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The Black Collar

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Chapter One

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The sudden tolling of the warning bell startled Alvaranox from his slumber. The green dragon awoke violently, leaping to his paws with his claws extended and his teeth bared. He jerked his horned head up, only to smash it against the rafters that stretched across the roof of his enclosure. Pain rang out in his head, adding to the harsh, throbbing ache of what the dragon dismayingly realized was a hangover. The dragon pressed a paw to the base of a ridged, black horn as if to quell the throbbing beneath it.

The alarm bell tolled again, louder than before. The sound rattled around inside the dragon's skull like a beast trying to escape its cage. The vibrant, echoing noise worsened the ache in the dragon's head. He took a few slow breaths, his powerful heart hammering beneath the plates of his chest. How he hated the sound of that infernal bell.

"I'm up!" The dragon snarled, shaking his head as though it would clear the sound. "I'm up already! Stop ringing that damn bell!"

The bell rang again anyway. It always did. Not that anyone else could hear it. The terrible tolling existed only in the dragon's mind. As if the sound alone was not enough to jar the dragon from his slumber, the bell itself flickered into his vision and with it the world fell away.

Alvaranox hissed and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as the world around him shattered into splinted fragments of color and shadow. When he opened his eyes again, a broken land of cracked red earth and crumbling gray stone surrounded him. A massive bell hovered above the ground. The bell was as glossy and black as polished obsidian and shaped vaguely like a teardrop. All across its black surface it was carved with stylized images of dragons in flight, bathing the earth in roiling flame. Wisps of coiling silver thread spilled from inside the bell and slowly spun themselves into a spectral hammer in the shape of a dragon's head.

"Don't you dare ring that again..."

The hammer struck the bell soundly. A deep, echoing tone rolled across the blasted earth, rattling pebbles and stones and kicking up dust. The sound reverberated inside the dragon's aching head, and the beast stumbled on his paws. Alvaranox banged himself up against the thick wooden wall of his sleeping chamber, bruising one of his wings. The pain drew him out from the images that gripped his mind. He took a deep breath as the sound slowly faded.

"I'm awake!" The dragon shouted, lashing his heavily spined tail against the floor of his sleeping chamber. "Damn it, I said I'm awake!" He grabbed at the wretched black collar bound around his neck, yanking at it in frustration. "Stop doing that!"

Finally, the images vanished from the dragon's mind, and the infernal bell stopped ringing. With a heavy sigh, Alvaranox settled upon his haunches, curling his tail around himself. He pressed a paw to the thick black collar that had been locked around his neck for so many years. It might have fascinated him if he had not hated it so much. It was smooth and hard like stone, yet flexible as well-tooled leather. It often felt warm to the touch. It held no clasp, as though it had been forged around his neck. As he had aged and grown, so too had the collar grown with him. Alvaranox gently brushed the skin of his paw pads against the images that wrapped around the collar. It was inscribed with scenes of dragons in flight like those that ringed the spectral bell. Such scenes seemed a cruel mockery to Alvaranox, given what the collar meant for his own life.

The dragon hissed through his teeth, flaring the spines around his head. No sense in dwelling upon what he could not change. The dragon closed his coppery eyes, and focused upon the warning that echoed through the back of his mind. He could feel it tugging at his consciousness, as though his mind were a physical thing with corners and edges that could be grasped and manipulated. For now the feeling was just a gentle pulse, urging him to travel west. That was good. That meant whatever the danger was, it was not yet urgent. The greater the danger he must face, the more urgent the threat, the more that gentle tug turned into desperate, painful yank.

For now, he had time. The warning pulse was little more than an insistent thrumming working in time with the beating of the dragon's heart. So long as he did not resist it, the collar and its wretched bond would not bring him pain to force the issue. That was good, because Alvaranox was in enough pain already. At least he had time to try and do something about the damn battering ram of a hangover trying to punch a hole through his skull.

Alvaranox pushed himself up to his paws. He glanced around his home. Though the sun itself yet slumbered, streamers of silvery-white moonlight poured through the windows and cast the dragon's sleeping chamber in a cold gray hue. It was the third such home they had built for him here. Each was a little larger than the last to accommodate his own slow growth just as each was placed further out to accommodate the growth of the town of Asterryl itself.

The home was built sturdily enough to account for the occasional tantrums and drunken stumbling of an adult dragon. The many massive logs used in its construction were mostly oak and pine. Alvaranox had helped to gather them himself, though he'd left the hewing and the actual construction to the humans. He'd watch them cut beams and boards and notch logs, eventually stacking, lashing and nailing them all together into a simple but durable framework. In the end there were three chambers, one for him to sleep and shelter in, one for him to store some personal possessions and casks of wine, and another chamber that had for some reason been furnished with human comforts as though the dragon expected visitors.

The sleeping chamber was the largest and most accommodating to the dragon himself. Much of it was occupied by an ever increasing sprawl of animal furs and hides, blankets and pillows and other soft things on which the dragon slept. It was comfortable enough, and in the cold, frozen winter months it helped to keep him warm at night.

Alvaranox was also rather fond of the hearth built into one of the walls. It was constructed of roughly hewn, uneven blocks of red and gray granite flecked generously with shiny mica. Whenever the dragon had a fire in the hearth all the mica glittered and sparkled like hundreds of tiny, fiery stars. A simple chimney of iron piping carried the smoke out through the walls of the dragon's home.

Leaded glass windows were fitted in the walls here and there. There were times the dragon appreciated them. It was nice to be able to lay inside his home in a patch of warm sunlight, or watch the moonrise cause the glass to glow on a cool evening. Other times he hated the damn things. Made him feel as though people were going to be peering in at him as he slept. Come and see the dragon, sleeping in your town. Don't worry, he won't bite. He isn't allowed. Sometimes he simply covered the windows with spare blankets when he wished privacy.

A few bookshelves cut from burled walnut lined one of the walls of his sleeping chamber. They were a recent gift from his previous Handler. She thought the dragon might appreciate a place to show off his various trophies and trinkets. It was a kind enough gesture, he supposed. So far though the dragon had adorned them with very little. While he did have a few possessions and belongings he truly cherished he'd be damned if he'd put them on display where any sweat-stinking human peering through his windows could see his most personal treasures.

At least no one had been peeking through the windows when he banged his head this time. If he had one complaint about his latest home it was that they had built the ceiling far too low. Admittedly it was a pleasant upgrade from the simple, flat ceiling of his last home's sleeping chamber. The slanted rafters were carved with elegant, spiraling symbols and joined in the center of the room in a notched cross-shape. Yet though the apex of the slanted roof was more than high enough for the dragon to lift his head without problem, he quickly discovered that the supporting rafters were anchored far too low to the walls. This was the third time in the last week the dragon had smashed his skull against one of them. At this rate he was either going to break his horns off or crack the damn rafter and bring the whole place down on his head.

Alvaranox muttered under his breath. As if he only had one complaint. The dragon yawned, and moved into a deep, languid stretch. Like a lazy housecat, the dragon dropped his chest to the ground, stretching his front paws out in front of him. He unsheathed his claws and dragged them back across the floorboards, scratching little marks in the pine. His yawn grew as his stretched and his pink tongue curled into his dark green muzzle. As he rose from his stretch he sniffed about a bit, nostrils twitching on either side of the little golden spot that marked the end of his nose. At least the air was not stale today. Reams of freshly cut pine bows lashed together with a few sprigs of lavender kept the air in the dragon's home smelling fresh throughout the night.

Alvaranox licked his muzzle. His tongue felt dry and sticky and his throat was no better. He could still taste a hint of thick red wine at the back of his throat. The dragon tried to recall just how much he'd had to drink the night before. A half barrel, perhaps. Maybe the whole barrel. Definitely the whole barrel. Maybe two. He padded to the water trough at the far end of his sleeping chamber, dismayed to find it empty. He'd have to get someone to fill it for him while he was out for the day.

The dragon went to the door of his sleeping chamber, and carefully opened it. In function it was not unlike the front door of any human's house, only greatly increased in size and thickness. The door itself was oak, sanded and smoothed down. It bore a thick, lever-like handle specifically designed to be worked by a dragon's front paws. The hinges were heavy set and very well oiled. The door swung open easily for the dragon and closed just as easily behind him when he gave it a shove with a hind paw.

Once outside he glanced back at his entryway. The door bore a raised relief depicting what Alvaranox assumed the humans thought was a majestic looking dragon. The carved dragon stood tall upon a rocky hillside, with his wings splayed and his head lifted, the spines around his skull were flared out. The woodworkers probably thought the dragon looked as though he were displaying himself and giving a challenging roar. Alvaranox thought it looked more like the dragon had just lost his balance and was about to drunkenly tumble down the hill.

Come to think of it, perhaps that was a better likeness than he cared to admit.

Still, it was better than the door that adorned his last home. That entryway had been carved with a detail of a dragon ostensibly preparing to attack his many foes. They'd carved the dragon in a crouched position, his claws unsheathed, fangs bared. They'd given the dragon narrowed eyes and what they likely felt was a look of grim determination. In truth, to Alvaranox the image resembled nothing so much as a dragon who was profoundly constipated. An image he was stuck viewing for years every time he returned home to sleep.

"At least that's one thing that's improved over the years," Alvaranox said under his breath as he made his way to get a drink.

Nearby sat a series of rainwater collection troughs. Like everything else in the immediate area, it was built specifically for the dragon. Several large, hammered copper funnels sat about the area, held aloft by whitewashed, lattice-like framework. Sloping pipes ran from the bottom of the copper collection funnels into a series of deep troughs of wood and iron banding like oblong barrels. Depending on season, rain, and the dragon's thirst each trough held a varying level of water. If they grew too stagnant, they were emptied, scrubbed, and then reattached to the pipes.

All save but one of the troughs, at least. Some years back, some irritating prankster thought it would be funny to slip a fat fish into one of the dragon's drinking vessels. When the dragon first stuck his muzzle into the trough and began lapping at the water he'd been quite surprised to spot a plump, silver-scaled fish with long whiskers peering back at him. At first the dragon thought to make a meal of the fish, but when he tried to spear it with his claws the damn thing just kept evading him. It darted and circled in the oblong barrel with nowhere to escape to. Nowhere to go, no freedom to be had and yet desperate to continue living another day just the same.

Alvaranox knew that feeling all too well.

Alvaranox decided to let the fish live. They shared a common affliction. Since then he'd made damn sure that barrel was kept filled with enough fresh water to keep the fish healthy. Though the dragon bristled at any suggestion that the slimy creature had become his pet. Dragons did not have pets. It simply amused him to see the thing stuck swimming circles in the barrel, that was all. Stupid Fish.

That was what he named it. Stupid Fish.

Alvaranox dropped his head into one of the other troughs, thirstily lapping up as much water as he could. The cool liquid soothed his parched throat, but it caused his belly to roil and twist like a tortured serpent. Too much damn wine. Still, his stomach calmed soon enough, and the hydration would help his headache. He lifted his muzzle, and licked away the droplets of water that clung to his dark green scales.

Before Alvaranox turned away he made sure to scoop a few pawfuls of grain from the nearby sack and toss them into Stupid Fish's tank. In the moonlight, Alvaranox could see Stupid Fish's silver scales gleam as he drifted towards the surface. Slimy whiskers probed at the sinking grain, and soon the fish was sucking it down bit by bit. Alvaranox watched for a moment, and then with a snort he turned away.

"Resigned to our fate, aren't we." The dragon lashed his tail against the ground. The gently curved spines adorning the end of it tore little ruts in the grass. "Stupid Fish indeed."

Alvaranox padded towards the dusty, packed-earth lane that lead away from his home and into the town of Asterryl. He flicked his frilled green ears, listening to the night. Wind rustled the leaves of the towering oak trees spread throughout the town. Waves lapped at the rocky lake shoreline in the distance, and the scent of water tinted the air. A few night birds called and warbled. Laughter echoed from some late night tavern. The air was a little chillier than usual for a summer night, but pleasant to the dragon nonetheless. It was a lovely, peaceful night despite the fact he'd rather be asleep. A shame he was going to have to go kill something.

First he'd have to try and kill his damn hangover. Hopefully the Old Lady could help with that. He'd have to venture into town to see her about a remedy. Alvaranox followed the hard earth lane that lead from his so-called home into the city of Asterryl. In his youth, other dragons had called it The City By The Lake, though Alvaranox cared little for the name of the place. He simply thought of it as his prison. Alvaranox might be allowed walk and fly about the area as he wished, but everyone knew he could never truly leave. Not since they'd put that infernal collar upon him. Ever since then, Alvaranox was as trapped in Asterryl as Stupid Fish was in his trough.

Alvaranox's barrel was just a little bit larger.

Still, the dragon knew things could be worse. In fact, they had been worse. Much worse. Scars long since faded to pale green lines attested to that. Alvaranox snorted, flaring his spines. He tossed his wedge-shaped head in irritation. No sense dwelling on the past when he had work to do.

Trying to ignore the pounding in his head, the dragon swiftly made his way into the town. From his personal chambers there were no walls or gateways to bar his way. Further beyond the edges of town, walls of various levels of age and sturdiness sprawled out in winding, oddly geometric patterns. Some of the oldest walls were built of stacked gray stone bricks, draped over time in curtains of lush green moss. Other walls were more carefully constructed of carved bricks slathered with mortar. More recently, taller wooden walls of heavy logs cut into spikes and lashed together had been erected. The city was always growing, and rather than tear down old walls they were simply incorporated into the city itself. When viewed from above, the layers of winding walls incorporated directly into the city gave it an almost runic, maze-like appearance.

Not that Alvaranox felt they needed any walls when they had a dragon to protect them. Still, if keeping out the wild animals and giving bandits second thoughts about trying to raid the city gave the green dragon a decent night's sleep then he was all for it. There were fewer walls to the north, but that was where the great lake lay. The jagged rocks that lined much of the shore would make landing a boat difficult anywhere aside from the city's docks, and even if enemies did sneak ashore, that was where Alvaranox's home was. The collar would never let him sleep through any danger that slunk ashore.

Soon the packed earth beneath the dragon's feet was replaced by freshly laid cobblestone. The path he took that once wound through grassy meadows now lead into one of the city's newest districts. At this rate, they'd have to build him a fourth house just to keep him from being stuck in the middle of the city again. At least the street was mostly quiet in the middle of the night.

The road was lined with freshly constructed buildings with sturdy wooden frames and elegant appointments. Arched beams with curled ends and engraved with patterns of intricate knots and diamond work held up gently sloped eaves in the front of businesses. The walls of the new buildings were all freshly painted with vibrant colors. In the moonlight the tones of blue, green and red all took on ghostly hues. As Alvaranox passed a building with a set of expansive windows, moonlight caught the glass just right.

The windows seemed to glow for a moment, acting almost like a silver mirror. The dragon could see himself clearly reflected in him. It gave him pause, he had not looked at himself in a while. Sometimes he preferred not to think how he had grown in his years stuck in this place. Now that he had a moment of privacy though, he allowed himself a little vanity. He'd certainly grown into a handsome male. Or so he liked to think.

For the most part, Alvaranox was covered in scales of deep forest green. Slight variations between lighter and darker greens across his body gave the dragon's scales the appearance of a forest canopy dappled equally with shade and sunlight. Black mottling marked his shoulders and his haunches as well as his tail. More ebony spots and blotches speckled the vast green membrane of his wings. A single, misshapen golden patch just between his green nostrils added unexpected color to his face. The dragon's scales themselves ranged from fine and pebbly textured across his face, to broad, smooth and sturdy across his sides. Thick, heavy plates protected his chest, with broader scutes like the belly of a snake across the front of each limb.

The dragon's wedge-shaped head was crowned with a set of ridged horns the same black color as his markings. His horns were heavily ridged and lightly curved. Much to his dismay he'd once heard them described as something an exotic goat might bear. As if a dragon would ever resemble something so pitiful yet delicious as a goat. If anything, the goat resembled the dragon.

The dragon's head was also decorated with several sets of spiny, membranous frills which the dragon himself referred to as his crests. The longest of the spines sprouted from between his horns, and ran for a good length down the back of his neck. He bore a smaller set of spines behind each of his frilled green ears. The spines themselves were black like his horns and claws while the membranes that connected them was a darker green color. A heavier set of curved, inflexible black spines also marked the end of the dragons tail and made it a formidable weapon in its own right.

The moonlight caused Alvaranox's eyes to shine with a false silver hue. The true color of the dragon's eyes was a bright, burnished copper like freshly minted coins. Yet they often caught and reflected the light of the surroundings. On a moonlit night they flashed with a mercurial sheen, while on a bright summer day they burned almost golden. Whatever color they bore, they were always striking with vertical pupils practically drifting within a metallic ocean.

As the dragon stared at his reflection, vanity turned to introspective resignation. Alvaranox's eyes were drawn to the black collar upon his neck. How many years had he borne that cursed thing now? Decades, he was sure. Perhaps half a century or more. He had practically finished growing up here. All the while the damn collar had grown with him.

So many years later and still the black collar both fascinated and horrified him. The power it held over his life. He lifted a paw, hesitantly exploring the engraved dragons with mottled pink and black paw pads. How long had it been since they first forced the terrible thing upon his neck? How long since the wretched magic first bound him forever to this town? Committing his life to Asterryl's protection.

How long now had he been their Guardian Slave?

"Moment of vanity on your midnight stroll, eh Dragon?"

A human voice tore Alvaranox from his moment of bitterness. He turned away from the moonlit windows, hissing under his breath as he dropped his paw back down. A man wrapped in a gray woolen cloak to ward off the evening chill sat in a wooden chair on a porch across the street. He'd probably been there the entire time, and the dragon hadn't even noticed him. Alvaranox began to pad up the street again, glancing back at the man.

"Shut up."

"Someone's cranky tonight," the older man laughed, easing back in his chair a little more. "Bit too much to drink again, I'd wager."

Alvaranox grit his teeth. He flicked his tail against the ground in irritation, spines clattering on the cobblestone. "Get mounted, Old Man."

Alvaranox decided he'd have enough interactions with the locals for one night. The pulsing in his head that tugged his mind to the west was starting to increase. The dragon knew he needed to obey it soon or it was going to make life unpleasant for him. Alvaranox decided to take a short cut on his way to see the old lady. She could help his hangover. The dragon slipped into a muddy alleyway in an older section of town. Alvaranox quickened his pace. Partway down the alley, something wet splashed under his paws. Gods, he hoped that was only water. He scowled, pinning his ears back. Damn it, it didn't smell like water.

Alvaranox kept his wings folded tightly to his body as he made his way down the alleyway. There was not much room back here for him, and some of the older walls were moldering and covered with muck and slime. Bad enough he probably had piss on his paws. No need to get anything on the rest of him, as well. Still, following the alley would him mostly out of sight from anyone else wandering the roads at night. For that at least Alvaranox was thankful.

Though Alvaranox was a large creature, the buildings here were still large enough to help hide him. Dragons were not as immense as some of the legends he'd heard made them out to be. Alvaranox was certainly larger than any horse, yet he was not so large as to simply haul away entire houses and toss them about like toys. Despite how fun that sounded. If he stretched his neck he could peer over the roof of a single story building, but not one with two floors. For now though, he kept his head down, not wanting to be spotted again.

"Didn't get enough to drink last night, huh?" A voice called from the open back door of a still busy tavern. Damn. So much for staying out of sight. "We've got plenty more wine if you want, Dragon." Alvanarox glanced at the plump man with the red beard peering out the back door. He was wiping his hands with some kind of grimy looking towel. A smirk spread across the man's bearded face. "Or maybe you're just after another hangover remedy."

That was entirely too accurate for Alvaranox's liking. Not exactly the sort of reputation he liked to have, truthful as it may be. The dragon growled and kept walking, calling back to the man. "Kiss my green stones, you bearded twit."

From the way that made the bearded man laugh, it was exactly the sort of ribald tavern humor the man appreciated. Damn it. Next time Alvaranox would just have to toss the man in that piss-puddle instead. Come to think of it, that wasn't a bad idea. Well, maybe not the tossing part. He'd catch hell from collar and town alike if he accidentally injured the barkeep. But he could work around that.

The green dragon carefully turned around which was in and of itself a bit of a feat for an adult dragon in a narrow alley. His long tail scraped wood, his wings brushed against the walls, and he did his best to keep his face away from anything disgusting. Then he walked back to the tavern. Light spilled out the backdoor, casting a pale golden glow over the alley and silhouetting the man who still stood watch. Rolling waves of laughter and boisterous voices poured out through the door along with the scents of roasted meat. The smells were enough to make even Alvaranox's wine-addled belly rumble ominously.

