Fallen. It reminded him of some prior civilizations he'd encountered, mostly on the various renditions of Earth, a planet not too dissimilar from these realms. "I was never one to hold any amount of stock in those ridiculous fairy tales about glitter, fireworks, and a grand entrance of some mysterious hero-figure, but I could've at least been warned in advance."
"You were chained to the ground, having the life sucked out of your body towards the eventuality of death." Terradora rolled her eyes as she soldiered through the calm flurries of snow. Luckily, the blizzard had lowered to a whisper as they neared the end of the mountainous pathways. "If I were you: My mind would lie in gratitude for your comrades, and much less of how to insult their senses of time."
"Oh, humbug to it all, Terradora. My day's been too long and too painful to listen to humbleness and piety." Cyrila huffed, preening her purple wings for the millionth time so she could crane the joint over and nibble at it. "Especially from you. No offense."
"Taken." Terradora growled.
"Isn't there supposed to be a 'none' -before that?" Colcrus chimed in from the back of the procession.
"No." The Earth Guardian snapped over a particularly loud shriek of winter wind. "-And I am tired of this blasted snow! It aches my wounds and rouses my temper! More-so than all of your incessant pestering combined. Ancestors damn this place."
"Ancestral burial grounds?" Colcrus harrumphed, insulted. "You all sure seem to not care a lot about the feelings of an Ice who happens to be here too."
"I'm just happy to see that you're safe and sound." Ignitia affectionately nuzzled Cyrila's neck, earning a click from the Ice Dragoness' tongue.
"Please, Ignitia, don't smother me." She mumbled.
"Indeed. It would be a shame if you caught whatever she has." Terradora quipped to the Fire Guardian.
"Intellect and grace if nothing else." Cyrila tastefully absorbed the blow with a flex of her chiseled, blue brow. "Or were you trying to be insidious? Because I could hardly tell. Your nature is, by virtue of existence: vitriol."
Terradora snarled at Cyrila over her wing.
"There's no need for harsh words, both of you." Ignitia nudged between the other Guardians. "Today is a momentous day! We're all together, and we've beaten the enemy once again. That's something to be grateful for."
"If only the victims of Cynder's Necromancy spells could say the same." Colcrus sighed. "All those tombs…"
"Colcrus, I realize that you endangered your own life to free me from my unfortunate placement, but I must say: it'd be most helpful to my mood if you kept the complaining to a minimum." Cyrila huffed, her snout raised to the sky in yet another sign of indignation. "Honestly, can't any of you afford me some peace? Besides, I take no offense of my own, Terradora, at the remarks made to these mountains. My father is buried back there, and he was an asshole, pardon my language. These peaks have little of anything that I love, and I am very eager to leave them behind."
"Always the same." Terradora scoffed. "Blaming everyone else around you for your own prudeness. How instinctual it must be for you."
"It isn't my fault the average drake lacks a suitable I.Q." Cyrila smiled with venom, oblivious as Colcrus blinked a few times to make sure he'd heard correctly.
"I was not even speaking of that."
"Oh, now you're defending them? It could be argued that they're the reason I'm out in these dirty mountains soiling my paws in the first place."
It was a good thing the wind chose that moment to howl again, for it covered up the snort from underneath the Fallen's helmet. Spyra turned to him over her wing, and silently mouthed 'BITCH' –to which he only offered a slight nod.
"I woke up this morning much less than I currently am, even after all that's happened." Ignitia butted between the other Guardians, trying her hardest to remain the voice of positivity. "And I can say the same for Terradora, and even Spyra and-" She glanced at the Fallen, only coughing before continuing. "-my point is, is that we have a lot to be grateful for. Cyrila, you are safe, and relatively unharmed, and for that, I am so thankful."
"Yes, yes, quite." Cyrila glared for a moment longer at Terradora before killing the disagreement with a quiet huff. She probed at the side of her snout with a wingtip curiously." …Yes, relative. Compared to what Cynder did to me before my capture, this is quite acceptable. Your healing talents have only grown, Ignitia. I praise that."
"Ah, well," Ignitia cleared her throat, again letting her eyes dart to the Fallen. "-I wasn't the one who treated your wounds, actually."
"Hm? Is that so?" Cyrila blinked. "Then it is obviously the Purple Dragoness I should be thanking."
"-Oof~!" –The Fallen hacked as Cyrila spun about, and clipped him dead-center the chest with her tail without even realizing. He landed in the slushy snow with a dim puff and vanished from sight.
"Your talents are many, it seems." Cyrila studiously examined Spyra below her own snout, even though the purple beastess was struggling to contain a fresh fit of giggles from the Fallen's plight. "You have my thanks, for both the participation in the battle and the application of aid."
"Application of what now?" Spyra stammered, tearing her eyes off where the Fallen had gone. It was like she was just realizing Cyrila had been speaking to her in the first place. "I didn't sign no application, lady, let's just clear the fog now."
"What might I call you?"
"Oh, well, the name's Spyr-"
"-I am Cyrila, Guardian of Ice, and commander of the Warfangian military." Cyrila interrupted, briefly holding out a blue paw, and quickly retracting it before Spyra could even reach to touch it. "So you are the Purple Dragoness of legend, as the prophecies said you would be. Excellent: we shall begin to teach you the properties of my Element as soon as we are able. Now, I know the journey is long and the days not-so-immediate, but I will warn you: to learn Ice, is to do battle with your own inner-"
"She knows Ice already." Terradora spat over her flank. "She throws almost as many Icicles now, as she does profanities."
"Did she just say I talk too much?!" Spyra snarled, her temper flaring.
"…Is that so?" Cyrila glanced at Ignitia, who nodded profusely a few times.
"Uh, yes, Cyrila, Spyra has attained a fair degree of knowledge without our teachings, but-" Ignitia coughed.
"If not you or the Purple Heroine, then who has alleviated me of these terrible afflictions? It couldn't have been Terradora. Trying to medicinally teach her would be like tutoring a brick."
"Having a head of stone certainly at its best beats having a head of brittle glass." Terradora shot back. "Throw a rock at ice: one shatters, I'll leave you to guess which."
"Guilty as charged." The Fallen grunted, his armor's joints whining minutely as he stood up, snow tumbling free of his purple and black plating. He gave a two-fingered salute and stepped closer. "You're welcome, by the way."
"-Fallen, please." Ignitia quickly lashed a wing out to stop him even before he could think about offering a hand. Though, from what he'd seen, even if Ignitia hadn't been so keen, he doubted Cyrila would've dared touch him.
Especially with the way she was looking at him.
"Yeesh-" Conscience flinched, standing by his side. "And I thought the dirt-one was giving us the stink eye. She looks like someone offered her a wad of chewed gum or something."
"I wish I could drown you in the snow." The Fallen muttered under his helm.
"What extant species is that?" Cyrila crinkled her snout, her gaze darting from his boots to his headwear. "And what in the world is it wearing?"
"Tough luck today, boi'." Spyra sniggered, lazily trotting around Cyrila and brushing against the Fallen's hips like a cat. "It's armor, sister, ain't ya' ever seen some before?"
"And I'm a he, thank you." The Fallen shivered as he unclipped his helm, briefly sliding it off to offer Cyrila another of his cheap grins. "Brrrggghhh~." He mumbled, brushing snowflakes off his face before replacing the helm. "I'm the Fallen, for I am nameless."
"Damn straight, and there ain't no me if there ain't a him with me." Spyra nodded. "He's just as mad a fighter as I am, probably madder, now that he's got this wicked-ass setup here."
"I can hold my own." He shrugged his pauldrons. Colcrus puffed his chops and pawed awkwardly at the snow, some utterance of exasperation whispering into the winter wind. "Still not a complete set yet."
"Oh gods, you're telling me there is more?" Terradora groaned. "Do me a liberty, and end me now."
"Stop that silly talk." Ignitia clicked her tongue. "The Fallen has proven himself just as capable of helping us end this war as Spyra has. We are a team, and we've been working together to stop the Dark Army. It'll be good to add your Element to our party, Cyrila. We need your help."
"…By law aren't I obliged to give it regardless?..." Cyrila muttered, still looking at the odd pairing of the Fallen and Spyra. She blinked. "What of Oversight? The battle raged in the fullest when I was taken."
"The siege was broken, and Urukal's army lies in ruin." Terradora said. "And that miserable little queen still remains locked away in her quarters."
"Lilith took part in the beginning phases of the battle." Ignitia nodded. "She and her court guard took… significant losses, and I don't quite think she's recovered from the fallout."
"Bah, she's a coward, nursing some mental affliction of little value in that throne of hers." Terradora sneered. "Pathetic and weak, as no queen should be."
"She still has not emerged?" Cyrila cocked her head. "Has anyone been past the doors to the throne room?"
"I, briefly, to call for aid." Terradora looked towards the way they had been headed. "She stank of residual moping and self-pity, and I don't just mean that figuratively."
"Well, before that disastrous episode at the Solemn Pass, I had been briefed on the situation of the city myself." Cyrila fluffed her wings. "Volteera and I had answered Lilith's personal plea for help. I doubt she's given you the specifics that she had afforded us."
"Specifics?" Ignitia blinked.
"Oh yes, she told you nothing indeed." Cyrila sighed tiredly, resuming her trot through the snow. "Come come, we still have one more challenge to defeat today, much to my chagrin."
{🐉}
"Whaz it look like ta you?"
"Meep."
"That's what I thought. Bloody burglars and their heathenryness and whatnot. I'll clean his clock I will, rank bastard."
Palmet had already combed the entirety of the first floor of the Guardian Temple with Meep, and up until now, there had been no other signs of foreign entry after they had discovered the broken window.
But Meep had been quick to point out that in one of the subsidiary ways off the foyer chambers, there were tiny shards of glass, and more importantly, there were some faint indications of footprints.
Or rather pawprints.
A dragon.
The intruder was a dragon. Palmet almost dropped the shiv he'd gathered up from that stupid vase.
It was likely that whoever it was didn't know he was here, which was more of a problem than a good thing, because dragons (as far as he was sure, anyway) –had pretty much culture-coded all their generations to kill his kind on sight.
And if anything over the last few days could prove smack for tap: generally, one-on-one fights between Apes and dragons were won by a particular party. At least, when the Apes were smaller and less ferocious than the officers. Palmet didn't have the guts of an officer, and he certainly didn't have the brawn or wit of a Commander. There was a reason those guys were the only ones Cynder gave enchanted weapons to.
The footprints led in circles for a while, to parts of the temple he and Meep hadn't checked yet. Though these were few, it reminded Palmet that the Guardian Temple was in actuality a pretty big place. Ignitia had been adamant of him staying away from the lower chambers, but after a while, his janitorial effectiveness whittled away her suspicions.
And frankly, he didn't blame her for letting her guard down.
This fucking place had become a pig-stye. Dust, grime, even some mold in the lower catacomb tunnels had overrun the higher shelves and the floors. Honestly, he was surprised the whole campus hadn't come undone without a proper janitor.
"Looks like dey broke in a night ago it does." Palmet stooped down and ran his finger through one of the dirty pawprints, humming as he tested the granular muck between his pointy and thumb. "Dis dirt's old, eh?"
"Meep?" The little sewer-octopus on his shoulder squeaked.
"Yeah, yer right, I should probably be a bit more cautiousness dere." Palmet did the smart thing, taking Meep's advice, and popped the dirty finger in his mouth, swishing the taste about for a few seconds before swallowing. "Eh, it ain't dat old I guess. Certainly not swamp-dirt it aint, that stuff tends ta be more mucky and whatnot, ah, and it tastes a bit like shrooms all da time it does."
"Meep?"
"Nah, yer thinkin' uv the wrong testers there, the corpse-quality-checkers had to do them uns good. Needed much more finga-werk back den."
Down the stairs the prints led, to the archway of the chamber.
The chamber with the Pool.
"…Aye…" Palmet grumbled, standing at the top of the flight with a look of hesitation scrunching up his face. "I don't like dat room much meself. Got the heebee-jeebies evva since that nutcase who likes the bouldas gave us a piece-a her mind."
"Meep?"
"Yeah, I don't know what a burgla would want with the nasty drag pool thingy either."
Quietly, the Ape slunk down the steps, the dim illumination from the chamber shining in a wide cone that blared the bottom of the flight in contrast to the murky shadows. He noted that the light wasn't just from the braziers inside. It was pink-hued, and occasionally wavering.
The Pool! The intruder must be using it.
"Meep-!"
Palmet plugged Meep's beak with a dirty finger, shushing him as he tiptoed to the archway.
"…well I think what you two have is so beautiful, and sincere. You can't let a thing like this jeopardize that." –A faint, low-leveled and feminine voice echoed from beyond the pillar-struct. Palmet compressed to one side in the dark, and carefully peeked around the corner, Meep propping himself on top of his narrow head to see too. "I don't think after everything you've told me, I could believe that her character would be anything but enamored with you. Oh, you both are so lucky."
"N-Not really, I… I don't think so." Taliopia huffed, pawing at the floor as she looked away from the shimmering projection standing between her and the very active Pool. She brought a wing around to nibble at the joint as she talked. "It's always been so complicated, and hard, and I… I haven't been as mature as I've needed to be. I've been a coward, and a snot-nosed brat."
"That's nonsense!" A green, yellow-bellied dragoness stomped her foot, making to step closer, even though she physically was not there. "Taliopia, Morinth was saying those things to support and defend you! She just didn't say it the right way."
"S-She said it perfectly." Taliopia snuffed, wiping at dried tears underneath her eyes. "She just can't bear to tell me the truth, which is that she can't stand being lassoed with me, and that she wishes she could move on. Because all I have to offer her is my whining, and my crying, and my horrible parents w-who hate her, a-and I hate them, and-"
"Taliopia, no, no you have it all wrong." Queen Lilith chuckled, spreading her red wings to demonstrate a broader horizon. "You're not looking at the big picture. The day you find a mate that is absolutely perfect is not the day you find the one, the one you'll spend the rest of your life with. There are supposed to be flaws. If you try to find something like this without them, it just isn't realistic. It's your job to better each other's weaknesses, be the other half! You know?"
"W-What weaknesses do I help a dragoness like Morinth overcome, huh?" Taliopia sniffled. "She's brave, and fast, and she has the thickest skin I've ever seen in anyone before. Morinth figured out life in more ways than I ever will…"
"All that thick skin and bravery never taught her how to be compassionate." Lilith shook her head. "You did that. She wouldn't be the same without you in her picture, she'd be different- dare I say: less. I'm only an outside observer, Taliopia, I'm not in your life like she is, but I am telling you, that even from a distance, I cannot see how what you have created with her could be so easily shattered by this occurrence. There is still time to fix this, especially now, with you both humbled, a little afraid… Gosh, it may not feel like it, but now's a better time than any to start the rekindling. That goes for both of you, I mean."
