Hunted
by Marlo Dianne

 

“Look at the poor girl,” Hewandra murmured in light tones never soft enough, “So helpless—and so young! What a waste, the poor dear little thing...”

Tricyah groped along determinedly, resisting a twitch that suggested she throw an elbow—and hope to accidentally catch some condescending ribs. This sort of tripe hummed on and on, and to even deepen a frown gave it too much power.

The bitch wasn’t worth chipping with an elbow.

Every time she came to the village, she could hear them wringing their hands, dripping all over each other, slopping great gobs of Such A Pity, What A Shame, How Can, Poor Thing. Of course they addressed the Poor Thing rarely, if at all, booming at her as if she were a nitwit, with cheer about as natural as, oh, licking a flame to keep cool. Sometimes, she itched to grab, to lift her face and force their restless probing tongues to her blank eyes. Knowing their shock and horror—purposefully creating it—would be oddly satisfying, but she came here for the peace, and, except for the odd enduring humiliation of the trudge through town, her life was as quiet as could be had.

The sun placed warm hands on her face as she walked home, arms laden with supplies.

#

A forest green dress swinging softly about long legs.

Red tresses gleaming bright, streaming in the breeze.

Rugar watched.

She was alone, as they had said. A poor little maid alone in the wilds with eyes that saw only darkness. He throbbed fast with the possibilities.

Finally, a hearty conquest.

Rugar and Loulin were mighty warriors. Everyone said so, and anyone who didn’t was dead. When tales had come of the Dreadful Beast, they knew this was their kill. Traveled beaten and bloody roads from Castdown to Thundelmore, winding up in this total nowhere scrap of flea-bitten squat, where the dragon was a just a giggling bit, the fable of fits and fools. Shit. The great kill would not be theirs, could not be theirs. Gut a fantasy?

Rugar spat again in disgust.

Fidgeting for a fight, and there was none to be had. They needed a little healthy fun—or to kill each other. He had already bloodied Loulin’s eye, and been repaid by losing a couple pinches of ear. That had grown stale, but not before they were both sore and angry.

They needed something to kick, to stab, to—

And then they saw that fiery woman called Tricyah. Hair of fire, but as helpless as a drop of water. They had needs, and she had needs, and one could rub the other...or two could rub the one. Oh yes.

Rugar licked swollen lips.

#

Stretching in the moonlight, Tricyah pulled away the bind, dropping the flop, and then shook her head until hair was lapping loosely over shoulders. She stretched again, feeling it pop between her shoulders and then rise up her arms, like a bubble moving to the surface.

#

It was a wonder to watch a girl stretch; it pushed the tits out to twice the size. Rugar felt breath pump his throat eagerly as her blouse dropped from pale shoulders. All too easy.

But hard enough.

Oh yes.

She stripped completely before their flaring eyes, then was as still as mud. Just stood there, naked and gleaming, as Rugar came out from the trees, Loulin panting at his side. When he could almost touch that icy warmth, she turned, bringing unseeing eyes directly to his. She didn’t seem surprised or unpleased. Her head cocked slightly, and he reached for her wrists, throbbing so hard he nearly screamed with it. Oh, this would be—

There was a blur, and then red, and Rugar’s fingers almost made it to his sword before he—

#

The Red Dragon flicked his tongue and spat delicately; he hated when things got stuck in his teeth.

#

 

Tricyah glided lazily on an eddy, skimming the Ruftbarst Mountains. The village was silent in the dark, tiny lights flickering nervously low below. As blind as rock when a human female, as a dragon male, Tricyah could pick apart each speck inside the tiny squares that waffled the roof tiles, or even the skittish insects that skittered below the heavy grass.

Carefully, he tipped and rolled, crouching a land near the pool. He gathered his wings smoothly against his back, like the graceful protection of expensive silk. His stomach felt—

Belching a burp that nearly set waves rippling across the water, he edged a claw away from a filthy tarnished sword. Another burp went to rise up, then settled grumpily back.

Must have been something he ate.

Tricyah stretched, head lowering, rump rising, elongating and sighing like a snake. Skin flared, back to small and white, and she groped, gathering up damp clothes. Lips twisting, she picked up the crude sword with two fingers and heaved it into the lake, where it clanged into the others.

