Chapter Text
The tears and screaming came instantly, once he’d dropped the match. But come on, be real, holding back one thrashing mortal girl with the hand not occupied with a two-ton metal egg hardly counted as a workout for Navarog. And let that be a lesson against going toe to toe with a dragon. To say nothing of one who spit molten gold ---among other things--- and had scales stronger than obsidian to match. Not that Kendra seemed to get the hint.
Navarog grinned.
“Come on,” he said. “He was half-dead anyways, and I didn’t even finish the job. I don’t see what you’re so upset about.”
She sobbed, shoving against his chest as hard as she could. He wasn’t moved.
Tsking softly, smirked. “There, there,” he cooed mockingly, patting her softly on the back, his arm wrapped securely around her side. He pulled her away from the smoldering flames, busy licking at the last scraps of the knapsack.
Her sobs wracked themselves into hiccupping, salty things that pooled into the fabric of his shirt. Gradually, the spirit to her shoves dwindled, apparently either coming around to the futility of her efforts or having used up the wick of her energy on the empty, desperate anger. She collapsed into him.
“It’s okay, Kens. Let it all out.”
He looked over his own shoulder, watching the fire die down into blackened knubs that no longer resembled a bag in any form or fashion. He chuckled to himself, letting her go, and she stumbled back from him, shaky and wild-eyed.
Looking at him, her face twisted into a snarl. “You monster,” she cried, voice cracking on the last syllable.
“Guilty as charged,” he smirked. She would forgive him if he had trouble taking her puffy red eyes seriously.
Kendra’s eyes darted away from him, searching the cavern for possible exits, he was sure. Finding none, she looked back to him. She took a great shuddering breath. “How could you do something like this?” She asked. “And what, with… Dougan, too. And Mara.” Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. Made great, violent plops against the muggy, slippery stone beneath them.
Outside the cleft the storm raged on.
“Pretty easily, actually,” he shrugged. “You’re an awfully gullible bunch.” He thought for a moment, shrugging again. “I guess Mara might be ok, though. Assuming there was a ledge and it was close enough for her not to go,” he made a crunching noise. “Humans are so delicate, honestly.” His mouth scrunched up. “I barely even tried to swipe a little bit, and schwoop. You and Mara both.” He rolled his eyes, then noticed Kendra’s skeptical look. Snot was still running down her nose. “What? If you’d been trapped in this,” he gestured downwards, “for four hundred-odd years, your coordination would be all fucked too.”
She wasn’t listening, though, gawping comically over his shoulder instead. Something in the maw of the cave.
He checked, half-glancing behind himself, sure to keep most of his attention rooted on her and any sudden movements.
Just as he thought. Nothing.
Ugh. You’d think tearing into another animal many magnitudes larger than her, eating her friend, trapping her cousin, and all right in front of her face, too, would cow her for, like, at least, two minutes. But no luck.
“Really, Kendra?” he snorted. “If you want something like that to work, you’re going to have to be a whole lot subtler.” He adjusted the egg in his hands, rough protrusions nestled between his fingers. The air tasted metallic enough to match, brought on by the heavy sheets of rain and lightning Kendra’s brother had conjured up just for him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, making a show of dragging her focus back to him, of struggling not to look back to the same point behind him. For fuck’s sake.
He sighed, gently setting the egg down, once againg rooting the entirety of his attention on her.
Who knew mortal girls could be so much work?
He stalked forward and she made a whole new show of blanching. Before she took off running. Ostensibly towards the remnants of the knapsack, still smoldering faintly.
Navarog heaved a sigh. He darted after her, poised to grab her and he was sure start up the whole kicking and screaming tableau all over again.
And she brought him right up to the point of intersection, where she seemed trapped between the space the circle of his arms was soon to fill and the cave wall. But then, feinting towards him, she ducked out right from under his nose and for the mouth of the cleft.
Growling, he whirled around, feeling former amusement curdle steadily its way towards outright irritation.
There Kendra was, ducked down, straining as she tried to pick up the metal egg.
He huffed. “Seriously,” and he could hear the bite snuck into his voice. “Where do you think you’re going with that?” Didn’t bother trying to stop her, staying rooted to the spot instead. If she needed to throw herself a little tantrum, so be it. Maybe it’d tire her out. Teach her being clever would only get her so far. Make things a little easier on them both.
His jaw clenched as he watched her just barely manage to raise it above her knees.
And the idiot ran for the ledge.
Godamnit. Was she going to jump?
Fuck. He ran after her, hearing the beat of Nafia’s wing match the rhythm of his feet slapping against moist stone.
