FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

She still planned to lay the daughter of the Queen, who had left for Avindor; the heir would, after all, need guidance ever should Her Grandeur pass. Besides, Dorissa didn't think she'd forget that she violated her, did she? A few licks of payback were called for; yet Sia managed to evade her for well over a week, so she would visit her side of the palace again.

But that had to wait; the council convened this month, this day, this noon., for which she dressed in a more refined doublet and breeches. She flew high o'er the towers, where only the most ennobled traveled, thousands below, until the membranes of her wings stretched; wind galed into her, knocking her off course.

Her wings strained, something stretching, to steady and descend quick to the platform that abutted the entry of the rotunda. Within would lay the council of Her Grandeur to discuss the recent spike of noble deaths; mostly, those who affected little had died at night, found in the morn without injuries to explain it.

Her paws and hands thumped a slab, cracking it and shaking her limbs. Dignitaries flying in pairs, trios, some in groups, some walking, were staring; mocking, she could tell, whether or not they spoke, the way they watched her folded wings to signal; dragons look at one another for but reasons quadruple: to take and dominate, to seize one up, to deal, and if not the others, then purely to mock. None, of course, dared approach, her strength having always repulsed or frightened those of the rotunda, these half-plated guards who averted combat included, untested as they were.

Even the ones guarding the undoored entrance, a hall two chains tall and one wide, that led straight to the rotunda itself, watched her feet as though she might fall and they would need prop her up.

Unjustly treated; true, she wasn't renowned for ableness to fly, but that wind had struck with intent.

Embossed murals lined with refined white curves graved by human fingers scrolled across the walls to depict the dispersal of the orschera on the left in red and purple and the shared domination of humans by dragons on the right in blue and green.

Glass domed the ceiling of the inner chamber, along the walls of which stood seventeen unrailed and trapezoidal platforms total: twelve for the council, filled; six for third parties, emptied; one for Her Grandeur, emptied, the one to its right occupied by Stewardess green-cloth dressed Zorica, emerald scaled; and naught in the centre but grey and white tiles below, few uncrazed, to debate over disputes twixt 'ness and 'ness; other than those times, the distance eased talks. Only four of the council had aged past a hundred, which was middle aged for dragons. Any could enter for any reason but at their own peril should they not be counted among the council.

A few of her armoured retinue and Kaiel, newly captessed, stood beside her, the latter as her second blushing while her Marshal unstrapped several of the captess's plates to lick her matte hindleg scales clean, which, though weathered from a decade long posting in the far north, appealed to her with their roughened surface and tan shade. This was how one showed dominance in Renait. The others of the council mere kissed, not one to brave her dare or even look if not busied with food and drink, grapes and purely white rice, served by 'nesses.

Save for that Fisa, a conniving and harsh duchess, not even arch, lounged on a platform across and only in the council by virtue of old blood coursing her veins, stared daggers at her. Admittedly, Fisa exuded beauty in an elegant sort of way, garbed in tightened velvet, features symmetrical, and her scales shone vivid blue but for a countershaded ventral side coloured off-white. Her antlers were prone to breaking and took three months to regrow--something Gerlis had used against her before; though, she did not submit easily, not with that lengthened tail that stung an agonising poison.

'M-marshal, is this usual practice?'

'Nay; most try to take as much as I give; you convey reluctance.'

'I...well, ye see, I, I do not quite, that act, with one's own gender, does not...'

'Are you worried about your taste? It doesn't bother me, though you should bathe more.'

'I prefer to bathe alone.'

'None will judge you for matteness.'

'My scales shine under the right light unslicked,' she said as she pulled back.

'Do you think me a male? No penetration will occur; stop fretting over naught.' Yet Kaiel continued to recoil till she leant forwards, peering.

'Mishra stands on the platform of Her Grandeur?'

'What? Nay, that cannot be so--Mishra? This transgressing will not go unpunished.'

But before word could be made good on, a dragoness covered in undecorated but glimmering full steel plate flew into the rotunda and landed on the tiles below. The council all leant in, looks excited restrained as she doffed her helm with its many complex segments sliding, visor first. 'O Marshal, Gerlis: I invoke the Law of Berlu to challenge thee, she-beast!'

She-beast; not an insult unheard by Gerlis in content but in form most unfitting of a dragon. Each Matriarch had legislated one inviolable law or was assigned one posthumously. The Law of Berlu allowed any dragoness to challenge another regardless of rank; once issued, the challenge compelled both involved to fight to the death, the winner to take the rank and property of the slain. To refuse or yield was to call oneself submissive and relinquish the same things, unless the two differed in strength too great.