Alvaranox walked right up to the man and lowered his head till he was nearly nose to nose with the barkeep. The dragon's hot breath washed across the man's face, ruffling his reddish hair and beard. The dragon bared his fangs, and gave a low, threatening growl.

"Come to take me up on that drink, have ya?" The man merely smiled, showing not the least sign of fear.

"No," the dragon said simply. Though he hadn't expected the man to be afraid, his heart still sunk a little every time a human proved to be so totally unperturbed by his presence. Not that he could blame them. They knew as well as he that short of self-defense, he couldn't harm a soul in this town. "I've need of your towel."

Before the man could react, Alvaranox snatched the towel away from him. It was easy enough given that the dragon's front paws also served as fully functional hands. Though not as dexterous as the hands of a human, they still possessed three large digits agile enough to grasp and manipulate objects as well as a fourth digit that was fully opposable. Whether humans called them fingers, toes, thumbs or so on the dragon did not care.

The dragon settled himself onto his haunches for a moment, and used the man's towel to wipe away whatever filthy liquid had befouled his paws. The towel was already a bit damp but Alvaranox would happily take paws that smelt like spilled ale over paws that smelled like piss. When his forepaws were cleaned, he smirked at man, thanked him, and promptly dropped the towel over his head.

The man coughed and sputtered and stumbled away. By the time he'd yanked the towel back off his face, Alvaranox was already well down the alleyway again. The dragon smiled to himself as he soon emerged at the far end of the alley. That little prank hadn't eased the pounding in his head but it had certainly lightened his mood. Now, he'd just go see the old lady, get something for his headache, and then go take care of whatever had caused the warning bell to sound.

With any luck he'd be back in bed sleeping off the rest of his hangover by dawn.

The dragon picked up his pace. The old lady lived on a large plot of land by herself, the better to deal with visits from the dragon. It had been a little while since Alvaranox had gone to see her at her home, but after all the years he'd spent doing just that he could have found the place in his sleep. At least once he'd actually done so and passed out upon her front stoop. Come to think of it, it was only the old lady's boot insistently nudging against his ribs that had actually awoken the dragon. The old lady had to get him to move his scaly ass just so she could get out of her house.

Old Lady. To think that she'd been young when she was first made his second Handler. Much the way he'd been young when they first put the collar around his neck. Still, perhaps she wasn't really all that old yet. It just amused the dragon to call her the old lady. Especially now that he'd heard a few other people start calling her that as well.

As the dragon reached the old lady's land, he turned off the street and made his way down his personal trail. For all the years she'd served as his Handler, when he needed something late at night he went straight to her window. No sense banging on her front door and making her travel through the whole house when he could just rap on her window and wake in her bed. The fact that it always seemed to irritate her to have the dragon tapping his claws against her bedroom window and cutting a muddy path through her yard made it all the sweeter for the dragon.

The trail he'd long since cut wound around the side of her white-washed house. He passed beneath the overhanging boughs of an immense weeping willow, sagging green curtains brushed and caressed his scales. They tickled his wings a bit as he walked past the tree. He glanced at the wall of the old lady's house. Dark wooden beams crisscrossed the white wall in diamond patterns, and each year she painted new colorful murals here and there. This year she seemed to have just started a new one. A green slope and some blue flowers dotted her wall, though the mural was clearly in the opening stages of completion.

Alvaranox came to his usual spot beside her bedroom window. He lifted a paw, unsheathed a single talon, and rapped it sharply against her window pane. Then he set his paw down, only to prick his pads on something sharp. He yanked his paw back up, hissing in discomfort. A patch of weeds seemed to have sprung up in the soft earthen spot he usually stood. Perhaps it had been longer than he realized since his last visit. He tried to find a spot to rest his front paws, only to end up pricking his other paw's pads on another barb.

"Damn thistles," the dragon hissed.

Alvaranox rapped on the window pane a few more times to ensure the old lady was awake. When he saw movement from the bed inside the room, he turned his attention to the thistles that had so arrogantly sprung up in his waiting spot. Well, he knew how to deal with unwanted thistles and weeds. As he waited for the woman to rise and wrap herself in a cream colored nightgown, the dragon unsheathed the rest of his claws. With a wicked snarl and entirely too much enjoyment, the dragon quickly began to lay waste to the troublesome nettle. He shredded the spiny stalks, and tossed their ruined remnants across the yard to serve as warning to any other weeds that might consider staking a claim to his window-side territory.

The window was abruptly thrown open, and a furious woman shouted through it. "What the hell are you doing to my roses, you drunken beast?"

"Roses?" Alvaranox blinked. The dragon lifted his paw, and peered at it in the moonlight. Bits of shredded red petals clung to his claws. "I thought they were thistles..."

"They are roses!" A woman with increasingly gray hair frizzled from her pillow stuck her head out the window. She peered down at the ground, surveying the wreckage of her newly planted roses. She reached out and delicately plucked a ruined petal from one of the dragon's claws, and shook it in front of his nose accusingly. "At least they were! They may as well be thistles now, for all the good you've done them. What the hell were you tearing them up for, anyway?"

"I thought they were thistles," the dragon repeated. He pinned his ears back sheepishly against his skull, flattening down his crests. Then he tried to explain, protesting her accusations a little. "They pricked my paws! I had to teach them a lesson. Besides, this is where I stand, you know that. What are you doing putting flowers here, anyway?"

"Trying to beauty up that muddy hole you always left outside my window." The woman flicked the rose petal against the dragon's neck, then reached out and snatched him by the ear. He yowled a little, lowering his head to ease the pressure until they were nearly eye to eye. "When I retired from my position as your Handler, I did so with the assumption that you'd no longer be waking me up in the middle of the night and ruining my garden with your muddy paw prints and your damn tail spines."

The dragon gave a frustrated growl, trying to pull his head away. The woman's fingers were like an iron vice on his sensitive ear. "Well that's what you get for thinking. How am I to get what I need if not from my Handler?"

"I'm_not_ your Handler, anymore!" The woman tightened her grip a little bit. "Kirra is! Go and see Kirra when you have a problem or you need something you cannot accomplish on your own. That's her job now, to help you out with whatever you need."

"I thought the Handlers job was to ensure I do not ravage the town in a drunken fit?"

If the woman found the dragon's joke amusing, she did not let it show. "The point is, Kirra is your Handler now. You can't keep coming to me for everything. You have to start going to her. Perhaps even starting right now."

Alvaranox took in a deep breath, his chest plates expanding outwards. He held it until his vast lungs began to burn, and then the dragon heaved a great sigh. Uncertainty and the deeply-seated fear he hated to acknowledge swirled in his copper eyes. "I do not trust Kirra. You are..." The dragon licked his nose, turning his eyes away. "...You are the only one I trust, Nylah."

Nylah pursed her lips. The worry she saw flickering in the dragon's moonlight-tinted eyes troubled her heart. For the most part Alvaranox had adapted to his life here, but Nylah knew well enough there were fears and pains buried in his heart he'd never quite escape. When he was first put in the collar, first bound to this place, his initial Handler had not treated him kindly. To that man, Alvaranox was nothing but the Guardian Slave. A dangerous beast they could have rightfully slain, yet chose to press into service to keep their vulnerable town protected. The man was wrong, and Nylah knew that, but his methods had left scars upon the dragon both visible and unseen.

She could not blame Alvaranox for not trusting Kirra. After all it had taken Alvaranox many years to grow to trust Nylah, though when that trust finally came it was far more complete than she knew the beast would admit to. Now Nylah hoped to see that same trust grow between Alvaranox and his newest Handler. Nylah herself had trained the young woman in the hopes of easing the transition, yet even a year later, the dragon was not taking well to it.

"I know, Alv." Nylah eased her grip from his ear, and instead slipped her hand beneath his chin. She gently stroked the pebbly green scales of the dragon's jaw line. "But you have to try. She has a good heart, I promise you that. If anything, I think she's as nervous to be near you when I'm not there as you are to be around her."

"I am not nervous around her," the dragon insisted, his voice soft. He leaned his muzzle into her hand.

"Of course not," Nylah said, chuckling. "She's quite fascinated by you, you know."

"Why wouldn't she be?" Alvaranox said, a hint of a smirk creeping over his muzzle. "Who isn't fascinated by a dragon?"

Nylah laughed softly, and the dragon pressed his chin against her hand. Nylah leaned over the window sill to put her other hand atop his muzzle. Soon she was stroking his jaw with one hand and caressing the soft, sensitive area around his nostrils with the other. It did not take long for the dragon to begin to purr. The sound came softly at first, barely audible like pebbles clicking together. But gradually it grew and grew until it was rumbling steadily from his chest. To Nylah the dragon's purr always sounded like a whole host of barrels filled with loose stones sent tumbling down a mountain. Nylah knew the sound well by now, though early on it had taken her quite a while to discern what exactly it was. As far as she knew, it was still a sound that Alvaranox offered only for her.

For most of her life Nylah had worked for Asterryl as the dragon's Handler. The job was a many-fold thing. Though the initial Handler might have thought his first priority was ensuring the dragon's compliance, the collar did a fine job of that on its own. As far as Nylah was concerned her foremost job was to keep the dragon safe and healthy. She had served as the dragon's personal attendant as well as his personal physician. The Handler also served as the dragon's negotiator, of sorts. If there was something he wanted from the town it was the Handler's job to try and get it for him. If his accommodations were no longer appropriate or required repair. his Handler was the one to make things happen.

In addition the Handler also had to ensure that no one from the town hassled or harassed the creature. It had also become her job to ensure that his various drunken misadventures did not cause any significant property damage. In the early days it was said the Handler also served as the dragon's translator, though by the time Nylah had been given the job the creature spoke the common tongue as easily as anything else.

"Why are you up, anyway?" Nylah asked with a little smile. She traced a finger around the edges of the golden blotch that covered the end of the dragon's nose. "What did you need from me?"

"I have a hangover," the dragon said simply. Much as Alvaranox might hate to admit it, it was a common enough malady for him. "My head aches greatly."

"Then drink lots of water, and go sleep it off." Nylah shook her head, and patted the dragon's cheek. "The way you seem to heal, it should be gone by morning. I think you could drink every barrel of wine in Asterryl and wake up feeling fine as long as you slept through the night."

"I cannot," Alvaranox said. He hissed through his teeth. "The bell is ringing."

"Oh," Nylah said. She straightened up, her voice sharpening. "Is it urgent?"

"Not yet, but the pull is growing."

Nylah ran her hand back over the dragon's muzzle. She stroked her fingers over his cheek, and then worked them down his neck until she rested a hand against the collar. The sounds and images the collar used to warn the dragon and summon him to action existed only in the beast's mind, yet the collar's magic was deep and mysterious. Nylah scarcely understood it, but she knew that the dragon's Handlers could understand the ways it touched and affected his mind better than anyone else.

Alvaranox had explained it to her, the best he could. From time to time when she touched the collar, she thought she could even hear the faintest echo of the bell that rang to warn the dragon of danger. Sometimes she wondered if she imagined it or if the collar formed some faint connection to the dragon's Handlers as well. Nylah sometimes wondered if the collar had somehow allowed the dragon's first Handler to understand the beast, even when Alv spoke his own tongue.

It was whispered by some that the dragon's Handlers shared some affinity for the magic of the ancient world. Forces and elements long lost to most, carried on in some unknown bloodline. For whatever reason, there were always a few people spread throughout Asterryl who better seemed to understand the dragon and interpret the collar's hold upon him than anyone else.

Rumors claimed Alvaranox's first Handler had been adept at using the collar against him. Using it to punish him. Though in truth Nylah was not so sure that was actually possible. It may well just have seemed that way to the dragon. After all, the collar's magic bound the beast in blood, body and heart. When the dragon resisted its calls, when Alv refused to fight Asterryl's battles, the collar forced him with pain. Nylah was not so sure that his original Handler hadn't simply lied to the dragon, told him he was in control of the collar when he wanted the dragon to do his bidding.

Nonetheless, Nylah was convinced there existed some kind of connection between collar and Handler. She was also certain that it was a tenuous thing. They were bound only by ephemeral strands. It was as though the collar simply recognized that the dragon it held in sway needed a human to help care for him. Nylah sighed to herself. She worked her fingers over the engraved wings of one of the dragons scribed upon the black collar. She could almost hear the bells echoing in her own mind but decided she was imagining it.

After all, Kirra was the Handler now.

Nylah pulled away, and gave the dragon a little smile. "I'll get you some herbs for your head, and a bit of food."

Alvaranox nodded as she ducked back inside the window. He shifted on his paws a little bit, waiting for her to return. Part of the dragon felt foolish whenever she told him to go and see Kirra instead. He hated to admit how he did not trust the woman. It made him feel like a coward, as though he were some hatchling still afraid of everything new in the world. Only instead of hiding beneath his mother's wings, he sheltered behind Nylah's skirts. He could scarcely help it, though. Of all the humans in this city, she was the first he could recall treating him as something more than some kind of monster.

Alvaranox knew well enough that was how humans saw dragons. As monsters. Great and powerful, terrible and majestic in their own right, but monsters nonetheless. They drove them away from their cities, they sought to slay them in the wilds, and perhaps from time to time they made alliances with them. Or slaves of them.

To Asterryl, Alvaranox was a monster of great importance. A monster who had become the answer to so many of their problems. They made him into their guardian to protect their town. Locked him with this cursed bond and set him to the task of keeping them all safe day in and day out. They had made him their slave, and because he was but a monster, they scarcely batted an eye. To them, a dragon locked in a collar was like an oxen in a yoke. A beast of burden they bound to a task without a shred of guilt.

Their Guardian Slave. It was a moniker he first heard from his original Handler the very day they put the collar around his neck. Whether the man had made the term up on the spot, or if it was some lingering arcane title passed down by whatever bastard had brought them the collar in the first place the dragon did not know. He certainly did not care. It was a fitting enough designation, and Alvaranox had even taken to calling himself that from time to time, however bitterly he might speak the words.

Alvaranox snorted, licking his nose. He tossed his head and flared his spines, trying to banish the thoughts. He was drifting into bitter waters again. In truth, things were not so bad anymore. Over the last few decades his life had greatly improved from what it had once been. A new generation of humans had grown up with him as part of the town. Their Guardian Slave had slowly become their protector. A difference that was perhaps too subtle for the dragon's liking.

Some of the townsfolk even came to see him as a friend, or so they claimed. Alvaranox found that a difficult feeling to reciprocate, but at least he was treated well these days. They brought him all the drink he could handle as well. That was good. He liked to drink. It helped him to forget for a little while that he was stuck in a barrel just like Stupid Fish.

"Here," Nylah as she returned to the window, drawing Alvaranox from his thoughts. "I've brought you some food, and some herbs for your head. Wouldn't want you to get yourself hurt cause you're too busy thinking about filling your belly to keep track of danger."

Alvaranox offered the woman a toothy smile. For a moment, he just looked her over. A feeling of nostalgia rolled through the beast. When he'd first met Nylah, her hair was lustrous and black. Her skin was soft and supple, and her body a little on the plump side. She had a fiery heart just like his first Handler, but where he held coldness and cruelty, she held warmth and compassion.

Over the last few decades, Alvaranox had grown and matured, and Nylah had slowly aged. She was not so old now that these were her last days, but it was clear to him that she was aging far faster than he was. Her hair was now far more gray and frizzy than raven hued, and her frame was increasingly slender. The supple fingers that once teased the purr from his throat were now no less delicate in their touch but noticeably bonier. Her eyes though, her eyes were the same. Now just as the first day he'd met her, her sparkling hazel gaze shone like polished topaz flecked with fire.

Nylah set a small table just inside her windowsill, and rested a tray atop it. She pulled aside the pale blue curtains and tied them with a golden ribbon to let the dragon stick his head through the window and access the tray. She'd laid him out an array of cold cuts of roasted beef and mutton, and some thickly sliced crusty bread smeared with blackberry jam. It was not enough to make a full meal for a dragon, but it would help settle his belly. And she knew his weaknesses for jam better than anyone. Alvaranox had come to quite enjoy some of the foods and drinks humans made. So long as he was stuck here, he may as well enjoy what small pleasures he could find.

"Thank you, Nylah," the dragon murmured. The dragon crouched down to push his head through the window. With jaws and tongue he quickly snatched up each chunk of meat, and each slice of bread. The beef and mutton were both rich and lightly salted, and the sweetness of the berry jam smeared upon the bread made the dragon sigh to himself.

"You're welcome," Nylah replied. When the snack was nearly gone, Nylah deftly reached out and stole the last slice of bread. Smirking, she took a bite out of it, and then deposited a handful of leafy green herbs upon the tray. The pungent, bittersweet aroma of the freshly sliced medicinal plants wafted over the dragon's nose. Nylah grinned at the way it made him scowl. "Now. Eat those. It will help you feel better. And I'll give you the rest of this bread and jam to get the taste of your mouth. And then you'd best be on your way before the collar decides to drag you."

Alvaranox muttered something insulting under his breath, but did as she suggested. He had come here for those herbs, after all. He just hated the way they tasted. The dragon gulped them up as swiftly as he could, chewed them a few times, and then gagged down the whole bunch. The bitter, biting flavor left his tongue feeling a little numb. The dragon worked his tongue against the ridged roof of his mouth a little, and even squeezed at his fire glands. A hint of his fire bile helped to cleanse his tongue. Then Nylah offered him the last of the bread and jam, which he gratefully accepted. He chewed it slowly, trying to smear the sweet blackberry jam around his mouth best he could.

Nylah moved the tray table aside, and pushed her hands against the dragon's head. She pressed at his skull between his horns as if trying to shove him back out of the window. Alvaranox of course made a show of glancing around the room. Nothing had really changed, but he always found her room a fascinating place to get a peek into. Her walls were lined with shelves covered in books, and a multitude of trinkets and treasures from her many years. Artwork she'd painted herself hung in wooden frames here and there. A dresser cut from rich mahogany adorned one corner of her room. For a human, she also had an immense bed that Alvaranox found himself a little envious of. It simply looked so delightfully soft, and it always seemed as though the blankets were a little rumpled in the most comfortable way. Come to think of it, that was probably because he was always showing up in the middle of the night and waking her up.

"Get your fat head out of my room, you drunken lout!" Nylah half laughed, half shouted at him, pushing on his head again.

"I am not a lout," the dragon replied. He backed away, grinning at her.

"We have a disagreement then," Nylah said. She put her hands upon the window, smirking at the dragon. "Now go. Deal with whatever it is you need to deal with." She paused a moment as Alvaranox backed away from the window. She already knew it was no use telling him not to dig his claws into the grass when he prepared to leap into the skies. "Alvaranox?"

"Yes?" The dragon paused, cocking his horned head.

"Be safe."

That brought a smile to the dragon's muzzle. "I shall do my very best."

Nylah watched as the dragon hunkered down. Just as she expected, he dug his claws into her grass for purchase, tensing himself up. Though muscles constantly rippled beneath the dragon's armor, Nylah always thought the creature seemed to possess a more graceful, leonine sort of power rather than the sheer bulk of something like a bear. After a moment, the dragon leapt into the sky, propelling himself upwards off his powerful hind legs. Bits of grass and dirt flew into the air where his claws caught the earth. Swift beats of his powerful wings sent the boughs of her nearby trees whipping back and forth. Rose petals and shredded leaves whirled around outside her window.

Nylah scowled, and stuck her head out the window, calling after the dragon. "When you get back, we're going to have a very serious talk about my roses!"

"Yes," Alvaranox called back to her as he spiraled up into the skies. "I'm going to tell you to plant them somewhere else!"

"And I'm going to tell you where you can stick them!" Nylah smirked and shook her head, chuckling. Never a dull moment with the damn dragon around. She closed her window, secured the latch, and with a smile still on her lips, crawled back into bed.

---

Chapter Two

---

Alvaranox rose swiftly into the sea of stars that stretched out in all directions above Asterryl. Much as the dragon tried to fight it, a smile graced his muzzle. If he had a single friend in this world, it was certainly Nylah. That didn't mean he wasn't going to tear up her next batch of roses again just to spite her. A dragon had to draw the line somewhere after all.

Within the span of a few dozen wing beats and just as many breaths, the city of Asterryl was already shrinking beneath the dragon. The herbs had not yet kicked in, and the exertion of flight was causing his head to ache worse than ever. Blood pulsed through his body. He could feel it thumping through the vast network of tiny veins in his wings, throbbing through the secondary heart chamber near his tail, and beating like some blacksmith's hammer against the anvil of his brain.

