[Gift] GD | Arenig, Chrysomallos, Cupcake

Strength - Wordcount 910

The heat was oppressive; the air heavy with humidity and the smell of damp earth and grass. Last night’s heavy rain had provided relief at the height of the dry season for the animals that lived in the savanna, but for the gathered dragons, it was one more obstacle to overcome.

Even Arenig, arguably the most well-equipped due to his fiery nature, smooth scales, the ice that lay in heavy plates down his back, and the clouds that shrouded him, found that his movements seemed to require more energy for less impact.

Yet, he did not waver.

Belthir was a young opponent, still growing. But he was agile and clever, constantly on guard. In the mock battle between them, he easily avoided Arenig’s snapping jaws, the thrust of his horns, and the occasional clumsy swipe of his claws or tail. His greatest advantage only required him to remain behind Arenig’s wings.

They spiraled into the sky, Arenig trying to reorient himself, competing against the slithery movements of Belthir’s lithe body that propelled with ease through the air, unburdened by the need to use his small wings. Arenig was closing the gap between them, but he was also breathing like a bellows, heaving and hot.

There came a great rumble from the earth below.

A magnificent spire shot out of the ground and pierced the sky, above the thin acacia trees and the towering baobabs. It was a marvelous thing to look at; banded sandstone created a rainbow of earthen tones down the almost-smooth sides, as if it had been neatly cut by a jeweler’s hand.

On the very top of it was a black cloud of a dragon. Cirrus, fascinated by her sudden displacement from the ground into thin air, scanned the savanna around her before watching Arenig and Belthir tumble through the sky. Eventually, she turned her attention down to the new landmark on which she stood and its creator.

Down below, in a sea of yellowed grass, she could see the faint gleam as the light caught on the crystals on Cupcake’s shoulders and tail. She seemed to be pacing around the base of her creation, zippy and light-footed, perhaps anxious.

When she stopped and peered upwards towards Cirrus, she finally took a step off the top of the spire and began his own descent towards the ground. It wouldn’t do for Cupcake to mar this lovely piece of work just to make it climbable.

“Impressive!” she crowed as she landed with a slight stumble on the ground.

Cupcake gave a small bow, then muttered, “Could’ve done better.”

“Next time,” Cirrus suggested brightly. “A masterpiece like this should hardly be one-and-done.”

Cupcake’s triangular ears twitched, perking up. Her tail gave a short wave behind her. It simply hadn’t occurred to her that she could do this again: bigger, better, as many times as she wanted until she was satisfied. “I guess not.”

Cirrus hummed happily, then asked, “Now where did the boys run off to?”

Cupcake nosed upward. Cirrus peeked upward where Belthir and Arenig continued to spar. “Oh, no, not them. The other two.”

“Oh.” Cupcake sniffed at the air, black nose twitching. Before she could give an answer, there was a horrible noise in the distance. Cupcake turned her head and listened to the distant pounding of hooves, the cries of frightened animals, and she growled. “Three guesses; the first two don’t count.”

The unicorn had been living among the zebras. It was a larger beast though similarly shaped, a proud horn jutting from its forehead. The white of its stripes were stained rust red from where the fierce warrior had battled and brought foes to a grisly end. It held an aura of magic around it, and its attention had not strayed from the two dragons surveying the herd from the time that they had arrived.

Sleipnir stood at attention, his posture stiff, his body ready to move, attack, defend, whatever was necessary at any given moment. He was an intimidating figure, though this only made Chrysomallos want to challenge him more. Whether he won or not seemed immaterial, if he could bring their horns together, clash for the experience of it.

Sleipnir had chosen the unicorn instead, because it was everything he wasn’t. The unicorn wouldn’t hold back its strikes, wouldn’t show mercy on a dragon trying to bring it down. This was a fight for survival. If the smaller dragon wanted to prove himself to the likes of him, it could not be done in half measures.

So Chrys set out. Given the blood stains on the unicorn, he doubted it would run even if the zebras did, so he charged at them full tilt, the illusion of wings behind him and the star pearl resting between his horns flashing brightly. The zebras took off at a gallop, frightened; when Chrys closed the gap between them, he bared his sharp teeth and nipped at their legs, driving the frenzy higher until a set of hooves ran into him and drove him into the muck.

It was easy, in the end. Pure instinct. He ducked his head and drove his spine into one of the kicking legs. The unicorn shrieked as one of his dorsal spines shredded its muscles, and with one leg grievously injured, its ability to survive was severely hampered.

There was no reason to take pride in it, and Sleipnir found that pleasing. It was simply done, and that was enough.