'You disrupt our talks,' said Fisa.

'Silence!' the challenger said, not taking her gaze off Gerlis.

Would be a shame. This angular dragoness recalled memories of the blurred past, though how...She faced Gerlis side on. Scales gleamt dark red. A wedge-shaped head, moderately longer than wide, with a sharp, sneering face and two well-spaced eyes narrowed and tilted inwards slight, all re-covered after a moment by plate, revisored. She wasn't readied to reckon with what she was calling.

'You come prepared,' Gerlis said. 'I do not.'

The challenger thumped her broad chest, large wings spread as though peacocking. 'Go and harness. I shall wait.'

Those wings folded, which revealed that across her back were lined short spikes, armoured too, sheathed, that tilted backwards; at the upper centre, they grew, widening to become almost plate-like and upped in count to cover a wider patch. When she turned to face Gerlis head on, her wide forequarters, narrow hindquarters, were revealed. A warrior.

'Marshal,' Kaiel said, 'are you considering this? You would crush her.'

And those limbs too, grown a mild amount past average proportions, the hinds, longer and sloped, paced across the tiles. Only a third smaller than herself overall. Differed from a memory but pulled at it still.

The voice, crazed speaking aside, gave away she'd matured but a year prior, meriting mercy; she clearly came here to impress someone but would fall in over her head the way a dragon hatched in water did.

'I have no time for this; I yield.' The Law constrained but the involved; her retinue would simply bar this 'ness's taking aught. A loophole, but one Berlu herself would've used.

'Thou yieldst?' She glared, head turning up, spikes tilted forwards.

'Yes; I cower from your challenge. Go, and tell all you had me begging before the council.' All laughed. 'Who shall start the meeting?'

'Heed, thou man, for I shall soar to strike thee down where thou standst, challenge taken or not.'

Her left eye twitched. Man. 'Accepted; prepare to die.'

Gerlis leapt but near plummeted and slammed down on the tiles, throwing many up into the air; her knees and elbows bent slight, the dust settling, before she straightened with a pop in her right forelimb. That wind had weakened her membranes.

'Oh such flare.' The dragoness cut below Gerlis's widened eyes in one bound that covered the quadrangle then leapt and slashed across her right wing. 'React.'

Gerlis chased, leaping after and smashing tiles, chunks pulverised misting the air. Though this dragoness misjudged the spacing of many of her numerous strikes, each was otherwise well aimed, size and natural plates accounted for, considered, and painfully countered, gaps exploited and her weakened flight mocked. 'Who trained you?'

'E'er that I would reveal such to a fiend, ha.' A claw slit through her doublet and reached her upper abdomen. Blood dripped.

'Pay me the courtesy of your name at least.'

'Very well, ill-speaker.' She alit a chain away to walk towards Gerlis. Slowly. 'I, Freer of the northeast Orschera'--all gasped at foes sworn mentioned aided--'Traveler of the Dust Crater, Edifier of the Pagoli'--the pangolins?--'Sighter of the Ama Dra, am the daughter of Ryil the Defier: Call me Dame Valant, the Striker.'

'Such grandiloquence: at your foreign words and archaisms even the Queen would sigh.' Valant, of Ryil; that name...ah, yes, thirteen years ago and one of several. 'Ryil the Ravished. You have come to requite then by topping me.'

'The Defier,' she growled. 'And nea. As any other would, I have come to avenge; thou defiledst her, thou killedst her, and to I thou shalt fall.'

She'd...died?

She had died.

'I am a dragoness; a 'ness does not defile another 'ness by forcing herself onto her.'

'Sexist lies looped in this city to allay guilt.'

'I did not slay her.'

'Felled by her own claw; driven to by thine acts.'

'Enough. Be gladdened she lived a life noticed--few rebels were laid by nobility.' None, least of the all council, would see her weakness. 'So sweet, she tasted. I recall how her spikes broke when she resisted, how she eventually gave in to my tongue.'

Another slash; another miss returned. Her single saving grace was that Valent didn't rend her breeches. The cuts were deepening...were the cuts glowing? 'Yet ungrown in mind, running, running,' Gerlis muttered. Valant kept gaining speed as Gerlis did, always slightly more of it, always slightly ahead. The council was talking, yelling, an uproar most unbecoming. How would she...

'Thou rapedst her, thou murderedst her.'

'Prattle as you will. Your mother enjoyed my gentle pleasuring her. You remind me of her. Perhaps I will taste you too.'