"But-"
"No buts." Lilith giggled. "Take it from a dragon who wasted the chance to have such a close relationship herself in the interest of the state. Taliopia, you and Morinth will make it better. You just have to try, and I'm confident that you'll figure it out sooner, rather than later."
"But we've only been talking for two days." Taliopia shyly smiled.
"And so much I have learned of you both in those two days." Lilith beamed. "So much have you helped me through all of this, with me, and my being here, and… and all the people I've failed."
"You still have time to fix your own problems too." Taliopia shifted on her haunches, her rosy eyes beaming in the chamber's pinkish shade. "And I thought I had it hard. You lost all those dragons. I don't blame you for locking those doors to your throne room."
Queen Lilith's response started as a quiet laugh, but then her jaw quivered, and she had swallowed the rest of it as an air-starved gasp.
"T-That isn't the only reason I'm here right now." Her voice cracked. "A-And I know what my people think. They think I'm a coward, a-and a failure, and a shadow of what my mother once was."
"I'm the coward, Lilith."
"No! No, Taliopia, you are not!" Lilith exclaimed. "You're the one on the front lines, risking your scales, doing battle with the Dark Army! I tried but once and was crushed, and now, I can't even wake up in the morning anymore without knowing how much I've destroyed, never to be remade again. A warrior beaten has the reliance on their king's faulty word for blame, but a queen, confounded and ruined by her own decree? No, no. There are sins, and then there are unspeakable things worth not even vengeful utterance..."
"I think we both have to work on the pity-parties." The medic bowed her snout, humbled. "I think there's more hope, and redemption, for the slights you believe happened. More than you see."
"…I feel depleted, that you don't offer yourself the same kindness."
"You're better off."
"Because of my throne?" Lilith frowned.
"No. I was-…" Taliopia fiddled with her tail, looking disappointed. "...I was kind of hoping I could say it more nuanced."
"I… think I understand…" Lilith scrunched her snout briefly. "If nothing else, Taliopia, I think we've reiterated our points fairly and consistently enough. I'll take this as fair therapy."
"G-Glad to be of help." Taliopia hummed nervously. "I never thought I'd make good consul to a queen, before."
"Titles make not the dragon." Lilith chirped, her mood raising a bit. "I wish you had brought Morinth with you this time, like you did the first." Lilith forced a smile. "All three of us probably had advice for the others that would've helped all the more. You're both so intelligent."
"Us? Coming from the Lady of the Realm of Vines…" Taliopia blushed. "You're the one who's amazing, Lilith. I don't care what anyone says about you. You're fighting your own war in that throne room. Why, if it wasn't for you, the whole province would be-"
"Aye! Bugga all's that swell, ya almost gave me a heart-attakk ya did there, miss-drag-lady!" Palmet guffawed, his Apish mass waddling out from his hiding spot and into the chamber. "I thought yous was a burglar or sum kinda jewely thief or whatnot! What a releaf dat turned out ta be, eh? Have ya seen the Master anywhere? I gots ta show him me new cleanin technique I do-"
"An Ape-!" Lilith and Taliopia both squealed.
"Run, Taliopia!" The queen panicked.
"Run?! From wha?!" Palmet gripped his chest, swinging around to stare in horror back at the stairwell behind him. "I knew it! There really is a burgla on da grounds! Stay behind meh miss-drag-lady! I'll protect ya with me wits and musclyness I will!"
"Meep…" Meep rolled his eye.
"No~!" Taliopia cried, fighting through the tremors forcing themselves through her limbs. She stood her ground, cementing her feet to the floor, and bowing her snout as to bear her fangs and preen her wings. "No, I'm done running! I'll be brave. I'll kill you, servant of Malefora!"
"Waitamintherenow-" Palmet quirked a brow. He didn't have time to voice a complaint about the obvious falsities of his service, however. "-Jus hol' yer stew there, Ms. Drag- i-it's me! Palmet! I-I werk fer da Fallen lad I do-!"
Taliopia didn't hear him. She leaped at him, claws unsheathed, with her teeth aimed for his throat.
{🐉}
They landed on the walls of Castle Crownhorn in record time. With most of their forces destroyed, Cynder, Chieftain Jute, and the handful of stragglers left had vanished into the mountains, beaten and bleeding (for the most part) –and would no doubt be back at a later date for revenge.
Folks gathered all around the party from the moment they touched down. Dragons and Moles alike gawked at the Fallen's armor and now much more imposing presence. They also couldn't believe that Guardian Cyrila was not only alive, but relatively unscathed and safely back within the city. Cheers were largely absent, but some applause sounded out once and awhile from tired droves of infantrymen and civilians. Ignitia's coughing had gone away completely, thanks to a brief injection from the Fallen's now plentiful reserves. By now, the injections had done the trick, and so she was able to call out for clear paths as the party moved on.
Though, mostly, this was to warn people about being run over by Terradora more than it was to make their walk easier. The Guardian of Earth was still fuming from the events that had transpired in the tomb. She stomped at the head of the party with a reckless gait, almost stepping on a few Moles who weren't quick to jump aside.
"It isn't what you think it is. Or thought it was." Ignitia muttered, drawing alongside her. "The Fallen is no traitor, and the situation is the most unique I have seen: something for only once in a lifetime. I'm not asking you to protect him, or me, or anyone else. But if this becomes louder than it already has, I don't need to tell you about the chaos it will sew."
"What more can we do to wound these lands, I wonder? Let us forget the threshold of this war, the grip of darkness from our forests, and the death of our friends: now we risk stealing from our people their only sense of hope." Terradora's stone voice grumbled out. "You lied to me, Ignitia. There is much more to the Fallen than I was initially led to believe."
"You wished not to hear of any details!" Ignitia incredulously stammered. "I understand that Spyra and the Fallen haven't exactly melded well with you through their own charisma, but Terra', this goes beyond how we all personally feel for one another."
"You wish to speak of feelings?" Terradora got in her face, her words lowered to a staccato tremor that seemed to come from the floor beneath their heels. "Withholding information from me is something I can respect, when the cause is pertinent, but have you thought of yourself lately? How you look at the Fallen? I know that light in your eyes, Ignitia. I know it as all adults do from their years of hormonal adolescence."
Ignitia was taken aback, her tongue clicking at the gall.
"Terra'." She gasped.
"Do not 'Terra' me, Ignitia." Terradora snapped. "I have been led these long years of my life with a certain kind of assurance: that to my back, I would never worry about the possibility of betrayal, or of a naive misstep. Not even once, not from you. And now, I reunite with you after a long campaign, and this is where you have fallen to?"
"Did someone call me?" The Fallen asked over Spyra's head.
"Shut your tiny fucking mouth." Terradora shot at him, her face lit with uncontained rage. "You've already done enough, human. So long have I been regaled with tales of your heroism and stature, only to find that you leave nothing but discord in your wake."
"If by leaving discord, you mean highways of the corpses of my- by extension: your -enemies, then yes, sure, that's an accurate description you have going there." The Fallen smiled sourly. "But the moment you step over that line right there, that's where you lose me."
"We're it but only such restraint between friends, of my tail pulping your skull on that wall over there." Terradora glared at Ignitia. "There would be cause for concern here, once I rendered you to a lifeless corpse."
"See?" The Fallen tisked. "That line. Right on over."
"Excuse me, no," Ignitia harrumphed, positioning herself between Terradora and the Fallen. She moved her snout just an inch from the other Guardian's, a narrowed glaze overtaking her amber eyes. For a moment, Terradora was cowed, stepping back with a surprised wash of uncertainty sweeping down her long face. She wasn't used to other dragons standing up to her. "no I believe this discussion was between you and me, and it would be pertinent- as you say -to keep it that way."
"Indeed." Terradora growled, recovering from the unseen blow dealt to her ego. She was trying to use her larger size in a way she normally reserved for strangers. It wounded Ignitia deeply, but the Guardian of Fire was quick to contain her emotions over it. "These are the questions that have been simmering underneath our paws even before the mountains. I knew something was wrong, without even any unsubtle hints. So, then tell me, sister, what is this? Have you tired of the code? Our way of life? Or is this really the first moment of true weakness you've reduced yourself to in front of me?"
"I have risked everything: my life, my view of the world, and the stability of my heart to get to this point, all within the rigid boundaries of our traditions, with the usual unofficial levity we've always gifted to one another. That remains off the books, of course." Ignitia sternly explained. "A moment of weakness? What is it you are suggesting? That I've somehow gotten younger, or that I have become wholly ignorant? Because either is quite an insulting assumption for even you to take."
"Even me!" Terradora barked, earning some stares around the hallway they had been trekking down. "Now, you sound like Cyrila! Do not turn this around!"
"Turn what around?" Ignitia snapped. "I've offered you nothing but love, compassion and understanding! Things that I might add very few before me have even considered affording you!"
"How dare you."
"How dare I, Terra'? How dare I? No, Terra', how dare you. You have the gall to abandon us in the name of some crazy desire to do a job that fate never meant for you to have! You are chasing ghosts that nobody in the world cares about, all the while pushing away everyone and everything that attempts to rip you from this drunken, stubborn, obsequious nonsense that you've clouded your taciturn, and frankly single-minded head with! And you've done it for almost twenty years! Now, you want to speak to me about wholesomeness? Legitimacy? Oh no, Terradora, it is not me whose horns are at risk here of being brushed away, it is yours."
Terradora was tremoring so much that the floor might've soon started to crack under her paws. She was so angry, that a draining, dark energy radiated around her like an energy-sapping, fear-inducing cloud. The Fallen, Spyra, Colcrus and Cyrila watched the exchange with varying reactions. Spyra was half-amused, half-concerned, the Fallen had gone blank, Colcrus looked terrified and Cyrila looked exhausted.
"-I-If I did not care for you the way I do-" Terradora utterly trembled with rage, her words hissing through gritted fangs. "-W-Which I now see is a mistake-"
"How mature of you to say." Ignitia snarled.
"I never needed you." Terradora snapped, jamming a talon into the other hen's chest. "Twenty years and you still can't figure out how not to waste your breath."
"At least I'm familiar with my own identity." Ignitia sneered, roughly cuffing Terradora's paw off her breast.
"And yet still are so xenophobic as to the meaning of duty." Terradora shot back. "Duty, purpose, and reason! I've been trying to tell you that you have nothing behind your name for our entire lives, and you still won't hear me, and you still clamor about in your infantile efforts, to obtain a reputation that preceded only the dragon in that office before you."
"Being famous isn't everything!" Ignitia shouted. "But you never listen to me! You've never ever listened to me once! And now, the Dark Master is on our doorstep, and you still cannot put aside your pigheadedness!"
"Maybe, I should expand my conjugal palette, and attempt copulation with an animal." Terradora spat venom in the other Guardian's face. "Seeing as I don't have some freak who fell from the sky at my beck and call such as you."
"Go. Away." Ignitia quivered.
"Gladly."
The whole party (and a number of spectators) flinched when Terradora tore away and stalked down the hall, her tail-mace crashing into a wall and leaving a ruined gash in its wake. Bits of brick were still clambering away on the floor by the time she vanished around a corner.
"I wasn't even in on the scoop," Spyra muttered. "-but man is she a bitch. Why do we need her again?"
"Such disrespect." Cyrila half-heartedly craned a brow at her.
"You'll get used to it." The Fallen sighed, looking to Ignitia with concern. He frowned when he saw the Fire Guardian deflate on her own heels, her wings wilting like weeds bathed in poison, as she sulked in the hallway. "Are you alright, Ignitia?"
"I'm fine." Even though her face was as animated as if she had said it loudly, the words only came out as a hoarse, muted croak. Ignitia shivered out a breath and rose to her feet, her serpent-tongue slapping quietly over her chops as she sought the answer to the subsequent silence, and the taste of her own bile. The dragon huffed a lick of flame, and gestured for Cyrila. "...We do not have time to dabble with one another anyway. Back at the mountains, Cyrila, you spoke of trouble with the Queen of Oversight?"
"...Aye." Cyrila nodded, obviously reluctant to let the argument go so easily. "It might be replenishing if you sat this one out."
"No." Ignitia grunted. "I'll go crazy without the work."
"This might not be the proper kind of work- ...therapeutically, I mean." Cyrila grumbled as she examined bits of soil still clinging to her talons. "But, I did promise Lilith that me and the scatterbrain would take a look down there, if we all didn't die during the battle."
"Don't speak of Volteera that way." Ignitia dryly frowned. "She could be dead. Is that what it would take for you to stop being so mean to her?"
Cyrila opened her mouth to retort, but glanced at where Terradora had vanished to, and shut her chops silently.
"You and me both have wishes unfulfilled by the others. Volteera's… antics. Your butting-horns with Terradora. I did not mean insult through my frustrations." Cyrila calculated her words carefully. It couldn't be helped now that the dialogue had become a steaming hot iron juggled between all the participants. "It was a job for me and her, but then Cynder hatched another of her brilliant schemes, and here we are…"
"That bitch should go squat and hatch an egg." Spyra rolled her eyes. "Seriously, all she's good for is making everything more and more friggin' difficult."
Could be my egg… The Fallen rubbed his chin in thought.
"She's a fighter." Colcrus nodded. "And a criminal."
"The tombs." Ignitia couldn't find it in herself to come up with more supportive words, she just said it and let it go with a displeased breath, casting a final, disparaging glance down the hallway that Terradora had vanished down.
"Please speak not of it." Cyrila's eyes went glassy, and she took to staring at a wall, freezing up like her own Element.
"Aw shit, don't tell me she's got PTSD too." Spyra scoffed, yanking on the Fallen's arm with her tail. "C'mon space-man, let's get cleaned up so we can get this done and over with. We're going in like a cave or something? Ya' said down there before."
"It's a tunnel network, below the castle." Cyrila dragged a talon on the floor as if to emphasize. "The Roseways. Queen Lilith claims something is down there."
"Do you believe her?" Ignitia asked.
"You don't feel the wrongness in the air too? Aside from all the terrible filth clogging my nose."
"I do." The Fire Guardian brushed Cyrila's flank as she passed. "I was just making sure it wasn't all the hot-air from the Realms' most dysfunctional family of Guardians I was smelling."
{🐉}
"Why do I get the feeling that Ignitia's the exception and not the rule? Every other Guardian we've found has been a grade-A cunt."
"Well, everything we're hearing about Volteera seems… nice."
"Ignitia talks about everyone 'nice', that's all she does. Nice nice nice. She's too nice, especially to that giant, walking, green lummox who's infected with a case of male-face." Spyra spat. "Makes me sick."