Gods, he had to stop drinking so much.

The dragon blinked a few times, flicking his flight membranes closed across his eyes to fight off the winds buffeting his face. He shifted and flicked his wings, working his membranes against the air currents until he felt a pleasant, warm updraft. The hot air rising from the earth caught his wings, gently elevating him a little higher. Alvaranox stretched his wings as far as they could go to catch as much of the thermal current as possible, and then set himself to soar and glide. The less effort he had to put into flying, the sooner his headache would ease.

Soon enough, the bitter herbs he'd eaten were dulling his pain. As the pounding tapered off inside his head, the strange yet familiar pulse in his mind began to guide him to the west. He shifted a wing, pivoting in the sky just a little, using that pulse like a compass until he was following it directly. It was the collar's way of guiding him to find whatever threat it was sending him to deal with this time. It was a very strange feeling the dragon had never quite gotten used to. It felt as though someone had a leash attached to his very consciousness and was giving it a series of rhythmic tugs.

West. West. West.

As he soared, Alvaranox glanced around the landscape below him. He had an excellent view of the massive lake that defined much of the area below. The locals called it the Lake Of Teeth because of the many sharp, jagged rocks that lined its vast shorelines. Its ancient waters were deep and cold and stretched far enough that when Alvaranox stood upon the shoreline the water seemed to reach the horizon itself.

From his high vantage, he could just make out the northern shore. It was there that the rocks and bluffs that lined much of the lake gave way to a series of swampy coves and inlets where several rivers drained into the lake. Thick marshy forest spread in all directions from that northern shoreline. From time to time Alvaranox was called in that direction to deal with various threats. A primitive, reptilian-like people called that place home. The humans likely called them something stupid like lizardmen, but Alvaranox knew they called themselves the Va'chaak.

Most of the Va'chaak were peaceful enough so long as they did not think anyone was attempting to steal their land. They lived in the forests and the swampy sections of the north shore in a cluster of villages. They had simple huts and homes made from mud and reed, tools carved from wood and bone and rock. Though they did occasionally cause enough trouble to arouse a warning from the collar, Alvaranox found that all he usually had to do was show up, roar at them, and blow a bit of fire to send them running.

From time to time a few bands of Va'chaak even ventured to Asterryl in order to do some trading and bartering. The humans always seemed surprised whenever they showed up. To their credit not only did the humans not attempt to immediately slaughter the creatures but the merchants in the market seemed more than willing to do a little trading with their scaly northern neighbors. In truth Alvaranox rather liked the Va'chaak because the first time he remembered them showing up in Asterryl, they had assumed the large green dragon must have been in charge.

If he had his way, he certainly would have been.

From his high vantage point, Alvaranox cast his copper gaze towards the island he called his own. There were many rocky islands spread throughout the lake and in ages long since forgotten, a sprawling stone fortress once capped the largest of them. Though its towers had long since tumbled into the water, and its walls continued to crumble by the decade, there was still enough of the place left for its former design to be clear. Lines of broken wall marked the island some grand puzzle missing half its pieces. There were yet rooms and sections there that were still intact, if a bit overgrown by brambles, brush, and the occasional tree. Alvaranox has long ago claimed the place for himself. A little island in which to find occasional hours of solitude away from the humans who had made him their Guardian Slave. There was a dock there once, but the dragon tore it up years ago to make it more difficult for any of the humans to venture out there. That island was his now, and his alone.

The pulsing in the dragon's mind suddenly accelerated. The collar wanted him to speed up. Alvaranox wondered what that meant. He suspected there might be a group of bandits planning an ambush for the early morning travelers and merchants on the nearby road. Or perhaps a raiding party of Va'chaak was about to attack an isolated farm. Whatever the case, the collar would fill him in as he drew near the threat it sensed. Then Alvaranox would put a swift stop to it. The sooner he ended the danger, the sooner he could go back to bed.

Alvaranox began to beat his wings again. Now that his headache had relented, he pushed himself harder in the sky. As the collar tugged his mind to the west with increasing urgency, the dragon began to pump his wings to match the ceaseless pulse in his consciousness. So long as the collar knew he was meeting its demand, it would not make things even more unpleasant for him.

Beating his wings to the collar's pulsing urge had a familiar rhythm to it. Much as hated the thing, the collar was as much a part of the dragon as breathing. It could sense seemingly any manner of danger looming over Asterryl or those who called the people of Asterryl friend. And whenever a threat presented itself, the dragon was sent to deal with it one way or another.

The collar's warnings did not always lead to battle. There were times it had sent him to rescue people trapped by rising water, or to help dig survivors from the rubble of distant homes damaged by rockslides. Sometimes it sent him to deal with aggressive beasts or belligerent inhuman peoples like the Va'chaak. Though the humans might say otherwise, he refused to call them monsters. Even when the collar did lead him into battle with bandit hordes or mercenaries who'd taken up robbing merchants and travelers, he didn't always have to kill them. So long as the threat was quelled one way or another the collar was satisfied.

Yet often that meant he had to shed something's blood. Today, he felt there would be blood spilled. Alvaranox snorted, shaking his head. He would do what he had to do.

Trying not to fixate on the grim task ahead, the dragon scanned the ground far below. Alvaranox had excellent vision even in the midst of the night, and the nearly full moon provided plenty of silvery illumination. Beyond Asterryl's outermost walls, the area was heavily marked by farmlands. Farm houses painted the shade of red apples were surrounded by stables, barns, sheds and other outbuildings, and those in turn were wrapped with acres of crops. Where there were no crops, there were pens with livestock. Pigs, sheep and cattle, and assortments of horses, oxen and ponies were all raised for food, clothing and work. The lands directly around Asterryl resembled some sprawling game board, sections divided by wood and wire or stone. Brown swaths of freshly tilled soil stood in sharp contrast to plots of land covered in rows of green crops.

Simple dirt lanes ran between farms and towards the town so that goods and livestock could be easily transported. Here and there simple guard houses were set up at intersections to provide a bit of protection and security for the various farming families. Some of the intersections also had their own little inns, taverns and markets set up so that the farmers could pick up a few simple supplies or have a drink and a meal after a hard day's labor without having to go all the way into town.

Further west the farmlands began to mild into the sprawling, rocky moors of the nearly endless wild. They rose and fell endlessly like the waves of some green ocean frozen in time. In the daylight, the brambles, heathers and thick moss and grasses that covered the land gave it a mottled green appearance not unlike Alvaranox's scales. Patches of sage dotted it with blotches of gray-blue, and randomly dispersed patches of wild flowers speckled the land with fiery reds and striking blues. Rocky bluffs rose higher above the green moors, capped with stony gray ridges like the armored back of some serpentine monster. Boulders were strewn about where they'd toppled down the ridges and rolled across the soft mossy ground before eventually easing to a stop.

Swift, rocky streams cut between the bluffs and hills. In some places, boulders had come to a stop in the midst of the water, creating natural dams that provided larger pools for fish to find a home in. Tall swaths of reeds rose all around such pools. In some areas alongside the streams, copses of trees made their home. There was little discernable pattern to species of tree. Oaks, elms, fir, willow, pine, and a variety of fruit trees all seemed randomly scattered as though the winds had simply taken handfuls of seeds and buffeted them in all directions to find purchase where they may.

Though the roads were fewer and the lands more treacherous, a few groups of humans still made their living amongst those moors. There were families of nomadic shepherds who tended vast herds of goats across the wide open grazing lands, and spent their nights in dome shaped tents, telling tales around great bonfires. A few families of stoneworkers lived out in the wilds as well, where they could spend their days cutting stone from the ridges or in simple quarries. Every few weeks they journeyed to Asterryl to sell their wares.

Beyond even those hardy souls were the wilds where Alvaranox had hatched and lived with his mother. Far from the lands of men, dragons had roamed more freely along with other beasts and wild creatures unshackled by the burdens of civilization. In his youth Alvaranox had never seen a human. As far as he knew, Asterryl was in fact on the very edge of human civilization. After all, the dragons did not call the moors and rugged lands beyond the wilds, that was a human term. Asterryl itself was the boundary that which humanity had claimed and conquered and that which had in turn conquered them. Humanity had stretched its grasp as far as it could, and found its reach exceeded.

Evidence of that great overreach were strewn all across the land. Once Alvaranox was well into the moors, old ruins were everywhere. A crumbled castle sat atop the tallest hill for miles. Alvaranox imagined it must have been a grand place, once. Now though, the once majestic towers lay strewn in broken moss-covered pieces all along the hillside. The cracked and crumbling walls were little more than another set of gray ridges crowning a rise in the moors.

Burnt out homes likely raided by bandits before Alvaranox had been collared served as proof that the land needed a protector, even if that protector was unwilling. Battered stone columns standing like sentinels on opposite sides of a wide stream where all the proof that remained of a bridge that once straddled the valley. The road that it connected was long since overgrown and vanished.

Somehow, Asterryl had remained. Asterryl was the line in the sand the humans had drawn. Perhaps it was the access to resources of stone, water and crops. Perhaps it was a more defensible position, or simply the time needed to build better walls. Whatever the case, the original inhabitants of Asterryl had long ago declared they would yield no more ground to the wild world beyond their walls. Nor would they let those without law continue to raid and plunder without consequence. A noble ambition in its own away. Or at least it had been until they put Alvaranox in the collar and made him the consequence to bear for banditry.

It was enough to make him wish he could just let the wilds claim Asterryl once and for all. He'd even be willing to fly Nylah somewhere nice. If she asked nicely, he might even take Kirra. Surely they'd prefer to live in some pleasant, quiet human town far from this rugged frontier, wouldn't they? The sort of town that didn't actually need a Guardian Slave just to keep it safe.

Perhaps that was too much to hope for.

Alvaranox let the collar guide him as he drifted through his aimless thoughts. Though most of the other roads that had once cut through the land were long since reclaimed by the moors, there were still a few thoroughfares that Alvaranox knew must eventually lead to other, safer towns. Asterryl's lands might be dangerous, but there was a lot of coin to be had by those willing to venture across them for trade.

Most of remaining roads were maintained merely by the traffic of boots, hooves and carriage wheels packing the earth down again and again. From time to time, local guardsmen and workers were sent out to do a little road maintenance, be it shoring up an area where the road was giving way or dropping flagstones in to sturdy up a particularly muddy patch. Damn collar had even sent the green dragon out to provide security for one such operation when a group of opportunistic bandits thought the lightly guarded workers would make easy prey.

Alvaranox closed his eyes for a moment, letting the winds carry him. He focused his mind on his task, asking a silent question of the collar. What was his destination? He needed to know where he was going. Slowly, fragments of images began to appear in the dragon's mind as the collar sought to provide him an answer. He could feel the damn thing buzzing around his neck, it made his scales tingle as it worked its magic in his mind. Shards of gray appeared on the edges of his consciousness. They drifted at first, and gradually began to flutter towards the center of his mind's eye. Soon, they were twisting and spinning as they began to assemble themselves like some ghostly puzzle.

Piece by piece, the image built in the dragon's mind. Broken gray walls. Rotten wooden framework. A ruin somewhere. More colors began to filter into the image. Green slashes marked the area behind the ruined wall as though a spectral brush were filling in the colors. A green hill with rare red heather spread across the top of it. Ah, yes. He knew the place. There was a bridge there, still in use. No sooner had the dragon realized it than the bridge appeared in his vision as well. A simple but sturdy wooden span, with an arched roof that covered it. The roof was painted a cheery blue color, a pleasant contrast to the ruins of the old village that lay on either side of the river the bridge crossed.

Alvaranox opened his eyes. He had seen enough to know what his destination was. He was familiar with the place, he'd been there a few times before. As it was a bridge that saw more than a little use from traveling merchants it made a suitable place for unscrupulous types to attempt to extract tolls, or to raid any passing trade caravans. That was alright. Bandits were easy enough to deal with. He'd have them dead or on the run in no time, and then he'd be back home and back in bed to sleep off the rest of his hangover.

After another few minutes of flying, Alvaranox was in sight of his destination. Several of the streams that flowed near Asterryl converged further to the west and formed a larger river. Because of the way the land rose and fell, much of the riverbank was steep, rocky cliffs that made finding a suitable place to traverse it difficult. There was a place where the slopes were much more gentle, and a bridge had been built there. As it was a well traveled crossing point, a village had sprung up around it. In decades long past, it must have been a prosperous little place, with several inns and shops, quite a few homes and even its own fort to help protect it.

Alvaranox snorted to himself. Clearly the fort hadn't offered enough protection, because the town had long since fallen into ruin. Whether the place had been overrun by some invading horde or simply abandoned the dragon did not know. Nor did he care. The stone-block walls of the fort itself were still relatively intact, as were a few of the buildings. Others were little more than moldering wooden framework, or brick foundations. The bridge though, that was kept maintained by workers at least once a year, and...

BRONG.

The bell rang unexpectedly in Alvaranox's head. He cried out in alarm as the sound rattled his skull. In an instant, the world below him had been replaced by a vast, sun-blasted wasteland. Cracked earth baked in the heat. Broken black stones and crumbling boulders sat beneath the twisted, hunched frames of dead trees. An ebony bell floated above the earth. Dragons inscribed upon it its surface seemed to twist and writhe around the bell as though suddenly given new life. Silver threads appeared from nowhere, weaving themselves into the shape of a dragon's head. A handle formed of the silver dragon's body and tail twisted into being next, and the hammer immediately struck the bell.

BRONG!

Alvaranox cried out again, this time in pain. The bell was rarely this loud. And he could not recall it ever displaying itself in his mind once he was already at his destination, let alone ringing at such a time. The bell rang a third time, the sound split Alvaranox's ears. The sound that carried from the bell was like a physical thing, a concussive wave washing across the wasteland that sent pebbles and broken shards of stone flying through the air. Alvaranox could feel it washing over him, buffeting as though he were flying across that wasteland.

The image was gone just as quickly as it had materialized. Alvaranox was once more flying over the moors, now just outside the ruins. His body trembled, his head rattled. Something felt off. He tucked his wings, and swept towards the ground, extending his hind paws. The dragon touched down on the road upon his back feet first, then his fore paws. He quickly trotted to a stop.

Alvaranox swallowed in an attempt to dislodge the sudden anxious lump in his throat. Was the collar punishing him for dawdling? No, it was something else. His spines flared as dread tingled at the base of them. This was something that had rarely happened before and never to this extent. He knew the collar and the bell would never distract him when he was actually in danger, and yet the sudden, intense warning so near his destination was unnerving. The collar was trying to tell him that something was wrong.

Alvaranox glanced around at the broken wreckage of a lonely village that had come to a sorrowful end. His belly twisted itself into an intricate knot. A strange, metallic buzzing sound began to fill his head as though the bell were vibrating. The collar rattled around his neck.

Sudden fear twisted the dragon's guts and dragged icy claws all down his lengthy spine. His massive heart began to pound against his sternum like a chained beast trying to shatter its bonds. If his heart beat any harder Alvaranox feared it might start rattling the plates right off his chest. He unsheathed his claws and bared his fangs as he flicked his copper eyes about. The dragon feared that collar meant to warn him that this was no simple mission, that this time his life was in real danger.

Alvaranox had been injured in battle before. He had taken wounds in defense of the town, yet never had the collar taken to warning him so directly after it had already dispatched him to his destination. It warned him of dangers to the town, and of trouble for those he was forced to protect. But for all the many years he had worn the damn thing, this was the first time it had ever warned the dragon of imminent danger to himself.

Before Alvaranox could focus and ask the collar for an image of the threat, the sharp twang of bowstring split the silence of the night. Arrows whistled through the air. Hot pain punched through the dragon's wings as several arrows punctured the sensitive membranes and impacted his body below. Blood ran from the holes in his wings though the arrows failed to penetrate the thick scales protecting the dragon's ribs. Yet the pain was a call to protective instincts for Alvaranox. With it, his fear was gone and replaced by anger and a great desire to strike back at those who dared wound him.

The arrows had come from both sides of the road, but Alvaranox knew he had to pick a target and move swiftly. He did not want to give them a chance to pepper him with a second volley aimed at his less protected areas. Movement inside the ruins of a house on the edge of his vision gave the dragon an easy choice. In an instant Alvaranox whirled towards it. Through a window frame in a wall that was still mostly standing, Alvaranox saw a man crouch down to nock another arrow.

Rather than stick his head through the window and risk a knife in the throat, or maneuver around the wall and take an arrow in the face, Alvaranox simply took a deep breath, and then spat as much fire through the window of the ruined home as he could. He sharply squeezed the fire glands at the back of his jaws, spraying liquid flame everywhere inside the ruined home. The broken wood walls and decaying thatch roof caught fire immediately. A ragged scream told the dragon that the human had ignited just as easily as orange light danced across all the broken buildings in the area. The smell of burning wood and charring flesh scorched the dragon's nostrils.

One down.

A few more twangs signaled another volley of arrows. One shrieked past the dragon's head, another over his back, and a third struck him in the side. Pain flared anew as that arrow managed to punch through his green scales and wedge itself between his ribs. It was a painful wound yet shallow. Alvaranox twisted around. He could see the haft of the arrow and its white fletches jutting from his body. For now, he had to deal with it in a hurry. He could try and grasp it in a paw and ease it out, but he had no time for that. Instead he just stretched his long neck and snapped his jaws through the arrow, biting most of it off. The arrowhead was still stuck against his ribs but he'd have Nylah pull it out later.

It wouldn't be the first arrow she'd taken out of his body.

Still the collar buzzed around his neck, rattled in his head. In the back of the dragon's mind a little of that previous fear began to return. It was still warning him about something. Warning him of danger. Perhaps it was simply because these men seemed to be a bit more organized than the average bandit horde. Alvaranox feared there was more to it than that, but he had no time to consider other possibilities.

Alvaranox spun around upon his paws, and ran off the road, into the ruins of the city. At least one of those archers was in an elevated position, likely in the remains of the old fort. Alvaranox would have preferred to simply fly and bathe the whole place in fire, but he'd be damned if he was going to leave his belly open to a bunch of organized archers below him. The dragon bound up the grassy expanse of what was once a lane. A few broken cobblestones still poked through the grass here and there.

The dragon sprinted by a burnt out home, and then a former smithy that was little more than a blackened, freestanding hearth surrounded by the foundations of former walls. As he ran, he spotted more movement behind an unsteady looking red-brick wall nearby. Alvaranox twisted to charge towards that wall. Just as he reached it, he reared up upon his hind legs and with all his momentum thrust his front paws against the ruined wall. Old mortar broke with a series of sharp _cracks,_and the whole embankment came toppling down beneath the dragon's weight. A fleshy crunch and a muffled cry announced the second of the dragon's victories.

Another arrow found its way to flesh. This one struck his left hind leg, and sunk deeper than the last. The sudden sharp pain caused Alvaranox's hind leg to cramp, though the wound was not so deep it would not heal easily enough with a little time. Still, fresh pain brought fresh anger, and the dragon roared into the night.

"Stop shooting me!"

That last arrow had definitely come from an elevated position. The fort that once protected the town stood atop a small hill, and had enough structure still remaining to provide adequate cover. Alvaranox would make that his next target because he was getting fed up with these damn archers. It wasn't as though they were doing him any serious injury yet. Without a clear shot at a softer area it was difficult to bury an arrow deeply enough in a dragon to hit anything vital. Alvaranox knew well enough to keep his throat protected, and he'd just have to do what he could to avoid taking an arrow in the eye. Short of potent poisons, arrows really just made the dragon angry.

The thought that the arrows might be tipped in toxin chilled the dragon's blood. Was that why the collar was warning him? He'd been hit with various poisons a few times before, and so far he felt none of the tell-tale effects. Dragons had powerful livers that did an excellent job filtering out toxins, but too much poison all at once could kill a dragon just the same. If worst came to worse, back in Asterryl Nylah had an antidote for just about everything. Over the years the old lady had made the dragon eat all sorts of disgusting things in the name of building up immunities to known toxins in case some bandit got it in their head to try and poison the Guardian Slave.

Not that Alvaranox had much time to contemplate the possibility he'd been poisoned. He had to kill these bandit bastards first, then he could worry about his wounds. The dragon ran from the ruined smithy towards the hill where the fort once held sway over the town. As he ran he kept watch on the fortress. One of the walls that still stood on the second level held a cross-shaped arrow slit. That was probably where the bastard was firing at him from. Well organized. Probably setting up an ambush for the first travelers to come through in the morning.

