LEO
The roaring of pain and suffering echoed throughout the mental channel, it was as if Leo had the worst possible headache throbbing behind his forehead, and the noise never ended.
“Cut it out,” Leo said.
All the noise, all the cries of agony ceased to exist. No wait, that was not true. The dragons were still suffering, but at least he was not listening to them dying.
Leo leaned into his strides, trying to run even faster through the corridor, but running fast was not really his thing. “You told me this mountain shielded your mental communications.”
“Your own fault,” Tern said. “I told you, there are still a lot of dragons dying inside these corridors. They have sneaked in after getting badly injured.”
“Ahh, put a pile of poop into it and shut up,” Leo said. “Alright, we will only let well chosen individuals into the mental channel.”
“Please, hurry,” Tern said. “My circuits are frying and dying.”
Leo held back a laugh. It was not like a marine to laugh in tense situations, but he couldn’t help himself sometimes.
The corridor of his destination opened up and he rushed into the room. Wyrhgon was still sitting in the corner, looking depressed and he was still slowly bleeding out from his sliced off paw. The young purple dragon had calmed down and fallen asleep on the spot, leaning against Wyrhgon’s side. Or was it dead? A disgusting feeling crept into Leo’s stomach. He had left in a hurry, only thinking about himself. What if this small one had died when he was gone? No, it was not his problem and he shouldn’t put second guessing into his mind, but even though he shoved the feelings aside, there was still something nagging at the back of his mind.
“Ahh, there is the dragon corpse. Good, it has not moved. Nice, dead, dragon,” Leo said.
“You knew that being dead usually robs one of its mobility?” Tern said.
“Wisecrack.” Leo put down Tern on the corpse. “I guess you can let Wyrhgon and the purple dragon into the mental channel.”
When in contact against Tern’s crumpled surface, the soft flesh looked as if it was being melted and absorbed into him. Tern’s sphere-shaped body started to regain its normal form.
“What are you doing!” Wyrhgon screamed, and which echoed through the mental channel.
Alright, maybe it had been a bad idea to let them in?
The green scaled dragon limped forward out of the corner and the moment he lifted his sliced off paw, the blood started squirting out from the remaining limb. Not good.
“You know, Wyrhgon. I have seen such injuries before. A railgun ball chopped this fellow’s legs off and the blood just kept coming. Litres per second. It’s actually a great story, one of the strangest battles have I experienced. I could tel…,” Leo started but was interrupted.
Leo ducked under Wyrhgon’s incoming paw. The claw was big, very big. But Wyrhgon’s injury made the movement slow and not too accurate.
“I will kill you.” Wyrhgon snarled at him.
Leo stepped away from Wyrhgon, but the dragon kept up the chase. At least it was not going for Tern, who in a weakened state might not have been able to dodge the slow attacks.
“You are kind of an ass, you know that?” Leo said.
“Ass?” Wyrhgon swiped at him again, but the claw went wide. “That is my friend. Ozier was his name. I have known him all my life, for two hundred years. We fought on those slopes, we killed many enemies together and we gave our lives defending this mountain from those invaders. I pulled him inside here, so he could perish inside the mountain, as are our ways. As I will do. To become a part of the mountain is to become part of the divine himself.”
“By the amount of blood squirting from that paw, I would give you a few minutes if you don’t keep pressure on it,” Leo said.
Wyrhgon roared and displayed rows of large teeth, before sending a torrent of liquid fire at him. Maybe it was the injury or that Wyrhgon had expended most of its fire during the battle, since the liquid fire barely reached five centimeters away from him. Making it easy for Leo to avoid it.
“Dead is dead,” Tern said, his mental voice was stronger now. The change was evident and immediate, as he consumed the dragon corpse. Good, Leo couldn’t return to Beth with a dead Tern under the arm, she would have shattered his head.
Wyrhgon roared one last time before slumping down on his belly, and by chance applying pressure on the sliced off paw. “I will kill you when I have slept some.”
“Good luck with that,” Leo said. But the pilot knew the truth.
“Hello?” A new dragon asked.
The young purple dragon must have awakened from all the ruckus that Wyrhgon had stirred.
“Howdy,” Leo said.