"What? Terradora's attitude or Ignitia's fluff?" The Fallen smirked.
"The first one. Ignitia doesn't deserve that shit, and she knows it, I know it, I bet even the prissy snow-wench knows it too. Didjya' see how Cyrila looked at her afterward? She knew that fight was a pile of stank, and she didn't want to get involved."
"I think the Guardians are a lot more complicated than most dragons around here realize." The Fallen shook his head. "Call it a hunch, but from what I've picked up: we're talking about a narcissist, a brute, someone with a real bad case of OCD, and a college professor being locked in the same monk-temple for a lifetime to be taught the same virtues. The results will vary. You'll also end up with a more spastic family-unit than a married couple would after fourteen adoptions."
"Still don't make it right." Spyra rolled her eyes.
"Sounds like someone's concerned about Ignitia." The Fallen chuckled, hands wetly slipping down his cheeks as he banished a ream of creamy suds.
"And you aren't?"
Spyra asked the question honestly, no sarcasm intended, she even stopped scrubbing her paw. The Fallen paused and took a second to think about his answer.
"Of course." He eventually concluded, craning a leg over the marble rim. "We owe her a lot."
"Some more than others…" She clicked her tongue. "Ya' know those people you can never ever really do anything that'll come close to repaying what they did for you?"
"You mean like good parents? No, I don't." The Fallen stepped out of the tub, water dripping from his limbs as he wrapped a towel over himself. He glanced around the guest room for some reason, suddenly feeling like he was being watched by someone other than her.
"Don't mind me, really, I'm always here no matter what. Y'know… being the same person and all." Conscience chuckled, legs kicking as he sat on top of one of the basin counters. "But I see what you mean. Or feel. What I meant was feel."
"Hey, you alright there, bro?" Spyra hopped out of the tub like a dog, water dappling everywhere as she shook her meaty flanks and rinsed off the whole chamber. The Fallen mused quietly, and started re-drying off the areas he'd already gotten on himself. "You zoned out."
"I'm sorry."
"I asked about your ma' and pa'. You made it sound like they sucked major degree ass or somethin'." Spyra stole the towel blatantly from him with her mouth, and started working on the crevices of her wings. Her words were muffled past the fabric. "Donbt tehl meh: dey gave u up fuhr adowpshun."
"What? No." He smirked. "I just don't remember them. I don't really remember anything about who I was before I became a Portaljumper. All that stayed was the fact that I'm human, and the knowing that wherever I came from, I just… didn't belong. I don't know how else to say it. I just know that's why I'm here right now, and not there."
"Pt-too~!" Spyra spit the towel back at him and he caught it. "-That isn't like a side-effect of becoming one, is it? Memory loss or some other whack-shit?"
"Not that I'm aware of. Why?"
"Well, for, ya' know, when the war's over, and we beat Malefora." Spyra's sentence was weird. It started with the usual smug confidence she sported in her tone, and then it wavered five words in for a more sheepish uncertainty. It made her blush, much to her chagrin, so she spent a good deal of energy avoiding his gaze by fiddling with her now clean talons. "…Uh, if we beat Malefora. W-Which we totally can!"
"Is this a question about the future?" The Fallen gave her the towel after finishing, going around her to grab the jumpsleeve laid out nearby. "Because you know I'm not a fan of stating ultimatums when I haven't gotten to what they're meant for yet."
"I wasn't stating any ultimatums. Yet. I can't get by with too much assumin'. It'll give me gas. It's a question about us." She wing-shrugged. "I finally got what I was looking for in my life. I got to see the Dragon Realms, go to Warfang, meet and befriend other dragons…" Spyra watched his back as he shimmied into the sleeve. "…and I got a mate, and stuff…"
"Hoho, been called that one before, hey, pops?" Conscience snap-pointed doubles. The Fallen chucked an unused body-sponge across the room, and it smacked into the wall where Conscience had been standing.
Fucking asshole.
Scowling at the wall prevented him from seeing Spyra's surprised reaction. The dragon's wings tightened against one another, and her tail started tossing about annoyedly.
"-Pssh, fine." Spyra scoffed, tossing the towel in the corner, her scales nice and dry. "Maybe it's something we shouldn't talk about, eh? I guess you're still pissed that I told you I loved you."
"-What? -Nono, that isn't what I-" The Fallen groaned, following her out into the carpeted guest room. The dragon's face was twisted in the beginnings of what he knew was an angry grimace. "I already told you what I intend to do about this, about us. You'll have that choice, Spyra. If all goes as planned- or close to it, knock on wood –I want you to come with me, when I leave this realm."
"So that's why I'm askin'." Spyra shook her head, and flopped onto the sheets of the bed with a muffled thud. She twisted around like a cat preparing a perch and curled up, scrutinizing the human as he finished applying the sleeve. "I want to know what the risks are if I go with you. You can't just ask a 'ness to leave behind her friggin' reality without giving some kind of a crash-course, you big oaf."
"A crash-course? For Portaljumping?" The Fallen smiled at her as he stepped over to the corner of the room. He saw her glaring, and held his hands up. "Right right, I'm sorry, you're just finding out about all of this, and you have the right to know. I don't want to make you angry, is all."
"Thankyou." She gave him a smug wiggle of her shoulders as she kneaded the sheets. "When ya' put aside all the people you kill and the other 'nesses you've screwed: you're a keeper."
"Ah." He scratched his chin, noticing stubble there for the first time. Huh, might have to ask Ignitia if Moles actually shave. I can't imagine any of the dragons own razors. "It'd help if you had some specifics in mind."
"Ohhhhh c'monnnnn…" She groaned, rolling over and exposing her golden belly. Spyra frowned at him upside-down, hanging her horns off the edge of the bed. "It ain't much to ask for just a general tutoring and some attention."
"Okay, so do you mind if I armor-up and talk at the same time?"
On the floor was a small pile of folded metallic pieces. His suit, freshly decompiled as it had been in the pod, was ready for use again. He picked up the breastplate and placed it over his chest, systems whirring as servo-links hooked up, and decompiled nano-reserves started to unfurl the support ribs that began to appear secured around his torso.
"As much as you may not want to hear it: the Portaljumping is the crash-course. But if we're just sticking to immediate side-effects from leaping through an actual portal, then the answer's no. Nothing permanent can happen, like memory issues, or deformations, or anything."
"Aight', so at least I won't have to worry about a fifth leg sproutin' out of my ass." Spyra harrumphed. "But there are non-permanent side effects?"
"Usually a person experiences mild to severe nausea, vertigo, dizziness, stuff like that for the first few jumps. After a while though, your body gets used to it." The Fallen mused at her expression. Spyra's eyes hadn't stopped boggling every time he did something with the suit. She looked on- utterly fascinated –as the breastplate and cuirass of his armor finished fixing itself into place. With a final little hiss and electronic bleep, he let it be and started applying the grieves and leg plating. "Do you like the suit?"
"-"Like" ain't too definite a word for what I feel, but, uh… yeah, yeah it's cool as hell." Spyra put her purple chin in her paws, her gaze becoming more longing. "I did say I liked you a whole lot when you were all suited up in that armor the Moles made for you."
"That had more bling, I'll admit." He sighed, disappointed. "Too bad it got wrecked. It irks me: the destruction of such fine lures with which to quiver the loins of nearby, and observing reptile-poon."
"Yeah, but I like this one better." She laughed, jumping a bit when the leg plating finished securing, and the nano-batches vanished into thin air with a pattern of minute clicks and metallic shifts. "What kind of magic is that? That makes the rest of it appear on you out of thin air like that?"
"Not magic: nanites." The Fallen clenched his fist as the last gauntlet finished securing itself. The suit hummed quietly as several little light-up slits across the plating began to glow a sickly neon green, and tiny portcullises lining the spinal structure turned light blue. "Millions of tiny, artificially directed machines, manipulating pounds of decompiled synthetic band-wrap metal."
"…Uh, bless you." She wiggled her nose.
"It just allows me to make the suit more portable, and it takes less time to prep than a traditional suit of armor would." He explained, stepping closer to hold out his plated arm for her to feel. "Though, there is some magic involved. The suit's designed to rely on a hybridization of systems and technologies both digital, mechanical and runic. I need some magical capabilities to counter other people's magic."
Spyra hummed as she listened, running her paws up and down the darkly colored metal of the gauntlet. She briefly slipped her talons between his fingers, getting a sense of the banded plating protecting those too before squeezing lightly.
"When I saw you punch those Apes today, you caved in their skulls." Spyra muttered, sniffing at his gauntlet's knuckles. "How did you get so strong? You couldn't do that a day ago."
"Well, the-"
"-The suit gives you steroids, doesn't it?" She cut him off.
"…No." He chuckled. "It does enhance my physical abilities, but not through drugs or anything."
"How does that work?" She cocked her head. "More nanny-thingies?"
"I think you'd just say "bless you" –again, to be honest." He chuckled. "All you need to know is that I have enough of my gear back for it to work exactly the way we need it to."
That satisfied her- at least for now –so she let it go with a little bob of her head.
"Lemme' see the other one." The dragon nodded at the right gauntlet, the one with the vent-port, and the little computer console he used as a command uplink.
The Fallen hesitated.
"Oh, this oughta' be good." Conscience puffed his lips, sitting beside her on the bed. "Just be carreeeeffulllll…"
"I-I don't think that's a good idea." He said, slowly retracting his arm from her. Spyra blinked, and then she pouted, even folding her forearms to make the point.
"I don't care if it's a good idea or it ain't, I wanna' see it." She angled her head.
"Just because you're my smex-derg doesn't mean you get auto-yesses all the time, girlie."
"I betchya' you'd let me see it if I blew you again." The purple beastess licked her chops and winked. "That what you want, huh? To blow another batch of hatchlings down my dragony throat?"
The Fallen twitched.
Clink –quietly rang out from the suit's groin pad.
"Ouch." He mumbled.
The suit was roomy, but dragon-induced boners were something even a spacious crotch-chamber couldn't contain properly.
"C'mon, really," Spyra giggled, the bed springs squeaking as she hopped closer like a gazelle, and planted her paws on his hips. She gave him a lurid look, and soot crawled out of her snout. "I'm serious dude, hand that arm of yours over here for a bit, and I'll slurp your spear until you sound like someone gave ya' helium. All that fighting made me horny as fuck. No pun intended."
"W-While that sounds like the best idea I've heard all day, I-I really don't think it's safe for you to handle it. There's… things installed in the suit that I'm not really willing to let you see yet, because-"
"Aw jeez', don't tell me one of those Apes hit you in the head hard enough for you to go gay." Spyra huffed, tearing to the flank, and reaching out for his arm in a swift movement. "-Gimme'~!"
"Nononono wait-" He stammered, trying and failing to rip his arm back. Spyra was one of the quickest fighters he'd ever met, so of course, even with the suit's aid, her reflexes bulldozed his own into the pavement, and didn't even look back at the skidmark. "Spyra, wait-"
"I- just- wanna'- look- at- it-!" She snapped between yanks, her talons clicking as she hooked them on the divider breach between the two forearm panels. "I- said- gimme'!-"
The dragon growled and readjusted her grip, a paw flying forward and clapping down over the little glowing monitor and the vent-port.
Beep~! –went the console screen.
"-OhnononowaitwaitWAITDON'TTOUCHTHAT-!"
The Fallen was too late.
In a flash of neon-green light, the whole room was overcome with a thunderous crackle of ozone, and a colossal bang~! –all enough for the poor Fallen to be knocked off his heels.
He clattered to the floor plated-ass-first, grunting as he slid and slammed into one of the dressers. Spyra yelped, literally being tossed off of the bed. She was wreathed in bands of white energy and green light that swirled around and clung to her scales.
The dragoness landed on the floor on the other side of the frame with a wooden thunk, shaking the whole room and plunging the exchange into silence. The Fallen growled and shook his head, nursing a sore spot from where his cranium had smacked onto the edge of the dresser top.
"…Why is it always the head?" He grumbled under his breath, holding out his gauntlet to check for red slicks.
"Hello, forgetting something?!" Conscience knelt beside him and pointed.
Green light illuminated the chamber from behind the bed, pulsing like a big, neon torch's flame to drown the whole room in sickly hues. It subsided more and more with each pulse, a moment later, leaving nothing behind to show its vacancy other than a dull sizzling noise, and of course, the low and pained groans of a certain purple dragon.
"Spyra!" The Fallen cried, stumbling to his feet, he ran around the foot of the bed. "Are you alright?! Spyra! Talk to m-"
"-Ugh…. Fuck." Spyra barked, shaking her head violently as she flopped over from where she had landed. "-what the actual fuck-cakes did you do, man? Like… fuckin' ouch…"
The Fallen's eye twitched as he watched the dragon roll off her side and sit up on the floor. She gave him a pouty look and snorted, a lick of flame extinguishing itself as quickly as it had appeared from her chops.
"Ya' just zapped your 'ness, and you're not even gonna' help her up? I didn't know it was asshole-o-clock, dude, jeez'…" She fluffed her wings, grunting as her joints crackled and popped. She started to stand up, and the Fallen almost tumbled back onto his rear for how panicked he was when he took the step back. "What's your problem? You're not the one who got thrown across the fuckin' room. What even was that anyway? Some kinda' force-beam or something to knock bad-guys back? 'Cause it works, like, really good."
"….S-Spyra." The Fallen swallowed. She was just noticing that his arms were spread out on either side of himself, like he was making them to form in a basket to catch a baby tumbling off a ledge right over his head. "-Okay, j-just… just calm down, and understand that it isn't permanent. Do you hear me? It is not permanent."
"But you sure as hell want it to be!" Conscience clapped his hands by the Fallen's side. "Hot damn! I don't think we've seen that successful a zap to the ladies since Berk."
The Fallen sneered, shooting a hideous glare over his pauldron at his doppleganger. Conscience only had a second to yelp before a very familiar phantom-boot came cartwheeling from thin air and smacked heel-first into his face.
"-You son of a bitch-!" -Conscience cried, dancing away in agony as he held his head.
"Permanent? What's not permanent? The fuck are you blabbin' about? And why am I dizzy? What the fuck?…" Spyra rambled under her breath, recentering his gaze.
"W-Watch your head-" He tried.
"Watch my head-? *bnk* -OW~! W-What the-?!" She gawked as her horn bounced off the curtain-top of the bed's luxurious frame. But the bump wasn't what had her.
The view of her elbow beside her face as she reached up to cup the site of impact made her freeze.
"…M-My arm. W-What happened to my arm?!" Spyra gasped. She held out her paws in front of herself and gazed at the insides of her thin forearms. The dragoness squealed in terror and jumped onto her feet.
