This was it. The end of isolation. The end of the rite. The beginning of her life as a dragon warrior of the Ice Tribe. Or it would have been if the Pridefort’s gates were open. Two giant doors of volcanic qoryxite barred Zyryxa from entering into her new life.
After watching Duilahir drive away Nitryx, after triumphing for a year over the dangers of the ice, after rising the mightiest mountain in just one day, she wanted to slam her fists into those doors and demand they open, to force them apart, to rip them off their divinedamned hinges and cast them aside. Zyryxa exhaled, unfurling her fist, leaving her hands on her waist and her mouth sealed. She would not show such impatience, such impertinence that she would knock on the Champion’s doors like an entitled child demanding entry into her mother’s chamber.
Smoke rose from the fires beyond the wall and she heard gruff voices within the fortress. Zyryxa wanted to scale it and give them a thrashing. Soon, she told herself. Each of them would fall to her in the practice yard before she left those walls. She waited a year for this moment and assured herself that she could wait a little longer.
At least, she was not alone in waiting. A girl slouched beneath a gelubor, a faded, white ritemark on her forehead, clutching a bow in her hands as she studied the snow at her booted feet. A broad-shouldered boy towered over her, his hairy torso exposed to the freezing air, boasting of how he would bond Duilahir and take her for a ride.
Zyryxa cleared her throat. The girl kept her gaze on the ground, but the man spun toward her. His droopy blue eyes snapped open, pupils dilating as his lips curled into a smug, self-assured grin.
Zyryxa suppressed her grin, keeping her mouth a flat line while she appraised the man’s qualities. Of the three things Zyryxa sought in others, he did not lack for power. He was built like an abominable and even taller than Zyryxa. This hulking man wielded no weapons save for his fists. The forecast was cold with a chance of sparring. Hopefully he could provide better sport than the abominable he so resembled.
Of the second thing Zyryxa sought in others, the tall man fell far short. He looked like he was born in a barrel of rum and left steeping for the first decade of his life. His long face ended in a chin much too prominent, his eyes drooped like he was permanently hammered, and his nose was crooked as if struck by too many hammers. His cobalt hair puffed atop his head and formed a greasy mullet in the rear that nearly made Zyryxa dry heave. Suffice it to say, he would never be her consort.
The ugly hulk’s blood flowed in the wrong direction, likely its standard course judging by the presumptuous grin he wore. He puffed out his hairy chest, flexed his bulging biceps, held his shoulders high, and strutted toward Zyryxa, undiscouraged by her flat-lipped glare. His deep voice slurred as he spoke, like he’d been steeping in the barrel for his entire life. “What a beautiful gift for Pelzyq after so long sleeping cold and alone. Would you like a better view of your future champion, ice princess? Pelzyq always rides on top.”
Her champion? Rider of her Duilahir? Her with him at all. Her on bottom!
Zyryxa’s snowball burst against his groin. Pelzyq stumbled to his knees, groaning like the bottomed-out drunk at the end of the night, and clutched at his sad, lonely, wounded pride.
“Pelzyq will only ride me in dreams and he will never be champion while I breathe.”
Pelzyq rose from his shame and licked his lips, proving himself shameless. “Heh! This one has the ice in her!” Zyryxa cracked a smile, against her better judgment. Pelzyq massaged his groin, overexaggerating its reach. “You talk proud for one who managed to hit the world’s biggest target. We’ll see how proud ye are after this target hits you back.”
Zyryxa’s sigh shattered her smile. Even if he weren’t ugly, she would never lay with this presumptuous boy. What did he take her for? Some lust-starved Leverian ninny? Some submissive girl who was not ice? He presumed too much. Zyryxa was a devout of Qoryxa, the truest ice, the future Champion. She would never consort with such filth.
She batted her eyelids at him, placed her hand on his hairy, brawny chest, and felt the hunger for the contest and the challenge yearning to be fed. Pelzyq ate well this year. He would make a fine meal while Zyryxa waited outside the gates of pride.
“Come to Pelzyq,” he said, grinning like he won the tournament at the Festival of Melding. He placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned in for a kiss.
Zyryxa locked her hands around the back of his shoulder, seizing his head and arm, and slammed him to the snow. She squeezed the air out of his head, pressed on his gut and chest with her back, crushing him with her weight. Pelzyq clawed at her chest with his free hand and tried to thrash his way onto his stomach. She buried his face into her armpit, letting him smell the scent of her superiority, letting him come ever-so-close to the glory of tasting her body, forcing him into the snow, disabusing him of all his foolish notions.