“What a strange word.” The purple dragon scuttled across the floor and over to the corpse and stuck out its snout to sniff. “What is that round toy doing? Can I play with it when you are finished?”
Leo stepped up to the young dragon, grabbed it and put it down a bit from Tern. Couldn’t have it interrupt the consumption. “Well, young one. Howdy, means hello. So hello, I am Leopold, but you can call me Leo. What is your name?” Leo patted his chest, feeling the pride that instead of throwing curses at the small one he had been nice and even asked its name.
“Howdy, Leo. My name is Nymri. But you can call me Nym. I am the strongest girl-dragon-warrior you will ever meet. I like you. Look at my fangs,” Nym said. “Please. Why can we not play with it?”
Leo was about to firmly point out that he was friends with Rahgon and that she was probably a tiny, whiny bit stronger than this ten kilogram dragon. But just when he was about to spill the beans, he paused instead. He sighed, he was not a goddamn babysitter. “Tern is my friend and crew, depending on who you ask. And in mankind we don’t play fetch with our friend’s wounded and dying bodies.”
“Friend, dying?” Nym looked at him. “I don’t like when things die.”
Nym turned and stepped up to him, slumped down beside him and leaned against his leg. Her left wing was injured, but what he could see there was no active bleeding, like Wyrhgon’s wound.
“We gave our lives for this mountain,” Wyrhgon mumbled. “We fought with strength and might. But we lost all the same.”
Wyrhgon didn’t move from where he had slumped down on his belly. The blood loss was starting to slow his mind down, maybe? This was not Leo’s strong suit, this was a Diego problem. His crew, he missed it. Hopefully they were doing better than him.
“We fought and died! With valor,” Wyrhgon mumbled.
The green scaled dragon was not shutting up, instead the intensity of his mumbling about mighty and strong dragons increased.
“Leo, I can’t sleep,” Nym said. “Is prince Wyrhgon dying? I don’t like it when things die.”
“Well,” Leo started.
“Leo, please, don’t tell me that he is dying. Please,” Nym said. “I want my momma. She died, I think. Those golems went after her, but she tried to protect me.”
“Goddamn,” Leo said. “As the Capt’n would have said.”
“Goddamn,” Nym said. “A nice word. Almost as nice as howdy. Goddamn.”
Leo sighed, even deeper this time. Nym couldn’t sleep and now he was learning her curse words. Goddamn, indeed.
He tried to persist, but the minutes passed slowly and Tern was all focused on consuming the corpse and Wyrhgon kept on rambling about great battles and the might of dragons.
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“You want to hear a story?” Leo asked.
Nynm’s lifted her head and her eyes widened. “A story? I love stories. Please, Leo, tell me a story.”
But this, this was a Leo problem. He looked at the purple dragon and gave a brief smile, contemplating the different possibilities and stories the small one would want to hear. Something with a happy ending, but still filled with excitement, would do the dragon well.
“There was this one time,” Leo started. “Me and my crew, my family. There were six of us and a few hundred of the enemies. We fought against an evil wizard who was able to throw a type of spell on people, to control their minds.”
“A wizard that controlled your minds? That must have been scary,” Nym said.
“Saif is an evil fucker,” Leo said
“Fucker?” Nym said.
Leo sighed. “Forget that word, please. Well, I am not going to continue the story unless you forget it.”
Nym nodded wildly.
Leo took a deep breath before continuing. “We designed a plan to thwart him, my friend Captain Samuels Adam, we call him the Capt’n, grabbed a nuclear warhead and assaulted the city by himself while I and Claire prepared the ship. The Capt’n, Sam. Sam was going to distract this wizard, to save our friends Beth and Milo. Beth was the strong one, who saved us on the surface, shoving us inside the cave entrance. Milo, you have not met, but he is also special, shooting lightning bolts from his hands.”
Every time Nym reacted to the story, Leo couldn’t help himself from smiling. The young dragon was so cute and innocent. He retold the story, but changed some of the elements, to give it a happy ending and even more fantasy-like events. Nym’s eyelids grew heavy and she started to nod off. Even Wyrhgon’s mumbling slowed and quieted down in the background.
-
“Leo, I am finalizing my repairs,” Tern said.
Leo stirred awake. How long had he slept? Nym’s head rested on his lap and she was purring as sleep’s hold held her tightly.