Her two feet.
"-Like I said, it isn't permanent-" The Fallen tried to control himself, and yet still he was turning into a shivering wreck as he took a step closer, his eyes unable to focus on her own, where they instead traveled much lower, past her chin. "-I-It i-isn't… p-p-permanent…."
"WHAT. THE. FUCK-?!" Spyra shrieked.
She held out her arms- her upright, forward-backward bending arms -and screamed.
Then, she peered past her chest, and saw a pair of taloned, purple dragon-foots holding her aloft via a pair of slender ankles, before two thick, curvaceous and rounded thighs plated with harder scaling towards her colossal hips.
The waist shrunk and sloped like liquid metal into the box-like base of an abdominal daggering, leaving exposed a flat, soft and paunchy belly that was layered with thinly scuted golden plates, only breached at the very center for a winking naval depression.
Past that was the lean torso, and a duo of pointed, finely sloped shoulders birthing the lengths of two powerful, yet sleek arms.
But what really had her was the chest.
Or, rather, the things on her chest that were never there before.
"-W-What in god's name are these." She moaned in horror. "Oh my Ancestors. Why?!"
Spyra darted her hands up and clapped them loudly over the two golden, gelatinous masses of softly armored flesh hanging from past her clavicle to drape over the top of her abdominal region.
The contact made her gasp as her palms roughly ground against a sensitive, brownley-colored nub that had spawned on the face of each globe. The poor dragoness had every color of the rainbow go across her face along with every expression, as she dug her fingers in deep to the meldable, squishy tissue making the organs. She squeezed, yanked and rolled them about, half-fascinated, half-terrified, as the dough-like masses flopped about in her untrained grip.
"-Fallen- F-Fallen, I-I shit you not- I am fucking afraid right now. W-What the hell is happening? What did that fucking space-suit do to me? Huh?! I- I can't even-Oh my god." She squealed, looking down at the human's head past and below the fleshy orbs. "-You're supposed to be taller than me."
Indeed he was.
At least, if biology here hadn't had its hand forced through artificial methods.
Now, upright, humanoid, standing almost seven feet tall and bedecked in one of the most outrageously bodacious physiques that the Fallen had ever laid eyes on, Spyra the Purple Dragoness saw the unfamiliar look of pure, unadulterated starvation overcoming the Fallen's face.
He looked like a zombie.
The poor dragon squeaked and folded like a cheap lawnchair. She hugged her arms over her golden breasts, squishing them into her chest, their billowy masses leaking over the purple borders of her fores, where they sagged defiantly in a constant reminder of their existence.
She curled her noticeably longer tail around her ankles and crossed her thighs. Spyra whimpered when she tried to flex her wings, and discovered that there was nothing to flex, aside from a sloping, curved and purple scuted back. There wasn't anything else she could do to curl up any more than she already had. She felt helpless, and oh-so confused, more so than she had ever been in her entire life.
"-i-it's… it was an accident and- u-uhm…" The floor pattered and tapped, as literal drool flooded past the Fallen's lower lip and dripped down his chin. One of his eyes was pulsating like a weeping growth, and his fingers had transformed into hooked daggers more suited to a reanimated crypt-horror skulking the dark for fresh flesh to prey upon. "-b-b-b-b-b-bo-boo-"
"Fallen, I don't know what kind of nightmare or hell this is, but if we're both dead, I-I really need you to fucking kill me again so I go to hell-hell alright? 'C-Cause this ain't my jam, man. This ain't my fuckin' jam-!" Spyra trembled, yipping when one of her newly formed tits started to flop out from under her arm. She released them and then tried to force them back with her palms, squishing the two golden globes together and creating a deep canyon of cleavage that almost looked bottomless. "-D-Don't just stand there, god damn it, help me!"
"-S-Spy-Spyra- b-b-b-b-" The Fallen stammered like a toddler, staggering forwards another gruelingly-slow step, making Spyra yelp in fright when his heel thundered into the floor. "-b-b-b-boobies. Derg-boobies."
"Lordie," Conscience rolled his eyes, still rubbing the sore-spot from the phantasmal boot. He was sighing as he stalked towards the door of the room. "I'll let you both have the floor for this one. See you in the funnies."
"Fallen, what did you do?" Spyra peeped, her pink eyes darting all over her chest and paws. "I-I don't understand. I-I-"
"Boobies." The Fallen growled, suddenly appearing more feral. He bore his teeth, and his back hunched in preparation for a lunge, his eyelids twitching as he wriggled his fingers at her. "Must. Feed."
"Fallen, w-wait-" Spyra sniffled, her paws flying up to her face to clench her cheeks. Tears started running down her snout. "-I-I'm s-scared." –She sobbed.
All at once, the dark gloom drained from the Fallen like blood weeping from a wound. He gasped, as if his lungs had been devoid of air, and all of the drool stopped flowing.
The human staggered back, hand clapping onto his head as he tried to focus his equilibrium on his own heels.
It took a moment, but rational thoughts eventually clawed their ways back into his skull.
"-u-uhm…" He croaked, blinking rapidly. The Fallen held out a plated hand and examined his own gauntlet, flexing the fingers. He used the wrist to wipe the spit off his mouth. "-I-uh… I… Spyra…?"
"-I-I'm so s-scared r-right now-" The dragoness wept quietly, clawing at her face and curling into a big, seven-foot-tall ball of purple and gold.
Wait a second, some inner voice that wasn't Conscience's told him. Breathe.
The Fallen let a deep sigh deflate from his chest. He clenched his fists, and forced away the inner animal.
Breathe.
"...It's okay, Spyra, I'm here. I'm here to help you." He hesitantly reached out to the purple dragon, and placed his hands on her upper arms, stroking the scales there as he looked up past Spyra's massive bosom, trying to ignore how it jostled with every other sob. "Shush, it's okay, you're not in any danger, and nothing permanent has happened. Let me explain everything, alright? Calm down, please."
"-w-what did you do to me-?" She heaved, the floor creaking as she lowered her massive legs, and sat to be at eye-level with him again. She was so tall now that she had to crouch to reach him. Her tail wrapped over her hips as he followed her down, rubbing her scaly shoulders.
"I-It wasn't me per-se." The Fallen swallowed, wiping away some of her tears with his thumb. "You touched my suit's command console, and, well… I guess it registered what you were to a certain device inside, and uh…-"
"-S-So this is it, huh? T-The big *snnrrff* -reveal." She choked, wristing her eyes clear. "You go from w-world to world, transforming chicks you dig, and blowing up people who try to kill you."
"…I'm not just about black-and-white things like that, it's more complicat-" He stopped himself, and thought about it for a moment. "…Eehhhh, actually, no that's pretty much it right there. It'd be deceptive to deny I'm anything but a promiscuous, dapper-hatted bloodhound with a chip on his shoulder for cybernetic warfare. But I have good reasons. And most of them follow traditional ideals of widely accepted morality. Most of them. And besides, I thought you knew that already."
"Y-Yeah, well, *snrrff* -I hadn't seen the transforming part yet." Spyra hiccupped, finally finding it within herself to take her paws/hands away from her face. She sulked, leaning back until her new upright rump compressed to the floor. She took a moment to look about herself, feeling up her limbs, her stomach, her chest too. "-I thought only mammals had these." She muttered, grunting when she accidentally brushed a talon over one of the nips. "-Ow, and they're sensitive as fuck. Why are they sensitive as fuck? This all just… I can't…"
"Oh they're sensitive alright." He shuddered, eyeing up the golden orbs.
Spyra hissed and flicked him on the nose with a talon.
"Ow. Right, sorry." He grunted. "I know this is a lot to take in all at once."
"No shit, getting shape-shifted by some magic-unicorn-shitbeam ain't exactly a common thing around here!" She sniffled. "And where are my wings?"
"They're, uh…" The Fallen leaned closer, frowning when Spyra's eyes darted from him, to her chest, and she clicked her tongue in offense.
"Normally I wouldn't mind, but damn, man, give a chick a second to adjust will ya'?"
"That's not what I'm doing. Hold on." He slipped his arms under hers, noting how the dragoness gasped under her breath, and her pupils shrunk from the entirely new feeling of being embraced in a different form.
She'd say nothing to confirm anything right now, but she did admit, it felt rather… good. This was a different kind of embrace than what she was used to with him.
The Fallen brushed his fingers over a patch of flesh just behind her scapulas, grazing the tips back and forth for a moment, his face scrunching up in concentration as he felt around.
"I asked for my wings, not a back-rub." Spyra muttered, leaning close to put her snout in his hair. She sniffed the soap-smell and closed her eyes, trying to focus on getting the sniffles to stop. "I did always complain about my height with you, huh?"
"Spyra, it isn't permanent unless you want it to be." The Fallen smirked when he found what he was looking for. Spyra grunted from a brief duo of painful stings, and then, with the sound of unfurling parchment, two slits appeared in the flat patchwork of her back-scales, and from each erected a long, yellow-orange stalk that grew and grew, unfolding joint-to-joint, like paper. "They fold inside, see? You learn to control it after some practice."
"I-It's not supposed to hurt." Spyra shook her head, whining when the last joint popped free, and the orange membranes of her wingspans draped outwards, revealing in full her immensely larger wings. "And they're bigger. Everything is bigger."
"Like I said, you get used to it, it stops hurting after a short time." The Fallen slipped away and sat on the floor in front of her, trying his best to stay focused on her face and not the new feminine assets she'd acquired. "Weapons aren't the only thing I have in this suit."
"Pfft, yeah, no shit." Spyra scoffed, huffing to rid herself of the last traces of her crying. She kept feeling around herself, exploring. "…Well, that wasn't there before, or that, or uh… or this. My ass feels like I'm sittin' on water-cushions."
"I know, isn't it hot-" The Fallen shut his lips when her glaring found a new spot to bore through. "-uhm, b-but only if you want it to be hot."
"How can this not be permanent? I'm… I'm different, I'm…" Spyra sighed. "-What do we do?"
"I'll change you back." The Fallen held up his gauntlet. "It's the special Ray Beam inside the vent-port, actually, a little invention of mine I like to call: The Boobif-"
"In a language I can understand?" She frowned.
"-The device that changed you goes both ways. Some people I meet across the Multiverse want to be- uh… more closer to me, to me myself. Biologically, I mean." He patted his cuirass. "The Ray did what it's supposed to do."
"And you're sure you can change it back?"
"Of course, I wouldn't lie to you about that."
"Heh, at least ya' didn't say you'd never lie to me period." She smirked.
"I can't say I'm perfect." He shrugged. "You on the other hand…"
"What about me?" Spyra was busy wiggling a talon in the naval depression that had appeared on her gut. She stuck her tongue out. "Ugh, dragon's aren't supposed to have worry about frikkin' belly-button lint."
"I think you look-"
"Bodacious, boobalicious, tasty, risque?" Conscience listed eagerly from over her shoulder at him, having reappeared. The Fallen glared.
"You look amazing." He said. "You always looked amazing, but I can't describe how much more amazing you look like this."
"That synonymous with anything?" Spyra sadly smirked, still calming herself down.
"You always were beautiful, but now you're fucking hot."
"…Hot, huh?" She rolled her eyes, huffing again and weighing her breasts about. "…I didn't ask for you to do this to me."
"Spyra, I'm telling you I'll change you back if that's what you want." He tapped a few keys on the console, and the little screen bleeped a confirmative note. He held out the screen for her, showing a holographic depiction of her in a T-pose in wire-mesh. It rotated, and a little sigil pulsed with blue life as the mesh granulated and reshaped into her quadruped silhouette. The dragoness tentatively reached out with a paw and brushed two talons through the hologram, as if to test if it was actually real. "You see? I just have to give you another small zap and that's it, you're you again. I'm willing to call today an accident and leave it at that if you are."
"There's a lot of 'if's in there." Spyra ran a paw through the hair-frills centering her forehead, letting them flap back forward with a cartilaginous snap. "...Isn't this what you wanted? You're drooling just from looking at me."
"I'm not drooling." He flicked spit as he spoke, grunting and wiping it away with his wrist. "-Alright I am, so what? You look amazing, more amazing than ever and I… I would like it, this, you as you are. But Spyra, my choice is irrelevant here. It's your body, and you do with it what you wish."
"Hmph." Spyra cleared her throat, patting her thighs. She wiggled her torso a bit, grinning as the Fallen's eyes started to glass over from seeing her tits jiggle. "It's kinda' fun being able to get reactions out of you."
"R-Reactions, uh, right…" The Fallen smacked his lips, he reached up with his gauntlet. "Let me change you back-"
"Wait, hold on just a second."
The Fallen staggered back as Spyra stood herself up. Her height looked impeccable beforehand, but when she was fully from the floor, back erect, wings spread and arms hung, she was utterly imposing.
The change had given her a stature of close to seven feet. Her arms were lithe, but streamlined with near-invisible chords of muscle that bulged and flexed every time she moved her limbs. Her legs had become long, defined towers, with thighs thick as tree-trunks, stood up by taloned feet that looked capable of shredding sheet metal.
All in all, coupled with that wicked-ass rack of hers, the Fallen was almost tempted to break his own gauntlet so that she wouldn't have a means to reverse it.
But no matter how strong his libido was when it came to draconic poon, nothing would ever overpower the voice in the back of his mind.
"You'd never force yourself on anyone." Conscience grunted by his side. "At least there's something good among all those lacking morals of yours."
Spyra looked to him for reassurance for a second, before she craned one of her new, long legs forwards, and took a single step. She wobbled, and the Fallen quickly settled his hands on her hips to keep her steady.
He wasn't expecting the weight, and so the armor's joints whined as the enhancer servos tightened, allowing him to manage the pounds Spyra had gathered from her transformation. She was heavy. Real big. It was really hard to concentrate, what with the air getting so bothered in here.
"See? Not so bad once you get used to it." He said lowly, helping her along as she trotted cautiously in a quick circle. The dragon's gelatinous purple rear kept bumping into his flank as her hips rolled. Again, the Fallen tried to control himself, but even now, he felt his muscles tightening up, his saliva glands began to overflow and his skin felt clammy.
That smell.
The perfume-like scent of pheromones was rife. Spyra was pluming the damn things.
I hate controlling myself.
"Tell me about it." Conscience scoffed. "This is a good view. I don't mean of her ass- though that's more than decent too -: but I do mean of the future! Look at her, she seems to like it, at least a little."
"It's kinda' the same as walking on my hinds. It's just more… orderly, I guess." Spyra smiled, trying to look tougher, only to fail as she stumbled on her heels. "Shut up." She giggled.
