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Draconis Combinus

Sorry for the wait on this chapter. (I'm getting slow aren't I?)

Okay, I lied; so sue me, there is some slight yiff in this chapter. (Slight as in very short)

Jyrtan awoke slowly, as if he had been hit over the head one too many times. He opened his eyes and groaned as a shaft of sunlight seemed to pierce his eyes, lancing into the centre of is head in a very painful way.

He reached out and flicked shut the curtain, falling right out of the bed in the process.

He lay on the floor, feeling rather stupid, wondering where in the hell he was?

From his position he could see a bed, draped with light-purple covers, messed up, seemingly from his thrashing in the night. Maybe he had been delirious? The curtains were the same shade of purple, and the floor was a kind of creamy yellow. The door was a huge thing of carved wood. The inlay looked to be marble, and depicted a rearing dragon, roaring at the sky in jubilation or anger.

Just then, the door came crashing open and several heavily armed men rushed into the room. Jyrtan could only lie there as the men surrounded him. He felt a sword against his throat.

"This the one?" One of the men asked.

"Yes." Said a familiar, sneering voice. Jyrtan watched as Drethan stepped over to him.

He spat on the prone figure, and then leaned down.

"Enjoy your last few days with your precious dragoness." Drethan sneered, before punching Jyrtan, hard, in the face, knocking him back into blessed unconsciousness.

* * *

"Wake up." A voice said softly. "Please. Wake up?" It pleaded.

Jyrtan opened his eyes. But there was no ray of sunlight to cause his head to become a swirling maelstrom of pain. He was in a dungeon. He could tell that straight away by the manacles hanging high from the wall, and by the bars that took the place of walls on two sides.

Ilytheria was there as well. She was sitting besides him, her wings dropping in a sad way. Her hands were in her lap, her eyes downcast, begging him to wake up. She was wearing an almost transparent silk gown that fell elegantly from her shoulders, obscuring her body from view. It was a magnificent pink

Jyrtan tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak moan.

Ilytheria gave a muffled squeal of delight at his awakening, immediately latching onto his hand and holding it close in her own.

Jyrtan felt strange warmth in his stomach at her touch.

"Thank god your awake." She whispered.

"Why are we here?" He choked out. His throat felt as if it were made of the sands of the desert.

"Drink this." She said, holding a large bottle of water in her hand.

Jyrtan took it and sipped at it gratefully as she began to explain.

"We've been imprisoned on charges of disrupting the peace, and conspiring against the state." She began. "We're slated to be executed at sunset tomorrow. I think that the leader of the Tiryan army, or even the leader of the country could be plotting something against the Draconis Combinus. That is why we're locked up. There was to be no negotiation. They will have sent a message back, telling the council members that we are currently in deliberation, while they mobilise their army. The Draconis Combinus won't be ready for an attack, they will fall easily."

"Then why haven't we been slated for execution at an earlier time? Leaving it for any length of time gives us a chance to escape and warm them." He said.

"How do you expect to escape? The guards never even come close to the cells, not even to give us food. They push it through the bars to us with their swords." She said in a defeated voice.

"Play sick?" He asked hopefully.

Ilytheria actually laughed. "That's the oldest trick in the book. No one falls that any more."

"I know something that will get the guards in here." He whispered, as he sat up. "I'm sorry milady." He said, looking up at her for the first time since he had awoken.

He reached up, wrapped his arms around her neck and pushed her onto her back, straddling her and kissing her furiously, with as much passion as he could muster while he strained his ears for the sound of a key in the lock.

Ilytheria was so surprised that she didn't put up any resistance, she just made a little "oh" of surprise.

"Oi! You two! Knock that off!" The guard called.

At that point Ilytheria began to kiss him back, her tongue twining around his own in a very visible way as she rolled him onto his back and began to tear his clothes off.

The guard opened the cell, stepping inside, drawing his longsword and advance towards them.

He raised it above his head, ready to bring the flat of the blade down on the back of Ilytheria's head.

Jyrtan threw Ilytheria clear, making sure not to hurt her, as the blade descended.

Jyrtan block the blade with the flat of his right hand. He then spun around on his back, his foot hooking behind the guards' knee, and then he kept spinning, taking the guards feet out from under him. The sword spun away out the door in a very loud way.

The guard leapt to his feet just as Jyrtan regained his. The guard sprinted out the door, intending to close it.

Jyrtan leapt after him, executing a long, jumping sidekick.

The kick caught the guard right in the back, knocking him off his feet.

The thing most people didn't realise about flying sidekicks is that they don't any damage whatsoever unless you do one off the side of a building or the person who gets struck is travelling towards the attacker at a fair pace. When a flying sidekick hits you, it just pushes you backwards, and hitting the ground is what causes the damage.

The guard was pushed forwards, right into the dark, stone, wall, impacting with a sickening thud and sliding down it slowly.

Jyrtan glanced around, the dragoness coming and standing besides him, breathing very hard, as if she was the one who had been fighting.

He found what he was looking for, the sword, and snatched it up.

"Do you know how to use a sword?" He asked quietly.

"Sort of." She said nervously.

"Just hold it and swing." He said, thrusting the sword into her hands and running up the long flight of stairs leading towards the upper levels, the dragoness following.

Jyrtan had reached the top of the steps, when a huge guard stepped around the corner, pushing his backwards with a big meaty hand, throwing him back down the steps.

He collected Ilytheria on the way down, and they both hit the bottom too sore to move.

The guard came back down and threw them bodily back into the cell. He took the sword, dragged the guard away, and in another five minutes, another guard had come down.

"Do you think that it will work again?" She whispered breathlessly, looking as if her own daring surprised her.

