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**The Missing Lynx, Chapter 8

Collision Course**

Kavah sighed, resting his head against his hands for a moment. It had been a long night, what with the sex and the ambushes and the explosions and the series of nonstop life-threatening situations. He'd signed onto this expedition just a few days ago, and it had already become abundantly clear that he simply wasn't cut out for this kind of hectic lifestyle. No, he was far better suited toward lounging around in civilized territories, where he could spend his time peacefully victimizing the gullible or wooing lovely women - or sometimes even wooing lovely, gullible women.

So that begged the question of why, exactly, he was still out here. Why was he sitting on the edge of a burned out war camp where the scent of fresh blood and sulfur still hung fresh in the air? Half the men he had signed on with were dead now, and another quarter of their number had quietly skulked off into the woods as soon as the opportunity had presented itself. All of those other beastkin, mercenaries and cutthroats and the like, had been far better suited for this kind of work than Kavah was. So why, out of all of them, was he one of the few who was still here?

Well it was complicated. But, suffice to say, he had his reasons.

Another beastkin approached, and from the stench Kavah knew who it was without even having to look in his direction. It was the tiger beastkin, Gange Southpaw - their supposed explosives expert. Gange was the one who had turned the tide when their warcamp had been ambushed in the dead of night, though that was putting it generously. In truth the tigerkin had actually managed to kill more of their own men than anything else, because the surviving mercenaries certainly hadn't found any wolfwere corpses left in the rubble.

"Boss is ready t'see yuh, kit." The tiger grinned, thumbing back over his shoulder. The feline seemed oddly jovial for someone who had so recently caused such massive collateral damage. Doubly so, given that the last Kavah had seen of him Gange had managed to burn off most of his own face in the process.

Kavah scowled a bit, glancing up at the tiger - his initial impulse was to snap at him, to tell him not to call him 'kit', but he quickly lost his train of thought. He paused, brow furrowed and ears slanted forward as he scrutinized the beastkin. "Y-... you, uh... yer lookin'... better?"

"Thanks!" Gange flashed him a sharp-toothed grin in return, punctuated by a double thumbs-up. The tiger had been a mess even before he had blown himself up, heavily scarred from a lifetime of ineptly handling explosive devices. The Pangolians had been the first to pioneer the art of powder-based explosives and they were loathe to share the secrets involved, but there were a few beastkin who were both brave and suicidal enough to experiment with it anyway. Gange was one of those lunatics, and he had the scars and missing appendages to prove it - or at least he used to.

But now he was... relatively more intact. He was sporting a few new limbs, evidently fully functional despite the obvious stitchwork and mismatched fur, and his shredded face had been mended up with some artfully applied pieces of what looked like freshly harvested hide. It almost made him look like a living ragdoll, or some fashion of patchwork beastkin.

Gange gave the fox a moment to admire his new look, then nodded. "Boss fixed me up with some o' the spare parts he had lyin' around. Ain't the prettiest, but I can't complain."

Kavah hesitated, his eyes lingering on the tiger's new arm for a few long seconds as he thought back. It was obviously out of place on the tiger's bulky frame, but it looked vaguely familiar- "Spare-... uh, wait, y'mean the guys you killed?"

"Hey!" Gange was still grinning, no trace of remorse or regret marring the joyful expression. "I told'em to duck and cover 'fore I set off the bombs. Ain't my fault they didn't listen."

Kavah was silent for a moment, simply staring at the grinning tiger before he finally spoke up again. "You killed our horses, too."

"Well they should'a ducked and covered, too." Gange grinned wider, his eyes narrowed to gleeful slits. Kavah was starting to wonder if the latest explosion had jarred something loose in the tiger's brain, or maybe he had just somehow managed to previously overlook how completely insane the tiger was. "But we ain't wastin' any o' their parts, neither. Breakfast's on in twenty."

Kavah's lip curled a bit, his ears twitching back despite his effort to hide his disgust. He resisted the urge to say something sarcastic, instead opting to just give a quick shake of his head.

Despite his near-oblivious nature, Gange seemed to pick up on the foxkin's dismay. The tiger leaned in to give him a friendly slap on the shoulder - hitting so hard that he practically knocked the fox completely off of his feet. "Chin up, kit! Ain't nothin' wrong with some fresh meat, no matter where it comes from. 'Sides, can't afford tuh be too picky right now. Turns out that no one taught our supplies how to duck 'nd cover neither."

Kavah opened his muzzle, then thought better of saying anything, instead pushing onto his feet and rubbing his sore shoulder. "Guess I'm gonna go talk to the boss, then. Just... uh... go get yerself somethin' to eat, Gange."

"Will do, kit!" The tiger laughed, giving the fox a double-handed wave as he sidled off toward the few tents that were still standing. The few other surviving mercenaries were already gathering there, building a firepit and cracking open the last surviving keg of beer. "I'll save yuh a haunch!"

"Please don't." Kavah murmured under his breath, a hand raised as he rubbed his muzzle wearily. He was thankful that he had thought to steal a few extra bits of food over the past couple of days, before their stockpile had been obliterated. The longer he could stave off the need to eat charred horse meat, the better.

He turned and moved toward the far end of their camp, though it was more of a rubble-strewn crater at this point. The mercenaries had spent most of the night scouring the sundered tents and shattered bodies for anything salvageable, and everything else had been heaped into haphazard piles. The furthest pile was where they had dumped what was left of the mercenaries who hadn't been fortunate enough to survive the night.

Kavah headed for that furthest pile. It was where their employer had been keeping himself busy for most of the morning.

The fox kept a hand at his muzzle, trying to block out the stench that was assaulting his nostrils. The smell had been unpleasant from the other side of the clearing, but now it was almost unbearable, like a mixture of blood, death, and acrid smoke. It was what he imagined Hell might smell like.

By Kavah's count they had lost almost a dozen men during the midnight ambush. Some of them had been killed by the attacking wolves, but most had been literally blown to pieces by Gange Southpaw's torrent of ill-timed explosives. Of those numerous casualties it looked like their employer had managed to get three of them back on their feet.

Oh, that wasn't to say that they had somehow been healed - they were still very, very dead - but despite their deceased state they were still surprisingly animate. Kavah's exposure to zombies was minimal, beyond a very brief trip that had taken him near the southern city of Gallow's Haunt, and even then he had never been this close to one. They actually didn't look nearly as horrifying as he had thought they might, given how artfully they had been assembled, but they were still more than unsettling enough to keep the fox's fur standing on-end.

At the moment the undead things were standing off to one side, patiently staring off into nothingness while they patiently waited for orders. Their creator, the black-robed necromancer, was currently in the process of piecing together a fourth one.

Kavah felt queasy as he spied the half-built body, his gaze quickly averted as he stopped a dozen paces short. Shuffling uneasily, he cleared his throat, trying to make his presence known without having to draw any closer.

"Ah..." the necromancer exhaled, his voice reverberating unnaturally as he straightened up. He was draped in black cloth as always, every inch of his body obscured by dark fabric or shadows so thick that they were practically tangible. "Kavah, report."

"Not lookin' good, boss." Kavah started, trying to carefully control the flow of information. The black-robed figure was volatile and dangerous, and the last thing the foxkin wanted was to get himself killed because his employer didn't like what he had to say. "Lost over half our guys last night, and, uh..."

"Hmn?" The necromancer uttered an inquisitive sound, though for the moment his attention was still split between Kavah and whatever unfortunate mercenary that was currently being reassembled. Kavah spared a quick glance at the cadavar, almost feeling guilty that he couldn't even remember the fellow's name. He didn't feel too bad, though, because he was fairly certain that this one had been wanted for murder somewhere back-east.

A heavy-gauge sewing needle glinted as the necromancer steadily threaded flesh to flesh, and Kavah's stomach churned. He quickly looked away again.

"Hhh..." The foxkin's voice rasped, his mouth suddenly feeling dry and his tongue refusing to form proper words. He coughed and swallowed, hastily trying to re-moisten his tongue, and he continued his report. "Er, yeh, I think we lost maybe fourteen or fifteen guys last night. I din't meet everyone myself, though, and... um... I can't get a complete list. Don't think anyone ever thought to make one, and most'a the guys you recruited didn't exactly socialize with each other."

The necromancer was silent for a moment, other than the steady brush of cloth and draw of thread-on-skin. Drawing the thread taut, he clipped it with an audible 'pop' and then knotted the loose end. His patchwork project looked a little more complete, but no less unsettling.

Turning toward the pile of neatly assembled and sorted 'spare parts', the the black-robed figure silently took stock of his inventory - then looked to the zombies he had completed, then to the half-dozen mercenaries who were gathered at the far end of the camp. Kavah was at a loss at first, but then quickly realized that the necromancer was doing some mental math. Finally, that unnaturally distorted voice rumbled out once more. "Mn. More than I thought."

"Well, uh..." Kavah bit his tongue lightly, his ears twitching back a little. He was a good liar, but this was still delicate work - he had no idea how perceptive his employer was. He was hoping that the necromancer was the sort who was too aloof or self-absorbed to really pay much attention to the finer details, when it came to managing minions. "Apparently a couple of guys bailed on us this mornin'."

"Hmmmn..." The necromancer's full attention was on the foxkin now, though his face was as unreadable as ever - his hood was drawn, his face cast into unnaturally dark and clinging shadow. Only the most basic details were visible, such as the vague impression of a muzzle, but it was impossible to gauge his reaction through facial expression or tone. "Who? When?"

Kavah suppressed a shiver, unable to see the necromancer's gaze, but still somehow feeling it burning right through him. He quickly cleared his throat again, licking over his lips as he readied another set of carefully crafted half-truths.

"Well, I didn't see 'em leave myself," he lied. He absolutely had seen them leave - in fact, he'd talked to them about it beforehand. Royce, the lion beastkin who's life Kavah had saved during the midnight ambush, had actually made a solid effort toward convincing the fox to leave with them. "But, uh, I think it was the mouse guy. The one with all the knives. He rounded up maybe two or three o' the other guys, and they all left together. I asked around, but none o' the other guys know exactly when they left."

Honestly, a rather sizeable part of the foxkin regretted his decision to not leave with them. Every sane part of him felt that he should have just cut his losses and gone back to civilization, no matter the cost. Unfortunately there was some crazy little voice that had convinced him to do otherwise.

The necromancer held stock-still for a few long seconds, like the looming visage of Death himself, before finally letting out a ragged sigh. An unnatural chill washed over Kavah's frame, and the foxkin could swear that some of the half-burned plants in area around them began to wilt.

"Unacceptable." The black-robed thing rasped. "Follow them. Take two of the others with you, and make an example of the cowards."

Kavah shifted unsteadily, gaze still firmly averted as he nervously clasped and unclasped his hands. "Uh, no can do, boss."

"Excuse me?" The necromancer drifted a step closer, towering over the shorter vulpine.

"I mean we c-... we can't!" Kavah cringed, his angular ears skewed out to either side. "There ain't no point, boss. We lost most'a our horses last night, and it looks like the guys who ran off took the ones we had left. We'd never catch up with 'em on foot."

"Hhhhssshhh..." Another long, ragged sigh erupted from the necromancer's shadowed visage. A gloved hand raised to readjust his black cowl. "Frustrating."

Kavah waited half a beat, then pressed on. "And, uh, that ain't the only problem..."

"Hmn?" The necromancer uttered a gutteral, inquisitive sound, one gloved hand gesturing. It took a moment for the foxkin to realize that the gesture wasn't aimed at him, as the necromancer's skeletal horse clattered over with impossibly fluid motions. As it reached it's master, the thing folded together like an elaborate child's toy, until it had taken on the form of a throne of bones. The black-robed figure delicately leaned his weight against it, almost seeming tired for a moment - and that made him seem just slightly less terrifying.

He spoke again after a moment of thought, one gloved hand gesturing to the fox to continue his report. "What else?"

"Well..." Kavah licked his lips, his ears twitching a bit as he worked at keeping his tone steady. "Most of our supplies are trashed. No more horses, maybe three usable tents, and only enough food and drink fer two more days."

"Impossible." The necromancer rumbled, sitting up a little. His undead throne shifted beneath him, actively compensating for the shift in weight. "I told them to butcher the dead."

"The, uh..." Kavah hesitated, a horrible thought coming to his head as he couldn't help but glance back toward the pile of 'spare parts' that were neatly sorted nearby. "The-...?"

The necromancer uttered a dry chuckle. "The horses, Mister Kavah. I do not expect you to eat your fellow beastkin. I have other uses for them."

The foxkin relaxed a little, though not by much. His gut was still churning a little, or- wait, no, that was the thing in his shirt. He shifted some, making a show of smoothing down the rumpled fabric of his frayed and filthy clothing, while more subtly trying to better conceal the thing that was hiding beneath it. "Um, y-... yeh, good. I mean, uh, you had me worried there fer a moment. But, uh..."

Kavah frowned a little, sparing a quick glance at his employer, and relaxing a little more once it became evident that the necromancer hadn't noticed anything suspicious. "Well, the guys we got left, they ain't exactly trained butchers or hunters. They got no real idea what they're doin', and they ain't exactly rationin' themselves. Morale's kind'a down the shitter, too, and... um..."

"Yes?" The necromancer rumbled softly, remaining dead-still. "Please, Mister Kavah. Speak your mind."

"Well, uh..." The foxkin gestured vaguely, waving his hand in the direction of the patiently waiting zombies. The ex-mercenaries, who had been restored to some semblance of life, but without actually being truly alive. "This shit, boss. The, uh... the guys ain't exactly square with this shit."

"Oh?" The necromancer murmured, a hint of disappointment in his reverberating voice. "Mister Southpaw didn't seem to mind."

Kavah made a face, briefly forgetting his own discomfort. "What, Gange? No, uh... I don't wanna speak out'a turn here, boss, but that guy's fuckin' crazy. You know he killed most'a these guys hisself, right? And... and now you got him all stitched together with their parts, and-"

"You would rather I let these perfectly good parts go to waste?" The necromancer chuckled again, as if he were humoring a child. "Well, no matter. Your discomfort has been noted, Mister Kavah."

That gave the foxkin pause, his ears slowly drooping as he tried to tell if that mental note was a good thing or not. So far he'd managed to stay on the necromancer's good side, at least as far as he could tell, but now he wasn't so sure. "Uh..."

"Tell me this," the necromancer interrupted the foxkin's half-formed thought. "Mister Kavah. What if I were to tell you that I could tend to your... personal little problem, here and now? We could call it an advance payment."

Kavah hesitated again, his ears twitching forward now. That offer had certainly caught him off-guard, since his employer had previously been adamant about holding off on such a delicate operation until the job at hand had been completed. "W-... what, here? Now? But... rr... you said..."

"Yes, well..." The necromancer was practically purring now, an oily tone to his echoing words. "That was before I found myself with an ample supply of meat to work with, and the dead have no need for the parts you want. Feel free to peruse the inventory, take your pick, and I can have you whole again within the hour. Don't feel limited to the ones that are scattered around on the ground, if you see anything you like on the newly risen then let me know. I can simply clip off whatever you might want. They won't mind."

"Rrrf..." Kavah darted a sidelong glance at the zombies, then at the piles of assorted bodyparts, his stomach lurching again. "N-... none o' those guys are, uh... none of' 'em are foxes, boss."

The necromancer's cowled visage tilted ever so slightly, his curios gesture echoed by the slight shift in his tone. "What difference does that make? I assure you, Mister Kavah, that I have sufficient skill to successfully perform a cross-species transplant. Mister Southpaw's new limbs should be proof enough of that. Your replacement organ will function adequately enough for your hedonistic purposes, perhaps even better than the original ever did."

Kavah felt a little nauseous again, his weight shifting back onto his heels as he looked for something to lean against. His stomach was still churning, and now there was a faint pang in his groin as well. It was true, he was rather eager to get his, ah, missing bit replaced - but he had been rather hoping to get something that at least resembled what he'd had before. Still, could he afford to turn down an offer for any replacement, even if he didn't like the idea of where or who it was coming from?