Spyra placed a claw on top of the Fallen's head to steady herself, her sniggering fit evolving into a more overwhelming episode as she clung to him desperately. He dealt with the feeling of having his skull being driven into the heart of his chest, wincing against the pressure created by her new and bigger muscles.
"Y-You should see your face." She laughed. "You look like a starved guy just offered a steak."
"Not far from the truth, said the peanut-gallery." Conscience scratched his chin. He met the Fallen's angry gaze with a shrug. "What? C'mon, you know I'm telling the truth."
"I can't help it, I'm sorry." The Fallen sighed as she let his head go, and cupped the side of her snout, giving attention to her scales with his thumb.
"This is less the mating-crazed dude I'm used to... Don't I look like how human females are supposed to look?" Spyra held his hand, her purple eyes going a bit glassy. She hiccupped a flame and blushed when the soot fled for the ceiling. "Don't I look better?"
"Yes." He said carefully, feeling the dragon's now huge and thick tail curling past her leg to constrict over his waist, the scales crackling as they brushed over the synthetic band-wrap of his armor. "-Yes all of those things that you said are correct."
"So why do you want me to change back?"
The Fallen gave a quiet laugh, both hands on her snout now.
Spyra gripped his wrists, initially leaning down for what she thought was a kiss he wanted to steal from her. But then, she felt a sting on her arm, and her world flashed white.
Bsshhckkk-~!
-She became drowned in a glowing mass of broiling energy, and it slowly began to simmer and shrink closer and closer down to the floor.
The Fallen followed the shifting material with his hands, only stopping once he was kneeling, and the light fluttered away, revealing the same quadruped dragoness he had grown so fond of.
"….Aww…" Conscience pouted. "Disappointing."
"…Oh." Stupefied, Spyra eventually forced her eyes off of his, and she held up a paw to wriggle the talons, her expression melded between glumness, relief, and perhaps something else. She twisted her neck around to examine her spinal scutes and wings, just to make sure, even giving the latter an experimental flick and curl. "...That sure as hell was an experience."
"Don't think about it too much. We're not there yet, like I said." The Fallen gave a shivering sigh, shooting her a reassuring smirk as he clicked a few holographic runes that appeared floating over his wrist-console's screen. "I'm sorry that happened, and I'm sorry if I frightened you."
"Pfft, frightened is one way of puttin' it, brutha'." Spyra chuffed, settling on her haunches to gather her bearings. "You've been apologizing a lot lately, ya' know that?"
The Fallen blinked, but Spyra made it very clear she was no longer comfortable talking about what had gone on. A studious few sniffs around her shoulders and a flex of her wings told him she was back to normal again, but the thoughtful depth now nested in her face was enough to destroy any complacency he might've garnered.
"There's been a lot to apologize for." He told her blankly, standing up, and moving towards the last piece of his armor he needed for the full rig.
His helmet. It was dark, and still snarling with the trifecta visor constantly leering out from between the curved, synthetic metal. He spiraled it in his grip and silently slid it over his head, adjusting the couplings with a few hisses and clicks.
Spyra sighed and played with her claws. The Fallen's suit gave off a confirmative hum, and the helm's visor erupted into a fervent glowing of neon green. It was this that looked down at her now, not the eyes she was used to from him.
"We should find the Guardians and plan our next move." His voice crackled out through the speakers. "We can talk more about this later."
"How cliché." She stuck her forked tongue out and followed after him. "And F.Y.I: that was my fault, yeah? I'm the one who was grabbin' shit I shouldn't have been."
"I wasn't even thinking about it."
"But now that I know what it is," Spyra watched the roll of his thin hips as she fell behind him. "-it's making me wonder."
"Yes?"
"Are you gonna' do what you did to me, to Cynder?"
He didn't answer her.
{🐉}
"You're handling this rather well."
"What?" Cyrila's head popped out from the washroom archway, water still dripping off her cyan coat, and pattering into the rug. "Says who? I can always appreciate a moment of victory, even if it came at the cost of my beautiful talons being soiled with all that snow-slush and the mud."
"Forgetting the dragons who are still lying dead at Solemn?" Ignitia clicked her tongue, glaring at her friend as she lounged on the room's futon. Cyrila only grunted before ducking back inside, the sounds of a brush scrubbing harshly against scales whispering out from the chamber.
"They wouldn't want us to dwell on it, wouldn't you agree?" She called back.
"Maybe maybe." Ignitia sighed and gazed out the guestroom window, looking for something to distract her from how unbelievable her friend was sometimes.
Oversight occupied the bottom flesh of the panes, as sad and broken looking as it had been the day prior, and all throughout the night. There were still some fires birthing spires of oily black smoke high into the otherwise lovely sky. The rain had at least stopped, and the overcast had been slain, leaving in its place a relatively open blue that edged golden orange the closer to the horizon one followed it.
That was in the direction of Avalar. The hints of its unnaturally beautiful airspace could be glanced at in peaks all across the southern coast and even in the Eastern Kingdoms. Nobody alive knew what the phenomenon of the valley's heavens was, or what was its cause.
The Cheetah rangers that hunted and lived in the enchanted forests that studded the landscape there had a name for it: 'I'aacha vlinn gor ma' –in their tongue. It literally meant 'The endless gaze of love'.
Ignitia's mood was already in the shitter, and that reminder of lore did nothing to improve it. Maybe it was because she was spiteful over her exchange of words with Terradora, or because she was being prevented from doing the things she enjoyed in life due to all the fighting.
But really, she liked to think the true cause was her relatively recent realization that she was clinically lonely.
And that she wasn't the only one.
"I cannot fathom the workload that's piled up back in Warfang. I've practically been absent for the last semester, and I'm poorer of it. I have no doubt that the Council is still aloof and drowned in bickering chaos. Knowing that all of this gets unloaded on your wings, Ignitia, makes it much more agitating." Cyrila said. "…I meant to ask you: has that aberrant cretin we hired as a secretary, Bilou, I think? Has he done anything about that warlock's curse? Or has he just coated all of our offices in disgusting mucus? I won't set a paw in that campus if he's still-"
"I'm worried about Volteera."
Again, Cyrila popped her head around the doorframe to look at Ignitia as she sulked on the cushions. The Ice Guardian sniffed and slipped back inside the chamber to continue scrubbing.
So much dirt, bacteria and other unsightly filth! It was all over her. Over every single inch. It needed to be dealt with immediately and completely.
Though, she doubted her so-reasonable explanations for such atrocities would sate the concerns of the angry Mole cleaners responsible for the castle's appropriations. When they found the washroom not only flooded, but covered in sud-drippings, their choices of words would hardly be flattering for the prior occupant. But, unfortunately for them, the Guardian of Ice had never cared for such unimportant subjects such as the personal feelings of underlings. Cyrila wing-shrugged at it.
It technically wasn't her room, after all. Besides, the cleaners should've been thanking her for providing the work that secured their jobs.
"I don't see how we can't be worried about her: she was whisked away by a pathological narcissist and psychopath." Cyrila huffed coldly. "But feigning personal differences: Volteera's as tough as any of us. This isn't the first time she was lost behind the enemy lines."
"So, you really are concerned too?" Ignitia watched the washroom's archway intensively, her wings splaying. "Cyrila?"
"Yesyes, did I not just express this?" Cyrila scoffed. "Honestly Ignitia, months of absence have befallen us, and the world's ending again, and this is how you greet me? With this mood of yours? It was as you said: celebratory words must be in proper store for us, granted, that I nearly died?"
"I tried to be warm hearted." Ignitia daggered her brows. "You were just being you as always, with that cold shoulder."
"Oh, I almost forgot about your affectionate Elemental humor. I hate it when you tell ice jokes." Cyrila scowled, tisking when she dropped her scrubbing brush. "It makes me feel belittled."
"You!" Ignitia cackled, startling Cyrila and making her drop the brush a second time where it rattled on the floor. "Are you being serious right now, or is it the head injury? I don't think you can use the second one as an excuse, seeing as the Fallen's medical device tended to that."
"What it is, is irrelevant! But that creature! That armored monstrosity with the irrevocably hideous attitude and that ugly snorting-laugh he does." The Ice Guardian guffawed, angrily snatching back her brush. "I've never seen anything like it. Terradora's descriptions of his pestilence must be apt."
Always the victim.
Ignitia growled and chewed on her thumb-talon.
"Was my spat with Terra' not enough, really?" She sighed, vulnerable.
"It was. I had no intention of spurring on the mule, as it were." Cyrila politely rebuked. "You said that it fell from the sky? The sky-warrior?"
"According to Spyra." Ignitia muttered.
"Yes, Spyra. That Purple Dragoness. She shames the Ancestors with her behavior. And her temper. Gods!"
"Oh for the love of god, just shut up." The Guardian of Fire cupped her face in her claws and huffed.
"Did you say something, Ignitia? I didn't hear you, I had suds in the ear-holes."
"It isn't important." When Cyrila peaked around the frame, Ignitia shot her the sharpest shit-eating-grin she could muster. "It's nothing, sister."
"Hmmph~." Cyrila upturned her snout and vanished back in the room. Water sploshed, and some of the small lake she was creating with all the puddles ran across the tiles and started to dampen the carpet past the divider bar.
Ignitia felt the harsh sting of her own words come back around and haunt her as the silence returned. She cupped her snout in a paw and huffed again.
She normally wasn't so venomous with other dragons, but the fight with Terradora had truly put her in an awful mood.
At least I am familiar with my own identity, the words echoed in her mind. Ignitia swallowed, anxiety gripping her chest. She really should have been scouring the castle right about now, searching for Terradora, to obstruct her path and apologize. But something was keeping Ignitia rooted to the spot with Cyrila to keep her company. Maybe it was because her patience had been so thoroughly drained.
"It's a lot to be afraid of when a dragon loses even a small block of time to circumstance and inconvenience." Cyrila's accented voice cut her from her thoughts. "I don't think anyone likes coming home to things being disordered and shifted from when they left. But now, I sound like Terra', and the last thing my life needs is the influence of a mutton-head like her."
"I just wanted her to come home." Ignitia said, her tone grim and heavy. "I just wanted us to be together for when this challenge came to our doorstep. Now it's here, and I'm too late."
"Ignitia-" Cyrila lost the words with an annoyed huff. She trotted out of the washroom and sat on the carpet, dabbing herself dry with a large towel she'd nabbed off the rack inside. "We've always talked about work and life like they're the same thing. I think what would be most instructive and healthy would be if we made just enough of a slice between the two. Because there is a line, I just feel like we've blinded ourselves to which side we stand upon."
"Maybe it's like that for most dragons." Ignitia shook her head, scratching at her crown with a hind paw. "But we're Guardians. We literally live by the book. Actually, we are the book. I guess I foolishly assumed when we were younger that that meant we wrote the rules, and then it turned out that the rules in actuality write us."
"You're being lethargic." Cyrila rebuked. "What really has you so bothered? It can't be what happened to me, and it can't be Terradora being… well, Terradora."
"Could it possibly be that my best friend and someone who I consider a sister is trapped in the claws of- of- what did you call her? A psychopath? How apt." Ignitia gave her an angry look, but forced it to soften. "And of course, what happened to you bothers me too. But right now we don't even know where in the woods of Avalar Volteera is specifically. Cynder could've hidden her almost anywhere. Twilight Falls, Evergreen Rise, the Elkyards? Anywhere! And it's driving me crazy!"
"I can see that."
"I don't know what I'll do with myself if-" Ignitia swallowed. "…if something happened to Volteera."
Cyrila rolled her tongue around in her mouth and took a second to examine over her talons for any scuffs she might've missed. She knew better than to promise anything, either to her own outlandish ideals of perfection, or for Ignitia's troubles.
"I wish I believed you when you said you cared."
The Ice Guardian gasped, a claw to her chest from the blow she had been dealt.
"I do care!" She squawked. "How could I not care about what's happening right now? Volteera is single-clawedly the most annoying, scatterbrained dragon I have ever met in my life! But… she's still…"
Cyrila had a look that someone would wear after swallowing engine coolant. When she failed to finish the sentence, Ignitia let out a groan of torture and buried her face in the cushions before her chest.
"That came out wrong." Cyrila licked her chops.
"Yes, it did." Ignitia muffled. "Gods, I just want to know that she's okay."
"If Cynder could tolerate me for as long as she did, than Volteera's alive and well." Cyrila admitted in a rare moment of humility. When Ignitia took her head out of the futon and stared, bug-eyed, at her, she wing-shrugged. "Leave it! I speak merely facts, plain and true!"
"I like it better when you talk that way, Cyrie'." Ignitia sighed with a tired grin.
"Ugh, you know I hate that pet-name. It's so demeaning for someone of my stature." Cyrila cringed, pawing awkwardly at the towel in her claws.
"Go over this with me one more time, while we're on the subject of work." The Fire Dragon requested. "Before your kidnapping, a consul with the queen herself?"
"Lilith's a confused one." Cyrila murmured. "A dragoness put on the spot too early and with too much haste. She wasn't ready to be queen, even with her record. I agree with Terradora's views on her personality- which I've discovered as abhorrently worthy of only pity, some days –but her views on Lilith's politics couldn't be further from the truth. For a dragon whose personal life is invaded by them, politics bend to her will, and so too does the city guard."
"Maybe they used to." Ignitia shut her eyes.
"None survived?"
"Perhaps a clawful."
"I know the eldest of Crownhorn's houseguard yet lives." Cyrila fluffed her wings. "The keykeeper to all the gates and doors in the castle. I believe Terra' met him already. He's an amputee, missing a wing and utterly flightless."
"Did Terra' mention him?" Ignitia asked, shooing away a trio of little hummingbirds that had slipped into the chamber from a small vine-crusted crevice in the ceiling. The birds squeaked in offense and quickly zipped back through the gap like colorful dust being sucked down a funnel.
"No, but judging by the rather… unpleasant adjectives I heard him mumbling in her presence, I'd say the two are somewhat familiar." The Ice Guardian watched where the birds had gone, before neatly folding her towel and settijg it down on the dresser top. Ignitia took a moment to glance incredulously between it and the messy bathroom floor. "What?"
"You're so eccentric." Ignitia nuzzled at her. "Anyway, I think I know who you're talking about."
"His name's Razoruk." Cyrila harrumphed. "And we need him to give us his key."
"Didn't Terradora already unlock the throne room doors?" Ignitia quizzed as she slid off the futon.
"We don't need the throne room key." Her cold friend shook her head. "Lilith found something before the battle was in commitment, something she only told me and Volteera of before she locked herself inside those chambers."