Wyrhgon was relaxed on the very spot he had slumped down. Yes, the green dragon’s chest was still moving, he was not dead.
“I must have fallen asleep, too. Battling drains the body,” Leo said.
Tern floated over the room to him. “You have been asleep for fourteen hours.”
“Fourteen hours?!” Leo said, almost stirring Nym awake. “Why did you not wake me?”
“You needed the rest. You looked so peaceful, Leo. And I needed to continue my consumption,” Tern said.
Leo looked behind the omf, the dragon corpse was fully gone now and only a dried up pool of blood remained on the floor where it had been laid down for its final rest.
“You look better,” Tern said. “But we need to find a way out of here now. Try to find our crew.”
“Alright,” Leo said, stroking Nym’s head, waking her slowly up.
“If we are going to pull Wyrhgon with us, we need to stop his bleeding,” Tern said.
Leo had not thought about bringing with them Wyrhgon. The green prince was an arse, as Diego would have said, and would only make their progress painfully slow through the mountain.
“We cannot leave him?” Leo said.
“Leave who?” Nym asked.
Leo stroked her head. “Nothing, little one. Tern, how do we get Wyrhgon to his feet, or paws?”
“He seems pretty adamant to me,” Tern said, the omf’s floating mechanism was still janky and he fell from time to time several centimeters before stopping. Also, his orb still looked damaged, with cracks and dents going across the surface. The dragon corpse had not been able to get him back to full health, but at least he was no on the brink of death.
Nym jumped away from his lap and made her way to Wyrhgon, who paid little attention to the little one.
Leo knew they couldn’t leave Wyrhgon behind. They wouldn’t be able to convince Nym of it, but the young dragon was small and so they could force it. But just because you could do something, doesn’t mean that you should. Some people in the world really needed to learn that. Some of his old friends even. Captain Samuels.
“We have to at least try,” Leo said, turning to Tern. “For the small one. Wyrhgon is one of the rulers of his world, one of the individuals Nym looks up to. We have to try. Even though he is an alien space dragon that could splash us in liquid fire and be done with it. I have already left both of them behind once, with the intent to never return, but not again.”
Leo stepped forward to the slender, green dragon. In this room and in this company and context, Wyrhgon was huge. But not as large as Rahgon.
“Wyrhgon?” Leo said. “We need to move out of here and find my people, and find a way off this planet.”
Leo swallowed before continuing. “We need to have a look on your paw and mend it. At least the bleeding has to be stopped, so we can move you.”
Wyrhgon raised his head, looking for his old friend on the other side of the room, but there was only a blood stain left of the corpse. “Ozier? Ozier has been accepted by the mountain.” Wyrhgon turned and around and slumped down on his belly again, during the movement the sliced off paw squirted another torrent of blood. “Your round friend has recovered some of his health. Good, I guess, for you. His kind is not accepted by the mountain, it’s only the mighty dragons that are strong enough.”
“Actually,” Leo started, but saw Nym in the corner of his eye and hesitated. “Yes, Ozier has been accepted. Before we slept he was still there and when we woke up, the dragon was nowhere to be seen anymore.”
Wyrhgon purred for a brief moment. “Good. I know, tiny human. Our ways, it is and has always been.”
Nonsensical bullshit, Leo wanted to say, but again Nym appeared in the corner of his vision and he didn’t want to upset the young, cute dragon in front of her much bigger and important role model.
“Can we see to that paw now?” Leo said.
“I am to be accepted by the mountain,” Wyrhgon. “Any moment now. I can feel the change coming. Like a tidal wave, but inside me. Human, if you knew this honor I am about to receive you would never have tried helping me.”
“How a morbid view of the world,” Tern said.
Leo sighed. How would he solve this? Tern was too weak and too little interested in saving Wyrhgon. But Nym would not come with them if they tried leaving without Wyrhgon. But what if they waited for Wyrhgon to perish instead? No, that was awful. Inaction was an action. To look and decide to do nothin, didn’t make them innocent. And Nym would have been upset.