Ugh, that damned cheetah. It had been, what, two weeks since she'd crippled him? A few well-placed kicks and she'd left him half a male. He might have recovered, given some stolen coin and some expensive potions, but then every other woman in Ma'Karach had suddenly become intent on finishing the job that the damned cheetah-girl had started.

The fox couldn't help but wince at the memory of the cheetah's boot crunching into his groin, though it was mingled with all of the other equally unpleasant sensations that he'd suffered through in the days since. He'd been struck in the balls before that, of course - it was a natural hazard for an opportunistic horndog like himself - but the level of abuse he'd absorbed over the past couple of weeks was almost surreal.

Kavah's gaze flitted back to the necromancer's black-gloved hands, then to the pile of corpses, and finally to the sewing supplies that were neatly arranged on a flat surface near the necromancer's side. His eyes lingered on the assortment of needles, the thick spools of thread, and the bewildering assortment of surgical blades. The foxkin's gut twisted again, and his one remaining teste suddenly ached fiercely at the thought of what would be involved in the process that the necromancer was offering to perform. Kavah was suddenly having a hard time breathing.

"You would, of course, be magically sedated before the operation." The necromancer chuckled, obviously picking up on the foxkin's growing discomfort. He sounded genuinely amused for once. "But I need a decision. Now."

The vulpine's jaw worked wordlessly for a moment, his breathing harsh - fuck, now his ball really did hurt. Maybe it was just the lingering ache of the fresh bruises he'd received last night, at the hands - and feet - of the wolves that had attacked their camp, or maybe it was some kind of psychosomatic symptom of...

Kavah abruptly paused, an ear twitching flat against his skull as he realized he wasn't just imagining the pain. Something cool and smooth writhed against his furred belly, beneath the loose folds of his shirt, and the coiled grip about his scrotum tightened a bit more. Evidently, his hesitation was beginning to annoy his... er... hidden benefactor. He'd felt the sting of her wrath in the past, and wasn't particularly eager to experience it again.

He slid a hand to his abdomen, padded fingers set to fabric as he tried to subtly readjust the garment - and the serpentine grip about his vulnerable organ redoubled, something sharp and thin pricking dangerously against the flesh. The threat was clear.

The fox wheezed harder for breath, but forced himself to straighten back up. His hands quickly slid back to his sides and he returned his attention to the necromancer, quickly rasping out a few words. "N-... nah, I... hhhf... my thing c-... can wait, boss. Uh, maybe after you, um... have time to get... somethin' from another fox."

"Hmmn." The necromancer mused aloud, one gloved hand gesturing palm-upward. "If it's just symmetry that you are concerned with, I could remove the one you still have and give you an entirely new pair. Most of these donors still have a matching set, you know."

Kavah felt like he was seconds from vomiting, for more reason than one. His whole body ached, his blood was rushing, and his head was pounding. "N-... nah, no thanks, boss. I'll... I'll wait."

"Ah." The necromancer uttered, his hand lowered again. "A pity, but you seem quite certain. We'll tend to your payment at a later point in time, then."

Kavah nodded mutely, his eyes closed to slits, though he slowly relaxed as the taut grip on his one remaining gonad slowly eased. His nausea began to subside, the sharp ache in his gut slowly fading, though a lesser echo of that ache persistently lingered.

The necromancer folded his gloved hands together, his shadowed chin resting against his knuckles. "Continue with your report, then. What of fa Soren?"

Kavah's ears twitched, perking some as he gratefully latched onto something else - anything else, really - to think about. Rhaelyn fa Soren. Right. That was why the fox had been absent for much of the morning, because he'd been ordered to scout out their erstwhile prey's current location.

The foxkin licked over his lips, moistening them with his tongue as he worked at evening out his breathing. It was time to tell more lies.

"D-... it don't look good there, either." Kavah began, his gaze averted once more as he looked off into the dense forest that surrounded their sundered camp. "I'm, rr... pretty sure that Soren and his guys must'a heard all the, hh... the explosions and screamin' from last night. Found their campsite 'bout a half a mile from here, but it looks like they left in a hurry."

"Disappointing." The necromancer murmured, rising smoothly from his stool as he moved back over to his sewing equipment. He gingerly plucked up a heavy needle, rolling it thoughtfully between his fingers. "But not surprising. Tracks?"

"Lots of tracks." Kavah quickly responded, his ears swaying slightly as he tried to skirt the edge of the truth without quite telling it. He was actually fairly certain he knew where Rhaelyn fa Soren's new camp was located, but he didn't want to actually say that. "Too many tracks, even. Pretty sure they put down some false trails, just ta throw us off, and I spotted at least a couple'a traps they left behind to slow us down."

The necromancer uttered another ragged sigh, but dutifully plucked up a spool of thick thread before moving back toward his latest project. "Frustrating. Very frustrating. Tell the men to finish their meal, then begin canvassing the forest until you've found-"

"That-" Kavah delicately interrupted his employer, cringing as the necromancer's faceless guise twisted around to abruptly stare at him once more. The foxkin swallowed hard, then pushed on. "That ain't a good idea, boss."

In the blink of an eye, the black-robed figure was towering over the fox once more. Palpable waves of unnatural cold were radiating from the necromancer's form, and the grass and weeds that poked up between the ashy blotches of charred dirt began to visibly wither away into dust. The buzzing insects that were cheerfully feasting upon the splatters of gore went silent, abruptly dropping dead as the life was literally sucked out of them.

"Why..." The necromancer rasped. "...not?"

"The wolves!" Kavah blurted, both his arms upraised in a defensive posture as if to shield him from the necromancer's magics. "It's the fuckin' wolves, boss! They're still out there!"

The necromancer's fearsome looming abated some, his tone even once more. It was as if a switch had been flicked, instantly transforming him from some unholy monster back into a sinister but business-minded stranger. "Mn? The lycanthropes?"

"Y-y-yeah," Kavah stammered in response, slowly lowering his arms. He eased himself away from his employer, putting a little more distance between them before he spoke again. "I d-... didn't spot'em until I was on my way back, but they were watchin' me the whole time I was out there. Shit, they're prob'ly still watchin' us now. I'm thinkin' the only reason they ain't attacked us again is 'cuz they're scared of you. If we go out there without you backin' us up, then..."

"Intolerable!" The necromancer growled, a gloved hand suddenly snapping out to one side. His spellstaff, a long and polished length of solid bone, sprang from the ground where it was resting and slapped into his gloved palm. "One annoyance after another! Obstacles at every step, all conspiring to keep me from my goal!"

Kavah opened his muzzle, hesitated, then closed it again without saying a thing.

His employer stood frozen for a long moment, perhaps lost in thought, before abruptly reanimating once more. The bonestaff swung outward as the necromancer briefly turned his attention to the patiently waiting zombies. "You three, find weapons and patrol the outskirts of the camp."

"Ser!" All three of the undead things spoke in unison, suddenly mobilizing like well-trained soldiers. As unsettling as they were to look at, Kavah couldn't help but be surprised with how fluid their movements were. Apparently, despite their ragged and stitched appearances, they were quite well-assembled.

"And you, Mister Kavah..."

"Uh..." Kavah cringed a bit, feeling the necromancer's gaze upon him once more. "B-... boss? I mean, uh, yes ser?"

"Tell the others to eat and drink their fill, and to then prepare for battle." The robed figure rumbled, turning back toward the neatly stacked body parts that were still waiting. "We'll be leaving in... one-hundred-and-thirty-seven minutes. No, make that one-hundred-and-forty. That should give me adequate time to find a use for the rest of these parts."

Kavah steadfastly kept his eyes on the necromancer now, refusing to even glance at the 'parts' in question, lest he should finally vomit. "S-... ser? Wh-... okay, but what, uh... where are we going? I mean, uh, what if the guys ask questions?"

"That coward fa Soren may have escaped my wrath for now," the necromancer rumbled, moving purposefully now as he casually plucked a sundered limb from the ground. With staff in hand, he affixed it to the partially assembled zombie he had been working on, and this time the sizzle of flesh and the acrid stench of foul magics emanated from the unnatural joining of flesh. It seemed much cruder than working with needle and thread, but it was certainly faster. "But I believe I know where he is going and whom he intends to meet. While fa Soren skulks about in the woods and attempts to throw us from his trail we will simply cut ahead to his final destination, kill the one he intends to meet, and then lie in wait for his arrival."

Kavah blinked slowly, his ears skewed some. That was... honestly, that was a lot more death than he had anticipated having to deal with. He had been hired as a thief and a scout, not as some sort of professional murderer. But he was in far too deep now, and he had the distinct impression that trying to back out now would almost certainly result in him joining the pile of spare parts. "S-... so, uh...?"

The necromancer chuckled, not bothering to face the fox. "Tell the men to gird their loins, and ready their blades. Today, we will slay one of the last of the elder dragons. I suppose it's just as well, I've been meaning to tie off that particular loose end for quite some time."

Kavah opened his muzzle, hesitated, then just opted to nod mutely and move away. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief as he noted that his employer was already engrossed with his current unholy crafts project. The fox wasn't quite ready to deal with the other mercenaries just yet, so once he was halfway back to camp he detoured into the treeline. One of the zombies crossed his path, but it made no move to stop him - really, it didn't even seem to notice him at all.

He kept moving for several minutes until he was quite sure he'd put adequate distance between himself and the camp, flopping down heavily onto a convenient log. Face planted against his hands, he skewed his ears, uttering a long and heartfelt groan. "I'm totally fucked."

"Not right now," a playful voice growled into his left ear, the foxkin's fur standing on-end as a pair of strong but slender arms draped about his shoulders. A clawed hand dipped boldly down to his lap, rather shamelessly groping between his suddenly tensed thighs. "But maybe later if you're gooood..."

"Gah-...Gods, don't fuckin' sneak up on me like that!" Kavah huffed, trying to shake off his surprise and recover his breath at the same time. "Damn near gave me a fuckin' heart attack!"

"Awwww..." The voice crooned into his ear, punctuating the faux-sympathy with a warm tongue stroke. "You pooor puppy. I would never do anything to hurt you."

And a pregnant pause, before she gleefully added. "Not without my queen's permission, that is."

The brush rustled softly, barely more audible than a whisper, as another wolf skulked into view. She had a similar build to the slim fox, though she was taller and sported more bestial angles and more feminine curves. "Venn, stop playing with your food."

The wolf at Kavah's back stiffened some, her body tensed, and then she slowly exhaled as she dipped her head in reverence. "Yes, my queen."

Kavah was silent for a moment, as the 'queen' eyed him expectantly. What was her name again? Kay? He knew it was something like that, but he was loath to try guessing since he had no idea what she would do if he got it wrong. This was the same wolf that had caught him unawares the night prior, and the same one that had threatened - at great length - to castrate him. It was also the same wolf that had lead the attack against the necromancer's camp in the dead of night, and now she-

Venn nipped gently at the foxkin's collarbone, the hand she had planted between his thighs giving pretty much everything at his groin a rather healthy squeeze. "Show some respect."

Kavah uttered a soft squeak at the feel of teeth near his neck and the none-too-gentle squeeze against his genitals. Ears skewed, he very quickly tilted his head forward in a hasty faux-bow. "M-... my queen, I-... uh... sorry! Yer, uh, majesty?"

Kai shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her rounded hips cocked out to one side as she regarded the subservient foxkin for a long moment. Her expression was severe and the look in her eyes was predatory, but the slightest hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth implied amusement or satisfaction. After a tense moment of silence, she finally indulged herself in a broader smile, rolling her shoulders in a casual shrug. "Better."

Venn eased her grip on the male's crotch and the fox relaxed a little. He still remained somewhat tensed, though, even as Venn began to more playfully stroke and tease her clawed fingers against the fabric of his trousers - and the delicate organs hidden beneath. The overly amorous wolf's tongue washed against the vulpine's collarbone, soothing at the flesh she had nipped.

Princess Kai leaned in smugly, giving the fox a toothy grin. "So, pup, you have something to tell me?"

Kavah gathered his thoughts, though it was somewhat difficult with the other wolf pressed to his back, her paws wandering all over his body. "Uh, y-... yeh, I do. The, uh... the boss, he's changed his plans just like I said he would."

"So he's leaving our forest?" Kai pressed, her furred brows arching and her angular ears tilting forward eagerly.

"Erm, well..." The fox hesitated again, panting just slightly as he found himself in an increasingly awkward position - both because of the nature of the news he was delivering, and because of the increasingly obvious erection that was forming 'neath Venn's persistent teasing. He never would have imagined that he could get aroused under circumstances like these, but the danger added a fresh, new element to his otherwise routine life of chasing skirts. "Well..."

Kai frowned, shooting a glance to her pawmaiden. In response, Venn gave the base of the vulpine's stiffening manhood a sharp pinch. Kavah uttered a strangled yelp, folding forward at the waist, but Venn was quick to wrestle him back into an upright position.

"Well!?" Kai growled, her eyes narrowed. "Well what!?"

Kavah uttered a few harsh gasps, his hands dipping toward his crotch, and Venn casually smacked them away before she reclaimed her prize. Her touch was soft and delicate once more, though the foxkin was becoming increasingly aware that this could change at a second's notice.

"Hhff... G-... Gods, fuckin'... take it easy, already!" He gasped, still breathless. "C-.. can barely... fuckin'... hhff... talk with yer girl... hhff... workin' me over..."

Princess Kai rolled her eyes dramatically, straightening back up and setting one balled up fist against her cocked hip. "Venn, I'm going to count to three. If your pet here hasn't told me what I want to know by the time I get to three, then I want you to rip his balls off."

She paused delicately, then split her muzzle into another predatory grin. "Oh, I'm sorry. His ball. One..."

"But..." Venn pouted, though she obediently shifted her grip off of the vulpine's slowly flagging erection. Her fingers curled a bit lower, instead, catching the male's tender little teste between the pads of her fingers. Her claws gouged into the cloth of his trousers, the sharp tips just barely felt through the fabric, though Kavah had no doubt that a twitch of the lycanthrope's wrist would shred through both cloth and flesh with ease.

Venn whined, joined almost instantly by the panicked fox's own sudden whimpering. "My queen...!"

Kai rolled her eyes again, uttering an exasperated sigh. "Oh don't give me that look, Venn. If you're really so horny then you can fuck Griff when he gets back. Or maybe Draev, after we rescue him. There are plenty of other wolves in our pack who I'm sure would love to fuck you. Two."

"But I don't want to fuck them!" Venn whined, her fingers twitching a bit more firmly against the male's crotch as she better secured her grip about the slippery little nugget she had pinned between her fingers. "I want Kevin!"

"K-... Kavah..." The foxkin stammered, his toes clenching and unclenching against the forest floor. It was taking everything in his power to resist the urge to grab ahold of Venn's wrist, to try to pry her clawed fingers off of his most prized pieces, but he knew better than to resist. These wolves were quite literally monsters - and he was just a simple fox who was hopelessly outclassed in comparison.

"Whatever." Venn giggled, her muzzle dipping as she gave him a hefty lick along the closer side of his muzzle. "You're cute."

"Ugh." Princess Kai set both hands to her hips, disgust evident on her face. "Gross. But fine, you can still keep him after you've castrated him. I'm sure he can use his, I dunno... his tongue or whatever. I don't care. Thr-"

"Stop!" Kavah huffed, thankful that the banter between the two terrifying females had bought him enough time to gather his wits and recover his breath. "I'm talkin', okay? I just needed a minute! Fuck!"

Kai arched a brow, her head cocked as she looked back to the fox. She remained silent.

"M-... my, uh, my queen?" Kavah hastily amended.