"This sounds serious." Breathed Ignitia. "But if whatever it is has to do with the throne room, there's only two-"
"It isn't the Vision Pool." Cyrila relieved her. "But it could be in danger soon if nothing is done. There's something underneath the city, something Malefora hatched a scheme to place there before Urukal's army assaulted the gates. Lilith was stringent on details, but I know this: it terrified her enough that she risked abandoning her own castle and all its patrons. That in and of itself is enough to turn my crown."
"Mine too." Ignitia stared thoughtfully. "It's in the Ro-"
BAM~! –the guest room door flew wide open and slammed into the wall, making Ignitia yip and Cyrila shriek.
"Volteera-?!" Cyrila clapped a paw over her snout, freezing (with no pun intended) when she saw Ignitia gawking at her.
"Hey, lookie' who I found all bushy-tailed and shit." Spyra smirked, her tail wagging as she trotted into the room like she owned the joint. That sass. Cyrila was immediately offended, as she collected herself from nearly jumping out of her of her scales. "'Sup, Queen Freeze?"
"I hope to god you're not speaking to me." Cyrila narrowed her eyes, lowering her guard.
"Why? You got a problem, Purple-Winged and Pointy?" Spyra gave a challenging purse of her chops. "Listen Chikita, I didn't get a whole lot outta' everything you were blabbin' about back in the mountains, but from the bits I gathered, I think I got enough of a picture. Lemme' just put it out there before someone gets hurt: the self-induced god complex? Uh uh, nope, Spyra no likey, we ain't getting along with that in the way."
"Then that's going to be a problem." Ignitia sighed.
"Are you simply observing this?!" Cyrila shouted, gesturing at Spyra as she gave Ignitia an incredulous face of typical Ice Dragon-brand disbelief. "Your own student is talking to us like we're two of her stupid, smelly little friends! Forgetting that she has also barged in on our privacy!"
"Oi', I don't have a whole lot of friends, but I can tell ya': they ain't smelly." Spyra frowned, sizing Cyrila up from toe-talon to chin. "And you know, now that I'm getting a good look at you, I'm pretty freaked out. You look like a dragon had sex with an icicle."
Thmp~!
-Cyrila's upcoming outburst died in a whistling breath when the floor thundered right beside her, making the poor Ice Guardian yelp and leap away on her heels like a startled cat.
Ignitia had rolled onto the ground and was hysterically laughing.
"-I-I- AHA-~! I-I needed that-~!" She heaved.
"Ignitia!" Cyrila blushed with grit fangs. "Stop that immediately!"
"Yeah, I knew it." Spyra plopped her rump on the carpet and polished her knuckles on her chest scutes. "I should be in comedy."
"Evidently," Said a male voice behind her, bootfalls clomping onto the floor as a fourth party quietly ducked into the room. "I don't think I've ever seen Ignitia laugh that hard."
"…Ohhhh, ha… y-you might be right." Ignitia heavenly sighed, rolling onto her flank. She shocked even Spyra when the Fire Guardian purposefully angled her plump hip, and laid her chin in her paw, her wings preening as she gazed at the human standing in the doorway. "Hello, Fallen~."
"At least be subtle, god damn it." Spyra glared.
"Fantastic, the sky-creature's attitude appears no better." Cyrila tisked. The Guardian put her foot down, shooting Spyra's musing expression off her face as she looked down angrily on the smaller hen. "And as for you, Purple Dragon, there is much you need to learn not only in ways of respect, but of maturity."
"Pfffft, bae', I think I got the maturity part covered." Spyra giggled, her tail lashing around the Fallen's armored ankle to yank him closer. "Ain't that right, babe'?"
"If you say so." The Fallen took off his helmet, and offered Cyrila a smile. "Hello again, Guardian of Ice."
"…Hmmph." Cyrila turned her snout up on Spyra, turning fully to address the human properly for the very first time since the mountains. She was almost two heads taller than him, but he was still level enough that she didn't have to look down, at least, which she admired. "Maybe I misjudged a small sliver of your temperament, sky-alien."
"Fallen's fine, please." He coughed. "And might I say: what lovely, bubbly and blue hindquarters you have. I'd love to use my power tool to repaint them a paler shade one of these evenings."
Thmp~!
As Spyra rolled around on the floor, her cackles almost covered up the sound of Ignitia making that same, tortured, and aroused moan from the mountain pass. Cyrila's jaw dropped when she saw the Fire Guardian squeezing her thighs together and sinking her teeth into the carpet, her amber eyes locked- half-lidded –with lust onto the human's cuirassed chest.
"Don't take this the wrong way, because I know we just met, but based on what I've seen of you," The Fallen leaned closer, making Cyrila flinch back in shocked horror. "-you might have some stuff you have to get used to with this group."
"H-How dare you-" Cyrila couldn't even form a full sentence.
"-Oh, ohmygawd- t-that was fuckin' hysterical-!" Spyra groaned, her laughing fits slowly starting to ebb away for tired heaves. "-I-I'm telling ya', you, me, human-boi'? Comedy acts, every Thursday evening, we'd be rich…!"
"Ignitia? Ignitia?" A deep, feminine voice bellowed out from the hallway. A second later, and Terradora's massive frame appeared in the arch. She tucked her wings and started to squeeze through, giving the Fallen a snarl. "Move, parasite, I'm coming inside."
"That's what she said." Conscience giggled.
"Uh-huh." The Fallen lazily lumbered back a step, and Terradora growled as she reeled the full length of her tail inside with her.
"Oh how on par! Let's just let everyone inside the room!" Cyrila cried. "Did you bring friends, Terradora? Or perhaps the entire remnants of the army here? Well, why not go fetch them too?!"
"Ignitia, you and I must speak, the words we left one another with were not professional, and I must apo-" Terradora froze mid-sentence when she saw Cyrila's horrified look. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"N-Not you-" Cyrila blubbered.
"And why are you rolling around like a cat?" Terradora blinked at Spyra, getting angrier with each new 'thing' she found before her. "And why do you look so smug?"
"It's com-" The Fallen started to say.
"And- Ancestors, Ignitia?!" Terradora cried, her expression falling into something of terrified awe. "W-Why- Why are you humping the carpet?!"
Thmp~! –and Spyra was on the floor again, cackling.
Nobody moved, even as poor Ignitia gyrated her plump, amber hips into the flooring, steam forming factory-quality pillars out of her snout as she gazed drunkenly up at Terradora, lost in a miasma of developing sweat and unbearable heat penetrating her body.
"….Mmmmmheelppmeeee~…" She moaned, muffled by the fibers of the décor of foot-level choice.
"I was going to say," Terradora blinked when the Fallen held his finger up. "-it's complicated."
{🐉}
"This is where the old geezer was hanging out before we took off." Spyra said, poking around the abandoned and dark armory. Nothing but vacant forges, tired anvils and empty racks were there to greet her, the Guardians and the Fallen. "Maybe he had a stroke and fell off the palisades."
"Spyra." Ignitia blushed, coming back from the forge station she'd been checking around. "To Cyrila's earlier point, could you please try to be a bit more respectful to your elders? I'm not demanding anything, it is merely a kind request."
"…*sigh* -Alright alright, jeez'…" Spyra groaned like a teenage girl told to do chores. The Fallen kept his smirk to himself, but did make a note of it.
"We should keep looking." Cyrila said from the stairwell leading back upstairs to the castle. She had refused to step foot in the old armory the second she saw even a hint of all the soot-dust down here. "Have any of you tried over there? Or there? How can a full-grown drake simply disappear into thin air?"
"You're a trip, lady." Spyra snapped.
"He isn't here." Ignitia's wings drooped. "This would go faster, checking every chamber, if Terra' were helping us too."
"Hardly an option with the way she stormed out." Cyrila sat on the bottom step and started grooming one of her paws with an astute expression. Everything with her was matter-of-factly. The Fallen couldn't help that the first word he kept thinking of with the Guardian, which was snob. "I was almost out the door with her."
"I told you that things had become much more stressful since we saw each other last." Ignitia shook her head.
"And that has earned you a floor fetish?"
"Ha! Sister, lemme' tell you something: what you think you saw back there? It ain't got nothing to do with floors." Spyra cackled, her musings sharply bouncing around the forge chambers. She kicked a small smelting pot over as she trudged around, idly nudging it to roll away with a hollow ring of iron. When it hit the base of one of the bricked walls, the normally minute thumm –was exasperated by the eerie silence, and so a crash of thunder was born instead throughout the shadowy depths of the castle's bowels. "Damn, this place is huge. It must look like the Warfang markets down here when people are actually doin' their jobs."
"That's quite an accurate summation of how the forges were right before the battle." Cyrila nodded, looking about the recesses between the various forge stations. "Alas, such no longer is. But that is quite alright: all of that pounding and metal clinking will give a hen a headache."
The floor was infested with articulately curved and dead-looking creepers that crunched under their heels when stepped upon. This was overlooked by draconic heads carved into the stonework walls via brass etching, each held opened mouths with baskets formed to resemble bronze tongues slipping from their gullets. Only some of them were filled with sconces, and even fewer of those were lit.
"I believe the term is 'Spooky'." Ignitia giggled, sidling up to the Fallen as he finished examining another banded smelt pot the size of his torso on the ground. "I warn you, that where we ultimately are going, it only gets darker."
"I've dealt with places far worse than this." The Fallen grimly murmured. "Crownhorn's understructure speaks to a lot of those places for me. But this place is just lonely, it isn't haunted."
"Both are due pity." Ignitia nodded, looking about his armor with appraising eyes. "You're taller in this outfit of yours."
"And stronger." He grinned, picking up the solid-iron pot with one hand to lift it up by the rim. The metal groaned under his grip, and tiny whines of servos whispered out from the suit. Ignitia smiled at him. "We'll put it all to good use I'm thinking. So, where else can we look for this guy?"
"He shouldn't be this elusive to begin with. What a waste of time!" Cyrila started complaining, and Ignitia immediately stepped forward to try and calm her down.
Watching the rambling exchange for a moment, Spyra groaned quietly, and looked around the forge for something to preoccupy herself with.
She hummed and moved into one of the forge stations, galloping over to an opened furnace-throat that exposed an old coal bed. It still stunk of the brimstone-like scent weaponsmithing gave off here, and it repulsed her.
"Blegh." She shot a candle's flame out her nose. "Place stinks, it's dark as hell, and boring. So so boring."
Normally, back in the swamps, rampant episodes of Spyra-brand boredom had been remedied by nature-treks through the marshes, picking fights with giant insects, and setting things on fire.
The last thought spoke to her inner pyro, and so, with a wicked smile, Spyra hopped back, stood on her hinds and oriented her face for the furnace-throat.
"This might go a bit quicker if we calm down." The Fallen patiently quipped to the Guardians.
"How dare you attempt to make demands of me." Cyrila harrumphed. "Ignitia, make the sky-alien appropriate the necessary apologies I so deserve. I will not stand for this disrespect."
"Heh-heh." The Fallen put his gauntlets on his hips and tried to ward away a comeback by smiling up at the ceiling. "If only you didn't have the curviness I so seek to penally-smite, I could talk up an insult to make you cry for your mother."
"Do all of your kind try to communicate with others through such mumbling?" Cyrila scoffed.
"Hey guys! I think we need some fi-yah~!"
Spyra cupped her chops, and the roaring whoosh of birthed flame announced her actions simultaneously as the blindingly bright cone of Fire that whipped out of her mouth.
The flames shot directly into the furnace-throat, and ignited the fuel-mix lying about inside. The whole machine lit amber and a cluster of exhaust-pipes spidering up into the ceiling squeaked as little reams of steam escaped their notches and rattled their tubes.
The forge illuminated the whole station a bloody orange, and as Spyra cackled at the entertaining display, she pranced back on her own heels-
-And she hit something behind her.
Jumping, the purple dragon scurried around and away, and looked at the previously dark recess of the station. An old, chiseled and angry-looking snout of a dragon frowned back at her.
"Holy shit-!" She shrieked, sprinting out of the station in a hurry. "-You're full of it, Fallen, this place is haunted as fuck!"
"That isn't a ghost." Ignitia breathed in relief. The forge screamed only for a brief moment longer, before the steam calmed, and the light slightly dimmed. The forge settled into its place with a bestial huff, pulsing lowly, "If you could please reveal yourself, friend?"
"…I'm not your friend." –Rasped a crackly, aged voice. Claws clicked on the forge floor as a dragon slowly slid from the darkness, his body clinging to the shadows, as if they could not detach from one another. Razoruk's atrophied form quivered, and his yellow fangs remained dull despite the glare of the forge-fire. "I am not a friend to any of you. Leave."
"We haven't even told you what we want." The Fallen called over, stepping to put himself beside Ignitia.
"I know what you want. You want my keys." Razoruk croaked, his sole wing twitching as he tried and failed to splay it on its ruined joints. He snarled and whipped his tail into the forge station's security wall with a dull thud. "Damn my body."
"Old one, do not interfere with matters of the state." Cyrila raised a brow, still not leaving her spot on the stairs. "We are the Guardians of Warfang, and our authority is absolute in times of war. Help us help you, if you would."
"Razoruk, my name is Ignitia-"
"I know who you are." Razoruk growled. "I know who all of you are. I said the same to the Guardian of Earth, before she accosted me, and assaulted me."
Oh Terra'… Ignitia sighed tiredly. Can't you ever try to talk to someone before you just punch them in the mouth?
"Well, Razoruk, you don't have to fear such behavior from me or my fellows." Ignitia smiled warmly. "We only seek to help the city, and now that the siege is lifted, we must attend to any other issues that might be present here."
"That are present." Cyrila corrected, almost stepping off the last level of the flight and quickly stopping herself. "We need your key to the Roseways."
The Fallen and Spyra had only been able to get general information about the Roseways, but aside from the mystery of whatever was going on down there, that might've been all they needed.
The Roseways were a combination of artificial catacombs, underground roads, and naturally forming cavities created by the massive rootballs of all the plants growing throughout Crownhorn Castle.
"No." Razoruk snapped, his breath wheezing as his cloudy eyes grew fierce. "You'll do more harm than good if you try to interfere with Queen Lilith's duties. She's the only one who can talk to the plants, and rid the land of corruption."
"What is he talking about?" The Fallen asked.
"The Dark Master, sky warrior." Razoruk glared. "For she poisons everything she touches. The only one who can undo that magic is Lilith."
"What magic? I don't appreciate the vagueness." The Fallen frowned. "If Malefora's put something inside the Roseways, then we can't just rely on your judgment-call and assumptions. Not to be rude, but the only thing I know about this Lilith character, is that she likes locking herself in rooms while war eats the city she's supposed to be chaperoning. You'll have to excuse my lack of trust."