Only for her to simply roll it over the side like a glorified bowling ball.
Navarog blinked. What? He came to a halt.
Overhead, though, he heard Nafia screech, saw her purple head streak downwards towards Kendra. Her answering fear-stricken freeze. Shit, ok. He had zero time for this. “Nafia,” he shouted, channeling into his command every bit of rage he felt at the nuisance Kendra insisted on sprinkling over his moment of triumph. This was supposed to be the fun part. Geez.
The angular, cruel curve of her head stopped, murder attempt aborted midway through.
She looked at him, annoyed. As if she had any right to feel that way right now. “No,” he barked simply. He switched into dragon-tongue: “Stay put until you’re called,” he sneered.
Having all these underlings was so stressful. They all wanted to do what they wanted to do. He rolled his eyes. This wouldn’t do at all when he switched his honorary title for a more solid one.
“Kendra,” he snapped. “Away from the ledge. Come here.”
She shrugged, defiance sparking in her red, puffy eyes. She took half a step towards him.
Despite himself, he felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. “What was even the point of that?” he said. “If you can’t have the key, nobody can. Kendra, you know I can fly, right?” And was more than willing to tear through however many dragons it took, too. Sounded like a lot more fun than this.
Or maybe not, given the little sneer she just sent him.
“Go on,” she said. “Fly then. But I bet you regret burning the knapsack now. That was your only piece of insurance that I’d stay put, much less cooperate.”
“I could literally just take you with me.”
“Oh,” she said, red tip of her black nose scrunched up into a sniffle, “while you need your claws to, I don’t know, actually grab the key and deal with all your dragon buddies. To say nothing of the storm.”
“I do well in storms.”
Kendra shrugged again.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “Nafia,” he shouted, calling her back.
“Yes, my prince?” she said, the sarcasm in her voice just muted enough to keep him at grit his teeth levels of annoyance rather than rip her head off levels.
“Guard Kendra until I am back,” he said, waving her off. “Do not let her leave but do not antagonize her, either.” He saw her scowl. Well, darling, the way he saw it, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Fuck around on a dragon preserve and then fuck around with him too, have fun being babysat. “If she’s not here and in one piece when I return, it’ll be your head.”
He stalked towards the mouth of the cave, sending Kendra a deadpan look. “There you go, my lady,” he winked. “Is that more to your liking?”
And he leapt off the ledge.
~
Kendra couldn’t move and she couldn’t talk. In fact, she was rooted to the spot not a scant few inches away from where her cousin had disappeared, perhaps forever. Probably forever, almost definitely forever. Only a scant few feet away from the gleaming, ginormous purple dragon, too, who seemed almost to glint several magnitudes brighter and more dangerous in the dimness of the cave compared to under the shining sun.
Though, of course, the flashing molten blue-yellow in the background likely helped that along.
And she seemed angry, too. Hungry. That might’ve helped as well. Gone was the amused, flirtatious theatrics from before, leaving naught but the blank threat. Teeth bigger than her whole arm, shining with saliva. Eyes bigger than her head, twinkling in the absolute least reassuring way eyes could twinkle.
More important than any of that, though, she was blocking her only exit. Raxtus flashed in and out of view behind her, wings beating against the heft of the giant key. He looked nervous.
Kendra couldn’t get to him, though, not while Nafia was hanging her entire neck over the opening of Sidestep Cleft for the express purpose of watching her like a hawk.
Which meant her only option would be a distraction. One that could keep Nafia’s attention off of her long enough to sneak out right under her nose.
One that she had no way of providing in this state.
Raxtus maybe could, but then that kind of defeated the whole purpose of him being hidden and, in that vein, not his fellow dragons’ food.
So maybe Kendra hadn’t thought this through as far as she ought to have. But then again, she hadn’t had time to, and when the opportunity had presented itself to get the egg to safety and Navarog off her back long enough to, theoretically, escape, she hadn’t seen what else to do but take it.
Not that Nafia seemed to think it particularly clever on her part. Instead, she passed the time until her boss got back with a chorus of silky, feminine grumblings. “I could have exposed him so many times. I could have eaten all of his little friends. Hell, I could’ve tried my hand at eating him! And what are the thanks I get? Ordered around, insulted, threatened. Made to babysit some mute idiot. And I can’t even eat her!”
Then why are you bothering? She wanted to say.
Which, maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t talk. That seemed the quickest way to earn herself a You’re right. Say, little girl, why don’t you come a little closer?
She couldn’t actually come a little closer, actually, but that wasn’t really the point.