"Maybe, but I don't think so, the guard would have been told about that, and told not to go anywhere near us unless it's pretty serious." He said in a defeated voice, sitting on the single bed attached to the cell wall, his eyes carefully averted from the dragoness, even though the old rules didn't matter that much at this point, they were both dead any way.

"It's worth a try." She said hopefully.

"I suppose it is." He said, standing up as if walking away to his execution.

She grabbed him and pulled him close, kissing him passionately. If he hadn't known that she was trying to make it look real he would have sworn that she wasn't acting.

"Heisn'tfallingforit." He whispered between kissed, glancing at the guard who was watching on impassively.

"I order you to do everything in your power to make him enter the cell." She said, leaning close on the pretence of allowing him to drop her silk gown to the floor.

He did so, staring at her naked form for a second, before pushing her onto her back slowly.

He kissed down her neck, slowly going lower, glancing up at her smiling face, but actually looking past her at the guard who was starting to think that they weren't just acting. But Jyrtan knew that they'd have to go one step farther to convince him.

"Sorry, milady." He whispered, so that only she could here it.

He dove between her legs, spreading her thighs and delving between her silken lips with his tongue.

"Oh!" Ilytheria squealed out, spreading her thighs and arching her back, pushing towards his questing tongue.

Jyrtan ran his hands across her taught stomach, delving deeper with his tongue, trying to get her to squeal again.

She did, a long, piecing cry of pleasure as she arched her back, supporting herself on only her tail and hind legs, thrashing wildly. She was either enjoying his tongue a lot, or putting on the best show that he had ever seen.

The guard slammed open the door and rushed them both, intending to separate them.

Jyrtan leapt up, his face shiny with her juices, licking his lips clean of her hot, delightful juices, grabbing the guards sword-arm, and yanking down and backwards hard. The guard went tumbling head first into the bars separating this cage from the next.

The wolf man in the next cage leapt from the bed, yanking the guard's head against the bars so that his head was jammed between them, immobile. The guards screamed and struggled to get free as the wolf started to eat his face.

Jyrtan searched the guard, ignoring his screams and flailing fists, taking a dagger and a ring of keys from him.

He ran up the steps, the rapidly dressing Ilytheria trailing behind him, trying to get her wings through the slits in the back of her silken robe.

He ran up the stairs, ready for the large soldier this time.

The guard stepped out, a punch aimed for Jyrtan's midsection. He side-stepped, the almost lethal fist missing him by inches, before he punched the guard right in the solar plexus, grabbing his fist as he doubled up, spinning into the hollow of the big mans body, his back pressed against the guards chest.

Jyrtan twisted, and pulled hard, leaning forwards, tumbling the guard over his shoulder, lifting upwards as he let go, adding extra rotation to the guards roll. He hit the stairs in a very painful way, snapping the second vertebrae in his neck into several little pieces.

He rolled right to bottom of the stairs.

Jyrtan waited for Ilytheria to catch up, and then continued on his upwards path.

* * *

It was several minutes later when they reached the top of the dungeon, and stopped, awed by what they saw.

They hadn't been in a dungeon. They had been in the Tiryan jail cells.

The jail cells were what the Tiryan's called inescapable'. They were basically huge cylinders sunk into the earth, completely hollow, housing thousands of prisoners each. Each one was connected to the next by narrow railings. There were five of these cylinders, arranged in a general circle, the walkways making one gigantic pentagram. The only way down to the bottom of the cylinders, and eventual escape was the ladder on the outside of every cylinder, each one with several guards waiting at the bottom.

That was where Jyrtan and Ilytheria were now, at the top of the northernmost cylinder, standing at the railing, staring at the magnificent view of the forest but not really seeing it.

Jyrtan immediately ran towards the nearest ladder. One thing the prison makers hadn't thought f was if a dragon was imprisoned in the walls.

"Fly, milady!" He said, looking around himself.

Ilytheria did as asked, leaping out from the tower and unfurling her powerful wings, hovering in the air about twenty metres away.

"Get going!" Jyrtan yelled to her.

He ran over to a long length of hosing, which would be used to siphon water up from the ground if a fire should start. He tested the elasticity, and did some rapid calculations in his head.

Jyrtan cut the length of hose hurriedly, chopping off a fair length. He threw that to the side, wrapping the length of the hose around the top bar of the ladder.

He tightened the knot, making sure it wouldn't give, before glancing over his shoulder, seeing several soldiers sprinting towards him from one of the other cylinders.

"Fly!" He called out exasperatedly as he saw Ilytheria still hovering close him.

Jyrtan grabbed the end of the length of hose he had just tied up, and leapt off the edge with it clenched in his left hand.

It was a good plan. He was spiralling downwards at an incomprehensible speed, the hose unravelling beside him, his sword held in one hand.

But h didn't count of the little failsafe installed at the halfway point of each hose.

Each hose was made especially for prisons, so that people could use them as ropes. They had a small nick at the halfway point, which would tear as soon as too much weight was put on it.

Jyrtan was nearing he ground, getting ready to start running as soon as his feet his solid dirt, when the hose snapped in his hands.

It had slowed his descent a lot, enough that he wouldn't die if he hit the ground, but he wouldn't exactly be in good health either. Jyrtan hit the ground next to a guard, his body crumpling as his left leg broke with the force of his impact.

He lay on the ground, groaning, staring up at Ilytheria who hovered above them, willing her to fly.

Ilytheria stared down at his prone form, her expression unreadable, her eyes sad.

She turned and flew to the north, towards the mountains, whispering, even though she knew he couldn't hear it, "Thank you."