Princess Kai bobbed her head, seeming more satisfied now. "Very well. You can keep your twig and berry. For now. So tell me, what's the well?"

The foxkin furrowed his brow a bit, thrown by the odd phrasing - these things spoke tradetongue fluidly, even better than he did, but sometimes the way they spoke gave him the impression that they did it without any real understanding of how the words were supposed to fit together. How did these lycan-things work, anyway? Had they been normal beastkin once? Or had they just been born as monsters with an instinctive, magical understanding of how to walk and talk and feign at being a proper beastkin?

"W-... well, uh, the boss didn't wanna turn back." Kavah mumbled, his gaze averted as he tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Thankfully Venn had stopped teasing him, at least for the moment. "I mean, I tried to tell him there weren't no point in chasin' after the guy we came out here to hunt, but he's pretty determined. Guess they've got a history or somethin'."

Princess Kai frowned, her arms crossing just below her chest as she glowered down at the seated fox. "And?"

Kavah floundered a bit. The necromancer's sightless gaze unnerved him, but somehow this wolf-monster's ire was even worse. Maybe it was because he had no real idea how the necromancer's powers worked, but he could easily imagine what the lycanthropes could do to him with their teeth and claws. "A-... and...?"

"And what's his new plan, dummy?" Venn rumbled into his closer ear, her tormenting fingers setting back into motion as she boldly slid them down into his waistband to more directly tease over his half-hardened manhood.

"Oh!" Kavah shivered a bit, his breathing quickened despite his terror. "R-... right, uh... fuck, sorry. I mean, uh, sorry my queen? He, er... he sez he knows where this Soren guy was gonna go see a dragon, but now the boss wants us to go there first and... um... kill it?"

The foxkin paused, suddenly aware of the shift in mood. Venn's fingers had fallen still against his rekindled erection, and Princess Kai was exchanging a rather odd look with her pawmaiden. Kavah turned his head a bit, peeking sidelong at Venn, then back to the would-be queen. "What? What's wrong? What'd I say?"

"A dragon?" Kai grumbled, her eyes closed to slits as she ran her clawed fingers through her carefully groomed mane. "Which dragon?"

"Fuck," Kavah groaned. "There's more'n one out here?"

"A few." Venn rumbled into his ear, absently rocking her hand as she gently rubbed her fingerpads to either side of the vulpine's cock. The normally confident wolf sounded a little uneasy, almost worried. "But only one that really matters, and you and your boss have been heading straight towards her."

Kavah frowned a little, a hand coming up as he reflexively brushed his fingers reassuringly along Venn's cheek - though he quickly caught himself. He was so used to wooing women that he had almost forgotten Venn was a monster. For one fleeting second he had almost forgotten that he was quite literally in the wolf's den, and under constant threat of being castrated, slaughtered, or even devoured whole.

Venn surprised him by pressing her cheek into his palm before he could pull it away again. He gave it a brief second of thought before he resettled his hand there, gently rubbing the wolf's cheek. She rewarded him with a few more casual strokes down lower.

"It's a problem." Princess Kai broke the awkward silence, as she suddenly set to pacing back and forth in front of her two subjects. "If that's where he's going, then it's a problem."

Kavah was silent for a few seconds longer, but curiosity got the better of him. "Er, whyzat?"

"We're not allowed to go there." Venn rumbled into his ear. "No one in our pack is. Our Goddess Sig-Nah has forbidden it."

Kavah's brow furrowed, his ears suddenly perked. "Sig-... wait, yer talkin' about Cygna? The, uh, the Bitch Queen? She- awk!" He sputtered into abrupt and soprano silence, as Princess Kai almost immediately stepped forward and stomped her foot between his legs. Her toes pressed harshly into the fabric of his trousers, just below where Venn's hand was still toying with his cock, pinning his lower bit of anatomy firmly against the unyielding log that Kavah was seated atop.

"Don't call her that." Kai sneered down at the fox, her ankle twisting a little as she gently but firmly ground the vulpine's tender little teste beneath the ball of her foot. She hadn't stomped hard, but the pressure was still more than enough to force the fox into choked silence, and she drove her point home with a few more vicious twists of her ankle. "She is the Goddess, Sig-Nah. She is the mother of my mother, Queen Dalleth the First, who gave birth to The First of our packs. The... that other title is one of disrespect, used exclusively by you southern mongrels."

"G-... guh..." Kavah uttered a low, gutteral groan as he practically writhed, impotently trying to literally squirm out from underfoot. Unfortunately for the fox, Kai's well-placed foot and Venn's suddenly tautened grip around his body ensured that escape was all but impossible. "Fu-... fuck! Okay, s-... sorry!"

"Sorry?" Kai growled, her foot bearing down a little harder, the delicate gland caught beneath it quivering almost tangibly as she threatened to squash it like a bug. "Sorry... what?"

"Sorry, my-... hhk..." The fox uttered a wheezing gasp, but steadfastly forced himself to talk despite the renewed agony coursing up into his body. "Sorry, my queen!"

Princess Kai eyed the cringing fox for a moment longer, visibly reveling in his show of subservience. Her weight was still leaned ever-so-slightly forward, pressure exerted continuously onto her warm and squishy foothold, but she at least made a conscious effort not to make it any worse for the poor fox. Eventually her muzzle split into a sweet and toothy smile, as she seemed satisfied with the male's writhings and his gasped apologies. "That's better."

She finally sighed, her smug amusement fading as she abruptly leaned back once more, stepping away from the crux of the vulpine's legs. Pacing again, she folded her arms back beneath her chest, her brow furrowed. "But Venn's right. We're not allowed to go there. Arvesk says so."

"Sig-Nah says so." Venn quickly offered up. "She's the one who told Arvesk and, uh... and then he told-"

"Well she might have said it to him," Princess Kai huffed. "But she said it to me. She never says anything to me. Sometimes I wonder if she tells anyone anything anymore. Maybe the elders of our pack are just making it up so we'll do what they want us to do."

Venn frowned a little, clearly uncertain on how to respond to that. After a few long seconds, she responded half-heartedly. "Okay, but Arvesk says-"

"I know what Arvesk says!" Kai snapped, cowing her pawmaiden back into silence.

Venn quickly drew her head back, stifling a whine as she practically hid behind the fox. It was laughable to think that the frail, trembling beastkin would make much of an obstacle for the irate princess, but the fearful gesture still seemed to mollify Kai a bit.

Princess Kai's expression softened, her ears twitching back as she spied the obvious terror in her pawmaiden's eyes. "Sorry, Venn. Sorry. I'm just... I'm just grumpy." She grumbled, and she set back to pacing once more. "Haven't had enough food or sleep. Draev is being held captive. Griff is hurt. Varg is broken. Oru is dead. And, oh yeah, I got stabbed."

Kavah shot a glance at the irate lycanthrope, his eyes briefly dancing down over her athletic and oddly-built frame. The foxkin still had all manner of aches and bruises from the previous night's battle - now mingling with his fresher bruises - but the only sign of any injury on the wolf was the nasty cut where Royce had managed to land a blow. Obviously these monsters could heal almost impossibly fast, but whatever Royce had been using had actually done some lasting harm.

From the way Princess Kai was acting, and the worried expression on Venn's lupine face, Kavah assumed that the lycanthropes had never seen that happen before. Hell, maybe they'd never even fought in a real battle before, and had just assumed they were immune to anything that beastkin could throw at them.

"I just-" Kai growled, suddenly stopping and punching a nearby tree. The blow impacted heavily, and the tree listed violently to one side amidst a series of staccato pops and the groan of tortured wood. The princess grunted, absently flexing her fingers and taking a few seconds to set the ones she had just broken. She waited a few seconds for the bones to set, and a moment later they was as good as new. "I just don't know what to do. I wish Arvesk was here so he could tell me what to do."

"Arvesk would tell us to go home." Venn huffed quietly.

"RrrrRRRrrr..." Princess Kai uttered an inarticulate growl, hand raised to rub her muzzle. She sucked in a deep breath, then softened again. "Yes he would. But... we can't just-... I can't do that. We need to rescue Draev, and we need to avenge Oru and Varg. Maybe if we could..."

Venn perked her ears, sitting up a bit behind the fox. "Yes, my queen?"

Kai paused for a long moment, then slumped again. "Uh, I don't know. I've got nothing."

"W-... well..." Kavah coughed, shifting a bit against the wolf that was seated behind him. He was still in a substantial amount of pain from the would-be queen's last little object lesson, but he had at least found enough breath to talk again. Kind of. "Ugh... I... I might have... nng... a couple'a ideas there..."

"Oh yeah?" The princess sneered, stepping forward again as she planted her foot between the vulpine's thighs - though this time her toes were a few inches short of his vulnerable bits. She leaned in, so close that her nose was practically touching the Kavah's. "Do tell."

Kavah's ears skewed, and he hesitated as he had second thoughts - and third thoughts, and fourth thoughts - all in rapid succession. But no, he again reminded himself that he was in far too deep to back out now. "W-... well... uh, you... nf... you just want yer packmate back, right? And... nf... and... you want my boss dead, too, so..."

Kai scowled, leaning in a bit closer as she stared the fox in the eye. "What's wrong with you? You're wasting my time. Talk normally!"

"I think he's scared, and he's definitely still huuuurting..." Venn giggled, her wrist rocking gently as her fingers delved a bit deeper into the vulpine's pants as she scooped up his dangling and obviously swollen nut with two fingers. Rolling it against her padded palm, she practically shivered in time with the suddenly tensed fox. "Oooh, yeah, he's in a lot of pain."

"What, Still?" Kai snorted. "I kicked him, uh..." She paused, glancing skyward. "Five minutes ago? Ten?"

Despite his pain Kavah couldn't help but wonder how the wolf even had a concept of time, let alone the ability to measure it. These creatures didn't wear clothes or carry tools, so he couldn't really imagine that they built sundials. Maybe they could somehow tell from the position of the sun, or maybe it was just another thing that the lycans were built to just instinctively... know? Either way, he certainly wasn't going to ask.

Venn giggled near his ear, buying him a little more time. "Well sure, a big tough wolf like Griff or Draev would get over a lovetap like that in no time. But poor Kavah here, he's just a little puppy. It probably takes him hoooours to feel better. Maybe even daaaaays."

The foxkin coughed lightly, but he said nothing. He could feel the wolf pressing up against his back now, practically grinding against him. Was she actually getting... turned on by all this? Gods, what the fuck was wrong with these monsters?

Venn spied his expression, then gleefully gave him another lick along the side of his muzzle. Looking back up to her queen, she smiled. "But I can make him feel better faster, if you'd like. Maybe then he'll be able to... talk?"

"Uuugh." Princess Kai gave a disgusted groan, but she took a few quick steps back before gesturing dismissively toward the male's lap. "Fine. Goddess, I have no idea why you're so taken with this pathetic little runt."

Venn practically slithered around the fox in one sinuous movement, quickly filling the gap left between his widespread thighs, her paw never leaving his pants. She peeked back at her elder, ears perked and a cheerful smile plastered across her toothy maw. "He's cute! And he's nice. And he's funny. And he smells SO good. And-"

"His dick is weird." Kai stated bluntly. Much like Venn, the princess had gotten a rather good look at the fox's body the night prior, when the two had ambushed and interrogated him together.

"Hey!" Kavah protested, his stung pride causing him to blurt out his protest before he could think better of it.

Princess Kai fixed him with another sneer, her ears slanted forward and her hands set defiantly to her hips. "Shut up. It is. You don't have a sheath or a knot or anything, and it's shaped all weird like... like a mushroom or something. It's weird and ugly and stupid. You're weird and ugly and stupid."

"Well I like it." Venn uttered a growling giggle, her attention focused back on the male's lap as she struggled with the button. She hooked a claw beneath it, evidently ready to rip it loose, but Kavah quickly stopped her before she could destroy his pants. The foxkin fumbled around her claw as he undid the button for her, loosing the fabric so she could fish out his erection. "It's cute!"

The younger she-wolf's tail was wagging visibly now, her whole body practically vibrating with excitement as she locked her gaze on that stiff little piece of meat. Her head bobbed downward, her rib cage expanding as she visibly and audibly drew in a deep breath, as if to get a double-lungful of the foxkin's scent. "Mmmnnhhh..."

Princess Kai's muzzle wrinkled some, her ears slicked back as she barely restrained another disgusted groan. "Gruh... well, whatever. Just... just do what you have to do. But don't fuck him, because I don't want to have to watch that. Just... do the thing with your tongue. He liked that well enough the last time you did it."

"Yes my queen!" Venn barked gleefully, her tail wagging even harder as she abruptly dived her muzzle down onto the male's lap, her toothy maw parted to let his cock slide neatly between her impossibly sharp fangs. She immediately started lavishing the flustered foxkin with oral attentions, as if she were starving and that lovely little bit of Kavah's anatomy was the first bit of food she had seen in weeks. She clearly wanted to savor it.

"Mmnf..." Kavah's eyes snapped shut to slits, his ears swaying slowly forward as uttered a few quick gasps before steadying himself. Okay, this... this was much nicer than his prior treatment. This was... "Ooohhh, Gods..."

"Gahwdehssh." Venn playfully corrected him, her voice slurred as she tried to speak around the piece of meat that was filling her muzzle. Her broad, flat tongue lolled out below the base of his cock, curling nimbly beneath his loose-hanging sac as she lavished that tender bit of flesh with some attention as well.

"S-... sure..." The foxkin practically moaned, his hands gingerly setting to the lycanthrope's slowly bobbing head as he affectionately stroked over her ears. Venn's tail wagged even harder in response. "Guh-.. Gawdess. Whatever you... say..."

Kai leaned back in, her nose practically jabbing the foxkin in one of his half-closed eyes. "You ready to talk now? Or do I have to order my pawmaiden to start biting?"

"Ah, f-... fuck..." Kavah straightened some, trying to force himself to focus once more. His ball still ached rather badly - in fact, most of his body still ached in general - but the pleasure was actually doing a rather good job of offset some of that pain. Now the trick was to string together coherent thoughts while he was feeling both ache and ecstasy. "Yeh. I mean, uh, no. No need fer biting. What, uh... what was I sayin'...?"

"Your ideas." Kai frowned, jabbing the fox firmly with one clawed finger. "And they had better be good, or I'll personally bite your balls off. Slowly."

"Bahhll..." Venn mumbled wetly, her words slurred around the stiff organ she was still literally drooling over.

Kai smirked, her ears perking a little bit as her sadistic amusement showed through the cracks in her ire. "Right, ball. You've just got the one, so I guess I'd have to make it extra slow just so you could fully appreciate it. Chewing. Grinding. Ripping. All that good stuff."

"Okay!" Kavah blurted, his ears skewed, as if to block out the wolf's words. "Just stop sayin' stuff like that! I'm fuckin' cooperating here, ain't I? Gods-... uh... Goddess!"

The princess smiled sweetly, her sharper teeth put on prominent display as part of the gesture, but she said nothing.

"M-... my queen. Sorry." Kavah whimpered, though the fearful sound was somewhat tempered by the sudden moan that welled up in his throat as Venn set to more actively suckling at his length. "My-... mmnhh... uh... the, uh..."

Princess Kai rolled her eyes a bit, a hand set to Venn's shoulder as she gave it a squeeze. "Ease up there, Venn. You're working a bit too fast."

"Shawrree." Her pawmaiden slurred, but she dutifully pulled back some, her bobbing slowed and the rapid strokes of her tongue coming in more languid and measured motions. "Tashtes gooood..."

Kavah steadied himself, drew in a deep breath, then forced his eyes open again as he looked to the lycan princess. "Okay, so... hf... so my ideas. Uh, you want your packmate back. Uh, Draev, right?"

The princess nodded.

"Yeh, so we know where he is already." Kavah bobbed his head in turn, mirroring the lycanthrope's nod. "I mean, er, we're pretty sure we know where the guys who have him are hiding. You guys would know better'n me, since yer the ones who found the trail. Hf... so... uh... you can just go there and rescue him. Easy."