They heard a shriek echo behind them, higher and more keening than the screaming wind. They heard the clash of metal that was certainly not metal, one that rang sharper than the boom of thunder that followed the flash of lightning. “Oh,” Nafia whined, “and it’s been so long since I had a good fight, too! At least since my last brood that I tasted meat like that, more decadent than a thousand sheep.”
Distant light bloomed outside, too orange to be the storm, streaking the other way, and Nafia blinked, her neck raising out of the cave to watch the proceedings.
Kendra breathed out, harsh and ragged.
She crept slowly to the lip of the cave.
Raxtus flew closer, his front, unburdened claws extended towards her.
She padded a little faster, hoping the din from the storm might mask her footfalls.
So close.
She heard a chuckle above her. Felt those burning eyes shift onto her again. “Does the micey want to play,” she heard, with the shifting of scales to match, “now that the cats away?”
Kendra broke into a run.
She felt the rush of air displaced above. But she didn’t look up, a mantra of please, please, please running through her head, her eyes trained on Raxtus instead.
He darted forward. Kendra leapt.
Raxtus caught her, claws wrapped securely, if a little tight around her middle.
Nafia’s jaw snapped around empty air.
They were gone, wind buffeting harshly against Kendra’s face as Raxtus raced away from the cliffside. Behind them, they heard a loud roar and the terrible sound of much larger wings beating. “It’s okay,” Raxtus whispered to her. “We can make it.”
Kendra nodded, wrapping her hand around the meat of his ankle. His scales rocketed with fresh glow beneath her hand, then faded back into translucence. “Thank you,” he whispered, voice lost in the howling wind.
Rain and tears sliced at Kendra’s cheek. She pillowed her face into the scales of his leg, her hand holding on with all her might.
What had just happened? How could things go so wrong so fast?
The vertigo did not leave her stomach, though, and no set of teeth clamped around her friend.
They made it to the cave where she could cry in peace.
~
It wasn’t on any of the nearby ledges. It wasn’t on the ground. Nor did any of the six odd dragons he’d spied on the scene have it in their clutches. Navarog ground his teeth together, fuming as he searched over battered orange rocks and the grey haze of the sky.
Bare scrubs of trees swinging back and forth in the wind.
Huh.
Could someone have already run off with it? Was, even now, as he wasted time looking around like an idiot for something that obviously wasn’t there, the key on its way back to the temple?
But there wasn’t even a disturbance, really.
Or, well, it was hard to say.
The storm may certainly have banged up a few trees, but he didn’t see much dislodged. Thin, sticky trunks remained rooted into the rock they had put so very much work into growing out of. A branch or two might be missing, but no cracks down their middles. No giant egg-shaped holes. None of the damage a giant metal key would create falling at that high of a velocity.
No new chips in the rock face.
It seemed like the egg had up and disappeared out of the sky.
Which, again, at the rate it should’ve been going, would’ve punched a hole or two in the average wingspan, even in a dragon as sturdy as himself.
Adding to his confusion, if it couldn’t have hit the ground and it couldn’t have been caught midair, then what? Did Kendra manage to vault a key she struggled to even pick up clear of the whole uneven, jutting cliffside, all while managing to make it look like…
Navarog froze.
While making it look like she’d simply dropped it over the side. As nonchalant as could be. Kendra, who tried her hand at every exit, he assumed, and would here, too… even knowing Nafia was standing guard? And she did know. She had to have known.
She’d seen her with her own eyes and walked him off the ledge anyways.
Kendra, who did this all in a misguided attempt to escape. With or without the key? And jumped into this despite the fact that she usually needed five minutes and the metaphorical equivalent of a calculator before she made any risky decision.
Dropped the key off a cliff.
That he couldn’t find, despite the ledges and hills and various other places for an otherwise heavy falling object to get caught up on.
Fuck. Forget dropped, try handing off.
Navarog whirled around, racing back to the cave, the fury of the wind and pump of blood filling his ears.
Kendra Sorenson, who might brood and angst and bite at her nails, but miraculously always ended up out of both frying pan and fire whole, hale, and unscathed. He’d never seen her lash out like that before, and what now? Slashing towards any possible exit, one of which she’d clearly found.
Flying nose parallel to the cliff face, he scaled his way to Sidestep Cleft, the force of his wings blowing brush and mud onto his belly. He stopped abruptly, already biting down the rage at what he felt sure he’d see.
Sure enough.
No Kendra. No Nafia, either.
Diving back around again, Navarog let out an ear splitting roar, not sure what he was looking for but sure there’d be hell to pay when he found it.