Alvaranox kept moving. He tried to use the various ruined buildings for cover whenever he could. No sense in letting anyone else get a clear shot at him if he could prevent it. He got closer and closer to the fortress. The archer behind the arrow loop fired at him a few more times, as did someone from elsewhere in the ruins, but the dragon was able to keep himself from being hit. Finally the dragon drew near enough the fort to try and assault it. Though how to do so without getting an arrow straight in his head?

The dragon hunkered down behind the mostly intact wall of an inn for a moment of planning. As he considered his options, he spotted something unexpected not far away. The head of a granite-carved horse lay half shrouded in the tall grass that ran alongside the wall he sheltered behind. Nearby, other bits of broken statue were spread about, gray stone shapes mostly obscured by grass and overgrown thistles.

Perfect.

The dragon hoisted up the stone horse head. It was heavy even for the dragon, but not so heavy that he couldn't manipulate it easily enough with one paw. In one smooth motion, the dragon cocked the stone head back with his foreleg, twisted his body around, and then hurled the statue's head as hard as he could at the fortress wall. The granite head toppled cracked muzzle over broken neck, wobbling through the air. Yet Alvaranox's aim was true enough for his goal. The statue smashed against the arrow slit with a tremendous _CRACK._Bits of rock and mortar shattered as the horse head exploded, blowing stone shrapnel inwards on whoever sheltered beyond the wall. Chunks of broken wall and granite rained down on upon the ground.

The dragon leapt into the air as soon as stone met stone. In two wing beats he was at the fortress wall. A flick of his wings in another direction pulled the dragon's body upright so that he could brace his paws against the wall. As his hind feet slammed against the stone, he grasped the half-crumbled parapets with his front paws, clinging to the wall. At the same time he roared and unleashed a burst of fire into the damaged arrow slit. Red and orange flames swirled through the opening, bathing the room beyond in incineration. A backwash of blistering heat radiated back over the dragon, searing his sensitive nose. He quickly pulled his head back and away from the arrow slit as the room beyond continued to burn.

There was no scream.

Damn. Alvaranox cursed. The little bastard must have fled the room just before the dragon could belch his fire. A sharp voice called out from within the fort. Another voice answered. The dragon did not recognize the language, but it sounded as though the remaining men were regrouping. Alvaranox vaguely recalled there being an overgrown courtyard inside the walls of the fort, if only because he'd once taken a nap there to escape the damn town for a little while.

If the men sought to regroup in that courtyard, then that was where he'd finish them off.

With a grunt of effort, Alvaranox scaled the wall on which he perched. Flames and heat tickled at his underbelly and sensitive areas as he passed over the arrow slit. Smoke poured from it and drifted around his scaly body. From the top of the wall, he had a quick look at the inner court of the old fortress. Near the central area, there was an open courtyard overgrown with grass and thick moss. A few outbuildings and structures still stood mostly intact. In many other places there was little left but crumbling walls that formed a maze-like series of stony corridors. At one end of the courtyard stood a man in a black leather cloak edged in scarlet and a helmet that gleamed silver in the moonlight. He shouted out orders to someone else in a foreign tongue.

Alvaranox leapt from the wall, extending his black and green wings for only a moment before he folded them against his body and dove. He was completely intent on landing atop that bastard and crushing him into something resembling a gooey paste. At the last second the man darted away with a yell, and the dragon landed only upon mossy earth. The man vanished around one of the walls, darting into a ruined corridor. Snarling his frustration, Alvaranox spun on his paws, claws tearing up the moss. He chased after the man, skidding at the corner before bounding around the wall.

In one horrifying, excruciating instant, Alvaranox realized why the collar had been warning him all along. Agony the likes of which the dragon had never experienced erupted as cold, sharp steel punched through the scales of his underbelly and deep into his guts. Alvaranox gave a scream so wretched he felt his throat tear, tasted his own blood. In a moment of panicked shock the dragon stumbled away from the direction the pain had come from. He banged up against another wall, unable even to force air into his lungs. With his roar of anguish still echoing over the courtyard, Alvaranox struggled to stay on his feet. He turned his head, a second man with a matching red and black cloak had plunged a sword into the dragon's belly. These men were not bandits, and they were not here to set an ambush for travelers. These men were professionals, and the ambush they had set was meant for the dragon.

The archers suddenly seemed little more than a sacrificial ruse designed to lure the dragon up inside the twisting ruins of the old fortress and its enclosed courtyard. That way they could fight the beast in a more enclosed space, they could draw him into a position of vulnerability. And like a blundering hatchling tumbling down a hill, Alvaranox had stumbled right into their trap. They were probably dragon slayers, hoping to cut him apart and make a fortune from the kill. Alvaranox had no way of knowing, and he certainly was in no position to think about it.

Yet in that horrifying, detached moment, it seemed all too clear. A few professional slayers hiring on a few bandits to act as archers. Let them get themselves killed in the process of drawing the dragon into an ambush. A few less stakes to pay out when the deed was done. The collar had been trying all along to warn him that there was more to this than a couple inexperienced bandits. The dragon simply hadn't understood the warning correctly.

Alvaranox was snapped back to reality by another searing wave of pain as the slayer wrenched his sword free from the dragon's belly. The blade caught for a moment then suddenly slipped free causing the man to stumble back towards the alcove in which he'd been hiding when Alvaranox passed by. The pain both terrified and infuriated the dragon. He was sure they must have hit something vital. He was going to die, wasn't he. Gods, he didn't want to die. Yet...he wasn't dead yet. If nothing else, he would live longer than these men. He would kill these men.

As the slayer recovered his balance, he moved to strike the wounded dragon again. Yet this time Alvaranox was faster. The wounded dragon bound forward while lashing out with his black-mottled tail. Alvaranox's tail spines hit the man in the chest so hard they punched straight through the steel plates he wore to protect himself. The only sound he made was a single wet cough. Black spine and steel shrapnel alike shredded the man's heart and lungs. When Alvaranox yanked his tail away, the force of it sent the man pin wheeling through the air. He landed in a shuddering heap, dark blood poured from his nose and mouth and dripped through the visor of his helmet.

Alvaranox coughed and spat blood of his own. The spasm sent another shudder of agony rippling through him. The dragon backpedaled the way he'd come. No sense following the first man into another blind spot, another ambush. Terror squeezed the dragon's heart as he backed away from an increasingly sizable trail of his own blood. In the moonlight it shone with a sick, silvery hue. Gods. The dragon had never seen so much of his own blood before.

As he turned to the more open area of the courtyard, he soon saw two more men emerge at the far end. If the wounded dragon wasn't going to walk into another trap it seemed they were willing to finish him off face to face. The two of them were dressed alike, ebon cloaks trimmed with red. Beneath the cloaks they both wore plated armor thick enough to provide good protection but not so heavy as to impede their movement. Each also bore a silvery looking helmet, revealing eyes only through thin slits in the visor. Probably part of some mercenary company or dragon slaying outfit. It mattered little to Alvaranox. All he wanted now was to kill these men before he bled to death. Perhaps if he killed them fast enough, he could even make it home before he expired.

Home. Who was he kidding. He had only a prison, not a home.

Yet Nylah was there. Yes. Nylah. She could fix anything, right?

Alvaranox forced himself to focus as the men cautiously advanced upon him. His thoughts were already starting to drift. Between the pain and the blood pouring from his body, the dragon feared he was already starting to go into shock. Alvaranox tried to take a deep breath to help with his flame, only to find that the pain caused his lungs to sieze up when he inhaled too deeply. Making due with what little air he had, he compressed his fire glands to spit a narrow stream of flame rather than a vast boiling cloud of it. The men had anticipated fire and were quick to dart away from each other. They thought dragons a predictable sort of monster.

As they split up in an attempt to divide the dragon's attention, one ran for the more maneuverable space of the courtyard while the other had to run closer to one of the ruined walls to avoid the rippling flames. Just what Alvaranox was hoping for. No sooner had he started to spray fire than he clamped his jaws shut and charged towards the men instead. Heat from his own fire still baked the air all around him as he closed the distance. Both slayers thought the dragon meant to ram them, and they moved further apart, positioning their blades in a defensive stance. Both were ready to try and slice the dragon's throat as they skirted around his charge.

Only Alvaranox had other ideas. Rather than attack either man head on, the dragon split the distance between them. Then he lurched sideways with a sudden powerful surge, smashing his well protected ribcage up against the armored human who had drifted too close to the wall. The dragon forced all his considerable weight into his sideways motion, and he felt the human's armor buckle. The man screamed and tried to drive his sword into the dragon, but in the second or two before his sternum joined his armor in crumpling completely, he could not get the leverage to penetrate the thick scales.

Yet even as Alvaranox crushed that man against the old wall, his companion continued the fight. His sword found purchase behind the dragon's shoulder. The cold steel blade bit deeply through the thinner scales on the back of the dragon's foreleg. Alvaranox screamed again, trying to pivot away from the attack. Yet with half his body pressed against the wall and a crushed human, maneuvering was difficult.

In desperation the dragon flared his right wing out as forcefully as he could, buffeting the man with it. It was enough to make him stumble back, though he lashed with his blade and sliced through the end of the dragon's wing. Still, it gave Alvaranox room. He pushed away from the wall and twisted towards the remaining warrior to strike him again. This time the dragon hit the man not with his wing but with his claws. Alvaranox's claws sunk partway through the man's plated armor, and though they did not sink too deeply into flesh, the dragon delivered the blow with more than enough force to launch the man off his feet.

The man hit the ground with a loud clatter and a cry of pain, and Alvaranox was on him an instant. The slayer sought to bring his bloodied sword to bare and Alvaranox swatted it out of his hands. It skidded across the mossy ground, bumping up against the base of a half crumbled wall. Alvaranox moved over the man to finish him off, tucking his tail protectively. Blood dribbled from the dragon's belly, speckling clothes and armor. Intent on tearing out the man's throat, Alvaranox lashed out with his claws. Yet faster than Alvaranox could see the dragon slayer had drawn a long knife and tried to parry the dragon's blow. The sharp blade cut deeply into Alvaranox's mottled paw pad, opening his paw nearly to the bone.

The dragon screeched at the sharpness of the fresh pain, but it would not be enough to save the man's life. Wounded paw or not, Alvaranox grabbed the man's hand, and squeezed till he felt the bones crunching. The dragon slayer screamed in agony of his own until Alvaranox dropped his head and ripped the human's throat out with his teeth. He spat the flesh back in the dying man's face, blood dribbling through the slits in his visor as Alvaranox stumbled away from him.

The dragon paid the dying man's gurgles little heed. Alvaranox's breath came in heaving pants as pain seemed to clench him everywhere at once. Weakly he lifted his foreleg and turned his paw over to see how badly cut it was. In the moonlight he could see bone, and sinew, and there was already dirt in the wound. It would have to be cleaned before it could be sewn up. Yet that was not the wound Alvaranox was worried about. With a whimpering moan, he eased himself down onto his haunches in a patch of moonlight to have a look at his belly.

The wound was thin but very deep, and dark red blood continued to well up from it. Already his forest green scales were striped and caked with crimson. As the adrenaline of the fight began to wear thin, terror began to creep back into the dragon's heart. Alvaranox had never been injured like this before. He'd been hurt many times, but in the past his scales had always prevented any sort of life-threatening wound. Yet these humans had gotten a shot at his underbelly, and knew how best to angle a sword to penetrate dragon scale.

Alvaranox pressed his uninjured paw to the wound, trying to put a little pressure on it. The pressure caused the already intense pain to soar into new heights of agony. The dragon screamed. He tipped his head back and roared his pain and fear to the sky as if calling to the moon itself for help. Gods he hurt. Oh, he was bleeding so much. The blade must have hit something vital, he was sure of it.

Home.

The collar's command came not as a word, but as a concept. Return home. Images flickered in his mind. He saw his sleeping chambers. He saw Nylah. He saw Kirra. The images flickered and distorted as though the collar itself was injured and unable to fully broadcast its instructions. The idea was clear, even if the pictures it painted in his mind were fragmented and brief.

Alvaranox did not hesitate. He knew he did not have much time to spare, and if he paused to think about how painful the flight was going to be, he might never leave the ground. So he simply gathered his will, grit his teeth, and leapt into the skies. He flared out his battered, bloodied wings, and beat them swiftly. Each wing stroke sent another jolt of pain stabbing into his gut, and every few moments the dragon cried out as if for mercy. Alvaranox tried to keep a paw on his belly as he flew. He had to do whatever he could to try and staunch the flow of his life blood, or he'd fall from the sky long before he ever made it home.

Home. The concept was almost laughable. In fact, Alvaranox did laugh. A boisterous laugh that came between cries of pain. The collar thought Asterryl was his home. Wasn't that cute. Cute. Yes. No. Damn it, Alvaranox, he cursed himself. You're in shock. Yes, you are. Wonderful.

"Asterryl is not home," the dragon growled aloud as if conducting a conversation with the collar. "It is my prison. My barrel."

No,_he imagined the collar replying. _It is your home.

"Get mounted, Collar," The dragon hissed, his vision swimming.

You first Dragon.

So, the collar had an attitude when Alvaranox was in shock. He'd keep that in mind, if he survived this night. The collar was wrong, though. Asterryl would never be his home. Asterryl was a life sentence. A sentence that Alvaranox had very nearly seen through to completion this night. Which made him think for a moment. He could land somewhere quiet, peaceful. Let his blood flow. He could end his imprisonment, end his slavery in some quiet place. Maybe he'd live long enough to see the sunrise one last time. He'd always liked the sunrise.

Yet the more he thought about it, the more Alvaranox wanted to live. For a moment, he hardly even knew why. What was his life worth, anyway? Years spent protecting a barely grateful populace who nonetheless thought him a monster. It seemed so futile an existence. So lonely. But in the end, despite all the pain and loneliness he endured, he wanted to go on living. He wanted to drink another barrel of wine. He wanted to tease Nylah, hear her laugh. He wanted to lay in the sun. He wanted to walk into the market and eat an entire stall worth of honey cakes.

Damn it, he was just like Stupid Fish. The closer he came to death, the more he wanted to keep swimming circles in that barrel.

Besides, someone had to feed that silver bastard.

So Alvaranox flew. And flew. And flew. The dragon wasn't even sure how he managed it. He felt himself fading the entire trip. Now and then his vision swam, other times it dimmed. His wings faltered. He forced himself to keep beating them against the air. He was so tired. If only he could land, and rest. If only he could just glide a little while. Yet hesitation would lead only to death. Perhaps it was the collar. Damn that thing. Every time he began to falter, he could almost hear its bell ringing to rouse him again.

Home.

In some morbid, half conscious reverie, Alvaranox wondered if the collar would have let him die at all, should he have chosen it.

By the time Alvaranox spotted Asterryl and lake beyond it in the distance, the sky had begun to lighten. A purple blush like an aged bruise was spreading across the darkness. Soon it was followed by the first pale pink and yellow hues of the pre-dawn sunrise. When golden fire began to spill across the horizon, Alvaranox's wings finally gave out. He knew in some strange detached way he had no strength left with which to beat them, so he simply locked them into place, and did his best not to crash into anything solid.

Alvaranox made for a patch of soft looking grass just beyond the outer wall of the town. In the distance he could hear the guards who manned the gateway calling out as they saw their guardian returning in bloodied tatters. Alvaranox stretched his legs out to touch down against the grass, but his limbs gave out beneath him and the dragon tumbled for a while. At least he didn't break anything. At last he came to a rest in a battered, bleeding heap.

Alvaranox found himself sprawled on his back, staring up at the sky. The sun was rising. Somewhere beyond him, people screamed and called for help. Someone yelled for Kirra, another for Nylah or any healer the town had to offer. Others just yelled. Alvaranox paid them all little heed. He was glad he made it home. The pain was fading.

The pain was fading, and he was home. That was good. The dragon heaved a sigh, staring up at the sky above him. Alvaranox watched the sunrise until darkness claimed him.

---

Chapter Three

---

Pain returned, and stirred the dragon back to consciousness for a little while. He gasped, his black-horned head jerking up off the grassy ground. For a moment he could not recall where he was, or why he hurt so badly. Humans were all around him, pressing things against his body. The more they pressed on his belly, the worse he hurt.

Alvaranox screamed.

"He's waking up!"

"Never mind that! Hold that bandage tight, I say!"

The dragon's vision swam. He tried to focus on the people around him but found it impossible. He lifted a fore leg and saw blood caking it. Confusion and panic rolled through him. They were murdering him. The dragon tried to swipe at the one pushing upon his belly, yet he simply lacked the strength. His front leg dropped back to the ground, limp. Then more pain surged through his belly. He coughed, spat blood, and blessed unconsciousness wreathed him once again.

When he awoke again with another scream, there were twice as many humans around him as before. The pain made him thrash, fear made him fight. Slipping in and out of consciousness made it impossible for the dragon to register what was really happening. Instincts told him to fight against those who caused him pain. He tried to twist away from them, tried to lash out with claws and teeth yet found himself too weak to do anything more than shove a human aside here and there.

"Hold him down!"

"How the hell am I going to do that, he's a dragon!"

"Where the hell is Nylah!"

"She's coming, she's coming!"

"He's bleeding again, press more salve in that wound!"

Nylah. The name was familiar.

Nylah. The name brought him a measure of focus.

Alvaranox struggled to lift his horned head from the ground. Blood caked his face and muzzle, bits of sod clung to his horns where they'd embedded themselves in the grass during his agonized writhing. His vision swam, copper eyes unable to properly focus on anything. A human woman stood at his side, just beyond his crumpled wing. She was jabbing her hands in the air as though striking down unseen foes, yelling orders at the motley assortment of men and woman who had come to try and save the dragon's life. Through his hazy vision, the woman seemed wreathed in roiling flames.

Someone had lit the poor woman's head on fire.

Alvaranox wondered for a moment if he'd inadvertently flamed the woman while she was pressing on his wounded belly. For a person who was on fire, she seemed to be taking it remarkably well. She must have been yelling orders to at least four or five men all at once. One of them was rolling out charts upon the ground, another pulling herbs from a basket, and two more smearing some kind of salve upon a set of bandages.

"Nylah," the dragon croaked, swallowing the blood in his throat as he tried to concentrate. Only Nylah yelled at people like that.

The woman turned towards him. No, it wasn't Nylah. Nylah didn't have flames shooting from her head. Come to think of it, neither did this woman. She just had plenty of slightly curly red hair cascading from her skull. The red haired woman quickly moved to the dragon and snatched up his broad, wedge-shaped best she could. Her brilliant green eyes caught fire in the sunlight as they bored into Alvaranox's own copper gaze.

"Alv!" The woman yelled as though it were the dragon's ears filled with blood and not his belly. "Alv, stay awake!"

Kirra. Yes. Kirra had red hair. His newest Handler. She always had been a pain in his scaly ass. "No," Alvaranox murmured, closing his eyes a moment. "Sleep."

"No, Alv!" Kirra hissed. "Stay with me! You cannot sleep right now, you hear me? You cannot sleep!"

Alvaranox would have none of it. He began to lean his head back against the grass again. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. The pain was beginning to fade again. Yes, sleep. Sleep brought relief from the pain. Kirra could yell at him later, when he felt better. Sleep.

"No, Alv," Kirra said, fear rising in her voice. "Damn it, stay awake! You!" Kirra scowled, her gut twisting. She didn't want to do this to the dragon, but she had no choice. "You! Squeeze his paw."

"But..."

"Do it now! Make him scream!" Kirra shouted her orders at the man, her eyes flashing. "We have to keep him awake, if he drifts too deeply now I fear we will never rouse him. It's a miracle his heart hasn't given out already."

Somewhere in his drifting mind, Alvaranox heard something about having his paw squeezed. For a moment, he had no idea how that was to keep him awake. Then someone dug fingers into the rent meat of his paw pad, and brilliant, sharp pain rocketed up his foreleg. Alvaranox roared awake, tears of pain shining in his coppery eyes as he jerked his head up and out of Kirra's grasp, pulling his paw away from the torturous fingers.

"I'm sorry, Alv," Kirra cried out, her voice twisting as though she were the one in pain. She grabbed the dragon's sensitive frilled ear. "But you cannot sleep right now, do you hear me? I'd rather hurt you and save your life than let you flee the pain and see you die."

Alvaranox took a shuddering breath, his paw and belly throbbing in torturous syncopation. "Kirra," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Where is...Nylah?"