"Lilith saved Oversight! And we gave all of our lives to do it!-" Razoruk shouted, his voice cracking into a dusty cough. When he recovered, he wiped his chops on a paw and snarled at them. "-I am the last of the Crownhorn Guard. They all died stopping the Dark Army from getting in the first time, and Lilith was at that spearhead. If it weren't for her delaying the advance, the Dark Army would've overrun the streets days before you all even knew of the true danger."
"…Mm, Boulderzilla didn't mention none of that." Spyra muttered, sheepishly emerging from where she had been hiding behind Ignitia. The purple dragoness coughed. "By the way, uh… I-I wasn't really scared. I just wanted you all to think… I wanted the old guy to think… or the ghosts… fuck me." She gripped her own face.
"I thought we were trying to be charismatic." Ignitia whispered to the Fallen. "I realize that he's a bit of a difficult drake to get along with, but we can't let his pigheadedness influence our strategy here."
"You were trying to be charismatic. Up until that little serenade he just gave, I honestly thought he was senile." He pointed out, holding up his hand when she flared a look at him. "Just let me try, okay?"
"Probably for the best anyhow. Ya'll don't trust me with first impressions anyway." Spyra lazily kicked her hind leg.
"We have met before." Razoruk sneered. "I can hear everything you all are saying. I'm not that old."
"Boo-hoo, gramps, it's not like I just wasted my day trying to set up a fund for some new fuckin' hearing-aids for ya' or nothing."
"Spyra!" Ignitia gasped.
"We need him to give us a key! What are you all doing?" Cyrila gawked.
"More than you~!" Spyra barked back. "What, the dust is gonna' blemish one of your nails?"
"Everyone be quiet."
The Fallen used the volume of his helm's speakers, so the interjection trumped all but the roar of the forge Spyra had ignited. All of the dragons looked to him, and the bickering silenced.
"Thank you." He sighed, dialing down the helm's volume. "Razoruk, whatever Lilith has or hasn't done isn't important right now, and whatever Terradora did to you is irrelevant. Oversight still needs help, because it can't overcome Malefora on its own."
"…Was that supposed to convince me?" Razoruk frowned.
"No, but it was to distract you." Spyra happily muffled, prancing away from the elder with a small brass ring clenched in her teeth, the cluster of keys latched to it jingling with each step. "Thanks for the charity, shit-breath."
"My keys!" Razoruk howled.
"Unorthodox, but effective I suppose." Ignitia took the ring from Spyra's mouth. Evidently, since Terra' had stolen the throne room key, old Raz' wasn't letting the rest out of his sight.
At least until now, that was.
"If you interrupt the Queen's efforts, you'll kill her! And doom the land!" Razoruk pleaded, his joints cracking as he started barreling for Ignitia. "I won't let you endanger her-"
"Stop." The Fallen stepped in his path, but that wasn't what made the elder screech to a halt.
Razoruk had no idea what the Doomblaster was, or how it worked specifically. But he did know the basic silhouette of a Mole flintlock pistol, which the weapon somewhat resembled.
The Fallen half-pointed it at his chest, motionless otherwise as he pinned the dragon with both the gun and the glowing green stare of his visored helm.
"We don't have time for him." He clarified when Ignitia raised a paw to try and calm him down. He already was calm: it was the impatience driving this. "Razoruk, step away from us and stay where you are."
"A mercy then." Razoruk's jaw quivered as he sulked away from the human.
"I just don't want to shoot you."
"If this were ten years ago, we would see about that."
"Unfortunately for you: it isn't. I'm not asking again." He looked over his pauldron at Cyrila. "Take us to where we have to go."
"-Wait-"
"I said back off." The Fallen directly aimed the barrel of his weapon for right between Razoruk's eyes.
"-I'm going with you!" The old dragon cried, defiantly staring past the gun and at the human's visor. "You'll have to kill me if you think I'll let you near the Queen unsupervised as easily as you stole my keys."
"I don't seem ta' remember this bein' a negotiation, you geriatric freak." Spyra growled. "Just let us do our jobs, yeah? It'll all be fine by tomorrow evening, and you can rest your whittle' wrinkly head on the nest-pillow safe and sound."
"Spyra, let's not be completely authoritarian here." Ignitia suggested with an encouraging- frankly disarming –smile. "The gentledrake was treated rather harshly by Terra', and now we come along and… well, we do this. I think we can at least allow him to keep an eye on what we intend to do, even if he doesn't have the choice of stopping us."
"No fuckin' way, he smells like mothballs, I don't want him prancing around next to me!"
"No, she's right." The Fallen lowered his gun. "It's his castle more than ours. I agree with Ignitia, but whatever is down there must be dealt with. I think we can agree to do that together?"
The human looked to Razoruk now, to which the elder dragon snorted, allowing a lick of flame to flash briefly before his muzzle. The lack of objection was good enough for the Fallen, and so he turned on a heel, and started stalking towards the stairwell and Cyrila.
"Alright then, let's move." He held his gauntlet out for Spyra. The giggling purple heroine galloped after him after another quick glare at Razoruk.
"They make an odd pair." Cyrila mumbled as Ignitia passed beside her. "You still haven't told me everything that's going on."
"The Fallen's shaken things up quite a bit. He and Spyra are- w-well, I'll tell you when we're done saving the world again." Ignitia swallowed, trying to snap the subject's spine as she waited for Razoruk to shuffle after them solemnly. "I'm pleased to have some accordance, Houseguard, we just want to help."
"I'm used to the West imposing its will on us." Razoruk glumly remarked, sneering when Cyrila quickly side-stepped to avoid touching him. "The End Times find us when the Guardians of Warfang strong-arm the Houseguard of Oversight too."
"As I said, we're only doing what must be done." Ignitia sighed.
"Lady Terradora said the same thing." Razoruk doused his chuckle with venom. "While strangling me."
"You're quite fortunate that that's all she did." Ignitia quipped.
"You sound certain." Cyrila hummed.
"The last dragon that made Terra' angry before me got stabbed in the eye." Ignitia smiled unpleasantly. "I suppose I've enough respect from her to avoid such a fate, even with what was said."
Razoruk had gone very quiet behind them.
{🐉}
"It's stuck!" Cyrila yipped, jamming her fist into the turn-slot. The lock flickered heavily as she tried to force it with her wrist. "It's really stuck!"
"Let me try." Ignitia volunteered with a chipper smile. Cyrila didn't like it. She didn't like it that she was angry and Ignitia wasn't angry either. That just didn't sit right.
"You stole my keys and cannot even use them?" Razoruk sighed. "They push in."
"I know that!" Cyrila growled, shooting a baleful look over her wing at the stubborn elder. "Would it have been so much easier, if we hadn't nurtured an obsessive compulsion to lock every single gate and door in this castle?"
"Choo-choo, baby, I hear the Excuse-Train is on route." Spyra snickered. "Hey, Mech-Boy, do ya' mind?"
"Excuse me." The Fallen smiled politely at Cyrila, startling the Guardian enough so that she scrambled away from the lock.
BSSHHKK~!
–The great throne room doors moaned as the blow sent them flipping in towards their own guts. Each panel hit the walls inside the hall in a pair of stupendous crashes. Dust billowed everywhere, nesting with the thundering echo of metal impacting stone.
The Fallen wiped at an invisible scuff on his pauldron, and shuffled through the arch, Spyra trotting just behind him.
"Good thing you did it before me, dude. I bruise like a banana, and I don't have all that fancy plating." She chuckled at him.
"I'm always one to get the door for a lady." The Fallen sighed, taking a moment to glance around the chamber. "…I take it Lilith has a thing for plants?"
"A thing." Razoruk mimicked grumpily under his breath. The elder tucked his sole remaining wing to his back and angrily limped between the two Guardians as he passed inside. He craned an eye at the rows of hanging plants practically turning the ceiling into a forest. "Some of those roses are older than me. Lilith cares for the gardens of the generations past who planted them."
"Shhffft, ack-! Shfffttt-!" Spyra shook her head, sneezing. "It's so friggin' humid in here, what gives?"
"It could be a hunch," The Fallen mumbled, starstruck as the forest of planters invading the pillared hall's flanks overwhelmed his eyes. "but it might be because we just stepped into the Amazon."
"The fuck is an Ama-zon? Sounds like some weird-ass type of shape nobody's ever cared about." Spyra wiggled her nose. "I hate geometry."
"We need the moisture to keep the ecosystem healthy." Razoruk growled, taking a moment to step between two of the pillars. He nudged a few massive frond-leaves back into their place within the planter, scattering a trio of little cherry-sized hummingbirds that immediately fled into the nest of flowerpots hanging above them. "Plus, the hummingbirds thrive in hydrated biomes."
With all the birds flittering between them on quietly pattering wings, the pots resembled some kind of naturally erected city literally sprawling over their heads. Some of the hummingbirds paused in their flight paths to glance down at the newest arrivals. One of them zipped over to inspect Spyra, buzzing in front of her face back and forth as it dodged her attempts to swat it.
"-Ah-! Jeez'-! Back off, you little shit!" Spyra squawked.
"I think it likes you." The Fallen smirked, holding out a plated finger for another of the birds to poke at with its beak. When he wiggled it, the hummingbird zipped over the knuckle and imposed itself before his visor. He stood still and let it sniff about, before it took off back the way it came. "They're harmless, Spyra, calm down."
"Get off-!" She growled. A lick of flame crackled out, and the frightened bird squeaked before fleeing under one of the palm ferns. "Thing was trying to eat my face or somethin'."
"Oh my." Ignitia murmured in wonder, testing the weight of a frond hanging over the aisle with her tail. She bent over to sniff at a Lilly poking out from a grassy breach in the floor, oblivious as the poor Fallen stared with silent hunger at her crimson haunches. "Oh, this is all so beautiful!"
"It's a bit too hot, if you ask me." Cyrila clicked her tongue. She held up a paw and breathed a cone of glowing frost over her wrist. "I see the throne's empty of our charge."
"What kinda' queen doesn't sit in her own throne?" Spyra trotted down the damp, blue rug running down the aisle, her heels giving off wet plops in the serene haze of the chamber.
There was a sprawling blossom-tree birthed from the floor behind a silver and onyx throne. Dappling rays of sunlight cascaded through the painted skylights overhead, the petals falling from the tree giving tiny daggers of black as they acted to shade their bellies from the luminance.
"If you won't respect me, then respect Queen Lilith. She has many duties." Razoruk chided, sadly presiding before the throne. "…As did her mother before her."
"Oversight's succession must be pretty long." The Fallen edged a brow as he noticed a tiny flashing alert-rune in the motion-detector box of his helm's HUD. The readings for lifeforms were going crazy from all the birds and insects living in the plants, but aside from that, the magicka detectors were spinning something fierce.
Not all the signatures he was picking up went idle when he restricted the size-filters. One of them- the vitals of a dragon –emanated from the far side of the room, through an arch and stairwell descending behind the blossom tree into a lower level.
"I've got her, in case you all were wondering." He said.
"Got her? Got who?" Cyrila sniffed.
"My suit's systems can detect the presence of others in a short distance. I'm seeing a dragon's life signs just down that way." The Fallen trailed as he played with the filters. "…And I'm seeing a whole bunch of other weird stuff."
"Like what? Does this mean we get to kick more ass today?" Spyra gleefully hopped, her tail wagging much like a placated dog's.
"Let me understand this. Fallen, you call yourself? You are saying that this… attire," Cyrila distastefully turned her snout up at the suit as she gestured a paw. "-is enchanted with wards of life-sight?"
"Holy crap, I'm surrounded by nerds." Spyra huffed under her breath.
"It's not entirely magic, most of it is run by machines called computers." The Fallen nodded, ignoring the commentary. "It's usually meant to alert me of danger, but in cases like this, or when I'm hunting that delicious derg-poon, it can give me a head's up."
"Excuse me?" Cyrila crinkled her nose. "What exactly is… 'derg-poon'-?" She tried mimicking. Spyra snickered.
"It would be best if you didn't ask, my sister, you'll be doing yourself a world of favors." Ignitia sighed, blushing.
"…Wait… that last bit is slang for- oh, h-how- how dare you!" Cyrila gasped, a paw to her breast as she reclined from the Fallen with insult. "And in the presence of a fairer hen!"
"Yeah, 'cause y'know, me and Ignitia are just a buncha' dirty boondock dykes in the uneducated corner, right?" Spyra testily guffawed.
"Speak for yourself." Ignitia grinned in a rare moment of spice, winking.
"He likes vag', sista', and I can't blame him." Spyra laughed, encouraged by her mentor. "So, you better get used to it. Apparently, my boi' here has a thing for slipping anything but his own species the sausage, particularly dragons."
"…Dragons…?" Cyrila was still struggling to connect the dots. The poor Guardian's eyes weren't working right. They flickered, like nodes on a malfunctioning circuit-board, as terrible images flooded her mind. She gasped again. "…Y-You mean, he… with…?"
"Menn-neeee tiyym-za. Yeah, I've had human for supper a lot the last month." Spyra flexed her brows and licked her teeth, experiencing a momentary shiver that sent her wings quivering. "And he is ssooooo delicious… Mhmmmm~…"
"Careful, or I might eat you this time." The Fallen mumbled. He grabbed one of her haunches and squeezed, making the dragoness growl with pleasure.
Cyrila looked like she was about to throw up.
"Your Majesty?" Razoruk called, completely ignoring the nonsense as he limped up the steps and lingered past the throne. "…My Queen?"
"She normally doesn't leave the throne during the day I take it." The Fallen said to Cyrila, releasing Spyra's haunch, much to the latter's disappointment. When the Ice Guardian just flapped her chops and squeaked at him, he blinked and turned to Razoruk. "She's got to be down in wherever those stairs go to. What's down there?"
"The Royal Vision Pool." Razoruk quipped impatiently. "She isn't supposed to be down there…"
A frightened yelp echoing up the flight raised all of their heads.
"Queen Lilith!" Razoruk cried, cursing as he tripped over his own limp and almost ate the bottom steps. He bounded down the flight in panic, following the sharp noise.
"Things always gotta' get interesting." Spyra huffed beside the Fallen as they hurried after the elder dragon. "You ready, dude?"
"Very." The Plunger of Doom finished materializing in his grip, and it swung with his arms as he jogged. Cyrila took one look at it and went boggle-eyed.
"Is that a plunger?!" She squawked.
"Later!" Ignitia rebuked. "Run faster!"
Glowing pink light shrouded Razoruk's shadow as he leaped off the flight, and sprinted into an ornate archway ahead. Another shrill yip from a very feminine voice echoed down the hall, almost drowned out by Ignitia and Cyrila as their heavy forms landed past the stairs with deep thuds. The ground trembled when the Fallen's armored heels pounded down behind them.
"My Queen! Are you hurt? Are you well? Why aren't you on your throne?" Razoruk babbled, his torrent of worries pitching.