Wyrhgon thought little of humans, there might be something else to this. But Leo couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something he could put his finger on. If Wyrhgon stirred up, if they enraged the dragon, then maybe he wouldn’t lay down and let death end him. To be enraged was to live. It seemed to keep both Beth and the Capt’n going when the going became tough. Maybe it could be applied to Wyrhgon? There was only one way of finding out and it could end with Leo and Tern torn into bits. But at least they had tried.
“Wyrhgon, you are afraid. Afraid to accept help from humans, afraid of surviving this battle which has almost ended your planet and race,” Leo said. There had been a small movement in Wyrhgon’s ears. “Prince Wyrhgon, you are afraid that if you survive through this, you will need to live in another world. A world which might not have your magical mud or the peaks of this mountain. You are afraid of change and the struggle which it might entail.”
Wyrhgon turned his head and snarled. “I am not the great warrior that my sister is. But afraid? No, I am not. I lead the defence of the slopes! From shoulder to shoulder, I fought against this invasion. We fought and we died together. Saving each other from death, sacrificing each other. Say that I am afraid one more time and I will eat you.”
“So, then why can’t we not have a look on your paw and mend it?” Leo said. “We need to move.”
Wyrhgon leaped forward and landed in front of him, drops of liquid fire dripped from his nostrils and that distinct breath of rotten eggs was exhaled on Leo’s face. “No. This mountain will accept me, as it has accepted my friends. I will be with my friends! You stupid human can’t understand this, your brain is too small.”
Leo tried pulling away, but the green dragon held him pinned down.
“I will do it. Goddamn,” Nym said. “I am not afraid of anything. Leo, Tern, take a look on my wing and mend me.”
Wyrhgon hesitated and relaxed his paw, giving Leo enough room to wiggle away from the dragon.
“I will do it. Goddamn,” Nym said.
“Nym, don’t curse, please,” Leo whispered, but also ushering her over to Tern.
“What is a curse?” Nym asked.
Leo sighed.
“Nym, what is wrong with your wing?” Tern said.
“I can’t fly and it hurts whenever I try flapping it,” Nym said.
Wyrhgon stared in disbelief or anger, it was difficult to read the dragon, but he did keep watching.
One of Tern’s modules were outlined and part of it ejected, creating a sort of prodding tool or something, which the omf started prodding with. A yellow paste dripped out and was pasted on the injuries of Nym’s wing. “You are young, still. The thin, hollow skeleton framework of your wings are not matured for aggressive movements or this kind of extended battle scenario. They have bent and fractured, several of them. This paste will keep them in place, but you are not allowed to try flying with them, or else the paste will crack and the help it gives you will be gone.”
Nym raised her snout. “I will do as you say, Tern.”
“You fixed her?” Wyrhgon said. “Nymri, you will follow them, instead of going into the mountain?”
“I sure am,” Nym said, still holding her chin high. “My people will not stop existing just yet. I am too strong for that.”
It was as if a fire had been lit in Wyrhgon’s eyes, the green dragon had been injected with inspiration, inspiration to live.
“Tern and human. Help me.” Wyrhgon turned and presented the sliced off paw, and as the pressure was released from it the squirting began again.
Tern hurried over and a different module activated, and a needle like tool protruded from him instead. A laser beam cauterized the wound and the slit artery underneath with Tern’s precise and smooth aim. The squirting stopped.
“You did it.” Wyrhgon raised the paw and had a look at it, his eyes wide. “I will have to live without this paw and claw.”
Tern floated, still janky, around the dragon. “You are not to apply too much pressure on the wound or else the mend will crack and possibly the artery can start bleeding again. Well, if we make it to our friends, there is someone who could outfit you with a synthetic paw and claws, a cybernetic one.”
“Prince Three-Paw,” Nym said. “It suits well.”
Leo stepped in. “And you have a great story on how you received it. The Battle of Shuvoq. Prince Three-Paw.”
“Prince Three-Paw,” Wyrhgon mumbled, as if tasting the nickname. “It sounds like the name of a warrior.” The fire in Wyrhgon’s eyes intensified. “Rahgon would be jealous if I was hailed the bigger warrior of us.”
“A proud warrior, wounded in battle. Wounded when trying to save his world and race from total annihilation,” Leo said. “The stuff of legends, Prince Three-Paw.”
Wyrhgon walked over to the end of the room, carefully not applying too much force on the mended paw. “Let’s move out.”