{"sf1_id":1545260,"sf2_id":"Rm009PZm","title":"Cold death","author":"Jubatian","words":3965,"posted_at":"2020-02-11T17:46:00.000Z","tags":["Death","Dragon","Ice","Mountain","Vore (soft)","War","Winter","cold"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1545260-cold-death","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/Rm009PZm","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/ba/63/ba63ef17-6a8c-4e1b-9196-41472972fe63","description":"#2 of Dragons \u0026 Wyverns\n\n(2016)\nA short story with the legwing dragon: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1544942 , a bit of vore included.","content":"Cold death  \n  \n  \n  \nWe lost. I gave up. There is no purpose to return. Warmth. To feel her warmth  \none last time...  \n  \nThirteen-twenty-two, May, probably June, I lost track of time. It could be  \nDecember here in this ice cavern. I am weak, starving, nothing to eat since a  \nweek, nothing to light a fire with. It is only her.  \n  \nI can't ask her to go down there. I don't ever want to go back there.  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \nSoaking in our own sweat, tumbling through the horrid wrecks of what once was  \na forest before the chemicals leveled it. The launcher on the top of my pack  \nis a terrible burden. We can't know when we would be assaulted.  \n  \nTrenches, fire, grenades flying to explode in terrible shrapnel, I was always  \nlucky. I saw people falling by my side. I saw death. Then I marched through  \nit. Bodies, dissolving into the raw earth, mere obstacles to conquer as we  \npushed forth, no longer even registering the stench.  \n  \nThen fate caught up with me.  \n  \nWe were flying above here, the Sky Mountains, to a bridgehead previously  \nestablished in the back of Tumania. A large detour, unstable weather  \nconditions, the command thought it being a safe route which the enemy wouldn't  \ntackle in time. They were wrong.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; A can of damn sardines beyond hope, that's a freighter under fire. I never  \nknew whether our support was outgunned or wasn't. They hit us. The thing  \ndidn't fall apart on instant, but went up in flames. We hardly had time to  \njump.  \n  \nI waited, counted the seconds until pulling the ripcord. I saw a canopy  \npopping open below, just to be shredded to bits in a few moments. They knew no  \nmercy. I dropped it, letting myself fall, into the white mass of a cloud. The  \nground could have been just below, but it wasn't.  \n  \nMinutes passed as I hovered in the pure nothingness. At first I heard the  \nengines, the distant pops of the aerial battle, then all went silent. I was  \nalone since I can't remember how long in the drill. A sensation of eternal  \nserenity, my mind shut off, it all didn't matter in the white cold.  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \nMy situation was bleak. I had my full gear, prepared for lasting guerrilla war,  \nbut it was the vastness of the Sky Mountains against me or anyone else who got  \ndown in one piece. Nobody lived here.  \n  \nI decided to stay where I was, waiting for the weather to clear up, hoping to  \njoin with the other survivors then. There wasn't any other real option. Nobody  \nprepared us for this. My military cell proved to be useless without a base,  \nneither it saw anyone in range. The day passed, giving way to a long, silent  \nnight of torturing cold despite the thick clothing I had.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The Sun of next day rose for a dazzling sensation. White, pure searing  \nwhiteness! Gargantuan peaks behind my back, a sheer drop in the front a long  \nway down, to meet an other jagged mountain's base! There was nobody to be  \nseen even as I ascended to a vantage point to oversee the hillside I landed  \nupon. I knew I could easily recognize the canopy of a parachute from any  \ndistance, yet there wasn't any!  \n  \nI knew no direction. There was no map, and even if there was, it wouldn't be  \nof any use. I wished we still had satellite positioning system, but that was  \nabout the first thing destroyed when the war broke out a decade ago.  \n  \nThe only thing I could rely upon was my common sense and my hardened muscles.  \nA long trudge. Downhill, probably to reach some flowing water, which after  \nmany dozen long miles might arrive to one of the scarcely inhabited valleys  \nwedged in this forsaken mass of mountains.  \n  \nIt was hard to conceive there was anything more difficult than traversing the  \nremnants of jungles and barricaded cities. This place was. Snow ever gave way  \nunder the foot, like wading in tar, barely making any progress. I was little.  \nThere was no war here. There was silence. There was the looming mass and the  \npuny little ant struggling to conquer it.