"Easy." Princess Kai echoed his word, but frowned a little. "Except that Draev is being held by another wizard, right? The group you've been following, led by The Soaring?"

"Fa Soren, yeah." Kavah gasped, his grip tightening just a bit on one of Venn's ears as she hit a particularly sensitive spot of his manhood with her tongue. Encouraged, she played her tongue over the same spot again, even more slowly this time. "Nnhf... he's... yeh, he's a wizard. Suppose'ta be a good one, too. Does, uh, some kind'a thing with magic rocks or whatever. But that don't matter, 'cuz you don't gotta fight him."

Kai arched a brow. "We don't?"

Kavah swallowed softly, trembling a bit as he struggled to keep his breathing even. Venn was certainly working a lot slower now, but it was still impossibly distracting having the lusty lycan down between his legs, softly licking and suckling over every square inch of his most private parts. "W-... well my boss wants him dead, right? So... so we just... you ever hear the old sayin', the enemy of my enemy is my friend?"

"The enemy of..." Princess Kai furrowed her brow some, ears twitching back and then forward as she mulled over that bit of wisdom. "That doesn't make any sense. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, not my friend."

The foxkin uttered a soft, exasperated sigh. "Well just... sometimes, sure. But this guy, Soren, he's one'a those hoity-toity noble-types, and an adventurer to boot. So he's gonna be open-minded when it... mnf... when it comes to an alliance o' convenience."

"Okay," Kai's frown held steady, a hand settling to her hip as she stared down at the fox. "So...?"

"So you don't go in there all fangs 'nd claws." Kavah grunted, almost swooning as Venn took his length so deeply into her muzzle that she was practically nuzzling at his pubic fur. He tugged lightly at her ears and she reluctantly eased back, giving him a chance to think a bit more clearly. "Y-... you... you go in there all diplomatic-like, then you tell them about my boss and what he's plannin' to do. Say you'll... hf... help take him down, long as they let yer guy go free."

"And I'm sure The Soaring won't just, say, obliterate us with his magics?" Kai rumbled, her face deeply etched with skepticism.

"Well, no..." Kavah hesitated, then flicked his ears forward. "I mean, I don't think he would. The guy's already workin' with monsters, anyway, so as long as he don't think yer a threat you should be able to..."

Kai's eyes narrowed, her posture suddenly guarded. "He has monsters?"

"Mohnshrrs?" Venn echoed, mumbling around the vulpine's cock.

The foxkin squirmed a little, the vibrations of Venn's mumbling tickling up along his nerves, and goading him ever-closer to orgasm. Panting harder still, he took a few quick seconds to steady himself before he spoke again. "He's got another wolf with him. Big one, too. I think she's one'a the gals what worked with yer, uh, Goddess back in the day. Plus, he's got a gryphon, too, and this ballbustin' cheetah bitch. Hell, to hear half the guys back in Ma'Karach, he's fuckin' all three of'em whenever he gets the chance. Guy's open-minded as hell."

"Eugh." Kai grunted. "Well I'm not going to fuck him just to get Draev back."

Venn seemed a little more circumspect, though, the younger lycanthrope's ears perking as she mumbled around Kavah's dick again. "Eshh hhe cyut?"

"What?" Kavah furrowed his brow, shivering again at the delicious sensation those vibrations caused. "Cute? I... fuck, I dunno. I mean, maybe? I don't... nevermind, that ain't important! You don't gotta fuck him just to work with him! I'm just sayin' that he works with monsters, so you guys should be able to work with him too, long as yer goals match up!"

"Oh." Kai mused, seeming intrigued now that the whole idea had been spelled out more clearly. "Oh! Well, yes, I suppose that makes sense. We can try to diplomacy him, and if that doesn't work..." She suddenly frowned again, ears twitching forward. "Wait, what about the dragon?"

"Hf, forget the dragon." Kavah shook his head, "Fuck 'em. You just-"

"Ish hhe cyut?" Venn rumbled again, her own ears perked alertly.

"Gah...!" Kavah's tongue lolled from one side of his suddenly slack jaw, his cock twitching fitfully against the younger lycanthrope's slavering tongue. He was already on the verge of orgasm, and he wasn't sure how clearly he'd be thinking once he'd blown his wad into the lupine's waiting muzzle. He tugged at her ears again, trying to discourage her movements. "V-... Venn, sweetheart, y'gotta stop... nf... stop talkin' down there. It... it fuckin' tickles..."

"Venn, Hush." Princess Kai, growled. "Kavah, keep talking. You say we have to fuck this dragon, too?"

Kavah snapped his muzzle shut again, giving the princess an odd look, then shaking his head again. "No. Sorry, s'just an expression. I mean, uh, forget about the dragon. The dragon ain't important."

Kai cocked her jaw, fixing the fox with an odd look of her own. "The dragon... isn't important."

"Not fer this plan, no!" Kavah grunted, squirming a bit as Venn's oral attentions shifted from his throbbing length to his aching orb. Her tongue looped below the soft little thing, scooping it into her muzzle as she began to gently suckle on that instead. "Hhhf... hh... uh... l-... look, best case scenario, the dragon fucks up my boss. He's dead. You don't gotta worry about him or the dragon no more."

Kai considered that for a moment, before she brightened. "Ohh. Oh! I get it, then we just diplomacy The Soaring into giving Draev back, and we go home without fighting any wizards! And if the dragon doesn't kill your boss, then we diplomacy The Soaring into helping us fight him, and... and... wizard cancels out wizard?"

"Y-... yeh!" Kavah gasped, his voice a little lilted as he suddenly squirmed beneath Venn's muzzle. He tugged at her ears again, harder this time, before hissing down at her. "Easy there, love! J-... just... mnf... not so hard, that bit's tender!"

"Mnshrry..." Venn mumbled, her eyes closed dreamily as she suckled on his puppymaker more gently. One of her padded paws slid upward, capturing his saliva-slicked manhood in her deceptively powerful grip so she could resume stroking.

"Clever little fox." Princess Kai grinned, sidling over to roughly tousle the vulpine's mane. "Clever, clever little fox. I'm glad I let Venn talk me into sparing your life. If I'd had it my way, we'd have gutted you the second you stepped back out of your burning camp and quenched the fires with your blood."

"Hrrf..." Kavah's ears splayed out to either side, trying to keep away from the lupine paw that was grinding against his scalp. Princess Kai wasn't exactly gentle even when she was trying to pretend at friendliness, especially compared to her enamored pawmaiden. "Well, uh... I'm kind'a glad you didn't."

Kai shot a sidelong look down at her pawmaiden, who was still hard at work with pleasuring the fox. "I'll bet."

Kavah followed her glance, then blushed a bit. He wasn't normally the sort to be so easily embarrassed, but even for someone as worldly as him this situation was... unique. He coughed lightly, eyes closed to slits as he tried to focus. Gods, he was fucking seconds from orgasm now, and it was taking everything he had to stave it off for just a moment longer.

The princess seemed to sense his impending climax, and a wicked grin slowly worked it's way onto her long muzzle. She set a paw to Venn's shoulder, slowing the pawmaiden's ministrations even further, then she leaned in closer. Her muzzle drifted near the foxkin's closer ear as she murmured. "So, little fox, is that all you have for me? Are there any more plans upon plans that you would like to share?"

"W-...well, you gotta move fast. Boss is... hf... boss is movin' out at noon..." Kavah gasped. "But that's... mnf... that's all..."

"Oh, good." Princess Kai smiled brightly, leaning back again. "Venn, we're done here. You can stop now."

Venn's eyes snapped open, the movement of her fingers and tongue both stopped dead in an instant. "Mnnh?"

"You heard me," the princess practically giggled, gesturing dismissively with one hand. "Stop now. We're done."

Venn uttered a plaintive whine, but she obeyed the order. She reluctantly pulled away from the male's crotch, letting his well-worked cock drop away from her stilled fingers, and letting his spit-soaked scrotum flop loosely from her lips. She pushed up onto her feet with a sigh, moving further away as her elder waved her off.

Kavah uttered an even more plaintive whine, as the overwhelming stimulation came to a sudden stop. He hunched some, hands dipping to his groin as he felt his impending orgasm wane, slowly replaced by the steady ache that came with being blue-balled. "Aw, c'mon...!"

Kai watched him squirm for a moment, her ears perked as she seemed to savor his growing discomfort, before she finally spoke again.

"On your feet, little fox." Princess Kai smiled, a hand grasping at his shoulder and yanking him upright with almost no visible effort. "You've earned a proper reward."

The foxkin winced, his shoulder aching from the yank, but his curiosity rather suddenly piqued. Of course, he was almost as wary as he was curious - he still didn't quite trust these... things. Sure, they sometimes almost seemed like proper beastkin the longer he talked with them, but he fervently reminded himself that they were still sadistic, murderous monsters. At least, that's what they were supposed to be. "Y-... yeh?"

Kai kept her hand on his shoulder, sliding the other one down toward the male's groin - and she rolled her eyes as he immediately tensed and uttered a plaintive yelp. Not to be deterred, she wrapped her fingers tightly around his cock. The foxkin's manhood certainly was different from that of a proper wolf, but she still seemed to have a good general idea of what she was doing, and she began to briskly and efficiently stroke him back toward climax.

"O-... oh..." Kavah relaxed a little, his legs wobbling beneath him unsteadily, and the princess tugged him forward a little to rest his muzzle against her furred cleavage. "Ohh... yeeeahh...."

"No fair, he's my pet! You said I could have him!" Venn grumbled. She was still lingering nearby, but a warning glance from her elder cowed her back into silence.

Kai gave a casual roll of her shoulders, a smile still on her muzzle as she lazily jerked and tugged at the vulpine's shaft over and over again in simple but effective motions. "Yes, well, he actually managed to please me, so it's only fair that I give him his reward personally. You can still have him after, assuming the dragon doesn't eat him first."

Kavah uttered a guttural groan, too lost in the moment to even care about the dragon, or any potential devouring that might lie in his future. After all the pain and suffering he'd gone through, no small amount of it at the paws of these very wolves, it was just pure bliss to get even a little pleasure for once. And this... this was more than just a little-

"Ah-... hhh..." He exhaled sharply as his cock spasmed, thick globs of his pent-up and possibly impotent spunk spurting out to paint Princess Kai's closer thigh. She kept tugging at his length for a moment longer, even as the male's body shivered harder and harder with the excessive stimulation, only relenting once she was sure she had milked him as thoroughly as she could manage.

She glanced down toward her leg once she was done, just slightly disgruntled at how much of a mess the fox had managed to make. Her thigh was practically coated, and the glistening stuff was streaming down past her crooked knee, dripping wetly onto the dirt at her feet. She drew her hand away, fingers waggling as she looked at the pearlescent stuff that had spilled over her fingers, as well. "Oh, yuck. Well, at least it didn't get in my eye this time."

"S-... sorry 'bout that." Kavah mumbled, his muzzle still wedged firmly into the would-be queen's cleavage. His whole body was still shivering with the oh-so-recent release of all that pent up seed, but he still had the presence of mind to utter an apology to the temperamental temptress.

Kai smiled a bit, her head tilted as she gave the vulpine's closer ear a soft little lick - nothing as heavy or lewd as what Venn had been doling out, but it was at least mildly affectionate. "Now say thank you."

"Th-... thank you..." Kavah gasped breathlessly. "Thank you, so much!"

The princess smiled wider, her teeth bared as she gently pried the vulpine away from her chest, her hands set to his shoulders as she put him at arm's length so she could look him in the eye. "You're very welcome, little fox."

And a long pause, before she rumbled playfully. "But you forgot to call me queen. Again."

"Oh!" Kavah's ears jolted upright, his brows arched. "R-... right, my-"

"Too late!" Kai grinned, her tongue jutting lightly from between her front fangs as she harshly jerked her knee up and into the beastkin's crotch. She was careful to use the same leg that he had just blown his wad over - something about that just felt right, almost poetic. It wasn't as if the sticky gunk did anything to temper the impact, anyway.

Kavah's muzzle snapped shut, the clack of teeth-on-teeth barely audible over the much heavier slick, wet thump of cum-coated fur slapping against saliva-slicked scrotum. The blow carried right through the male's dangling sac with almost no resistance whatsoever, the lone little organ within being crushed harshly into the much more resistant bone of his pelvis.

The blow lifted the fox up onto his toes, then a bit higher still before Kai let her leg drop back down. She kept a tight grip on his shoulders, easing the male's weight back down onto his own very unsteady feet. She hadn't hit him anywhere nearly as hard as she knew she could, but as Venn had reminded her the poor little fox was just a feeble beastkin - not a hardy wolfwere like the rest of her packmates. She was sure she had still hit him plenty hard enough to get her point across.

"Well?" Princess Kai smiled, sweetly, the male dangling limp from her grip. He was barely coherent, sucking down great, ragged lungfuls of air as he tried to struggle with the impossible agony that was coursing through his frame. She could feel his cock twitching spastically against her tensed thigh, more of his impotent spunk drooling down one side of her leg - but for the moment she was more interested in maintaining eye contact with the male, to make absolutely certain he'd learned his lesson.

"M-... muh..." Kavah barely managed to utter, before he suddenly gagged, and the princess quickly shoved him away. He collapsed to the forest floor, writhing and twisting about before drooling and dry-heaving into the brush. Evidently his insides had fully rebelled, finally unable to keep up with the massive pain that was ripping through him.

Kai peered down at him for a moment, then looked over to her pawmaiden, and Venn quickly shrugged in return. Grinning toothily, the princess peered back down at the agonized fox. "Good enough, I suppose. Now, don't spend too much time down there, because I'm sure your boss is expecting you back soon."

"We'll come and find you once we're done with our part of the plan." Kai smiled, barely suppressing a giggle. She melted back into the forest, though her voice was still easily heard. "So try not to die..."

Venn lingering behind for a brief moment, leaning down to give the moaning fox an almost shy smile and a fond lick across one side of his muzzle. That done, she quickly straightened back up and vanished into the brush as she followed after her elder.

"You were right, Venn." Kai's voice floated back to the fox, just barely audible as the two wolves moved deeper and deeper into the woods. "He is kind of cute..."

And Kavah said nothing. Hell, it was all he could do to even breath, or to cling to consciousness. Fuck, he'd been hit in the balls before - or, er, the ball - but it had never felt this bad. His gut was a tangled knot of clenched muscles and acute nausea, but the pain searing through his nethers was even worse. Maybe it had to do with how he had been hit right after he had orgasmed, but whatever the reason - it felt fucking awful!

The fox heaved into the bushes a few more times, some small part of his brain thankful that he had declined to drink any beer or eat any horse meat for breakfast. His stomach was mercifully empty, so at least he wouldn't have to worry about cleaning vomit or bile from his fur.

He stayed on the ground for what felt like an eternity, his hands buried between his thighs and his fingers wrapped protectively around his throbbing testicle as he repeatedly reassured himself that it was, in fact, still there. It had to still be there, because how else could it ache so damned much?

After several more moments had passed the roiling nausea and blinding agony had subsided enough that the foxkin managed to push himself up onto his hands and knees. Rolling roughly onto his side, he rocked himself into a sitting position, back planted against one of the many trees that surrounded him. He felt lightheaded, his throat was raw, his eyes were watering, and his whole body was sore - but he was alive and relatively intact. That was... actually better than he had expected, given the people he was dealing with.

"Fffuck..." He uttered, his voice coming out as a rasping croak. "Fuckin'... bitches..."

He squinched his eyes shut, ears splayed as he waited a few seconds to see if the queen and her pawmaiden would come bursting back out of the woods to punish him for his insolence. A few tense seconds passed in silence, but nothing happened, so he slumped back against the tree as he allowed himself to relax again.