"She's coming," Kirra said, though the dragon feared it may be more hollow reassurance than anything else. If Kirra was hurt the dragon was calling for his previous Handler in his darkest moment, she did not let it show. "Alv, listen to me. You cannot sleep. If you sleep, you will die. Do you understand? You will die!"

Die. He did not want to die. Kirra's words found his barely-beating heart, and squeezed it with cold fingers. "Don't...Don't let me die, Kirra," the dragon said, his voice trembling with fear and pain. Later, he would be humiliated to recall his plea. But in that moment he was simply afraid, as any other creature would be. It wasn't simply that he feared death. More than that, Alvaranox did not want to die like this, in this place. Not in his prison, like Stupid Fish. "Please, Kirra! Don't...don't let me die. Not here...not in this barrel."

"He's delusional," Kirra called out to her assistants. Then she turned her attention back to the dragon. She worked her hands around him to hold his head, stroking his muzzle. Sticky, half-dried dragon blood coated her fingers. "I won't, Alv, I promise. I won't let you die, alright? But you've got to stay with me for a few minutes, whatever it takes. Alright? Can you do that for me?"

Alvanorax nodded slowly. Even that simply action seemed to take all his strength. He had to try and focus. He tilted his head, looking over at Kirra. For the first time he realized the woman wore little more than a dark green nightdress swishing around her body. She must have sprinted here straight out of her bed. Her dress was already caked in dragon blood, and her arms were both smeared with the stuff as well. Kirra was probably one of the first here, perhaps even the first to try and staunch the bleeding.

"Alv, can you hear me?" Kirra asked, her tone forceful enough to draw his attention.

Alvaranox managed another little nod.

"Do you know where your liver is?"

The question caught Alvaranox off guard. If he'd been in a better state of mind the question would have worried him. The humans didn't know what parts of him were injured any more than he did, and they were hoping the dragon knew his own anatomy well enough to offer them some assistance. But Alvaranox was practically drifting above his own body now, and the question brought a wheezing laugh from him.

Alvaranox tasted fresh blood splatter his tongue as he laughed, and yet he managed a grin. Kirra grimaced at the sight of the dragon's fangs and teeth tinted so scarlet. "In a barrel," the dragon murmured.

"What?" Kirra didn't realize he was joking at first.

"My liver," the dragon said with another wheeze of amusement. "I put it in a barrel. It keeps Stupid Fish company."

"He's not going to be able to help us," Kirra called out to the others. "He's barely even conscious." She gently stroked the dragon's throat, trying to keep him calm. "That's alright, Alv. You just stay awake for me, okay?"

Alvaranox gave a loud groan as he felt someone clambering onto his body. He lifted his head just enough to see that a human man had settled against the area below his ribs. "If he's anything like a horse, his liver would be here..." The man traced a line across the dragon's underbelly with his finger. Then he began to crawl about, pointing out different places. "His kidneys about here, and here...His stomach here. And...his bowels probably start around this area..."

"But that's all speculation," Kirra called out. "If his liver's been run through, I don't think he'd have made it home, so we focus on stopping the bleeding and trying to close him up."

"But if its his kidney, by tomorrow he could..."

"If we don't stop the damn bleeding now, by tomorrow we won't have a dragon to worry about anymore!" The strong, sharp tone of Kirra's voice cut off any argument. "Right now that is the first and _only_priority! Is that understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am," replied a chorus of voices.

"When did you get so damn bossy," Alvaranox muttered, his voice slurred. He'd never actually heard Kirra take charge like that before. Usually she was a little more subdued, deferring to Nylah. She was often quiet around the dragon, rarely pushing back against his insults or his attempts to boss her around. Some days she simply sat nearby, writing or sketching in some book while the dragon did his best to ignore her. Nylah worked to get him to trust the woman, and to get Kirra to take charge more when Nylah wasn't around. Until now Alvaranox hadn't seen much evidence that it was working.

"When you got stabbed in the belly," Kirra snapped right back at him.

That made Alvaranox grin just a little despite the pain. Sounded like something Nylah would say. Weakly, he licked his nose, and cocked his head a little to regard her with as much focus as he could grasp. "I'm going to die, aren't I Kirra."

Kirra's face twisted in a pained scowl that provided more answer than her words. "...No."

"You're lying," the dragon said, his heart sinking.

"I don't know, alright?" Kirra's voice rose, heated. "It's bad, Alv, it's very, very bad. But I am doing everything I can to save your life, I promise you that. We're trying as hard as we can..."

While he had the focus, Alvaranox lifted his head again, swinging it around. There were dozens of humans all over the place. Someone had dragged over benches and tables, covered them with reams of gauze and rolls of bandages. Other tables held basket upon basket of herbs and medicines. A whole line of people were mashing and mixing things with mortar and pestle and smearing the contents on trays which were hustled over to the dragon. Every time someone pressed against the dragon's belly, they were working in more herbal salves made to staunch the flow of blood. When the salves were smeared into the wound, clean bandages were held against the wound. When those were red and soaked they were removed and the process began again.

"So it seems," Alvaranox said, resting his head against Kirra. Her warmth was oddly comforting. "Is it working?"

"We've slowed the bleeding, but we haven't stopped it yet," Kirra admitted, cradling the dragon's heavy head. "You've more blood in you than I'd have guessed, and its not spurting from you so there were no truly major arteries severed. But it continues to ooze and run and we fear something vital to you has been cut deeper than we can reach to sew it shut."

"Mmrrhmm," the dragon murmured, trying to keep his eyes open. Things were going out of focus again. "You're awfully bloody, Kirra."

The odd, off-hand remark brought a nervous smile to Kirra's face. "That's your fault, Dragon. I was pressing bandages on your wounds while I waited for everyone else to make it here."

"Kirra!" Someone called out, running up behind the red-haired woman. "Nylah has just arrived."

"Oh, thank the Gods," Kirra said. Kirra gave the dragon's head a squeeze. "I'll bring her over, alright? Do not sleep!" Kirra rose to her feet, grabbing the man's shoulder a moment. "Do not let the dragon sleep! If he begins to drift off, snatch up his ear and twist it as sharply as you can till he wakes."

"I shall bite his hand off if he does," Alvaranox said, though the fatigue in the dragon's voice said otherwise.

"Do it anyway," Kirra hissed through her teeth to the man before she darted off. "Nylah! Nylah, over here!"

Alvaranox cried out in sudden pain as someone pressed a fresh bandage to his belly. At least the waves of pain that came when they pushed upon his wound seemed to arrive with less frequency. That was good, right? Didn't that mean it was taking longer for the bandages to become soaked with blood? Surely that meant his bleeding was nearly stopped. Either that, or he was out of blood.

Seeking to distract himself from the pain, Alvaranox twisted his head around. One of his horns caught in the grass, tearing a little rut through the sod. Though it left his neck bent at an awkward angle, the position did allow him a clear view of Kirra as she ran towards Nylah's horse. Nylah did not often ride a horse any more, but she did have a dappled chestnut mare she took around the town now and then. Much like Kirra it was clear Nylah hadn't bothered to change out of her cream-colored nightgown when she heard the news about the dragon. Given the way she was ordering a group of people to strip all the saddle bags from her horse it seemed likely her own delay was due to stopping by the Handler's Sanctuary she had set up years ago. It was where she kept all her notes about the dragon's health and anatomy and all her various herbal concoctions she'd created especially for him over the years.

As the men began to ferry her supplies towards the group working feverishly on the dragon, Kirra ran right up to Nylah. Nylah tried to push past her towards the dragon, but Kirra snatched the older woman by the shoulders. Alvaranox couldn't hear their conversation, but for some reason it seemed Kirra wanted to talk to her before letting her get to close to the dragon. The complexities of human relationships sometimes eluded him, but it seemed she was trying to prepare Nylah for the worst. Why, he didn't know. If they were dragons they'd simply come right out with the truth. He was dying, so say goodbye.

Perhaps Kirra said just that. Her words struck Nylah like a physical blow. The older woman doubled over a moment, pressing a hand to her mouth as if to hold a horrified scream inside. Kirra moved to support her as Nylah's knees buckled, and soon the older woman was leaning against the younger. Nylah's shoulders shook.

Nylah was sobbing.

Alvaranox knew then just how deeply Nylah had come to care for the dragon. Nylah had known the dragon nearly all her life, and for all those years she had sought to make his lonely existence just little more pleasant. Though she had never truly put it to words, Alvaranox understood then that Nylah thought of the dragon as her greatest friend. And she had just been told that friend was dying.

Tears brimmed in the dragon's eyes as he saw Nylah sag to her knees, her face pressed to Kirra's shoulder. Alvaranox did not want to die. He did not want to leave Nylah here, without him. It was a strange realization for him to have, yet he knew it was the truth. For a while now, he had feared what life would be like for him when Nylah was gone. Yet this was the first time he had even considered what life might be like for Nylah without Alvaranox there. Bittersweet as it often was, their friendship was true and the dragon was as important a part of Nylah's life as she was of his.

"Nylah," the dragon wheezed. He tried to call out to her, but could not find enough strength to make his voice heard. "Nylah!" He tried again, but her name slipped from his tongue as a trembling plea rather than a demanding roar.

"Lady Nylah!" The man who'd stood by to ensure the dragon remained awake offered his voice in the dragon's stead. "Lady Nylah, he's calling for you!"

Nylah's head jerked up from Kirra's shoulder. She pointed towards the dragon, and Kirra nodded. With a supporting arm draped around Nylah's body, Kirra rushed the former handler over to the dragon's side. The man moved out of the way, and Nylah eased down onto her knees alongside Alvaranox's head. Tears still ran from Nylah's burnished brown eyes, glinting like jewels of sorrow in the morning sunlight.

"Gods, Alv," Nylah whimpered, moving to hug the dragon's head tightly against her body. "I told you to be safe, and this is how you thank me?"

Alvaranox laughed despite the pain it brought him. "You know I never do what you tell me."

"I know," Nylah said, her voice a trembling whisper. Hot tears dripped to the dragon's muzzle, washing lines through the dried blood. "I'd tell you to live through this but I'm terrified you'd defy me in that, too."

Kirra meanwhile, dashed to the table where all of Nylah's notes and journals were being assembled and unrolled. "Nylah! Which journal has the herbal notes you were telling me about the other day?"

Nylah blinked and lifted her head. For a moment, she seemed irritated to have been interrupted. Then her eyes brightened and she sucked in a breath. "The blue one! The two roses on the cover. What have you been giving him?"

Kirra quickly shuffled through the journals until she found the one trimmed in blue leather. Twin roses were embossed upon the front of it. "Everything I know to stop the bleeding and ease his pain. Threeblade, Whiteroot, ground Sage Blossom..." She thumbed through the pages swiftly, her lips moving as she read to herself. "But I just remembered..."

"Forget easing the pain," Nylah called out. She would have jumped to her feet were she not so intent on cradling the dragon's head against her body. "Sage Blossom inhibits the ability of Whiteroot to promote the clotting of blood! Take it out of the mixture, and replace it with as much Black Arrowbloom as you can get, right now!"

"Of course," Kirra said, reaching the page she'd sought. "I'd totally discounted it because of the fevers and other sicknesses it can cause, but its worth the risk because it..."

"...Demonstrates a remarkable ability to staunch the flow of blood from the dragon's wounds," Nylah finished for her.

"Yes!" Kirra beamed, waving to the table with the baskets of herbs. "The Black Arrowbloom. Now! As much as you can pulverize. And for the love of the Gods, don't any of you get it in your mouth."

Alvaranox gave a whimper, trying to follow the conversation. He did not like the sound of that. "Arrow...bloom? Is that not...a poison?"

"It causes fevers and sickness, and it causes the blood to clot unnaturally fast. Especially your blood." Nylah glanced down at the dragon. For the moment her fearful sorrow had been replaced with hope and determination. "I wouldn't normally do this but we are out of options, Alv. I even have it listed right in my notes..."

"For emergency use only," the two woman said at the same time.

"This qualifies." Nylah settled back upon her knees alongside the dragon's head. "But its your decision to make, Alv. Yes, it is a poison, but I believe it is a poison with a chance to save your life. You are a creature of strength, stronger even than I had ever realized. But even a dragon has his limits, and there is so much blood all around you..." Nylah's voice trembled, and she fought to keep speaking. "I...I do not want to lose you, Alv." She reached out, cupping the dragon's green scaled cheek, stroking it a little. "But this is a chance we are taking. It is possible this may expedite your end rather than stave it off. I feel if we do nothing now, you will not see the sunset. If we try this, at least I believe it gives you a good chance to pull through. But it will hurt. A lot. And as I said..."

Nylah trailed off, her hazel eyes drifting towards the ground. Alvaranox sighed. She did not need to repeat herself. "Go on then. Do what you must, you old hag."

A smile cracked through the pained veneer of the old lady's face. Her fingers shook as they traced little circles around the pebbly scales of the dragon's muzzle. "If you die on me I shall quite cross with you."

Pain and fear strained the dragons voice yet he sought to present a brave facade. "I should think you'd be more cross with the man who stabbed me."

Nylah's smile grew just a little more. She lifted her eyes to glance at Kirra, giving her a silent nod that she had the dragon's permission. Then she looked around at a few of the other man standing nearby. "Fix up as much antidote for the Arrowbloom's sickness as you can. And mix it with just as much Redbark. It'll help keep the fevers under control, and if the Gods are willing, it will also help his body start to produce more blood."

"I hate Redbark," the dragon muttered. He'd been made to eat the bitter stuff before after lesser injuries and illnesses.

"That's a shame, because you're going to be eating it three times a day for the foreseeable future," Nylah smiled at him a little, her lightly boney fingers tenderly rubbing the golden blotch at the end of his nose. She cleared away as much dried blood as she could to trace the shape of the golden marking. "Consider it penance for ruining my roses."

The dragon liked her optimism. It was as though she were already sure he'd survive. Nylah had always been optimistic. A good balance for the pessimism and bitterness the dragon himself often tried to stave off. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he'd come to trust her. She balanced him out. She always looked for a way to make things better for him or a chance to give him something to feel thankful for.

Kirra soon came forward carrying an old wooden bucket by its rickety handle. Discolored water sloshed out of it. Even with the scent of his own blood sticking to his nostrils the dragon noticed the water's foul, bitter aroma. When Kirra set the bucket down near his head, he gave a little growl, flaring out his spines.

"I suppose there's no point in telling you I refuse to drink that."

"Drink as much as you can," Kirra said softly. "We ground the herbs and mixed them into the water. That will help them get into your system faster. And you need the water, as well."

Alvaranox glanced between the two women. Both faces were set with lines of worry. Nylah looked at the bucket, and Kirra gave the older woman a slow, single nod. They must have put something else in there. He stretched and twisted his long neck towards the bucket, and Nylah lifted it to hold it out to him. Ignoring the scent, the dragon delicately lapped at the water in the bucket. It was cold, and held a hint of a bitter medicine quality that helped to replace the coppery taste of his own blood. The water rolled down his long throat in waves. As he drank, the dragon could not help but notice the woman glancing at his belly now and then.

When Alvaranox paused for a breath, he forced a smile to his muzzle. "Please tell me you're not waiting to see if that water runs out the hole in my belly."

Their silence was not the answer he'd hoped for.

After a moment, Nylah gently stroked his neck. "Finish your water."

Alvaranox pushed his muzzle into the bucket, lapping up the last of the water. He swirled his tongue around the bottom of it to collect the final bits of foul smelling herbs. As much pain as he was in, the unpleasantly bitter taste across his tongue was almost a welcome distraction. He forced himself to swallow the last of it, and then let his wedge-shaped head fall back against the grass.

Nylah smoothed out her nightgown, and settled herself down alongside the dragon's head. "In a moment, we're going to start working the Arrowbloom mixture into your wounds. What we just gave you should help ease your body into a restful state. If you start to fall asleep..."

"I know," The dragon muttered. "Kirra told me. I have to stay awake."

"...You can sleep now," Nylah said, softly. "You won't want to feel what's about to happen any more than you have to."

Alvaranox cocked his head without lifting it from the grass. He knew what that meant. Kirra had been worried about being unable to wake him, but they all knew he was fading swiftly. They were about to do whatever it took to force the bleeding to stop, and they would either save the dragon or they would fail. If this attempt was going to accelerate his demise, it would not matter if he was awake at the time or not. They would stop his bleeding, and then his body would either pull through...or it would not.

Nylah and Kirra both knew that. They had silently agreed to have Kirra add something to his the herbs to ensure he would sleep through the worst of it. The look they'd shared had been agreement that Alvaranox had suffered enough. If the dragon was to die this day, Nylah wanted his death to be as peaceful and painless as possible. They had just ensured that if his death were soon to come, it would come in his sleep.

"I understand," Alvaranox murmured, closing his eyes. He did not wish to look at his bloodied body any more.

"We're ready," Kirra said softly, near the dragon's belly.

"Give him a moment, first," Nylah whispered.

As Alvaranox lay upon his back, Nylah slipped her hands under his head. She gently eased the dragons head up in her increasingly frail arms. Nylah guided the dragon to rest his head best he could against the warmth and comfort of her lap. Then she began to stroke the dragon's throat. Nylah had long known that was a very soothing gesture to a dragon. Alvaranox swallowed the suddenly clenched lump beneath her stroking hand. A few tears threatened to spill from the dragon's eyes.

"Nylah," he said, his voice barely perceptible. "If...I do not wake..."

"Hush, now," Nylah said, caressing his scales. Her voice trembled as she sought to keep it from breaking. Sobs were climbing her throat, and threatened to send her crumpling against the dragon in a anguish-wracked heap.

"...Thank you...for..." For being my friend.

"I said hush," Nylah said when the dragon trailed off. She knew what he was trying to say, yet the more he spoke aloud the more she feared it was the last thing she'd ever hear him say. She leaned forward as she began to cry, pressing her face against the dragon's bloodied scales as though he were some favored blanket there to comfort her, not the other way around. Her shoulders shook as she wept against the dragon. "You don't have to say anything, Alv. Just rest."

Kirra returned to them, crouching down to gently rub Nylah's back. Alvaranox wanted to open his eyes, to look up at them one last time, but found himself unable. An entire ocean of fatigue was washing away at his mind now, eroding his consciousness one dark wave at a time. He thought he heard Kirra sniffling a little too. The dragon felt a few hot tears of his own escaping his closed eyes.

Gods. He did not want to die. Not in this place. Not in this barrel. Not alone.

Yet.

He wasn't alone.

"Whatever happens," Alvaranox murmured through a haze of unnatural drowsiness and fear. "Please...don't leave me."

"I won't," Nylah promised through her tears, her voice a fervent whisper brushing against the dragon's scales. Her breath felt cool against the wet streaks made by her tears. "Never, I promise!"

Alvaranox smiled as he drifted away. He wanted to thank her, but he could not find the strength to open his mouth again. The feeling of her warmth against him, her hand brushing his scales gradually faded into the background. He knew the pain was coming, but he let sleep overtake him. When at last the pain did come, it seemed distant, cold. The sharp, icy spike of it drove deep into his belly, and sent him tumbling into the merciful void of unconsciousness.

---

Chapter Four

---

Alvaranox wandered the wasteland. For hours, he had trekked across the place on foot. His wings were too weak to carry him. So he walked across blasted, broken earth. His paws ached from the blistering heat and the many cracked, rugged pebbles and stones upon which he stepped. The scorched red hue of the parched ground stretched on endlessly. The color of it burnt his eyes. The horizon stretched on endlessly, seared and scarred by the baking sun. The endless expanse was only broken by the twisted skeletons of long dead trees. Most of their limbs had rotted away in ages past, leaving only desiccated hunks of gray and black wood.

Somewhere in this wretched place there was a bell. Alvaranox intended to find it, and beat the damn thing into dust.

Yet for as far as Alvaranox walked, he never seemed to get anywhere. The land seemed to hold no beginning and no end. For every ten broken trees he passed there were ten more. And no matter how much time had passed, the sun somehow seemed to rise just a little higher without ever actually reaching a zenith. The sun glared down at him in fury and burned his wings. They stung and ached, and he could not hide them from the ever-present sunlight. When he shifted them against his back they felt raw and blistered.

If only he could get a little water. Once he came upon a dry streambed. A cluster of broken logs dotted the ground around it, testament to the fact that there had once been water there. That there had once been life in this place. But life and water were long gone from here. Nothing living seemed to remain. No birds circled in the sky, no lizards skirted across the ground. Alvaranox even turned over a few of the dried out logs expecting to find a few bugs skittering for cover. Instead he found only more dry, dead earth.

