"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Her body was shifting, and as it did, the magic made her sick. Her scales thickened and her spine lengthened, folded wings split the skin on her back, raw and tender to the touch. A kind word from a sister was enough to bring flames roaring from her sharp-toothed mouth, and there was barely any sign of intelligent life behind the fire in her draconic eyes.
She is feral and unaware of how much time passes as her body modifies itself to the specifications of her ancestors, days maybe weeks, but once her wings are large enough to be of use, she takes to the sky. Another week of quick learning, of launching and landing, and the dragoness puts Tephra behind her. It wasn't the first time she had left her birthplace; she had made several attempts at rebellion, unsuccessful in the end because something seemed to pull her back to the volcanic island. But this time, there was no single thought, no dream of something more, no great escape - it was simply a dragon following the primal need to hunt.
She is no longer the clumsy adolescent she had been, half-lizard and half girl. Now, her metamorphosis is complete. She rises into the soot-stain sky an apex predator. The stiff leather of her wings buffers the wind as she travels just below the clouds, heading east with her slit-pupil eyes scanning the earth for prey.
Kingdoms pass below her, and some thread of common sense keeps her from swooping down on the creatures that move within them. She flies, her stomach churning, for the common-lands.
Locheed spots the stag from miles away, and she knows by the way he moves he is injured. Despite the shelter of the forest's leaves, she sees him clearly, tracking his heat signature and its halting progress across the uneven ground. He is angling towards a clearing, and she bites back her impatience. She circles and her steadiness pays off. As he steps into the sun, the earth-tone dragon clips her wings to her sides, and she is upon him before he has a chance to run. It's the first time she's ever felt a weight so large crumple below her or seen so much blood. She relishes in his thrashing, gorging herself on her prey, and she is more content than she had ever been.
The creature stays close to the comfort of the shadows, the terrible sound of his unsteady breaths loud in his ears. His skin is stretched thin across bone, as if at any moment he would tear with just a single step. At the base of his spindly and sharp antlers, blood has caked on the deep black of his skin, perfectly frozen where they dried dripping down his thin, emaciated face. His eyes grow dark, only a pinpoint of blue left in the very center as his blank stare remains hidden beneath the shade of his growing antlers and the tall pines that surround him.
Part of him is still as he once was, but the growing darkness of his skin is still spreading, leaving only his barrel and neck as the mottled blue of his past. He thinks himself dying (or perhaps undying, caught in this perpetual state of living death), his throat dry as his stomach roils with hunger and starvation, the simple smell of a living being causing something sinister to awaken within him.
The smell of death brings the creature out from the shadows he normally keeps. His own monsters (hallucinations, a product of starvation as well as decades of insanity) scurry somewhere in the depths of the forest that borders the river, parading and howling at the promise of blood. His dark nostrils flutter, thin and papery, as he steps into the sunlight where the dragon feasts on her kill.
He is ugly in the light (ugly in the darkness too, but it is less noticeable - the sharp edges of his hips and spine are not so easily seen, nor the discomforting way his eyes look upon others). The creaking of his bones silence themselves as he stands now motionless, the cooing of his demons whispering dark thoughts into his ears. The shadow of his thin and sharp antlers cast splinters of darkness across his already obsidian face, ominous and sinister as he stands in the broad light of day. Licking his lips, propelled by hunger alone, the stallion shuffles closer to the predator, his breath struggling and haphazardous. Balto’s insidious eyes never leave the dragon’s.
He is no predator himself (perhaps not now), but merely a scavenger begging for scraps.
A twig snaps, old bones creak, and the dragon halts her merry feasting. Locheed's heavy skull lifts from the carcass, scanning the line of trees for heat signatures as her claws sink a little deeper into her prize. When she spots him, her vision switches into something that will better show her the shape and colors of the creature that approaches. She waits with teeth bared, unwilling to give away ground or her prize to the stranger.
The stallion that steps into the sun is unlike any she had seen so far in her handful of years, but she does not flinch. She maintains her stance on top of the carcass as her forked tongue flicks the air to better catch his scent.
He hardly seems capable of wrestling her prize from her, with his protruding bones and shuffling step, but she knew better than to trust looks alone. Luckily, he seems to defer to the instinctive code of scavengers and predators, and just as his eyes never leave hers, hers never leave his. She had always been fascinated by the monsters in the stories she was told, not the light queens and golden kings, and he looked as if he was someone's monster. The red V on his throat is of interest too - she knew where that was from. Maybe it wasn't so long ago that he was someone's hero.
The dragon tears the shoulder of the stag, a long slab of muscles sliding down her throat as she tilts her head back, and still, doesn't break the line of their locked stares. She takes her time, coiled and ready to strike despite her facade of disinterest in his presence. One quick movement on his part would show him how brittle that facade was, if he hadn't sensed it already.
Her belly is growing warm and heavy, and she feels herself relaxing even though she knows she shouldn't. But she lifts a claw to her mouth, nipping off a bit of deer-hide that had been trapped in one long, curved nail, and she breaks the silence. "Do you speak, creature?"
The dark creature watches the reptilian beast with patient, burning eyes. His gaze drifts between her slitted eyes and the blood that pours from between her massive claws, hunger gnawing at the pits of his stomach. He swallows hard as she ingests huge portions of meat, lowering his head a bit more as he continues his casual walk towards the predator. The sun falls against the barely sprouted tangle of antlers, sharp and twisted like branches across his face.
Her voice falls clearly through the air and Balto’s movement ceases. All whispers have fallen silent (uninterested in such a conversation where it is so obvious that he would not be able to draw blood) and he is alone in his thoughts with this dragon, stained in blood.
“Yes,” he manages, his voice low and harsh with disuse. For a moment of tense silence, Balto’s lungs rattle with a few inhales and exhales. He understands nothing of his desire for blood and sinew, only the instinctual need to investigate the smell of death that has permeated the entire riverlands. “I am no thief,” Balto reassures the dragon, though the sour feeling in his stomach would be able to convince him otherwise. His hunger grows and with the inability to die, he will soon have to face the morbid reality that he is more predator than he truly believes.
Balto’s icy blue eyes fall back to the stag that is now unrecognizable - a mass of blood-stained and cracked bones, bits of fur and seemingly brittle antlers compared to the teeth and claws of the dragoness.
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