Thank the Gods, the lycanthropes seemed to be well and truly gone. They were fa Soren's problem now, at least for a little while.

"There, did what ya wanted." He groaned aloud, ears twitching sidelong as he seemed to address no one in particular. "Did just what ya wanted me to do. Now all yer fuckin' pawns are in place, and I got my fuckin' ass kicked. Again. Happy?"

Something cool and smooth slithered against his gut, worming it's way beneath the fabric of his shirt before erupting from a partially split seam. Tiny stone claws streaked out to grab at his closer ear, coming dangerously close to piercing the flesh as she dragged his head down closer to her tiny jade muzzle.

"I'm happy." The shrill, giggling voice sounded into his ear. "Hope you're happy, too."

Kavah winced, his ear twitching harshly away from the grasping little fingers. "Thrilled."

The odd little stone snake-lizard wasn't so easily discouraged, emerging the rest of the way from his shirt as it scrabbled up his shirt and then coiled loosely around his neck like a living scarf. The voice crooned in his ear again, vaguely sympathetic but nowhere near as soothing as Venn's dulcet rumbling had been. "Love hurts."

The little stone creature leaned into his line of view, it's vaguely draconic maw split wide into a grin that showed off dozens of sharp little teeth. "Love is a battlefield!"

"You're crazy, you know that?" The foxkin grunted, forcing himself to sit back up. He didn't really want to move around too much, especially not so soon after that massive blow to his oft-abused pride, but Kai had been right about at least one thing. He needed to get back before the necromancer had noted his absence. "This whole thing's gonna turn into one big, fuckin' disaster."

"Oh, I know." The strange little statue giggled, lithely snaking her way up the side of his head and then draping atop his skull. She leaned her head back down to resume eye contact, and for once she seemed to be talking to the fox instead of just at him.

Kavah had only known the golem for, what, about eight hours? Ever since she had fallen out of the sky, beaning Princess Kai in the head and inadvertently saving Kavah from a fate worse than death. He barely knew anything about her, beyond that he had briefly encountered her during his ill-fated attempt to break into fa Soren's family estate a week ago.

Had it really only been a week since that had happened? So much had been going on recently that it felt like it had been an entire lifetime ago.

"I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep up above in my head..." the tiny golem's attention had wandered again, and now she was humming and singing to herself as she crawled all over the fox's head. "...instead of going under."

Kavah sighed. One thing he had definitely learned was that most of the time she just seemed happy to chatter and blather for the sake of making noise. But she did occasionally have brief moments of startling lucidity, and it was during one of those moments, early this morning, that she had somehow convinced the foxkin to go along with her entirely insane plan.

It had all seemed to make sense at the time, but now he was having second thoughts. "This... this is stupid."

That seemed to get the golem's attention. She leaned back down from her perch atop the foxkin's skull, one tiny jade fist shaking. "Dare to be stupid! It's so easy to do!"

"Whatever," Kavah grunted, going a little cross-eyed as he tried to focus on the snake-lizard-thing that was bobbing and swaying right in front of his eyes. "Just... r'mind me, why the hell am I doin' all this?"

She beamed, wriggling against the top of Kavah's head as she uttered a shrill giggle. "Because sometimes all you need is a little Chaos!"

And Kavah sighed, one hand coming up to wearily rub at his eyes.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Veridia rubbed her eyes, her brow furrowing as she tried to process the current situation. She'd been along on Rhaelyn's little adventures in the past, so she was rather well-versed with how quickly they could spiral out of control. The first thing she needed to do was determine exactly what was happening, and then take steps to prevent it from getting any worse.

"Rrrraff..." she rumbled, her voice coming out as a husky growl despite her efforts to control her tone. "Why, exactly, did you brring him here?"

Raffina blinked, her hands set to her hips as she fixed the seated canine with an odd look. The cheetah beastkin seemed genuinely baffled as to why the ex-Amazonian warrior was so put-off by what she had done.

"So we could, like, beat the shit out of him." Raff shrugged. From her expression and body language, she seemed to think that her response was entirely reasonable.

Veridia's head lifted a bit, so she could eye the feline warily. "Why?"

The cheetah shrugged again, glancing back toward the edge of their camp. She'd stowed her prisoner there, bound to a tree with rope and wire, though neither really seemed necessary just yet. He'd remained steadfastly unconscious since she had confronted - and clobbered - him in the woods. "Shit, I don't know. We could, like, ask him questions or whatever. Like an interrogation, right?"

Veridia's head tilted slightly, and she leaned forward so she could rest her elbows against her legs. She repeated her question. "Why?"

"Okay," Raffina frowned a little. "I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who's actually trying in this conversation. What gives?"

Veridia rose to her feet slowly, towering over the smaller feline beastkin. She drew in a deep breath before thrusting a finger toward the captive wolf, abruptly letting out the anger and frustration that had been rapidly building up inside her. "You brrought a lycanthrope rrright into ourr camp!"

Raffina arched a brow, slightly nonplussed by the ex-Amazonian's aggressive posturing and even more aggressive tone. "Well, yeah. We covered this. I ran into him in the woods, managed to knock him out, and figured he'd be a good source of info. I'm just not sure why you're giving me such a hard time about it."

The larger canine rubbed her eyes again, drawing in another deep breath. She had been build with an inherent bestial lust for violence, but she had spent years learning to control it after she had first left the Bitch Queen's service. It was rare for her to give in to her monstrous impulses, but Raff seemed intent on testing her at every opportunity. "We'rre being hunted by the Queen's serrvants, and you brrought one of them rright into ourr camp."

"Um, yeah?" Raffina responded. Her tone still fairly casual - though there were hints of doubt in her voice now, as she started to have second-thoughts about what she had done.

Veridia pointed back toward the lone tent now, her ears slicked back as she growled lower. "Where we have ourr sick and wounded!"

"Well I knew the birdbrain was sick," the cheetah frowned, her tail lashing behind her. "But how was I supposed to know that Rhaelyn was going to be out of it too? This is a hell of a time for him to be taking a nap."

"He's a wizarrd!" Veridia snapped, her fingers curled halfway to fists before she caught herself. Yes, the cheetah's attitude was abrasive, but this time her anger stemmed more from her concern about Rhaelyn than her irritation with the cheetah. "He always has t'charge back up after a big fight!"

The husky sobered a bit, trying to decide if she had added that last bit for the cheetah's benefit or for her own. It was true that Rhaelyn usually had to recuperate for a time after excessive magic use, even with the aid of his numerous enchanted trinkets, but it had felt a bit different this time.

The wizard had seemed fine right after they had fought the wolfpack, though he had been understandably distraught by Kira's condition. He had seemed energetic enough when they had first hidden themselves away in the woods, but had steadily grown more exhausted afterwards, until he had practically collapsed. Veridia had tried to reassure herself that it was only because the panther had been running on pure adrenaline, and that he had only collapsed because it had finally worn off, but the last time she had peeked into Rhaelyn's tent he had been practically comatose.

Raff hesitated, perhaps picking up on the canine's concern. She cleared her throat, then spoke again - this time sounding a bit defensive. "Well how the hell was I supposed to know that? He didn't have to do that back when we were still dating." And a pause, before she murmured under her breath. "Well I mean he did, but only after sex. Or a really hard kick. Or both."

Veridia's ear twitched as she caught the murmured comment, but she chose to ignore it. There were more important things to contend with at the moment. She had a better handle on her anger now, and with a bit of effort she managed to speak in calmer fashion as she reiterated her concerns. "We hid out here so we could avoid trouble while we recover from our battle against Arvesk's pack, and now you've brought one of Arvesk's packmates right into our camp."

Raff snorted, glancing back over her shoulder. "What, him? Pff, whatever. He's tiny."

"He's a lycan!" Veridia growled. "A wolfwere! He's as strong as three beastkin combined, and filled up with so much blood magic that he's practically unkillable!"

"And I still managed to take him out with a book and a boot." Raffina purred, more than a little smug. "Guess I'm more of a badass than I thought."

She paused, catching the canine's irate expression. "Oh come on, we took on, like, thirty of these guys the other day. This is just one runt of a wolf. You saying the two of us can't handle one runt?"

Veridia sighed, glancing back toward their captive again. She wouldn't really classify him as a runt, but there was some validity to Raff's statement. The pack of lycans that had attacked them before had consisted entirely of older wolfweres, veterans left over from the Amazonian Campaign ten years earlier, but this one seemed a good bit younger. He was likely a third or fourth generation lycan, too young to have ever fought in the war, but that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

"It's still an unnecessary risk," she grumbled. "His packmates could track him here."

Raff considered that briefly, then casually shrugged as she reached for one of her knives. "Okay, so I'll kill him and dump the body, then we can move the camp again."

"Please don't."

Both beastkin looked back toward the tree, and this time they found the scrawny wolfwere peering back at them. His head was held low, his ears splayed in a sign of fearful submission.

"Oh, he lives." Raff quipped glibly, turning away from Veri and moving toward the wolf instead. Her knife was still in-hand, the well-polished blade practically shimmering in the morning sunlight. "Morning, runt."

Veridia let out another heavy sigh, her massive shoulders sagging as she trailed behind the feline.

The wolf paused, watching the two beastkin approach for a moment, until the cheetah stood at arm's length from him. He winced a bit, as if half-expecting her to plunge her knife into his body, but when she didn't he uttered an uncertain response. "Err... good morning?"

Raff smiled, and the wolf hesitantly offered a tight-lipped smile in return - then the cheetah hauled back and punched him in the head.

The wolf reeled, effectively stricken twice as the feline's fist clouted him upside the muzzle with enough force to drive his skull back into the tree behind him. He slumped against his bindings, dazed but still conscious.

"Ow." He muttered, though it was a rather underwhelming response to a rather tremendous impact.

Veridia stepped behind the wolf, briefly inspecting his bindings. Wire had been wrapped about his wrists and his ankles, with both being laced around the tree behind him to prevent him from getting proper leverage for escape. Still, it was obvious that he'd been struggling to quietly break his bonds for at least a few moments before he had called attention to himself.

The husky leaned in, one heavy hand set to the wolf's arm as she adjusted the wire that was wrapped around his wrists. "You've been tryin' to get free. Don't. This is silver wire, so you're gonna bleed out if you keep pulling at it."

"Oh." The wolf mumbled, one corner of his mouth quirked downward in a half-frown. He seemed confused by the concept, making it more than likely that he had simply never encountered silver in the past.

"That true, runt?" Raff sheathed her knife, instead making a show of cracking her knuckles as she remained in front of her prisoner. "You trying to escape?"

The wolf blinked slowly, eying the feline's fists now. What little damage she had inflicted with her first blow had already visibly healed - blood still flecked the fur one one side of his muzzle, but his split lip had already sealed up without even a hint of scarring. "Um... no?"

Raff hit him again, this time in the other side of the head. "Don't lie to me."

"Ow!" The wolf grunted, his response a bit more spirited this time, though he still sounded more annoyed than pained. He huffed, ears splayed further to the sides as he whined in protest. "I'm not lying!"

Veridia leaned forward, speaking gently but firmly near one of his ears. "Don't lie to her."

The wolf's ear twitched slightly, his gaze slanting sidelong at the larger Amazonian. He fidgeted a bit against the tree, seeming uncertain about how to proceed, but he finally gave a reluctant nod. "Um, okay. Sorry?"

Raffina laughed, shaking her head incredulously. She obviously wasn't accustomed to dealing with a wolf quite as civil or subservient as this one seemed to be. "You're sorry?"

"Um, yes?" The wolf mumbled, his ears perking a bit as a thought occurred to him. "But in my defense, I wasn't lying. Not really. I was trying to escape before, but, err, that didn't work. So by the time you asked me if I was trying to escape, I had already stopped."

Raff stared at him.

"So... so technically I wasn't trying to escape when you asked me." The wolf concluded, seeming quite satisfied with his exercise in mental gymnastics.

The cheetah arched her brows, one hand set to her hip as she shifted her stance a bit. She looked the lycan up and down, a faint smirk on her muzzle as she noticed that his twice-split lip had already healed again. "Oh, I see. You're trying to be clever. Not bad, runt."

"Thank you." The wolf responded, oddly pleased by the entirely insincere compliment.

Raff shifted her posture just a bit more before lashing one leg out in a crude, straightforward punting motion. The toe of her heavy boot slammed up between the wolf's forcibly spread legs, pounding into his crotch with all the delicacy of an oversized meat tenderizer.

The wolf barely managed to utter a strangled yelp at the impact, his muzzle gaped and his tongue lolling out from one side of his muzzle. He writhed impotently against the tree he was bound to, desperately trying to cover his stricken bits and pieces, but Veridia quickly grabbed hold of his limbs to prevent him from pulling at his bindings.

"Don't try to be clever." Raff purred, her smirk widening. "I don't like clever."

Veridia uttered another heavy sigh, fixing the feline with a disapproving look. "Why do you keep hittin' him?"

The simple question seemed to throw the smug cheetah off-stride, and it took her a few long seconds to come up with an appropriate response. "Why-... because I'm interrogating him! You hit people when you interrogate! Otherwise they won't answer your questions!"

"You haven't asked him any questions." Veridia frowned.

"What?" Raff blinked, her ears perked. "Sure I have. I, uh... well, I asked him about the escaping thing. Then he lied and acted like a jackass, so I hit him again."

Veridia rolled her eyes some. "We a'ready knew he had tried to escape. You haven't asked him anything that we don't a'ready know."

Raff rubbed her jaw, considering that for another few seconds before she shrugged. "Right, well, uh..."

There was silence for another moment, before the husky broke it. Her tone was just slightly reproachful. "You have no idea what you wanna ask him."

"I do!" The cheetah protested quickly, her tail lashing behind her. She stepped back up to the gasping and whimpering wolf, but his head was still bowed and his gaze securely fixed on anything but the feline beastkin. Raff jabbed an elbow below his muzzle, digging it into his throat as she forced him to look back up at her. "Why did you attack me!"

The wolf's muzzle worked, but he barely managed to gasp out another strangled whimper.

"And now yer chokin' him." Veridia murmured pointedly.

Raffina quickly relented, easing the pressure on the prisoner's neck. "Uh, right. Sorry."

And a pause as she fixed the wolf with a threatening glare. "Just to be clear, I'm apologizing to her. I'm not apologizing to you."

The wolf nodded mutely.

"So answer the question already!" Raff huffed, her ears slanted forward. "Why did you attack me!?"

The wolf's muzzle opened, working quietly for another few seconds as he tried to speak, but his head bowed again as he uttered a heartfelt groan. His whole body shuddered some, his muscles tensing and untensing as he tried to cope with the sharp pain that was still radiating through most of his body.

"You kicked him in the balls." Veridia stated, her tone even but her disapproval even more obvious than last time. "Can't really expect him to be up fer a chat after somethin' like that."

Raffina scowled. "Oh, whatever. These guys are built like fucking bricks, and they heal crazy-fast. He's obviously faking it."

"They heal fast, but that doesn't mean they're immune to pain." Veridia responded, her tone still even. "A normal beastkin would be on the ground fer the better part of an hour after a kick like that. It's gonna take him at least a few minutes."

The cheetah hesitated, chewing on the husky's words for a moment before she relented. "Okay, that's fair. You might have a point. Uh, we'll give him a minute."

She fixed the wolf with a steely gaze, one clawed finger rising as she tapped it against his nose. "One minute."

And they waited, the clearing silent but for the occasional rustle of leaves and the sounds of the wolf's rasping, gasped breathing. He recovered a bit at a time, far faster than a normal beastkin but still too slowly for the cheetah's liking, and once a full minute had passed she reached low and roughly grabbed a handful of the wolf's dangling nethers. The lycan's whole body went rigid in response, his breathless whimpering suddenly spiking to a much more abrupt and shrill whine.