After a time, Alvaranox began to wonder if he was dead, too. His memories were all vague, almost imperceptible. He recalled something about a town. Something about a grave injury. Yet the more he tried to recall just how he'd gotten to this wasteland, the more ephemeral his memories got. Reaching for his memories was no better than reaching for a dream. He may as well have been snatching at spider webs. The harder the dragon tried to grab them the more they disintegrated all around his paws.

But Alv knew there was a bell, and he knew he hated it.

If only he could find the damn thing at last and shatter it, he might finally get some rest. Wasn't that what he was supposed to be doing? Resting? A strange thought. The dragon shook his head as if to clear it, but he could not clear the thought. It nettled at him like a tiny thorn in his paw pad. An irritant more than a pain yet inescapable. Should he rest? Had had already been resting?

No! No time to rest. Smash the bell, then rest.

Alvaranox trudged on. He tilted his head black, glaring at the sun. He flicked his flight membranes closed over his eyes to help protect them from the heat. The dragon felt as though his eyes themselves were going to dry out and end up just like all those dead trees if he spent too much more time in the sun. He licked his nose. His tongue felt dry, and sandpapery.

Gods, he was thirsty.

The dragon tried to swallow, but his long throat felt like that dry streambed.

"Help him."

Alvaranox jerked his head up. Who the hell said that? He turned on his paws, looking around, but the wasteland remained as empty and endless as ever.

"For all the things you can make him do..."

It was a woman's voice. It sounded like a ghost, whispering in his ear. The words drifted in and out of his consciousness. He must be imagining things.

"...For all the control you seem to have..."

Alvaranox groaned, and pressed a paw to his head. Was that voice real? The words rattled around in his brain like the tolling of some spectral bell.

"...Surely you can help him heal. Damn you, he's lived through this much, just help him make it through the night! Help him heal! Save his life, you wretched thing! You owe him that much!"

Something grabbed the dragon by the neck. Alvaranox felt something smooth and solid tighten around his throat. He gagged a moment, flopping back onto his haunches. He grabbed at his throat with both paws, choking for a moment as the pressure built on his throat. His collar. He wore a collar, and it was choking him. It twisted and turned against his scales as though someone were trying to wrench it free.

Then the feeling eased as quickly as it came, replaced by soothing waves that radiated out from beneath the collar. His burnt and blistered wings were cooled, and the throb in his paws eased. The worst of his parched thirst ebbed away. Even the crushing, relentless heat of the sun faded to a gentle warmth.

The voice drifted to him again, but it was fading quickly. Alvaranox tried to focus on it. Perhaps it was a spirit who could lead him to the damnable bell. Yet whatever tenuous connection the voice may have shared with the dragon seemed broken, and the sound drifted away upon the sudden, refreshing breeze that unexpected rolled through the wasteland.

So be it, the dragon thought. At least he felt better now.

Alvaranox trudged onwards until something in the distance caught his attention. A particularly large dead tree stood like an unforgiving sentinel against the horizon. Beneath that tree lay a huddled heap of bones. As though some poor creature had sought shelter beneath the tree back when the land had life, and they had both perished together. Alvaranox altered his course a little, heading towards the skeletal remains.

Even from a distance, he could tell the skeleton once belonged to a dragon. For some reason, that saddened him. It also made him curious. He wondered if the dead dragon sought the bell as well. He padded towards it. The skull lay mostly exposed atop the earth, though part of the bottom jaw was hidden in the broken dirt. From the size and shape of the horns, Alvaranox guessed it might have once been a female dragon. They bore smaller horns and frills than the males. The skeleton was half curled around the base of the dead tree, as though the female had curled there seeking shade and shelter, then never again rose.

Alvaranox pitied her. It seemed a lonely place to die, even if his species often sought solitude.

The bones of the skeleton's wings lay draped out on either side of her, though many of them seemed lost beneath the cracked earth. Or perhaps when there was still life here, they'd been gnawed upon and carried off by scavengers. Though for the most part, the skeleton was intact. The tail curled out across the ground. No sign at all of any spines upon the bones of her tail. Definitely a female, then. Only the males bore by the deadly decorations upon their tails.

Half her neck was buried in the dirt as well. Some of her vertebrae vanished into the earth for long stretches, only to return again near her skull. Alvaranox wondered how long ago she must have died. The bones that were visible were long since bleached by the sun with no traces left of flesh upon them. Though as he walked around the skeleton to examine it, Alvaranox did spot a few dried up scales here and there. At first he mistook them for pebbles. Then he plucked one from the dry earth and held it up in front of his snout. Though withered, it was clearly a dragon scale. Black from the look of it, or perhaps very dark blue. The color might well have been altered by decades in the sun.

With a smirk, Alvaranox thought it was a shame the female hadn't arrived here at the same time he had. It had been a while since he'd had the pleasure of female company. Then he scowled to himself. A morbid joke to make given the circumstances. Ah, well. Perhaps he should bury the bones. Then again, dragons were never much for elaborate rituals surrounding death. When a dragon was dead, what good did it do anyone to give the body any special treatment? If the dragon had a mate or relatives, then they would burn the body, and celebrate the life of that dragon.

Alvaranox considered burning the bones of this long-dead female, but he'd have to dig the rest of them up to do that. Seemed a lot of work. Besides, he had a bell to...what was that? Something caught his attention at the female's neck. That hadn't been there before, had it? A bulging area of earth marked the spot where the skeleton's neck plunged beneath the ground.

Alvaranox went to clear the dirt away from the rise. His paw trembled as he dug. He already knew what he was going to find. It took only a few swipes of sharp claws through hard earth to uncover the curved surface of an ebony collar. He brushed dirt away from it, exposing the engraved images of dragons in flight that circled the skeleton's neck. The ebony surface caught the sunlight, glinting at the dragon as though teasing him. Alvaranox's whole body shook. His heart railed in his chest as though furious with his sternum. This female had a collar just as he did.

Was he not the only one? Was he not the first?

BRONG!

The terrible sound of the bell shattered the silence of the wasteland. Alvaranox jerked his head up and turned towards the sound. In the distance, a towering black bell loomed over everything, monolithic as a mountain. A roiling dust cloud raced across the land, kicked up by the shockwave of the bell's terrible toll. Debris hurtled into the air as the power of the wave tore trees, stones and earth apart. An earthen tsunami swept through the wasteland, destroying everything in a terrible cascade of devastation.

Alvaranox screamed in horror, and turned to run. He sprinted back across the wasteland as swiftly as he could, dust kicked up from his paws. If only he had strength in his wings. Behind him, the terrible churning roar of the shockwave grew louder and louder. The earth began to shake beneath his paws as the very world was torn asunder. The tall dead tree and the dragon skeleton beneath it vanished as an instant, sucked into the roiling maelstrom. Moments later and the wave reached Alvaranox. His stomach lurched as he thrown into the air, tumbling head over tail. Tossed like a leaf in the wind, the dragon saw nothing left beneath him now but blackness. As he plummeted towards it, Alvaranox screamed again.

That horrified shriek spilled from nightmare into reality. The sound of it finally yanked Alvaranox from the fever dream and he jumped to his feet with a start. His breath came in great heaving pants, and each inhalation brought a spike of pain to his wounded belly. The dragon's spines all flared out in alarm and his copper eyes were wide and unfocused. He frantically looked around, the nightmare's images still influencing his mind.

Where was he, where had he landed? Had he survived that maelstrom?

"Alvaranox!"

That voice again.

"Alvaranox, it's alright! It's alright, it was just a dream. Please, calm down before you tear yourself open again."

That voice.

"Kirra," the dragon murmured, his vision blurred.

"Yes," the voice answered. "And Nylah. We're here, but please, lay down!"

"Gently," another voice said. "Slowly. Just...ease back down..."

Kirra. Nylah. He knew those voices. Those names. Yes, he knew them. Hesitantly, the dragon tried to grasp at his surroundings, tried to separate dream from reality. Hadn't he been...in a wasteland? No...No, that was...only a dream. Even as he tried to recall it, it shattered like glass, leaving smaller and smaller fragments for him to piece together and remember. Yet at the same time, memories of Asterryl and Nylah and Kirra flooded back into his brain, assembling themselves again in his mind. That was right. He'd been on a mission. It was...an ambush. Oh, Gods!

He...he'd lived.

"I'm alive," he murmured, half awed by his own survival.

"By a thread," snapped the second voice, which he now clearly recognized as Nylah. "Now sit your scaly ass down before that thread snaps." Only Nylah could tell him how close to death he was and make it sound like she was talking to a child she'd just caught stealing cookies. "Carefully, dragon."

"Yes, Nylah," Alvaranox murmured.

Alvaranox slowly lowered himself to the grass again. He glanced around, taking in his surroundings for the first time. It was dark out. Most of the people who'd been working on his wounds were gone, and most of the supplies had been removed. Blankets were now spread around him. Some of them had blood on them. Blood. The treatment must have worked then. Pain roiled in his belly as if to remind him he was still badly injured. The pain was soon echoing in his paw, and a few other places. A heavy bandage was now wrapped around nearly his entire right forepaw. A dark stain was soon spreading across it. Oh, that was right. His whole pad was sliced open, and he'd just jumped up and put weight upon it.

Smart, Alvaranox.

"Wasn't I on my back?"

"For a time," Nylah said gently. "You began to thrash about in your sleep, though. Kirra and I had to move back. We were afraid you were going to open up your wounds, but thankfully that doesn't seem to be the case. You ended up on your side, and seemed a little more relaxed for a while. At least until you jumped up screaming. Looks like you've got your paw bleeding again now."

Alvaranox groaned in pain. He twisted himself a little to lay on his side opposite his wound. "I hurt."

"I'm sure you do," Nylah said, moving to sit next to the dragon's muzzle. "Try and go back to sleep."

"How long have I..."

"All day," Kirra spoke up. Alvaranox saw Kirra had gotten cleaned up and changed into warmer clothes. She walked to a nearby table, and fetched a bucket of water and a soft cloth. "And well into the night." When she returned she dipped the cloth in the cold water and then began to run it along the dragon's neck. "After you calmed again, we'd been trying to tend your fever for a while."

Alvaranox murmured to himself. He hadn't felt the fever until she mentioned it, yet now he felt as hot as he had in that damn wasteland. Wasteland. Yes, he'd dreamed of it. No wonder he dreamt of being so damn hot. "Fever...yes, you...warned me about that. I felt it in my dreams."

"Did you?" Nylah asked, stroking his muzzle. She was still wearing her cream colored nightdress. Still caked with some of his blood. Nylah had stayed by his side the entire time, just as she promised. That made the dragon smile.

"Yes," Alvaranox murmured, slowly closing his eyes again. He wanted to sleep. "Hot as hell, and parched."

"You should drink some water then, before you return to slumber."

Alvaranox opened his eyes once more. "Very well." He stretched his long neck, and as if just to irritate Kirra, shoved his snout into her water bucket, quickly gulping down the cool water. It felt like cold heaven sliding down his long, dry throat. The irritable growl that Kirra gave only made the water taste that much sweeter. When he lifted his head and licked the dribbling beads of water off his chin, the dragon glanced at Kirra. "I heard your voice in my dream."

"Did you," Kirra's voice was flat as she took the bucket to fill it back up from the nearby well.

"Yes," Alvaranox said, laying his head back down. "Thought you were a spirit. Something about...helping me to heal. To save my life. I think I felt better after that."

Kirra stiffened, frozen for a moment. She slowly turned back towards the others, sharing a concerned look with Nylah. "You heard that?"

"Yes," the dragon said again, letting his eyes drift shut. This time he had no intention of opening them until he'd gotten more sleep. "Was I not supposed to?"

Kirra poured water from the well bucket into her own, and then returned to kneel alongside the dragon again. "I was...talking to your collar."

"Ah," Alvaranox murmured, a little smile drifting over his muzzle. "I appreciate you cursing it on my behalf then. Must have heard your voice drifting into my dreams."

"That's just it though," Nylah said, looking at Kirra a moment. "She...didn't actually say anything."

"I had my hands on your collar, while you were thrashing," Kirra said. A chill began to trickle down the dragon's spine, unrelated to his fever or the cold water Kirra gently washed his neck with to try and cool him down. "My words were only in my mind. More a...desperate prayer than anything else. We'd stopped your bleeding but you were right on the edge of life and death. Then the fever came, and you started thrashing."

Kirra's hands trembled against the dragon. Beads of cold water ran down between his scales. Her voice shook a little as well. "I just wanted the damn thing to help you for once. Nylah told me something about...coaxing the collar to help you calm, when you were young, and frightened and filled with turmoil. I thought...maybe there was more the collar could do, as well. But I wasn't...I mean...I didn't even know what to say. I was just cursing it in my head, really, and thinking about what I was going to say to it. Thinking that after all this, the least it could do was use its damn powers to help you for once. And you just...you went still. Your fever eased a little and you slept quietly for a time. You...you heard my voice?"

"Yes," Alvaranox replied after a moment. Whatever that meant, he was not sure. In truth, he'd been through so much he didn't even want to think about any new wrinkles the collar might possess. He just wanted to rest. "I think...I should like to sleep, now."

"Sleep, then," Nylah said, gently rubbing his head. "Rest, Alv. Rest and heal. We will be here when you wake again."

Alvaranox was already drifting back into the vividly painted dreams of feverish slumber. This time at least, the dreams were peaceful.

---

Chapter Five

---

Warm, bright sunlight awoke him. Alvaranox opened his eyes to bleary, copper slits. Why was so much sun pouring through his windows? Movement drew his attention. People stirred around him, whispering amongst themselves. Why were there people in his home? If Kirra had decided to give another tour, he was going to bite her. Alvaranox shifted and the sudden pulse of throbbing pain deep in his belly and throughout his paw reminded him of the previous night's events.

Ah, yes. All that sunlight was because he was outside. And all those damn people were there to help tend his injuries.

"Go away," he muttered without lifting his head. He did not like having so many people around him. The dragon's words came out as little more than an incomprehensible slur. His tongue felt swollen, pressing against his teeth. His head ached, his spine felt stiff.

No one seemed to pay his words any heed, though the sounds he made quickly drew the attention of the various healers and physicians and their gathered attendants. They shifted and buzzed around him like ants swarming about some food that had fallen on the floor. Alvaranox growled under his breath, pinning his frilled ears back.

With a great deal of effort the dragon lifted his wedge shaped head. He forced carefully formed words past his swollen tongue and stiff jaws. "Go. Away."

"After they change your bandages," Kirra said, pushing her way through the crowd towards the dragon's head. "It's nice to see you awake again. How do you feel?"

"Horrid," the dragon admitted. "Tongue feels...fat."

Kirra slipped her hands under the dragon's jaw line. "Open your mouth."

Alvaranox growled at her. He was not going to lay here in front of all these people and be openly inspected like some animal on display. "No."

Kirra sighed, pursing her lips. "You're still quite feverish. I need to check you for some things."

"No," Alvaranox repeated. "Not here." He lifted his head away from her hands, glancing around. Plenty of humans he did not recognize, but very few that he did. "Where's...Nylah?"

"Not far, she hasn't left you."

"Not...what I asked." Alvaranox grunted at the effort of working his words so carefully across his uncooperative tongue. He knew Nylah wouldn't have left him. That wasn't why he was asking about her location.

"Over there," Kirra said, a note of annoyance creeping into her voice. She waved her hand towards a small thatched-roof building on the edge of the grassy field where Alvaranox had crashed. "I finally talked her into going to get cleaned up, and get some food in her. She'll be back in a few minutes."

"Home."

"What?" Kirra tilted her head quizzically, red curls spilling across her face.

"Home," Alvaranox repeated. "Go. Home."

Kirra set her jaw, a bruised look shining in her eyes. "I know you don't like me, Alvaranox, or trust me the way you do Nylah, but I can't just leave you here to the attendants."

"Not that," the dragon murmured. He did not argue with her assessment, though. "Not you. Me. Take me. To my. Home."

"Oh," Kirra said as she caught on. "I realize you don't want to be laying wounded in public, but I've no way to get you home. It's not as though we can just load you up on a cart."

"I walk," Alvaranox said. Nylah would never allow him to try such a thing. But Nylah wasn't here right now, and Alvaranox knew how to get his way with Kirra. He'd just push and push until she finally gave in. She always gave in. "Right now."

"Alvaranox, you can't just..."

Alvaranox wasn't even going to give her a chance to protest. "Move," he muttered, and then began to roll over onto his feet.

If she didn't move aside, he'd simply bump her and all the others out of the way. Which was exactly what happened as he gingerly pushed himself up. Kirra got shoved aside with a yelp, and a few of her attendants were stumbling out of the way not long after. Half furled bandages that had been laying against the dragon's belly toppled to the ground. Alvaranox grit his sharp teeth. The movement was agonizing but he was not going to let the pain show any more than he had to.

"Gods damn you, Alvaranox," Kirra fumed at his side. "You're going to tear your stitches out. You are in no condition to be walking anywhere! And we haven't even finished changing your bandages."

"That's a shame," the dragon said, his rumbling voice taut with pain. "Just...help me home. Then...you can do...whatever you must. Alright?"

Kirra gave a long sigh of resignation. "Very well. But I don't know how you expect me to help you. It's not as though I can just wrap your arm around my shoulder and support you the way I could if you human."

Alvaranox would have grinned smugly at her acquiesce if he wasn't in so much pain. He stood upon three legs, gazing at the bloodied bandage that wrapped his right forepaw. Further up his foreleg, near the shoulder more bandages wrapped his limb where the sword had cut deeply. Between the two wounds he wasn't going to be able to put weight on that leg for a while. Walking would be difficult.

"Don't you dare put weight on that paw," Kirra warned him, folding her arms. Alvaranox resisted the urge to point out the obviousness of that statement. Kirra fumed a moment, and then shook her red-haired head. "Here. Let me try and support it a little."

Kirra came forward and pushed both her arms against the underside of the dragon's front leg. Alvaranox smirked at her, letting her hold the weight of his foreleg. The pain that throbbed in his paw and near his shoulder as the limb was moved did not blunt his smugness. "Yes, you hold onto that for me."

Alvaranox took an awkward step forward. His hind limb moved easily enough but he had to make a sort of hopping motion with his left front paw. Then when he moved his other hind leg, a jolt of pain in his haunch reminded him he'd taken a few arrows in the battle, as well. Kirra grunted in discomfort as the weight of the dragon's foreleg rattled her body. She stumbled a little bit, shifting her grip.

"Damn it, Alv, you can't put your weight on me or you're going to break my legs."

"I didn't," the dragon muttered, taking another awkward, half-hopping step. Hobbling around like this was going to take some getting used to.

"If you're going to insist on walking..."

"I am," the dragon cut her off.

Kirra continued anyway. "Then we're going to have to make you a sling of some kind. Brace it around your neck and hold your foreleg up while you walk, make sure you don't put any weight on your paw. The wound near your shoulder isn't as bad but it still needs time to mend."

"I shall wear no such thing!" The dragon hissed at the very idea of wearing such a foolish looking device.

Kirra did not argue. She knew she couldn't win an argument with the dragon. But she also knew Nylah could, and she'd broach the idea to the older woman as soon as she had the chance. For the moment, she focused on supporting the dragon's weighty foreleg just enough to ensure he didn't accidentally step down onto it. Walking was an arduous process, but the two of them were soon getting the hang of it. Once the dragon got used to hobbling on his left foreleg he shifted his weight towards Kirra less and less.

Still, after about fifteen minutes of gradual progress, Alvaranox's head was pounding as much as his belly. His lungs felt tight. Whatever fevers and illness lingered in him from his wounds and their treatment was making physical exertion difficult. He glanced down at Kirra, and as much as he hated to admit she was right, he knew he was in no condition to be walking anywhere. Still, he would never speak as much aloud.

"I need to catch my breath," the dragon said. A suitable compromise, he thought.

"Alright," Kirra said without pressing the issue of who was actually in the right. "Ease onto your haunches. Rest for a moment. I'll get you some water, you need to try and drink it."

Alvaranox slowly settled back into a seated position, curling his spined tail around his paws. His whole body hurt. Though he hadn't realized he was thirsty until Kirra mentioned water, his entire throat suddenly felt as cracked and dry as that wasteland he'd been wandering in his dreams. The dragon dipped his horned head in a nod, panting a little.