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Then next day even the fog returned, making me losing direction again.  \n  \nI camped, trying to make progress whenever weather allowed, racing with time  \nand my dwindling food supply. I barely felt my toes and fingers and feared the  \nfrost would do them in. I warmed them at nightfall by a small gas burner  \nsupposed to serve for cooking, but it was running out of fuel quick. There was  \nno wood to build a fire from. I rationed everything, yet they were depleting  \nat a frightening rate.  \n  \nWhy had I to end up there?!  \n  \nFate. One day, one way or another, it reaches everyone. Everyone dies.  \n  \nBut why? Why it had to happen? Why we have to kill?  \n  \nThere was no answer. There was no sound. Only the whiteness. The silence.  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \nI couldn't wake up any more. I laid in my sleeping bag, wrapped up in all the  \nclothing I had, yet cold was biting in me, and my fingers were too numb to  \nget a cup on the burner. It kept bouncing off, then rolled away to sink in the  \nsnow far beyond reach.  \n  \nThe blue sky. I looked up, laying on my back. The distance, space, where we  \ncame from, where we descended from to conquer new worlds, to spread  \ncivilization and humanity, our unique gift for we were alone! Beyond...  \nSomewhere... Were ever a God watching us?  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; A shadow passed over. A great winged shape!  \n  \nSo that was it. I couldn't move any more. I couldn't reach for my gun. I lost  \nmy will to reach for that gun, to kill any more. Fate had came to me.  \n  \nI heard the faint sounds of it aligning itself to land, then the smooth thuds  \nas it touched down into the snow beyond my feet. The noises came closer, then  \nthe beast's form emerged.  \n  \nA large Tibiala, nobody knew whether any remained, but it was there, its cream  \ncolors blending in the snow. A mild, simple minded, but carnivorous creature  \nout in these bleak mountains, its hunger was to be my end. I looked up at it  \nwithout any will to fight, hoping it would be fast.  \n  \nIt wasn't.  \n  \nThe gargantuan body came to loom over my miserable camp as it poked around  \nwith the snout and a forelimb, supporting itself on the other, before turning  \nto my sleeping bag. I felt a warm puff from a nostril on my face, almost  \nsoothing despite the circumstances. Then probably it realized I was there, a  \nliving body.  \n  \nI waited for it to happen, that it would rip me out like any beast, yet it  \ndidn't. It handled me with a tormenting slow pace, first grabbing on my head,  \npulling me off from my bag. The clawed forelimbs were nimble, almost like  \nhands, and it managed to do this without scratching me, or at least in my  \nstate I couldn't feel it any more if it did.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Then, laying down on its chest, it progressed to remove my clothes, an  \nastoundingly delicate feat both bewildering and terrifying. I had no idea what  \nit was up to do with me then! I would have been frozen, but it kept hovering  \nits head over me all the time, exhaling eerily pleasant warmth. Time crawled.  \nIt was all otherworldly frightening, perplexing and amazing. It didn't matter.  \n  \nFinally I was wrapped naked in my sleeping bag, which it snuggled to its chest  \nwith an arm, I could see how it assisted with the other to walk, then to leap  \ninto the air!  \n  \nI barely felt it. Maybe it used the arm as pivot to launch towards the valley.  \nAll of sudden, the ground, the dark objects of my haphazard camp scattered on  \nthe pristine snow fell long below! It was only a wind. There was no motion. A  \nsensation of peaceful serenity, the domain of these beasts! The cold started  \nto bite in my numb body hard.  \n  \nThen, soaring high between cloud-engulfed gargantuan peaks, it raised me in  \nfront of its long snout, I saw both of the red eyes looking down on me, the  \nhorns over the imposing curled up neck. A strange sensation of sorrow in a  \nmajestic frame. The huge jaws opened.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; I couldn't do anything. I barely contemplated over the events, why it didn't  \njust do it as soon as it found me. It didn't matter any more however I related  \nto whatever happened. Very soon my head was in that mouth, I felt the faint  \nstench of the carnivore gut, life was a matter of mere moments.  \n  \nYet it neither bit me, neither crushed in any manner. The air was foul but  \nbreathable. I felt every inch of my body sliding in, the contrast of the cold  \noutside and the warmth of the predator. I felt my fingers, I felt them  \npressing against the smooth, slimy surface of the gullet. Despite the odor,  \nit was a relief to feel the mouth shut behind me, closing off the chill biting  \nin my feet. The beast's mild swallows, the work of the musculature was like  \nmassaging for my tormented frostbitten body.  \n  \nA canteen, or maybe a pub, or, hell, even a bawdy-house. A faint odor of  \nvomit, some sludge, and gentle hands, so many nimble gentle hands! The thumps  \nof the large heart above me like distant machinery, the engines of the  \nConquistador! Yes, that vessel, that horribly foul mess hall, still, it was  \nall it had! It was astounding what could pass the zonked mind in there!  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Soon I felt I came to rest what I believed was the beast's stomach, curled up,  \nalmost as if hanging in a hammock, a warm, sludgy, reeking hammock, the  \nrhythmic thumps emerging from above my feet. I was surprised to still have any  \nair there, but somehow it lasted, and apart from the stench, I didn't feel  \ndeprived. Somehow it all just felt eerily pleasant.  \n  \nTo silently cease to exist, to just dissolve into this beast soaring high. I  \nfelt peace. I started to think about it as her, as the muscles of her stomach  \nmassaged my body, I couldn't help. I saw too much war, too much death, I  \nmarched for the will of distant powers for months in sludge and tar, the  \ndarkness, the nothingness felt like the well deserved rest. Unbirth in an  \nunholy womb, where all my sins and concerns cease to matter any more. I gently  \npushed in the walls, sort of returning the caress, thinking maybe she would  \nfeel, maybe not, it didn't matter any more.  \n  \nHanging in the void, a gentle warm pouch, the nihil. I didn't exist. I just  \nceased to exist from the world, my mind just lingering in the void, a last  \npleasant place before the fire of hell waiting in the abyss. It didn't matter.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \\* \\* \\*  \n  \nI felt cold, something pressing against my body all the way, yet it wasn't the  \nwalls of the stomach, although the odor, a reek of saliva still lingered.  \nBelow myself I felt the texture of my sleeping bag, also realizing I was  \nnaked. Light seeped in on the edges, illuminating cream colored folds of  \nsmooth skin. The Tibiala! I hardly believed it wasn't a dream!  \n  \nI pushed myself forth with some wiggling to see where I was. A large ice  \ncavern, the smooth surfaces reflecting sunlight to illuminate the whole of it!  \nShe laid on her side, resting on her left elbow, the right arm somewhere on  \nthe wing under which I was tucked. The posture looked so familiar, almost like  \nhuman despite her size and dragonlike features. Then I realized even my  \npackback was there sitting in a recess of the cave wall.  \n  \nIt was a dream. I couldn't hope anyone finding me, yet she did, and saved me  \non her own way! It was something otherworldly, something which just couldn't  \nhappen, yet it did. I wished to thank her in some manner, yet all I could do  \nwas attempting to stroke her which I miserably failed to do proper, shivering.  \nShe pushed me towards my pack.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; To my bewilderment, in a haphazard arrangement, a few things torn and broken,  \nbut just about everything was there, so I could quickly dress up in those  \nwholly unpleasant steel-cold garments. I kept shivering, chafing my hands to  \nwarm up before assessing my situation further.  \n  \nMy remaining little food was all gone.  \n  \nI felt the warmth of her breath. She pushed her snout to my face, then leaned  \nback on her elbow, slightly opening her mouth, rasping. To my bewilderment, I  \nunderstood as she clearly vocalized our language!  \n  \n\"Ungry. Eat sood. Ery ery ungry.\" She rubbed her stomach with her right hand,  \nthe area under the chest, above the lump of muscular base powering her wings  \nwhich many mistake for a round belly not knowing the animal.  \n  \nBut I never knew they could speak. If that was true!... I left my packback  \nreturning to her side. \"It's okay\". I stroked her hand \"It's okay\". I knew it  \nwasn't okay. It immediately dawned on me that if such a large flying beast  \ncan't find anything to eat here, then there was nothing to eat for many many  \ndozen miles.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; I observed her features. I recalled some of the old days, before the war.  \n  \nThe Tibiala was always endangered. I thought them amazing creatures, just as a  \nlot of the young, but they were dangerous. I had never seen one for real  \nbefore, as they were constrained to reserves hard to access to the public.  \nEncounters were rare and expensive, and in many countries, outlawed due to the  \nperceived danger. More so, as a global law, they were required to carry a  \nsedating implant triggered by the global positioning system, so they would be  \ntranquilized if they left their zone, to avoid them endangering aerial  \ntraffic, or so it was told.  \n  \nThe GPS went down as the war progressed. So did probably most of them, merely  \nby the fundamental safety system of the implants. There was an uproar, it was  \nall in the news for a few weeks, but overshadowed by the tolls and deaths of  \nthe war. When entire cities are bombed into oblivion by the enemy, nobody  \ncares. We had to march on. Why?!  \n  \nA few maybe cared. Probably a lot more, but only a few had the chance, the  \nluck to be away from the mindless destruction. I heard about cases when  \nTibialas flew over war zones and were shot down. They had their implant  \nremoved.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She was also one of those. I found an oval shaped scar on her side, clearly  \nartificial. My childhood dreams returned as I stroked her features. \"It's  \nokay.\" Despite her naturally somewhat plump shape, I knew she was starving.  \nShe looked skinnier than anything I ever saw, and it wasn't normal. Her folds  \nof scaly skin were thick, however it wasn't by fat. All her loose flabs were  \nlight, merely consisting the airy foam they evolved for insulation.  \n  \n\"It's okay.\" She laid on her chest, allowing me to massage her neck. It was  \namazing to feel this creature, to be there with her. I couldn't imagine they  \ncould be like this, I still hardly believed that despite her hunger, she  \nreleased me, to nip up that meager amount of canned food which I had, which  \nshe even had to chew or ram open somehow piece by piece. Peace. Serenity. It  \nwas all in her.  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \n\"Lead salley.\" She spoke to me, yet I failed to understand. \"You ride. You  \nlead salley.\" She even motioned with her hands, that I should ride her, but I  \ndidn't understand what she wanted. Where I was supposed to lead her?  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; I tried to talk with her, straining my feeble mind. \"Where is salley?\"  \n\"Salley, sorest! I know ai!\" \"You know where is it?\" \"I know ai!\". Then why  \nshe doesn't fly there on her own? \"Why you need me?\"  \n  \n\"You unan! You tell unan I sriend! You tell unan I don't kill!\"  \n  \nThe war. Damn them. I felt I understood. She somehow knew she could be shot  \ndown wherever she wanted to head. This was all at best neutral territory. If  \nshe brought me there, I would be saved, but for her, the chances were bleak.  \nIt had to be tried.  \n  \n\"Can you fly low?\" \"I can!\" \"Can you hide?\" \"I can!\" So we started. At dusk  \nshe let me climb her shoulder, motioned me to lay flat, and we took off! The  \nclouds, the jagged peaks under the waning light were wonderful! If it was  \npossible to just fly, to keep flying not heeding the world!  \n  \nHowever at the onset of night, she steered low to follow a path tight between  \ncliffsides, a gigantic ravine with a stream washing its bottom, and finally,  \nsome foliage! She stopped before a turn of the valley, and I noticed a faint  \nold road leading up by the side of the water. I stroked her, \"Stay.\", and she  \nobeyed, folding up her wings laying in a recess of the rock wall. Her bright  \ncolors stroke out even under the cover of darkness, but I hoped nobody would  \ncome this way until I scouted whatever laid ahead.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; A few turns of the road among the cliffs, maybe half a mile of walk, and it  \nstarted to open up. From a vantage point I could see a village further down,  \nbut it didn't look normal even from the distance. Stalking closer to get a  \nbetter view revealed a military force stationed there with a few trucks and a  \nmobile anti-air missile station.  \n  \nI could have just walked in. I could have just submitted myself to whatever  \nforce was there, to continue my trudge through life. But the chances to even  \nsee her any more were near nothing. I couldn't do it. I silently sneaked back.  \n  \n\"We go back.\" She understood. She didn't even ask, just letting me on her  \nshoulder, and starting a tiresome flight upwards. She couldn't find any  \nbeneficial updraft for long, straining herself to rise with her own power, or  \nmaybe she was even afraid of raising high before getting far enough.  \n  \nIt felt like an eternity to reach the cave. I was cold. I didn't feel my  \nfingers. I felt my stomach, my hunger chipping me away, and there was no way  \nto remedy that. I only had some filters of tea, and the remaining fuel in my  \ngas burner. But I was so dead I could only crawl to her, to curl up on my  \nsleeping bag under her wing.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Next day I asked her if she knew any other location. She only told she was  \nhungry. That she couldn't fly. I was myself hungry. I caressed her. I felt  \nlike she was all I had. Peace.  \n  \nI brew myself some tea. She was excited by the smell, hovered over me curious.  \nI couldn't deny it from her. I ceased to care that even this would run out in  \na very few days.  \n  \nNext day she told about another valley, as I now understood. She told it was  \ntwice as far as the one we visited, and that she felt the winds were bad. She  \nwouldn't be able to return in her state. We decided to wait, another day,  \nhoping for favorable weather. It didn't came, only a dense fog.  \n  \n\"Ai unan kill? Ai unan kill all orld?\"  \n  \nI couldn't answer her. I didn't know why we kill. I knew the war, the cause,  \nthe Tumanian aggression, as they told. It wasn't like that in my childhood.  \nThen there came a recession, and a so called revolution. A novel way of of  \ndemocracy, serving our interests rather than theirs. The removal of their  \nagents from power, cutting out the sick flesh from the body of the nation. I  \ncouldn't believe it all. We were people. They were people. And we were killing  \neach other. We were destroying all the good we once made. And we fail to see.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Here was this creature, on the verge of extinction for our madness. All she  \nwanted was peace. An we would destroy them even before we knew we weren't  \nalone!  \n  \nTo cease to exist. I wished to just be with her, away from all that world we  \nmade and destroyed! I caressed her, stroked her neck, hoping to comfort her  \ndespite I knew she felt the same hunger like clawing my own belly, the same  \nweakness numbing my own limbs, and probably even the same cold biting in her  \nflesh without proper insulation.  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \n\"Will unan kill you too?\"  \n  \nI shivered under even her wing, unable to fathom whether hunger or the bitter  \ncold was worse. I was past my last filter of tea, I was past my last puff of  \ngas from the burner. It was over. Then she asked this. Puzzled, thinking about  \nthe village, I replied \"No\".  \n  \n\"You lead salley.\" She meant she would fly me to the village. \"Why?\", I asked.  \n\"You starse, you die. You lead salley. You lise.\" \"But what about you then?\"  \n\"I starse. I die alone.\"  \n  \nSilence. She looked in front of herself, sad, hopeless. \"Unan kill I. Unan  \nkill all orld. I die.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; I felt I couldn't let this happen. I couldn't just leave her dying up here. I  \nstroked her hand. \"I can't leave you. I stay. It's okay.\"  \n  \nMy mind struggled to devise a solution, anything. There was nothing to do. We  \nwere doomed. I could have saved myself, but I wouldn't have been able to live  \nwith that burden in a world where probably all the Tibiala were destroyed  \nwithout us ever knowing. She was more than a friend. She was everything I had,  \nwith the world below seeming so distant.  \n  \nI didn't want to live in that world. I was tired of being pushed around, to  \nkill for degenerate commander's degenerate commands. I wanted to go home,  \nwhich was all aint any more! They were bloody killed! Some moron bombed them  \nfor some dickhead's wretched order! It was all over. There was nowhere to go.  \nThere was nowhere... Expect here. She was all I had.  \n  \n\"It's okay.\"  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \nI think I am hallucinating. I am talking.  \n  \nI am talking to her. I am talking about my home, my parents.  \n  \nHer skin is so smooth. I feel her warmth on my fingers. It is good. She  \nunderstands me. She watches with those big red eyes of her. I remember her  \nwarmth. The serenity, the solitude in the darkness.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \\* \\* \\*  \n  \nShivering. It is cold.  \n  \nShe embraces me by her wings, her warm breath. My fingers are numb. I wrote,  \nbut I can hardly do it any more. I don't know if she tried to fly since a  \nwhile. Cold might have killed me if she left me alone. Hunger is coming. I  \nhave nightmares.  \n  \nI caress her. I wish to be one with her.  \n  \n\"It's okay.\"  \n  \n\\* \\* \\*  \n  \nThirteen-twenty-two, probably June. I lost track of time.  \n  \nIt is over. It is over for both of us. I don't feel my toes an more, only  \nhunger. She is gentle with me, yet I see she is in pain, starving.  \n  \nWarmth. Serenity. Nothingness. I want to be one with her before we pass away,  \nthe only being who I had.  \n  \nIf you find this cave, please remember her. Please remember we met an  \nintelligent race, one who just wished peace. We weren't worthy.  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Dragons \u0026amp; Wyverns","previous":"https://sofurry.com/s/4nAj5Yb1","next":"https://sofurry.com/s/pnGgblwn"}}