Flexibility - Wordcount 971

The city was overwhelming from the off. Tall buildings were cramped together, narrow, twisting streets and alleys were either lit by an abundance of neon and flashing lights or lay abandoned and dark in the shadows. The only breathable breaks in all of the hubbub were the wide canals that had once served as the major thoroughfares through the city, and even these were being taken over by floating markets or fleets of houseboats, until one could almost forget about the water beneath.

Cupcake, seeking a moment’s reprieve from the noise and lights, had followed one of the canals deep into the inner city only to find herself standing on the edge of a large, almost black lagoon, wherein a much larger dragon lurked, seemingly cut off from the outside by the crowds flooding the canals.

She cast about for way to get closer, and saw a boat loaded with goods but currently dark, unguarded, tethered to this side of the canal. Cupcake jumped onto it, wobbled uncertainly before chewing through the rope, then managed to clumsily work the small motor on the aft of the boat to bring it closer to where Abyzuo waited.

“Hullo,” Cupcake said after she killed the motor and floated closer. Abyzuo’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, which Cupcake didn’t intend to hold against her. “Feel free to push me back to shore if I’m off base, but if you could use some help, I can go ahead of you and clear one of the canals.”

The much larger dragon slowly tilted her head, the tentacles on the sides of her face wiggling curiously. Cupcake grinned. “Watch.” She lifted her head, looking down the different canals until she found the one that looked the most empty. She puffed up, her velvet scales seeming to catch the wind around her, and down the canal, the water rose in a tumultuous wave as Cupcake simply lifted the mucky earth at the bottom and rolled it outward.

The people, previously sprawled across the length of the canal, began to reel their boats in, tether them tightly as Cupcake continued to make roiling waves and filled the canal with grit. With Abyzuo’s help, they turned her boat down the canal, and Cupcake led the way, riding the boat down the turbulent waves as Abyzuo followed behind, no longer cramped by the waterbound traffic.

Not terribly far from them, two dragons tried carefully to navigate the variable towers of the city, the reflective glass windows that turned the skies into a labyrinthine horror. Ascending higher ought to be easy, but they had thought so twice already and not reached the end of the skyscrapers.

Cam abruptly slammed into a window, the spikes on his head scraping the surface, leaving deep scratches on the glass with a horrible noise. Arenig swept in as quickly as he could, trying to catch Cam with one leathery wing as he fell back. “Grab on,” he said.

“You’re cold, nya,” Cam complained, sounding dazed, but he obediently wrapped his hands around Arenig’s horns, not quite resting his weight on him, but letting himself be pulled along as Arenig tried to navigate the city of mirrors.

Arenig gently assured, “If we find one of the canals, we can follow it to the wider sea.”

“But if we take a wrong turn, we’ll never get out of here.”

Arenig snorted and tossed his head just enough to wiggle Cam, who was only arguing for the sake of it. “When the sun comes up, it’ll be easier to see.”

“Will it?”

“Yes,” Arenig said, without a clue if it was true or not and no longer caring. “But hopefully it won’t come to that. Either way: you’ll see.”

“Believe it when I see it, nya,” Cam said, sounding more playful than melancholy, which Arenig would take as a win.

Down on the streets below, two pale dragons had been having a lovely walk on one of the quieter streets and came to a sudden and unpleasant stop.

Chrysomallos took a step back, his nose wiggling from where it’d bumped into the invisible barrier. He glanced up at Zuri who was similarly scowling, his cobra’s hood flared and feathered scales standing on end. “You alright?”

“Fine,” Zuri mumbled and reached out with his front paws, testing where the barrier was. He followed it around, a small circle confining the two of them. Chrys was careful to mind Zuri’s tail as he looked around the street where they’d stopped. There was a mess of neon signs everywhere, the smell of food wafting from a noodle stand nearby, but the most probable cause was a curio shop with several magic wonders advertised in its front window for alarmingly cheap prices. That these included things like dragon scales and teeth was not terribly inspiring.

It was hard to discern the magic circle where it had been laid between the cobblestones. Moreover, he didn’t know how they were going to break it. Unless…

Chrys found his way to the center of the circle. He tested the cobbles one at a time until he found one that was loose enough. To Zuri: “Could you pry this up?”

Zuri obliged, and with one gone, it was easier to unearth more at the center of the circle. There were runes beneath, sealed in blood, but Chrys began hammering them with his hooves. He rose on his hind legs and slammed down with as much force as he could find, pummeling the runes into dust. Even that wasn’t enough, but once he’d made a literal dent in the circle, lowered the remnants of the runes so they were no longer level with the others, there was tangible relief as the magic broke apart.

Zuri grinned, and the two of them took off down the street, laughing the entire way.