"Oh-no-! W-Wait-? T-Tali'?! Tali' where did you go, what's happening?!"
In the center of the chamber stood the marble-rimmed Vision Pool itself, and standing on her hinds, clenching its top and dipping her head inside was a dragon of greens and reds with eight silvery horns.
"Come back!" Lilith cried into the swirling magicks of the Pool, her horrified face lit in a pink starkness from the glow. "…O-Oh no… Oh no…"
"My Queen?" Razoruk's ghostly voice trailed.
Lilith yelped again and spun around defensively, her chest scutes pumping as her heart's beating thudded in her throat.
"Razoruk?" Lilith gasped. "-W-What are you doing in here? I wasn't expecting you!"
Lilith noticed the Guardians, Spyra, and the strange armored being standing among them. A third yip louder than the last cracked the still air sharply and sent her off the ground by almost two feet.
"Who are all of you?! C-Cyrila? Lady Cyrila? A-And Lady Ignitia, and-" Lilith's face slowly dawned in wonder as her eyes settled on Spyra, who herself, edged a lower-lid, disturbed from the sudden, and rather creepy interest.
"…It's rude to stare, yeah?" Spyra coughed into her paw.
"The Purple Dragon." Lilith breathed. "The same who saved my people…"
"That was a team effort, baby." Spyra bumped her hip into the Fallen's leg.
"Hello." He waved at the queen sheepishly.
"...Is that the alien that everyone is saying fell from the sky?" Lilith blinked. "The Fallen, yes?"
"Huh," He put his hands on his hips and nodded with satisfaction. "at least somebody has a polite greeting for me today. A pleasure to meet you, Queen Lilith. Might I say, that your curvaceousness is as intoxicating as the lovely aroma coming off of your scales? I'd be down to mine your gold any day."
"Oh my god." Cyrila gave him a disgusted look.
The poor Queen had the expression of a mule interrupted mid-grazing by a foreign object being rammed up its ass. Ignitia raggedly cleared her throat when a small trail of giggles started to creep out of her snout. She blushed tomato-red and scratched at her snout.
Interestingly, no retort, scalding, or reprimanding left her.
"Told ya' he's cute." Spyra winked.
"…I-I…" Ignitia stammered, squeezing her thighs together. She looked away. "… O-Oh my."
"What has happened, my Queen?" Razoruk bowed lowly. "What was wrong with the Pool?"
"…-E-Er nothing." Lilith gave a fake smile, taking a few steps back from the strange human. "-Nothing was wrong at all! I was just… eh… checking it. You know, to see if it was… working correctly. Yes."
Razoruk blinked a few times at her stupidly, but ultimately let it go.
"…Of course, my lady, but… what of the ritual? The danger?" He pressed.
"-Taken care of!" Lilith's expression sharply plummeted when the elder's face bloomed in disbelieving shock. "-I-I mean- s-s-semi, semi-taken-care-of. I'm working on it… Uh, Lady Cyrila! It's good to see you again! You are unharmed."
"Yes, a timely intervention was necessary and executed by competent souls." Cyrila shook her head to clear it, glancing at the Fallen. "I've returned to assist you, as was promised."
"And what of Lady Volteera?"
Ignitia's blush faded, and a terribly grim look populated her face as her wings and tail drooped.
"…I see." Lilith muttered. She sat on her haunches, looking at the Pool over her shoulder with a mysterious feeling of worry before turning back to them. The poor dragoness was flustered beyond reprieve, Spyra could tell just by the flushing on her snout. "I'm certain your comrades will come to her aid as they did yours."
"With hope, of course." Cyrila huffed, ignoring Ignitia's angry glare.
"Well, it is a pleasure to finally stand in the company of the Purple Dragon, and the sky-warrior who saved my city." Lilith tentatively stepped forwards, placing herself before Spyra, where she graciously put a paw forward and bowed her crown. "I am Queen Lilith, Lady of the Realm of Vines. And you are?"
"…Uh, yeah, name's Spyra." Spyra scratched at an exposed fang awkwardly. "Wassup?"
Lilith cocked her head at the strange dialogue, but didn't pursue it. Next, she stepped over to the Fallen, examining him closely from helmet to toe.
"And you are the Fallen, correct?" Lilith sweetly said, looking up at him, seeing as she was just about the same height as Spyra.
"Yes ma'am." He nodded, his helm's links hissing as he removed the headwear. Lilith blinked at his exposed face, as he cradled the helmet, and grinned at her.
"Curious." Lilith breathed, hiking on her toes to poke her nose around in the direction of his head. "What a strange suit of armor you possess, I'm afraid I've seen nothing like it before."
"It's-" He paused. "-not from around these parts. But it works."
"It must, given all I've heard about you two." Lilith nodded. "My soldiers say that you and Ms. Spyra practically stalled Urukal's army by yourselves."
Spyra giggled.
"Ms. Spyra!" She squealed under her breath. "Aw man, she's cute as fuck, can we keep her?"
"Can we?" The Fallen looked at Ignitia.
"I don't know what customary greetings exist for your people, Fallen, but given your stature, perhaps it isn't so indifferent from what the Cheetahs further east value?" Lilith balanced on three paws.
Then, she offered one up.
Even when Ignitia's eyes dilated and her heart dropped into her feet, she was too late to react.
"-N-No wait-"
"That works for me." The Fallen gripped Lilith's claw and gave it a slight bob. He winked. The reaction was almost instantaneous.
"-U-Uhm r-right." Lilith shivered suddenly, a strange look glazing over her eyes as she stole her forearm back and stepped away from him, a growing tremor overpowering her wings and her tail. The Queen swallowed.
Her thighs.
There was something wrong with her thighs, and she didn't know what. And her hips. And her face.
Actually, everything felt wrong right now. It felt tingly. Tingly and… and hot.
"Are you alright, your Majesty?" The Fallen asked. "You look a bit pale."
Ignitia groaned in defeat and sunk her face into a claw. Spyra was growling like a possessive hound, and even had her tail lashing around for effect.
"The hour is late, just know it isn't under my watch that such crimes held me from you for this long, Lady Lilith." Cyrila moved around the human to give the queen an austere look. "Has the situation much evolved?"
"…U-Uhm, no, no not… not in that sort of way. It's still the same, just getting worse." Lilith shook her head, trembling as she flinched away from the Fallen, who had suddenly become a lot more scary. She gulped. "My magic c-can only keep it in check so much."
"Magic?" The Fallen asked.
"There is something wrong with the plants in the Roseways." Cyrila nodded. "A building and dark energy, deep beneath the city. Malefora is eager to exacerbate anything she can to cause a cancer for Oversight. The city is still weak from the invasion."
"There's something growing in my plants, or, under them, that isn't supposed to be there." Lilith swallowed again, keeping her distance as she unsteadily walked back to the stairwell, with Razoruk falling beside her. "You may have noticed, all throughout the castle, the vines, the flowers and the stems? Growing out every little niche and crack? They're all connected to the Roseways underneath the city, and they have been for thousands of years since Oversight was first built around the Suntree."
"What's a sun-tree?" Spyra snorted.
"This." Lilith smiled, pointing with her tail as the party disgorged back into the throne room behind the actual seat itself.
The blossom tree sprouting from the planter in the floor. Its branches somehow whispered just then, as if it had been caught in a phantom breeze. One of the petals softly flowed off, until it landed on Spyra's nose.
"-Achoo~!" –Fire shot out in a brief flash as the poor beastess was rocked onto her heels. She dug a talon in her nostril and sniffed angrily. "-Agh, I don't even have allergies, man! What the hell…"
"How rare." Lilith breathed with delight. "The tree almost never sheds petals on a dragon so brazenly! The plants here must trust in you very much, Spyra!"
"Lore says that millennia ago, the western coast of the Dragon Realms was sundered under a terrible storm of ash from the Dark Continent." Ignitia explained, brushing another of the petals off her shoulder-fins. She pinched another between her talons and held it aloft to give it a sniff. "The sky turned black, the ocean stopped churning and became so clogged with dust and soot, that it was said one could walk on its surface without fear of falling in. But there was fear for things much more potent than that. Birds and forest animals suffocated to death, the trees were burned down, and the plants covering the region all died, wilting, and creating an immense black forest of despair. The Suntree was the first plant that ever grew back when the storm dissipated years later, and it's said that all plants and all life in the entire region stem from it, because its roots were the ones that delivered water to the landscape."
"So this tree is physically linked to almost every square-mile in the entire province?" The Fallen asked.
"In theory."
"It's very true!" Lilith nodded adamantly. "I should know! Both me and my mother are attuned with the Suntree. We can feel what it feels, and it cannot survive without the bond of love to a dragon who strives for the realm's betterment."
"That's-… That's beautiful." Spyra trailed. Suddenly, she scrunched up her face, and a quick, sharp fart erupted from under her tail. The Guardians scattered with disgusted squeals, and the Fallen put his helmet back on.
"Damn it." He glared down at her- trying to hide that he was half-laughing –and of course, failing.
"Sorry, I couldn't hold it." Spyra wheezed, rocking as the chuckle-hour took its toll. "You should see all your faces~."
"She's disrespectful, she has a poor vocabulary," Cyrila listed as she pinched her snout. "-and a poor diet. Honestly, Ignitia how far would you have let this hatchling plummet before intervening?"
"I was intervening!" Ignitia cried. "She just… doesn't want to listen to me, ever."
"I thought you learned something of a matriarch's calling with all those years at the Temple."
"Oh please, Cyrila, this coming from the dragon whose mother couldn't be bothered with knowledge of her whereabouts even before she forgot her own name? Touche." Ignitia clicked her tongue.
"Forgetting the gas and mommy-issues." The Fallen held his hands up. "How do we fix what's happening in the Roseways? The tree's being… what?"
"Poisoned!" Lilith cried, her jaw trembling as she gazed at the Suntree lovingly. "Oh, that terrible witch has done something, sprouted something horrible underneath this city, and the Suntree is being poisoned. I've only been able to keep it at bay through my presence and some wards, but it's accelerated so rapidly when I departed with Razoruk, and the rest of the houseguard, to try and-"
At this, the Queen's voice cracked, and she shut her mouth, looking at Razoruk with pained eyes.
"-…Lady Terradora thinks I'm a coward. Well, she's probably right. I emerged to push Urukal's Orcs from the gates the first time, before Ladies Volteera and Cyrila arrived. I pushed them back once. A-And I lost everyone except Razoruk. Oh, dear Razoruk… I'm so sorry."
"You have nothing to fault yourself over." Razoruk stoically grunted, but even the Fallen could detect his composure wavering. "They died well. I'll remember them all for what they were: heroes, and nothing less."
"So that's what happened to your wing." Spyra said.
"Yes." Razoruk doted on the wilted, deformed stump over his scapula. "An OgreOrc, it knocked me down… and it… it brought its mace around and…"
"I pulled him to safety myself." Lilith sighed, using a thumb-talon to wipe away the beginning of a tear. "P-Please excuse me, but I haven't been having a good l-last few days-"
The Queen sank onto her haunches, quiet sobs stealing away anything more she had to say.
"Jeez', you people cry a lot." Spyra whispered at Ignitia. The Guardian frowned and nudged her with a foot.
"Her mother, the previous Queen, only died a few months ago." She hissed. "The Royal Houseguard of Crownhorn are personal friends of each monarch they serve, they're claw-picked, each and every one of them. Last I remember, they numbered thirty-two. Lilith has lost thirty-one friends and her only parent, and her city has been ransacked, give her some space, please!"
"I'm sorry for your loss." The Fallen stuped a knee, leaning over the crying queen. He wanted to put a hand on her scaly shoulder, but that damage had already been done, and he didn't think now was a good time to 'up the dosage' –per-se. "I know how that feels. I've lost more people than I can count."
"H-How do you put up with it?" Lilith sniffled.
"I don't." He muttered, huffing as he looked back at the pink Suntree.
One of the petals fluttered down from the full branches, turning and corkscrewing like a little mill propeller.
When he reached a palm out to take it, the petal swerved, and then hovered right over his plated palm for all of a second. He clasped his fingers, and the petal slipped deftly past his thumb, where it ended its sole journey onto the floor beside his knee.
The Fallen frowned deeply.
The message hurt, but he understood it. He rose and started walking towards the tree.
"We have to kill whatever is poisoning the tree." He declared. "These Roseways, how do we get to them?"
"Well," Razoruk glared at Ignitia, nodding to the little keyring hanging off her equipment hipsash. "you're the keymaster now, milady."
"Right." Ignitia took the ring in her teeth and gazed expectantly at Lilith. "Where liesh the gahteway, yu Majesty?" She muffled.
"…T-The tree." Lilith sniffled, pointing at the thick trunk sprouting from the floor. "-B-Behind it…"
"Holy shit."
Spyra's jaw dropped as she finished wandering past the tree's flank. She was staring at something in the bark, gesturing quickly for the others to look.
"You have to see this." She grunted.
The tree's flesh yawned into a naturally occurring arch made of twisting root-flesh and petal-ridden brambles. Beyond it, worming into the soft, mulchy ground was a cavernous tunnelway, just barely big enough for a single dragon to tuck their wings and fit through.
The tunnel's walls and ceiling were made of so many interconnected vines that they resembled sheets of finely woven black hair. Each vine-strand was speckled with tiny glowing green ulcers and veins, and each time the whole assortment pulsed, the waves of neon light traveled from the interior throat of the causeway all the way up to the surface.
A gust of wind sighed out of the tree's guts and blew in their faces. It smelt of wet soil and honeydew, and a whole cluster of pink petals detached from the blossom clusters above to fall around them like snowflakes.
"Huh," Spyra raised a brow. "who knew the friggin' tree had an asshole, and that we have to climb into it? Not me."
"It snakes around the root-cluster." The Fallen said, angling himself to try and look deeper inside the tunnel. It twisted sharply to the left and continued down in a spiral. The whole tree creaked eerily and sighed again, making his suit's sensors blare with panicked mania. "I'll always volunteer point, but if anyone else wants it…"
"I ain't sticking my nose in that thing first." Spyra nudged him with her horns. "Get goin', space-man."
"You'll need the key, probably." Ignitia let him take the ring out of her mouth. She brushed her tail over the human's plating down his back, eyes wandering down the synthetics protecting his body. "I know you'll be careful, but just hear it from me too? I don't know what Spyra would do if… well, something happened."
"Just Spyra, huh?" He quietly smirked at her. The Fallen put a finger under her chin and actually got her to almost fall into him when he brushed it backward. "Alright, the role of first-guy-to-die-to-killer-plant-assholes is filled. Let's get going."
{🐉}