"Can you talk now?" Raff purred sweetly, her fingers lightly flexing around the soft handhold she had taken. The tips of her claws tickled across the furred skin of his sac.

The wolf desperately nodded, gasping out breathless response. "Yes!"

"Good." Raff smiled, though the expression was more dangerous than friendly. "Now why did you attack me?"

"D-... didn't!" The wolf quickly gasped out, his ears twitching fitfully against his skull as he struggled to keep himself still. It was obvious that his fight or flight instinct was surging, but given the circumstances he couldn't really do either. "I didn't attack you! You attacked me!"

Raffina tightened her grip a bit, the wolf wincing and uttering another lilting whimper in response. "Don't lie to me, you son of a bitch! I'll-"

She stopped abruptly, her grip loosening slightly as she came to a sudden realization. "Oh, wait, yeah. I guess I did attack you first. Huh."

"This is pointless." Veridia muttered.

Raff glowered, her grip tightening again - prompting another higher-pitched whimper from the poor wolf - but this time her ire was aimed at the husky standing behind her prisoner. "You think you can do this any better?"

Veri cocked her head slightly, answering blithely. "Yes."

The cheetah faltered a bit at the canine's blunt response, but she quickly recovered. Her grip tightened even further, the wolf practically bowing toward her as he folded at the waist as much as his bindings would allow. "Well... who asked you, anyway!?"

"You did." Veridia quickly pointed out, thoroughly unamused. "Just now."

Raffina's clenched fist was trembling visibly now, though more from the perpetual strain of continued squeezing than from her rapidly growing rage. Still, despite the ache in her muscles, the wolf was still obviously receiving the worst of the exchange as his surprisingly delicate little puppymakers compressed to nearly half their normal width. "Just answer my damn questions already!"

The wolf's muzzle opened a bit, drool trickling unabated down one side of his chin, but he couldn't get a single word out. Shuddering hard, he just bowed his head again, mutely accepting his punishment.

"He can't talk if yer crushing his balls." Veridia murmured.

"Ugh!" Raff grunted, throwing down the handful of meat she had been mangling. It slapped wetly against the tree behind the wolf, illiciting another sharp yelp, but the cheetah ignored it. She sullenly flexed her hand instead, trying to massage the ache from her strained muscles. "This is fucking impossible."

"That's because yer doin' it wrong." The husky responded.

"Fine!" Raff practically snarled, one booted foot stomping a bit petulantly against the dirt as she took a step away from her prisoner. "If you're such an expert, then how the fuck would you do it?"

Veridia was silent for a moment as she studied the furious feline, deciding whether or not to humor Raff's obviously sarcastic query. After giving it some thought, she finally opted to do so. At the very least it would kill some time while they waited for the wolf to recover. Again. "Well firrst, yer not interrogatin' him, yer just torturin' him."

"What's the difference?" Raff snapped, still working at her sore hand.

"Interrogation uses intimidation and the threat of violence t'get information." Veridia responded smoothly, quite familiar with the practice. "Torture is violence fer the sake of violence, fer when you just wanna hurt someone. You only use it t'get information as a last resort."

"Really?" Raff snorted, her irritation still evident. "Because I usually find that a guy's eager to tell me anything I want, once I've got my fingers wrapped around their balls."

Veridia nodded. "Exactly. They'll tell you anything just t'make you stop. But that doesn't mean that what they tell you is gonna be true. It's just gonna be whatever they think you want to hear, so you'll stop hurtin' them."

"Well, I-" Raffina started to retort, but she stopped. She frowned, her ears twitching a bit as she looked back to the gasping wolf. "I guess I could-."

"Besides," Veridia rumbled, content to be making some headway. "You still haven't actually asked him anything."

"Yes I have!" Raff was quick to protest again.

Veridia's eyes rolled. "Anything that matters."

"Yes I-" The cheetah started, but then abruptly stopped again. She thought back on what she had asked so far, then relented. "Fine. Okay. This is harder than I thought."

Veri cleared her throat, her head cocked slightly as she adopted a gentler tone. "Well, first you need to decide what you wanna ask him. Sounds obvious, I know, but yer just goin' at him without a plan."

The cheetah cocked her jaw, looking thoughtful. "Okay, uh... well, I guess I want to know why the wolves attacked us."

"He might not know that." Veridia responded flatly. "He wasn't part of the group that attacked us."

Raff blinked, glancing to the wolf and then back to Veridia. "How can you tell? There were, like, thirty of them and they all look the same."

Veri shot the cheetah a dirty look, but opted not to chastise her for the specist remark. "No they don't, and I can tell because he's too young. All of the wolves that attacked us were pure-breeds, survivors from the Amazonian campaign, but this one is a third or fourth-generation hybrid. Prob'ly still a pup when the war ended."

The cheetah frowned, looking back to the wolf, but she didn't say anything.

"Yer the one who pointed out that he's a runt." Veridia probed, still trying to maintain a gentle tone as she educated the cheetah. "That's because he's barely an adult. They absorb ambient magic over time, and it makes'em bigger 'nd stronger as they get older."

"Okay," Raff's frown remained persistent, but at the very least she seemed a tad mollified. "But they were still attacking those other guys."

"The mercenaries?" Veridia murmured thoughtfully, thinking back to what little the cheetah had said about the other travelers that she had spotted camping near the road. The husky had been thoroughly distracted by the more immediate concern of their unexpected prisoner, and hadn't thought to ask much about the other travelers. They certainly bore more investigation. "What can you tell me about them?"

Raff drew herself up a bit, her ears perked as she suddenly seemed to drop into a more professional mindset, her old training as a wilderness scout asserting itself. "There were about twenty of them, I think. Obviously a traveling war party, but as far as I could tell it was mostly populated with gutter trash. No uniforms, no discipline, no consistent armaments, but they were toting a lot of cutlery and explosives. Pretty sure I recognized at least a few of them from the bar Rhae was recruiting out of back in Karash, including that one fox-guy-"

"Kavah?" Veridia arched a brow, her ears flicking toward the feline. She had met the fox on more than one occasion in the past, both when the oft-amorous beastkin had hit on her, and then when he had subsequently hit on just about every other woman at the Cat House.

"Yeah, that guy." Raffina drawled, grinning a little. "Old 'One-Nut' himself. Saw him tangling with some wolves on the south side of the camp, right before the guy in the cloak showed up."

"Tell me about the one in the cloak." Veridia pressed. The cheetah now had her undivided attention.

Raff nodded, but she seemed a bit uncertain. "Not much to say, really. Medium height, medium build, species indeterminate. Covered head-to-toe in some kind of magic cloak, face totally obscured. Had a staff maybe five feet long, made of bone or ivory, and he used it to... uh... disintegrate two of the wolves, maybe?"

"Maybe?" Veri arched a brow.

Raff shrugged. "Not sure exactly what he did to them, really, but it was some strong magic. The smell alone nearly burned out my sinuses."

Veridia sighed, rubbing at one of her ears as she gave a slight nod. "Right, then they're definitely hostiles. Can't be sure without seein' him in person, but that sounds an awful lot like the Bearer of the Black Cowl."

"The who of the what now?" Raff asked flippantly, seeming less-than-impressed by the fanciful title.

Veri frowned a little, trying to get the cheetah to take things a little more seriously. "The Bearer of the Black Cowl? Exile from the Council of Nine? One of the most powerful spellslingers on the continent?"

Raff shrugged. "Sorry, don't really keep up with the magic stuff. That was always more Rhaelyn's thing than mine. Uh, but isn't it the Council of Eight?"

"Only 'cuz he vanished a couple'a decades ago." Veridia murmured, a bit too deep in thought to be truly annoyed by the cheetah's flippant response. "Not sure exactly what happened to him, but most folks figgered he had just died without choosin' a proper successor. Course, that was before he turned up durin' the Amazonian Campaign workin' fer the other side. Near as I can tell he had some sort'a fallin' out with the rest of the Council and they exiled him, so maybe he joined up with Cygna just to get revenge on 'em."

"Pff, wizards are such drama queens." Raff snorted. And a pause, before she glanced back toward Rhaelyn's tent. "Present company not excluded!"

There was no response.

The cheetah looked back to Veridia, a little disgruntled. "Just seeing if he's awake yet. Guess not. So, uh, what's this black wizard's deal?"

Veridia mused, thinking back to the last time she had crossed paths with the shadowy mage. "He's powerful. Not as powerful as Cygna, but still a high-level necromancer with a lotta skill and no morals. Cygna sent him all over Skarn to claim all sorts'a relics and artifacts for her, but he ended up double-crossin' her halfway through the war. Killed a whole bunch of her agents durin' a mission out in the Wild Lands, then ran off with whatever it was that they'd been sent there to fetch."

Raff blinked, an ear perked. "Really? Why?"

Veridia shrugged, seeming more than a little disconcerted by her own own ignorance on the matter. "Dunno. Rhae and I have butted heads with him a few times since the war, but we never really figgered out what he was tryin' to accomplish. He's not really the 'evil monologue' sorta villain who tells you about his plans before he tries t'kill ya."

She frowned some, rubbing her jaw. "Last time I saw him, he was takin' a lava bath near Firestorm Peak. Thought he was dead, but I guess I should'a known better than to just assume that. Next time I'll hafta make sure I see the body."

"Um, okay..." Raff drawled, obviously uncertain about just how much of the husky's banter she was supposed to believe. "Well, what's he doing here now? Is this some kind of grudge match?"

Veridia's frown deepened, her hand still rubbing lightly against her chin. "Maybe. Dunno. Rhae is the Heir to the Violet Cowl, and he's also messed up a few of the Black Wizard's plots. Could be that the Black Wizard decided to finally make another move against the Council, or maybe he's just singlin' out Rhae this time. Could also be that he's just out here for the same thing we are."

"Oh, right." Raff glanced away, an ear perked. "The, uh, magic necklace?"

Veridia eyed the snarky cheetah. "Cygna's phylactery, yes. Cygna was one of the most powerful necromancers who ever lived, and the phylactery holds everything that's left of her mind and her power. Dangerous in any spellslinger's hands, 'specially someone like the Black Wizard."

The cheetah shrugged. "Honestly, I just kind of figured that Rhae made all that shit up."

Veridia blinked. "What? Why would he-?"

"So he could run off into the woods and have some kind of orgy?" Raff shrugged again, though even she sounded like she knew how stupid she sounded. "Come on, what was I supposed to think? He was yammering on about magic jewelry and the world ending, and then he ran off into the woods with that flirty gryphon and, uh, you..."

The cheetah glanced at the wolf pointedly, and Veridia followed her glance downward. The husky was massively built, easy standing head-and-shoulders over most other beastkin, with a wall of solid muscle behind her otherwise exaggerated curves. Even now, her overly ample bust was straining against the torn and frayed leather of her armored vest.

Raff made a vague hourglass shape with her hands, seeming disgruntled all over again. "No offense."

"Can't help how I look." Veridia frowned. "This is just how I was built."

The cheetah hesitated, obviously a bit curious about how the husky's choice of wording, but she refrained from asking about it. "Anyway, uh, I figured the whole 'adventure' thing was just a ruse to spend some time alone with a bunch of sexy women. Especially after he mentioned that topheavy whore we're chasing after."

Veridia snorted, smiling a bit despite the serious situation. "This is Rhaelyn we're talkin' about, not Saga. Rhae wouldn't do that sort'a thing."

"Who's Saga?" Raff arched a brow.

"No one. Nevermind" Veridia quickly responded, and after a brief second she abruptly changed the subject. "And Elin's not a whore. She's a friend."

The cheetah rolled her eyes. "Whatever. She's topheavy and she works at the Cat House, so I just assumed she was a whore. My mistake."

Veridia scowled a bit. "I work at the Cat House too. Am I a whore?"

"I don't know." Raff retorted, her hands on her hips. "Do you sleep with customers in exchange for coins?"

The husky paused, then cleared her throat, her ears slightly splayed as she rather suddenly regretted moving the discussion in this direction. "We're gettin' a bit off-topic. The important thing is that Rhae wasn't makin' any of this up. We're really tryin' t'find Cygna's phylactery. The world might not really be in danger, but pretty much everyone within a hundred miles o' here is. 'Specially us, if the Black Wizard is doggin' our heels."

Raff remained silent for a long moment, eyeballing Veridia as she seemed to mull over everything the larger beastkin had said. She finally spoke again, her demeanor refreshingly subdued. "Well shit."

Apparently she had finally exhausted her supply of snark, or perhaps she had simply been convinced on the gravity of their situation. "Okay Veri, then what do we do now?"

Veridia's brow furrowed as she began working out potential courses of action in her head. After a few long seconds of thought, she gestured toward the tent. "Gonna go see if I can wake up Rhae, then we'll hurry over to Zura's place. Too many players on the field now, so we gotta keep ourselves movin'."

Raffina quickly interjected. "Who's Zura?"

Veri blinked, glancing back to the cheetah again. "The dragon. We mentioned the dragon, didn't we? I'm sure we must'a told you about her. It's why we're out here in the first place."

"Shit," the cheetah muttered distastefully. "You guys were serious about that part, too? Dragons, evil wizards, wolves - this is all getting to be a bit too much for me. I only signed on for this job because I wanted an excuse to hang out with Rhae-"

"Errf..." the wolf uttered, forgotten. He had been given more than ample time to recover both his breath and his wits, and he had been more than content to simply wait quietly while the two beastkin ignored him. But now that the conversation seemed to be wrapping up, he apparently felt compelled to speak up again. "So, can... can I go now?"

"Oh, right!" Raff perked up. "I forgot all about you!"

She grinned viciously, waggling a hand back toward Veridia. "Okay, you go wake up Rhae and get things packed up. I'll take care of our little friend here."

"Yer gonna let him go?" Veridia murmured cautiously, not entirely sure she trusted the cheetah to handle the task.

Raff shot a glance back over her shoulder, already halfway back to where the wolf was bound. A knife was already in her hand. "What? No. Don't be stupid. I'm going to slit his throat, then wait to make sure he dies all proper-like. Then I guess I'll, like, burn the body or something. These guys can't regenerate if you burn them, right?"

The wolf's ears splayed out, his head low. "Please don't do that."

Raff seemed thoughtful, an ear perked. "Which part? The throat-slitting or the burning?"

The wolf seemed put off by the question. "Uh, both? Please don't do either of those things."

"Well now you're just being unreasonable." Raff grinned, gesturing toward the lycanthrope with the blade of her knife. "Pick one."

"Yeh, uh..." Veridia quickly moved back toward the wolf as well, more than a little alarmed. She genuinely couldn't tell if the cheetah was being serious, or if she was simply having fun at the young wolf's expense. "Don't do that."

Raff scowled, her hands back on her hips. "Why not? These guys are dangerous, and he heard everything we just said. If we cut him loose now he'll just run off and tell his pack where we are and what we're doing."

She arched a brow, glancing back to the wolf. "Right?"

The wolf was silent, his ears still splayed. He didn't even bother trying to lie. That was absolutely what he would do the second he was let loose.

"Not if he comes with us." Veridia rumbled, a hand set to the cheetah's shoulder as she none-too-gently pushed the feline away from the prisoner.

"What?" The wolf blinked, head lifted and ears suddenly perked.

"Yeah, what?" Raff echoed the wolf's confusion, glancing from one canine to the other. "We can't trust this guy, Veri. Better to just kill him. He's a fucking wolf."

Veridia's expression was neutral, but there was a slightly dangerous edge to her voice. "I'm a wolf."

"Well yeah, barely." Raff responded quickly, though she had obviously lost a bit of conviction. The husky obviously had Amazonian blood pumping through her veins, though it was just as obviously diluted by the blood of other canine beastkin. "But that's not what I meant. He's a monster, Veri. Cygna made them with, like, blood magic and corpses."

Veridia's expression shifted a bit, her gaze averted a bit as she shifted uncomfortably, studying the prisoner's face but still speaking back toward the cheetah. "I'm a-... I was a monster, too, 'til someone showed me that I could be something else."