As Kirra went to fetch a bucket of water, the dragon gazed around at everyone. There were dozens of people watching him. Most of them were entirely too close for his liking. Quite a few of them had dried blood smeared on their clothes, others looked as though they were freshly washed up and had come back for offer further assistance. Though Alvaranox had crashed in an open grassy field, he was still within the borders of Asterryl. Not too far away ran a long, winding fence made of the twisted boughs of towering ancient willows. Beyond the fence a large crowd had gathered upon the road. Alvaranox growled to himself. He hated it when they stared at him.

It looked as though half the population of Asterryl had come to see the wounded dragon. Men and women alike milled about. Friends pointed to the dragon, whispering to each other. Parents held tight to the hands of children to prevent them from slipping through the openings in the fence and running out to the field. Others children were hoisted and placed upon their parents shoulders so the younglings could get a better view of their battered guardian. And though Alvaranox would hardly consider himself a fan of the local guard force, he was nonetheless glad to see them working to keep the crowd separated from the dragon.

A whole line of burly men wearing blue and gold surcoats over heavy chain mail and plates of steel stood alongside the fence-lined road to ensure no one bothered the assorted healers and doctors dealing with the dragon. It was a peaceful enough crowd, and truth be told Alvaranox knew no one in the town would want to cause him trouble. After all while they may think him a monster, he was a monster with many uses. He could hardly blame them for being concerned that their protector's life had so nearly been snuffed out.

Kirra returned to him with a large bucket of water. Now that he had a moment to focus upon her, Alvaranox noticed she'd changed her clothes again during the night. The red haired woman now wore a loosely fitted, long-sleeved blouse that matched the dark green color of her eyes. It did little to show off the natural curves of her body, but then again being stuck tending a dragon gave her little need to do so anyway. Swirls of golden thread ran down each sleeve in intricate swooping designs. She also wore a pair of breeches with scale-like patterns in overlapping shades of black and gray. Diamond shaped designs ran down the outside of the legs in the same golden thread that marked her sleeves. A bit of dried blood still caked the toes of her dark leather boots. She probably didn't have a spare pair to change into.

When Kirra set the bucket down in front of the dragon, he dropped his head and sniffed at it. A hint of herbal aroma wafted from it. He lifted his head again, cocked it and narrowed his copper eyes at the woman. "What's in there?"

"Mostly Sageblossom and Threeblade."

Alvaranox gave her a blank look. He wasn't exactly one to take notes whenever Nylah had tried to teach him about herbs in the past.

Kirra nudged the bucket with her boot. The water rippled within. "The Sageblossom helps to ease pain, and Threeblade helps to promote healing, and to help replenish lost blood. It's the same thing we give an injured human who needs to rest and recuperate. There's also some Feathertwig, it'll help with your fever."

Alvaranox sniffed the bucket again, and let his tongue play against the water. He tasted something bitter as well. "Is there Redbark in this?"

"A bit, yes." Kirra held up her hands for the dragon's silence before he could tell her how much he hated the stuff. "You need it, and you need the water. Just drink it, Alv, alright?"

Alvaranox did not have the energy to argue. And much as the water had been tainted by the unpleasant, bitter flavors of mashed and muddled herbs, he was still desperately thirsty. So he took a deep breath and ducked his head to drink the water in the bucket. Swollen as his tongue was it was troublesome to make it curl and lap at the water. Natural, instinctive motions became stiff and forced. Still, each mouthful he managed helped to ease his thirst and slake the burning in the dragon's long throat. When the water was gone, he licked at the bottom of the bucket. As he lifted his head, Kirra reached out and wiped beaded droplets of water from the dragon's green pebbly-scaled snout.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"It wasn't so good, either." Alvaranox pushed himself back to his three good paws with a grunt. "I am ready to proceed."

Kirra nodded and moved to stand alongside the dragon. She gently cradled his foreleg, and at a slow, grueling pace walked with him. Each step he took she moved along at his side, her own arms soon burning as she sought to offer his foreleg support. Still, Kirra knew whatever discomfort she was in paled to the pain that the dragon felt with every step and she bore his limb without complaint. This time they got a goodp distance further than the first attempt before Alvaranox had to pause to collect himself and catch his breath.

Not long after the dragon had settled down for a few moments, an angry voice called out. "What in the darkest of hells do you two think you're doing?"

Alvaranox winced, pinning his frilled ears back against his skull. His spiny crests sagged against his head and neck. Nylah sounded angry. He glanced down at Kirra. "I shall let you answer that."

Kirra's emerald eyes went wide, and a crimson flush quickly tinted her cheeks. This was Alvaranox's idea, not hers. She swallowed, turning on her heel to face Nylah as the older woman strode towards them. There was a fierceness to her stride that belied her boiling anger. "Nylah! Well, you see...he wanted to...go home, and before I could..."

Nylah put a hand on Kirra's shoulder. Kirra went quiet, glancing down, and Nylah pushed past her. Her own polished hazel eyes nearly burned a hole right through the dragon's coppery gaze. "What do you think you're doing, Dragon!"

Alvaranox hung his head a little, black-marked wings drooping. She only called him Dragon playfully, or when she was legitimately angry with him. "I wished to return to my home. I do not like being on display."

"You've no right to take advantage of Kirra like that!" Nylah's words surprised the dragon, and he suddenly wasn't so sure what Nylah was angry about. Given the odd little noise of surprise Kirra made, neither was she. "If you weren't already in so much pain, I'd twist your damn ears off."

"Luckily for my ears I am in pain," the dragon said with a little hiss. "And lots of it. If it's all the same to you, perhaps you could help Kirra get me home. Then you can berate me to your heart's content while Kirra changes my bandages and tries to ensure I don't start bleeding again."

"I...ah, damn it," Nylah growled through grit teeth. The worst of her anger faded, leaving a smoldering frustration in its place. She was weary of seeing the dragon belittle his current Handler by walking all over her, and just as weary of seeing Kirra do nothing about it. Kirra had held the position over a year now, and so little had changed. "It isn't fair of you to push Kirra around the way you do, let alone to twist her around your tail to get what you want when I'm not here. How do you think she'd have felt if you tore your belly wide open right after you talked her into letting you walk home?"

"Not as bad as I would have felt should my guts have fallen out," Alvaranox said softly. The dragon found himself in the rare position of feeling both guilty for taking advantage of Kirra and also convinced his injuries had earned him the right to do just that. "Now, are you going to walk me home or not?"

Alvaranox pushed himself up, and once more began to hobble home. At first he cradled his fore leg against his body, but Kirra quickly moved to support the limb again. Nylah sighed, and walked up alongside Kirra. She put a hand on the small of the younger woman's back, silently asking for a moment of her attention even as she worked to help the dragon along.

"If you continue to let him walk all over you, he will never stop doing it," Nylah said, her voice firm and loud enough for both Kirra and the dragon to hear. "There will be many times as his Handler that you will know what is best for him, and though he will not like it, part of your job is occasionally to enforce your own will upon him for his own good. Such as in an instance like this. Yes, he hates being on display, but the risk of further injury was not worth letting him test his limits before he's even begun to recover."

Kirra opened her mouth to reply. For a moment, she thought about insisting that she'd done her best to prevent him from going home. That the dragon had simply gotten up and started walking. How was she to stop him? Though they both knew if Nylah had been there she'd have found a way. Then again, the dragon listened to Nylah. He rarely listened to Kirra no matter what she tried. Nylah was right, though, Kirra should have tried harder to prevent the dragon from walking off.

"Yes, Lady Nylah," Kirra said softly. She rarely used the title anymore. Yet there were times when Nylah instructed her that made her feel as though she were still an apprentice rather than the dragon's full time Handler. It was hard to avoid falling back on old habits at times like that.

"You needn't call me that," Nylah said. "And I do not mean to sound as though I am talking down to you, so I apologize if that is the case. But you are going to be Alvaranox's Handler for many, many years, and the sooner you learn that sometimes you have to exert your will to keep him safe and healthy, the easier life will be for both of you."

"I'm just going to keep walking," Alvaranox suddenly said with a snort, his voice a little slurred.

"I hope you are listening, Alvaranox, because I am fed up with you always trying to take advantage of Kirra."

Alvaranox glanced at Nylah between hobbling steps. She'd changed into a beautiful, sky blue colored blouse with silver threading across the front like lacy clouds drifting over her chest. Though Nylah often wore a light dress or a skirt on warm days such as this, today she'd slipped into a more formal looking pair of gray breeches, and had replaced her usual cloth sandals with the old pair of nearly worn out leather work shoes she used to wear. It was the sort of outfit she'd worn on busy days as his Handler, and it told the dragon she planned to stay with him and supervise his treatment.

That was fine with him. Kirra would probably screw it up anyway. The thought made him smirk a moment. Then he looked down at Kirra working so diligently to hold his injured limb aloft for him while he limped along. She was certainly trying hard, he had to give her that. And while he was injured she'd taken charge of the situation as only Nylah had done before. Perhaps he could cut her a little slack.

"To be fair to Kirra," the dragon said, hating himself already for coming to her defense. "She only relented on my request to return to my home when I promised to let her examine me. She'd been trying to get a look at my tongue and in my eyes as well as a chance to feel my throat." Much of that was an exaggeration on Kirra's behalf. He suspected the woman had planned to examine the rest of him, anyway. "I refused to allow her to do so in front of these legions of slack-jawed gawkers, but promised to allow her to examine me in every way she must as soon as I was back home."

"I suppose making a bargain with him is better than being trod upon," Nylah said, squeezing Kirra's shoulder. "Next time, though, snatch him by an ear. They are very sensitive. Then begin to twist it until he agrees to let you examine him immediately." A little smirk crossed Nylah's lips.

"Why must you hate my ears so, Nylah?" The dragon chuckled to himself.

"Would you rather I advise her to grab and twist something even more sensitive?"

That made the dragon cringe, his tail tucked involuntarily. "No."

"Then behave yourself."

Kirra giggled a little as she hefted the dragon's foreleg. Alvaranox shot her a glare, and rather than look away as she often might, this time the red-haired woman stuck her tongue out at him. Alvaranox supposed that was what he got for coming to her aid. He looked around a little, trying to get his bearings between limping steps. At least he'd crashed near the northern outskirts of the town. That meant he wasn't too far from his home. Yet the fact he could only manage a grinding, painful pace meant the trip was still going to take quite a while.

Home. It irritated him to realize he thought of the place that way. This town was his prison, and the building where his blankets and things were was simply the place where he slept at night. Yet, it was his shelter. It was his refuge from the world, his hideaway from prying eyes and the place he felt most comfortable at all times. What else was that but a home?

Irritable as it might make him to consider it such, the place was his home now. For the time being he would much rather be there, curled amidst his blankets and animal furs and other soft things than he would out in the open with all the townspeople staring at his many wounds. This wasn't going to be good for his reputation. He much preferred to seem strong, nearly invulnerable if possible. Now they would see that not even their Guardian Slave was invincible. Perhaps they'd decide to cut their losses and let him go. As if he'd be so lucky.

When Alvaranox next paused to catch his breath, Nylah summoned a host of attendants. They'd been trailing behind the dragon ,waiting to see if his Handler had any further instructions for them. Others worked on cleaning up the area that had been transformed into the dragon's temporary field hospital. Alvaranox paid little attention as Nylah gave them orders and sent them scurrying away towards the dragon's home. From the sounds of things she was sending them ahead to get them to prepare his home for his arrival.

A shame it took a serious injury to get people to start catering to his every need.

While Alvaranox waited for the tightness in his lungs to ease and the feverish pounding his head to slacken, he looked around the field upon which he sat. It was a wide grassy expanse with blotches of heather strewn about here and there. Brilliant blue wildflowers provided patches of vibrant color, speckled here and there with single red blossoms atop tall stalks. In the distance, a small herd of goats grazed near a corner of willow fence, seemingly undisturbed by the dragon who'd crashed into their field the day before. Alvaranox scowled. Not even the prey was afraid of him anymore.

Alvaranox flicked his frilled ears at the sound of hushed whispers. He turned his head slightly and saw Kirra and Nylah conferring nearby. Now and then one of them gestured towards the dragon or made some sweeping movement with a hand. His scowl grew larger till several of his sharp teeth were half exposed. He scrunched up the pebbly scales of his snout a little. He didn't like being talked about as though he wasn't right there.

"What are you two gossiping about?" Alvaranox glared at them, flaring up his spines enough for the faint black blotches across the green membranes to be visible. "If you're speaking about me, include me in the conversation."

"Very well," Nylah said, turning her still-smoldering brown gaze upon the dragon. A smirk tugged at the corners of her thin lips, and she gently nudged Kirra with her elbow. "Ask him."

Kirra cleared her throat, and approached the dragon. "Have you felt any urge to urinate yet?"

Alvaranox pulled his head back with a snort. His neck curled into an S. That was what they were conferring about? He was sorry he asked. "Do you often discuss a dragon's need to piss?"

"Only when we're worried his kidneys may be injured," Kirra snapped back at him with a little more vehemence in her voice than he was used to from her. "Answer the question."

"...No." Alvaranox grunted. "I wish to walk again. I am ready to be home so half the damn town doesn't hear you asking me if I've pissed lately."

"We were going to ask you when you got home," Nylah said, her smirk widening just a little. "In fact we were just discussing how best to broach the subject, and we had concluded privately would be preferable. But you had to butt in and ask us to include you."

Alvaranox growled under his breath, easing himself back to three paws. "I shall keep my damn mouth shut from now on, then."

Kirra moved to support the dragon's foreleg, and once more the three of them journeyed across the field. Up ahead, a group of guards had already pulled down a large section of the fence to give the dragon a place to pass from the field onto the cobbled road beyond without having to take a lengthy detour to the gate. Once on the road, the journey seemed to progress a little more swiftly. Alvaranox tried to keep track of the buildings they passed to remind him he was making progress. Every step seemed to make his body ache worse but he forced himself to keep limping along, knowing his reward was a chance to flop down on his own bed, away from so many prying eyes.

By the time the intricately carved wooden door of the dragon's home lay open just before him, Alvaranox felt ready to collapse. But he forced himself to walk the last few dozen feet into his home. He'd come this far. He certainly wasn't going to give up just shy of his goal. At least the herbs he'd ingested with his water had dulled the worst of his pain. He still hurt just about everywhere, but the sharpness of the pain was smoothed away, replaced with a steady, dull ache that thudded in his limbs and belly. His brain felt as though it were thumping against his skull, the fever sapping what little strength he had left.

Inside his home, the scents of freshly cut pine boughs and lavender sprigs greeted him. Alvaranox was a little surprised by just how welcoming the familiar scents seemed to be. He'd grown accustomed to them over the last few years yet never had he actually realized he enjoyed the smell until that moment. The dragon inhaled deeply of it, and then gave a long sigh of relief. He staggered forward towards his bed. It took all the effort he had left not to just flop upon it and split his belly open again.

Alvaranox first gingerly lowered himself onto his haunches atop the spread of blankets. Then he ever-so-slowly eased down onto his left side, away from the worst of his wounds. In the process he tried to avoid putting any pressure on the arrow wounds, but the pain those provided him paled in comparison to everything else he was dealing with.

The dragon held his head up, peering about for his favorite pillow. Someone had donated it to him ages back. It was covered in layers of green fabric with an overlapping pattern designed to look like a dragon's scales. Fringes of black ringed it and it held golden tufts at every corner. Just as important as the fact it was clearly designed after his own magnificent colors was the fact that it was among the softest of his many soft things.

He spotted the pillow well across the room. No way he could fetch it without rising back to his feet. At that moment the dragon doubted he could stand back up even if he got to knock Kirra over in the process. He could however, have her fetch the pillow for him. The dragon lifted his uninjured paw, and gestured at the pillow.

"Bring me that, Kirra."

Kirra took a step towards the pillow, but Nylah put her hand on the younger woman's shoulders. She pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. Kirra hesitated. Alvaranox glared at them a moment, but he didn't have the patience for a battle of wills. He knew what Nylah wanted, and at least for the moment he would give in.

"Kirra," Alvaranox said, softening his tone with what he hoped was a decent approximation of the respect Nylah wanted him to show his Handler. "Will you please bring me that pillow?"

"I will," Kirra said. She stepped away from Nylah and went to pick up the pillow. Then when she turned back towards the dragon, she hesitated. She worked the pillow back and forth between her hands a moment. The soft green cushion easily yielded to her fingers. "But you owe me a full examination."

"I shall examine you if I must, but I've no idea what to look for." The dragon smirked at her a moment, a sparkle of smug mischief dancing in his copper eyes despite the twin glazes of pain and fatigue that coated them. "Now bring me my pillow."

"That...that isn't what I meant..." Kirra faltered a little bit.

She kneaded the pillow again, grinding her teeth in frustration. Why did he always seem to get the best of her? The other night, when he'd been injured had been her finest hour. Kirra hated to think of something so terrible for the dragon as a shining moment for her. Yet she could not help but feel a bit of pride at the way she'd acted, the way she'd pushed her fear aside and simply taken command. She helped to save the dragon's life, and she knew it. Yet he was not yet even healed and already he was putting his paw prints on her back and turning the words she stumbled over against her.

Kirra glanced to Nylah for assistance, but Nylah merely shrugged. Kirra scowled, and knit her brows. A flush of embarrassment tinted her cheeks scarlet and heated her ears. For a moment she simply stood there, folding her fingers into the dragon's pillow.

"Are you going to bring me my damn pillow or not?"

"No!" Kirra half hissed, half shouted at the dragon. The force of her voice surprised her as much as anyone else. Then she took a deep breath, collecting herself. "You knew quite well what I meant. You need not take every opportunity to pick and needle at me, Dragon. I will bring you this pillow when you agree to allow me to examine you in as much detail as I require, and to answer any and all questions I have pertaining to your well being. Is that understood?"

Alvaranox glared at her a moment, but he lacked the strength to challenge her new found resolve. He also lacked the will to tell Nylah to wipe that smirk off her face. Though he didn't look at the older woman, he knew well enough she'd be beaming to hear Kirra give the dragon a piece of her mind.

The dragon rumbled low in his chest, and tossed his horned head. "Very well. I did promise you as much. Bring me my pillow and get your examination over with."

A smile slowly replaced the angry storm that threatened to wash over Kirra's face. Within the few steps it took her to bring the pillow over the worst of the scarlet tone had fled her cheeks as well. She knelt down and placed the pillow on the ground near the dragon's head, patting it for him.

"Thank you," Kirra said, her tone easing as well. "I did not mean to yell at you."

"You need not apologize, Kirra," Nylah said. "He'd earned a bit of a tongue lashing..."

Kirra continued her streak of uncharacteristic behavior by cutting off Nylah. Alvaranox couldn't actually recall her ever doing that before. "Thank you, Lady Nylah, but while I agree I still feel it is in the best interest of my relationship with my dragon if I let him know I am willing to apologize when I get angry with him. Otherwise he may never adjust to my...style of handling. It may be different from yours, and trying to mold myself in your image on his behalf will not help him adjust."

Nylah watched the woman a moment, her grin widening. That was a very polite way of saying, thank you Nylah but let me do this my way, damn it. Which Nylah found to be an excellent and important step for Kirra to take. She was certainly not offended. If anything she was glad to see Kirra taking that particular step. Nylah knew well enough that the dragon would never have two Handlers who were exactly alike. Though he had come to trust Nylah it would be unreasonable of him to expect his next Handler to follow in her path in every way. It would also be unfair to Kirra to be expected to deal with the dragon in exactly the same manner as Nylah had. Kirra had a softer touch and though she had just as much fire in her spirit as Nylah it manifested itself differently.

"Of course, Kirra," Nylah said. "Why don't I leave you with your charge for a little while then, so that you may examine him in peace."

Kirra sucked in a breath, freezing a moment. She hadn't quite expected that. Nylah likely only wished to give Kirra a chance to deal with the dragon in her own way, without anyone else watching or feeling as though she were being judged. Not that she hadn't dealt with the dragon on her own many times already. She'd just rarely done so under such serious conditions. Kirra realized Nylah thought it would do both Handler and dragon a world of good, and she raised no argument.

"That would be fine, Nylah," Kirra said, bowing her head. "When I'm finished with the examinations I'll put together a list of supplies I'll need for him."

"Is there anything I can do before I go?" Nylah asked, easing towards the door.

"I'll need fresh bandages, resins and salves for his wounds, and if you'd be willing to help me apply them later I'd be grateful."

"Of course," Nylah said.

Nylah turned her attention to the dragon, and for a moment her hazel eyes lingered upon his copper ones. Poor Alvaranox. In the years she had grown to consider the dragon an unspoken but very dear friend, she had often pitied him his inescapable tasks. Had she a chance, she would have freed the dragon ages ago. Yet never had she seen him looking so pitiable. Sprawled out upon his side, fear in his eyes, blood caked upon his scales. Her throat clenched a little, and she felt tears brimming in her eyes.

