Series: On Dragon's Wings||Title: Ring The Dinner Bell||Chapter: Disagreeable
Romance: Mizael x Vector
Chapters: 3-10||Words: 1,611||Total: 4,804
Genre: Romance, Fantasy||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Diversity Challenge, YGO Zexal Aus, section I12, 10 chapters
Notes: This is an AU with princes, magic, knights, dragons, flying horses, and other such things. But no dueling with cards.
Summary: Dragons devour virgins and keep princesses captive. At least, that's what the legends say, and when a dragon arrives in good Prince Vector's kingdom, the prince finds that his father knows a lot about legends. But maybe he can learn a little something about dragons?
Humans! Mizael could hardly bring himself to believe this has actually happened. In all of his centuries, he'd never had someone think they needed to placate him by giving him humans to eat. He'd acquired a few nice treasures for his hoard from humans who didn't know any better, but that was different. He wouldn't turn down a pretty bauble; there were few dragons who would, so long as it suited their choice of hoard. Mizael didn't think he was hard to please in that aspect. Simple gold and treasure was what his consisted of.
Not that he let it lay around where humans could see it, of course. That was one reason he felt safe in leaving that prince – Vector, wasn't it?- in the lair while he searched for something to disguise the human with so they could get to the bottom of this. Without a dragon's eyes, no one could see the hoard.
So, with that in mind, Mizael leaped and bounded his way down to the city. He knew where most of the humans in the area lived and worked so it was easy to avoid them. He didn't know what Vector meant by him being pretty, but he knew humans could delay him whether he understood that or not.
The concept of 'pretty' worried at his mind a little as he moved onward. He knew by dragon standards he was quite the desirable mate. He'd had a few enjoyable liaisons with other dragons in the past as well. But never before had a human said anything like that to him.
It's the dragonawe, he decided. Some humans just couldn't shake it off and spent the rest of their lives thinking dragons were the most wonderful and impressive creatures that ever existed.
This was true, without a doubt, but Mizael preferred that they think that because it was true and not because of the supernatural aura that his species exuded as a matter of course.
He put the thought to the side for the moment as the city gates drew nearer. The closer he grew, the more he could see what was going on there, and he wasn't surprised to see everything draped in mourning colors. Even the warriors who stood guard bore a strip of something to mark the loss of their prince.
What they thought was the loss, anyway. Mizael quite looked forward to sorting this mess out and returning Vector to his people. He would move on then; if humans didn't start sacrificing to him, they frequently started to look for his hoard, and whether they could see it or not didn't matter. They would disturb his rest and his hunting, and while one human wouldn't satisfy his appetite, they did tend then to come in large groups which at least made a satisfying snack.
And after that humans tended to get tetchy. Silly creatures. There were so many of them, Mizael didn't understand why they were perfectly willing to give up one of them and yet if he ate them in bulk, he was the one they got angry at!
Humans. So confusing and without any sense at all.
Well, it was high time that he moved his lair if this was what they were going to be like. He hadn't visited Jinlong in ages anyway; perhaps it was time to fix that. His grandsire would likely have a few choice words to say about his time near humans as it was, mostly in the vein of 'I told you so'. It would be worth hearing it to know that no one was going to try to offer him up humans or steal from his precious hoard.
And Jinlong really had told him so anyway.
"Your purpose for entering the city?" One of the guards addressed him as he drew close to the entrance. None of the guards there seemed that happy to be on duty today, as far as Mizael could judge human expressions.
"I'm looking for used clothes," he replied. He had no qualms about lying, especially to humans, but there were spells which could detect the truth, and while not all magic affected dragons, he didn't care to run afoul of that which could. All in all, a simple bit of honest could go much further than complicated lies.
The soldier gave him a quick look, as of disbelief, and Mizael casually expanded on it. "They're not for me. They're for someone I know. He doesn't have anything suitable to come into town with, so I said I'd find something for him."
Mizael didn't smile. He'd tried smiling at a human once while he was in human form, and the results confused him even now. The human had muttered something to the effect of 'how in world do you have that many teeth in your mouth, it's not right!' and never spoken to him again.
Humans were just strange.
So now, Mizael arranged his features in what he hoped looked like mild annoyance, the expression of someone sent on a task that was necessary but one they didn't especially enjoy. That was about the truth, just with an incredible lack of details that he was certain the guardsman didn't need to waste his time about.
The guardsman must've felt much the same, as he waved Mizael in and pointed him in the direction of several used clothing merchants. Mizael made a point of recognizing this guardsman's scent; he'd been quite helpful and he didn't want to run a chance of eating him if everything went the wrong way.
He didn't expect anything to go seriously wrong right now, not on a simple shopping expedition. But Mizael liked to plan for everything that he could and what he couldn't plan for he generally did wind up eating anyway.
He was a dragon. He had a reputation to uphold.
Being a dragon also meant that he had senses far sharper and more suited toward hunting than humans. And that meant wandering in this city was not a pleasant way to spend his time. He could smell prey everywhere and he knew he couldn't attack any of it. The sudden appearance of a dragon in the midst of their city, especially the dragon they'd sent the prince to, would wreck all of his and Vector's half-formed plans.
Again the thought of Vector slipped and wove into his thoughts. Mizael hadn't considered human attractiveness before. He'd never had a reason to, and he didn't think that he did now. But if he were going to eat humans, he didn't think he would eat Vector. Vector hadn't been very afraid of him. He'd been somewhat afraid, because any living creature that saw something of Mizael's size, with all of his sharp teeth and claws and fire, and wasn't afraid would be little more than a fool.
But the fear hadn't overwhelmed him. He'd been willing to die for his people, if it would've saved them. And Mizael found that… interesting, to say the least. He hadn't met many humans with that kind of courage.
Don't be foolish, he reminded himself. You are a dragon. He is a human. Humans are stupid about mating, especially outside of their species. We will get this settled and I will leave.
Keeping that firmly in mind, he followed the guardsman's directions to the used clothing merchants. He kept a small pouch of coins with him at all times when disguised as a human, and had learned from previous encounters that it would be better if those were the smaller coins, not rare ones or ones of high value. Those who carried high value often had to deal with those who wanted to take that from them.
Again, Mizael didn't want to eat some human and set the entire city on alert.
The major issue that crossed his mind now was how to choose which of these outfits would suit his purposes best, and which would fit Vector without giving away that it was a disguise. Not to mention choosing one that didn't make him wonder if humans really had invented a method of washing their clothes or if that were some kind of rumor they'd spread around.
He could hardly wait to get back to the clean air of the mountains. The sooner this was all settled, the better. The farther away from humans and their cities Mizael was, the happier he knew that he would be.
While Mizael kept most of his focus on looking through piles of clothing and trying to remember just what Vector's body looked like, he could not stop himself from hearing all the gossip humans threw about between themselves. Most of it was boring, and he doubted even another human would've cared that much over who slept with whose mate, and who was reputed to have cheated their way to high marks in their educational system, and who was using cosmetic magic to keep their natural hair color and who wasn't.
He ignored the majority of it as best that he could. While dragons had their own form of gossip, this didn't interest him. There were a few whispers of the prince's name that caught at his attention, but mostly sad murmurs of how kind he'd been and how his loss was so great to the city. One or two even mourned the chance they believed they'd had in wedding their daughters to him.
Just when Mizael made his final purchase, another whiff of sound all but made his ears perk up even in human form. It started with a few simple words.
"Did you hear what the king said about his son's sacrifice?"
To Be Continued