She didn’t eat junk food, just spoiled meat.

#

She cuddled the smallest kitten. Poor little thing, born with a few extra toes and his mother would have nothing to do with him. Brothers and sisters snubbed, or beat. Tricyah fingered him again, gently. He had an ugly scratch that nearly tore his left ear in two. It was sticky, probably bleeding steadily.

She strolled down to the water, dipping a cloth for the offended ear. The kitten mewed, then howled with the sting. She murmured to it softly, but it scrambled harder, squirming desperately as if for air. She let it go.

A bush had scratched another.

There was no wind.

Tricyah turned. “Who is there?” she snapped.

No answer.

The bushes scraped again, and she huffed inside her head. Likely the village brats in play again. Oh, fun with the blind wench. She wished they had better games, like chewing each other’s necks or smothering the young.

She moved back to her cottage, feeling the new chill in the air. Sunset it was; moonrise soon it—

“Is that it?”

Tricyah stopped, turning, running her tongue along the bite of her top teeth.

“Is that the best you can do? You’re a dragon—brilliant, noble, powerful, beautiful—and you snack on rusty filthy clumsy would be rapists?”

Tricyah felt her cheek twitch, tug, then pull into a grin. “What would you suggest, a tart brie?”

She heard nothing, but he was still there. The voice was male, young, but far past a child. In a few years, the hair on his scalp would begin to turn, or flee.

If he survived.

“You can’t see me?”

Tricyah whirled, back curling. Behind her! How did he—”How did you—”

She heard the smile. “Magic.”

The punch was out before she thought of it. Her fingers met the furniture of flesh, but—disappointingly—by the points of knuckles, not the flat of the fist. Also, the strike was a tad low.

There was some long wet gagging.

She smiled pleasantly; she’d hit the throat. “That magic?”

More frothy gurgling, then some dry hacking, and some pained wheezy gasping. Tricyah dropped clothes, and flexed her jaw, rubbing it.

“Qualaugith Quith.”

That wasn’t breathless; also, it made her want to bite him now, and her teeth weren’t big enough yet.

“He’s why, right?”

“Why what?” she snapped, teeth closed tight.

“No one could kill the dragon. It was too powerful, too clever, too fast. Of course, they obsessed their pride on it, and it grew to such proportions...

“That was the key, wasn’t it? Qualaugith Quith figured the problem was basic: you can’t fight a dragon. Everyone had tried enhancing themselves; he went for inhibiting his enemy. It went bad.”

 

“Somewhat.”

“He only got a partial, it didn’t go to completion, and the by-product was a blast that made Brohyhenmte Mountain into Brohyhenmte Scarred Pit.”

“Yes,” she sighed, bored now, “making a dragon sometimes not a dragon, but still very much alive, and making Qualaugith Quith a few crushed blots of stringy meat.”

“Not quite.”

Her ears began a growling hum, and she felt the bottom drop out of her mind. “What?” she shouted over the drone.

“He isn’t dead. If he was, his magic would be.”

Tricyah hadn’t known that. Possibilities bounced around the top of her mind.

“But I could help you kill him, and you’d be just a dragon again.”

She laughed. “Why do that? I have nothing. What could I give you?” Excepting a quick death.

“It’s not about what you can give me.”

She felt muscles roll and crack, and looked down ready to bite.

But Tricyah looked.

Pierced the pest’s age like a finger to a needle, he was fairly sure of that. His hair was a flop of that non-descript brown; his clothes were wraps of loose swaths, faded green.

But of course these were all things forcing a second look to notice, even with enhanced precision eyes, to make such minor discoveries.

Because the very first thing to see was the hole where a face should be.

There was some face, and what was there was blandly typical: the usual assortment of eyes, nose, and eyebrows, and so on. But something had ripped off the lower half of his face, tore the lower jaw free of the body, so that you could actually see into what was left of the jaw and throat—all dark pink and gaping black. It was somewhat jarring, the juxtaposition. You know, a normal man with the hanging maw of a death’s head.

It was worth more than a glance.

Only because of the wide scope and analytical meticula of his vision did Tricyah note something else off in the scene.