'I am not a gouine. Ahh!' Valant roared, a word foreign, snarling as she lunged again, enraged, pattern assuredly upset.

Gerlis leant to the side before claws would have hit--

One raked through scales across her side and thigh. Hastened beyond belief. Some of these wounds would lastingly scar if this went on much longer, and Dorissa hated scars; but death looked the sooner outcome, that rage only focusing this wildcat further.

'Thine ashes be to come.'

'Everyone dies. Others had her too, some stood in this very building. But I let no male touch her. You should be thanking me!'

'Hide hind thy sex no longer.' Another sweep.

She cringed, the cuts starting to sear, to sink in, flesh tearing beneath scales, glowing; it burnt and she couldn't feel aught else in one of her legs but that and her steps misplacing, wobbling despite her own never tiring. You, have come too far for revenge.' Valant was planning something. This flurrying of dashing and slashing rising, pushing her back; she failed to track her, even with every blow predicted, for a first strike in return was precluded.

'The truth?' She started soaring a shallowed spiral that had many of the council flee or ready to, flaps drowning out all but her. 'I do this for all, for thou art a rapist, a murderer, a pillager a defiler a self-appointed judge, jury and executioner and that tyranny must end.' At the Queen's emptied--Mishra had left?--platform she hovered while slipping out something beige from a plate of her vambrace and crushing it; points of light poked into existence, stretching to one another afore her. 'Take this, apon the rocks shattered but to hatch all the same for a world better: My dreams!' A lance glowing blue formed in hands no longer awkward, their place found, wielder already mid-dive, and in that moment did she shout a voice piercing staggering all with pitch quickened beyond even what wax moths could hear: 'I've thee now: Fates End!'

Her eyes flashed into gold: an heir of Visar, unlike any recorded. Her mother'd showed no signs.

Gerlis turned and smashed the ground with her so-far unused tail and a tile launched into Valant to knock her from the air; it crushed her chestplate and sent her careering across the tiles, as a wing bent, then rolling to a stop.

'Fairly toughened,' Gerlis said as she began approaching, crushing bits and pieces of metal and claws with every second step, 'compared to her.'

'Scrape, my, scales,' Valant groaned while she propped herself with her lance,but Gerlis wrested it from her and punched her spine, making her roll to two tiles away, blood streaking after her as more plates flew off.

Yet while the wind lowered outside, she began to push herself up again, retching blood and mucus. 'Break my bones.' Her limbs shook. 'Take my dignity.' A spike fell. 'Clip my wings.' Wings spread, one tilted to the ground, so bent. 'But I won't stop. My eyes may glaze...but they shall never be blinded.' She spat blood one more time. 'For the morrow changed, ever will I stand!'

She charged at Gerlis. And fell, sliding across the tiles and bumping into her forelimbs, head laid before her, quieted.

'Yet blinded by your own lance's light.' Normally sparing would be chosen, but the threat had been proven; all had seen it. By Berlu's Law, she had to kill her. 'How human; calls me she-beast when she insults as man does. At least you die to one and not many, a death suited to a dragon.' No others had seen her eyes flash from the looks of it. Goodbye. She raised her right forelimb and slammed down--

'Halt.'

A voice: Sia's, but not truly hers, too emboldened. The scent in the air; her forelimb froze, bending Valant's helm. Every ounce of will poured into that limb, an inch squishing through plate, but it moved no further. All the fear gone. It could only, only have been the voice causing her limb to still.

Crowne Princess Sia descended alone to the seating of Her Grandeur to lay across the second divan. 'In the absence of Her Grandeur, I command, and I demand that thou spare that troubled soul.' Were they working together?

All on the platforms and those returning nodded save Fisa. It didn't make sense; none had deemed Sia fit a week ago.

Gerlis handed the lance to one of her retinue. The thing didn't weigh too much, but it was long enough that it took three to carry it. She said, 'We are not above the Law of Berlu.'

'Thou jest. You differ in strength too much. As regent, I annul the duel, Marshal. Do not err again.'

'Ye do not rule, dam afar or not. But I'll meet halfway and take her, this Valant, for my harem. Troop!' Eight of her retinue descended. 'Mend her and ferry her to my estate.'

She flailed at them, managing to hit one with her tail till Gerlis grabbed it.

'You have lost; if honour is to you, then take the healing proffered, if not accept your place.'

'I am, to honour...ne'er the reverse.' But she did relax, just as her lance vanished from the hands of the retinue. It didn't reappear.

