A/N: Good evening friends, and welcome back! This chapter is slightly based on fanart by teriyaki-deer on tumblr and scrapped ideas for A Rose in Winter. This gets a little angsty and has not as much gay, so I might just make part 2 to this next week or the week after and make it moreso. Let me know if that appeals to you.
Reynabot: Thank you friend! I'm glad you enjoyed.
ThatFanFicGuy: Hah well I'll be doing this for a long time, so there's plenty of opportunity for you to come up with new ones! Thank you very much friend! And I did end up finishing the chapter, I think it turned out better than the original copy!
Enjoy friends!
Deep within a dense wood, where no sunlight could pierce the canopy, a great beast slept. Its obsidian scales shimmered in the low bioluminecence of the forest floor, mushrooms of various shapes and sizes glowing an incredibly dim blue.
Great wings of abyssal black folded against the dragon's hide, for even the tallest of ancient trees could not compare to the sheer size of their span.
Its breathing could be heard for miles, deep and full like an oncoming typhoon, gallons of air filling lungs the size of horses. Local wildlife in the region fled from the sound, leaving the forest disturbingly quiet save for the breaths of an apex predator and the grass crunching beneath the boots of the only other living thing nearby.
A young woman no older than 16 nervously trudged through the underbrush, a sword and shield held tightly in her clammy hands. Her bright red eyes jumped from place to place, irrationally fearful of what could be stalking her in an empty forest.
"J-Just a little further..." She muttered to herself, moving slowly towards the source of the wind, each step shaky and hesitant; though it was cold so deep within, the girl found herself sweating.
Finally she came to what would have been a clearing, if the branches of the other trees weren't so mindbogglingly large; even with many of them destroyed or burnt away, not a single beam of sun could be seen.
What the girl had initially thought to be a natural rock formation or boulder, was- upon further inspection -her target: The great black dragon lay still in front of her, slowly breathing in and out as it dreamt of destruction.
If she could kill it in its sleep, she would be heralded as a hero, it would be so easy to just strike right then but...
Her arms just wouldn't move. Her legs weren't responsive either.
She was afraid.
This fear robbed her of the only possible chance she had as the next time she blinked, her eyes opened to meet another. Blood red with a large slit down the middle it watched the intruder, quietly peering deeper and deeper until the girl's very soul quivered.
"Another blind lamb finds its way to the slaughter?"
She couldn't breathe. The beast had spoken to her, in a voice recognizable as female and in perfect English.
"And I see they've equipped the sacrifice this time... What a cruel joke."
The dragon raised up to a seated position, towering over its new prey and eyeing her with an unreadable emotion.
The sword and shield in the girl's hands felt incredibly heavy at that moment and she suddenly remembered their purpose.
"I-I-I'm n-not a s-sacri- sacrifice!" She stuttered uselessly to the beast's amusement. "I-I am S-S-Squire Ka- S-Squire Akko Kagari! And I- um..."
A toothy maw was suddenly shoved into her face; the dragon was smiling.
"You're here to slay me? Is that right?" Her- the squire assumed her -voice was double sided in its emotion, equal parts amusement and pity.
Akko nodded, raising her shield to hide all but her eyes. "I- I'm gonna s-slay you and-"
A heavy tail suddenly slapped against her tiny steel shield, sending her flying back into a tree stump. Nonchalantly stomping over to the fallen squire, the dragon leaned in even closer than before, her voice dropping to a gravely murmur.
"Your people didn't send you all the way out here to kill me." She began, puffing hot air out of her nose to blow the hair out of the terrified girl's eyes. "They've sent battalions of their very strongest, with only one survivor hand picked by myself to return with the news."
Squire Kagari gulped, realizing where the serpent was going with her line of thinking, eyes widening in horror, burning a hole into the grass in front of her.
"You were sent as a sacrifice. A meal to placate me into staying in this forest."
Akko looked up sorrowfully into the face of death, at the single red eye that was not covered by horn; she felt tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Those she trusted and called friends, those she looked up too, had left her for dead, not even having the enough decency to tell her the truth.
In a world that had abandoned her, the only thing left was to accept her fate, closing her eyes and letting the tears fall freely.
The dragon looked disgusted, pulling back and turning her snout up. "Don't start crying you baby, I'm not going to eat you."
"W-What?" Tossing acceptance into the garbage, Akko looked back up at the dragon, wide-eyed and confused.
The dragon looked at her like she was an idiot, eyes drooping and posture slouching. "Why would I want to eat some scrawny kid? They usually send someone with more muscle; meat."
"I mean look at you." She began with a huff that almost sounded like laughter, blowing hot air against the squire's legs poignantly. "The most muscle I can find is down here but that's not enough to satisfy anything other than my sense of aesthetics."
It look an eternity and a half for Akko to process the dragon's words before she realized that the great beast was both insulting and complimenting her one after the other. She was still reeling from the sudden removal of death from the equation and found herself accidentally allowing thoughts to spill from her mouth.
"C-Can I stay h-here?!"
The beast had curled back up and closed its eyes by the time this happened, fully expecting the young squire to have already run away in fear. The sudden innocent question caught her off guard, her left eye creaking open to meet the girl's own pair of rubies.
"I said I don't want to eat you; that doesn't mean I like you." She huffed, slapping her tail against the ground twice.
Akko stood shakily, dropping her sword and tossing her shield away to be forgotten amongst the tall grass. "But.. The p-people in my village sent me to die; l-lied to me... and..."
She stood next to the beast now, eyes taking in the beauty of its deep purple scales, hands begging to reach out and touch them. "It m-must be lonely out here..."
'Lonely is one word for it' The dragon mused, watching a mushroom pulse with a melancholic blue glow.
"I-I can be useful!" Akko cried when the dragon closed her eyes without responding. "I can go hunting for you!" She scrambled over the dragon's body to the pile of abandoned weapons her hopeful new friend was sat curled around and picking up a rather elaborate bow.
"You? Hunt? That would be rather funny." The dragon chuckled raising her neck to look down upon the weapon cache, her maw curling at the edges in an almost smile, interlocking sets of razor sharp teeth shimmering in the low light of the forest.
"And you might just do better at hiding from the elk."
Visibly brightening, Akko nodded furiously up and down hugging the dragon's tail tightly before sitting down to scrounge around for arrows in the pile. "I'll do my best Miss Dragon!"
The squire's joyful tone of voice caused a strange warm feeling within the dragon's chest cavity, like fireflies buzzing around.
It was odd, but not unpleasant.
She had heard stories of dragons kidnapping fair maidens and keeping them in their lairs, but she would have never imagined that one would willingly waltz into hers and ask to stay.
Maybe the next seventy years wouldn't be so bad.
A/N: And Squire Kagari was never heard from again by any human being. I always love those subversion stories of maidens being sent as sacrifice but then staying out of choice when the dragon doesn't want to eat her. Thats some good cliche romancey shit.
Fun Fact: Did you know that both Yuri!Sucy and Dragon!Sucy show a different eye to the rest of the Sucy's? It's true! While normal Sucy always has her left eye hidden, her super gay and dragon forms both reveal that eye, perhaps to symbolize that this is who she truly is under the mask.
As always let me know how it was and share your ideas for future chapters!