The man was missing his hands and feet. Jagged ends.

Torn off too.

“It’s not about you can give me,” his chafing visitor said again. “It’s about what he took.”

#

As a dragon, Tricyah wasn’t fluid with the conversation. That wasn’t to say he didn’t argue and express himself. He did, and quite well. He used his mouth quite fluently, but it only had to express two things:

1) You’re no bother

2) You’re food

Truly, there was no need for words for that, just teeth.

He could probably talk as a dragon, but to bite or not to bite was just so much simpler.

As he had already decided not to eat Man-tore, he nibbled on a bit of snodgrass. He wasn’t that hungry really—getting older, getting human female, getting a supper that had been a bit of a gorging, getting a clear look down a gullet. That supper had been something though, fit for a family-size family.

It had been good to drop that skirt before it busted a seam.

His company didn’t appreciate the art of non-conversation, particularly dinner non-conversation. Man-tore also made a rather unfortunate comparison of his host to a cow. That probably would have gotten him eaten, if Tricyah had been able to stomach it. But no, poor planning; he was too full.

So he took his other option: he flew. Which, let us be forthright, was certainly rude. But how polite was it to yammer incessantly through dinner? And to break natural law repeatedly, forming words when you had no lower jaw to shape them with?

And then there was showing up uninvited...

And bringing news of an undeath.

 

Sighing, Tricyah tried to focus. It was true there was nothing up here that could hit him and harm him. That was hardly a problem below either. No, flight was not for migration, or travel, or exercise. Rather, never primarily. Flight was for enjoyment; to be pleased by the wind, the view, the feeling of alive. It was a time to be, not to think.

And it was ruined.

With another sigh, Tricyah dropped from the sky.

Dragons fall.

It was their earliest memory.

Falling from the sky. For some—poor wings, poor instincts, poor mothers—it would be their last memory as well.

Mothers pulled their young, tore them, dripping from their chests. Held this pathetic globlet aloft with pride, then hurled it below with a kick and a thrash of wings.

Black, it fell, viscous and solid, heavy and leaking. Like a raindrop cried from a cloud, and like a flame, sputtering above as consumed from below.

As it plummeted it cooled, spun like clear crystal, spitting chips like ice, until a swing of head or strike of limb shattered the now fragile skin. Or not.

“Hey, Fleetfoot!”

Tricyah sighed. “Could you please mind? I was recounting existence.”

“How far were you?”

“Birth. And, technically, strictly speaking, I am hardly quick on my feet.”

“I hardly have a few millennia for you to reminisce, and how can you waddle in past glories, when your greatest enemy is—”

“No waddle, no glory, and certainly no greatest enemy. Besides, he’s dead.”

“Ah. So this is really a waddle in self-pity and denial.”

“How did you get here? Men don’t fly.”

“Don’t they? But no, I don’t like to fly.” His gaping hole went wide. “I’m more of an earthy type.” Man-tore pinched his nose, scratching it. “So...he thinks you’re dead too, you know.”

Tricyah remembered that he meant to bite his dragon tongue. Now that he thought back on it, the voice was nice though: deep, thick, and with no embarrassing enunciation. But why bite a tongue, when—

“He brags about it. He tells everyone he raped you first.”

A single talon, that’s all. Just one claw with a hint of overflow or not enough reach, and it would have been fatal. Two at the neck, two at the shoulders, and one for every man’s most precious place. Tricyah brought his head down, slowly. “While you have a prattle, and a lump of meat behind some teeth, be careful how you use it.”

“Ah—”

His ruffs pulled back.

“Yes! Of course! Uh, meat lumps, badly done. Um, it—”

“Qualaugith Quith.”

“Yes?”

“Where?”

“Ah, right.” Man-tore tried to point. Not just with an arm missing the appendage of fingers, pinned with the bondage of cloth and claw, but also caged immobile by the press of talons. “Um, that way.

“I think.”

#

“You’re lost.”

“No.”

“You’re lost!”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, not exactly,” Tricyah muttered. “Getting lost would require more precision than this enterprise is capable of.”

“Eh, it’s been a while. I didn’t exactly follow a red arrow to you, you know.” The gap twisted, what was probably a frown. “I can find him.”