The cheetah stared holes into the husky's broad back, lapsing into awkward silence for a long moment. She finally gave one last shrug, uttering a sigh of her own. "Fine, whatever. He's your responsibility, I guess. You play with your pet or whatever, I'll go kick Rhae in the nuts."

"Don't do that, either." Veridia glanced back over her shoulder toward the cheetah, a frown on her muzzle. "Just wake him up, okay?"

Raff flashed a toothy grin in response. "What, you don't think that would wake him up?"

"Rrraff..." Veridia growled, her patience wearing thin.

"Gods, you won't let me have any fun!" Raff grumbled, though it was half-hearted at best. At the very least, she didn't seem intent on arguing. Instead, she just muttered under her breath as she stalked away, her knife tucked back into one of the many sheaths lining her belt.

Veridia watched the cheetah go, then looked back the wolf. She set her hands to the sides of his head, angling his muzzle up toward her own so that she could look him in the eye.

"Sorry 'bout that." She rumbled, her attention intently focused on her captive audience.

The wolf fidgeted some, eyes locked with the larger canine. He mumbled a bit uncertainly. "Um, it's okay. I didn't get my throat slit, so I can't really complain."

"What's yer name?" Veridia pressed, her tone low and intense now as she continued to stare into the wolf's eyes.

"Er, Draev." The wolf answered uneasily. His ears slicked back, his head drawing back until he bumped the back of his skull against the tree behind him. He was still maintaining eye contact, though he certainly didn't seem happy about it.

"Draev..." Veridia rolled the name on her tongue. Yes, that had the taste of an eastern-tongue on it, which further cemented her suspicions. The young wolf was almost certainly a... third generation hybrid? Twice removed from the purebloods, likely with a bit of mundane beastkin mixed in there somewhere - at least judging from the slightly off shape of his ears and muzzle. A southern foxkin, perhaps, or maybe one of those eastern jackals.

"Do you know who I am?" She murmured, a hint of curiosity in her otherwise even voice.

Draev hesitated, his ears twitching slightly. What had the cat-thing called her? "You're, uh... Veri?"

"Yes." Veridia answered simply. "I am Veridia, daughter of your creator, the Goddess Sig-Nah. I am also littermate to Dalleth the First, your prime alpha. You will obey me."

The wolf's eyes widened, his ears perked bolt-upright. The magic in his blood was practically singing in his ears, each of the husky's words lancing straight into his brain. It wasn't unlike when Princess Kai spoke to him on occasion, when she stopped flirting and teasing and threatening and instead started doling out commands. He couldn't find the breath to speak, so he nodded dumbly instead.

Veridia uttered a relieved sigh, releasing the wolf's head. She hadn't been entirely certain that it would work. "Good. I'm gonna untie you now. No tryin' to run away. No fightin' unless it's in self defense. Yer gonna obey all of my commands until I say otherwise."

Draev's head bowed submissively, showing deference to his new alpha. "Yes mistress."

The husky winced a bit, her lip curled with distaste. "Don't call me that. Just, rrf... Veri is fine. Call me Veri."

Draev peeked up at the larger canine a bit uncertainly, but she had already moved out of his line of sight. She was behind him now, working at his bindings. "Erm, yes... Veri?"

"Better." Veridia rumbled, deftly twisting the silver wire off of the lycanthrope's wrists. "Oh, and don't tell anyone what I just told you. Far as anyone needs to know, yer just the world's most cooperative wolfwere. Got it?"

The wolf frowned a little, but he gratefully pulled his arms forward once his wrists were loosed. He rubbed at the spots where the cool metal had seared and torn into his flesh. Unlike his other injuries, the shallow wounds didn't seem to be healing properly. "Um, okay?"

Veri untied the wolf's ankles next, moving back around the tree again once she had finished. "Oh, and tell me if you notice any of yer packmates nearby. Don't want them catching us off-guard."

Draev sat on the ground, poking at his bloodied ankles as he inspected the scored flesh. Nope, those weren't healing properly either. He perked an ear, glancing back up at the husky as he registered her latest order. "Oh, erm, sure. But..."

"But what?" Veri arched a brow, absently coiling the wire up and shoving it into her pack.

Draev licked his lips, growing increasingly comfortable with his sudden new loyalties, even though he could feel some doubts still tugging at the back of his brain. "But, uh... well, what if some of them are already nearby? Uh, hypothetically speaking?"

The husky's ears perked bolt-upright, her gaze suddenly turned outward as she scanned the brushline. The woods were quiet, with nary a trace of any intruders prowling around the clearing, but... there was a distinct lack of any wilderness sounds. The local wildlife had gone to ground, leaving the forest even quieter than usual.

"Raff!" She barked back toward the tent, before scrambling to find an improvised weapon to defend herself with. "Trouble!"

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

"Trouble?"

Cygna didn't respond, her tongue jutting from between her lightly clenched teeth as she focused on the task at hand. She had been silent and still for at least ten minutes now, her fingers held poised near the copper-scaled dragon's skull.

Azura was silent for another moment, watching the undead queen and her borrowed body with one great, big eye. The possessed lynx didn't budge an inch. Was she broken? Had the tenuous magics that had let the Bitch Queen's spirit worm its way back into a mortal body somehow broken down?

The dragoness finally spoke again. "Maybe if you tried-?"

"I thought I told you to keep quiet?" Cygna snapped, the lynx's pretty face twisted into an unnaturally ugly scowl for a few fleeting seconds. It vanished quickly, her brow furrowing once more as she resumed her work. "I'm trying to concentrate."

"Sorry." Zura grumbled in response, not particularly thrilled by the Bitch Queen's tone. Still, she took care to keep her tone subdued, even slightly deferential and submissive.

The two barely tolerated each other, but over the past couple of days they had at least finally gotten to the point where they had agreed to help each other. Cygna needed a fearsome beast to keep her safe while she gathered her strength and marshaled her forces, and Zura needed a powerful necromancer to ease some of the enchantments that had been layered onto her as part of her captivity.

They were still almost certainly going to end up trying to kill each other in the future, but for now there was an uneasy truce.

Cygna remained still and silent for a few moments longer, but for the occasional twitch of her poised fingers. She finally spoke back up, uttering an exasperated hiss as she hooked her fingers in the air. It almost looked as if she were lacing her fingers through an invisible net. "Why would you ever let them do this to you? Your aura is just one big, tangled mess. I can hardly even tell where one knot ends and another begins."

Zura sniffed faintly, her massive copper-scaled bulk shifting as she tilted her head a bit more. One saucer-sized eye peered up at the little lynx, the corner of her long mouth curled downward into a slight frown. "Yes, well, my options were rather limited. It was either house arrest or summary execution, so I opted for the punishment that let me continue living."

"If you can call this living." Cygna snorted in response, her wrists flexing as she experimentally tugged on some unseen strands of magic. "They've essentially crippled you, just so they can keep you prisoner."

"Well..." Azurana paused delicately, then opted to show just a little attitude of her own. "You opted for death over captivity. How has that worked out for you so far?"

The lynx froze in place, then slowly tilted her head downward to stare the dragoness right in the eye. She obviously wasn't much amused. "Do you want to find out first-hand?"

"Oh please," Zura huffed, a plume of chlorine-tinged gas seeping from her copper nostrils. "Are we really doing this again? Yes, we can both kill each other, but what would that accomplish? We still need each other."

Cygna scowled again, rolling her eyes in exasperation before she returned her attention to the invisible weave of magic that surrounded the dragon's body. She shifted the position of her fingers, trying to find a weakness in the enchantments that were tightly woven into Azura's aura. "For now."

"Yes, for now." Zura rolled her eyes as well, mirroring the smaller beastkin's exasperated gesture, though her massive copper-flecked pupils made the gesture seem much more impressive. "Then when we're done using each other we can go right back to trying to kill each other. And when that happens-"

"I'll kill you." Cygna interrupted, her tone flat and even as if she were commenting on the weather or noting the time of day. She licked her lips, eyes narrowed as she leaned forward and pressed her fingers more firmly into a knotted clump of densely packed enchantments. The air started sparking and hissing in response, the scent of ozone wafting through the air, but she stubbornly persisted.

Zura curled her lip a little, exposing a row of sharp, metal teeth. "Or maybe I'll kill you first. Don't act like it's a forgone conclusion. We both know that you're weaker than ever. You've been fading away ever since you lost your body, and now you're barely even holding yourself together."

"I could kill you right now if I wanted to." Cygna grunted, her ears slanting forward as she kept herself focused on her work. "I'm elbow-deep in your aura, so all I'd have to do is sever the right life lines and your heart would stop beating."

"And I'd still have time to roll over and crush you before I died." Zura retorted, her tongue jutting lightly from between her metallic teeth. Her tone was almost playful now, but the look in her copper-flecked eyes was deadly serious. "Besides, if you did kill me, then I'm pretty sure at least one of these enchantments would alert the Council and they'd send their agents to investigate my death. Then you'd have to deal with them, but without the benefit of having a dragon around to help protect you."

Cygna was silent for a long moment, as if mulling that over. She sniffed and shrugged, dismissing the entire conversation now that it was moving in a direction she didn't like. "Yes, well, I still can't believe that you would let them cripple you like this. I thought you had more pride then that."

Azurana rolled her eyes again, the massive wings at her back flexing with a sound like rustling foil. "I told you, I only let them do it because-"

"Ah!" Cygna uttered a startled yelp, a cascade of purple and green sparks shooting from the empty space around her fingers. She quickly jerked her arms back, jamming three singed fingertips into her muzzle. The scent of burnt fur joined the smell of ozone that was wafting around her. "Damn it!"

"What?" Zura tensed, her head shifting a bit in alarm - though she was careful not to move too much, lest she should prematurely crush the much smaller and squishier beastkin. "What happened?"

Cygna suckled on her burned fingers, mumbling around them. "Magical countermeasure. Thought I had bypassed it, but it went off anyway." She paused, withdrawing her hand and briefly studying her injuries before deciding that they were minor. Painful, but minor. Frowning a little, she returned her attention to Azurana's aura. "But I still think I managed to do... something?"

The dragon's eyes narrowed, her expression equal parts apprehension and curiosity. "Something? What kind of something?"

"Well, ah..." the lynx paused for a long moment, her brow furrowed once more. She raised her hands again, her fingers tracing strange patterns in the air as she studied the dragon's aura more closely. "I'm not entirely certain, but I definitely manage to do something before I set off that trap. Do you feel any different?"

Azurana shifted again, her long neck crooking as she angled a sidelong glance back over the rest of her body. As one of the few greater dragons left in existence, she was quite a sight to behold - over thirty feet in length from snout to tail, with scales and ridges of burnished organic copper. "I don't... think I feel any different. Just a little nervous, I suppose?"

"Try-" Cygna bit her tongue, an index finger tracing through the air. One of the neatly woven enchantments was frayed around the edges now, a roiling thing of half-formed magics. Even the lightest stroke drew a smaller cascades of goldish-green sparks. "There, try doing something now."

The dragoness slanted her gaze back to the Bitch Queen and her borrowed body. "Like what?"

"I don't know," Cygna scowled, meeting her gaze. "Anything! Try... try shapeshifting, or flying, or spitting a stream of acid. Any of the abilities that those mewling whelps on the Council locked away behind all of these enchantments."

"Oh!" Zura perked, lifting her head some as she shifted against the bed of treasures that she was resting upon. "Yes, of course. Give me some room."

Cygna scrambled to her feet, backing away until she felt she had cleared enough distance between herself and the much larger dragoness.

Azurana flexed, her scales scraping together lightly with an almost musical sound, her wings fully extending until the tips had almost touched to either side of the large cavern. "Okay, well, I don't think I can fly. I'd have to go outside to be absolutely certain, but I can still feel the enchantments working against me."

The lynx frowned, her arms crossing below her ample bust. She said nothing.

Zura shifted again, angling her head away from the beastkin as she instead aimed her muzzle at an outcropping of rock near the far side of the cavern. She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled sharply through her mouth, quickly filling the chamber with the acrid tang of her coppery breath.

"Oh, gross." Cygna hissed, both hands snapping upward to slap over her muzzle in an attempt to somehow filter the air she was breathing. "That better not be poisonous!"

"No," the dragoness moped, a metal-plated forelimb sliding up as she wiped the drool away from her chin. "No, I think that's just my normal breath. Sorry. Uh, so I can't exhale acid or poison gas, either. The magical safety restraints on my breath weapons are still in place."

The lynx retreated several more steps until she was standing near one of the ventilation tunnels. "Ugh, useless. What else?"

"Well..." Azurana's head tilted to the other side, her neck arched and her eyes locked onto the feline's frame as she towered over her. The dragoness fell silent for a few long seconds, before she uttered a much softer sigh. "Okay, I can't cast spells either."

Cygna arched her brow, her unspoken question hanging in the air.

"I was trying to kill you with my mind." Cygna smiled sweetly, doing her best to look innocent. For a one-ton dragoness she was actually rather good at it. "But it didn't work. Oh well, maybe next time."

"Ha. Ha." Cygna scowled, her tone dry. "Hilarious. Anything else?"

"Oh, let me try shapeshifting!" The dragoness perked, her scales rippling as she pushed herself up and leaned her bulk onto her hind legs. "Alright, I just need to..."

She paused for a moment, peering down at herself intently, but nothing happened. Frowning, she folded her wings around her body, her eyes squinching shut as she concentrated harder. "Well, maybe if I... if i just..."

Cygna's fur stood on end, the air around her charging with static. A faint hum permeated the air, more felt in the lynx's teeth than actually heard. An unsettling thought occurred to her. "Er... Azurana, you're not trying to kill me with your mind again, are you?"

"No, I'm just..." the dragoness faltered, her eyes still closed tightly. "I think I can just..."

The soft scrape of shuffling scales filled the cavern, like the nightmarish sound of a thousand metal snakes all bound into one writhing knot. It persisted for several long seconds before the dragoness finally opened one eye, peeking back down at herself.

"Oh." She frowned, her wings unfurled so she could prod herself in the underbelly with one copper claw. "Well, clearly I'm still a dragon."

"What were you trying to change yourself into?" Cygna inquired, seeming genuinely interested in what was happening for once.

"Do you remember the shape I used to seduce the Lizard King?" Azurana grinned, two clawed hands coming down to her scaled chest. It was flat in her natural form, all smooth scales and metal-corded muscles, but the shapes she mimed with her forelimbs were much rounder.

Cygna brightened a little, a hand set to her muzzle as she thought on that. "Oh, the lizardwoman form? Yes, I remember that. You were cute. Top-heavy, but cute."

"It wasn't top-heavy, the thick tail provided a proper counter-balance for the chest." Zura sniffed, eying the lynx. She reached out, her serpentine spine swaying as she very gently probed the tip of one claw against the feline's chest. "Besides, you're hardly in any position to criticize my taste in endowments. Just look at you."

"Oof-!" Cygna's whole body swayed backward at even the gentle probing, her heavy bust bouncing firmly despite the layer of costume armor wrapped over it. "Don't.... ow, don't do that. And it's not like I chose this body, it was just the first one that came along. I already ordered Grundy find me something more suitable."

The dragoness cocked her head a bit, eying the lynx. It was admittedly strange interacting with the Bitch Queen when she was occupying someone else's body. It was understandable, of course - Cygna was dead twice-over, and her original body had long since been burned and the ashes scattered. But still, this new feline body was a far cry from how Azura remembered her.

..and it didn't help that the body's original owner still managed to occasionally assert her presence, if only in short bursts. Her name was Elin, and apparently she had been some sort of serving girl in the Feline-dominated city of Ma'Karach. She seemed nice, and made for rather pleasant company on the increasingly rare occasions that she emerged.