'That conveys little to me. Away with her. Is anyone else to challenge me? No? Right then.'

She spread her wings and leapt, but she fell short of her platform's edge, plummeting back down in a manner that would have earnt any other jeers.

'Oh ho, does thou need help?' Princess Sia said. 'A bab failing to climb the air?'

'Ye dare...?'

'Sia, stop it,' said a voice that cut the air. Beside Gerlis alit its owner: the albino, robed in white as before.

'Are you to help me then?'

'Yes, I am.' She pressed to Gerlis's side, slipping her left forelimb under Gerlis's right, her scent strengthened since last they passed each other, sweetened yet unsickening.

'I'll aid as well,' said one of her heralds, Fla, as she alit on her other side and slid her forelimb under. Blue fur, of all things, hung from her body.

'Neither of you will succeed in carrying me.'

'Mayhap not carry, but, while I cannot speak for the tempting vixen to the left of you, my wings never falter, and we will--'

'Vixen!?'

'A figure of speech, dear. Lift.'

Both lifted, though most of the work was done by the right wing of the albino--'White scale, yield your name.'

'Letay. But say Laé.'

'Thank you for service rendered.'

'Say it.' Her voice softened, further and further. 'Please, say it, won't you? Please...' She leant in, almost nuzzling, and sniffing. 'I want you...' That scent.

'What, what are you doing, Laé...? Speak to me later maybe, not here.'

'It would be pleasurable; you fair well with ignominy such as this.' A thigh brushed her right one through one of the few cuts to her breeches.

Kaiel swope down past them to the tiles as they reached the top, where Laé gently helped set Gerlis down. The captess was searching the rubble for something. Seven of Gerlis's retinue started cleaning her, releasing 'crafts within the wounds. They'd remain as scars awhile but heal away fully within a month or so.

'Laé, return to me,' Sia said, to which Laé responded by flying over to her. An approved of presence then.

'Do I get a reward now?' Fla asked.

'What? Begone.'

Kaiel flew back up to the platform. 'A crushed sigil, writecrafted. But too small. A dagger would have fit, but how did a lance?'

'She looks not a writecrafter, does she,' Fla said as Valant was carted away.

'I said begone!' Gerlis stomped and Fla fled.

'Enough,' shouted Her Highness. 'The copper runs low; the dragontals pass resenting us. We shall fail to bear their numbers, be it for food or by bloodshed; they will die or revolt. We must move first. The spike of noble deaths shows as much.'

None of this made a difference to Gerlis, so she nodded along.

'This is improper,' said Fisa. 'Ye are no liege. Ye are unfit to be called even a Princess. And ye imply the 'tals kill us in our sleep.'

The council feigned surprise in gasps and whispers, but it was opinion held by many here.

'Duchess Fisa of the Three Points Untethered,' Sia said, 'Shut up.'

The Duchess's eyes widened while everyone gasped in shock, drinks spat. Gerlis had to yield to a grin. The Princess continued, 'I am not my mother, but I have surpassed thy tensed, "beauty." '

'So says the ungrown hatchling. Even to think of laying with you brings korephilia to mind. Who follows an unbeddable ruler?' Her exaggerating was met by silence.

'Oh? And better they follow one whose visage lacks vigour, of feminine sort or otherwise? Compare that to my warmth, chilled prig. Further, I am supported by those wisened. Zorica.'

'I vouch for Her Highness,' Zorica said, 'by supplying reports of unrest from the depths'--those were Gerlis only--'as well as the quarterly reports of the reserves; note the cut trade from the southwest merchants of Silay.'

'You stole my reports?' Gerlis asked.

'Nay. They were dropped on my balcony.'

Lying; but attacking her to learn the truth would have all the guards on her weakened state in seconds; even her retinue couldn't handle that. She'd wait for later.

While the reports were flown to each council member thence read, none dared speak against Sia, Fisa's being thoroughly ruffled cowing them all, many of whom grew enamoured with her. The talks ended late afternoon, all then leaving, maids to clean the rubble. Gerlis flew from tower to tower towards the palace, where Sia would be doing whatever she did, because her wings refused to sustain flight. Sia was planning something with Zorica, that much she inferred. But to what end?

'Ye should've seen Fisa. I've never seen her so humiliated!' Fla said, apparently having been behind her for a good while. 'Haha. She even shoved me away.'

'Why do you bother me so still? Messages wait to be delivered.'

'I, ah, that albino, Laé--she was following Fisa,' Fla said.

'Gives me more time with Sia. Now leave...No, wait.'