“Oh? He has a red arrow?”

 

“No.” He closed his eyes, sighing a breath.

Man-tore dropped. Like a chair suddenly lopped to two legs, he hit heavy, rolling in the dirt, screaming and drooling, battering at himself as if he were on fire or gone rabid in a deranged fit of loathing.

He went limp.

Silence.

Really awkward uncertain silence.

“Uh...”

Just silence.

Tricyah bent, just a bit, not wanting to get close. “You okay? Man-tore?”

His eyes came open like scurrying spiders. “What?”

“Are you—”

“Man-tore?”

“Well, I didn’t have a...” Augh, if the name was so important, he should have provided an approved one.

Ragged touchy human sat up, grunting, holding his head like leaking fruit. “Hurt more than I expected.”

“What, thrashing?”

“He keeps souvenirs.”

Tricyah ticked that by a few gears of wheel. “You—”

“The rest of me is that way.” He pointed as easily as a man marking the brightest star. With a wag of stump.

#

There was a slight breakdown in the group travel plan, owing mainly to irreconcilable differences on the transportation mode. This didn’t ricochet along to the expected logical conclusion of, say, sudden death.

“I have wings for a reason.”

“You don’t have them now, and besides, I could just—”

Tricyah wished she was wearing the big teeth again. “No magic.”

“It’s stupid to be stubborn—”

“Exactly.”

“I’m being quite sane and practical, you’re—”

“Allergic to magic.”

That shut him up, for a moment anyway. “Pardon?”

She pointed at her face. “Note: why do you think this misfired?” Sigh. “I’m guessing you’re not up on your dragon lore.”

“Ah, no, not really, no. Finding you, that was just scuttling rumour.

“I know big, wings, breathes fire, long life, unpredictable temper—and I’ve noticed you’re an omnivore.”

“I am, though my species tends towards vegan. We just have an instinct that says eat what’s dangerous.”

“Grass is dangerous?”

Tricyah snorted.

“Those two dumps weren’t dangerous.”

“Really?” She held out her hands. “What if I was exactly what I look like?”

A pause. “Um, I would have saved you.”

“I feel greatly relieved. However, if I was just this, you wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t even have been there.”

“You could have just toasted them.”

“Can’t breathe fire.”

“What?”

“I’m asthmatic.”

 

 

“Shit! What kind of a—”

Tricyah had him by the throat, tight. “The kind you came looking for, and really don’t want to piss off?” She let go, shoving him with a twist of wrist that dropped him to the ground. “We’ll fly at night.”

“We can’t.”

She stepped forward.

“You don’t know magic—”

“I don’t care—”

“It will kill me.”

Tricyah stopped, considering that. Almost at length. A twitch at the base of the back wouldn’t let her concentrate though. It had an uneasy taste, like bad metal and dried blood.

Blood.

She smoothed hair back from her face, spooning it behind the ears. “Kill how?” She could hear him shifting, but he didn’t stand. Lips slid over her teeth.

“Life consumes life. To be alive you have to eat life itself. It’s as basic as that.

“What you call magic is like that, except it consumes a different kind of food, for a different kind of energy.

“If you took me into the sky, I’d starve.”

“You eat dirt?”

“No, but it’s in there, in the ground. I can feel it, but I can’t see it.”

“You can live without food for—”

“It’s faster. Throw me in the middle of your lake, and it would kill me before I could drown.”

“More precious than air.”

“Maybe as precious as.” She heard the gap change. “I was giving myself some credit for thrash.”

Tricyah bit both lips. “I can’t magic; you can’t fly.”

“Got it?”

“Not yet...but I will.”

Chattered away in the head, it looped endlessly. Can’t fly, can’t magic. Could they split up? Only Man-tore knew where they were going, and, at that, it was a nebulous feeling, not a predetermined geo-location. They would just get lost, or at least a dragon would.

Perhaps, Man-tore could fly somehow. Short jumps? Ground brought with him? No. Not if the reaction was quick, not when it was not really dirt he was feeding on. Tricyah suspected it was life itself he fed upon, at its most pure, like a basic parasite. Giving him life to consume continually was...unthinkable. And equally unpractical.