Providence - Wordcount 916

The old mine had been a risk that they’d all undertaken together. It wasn’t really a shock that as they descended deep into the earth, past rotting struts and bowing ceiling beams, something, somewhere gave way. Old lantern lights went from dim to dark, and with the grating sound of stone on stone, the three dragons were plunged into an oppressive space, severed from the rest of the world.

“Sound off,” Cupcake barked. “Everyone alive?”

“I am,” Arenig announced.

“For now,” Chrys said almost cheerfully.

“Was it worth it?” Arenig asked blandly, already wondering how on earth he was going to explain to Desdemona that he died during a perfectly preventable cave-in.

“Stop that,” Cupcake snipped, her voice closer than it had been a moment before. It seemed she still had freedom of movement. “Can you light anything?”

“Fire would be dangerous right now,” he pointed out sweetly. “Chrys has his wings.”

“Ah, yes,” Chrys said. “Except they — I — am a bit trapped.”

Cupcake followed the sound of his voice and found a small seam of golden light in the crack between a pile of rocks and the ground below. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” Chrys said. “Nothing I can’t handle. But I can’t very well get out on my own.”

“Hold still.” She began digging at the pile of rocks with her forepaws, hesitant to use too much magic in case it brought the cave down on them more. Slowly, she uncovered more of the light, and the sight of Chrys in a hole, his legs tucked under him, almost buried except for his face. Once he was loose enough, he stood, shaking the rocks and dirt from his scales, though he was still covered in filth.

Golden light flooded the cave as Chrys’s wings of light were freed.

Arenig was revealed, a large boulder pressing down on and digging into his shoulder. He bared his teeth in pain, leg shaking as he held himself up, too afraid to buckle lest it brought the roof of the cave down.

“Here, let me—” Cupcake began.

“Careful,” Chrys said. He moved closer, in soft steps as to not startle Arenig, letting the light catch on the veins of metal ore threaded through the rock holding him down. “That might cause problems.”

“If it doesn’t, we can take it home and call the job done, before his rider kills all three of us,” Cupcake said. She also approached, so soft, so careful. “Arenig? I’m gonna lift it off of you.”

“Lift, or push?” Arenig gritted out.

She considered. She could scrabble up on top of him, lift it with her physical body, but… “Magic,” she decided. “I can probably—” she hoped “—hold the entire thing up.”

“Should have been doing that before,” Chrys said.

“The whole mine would’ve been a bit much,” she bit at him.

“As you say, as you say,” he said, scampering out of her way. “Arenig, come over here when she lifts it off you. This area’s wider, more open. Probably less likely to cave. We’ll have a nice eulogy for Cupcake after.”

Arenig considered then nodded slowly. If Cupcake took offense, she didn’t show it, instead concentrating on the stone around the metal, the cave around them. She felt the absence of it then, the elements she couldn’t touch, and for a moment, she faltered. Dust and dirt fell from the roof of the cave, and she closed her eyes and locked down. She might not be able to do much, but she would get Arenig and Chrysomallos out of here. She would.

The stone slowly pulled out of Arenig’s shoulder. He gasped in both relief and pain, then slunk over to the spot Chrys estimated was safe. The cave seemed to breathe with Cupcake as she slowly directed the earth around them where to settle, to leave them and the ore-laden rock free of the configuration.

Getting out of here would be a different problem, but soon she had returned to the other two, almost trembling from the effort.

“Can you walk?” she asked gently, nuzzling Arenig’s face comfortingly.

“Yes. Maybe not fly.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Chrys was diplomatic. “Cups, is there anywhere that feels close to the surface?”

She leaned against Arenig, thinking, then huffed. “I think there’s a quarry. I don’t know if the mine itself opens to the sky, but the ground is thin. We could probably dig our way out if we go east.”

“East it is.” Chrys nudged the ore-laden rock with his horns, rolling it inelegantly across the uneven ground. “This way?”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Metal dragon, magnetism, I’ll bore you with the details while we get out of here.”

Arenig slowly stood up, growling in his throat when moving either his wing or putting pressure on his leg hurt his shoulder like nothing else on this earth. Cupcake came up alongside him, on his injured side. She was smaller than him but sturdy. “Lean on me,” she said.

“Do you want another cave in?” he asked, more worried about her than, perhaps, he had any reason to be.

“I won’t let you fall.” Then, with terrifying insight, she added, “You wouldn’t let me.”

His tail swept behind him, the thin threads of irritation overwhelmed by the trust she gave him. Reluctantly, he leaned his injured leg on her, and with every step of his he took, she leaned into him, acting as a brace.

It was slow going, but it worked.