The dragoness still wasn't entirely certain what it was that triggered the shift from one persona to another, but she had some suspicions. She was also doing her best not to mention anything about it to Cygna, since the Bitch Queen didn't seem aware that it was happening. Azura was sure she could use that to her own advantage, somehow.

"I don't know..." Zura murmured, once she realized she had lapsed into an awkwardly long silence. Cygna was staring at her, so the dragoness quickly tried deflecting her suspicions with an off-handed comment. "I think it looks cute on you."

Cygna looked down at herself appraisingly, a hand kept at her chest as she hefted the almost disproportionately large breasts. Ears perked, she craned her neck, sliding her other hand down along her side as she caressed over her equally ample hip before patting against the voluminous rump that was just barely covered by the leather bands of her skirt. Her thick, feline tail swayed behind her, curling upward until it almost resembled a furry question mark. "Well, it's... fine, I suppose. Not terrible, at least. But it's the wrong species, and there's something wrong with the-"

She stopped abruptly, then shot a dirty look at the dragon. "Stop that, you're just trying to distract me. We're focused on you right now, remember? Or did you change your mind about wanting me to fix your aura?"

"Oh!" Azura hesitated, then glanced back down at herself. "Yes, of course I still want you to fix me, but I'm not sure what else we can try. I don't think I can fly, and obviously I can't shapeshift or use magic, so..."

Cygna frowned a little, her oversized ears perked as she held up one finger. "Wait, straighten back up again."

"Mmn?" Zura looked to the queen in askance, but she obediently followed the command. Back straightening, she rested her bulk onto her hind legs once more.

Cygna studied her for a few seconds, her frown growing deeper. "I think you're... smaller now."

"Am I?" Azurana wasn't sure if she was supposed to feel pleased or alarmed by this news. Her neck craned, her gaze sweeping down over the length of her body, but it was difficult to tell whether she actually was smaller. How could she gauge her relative size if her sense of relative proportions had shrunk right alongside the rest of her?

She unfurled her wings, stretching them out to their full length, only to find that the cavern walls seemed more distant than before. "Oh, I am!"

The lynx bobbed her head in agreement, a hand raised as she stroked through the fur at her chin. "Yes, I would estimate that you're roughly ten percent smaller than you were before you tried to change your shape. I think we've unlocked your mass-shifting ability, but not your ability to redefine your exact physical form."

"Well that's-" Zura shifted about, studying her body from multiple angles now. There was no denying that she definitely still had the same shape as before - she was still very much a dragon - but she had also definitely gotten smaller. "That's something, I suppose. It's progress."

"Can you grow larger again?" Cygna asked, one brow delicately arched.

Zura hesitated, then quickly closed her eyes again, concentrating for a moment. The slithering sound of scales scraping against scales sounded out again, her massive frame subtly but visibly altering from one second to the next.

"No, stop!" Cygna yelped, her canine mannerisms showing despite her feline form. Her ears perked and her thick tail stood on-end as she waved her hands in alarm. "Larger, not smaller!"

Azurana snapped her eyes back open, darting her gaze down to her body once more. She was still massive, at least compared to the lynx, but she had willed away another tenth of her mass. "What? Well I-... oh, wait, I'm even smaller than I was before."

"Yesss..." Cygna hissed, her scowl firmly in place. "I asked if you could make yourself larger, not smaller! Can't you follow even the simplest of instructions?"

Zura furrowed her brows, her thick tail thumping against the carpet of gems and treasures with an audible metallic crunch. "I'm trying, okay!? I tried to make myself larger and it didn't work! I just-"

She coiled herself up, crushing a dozen more gold and silver treasures beneath her bulk in the process. Huffing faintly, she forced herself to calm down. "I think some metaphysical wires got crossed. It's not working right. That's not my fault."

Cygna groaned, her hand planted over her eyes. "So you can shrink yourself, but you can't change yourself back again?"

The dragoness glanced back down at herself, loathe to try growing again lest it should somehow make things even worse. "Um, yes. Yes. I think that is a correct assessment of my current condition. Of course, I'll need to run some more tests to be certain, but-"

"No!" Cygna quickly butted in, her eyes wide. "Don't do that! No more testing until I've made some more adjustments to your aura! The last thing we need is for you to make yourself even smaller! The whole point of this is to make you more deadly, not less!"

Zura reared her head back, looking a bit sullen. "Well I'm still... I'm over twenty feet long, so I think it's fair to say that I'm still quite deadly."

"Are you?" Cygna snorted.

The dragoness paused, then grumbled under her breath. Her voice was low and sullen, but still quite clearly audible. "Deadlier than you are..."

Cygna sighed, her hand running back over her feline face in an open show of exasperation. She felt tired all of a sudden. "What happened to us, Azurana? When did we turn on each other like this? My memories are a little hazy sometimes, what with the dying and all, but weren't we friends once?"

The dragoness paused, caught a bit off-guard by the question, or perhaps just the tone behind it. The queen was normally imperious and domineering, even in death, but for once she actually almost sounded whistful. Azura's bulk shifted as she partially uncoiled her frame, crushing even more of her carefully crafted treasures beneath her body until she had made herself comfortable. "Mmn... truth?"

The lynx moved over in front of the dragon, flopping down to sit in front of her. "Yes, the truth would be nice. Do you think you can actually manage that for once?"

"Well, I did spend decades working as your spymaster, but..." Azurana smiled a little, her gaze averted in coy fashion. "But I do think I can still manage to tell the truth from time to time."

Cygna nodded, her chin resting against her hand as she waited. "So then what happened to us? The way I remember it, we were friends for centuries, and then it all fell apart right before I died."

Zura glanced back to the Bitch Queen, her smile fading a little. "Well, 'friends' might be putting it a bit strongly. You were the master and I was the servant, and you never really let me quite forget that. But... yes, I do suppose we were allies, at least. Perhaps even comrades on occasion. We had some good times."

"And what happened that changed all that?" Cygna frowned, her chin resting against both hands now.

Azurana glanced away, suddenly seeming just a tad anxious. "Well, then we had some bad times. You started playing the game again."

Cygna blinked, her head lifting as her back straightened. "What, the-... so what? You liked the game! You were one of the first to join my team when I started playing it again!"

"When I thought you were just having some fun, yes." Zura rumbled, speaking slowly as if she were chewing on every word she uttered. "It's nice to shake things up every so often, to undermine a few governments and topple a few kingdoms. Something to keep the other players on their toes. But you got careless."

The lynx stared at her.

Azura leaned in, her head cocked to one side as she rephrased her statement. "I thought we were playing a metaphorical game of chess, and you wanted to turn it into a literal game of thermonuclear war. We were gaining territory, but losing too many pawns in the process. It just wasn't sustainable. I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn't listen to me."

The Bitch Queen was silent for a moment longer, her shoulders slumping as she mulled over the dragon's words. "Well, I wanted to win, and that seemed to be the most efficient way to do it. Besides, it's not like you ever worried about a little collateral damage. This world has pawns to spare, so why does it suddenly matter if a few thousand of them die?"

"Yes, well, I changed my mind." Azura sniffed, her head tilted as she looked away from the undead Queen.

"When?" Cygna scowled.

The dragoness spared her the briefest withering glance, her tongue flicking over her coppery lips. "When you killed my brother."

"What!?" The lynx's back straightened again, her eyes wide. "I never-... you know I'm not the one who killed him!"

Zura huffed, her body twisting as she slowly recoiled herself into a tightly-wound pile. For a moment she almost seemed more like a copper-scaled snake than a dragon. "Well, you might as well have killed him. You're the one who wanted to play the game again, you're the one who kept pushing things farther and farther, and you're the one who recruited that psychopath in the black hood. You remember him, right? The one who decided to murder my brother and strip him for parts?"

Cygna sighed, rubbing at her temples. Gods, she had such a headache all of a sudden - maybe it was from slaving over the dragon's aura over the past few hours, or maybe it was because of this inferior mortal body that she was stuck with. Either way, her brain was practically throbbing. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sure I've said that before."

"You haven't." Azurana interjected quietly. "I don't think I've ever heard you apologize for anything, ever."

Cygna glanced back up at the dragoness, her frown softening. "Well I am, okay? I liked your brother, you should know that better than anyone else. When he died, a part of me went with him."

Azura grunted, her wings drawing up, copper-foiled membranes settling over her coiled body like a metallic blanket.

"When I recruited-" Cygna paused, then uttered a dejected sigh. "Look, I made a mistake and it cost us both. Your brother wasn't the only one that died, you know."

"So you lost a few of your other pawns, big deal." Zura snorted, chlorine gas leaking from her nostrils once more. "No one was going to cry over someone like the Golem King or the Baron of Shadows. They were mostly assholes and psychopaths anyway, and everyone is better off with them dead and gone. But my brother was different, because he was my brother."

The lynx lapsed into silence, then spoke again as she tried grasping at straws. She obviously felt that the dragoness wasn't being rational, but... "That's a little hypocritical of you, isn't it? You watched me kill thousands of people and you never objected, not even once. You killed your fair share of people just to keep them from interfering with my plans, and never once shed a single tear. Are you really saying that you only care about death when it effects you personally?"

"Fine," Zura hissed like a tea-kettle, more chlorine-tinged gas jetting from her nostrils - though the flow sputtered to a halt as the magical safety measures wrapped around her kicked into high gear. "So I'm a selfish hypocrite, and I only care about myself. I'll admit to that. But you asked when we stopped being friends, and I gave you an honest answer. It's not my fault if you don't like that answer."

"Yes, well..." Cygna started again, trying to think of a different approach that might placate the dragoness.

"He was my BROTHER!" Azura roared, suddenly rearing up like a great copper viper. The metallic stench of her breath filled the cavern once more, the faint burble of acid welling up in her throat as acrid vapors once again seeped visibly from her nostrils. The air practically shimmered around her, the enchantments that bound her powers growing strained.

'And I am your Queen." Cygna hissed back, drawing herself up onto her feet as well. Between the two the furious dragon cut a far more intimidating figure, but the crooked posture of the lynx's fingers implied that the much smaller beastkin was ready to hurl bolts of magic at the beast if need be. It was hard to say which of them would be victorious if it actually came to blows.

There was another long moment of tense silence before Zura's posture suddenly relaxed again, her gaze averted. "Not anymore. That ended the moment you died and the blood bindings between us were broken. You may be a queen, but you're not my queen."

"Yes," the lynx uttered tersely, her own posture relaxing as well once it became clear that the dragoness was backing down. "I made a mistake and it cost you - it cost us both. You lost your brother and I lost my life. I apologize for that, for what it's worth, though between the two of us I think I paid the greater price for my mistake."

"Hrrf." Zura uttered a disgruntled hiss, her puffed up copper frame slowly deflating as she exhaled.

Cygna frowned a little, but then shrugged dismissively. "Fine. I tried. If we can't be friends again, then we can at least be allies for a time. You continue to guard me from my enemies, and I'll see about restoring your powers, and once we no longer have a use for each other..."

She left the statement unfinished, clearly baiting the dragoness.

Azurana seemed tempted by the metaphorical bait, but she held her tongue.

The lynx sat back down, leaning back against the wall behind her. "I think we both could use a break. Why don't you go get me something to eat, and then I'll work on your aura a bit more."

Zura seemed ready to object, perhaps just to be contentious, but she quickly changed her mind. "Fine, I could use the fresh air. Stinks in here."

"Yes, well, that would be your breath." Cygna murmured pointedly.

The dragoness rolled onto all-fours, moving toward one of the many ventilation tunnels. Anything to take her farther away from the former queen. "Not what I meant."

"Yes," Cygna murmured behind her, her voice quickly fading with distance. "I know."

Azurana's pace quickened as she worked her way through the long, dark tunnels. She had gouged a veritable labyrinth into the earth during her years of captivity, but she knew the layout like the back of her scaled hand. Within moments, she had emerged into the mid-day sun, her body stretching out as she soaked in the welcome warmth.

She let out a long, slow breath as she deftly picked her way over the brush- and rock-strewn terrain, until she had reached the edge of one of the many little orchards she had cultivated. A small part of her mind focused on finding something that the Bitch Queen could eat, but the rest of her mind swirled with half-formed plots and plans.

There were a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and she was in a woefully inadequate position to keep track of them all. How could she best assure that she wouldn't be one of the inevitable casualties in this latest chapter of the Bitch Queen's stupid game? And, more importantly, could she possibly use the inexorably unfolding events to her own advantage in some way?

Elin, the lynx who's body the Queen was occupying, had said some very interesting things during her increasingly rare moments of lucidity. If the little beastkin's information could be relied on, then that meant that Rhaelyn fa Soren was mixed up in this whole mess - which was fitting, really. That obnoxious little panther had a way of sticking his muzzle into anything and everything involving the Bitch Queen. He had played a hand in Cygna's downfall twice over, and he had even played a hand in convincing Azurana's deal with the Council of Eight.

If he was involved, then surely he would be on his way here? Maybe if she could just delay Cygna for long enough, the problem would solve itself...

Something moved at the edge of the dragon's vision, and she twitched her horned head to one side as she tried to focus on it. Wildlife was somewhat uncommon, so close to her lair. She put off so much raw magic that animals generally avoided her, though there were exceptions. So what-?

"Ah," she murmured, dropping a handful of gathered fruits and berries into an untidy heap on the ground. She laced her way between the trees, moving toward the figure she had spied. "Hello there."

She was practically nose-to-nose with a beastkin, a scarred and heavily stitched canine with a dull-eyed stare. The dragoness had hoped to get a bit of amusement from startling him - mortals always squeaked and flailed when she caught them by surprise - but this one seemed to take her appearance in stride. In fact, he barely seemed to register her presence until a few long seconds after her appearance.

Azurana sniffed lightly, her brow furrowed as she drew in the beastkin's scent, her head drawing back as she caught an almost overwhelming scent of charred meat wrapped around white-hot magic. She cocked her head to the other side, eyes narrowing as she focused on the beastkin's aura - awkward lumps of life energy all bound together with strands of black necromancy.

"Oh, well, someone's already killed you, haven't they?" She huffed, the corners of her mouth tugging down into a slight frown. "Are you the smart sort of undead, or just someone's puppet?"

The beastkin said nothing, instead turning to point back in the direction he had come from.

Azurana peered past the zombie, peering through the brush. That direction led to one of the craggy cliff faces that curved around the very northeastern edge of her territory. Clearly this sad little creature had been sent in to get her attention. Now the question was, did she dare to accept this rather unsettling invitation?

She flitted her gaze over to the mouth of her cave, where Cygna was presumably still waiting for lunch, then looked past the zombie toward the brush-obscured cliff as she mulled over her options.

"Alright, I'll bite." She murmured, before glancing at the zombie and offering a half-hearted smile. "Don't worry, that was a joke. I don't really bite. Get it?"

The zombie stared at her impassively. It's eyes weren't even dilating properly, so it was hard to say just how much it was registering her presence at all.

Azura sighed, then pushed past the thing. "Oh never mind."

She wove her way through the brush and rocks with surprising nimbleness, muttering to herself. "At least when Cygna used to make those things, she'd give them a sense of humor. Now who...?"

She came to an abrupt halt as she reached the top of the craggy rise, more figures coming into view. The very edge of her territory was marked with a line of carefully placed runestones, the enchantments marking the line that she was not allowed to cross. Just beyond that line an ominous, black-robed figure was standing imperiously, burnished ivory staff in hand.

"Oh," Azura rasped low, her eyes narrowing. "It's you."

"Dragon Queen." The Black Wizard answered, his voice reverberating unnaturally from beneath the Black Cowl.

He shifted his posture, black shadow-stuff practically dripping from his robed form as he gestured toward the Azura with his spellstaff. A dozen beastkin emerged from the foliage around him, each of them armed and armored, and all of them with their wary gazes fixed on the dragoness as they moved to start flanking her on either side. "We have much to discuss."