There was no way to do this. They were stuck as firmly as—

But did they? Did they have to do this? What could be the conclusion, to suffer, again, by choice, merely to punish the one who made the wrong?

That wasn’t just petty; it was stupid. “Do we have to do this?”

“What?” Shock and outrage slapped.

“Bring him here.” Silence. “You could magic that. Force him to come to you.”

“I...I never thought that...but, what do we do if he gets here?”

“What were you planning on doing when we got there?”

The reply was flat. “The plan was for you to flame him.”

“Oh.” Thoughts regrouped. “What were you going to do, attempt wits on his sexual preference?”

“Protect you. Try to draw his attack, block his defense.”

“You...weren’t expecting to survive,” Tricyah said with surprise.

“He would be dead; I would be whole. The rest...wouldn’t matter.”

“And me?”

“Oh, you’d live. He thinks you’re dead, remember?”

“So bring it, bring him, and I can—”

 

“Oohhhh, isn’t this just delightful?”

“Delightful indeed.”

Tricyah could feel the nerve behind the eye sockets twitching. This was a poor time to unsee, what with no doubt a lovely view—and a newly arrived, happily psychotic, Minder. If he lived, she would have to have a chat with Man-tore on timing. Namely, on the bad nature of it; subtopic: don’t blow you load, or, how to wait until your worthy ally has the big teeth. This was supposed to be a simple crunch of bones.

“Trying to kill me again?”

Tricyah opened mouth, but Man-tore was already there, with, “No. I learn from my mistakes.”

“Parts of you do, anyway.”

“Indeed again. You learn from yours?”

Uh-oh.

“Excepting missing that you would make your push for 1st from 2nd so soon, I’m out of errs apparent.”

“I have something to help with that: reparations.”

Tricyah felt cold and hot, pouring over one another.

“Her? I doubt you’d hope for that simple wench to be sufficient.”

He didn’t recognise—

“You have no idea. It’s hidden well, but the power there...”

It was the tone more than the words—she was meat being tossed to snapping jaws—and Tricyah reacted with a smash to betrayal.

Something was wrong.

Her hand was pressed to her mouth. Something warm and wet dribbled out through her fingers like gravy. There was pain—and a hole where a tooth had been. She rocked her body, gagging, and discovered she had to sit up. She was flat on her back on the ground.

Tricyah missed; Man-tore hadn’t.

“...spirit...”

“...not...long...”

Stall. That was all that—

Her skin was on fire. And then it wasn’t. Tricyah was a dragon. It was still day. And he was alone, with an old man.

“Sorry about the tooth,” the geezer wheezed. “It had to look real, but I didn’t mean that real.”

His tongue probing relentlessly at the hole, Tricyah studied the old man. He had all his parts, withered, but present, and coiled in wraps of faded green. “Did you want one less tooth for me to bite you with?”

“I couldn’t get him with magic. I know...that the painful way. You might bite him, but you’d never have a chance to...finish it...before he countered.”

“So?”

“I don’t know. When he didn’t even know who you were, it just struck me: allergy. I could use it. If he targeted with enough magic, and it back-lashed—-”

“It might kill us both this time?”

“No! The circuit, reversed the loop, made it go one way. He threw a spell, and...I made sure he choked on the feedback.”

“He attacked me.”

“No! Well, he thought he was. I let him think you were a battery, a repository of a huge whack of magic, with no ability to use it.”

“He would need it...”

“Of course. Even if you weren’t a perpetual power force, he doesn’t—didn’t—know you could get magic any other way. Feeds on people as blandly as you do on grass. He’s been feeding on me for—” He shook his head. “That’s done.”

“So I was bait.”

“Poisoned bait. But that was nothing new to you, was it? You weren’t hurt.”

“Seems you were.”

 

“I was willing to pay it. Had to. Everything has a price.” He looked down. “Maybe it doesn’t look it, but I paid more. For less.”

“When you were friends.”

“We were never friends. We were...something better. Something worse.” His head came up, and shoulders shifted, twisting like a snake. “Don’t bite any windmills.” He poured into the ground, disappearing in it like a drop in a lake.

Tricyah blinked.

Windmills?

No, bad for the teeth.

With a crack of wings, he left the dirt.