Yes! Zyryxa wanted to roar, to let loose the restraints on her exhilaration. Pelzyq was strong, he fought hard for his freedom, but she was the strongest.
He grunted and thrashed, trying to push her off him by bucking like a wild drake, by hammering at her arms and back with his free fist. He tried to slip his trapped arm through her vice grip, tried to wiggle his head out of the stranglehold. He tried, and he tried, and he tried. How Pelzyq tried to be better than he was!
Alas, he was not better than her. His eyes looked up from the bottom, frantic and wide, brimming with tears. Zyryxa mouthed a kiss, part of her tempted to deliver it to his lips. Thankfully, the small part of her that was aroused was suppressed the by the remainder of the disgusted whole.
Zyryxa’s words flowed with the lilt of a lover’s tender melody. “Come on, Pelzyq. Ride me. Get on top and give me a better view of my future champion.” She winked.
Pelzyq seized a handful of her braid and yanked. Zyryxa clenched her teeth, suppressing a cry, channeling it into her rage and tightening her grip on his head and arm until he started to turn blue and purple in the face.
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“This is the most you will ever touch me,” she growled.
Dryxl dashed in, late to the fight as ever, happy to join in now that easy meat was on the ground. “Back off!” Zyryxa barked, sending him away before he gorged on jackass blood.
Pelzyq panted, fighting for air, trying one last desperate attempt to buck her off. Zyryxa shifted her body, keeping her legs braced for his waning resistance. She roared in his ugly face, “Who is your champion!”
Just when the challenge of the contest grew wearisome, the stubborn prick went demented with rage. Pelzyq thrashed beneath and behind her, hammering her back with his fist, testing her endurance, her poise, and her strength toward its limits.
“Who is your champion?” she asked, straining to keep the exertion out of her voice.
Pelzyq’s complexion shifted further toward blue as his flails died down and his panting grew more frantic.
“Qoryxa’s flaming eyes!” Zyryxa roared. “You are stubborn and stupid and not strong enough to afford either!”
Sighing, she released him. Get used to worshipping the ice beneath my toes, Pelzyq.
“Face me head-on, bitch!”
Zyryxa threw her head back and laughed. She laughed until the cold air hurt her throat. She laughed and laughed, to let it sink in how laughable of a challenger he was to her. Zyryxa did not give him the satisfaction of another word, or even of acknowledging that she needed to defend herself from him. He was so far below her that he was not worth the effort of turning to laugh in his face. She did hunger to throw him down again, to remind him of where he belonged since he seemed unable to retain the simplest lesson taught with the heaviest of hands. Alas, ignoring him was the ticket his presumptuousness purchased. Should he choose to attack her from the back, he would humiliate himself twice more. Once, for his hypocrisy. Twice, for tasting the snow at her feet a second time. She hoped he came for her.
He did not. In this, he earned the smallest fragment of her lost respect for him. Yet that tiny fragment struggled to survive as he hurled insults and challenges at her. She tuned him out like she would have Zyrxine after beating her for the thousandth time and still hearing her cringy whining and excuses. Some people were too fragile to admit that someone else was better. Like brittle ice tested by the coolest flames, these people broke beneath Zyryxa’s dominance.
Zyryxa strode over to the third aspirant outside the Pridefort’s gates. The quiet girl slouched beneath a gelubor, her blue eyes staying on her feet though her fingers tensed on her longbow. Her midnight-blue hair was nearly black, an extremely rare hue for an Ice Tribe Volqori, and Zyryxa knew this was the person she saw earlier on the slopes. For a creature so timid, Zyryxa tried not to underestimate her, remembering the arrow buried in the abominable’s eye. This girl might not be the strongest, but she was a survivor.
Zyryxa extended her hand. “I am Zyryxa.”
The girl’s eyes darted from her feet, to the hand, to Zyryxa’s face, to the hand, and back to her feet. Her hand trembled as she put it in Zyryxa’s. There was no strength in her squeeze, so Zyryxa kept her grip soft and compassionate. “L…L…Lexyn,” she stammered.
“Lexyn,” Zyryxa said, “a pretty name. It fits you well.”
Lexyn’s smile warmed Zyryxa, even if it was aimed at the snow. Lexyn was pretty, without a doubt, even if she was not sculpted like true ice. Cute may have been the most apt word. Adorable? She was at least a head smaller than Zyryxa even if she were not slouched like she expected the world to punt her arse. If you could only have one, Zyryxa preferred sculpted muscles to big breasts but at least Lexyn had the latter, noticeable even beneath her well-maintained yak hides. Her face was soft and somewhat round, lacking the sharp, draconic edges of a mighty ice warrior, and even heart-shaped as if the softness were not evident enough. Still, it was an excellent face with large icy blue eyes, long lashes, defined brows, full lips, prominent cheekbones, and a perfectly symmetrical jaw, all framed by her unique shade of dark blue hair flowing down the sides of her face. She was not without flaws. Her nose was perhaps a size larger than fitted the rest of her face. Her skin bore a blemish on one of her cheeks nor was she the snowy pale complexion of the Ice Tribe, but darker by a few shades.
All in all, Zyryxa wanted to care for this lovely, timid creature. She yearned to draw out whatever strength lurked within her unimposing frame, to help her grow into power that would match her beauty, and to learn whether she was as compassionate as Zyryxa assumed. Until then, Zyryxa felt a calling to protect this survivor who endured a rite that only one in three Volqori sixteen-year-olds completed.
“Stop ignoring me, ZIE-RIX-ZUH!” Pelzyq howled.
Zyryxa ignored him. “How is your aim?”
“D-d-dee-decent.”
Decent. Zyryxa scowled. The meaning of decent was contingent on the arrogance or humility of the person wielding that word. Zyryxa remembered the arrow in the abominable’s eye and nurtured a suspicion that “decent” understated the truth, that this girl wanted to appear less than she was. Perhaps it was her confidence that was subpar? All this conjecture was as useful as the headache it would cause. It was always better to trace the truth to its source than to spin in circles thinking about the possibilities.
Partitioning her attention away from Pelzyq’s insults, from Dryxl’s growls at the roaring buffoon, Zyryxa pointed out a stalagmite across the plateau about a hundred yards away. “Can you hit that?”
Lexyn scrunched her eyes toward the target. “I…I don’t, uh, don’t like to…break my…my…my arrows.”
“If you hit the stalagmite, I will buy you an entire quiver after we become dragon warriors.”
“If I… if I miss?”
“You won’t.”
Lexyn’s cheeks flushed red. She inhaled, scooped up a handful of snow into her gloved hand, and tossed it in the air, watching how the wind blew it astray. She ran her fingers over her arrows, inspecting their fletching before pulling one from her quiver. The arrow slipped from her grasp. She knelt down, arms and legs shaking like her chest was the epicenter of an earthquake. Lexyn struggled to nock the arrow to her bowstring and Zyryxa’s expectations withered. She held it there a long time, breathing in and out while Pelzyq hollered empty insults at Zyryxa.
When at last the arrow sailed over the plateau and smashed into the stalagmite, Zyryxa patted Lexyn’s back. “Decent.”
Lexyn chuckled. “Thank you.” She lowered her eyes back to her feet. Perhaps her fixation was why she managed to keep her boots for the whole year, Zyryxa mused.
Even Pelzyq paused his harangue to whistle. “Heh, so she can do something other than stare at her feet!”
“And yet we have yet to see something you can do besides blather,” Zyryxa said.
Lexyn snorted. Pelzyq most certainly did not. He puffed out his chest and wagged his finger at her. His ugly face twisted into a horrid snarl. “You seduced me, you fire-loving bitch. A true ice champion wouldn’t ambush me like you did. You’ll never be nothing more than the Champion’s pretty whore.”
Her fists closed into deadly hammers, his barbed words finally sinking into a soft spot in her hardened hide. She would throttle him until there was nothing left for Vaztyma to play with.
“Look!” Lexyn yelped, pointing her finger toward the twin peaks overlooking the Pridefort.
There was no mistaking Praedax. Equal in size to Nitryx, his enormous dark blue wings flew through the night, cutting the sky beneath a glistening blue, nearly full moon. Praedax heralded his coming with a mighty roar that sent a huge chunk of ice crashing off one of the peaks, fated to shatter in the valley over a mile below the high plateau where he roosted within walls of qoryxite.
With Champion Vaztyma’s arrival, the gate of the Pridefort rumbled open.