Gods. She'd almost lost him.

The full weight of what that truly meant to her was only starting to settle in on the older woman. She'd considered the beast a friend for many years, but only upon seeing him so close to death had it struck her just how tightly the dragon had wrapped himself around her heart. For over forty years he'd been a part of her life. She had watched him grow, she had felt his fear of this place, she had seen the terrible loneliness that burned his eyes when he thought no one was looking, and she had seen those pains gradually ease as he came to call her friend.

Nylah's heart pounded in her chest as she fought to hold back sudden tears. She cleared her throat with a little growling noise, and looked away from the injured dragon. The anger she felt earlier had long since melted away, replaced with a growing tide of other emotions she was not sure she wanted to face. "Is there anything I can get you, Alv?"

"Stupid Fish," the dragon murmured.

"What?" Kirra blinked, not sure she'd heard him correctly.

The dragon glanced back and forth between his old Handler and his current one a few times. "Feed Stupid Fish."

"I think his fever is growing worse," Kirra said, concerned but misinformed. "He's not making any sense. Perhaps he wants you to bring him some fish to eat."

"No," the dragon said, growling in frustration. "Nylah..." He sighed, and lay his head against his pillow, closing his eyes. "Feed Stupid Fish."

Nylah couldn't help but laugh at Kirra's confusion and the dragon's frustration. The laughter felt good, it eased her troubles for a little while. And the request gave her something else to occupy her time with while she allowed Kirra to examine the dragon on her own. "He's talking about the fish in the barrel, outside."

"Oh!" Kirra said, laughing sheepishly. "That Stupid Fish. Of course. I was too busy thinking about how to deal with his wounds and illnesses, I didn't even think about his pet."

Alvaranox bristled immediately. He flared the spines out behind his ears and down his neck, lifting his head. He opened his eyes to angry copper slits, glaring at Kirra. "I do not have a pet. I have a stupid little fish that amuses me with its captivity."

Nylah gave a happy little sigh, feeling better already. "I'll go and fetch the bandages and other supplies. Then I'll go and feed Stupid Fish. You stay here and deal with the irritable consequences of inferring a dragon would ever keep a pet."

Kirra smiled as Nylah closed the door. She was actually glad to have distracted Alvaranox from the fact Nylah was leaving. Rather than apologize for using the forbidden P-Word, she simply reached out and gently stroked the dragon's muzzle. Then she smoothed down his spines a little with her hands, trying to ease them back against his head. While she had no expectation to ever hear the dragon purr for her the way Nylah claimed he did for her in private, she was nonetheless happy to see Alvaranox relax a little. For a little while the two of them were simply quiet as Kirra sought to soothe the beast.

"I know you don't really like me, Alvaranox," Kirra said gently as she worked her hands over the spines along his neck. "But I promise you I have only your best interests in mind. I know I can make a lot of mistakes, but I am doing all I can to learn from them. Is that fair?"

The dragon grumbled a little bit. "It is...not that."

"Not what?" Kirra tilted her head.

"It is not that I dislike you," the dragon said, working his words carefully around his swollen tongue. "It is...difficult to explain without offending you."

"Just spit it out, then," Kirra said. She pulled her hands back a moment, folding them in her lap. "The sooner you offend me, the sooner you can make it up to me."

The dragon did not seem to share her humor. He watched her through slitted eyes. His green-scaled body slowly rose and fell with his breathing. He flicked one ear back, twisting the other forward in an expression of draconic exasperation. "I do not trust you." He held up his good paw as if to silence any objection. "I do not mean to say I expect you to harm me, or betray me. It is...deeper than that." The dragon scrunched his muzzle, unsure how to proceed. "It is difficult to explain. But Nylah is the only one in this place I trust, and it took me over a decade before I came to trust her. So you cannot expect me to feel comfortable around you or to trust your judgment when only a year has passed."

Kirra wrung her hands together, mulling over the dragon's words. Her answer surprised Alvaranox a little. "That is fair of you, dragon." She smiled at him a moment, and slowly reached out to rub the golden blotch at the end of his nose, working away some of the dried blood that still caked his scales. Bathing the wounded dragon had not exactly topped their list of priorities. "Perhaps if we work together we can..."

"Kirra," the dragon said, sighing. "I am very tired, and I hurt in ways I did not think possible mere days ago. If I promise against my better judgment to hold this conversation with you another time, will you get your damn examination over so that I can sleep again?"

Kirra blinked, and then burst out laughing. She shook her head, her red curls swaying before her face. "That is also fair, Alv. Very well. Lift your head and open your mouth, please."

Alvaranox begrudgingly did as she asked. He parted his jaws, and Kirra gently grasped his muzzle to peer into his maw. The back of the dragon's throat and the ridged roof of his mouth looked a deeper scarlet than usual. His pointed pink tongue seemed very puffy and swollen. Kirra gently pinched the tip of his tongue, feeling its softness and temperature.

"You've a lot of swelling, and your fever is still fairly high." She let go of his mouth, patting his jaw line. "But not as high as it was. Let me have a look in your eyes. Tilt your head towards the light, if you can."

Alvaranox licked his nose, feeling like some prize farm animal being appraised at the local fair. But he did as she asked. He stretched his neck out until his head reached a patch of sunlight, then turned it a little so the golden rays cascaded across his face. Kirra put her hands upon his head, and held the dragon's eye open with her fingers. In the sunlight his normally copper eyes shone like freshly polished golden coins. The black pupils quickly shrank to thin slits, though not as thin as she would have liked given the sunlight pouring into them.

The weave of tiny red blood vessels was nearly hidden inside the copper hued irises. A paler shade of that metallic color seemed to tint the rest of his eyes beyond the irises as well. The color gradually faded at the corners of his eyes, where the blood vessels were more clearly visible. She peered into one eye for long moments, then did the same to the other.

When she let him go, Alvaranox blinked profusely a few times, trying to clear the bleariness from his eyes. "You made my vision go all blurry."

"You'll be fine," Kirra muttered, trying to hold back a chuckle. Then she reached out and gently rubbed her thumb against the inside of the dragon's frilled green ear. She murmured to herself. Soon she pressed a few fingers from her other hand to Alvaranox's chin to get him to tilt his head back. "Chin up. Let me get to your throat."

Alvaranox flicked his tail in irritation, his spines thumped against the blankets. He'd made the girl a deal though, and he wasn't going to go back on his word now. Nor would he make things difficult for her. Slowly, he tilted back his head till the pebbly green scales of his throat were exposed for her. The scales of the dragon's throat were smallest and finest at the very top where his neck met his jaw line. Further down his throat they grew broader and broader until eventually they reached the greatly expanded plates that protected his heart and lungs.

Kirra set her hands on either side of the dragons throat. She worked her fingers around a little as though massaging the dragon's neck. Then she slid her hands up to the back of his jaw, rolling her finger tips in little circles just behind the dragon's jaw bone. She could faintly make out a feeling of firmness on either side. She scowled a bit, though the swelling did not surprise her.

"Your fire glands are a little swollen," Kirra murmured as much to herself as to the dragon. "That should go down when your fever breaks, though. Do they hurt?"

A smirk of bitter amusement twisted the dragon's muzzle. "Not enough for me to notice them over all my other pains."

Kirra shared his smile a little as she moved her fingers back down the dragon's neck. "We'll consider that to mean they do not hurt, then."

Alvaranox was quiet for a little while as Kirra explored his throat. The dragon scarcely knew what she was looking for, though he supposed as long as Kirra knew, that was what mattered. Her fingers felt soft and warm. Her touch was very gentle, almost soothing. If it had been Nylah rubbing him, he might have even purred a little. As Kirra worked her fingers towards the base of his throat, Alvaranox closed his eyes, rumbling to himself.

"Your touch is quite gentle."

"You'd rather it was rough?"

"No," Alvaranox said, giving a little snort. "That is not something I wish to go back to."

Kirra's hands paused upon the dragon's scaly neck. "Your first Handler, right?"

"He was not kind," Alvaranox said. The dragon's tone made it clear he did not wish to discuss it further.

"Well, trust me or not, that is one thing you will not have to worry about from me," Kirra said. She pulled her hands away from his neck, scooting back a little. Then she gave a nervous laugh as though trying to cover some sort of embarrassment. "If anything, Nylah thinks I may be too gentle with you." She peered up at the dragon a moment, and when he did not provide answer or commentary, she gestured with her hand. "Can you roll to your back? I need to look at your paw pads and your belly wound. But if its too uncomfortable I can..."

Alvaranox was already rolling over. He'd had more examination than he wanted as it was, the sooner they got this over with the better as far as he was concerned. Careful to tuck his wings out of the way, the dragon managed to sprawl out upon his back. He groaned in pain, craning his neck to look down at himself. Rusty, reddish brown dried blood caked his green belly scales in many places. Where the dried blood was thickest it added layers of rough texturing to his pebbly scales. The wound itself lay bared where the bandage had come away. It looked red, puckered and angry amidst all the green of his underbelly. Thick sinewy stitches now held the flesh together, a little fresh blood leaked from the wound along with beads of watery lymph. The dragon scrunched his muzzle at the sight.

"Well I don't know what you're fussing about," the dragon said, laying his horned head back down. "I look like the very picture of health."

"More like the picture of my hard work," Kirra said, giving the dragon a little smirk. "I put those stitches in myself."

"They didn't pop out when I got up, so you must have done well," Alvaranox said.

Kirra clambered up atop the dragon's chest, straddling his plates a moment. She smirked at him when he lifted his head to glare at her. "I shall take that as your way of thanking me."

"I do not like people sitting on me," the dragon said. He lifted his head again to glare at Kirra, growling softly at her.

"Be that as it may, you're in no condition to do anything about it." Kirra patted the plates over his chest, grinning. "Besides, I need to listen to your heart and lungs in a moment. First, let me see your left paw."

With an exaggerated sigh, the dragon lifted his foreleg and held it out to her. Kirra gently took his paw in her hands, turning it over to examine the mottled pink and black pads that covered the underside of it. She was heartened to see those mismatched colors seemed much more vibrant than only the night before. She brushed her fingers over the soft skin, feeling the temperature. Then she pushed a single finger into the center of the dragon's pad till the flesh went a bit white. She let it go, watching how quickly the color returned to it.

"You seem to have good blood flow to your pads," she said, pressing upon them and releasing a few more times.

"That one was not injured."

"I shall check them all, but it is not a test for injury." Kirra flicked her green eyes up to the dragon. She had an unusually determined look in her eye, Alvaranox thought. As though she were a little annoyed with the dragon questioning her about the one thing she was actually good at. "When a creature loses too much blood, or experiences symptoms such as an extremely high fever, it often affects the circulation of blood into his extremities. The fact that your pad seems to have good blood flow restored to it means your body has already started recuperating from all your blood loss. When we checked your pads while you were unconscious, they were far paler. It also took noticeably longer for them to regain their color."

"Thank you for the explanation, Doctor." Alvaranox put his head back down, grumbling. "Shall I just lay here silently then, and only speak when spoken to?"

"It would make things easier," Kirra said, though her giggle undercut the sharp tone she'd attempted. She released his paw, and then gestured towards his other foreleg. "Let me see the injured one. Go as slowly as you need to, and if you cannot move it that far, I will go to it."

Alvaranox slowly worked his foreleg towards her. The injury to his shoulder made it difficult, but it did not stop him. Kirra gently cradled the dragon's wrist in one hand, and quickly unwrapped the bandages already loosened by the trip. The gauzy fabric was heavily stained by blood both old and new. The dragon's paw was leaking worse than his belly was, but given the long journey over here that was not a surprise to her. A heavy row of stitches now kept the flesh of his paw together. They looked intact. If everything went well they would remain in place for quite some time.

"This will hurt a little," Kirra warned him.

Alvaranox nodded his consent. Kirra performed the same test as before, poking at his paw pad to make sure it was getting adequate blood flow. Alvaranox cringed, curling his tail as the prodding caused the steady thudding pain his paw was already feeling to accelerate into a sharp pulse. He hissed through his teeth, but did not pull his paw away. Kirra then pushed on the pads at the end of each digit to make sure the dragon's fingers were all still getting enough blood.

"Everything looks good," Kirra announced, a little too cheerfully for the dragon's liking.

"Speak for yourself."

"I am," Kirra said, then off-handedly added, "I'd have felt terrible if we had to amputate all your toes."

Alvaranox pinned his ears back against his head, unsure if she was teasing. His heart rattled in his chest at that idea, his wounded belly coiling in an icy pit. Rather than give her the satisfaction of letting his fear show, he simply asked, "Are you almost done?"

Kirra ignored the question. She leaned forward and pressed her ear to the dragon's chest. For a few long moments she listened to the resounding, slightly accelerated thump that was the dragon's heartbeat. It sounded strong, if a little faster than usual. She counted the beats in her mind. Definitely accelerated. She'd probably scared the poor beast with that amputation comment. Though she hadn't exactly been joking. Still, she was happy to hear how strong his heartbeat was. A definitely improvement over the night before.

"Your heart sounds much better, Alv," Kirra said without lifting her head away from his chest.

"It does?" That time the dragon could not help but allow a little of his fear to bleed into his voice.

Kirra nodded when she finally lifted his head. She put a hand upon his chest, and idly stroked the dragon's dark green scutes. She looked up, letting her green eyes linger upon his copper ones. The fear that the dragon tried to quell in his voice shone through in his eyes, flickering like haunted copper pyres. "Yes," Kirra said softly. "You were....not well. Nylah and I were...not sure you would..."

"Till you touched my collar," the dragon murmured, putting a few pieces together on his own. He lifted his good paw, and idly ran his pads against the engraved images of the dragons in flight bound around his neck. "Till you told it to heal me."

Kirra looked down at the dragon's chest, unable to meet his gaze. Instead, she watched her fingers trace the outline of the hardened plate that lay above the dragon's heart. "I didn't tell Nylah, but...I heard it."

"You heard...what?" Alvaranox swallowed. He suddenly felt as though he were cracking open a door he was going to wish remained shut.

"...The bell."

The dragon sucked in a breath. Nylah claimed to hear it echo, now and then. But no one had ever heard it the way the dragon heard it. "Are you certain?"

"It was when I was talking to the collar, in my mind..." Kirra worked her fingers back the other way, tracing the same plate's outline in reverse. She shifted her warmth against the dragon. "I heard...I heard a bell. The way you describe it, loud and vibrant...and terrible. It startled me. But, when the bell tolled, that was when you started to calm." Kirra's eyes darted back and forth a few times, her fingers trembling. "I could feel your pulse in your neck, your heart was fluttering, and your pulse was...fading. You were..." Kirra bit her lip, blinking away a rush of tears that seemed to surprise the girl. She quickly wiped her eyes. "You were dying, Alv, I am certain of it. That was when I told it to save you. Then I heard the bell, and I felt your pulse quicken in your neck. I think that whatever the collar does to you to make you fight, it did that to your heart. It snatched your heart up and it kept it beating. When your body was too weary to go on living, when your heart was giving out, I told the collar to heal you and it made your heart beat again."

Kirra went quiet. She had not yet told Nylah that part of the story, and she hadn't planned on telling Alvaranox either. She half expected the dragon to laugh at her, tell her that was impossible. She also half expected the dragon to believe it yet snarl at her for interfering, that he would have preferred death to an extended lifetime of forced servitude to this town. But the dragon did neither of those things. He simply stared at her, awe, wonder, and fearful uncertainty all swirling in his fiery copper eyes.

When the quiet became almost unbearable, Kirra spoke up again. "I just...I didn't want you to die, Alv. You asked me not to let you die here, in this place, and I..."

"Thank you, Kirra," Alvaranox said abruptly, staring down at her. The words seemed far too simple but they were the only words he could squeeze through his increasingly constricted throat. He meant them with every ounce of blood left in his body, and he hoped she understood that.

Kirra understood. She smiled at him, and reached forward to gently stroke the end of his nose. After a few heartbeats she gave into the moment. She wrapped her hands around the dragon's head best she could, hugging it against her body. Alvaranox did not resist or complain. She stroked his cheek a moment, and then let him go. Carefully, she eased herself off of his body and back to the blankets and pillows that surrounded him.

"I think I've poked and prodded you enough. You need new bandages but we can do that later." She patted the dragons scales, and gave him a shy little smile. "I'll let you rest."

Kirra slowly made her way out of the dragon's home. She gave him one last look, smiled, and then quietly shut his oversized door. Once Alvaranox was alone, he heaved a long, trembling sigh. He had been even closer to death than he thought. For a moment he wondered if in fact he had died. He'd been wandering that wasteland an awfully long time, and the memories of his life had been so hard to recall. It almost seemed as though that wasteland was his life, and reality was his dream.

Was that death? If so, he wondered what horrible deeds he had committed in his life to be bound to such a wandering, torturous afterlife. The dragon knew well enough he had done terrible things, yet so often they were by the will of the collar. He could not resist its commands. He idly ran his paw against the collar, exploring it as if he did not already know every wretched inch of the damn thing.

So. It appeared the collar did have the ability to force his heart to keep beating. And yet it seemed it had only done so when Kirra asked it to. Or...was it because his Handler commanded it? As far as he had known the Handler never had much direct influence over the collar or its abilities. And certainly no one had ever actually heard more than an echoing whisper of the bell before now and he wasn't totally convinced Nylah had truly heard that much.

Was there something different Kirra? If so, did Nylah know it? Was that why she'd chosen her to be her successor? It was all too much to think about right now.

Alvaranox lay his head back, trying to recall the dream he had when he nearly died. Something about wandering the wastes. Yes, he remembered that part. He remembered scorching heat, perhaps an effect of his fever infiltrating his subconscious. But there was something else. There was...a tree. A skeleton. A collar.

Yes, a collar. Alvaranox had always assumed he was the only dragon who had ever borne the collar, but the thing seemed ancient beyond reasoning. Perhaps he was not the first after all. For a moment, he tried to recall if any of the other dragons he'd known in his youth had ever mentioned anything about a collar. Some of the dragons he'd known since being bound to Asterryl had teased him about it, but they had scarcely known what it was. But in his youth...

...Strange. His memories of his youth before Asterryl seemed so hazy. He pictured his mother a moment, smiling at him. She was green, like him, but a paler shade. The gold blotch that marked his nose was inherited from her, she had many gold markings. Yes, he remembered her clearly. But he could not recall...what became of her. She was gone now, he was sure, and it pained him that he did not remember how, or why. It had been ages since he'd seen her, and it was likely she never even knew what became of him. Still...

For now, Alvaranox gave up on his youthful memories to focus on things he could recall. He began to drift, easing into the sleep his body so desperately needed. He recalled something else from that dream just before he began to doze. The wretched toll of the bell, and the way it tore the land asunder. The maelstrom it caused that ripped him from the earth upon which he ran. Was that when Kirra heard the bell?

As slumber took him, Alvaranox's last thought was to consider whether that Maelstrom had been his death come to tear him from the world of the living, or the power of the collar and the bell hurtling him back to life.

---

Chapter Six

---

Afternoon stretched into early evening by the time Alvaranox awoke. The sun had not yet set, but it hung low in the sky as though growing ever drowsier. Soon the weight of the coming night would settle upon it and push the sun below the horizon, bathing in the world in darkness once more. For a little while the dragon just lay upon his bed of blankets, pillows and furs, staring at the wall. He tried to recall his dreams, but they eluded him, dancing before his eyes like fireflies just out of reach. Something about his youth, he thought.

Alvaranox licked his nose. His mouth felt sticky, his throat dry. His body still ached, and the pains in his belly and paw were getting sharper again. His other wounds hurt as well but the pain elsewhere was great enough to nearly overwhelm all others. The dragon was also gradually aware of a tight sort of sharp pressure in his abdomen. At first the normally familiar feeling confused him. He had not felt it for some time, and his mind was still shrouded in a drifting layer of herbal haze. When he finally collected his thoughts and recognized the discomfort, he smirked to himself. At least he could tell Kirra he finally had to take a piss. That ought to be a relief. Though, not as much of a relief as it was going to be for the dragon.

Now, if he could just get outside.

Alvaranox took a few deep breaths before setting himself to the arduous task of rising to his feet and limping to the door. Pain rolled through the dragon, and he bore it with grit teeth. He tucked his wounded leg and paw up against his body as he hobbled across the room. When he reached the door he instinctively reached for the oversized handle with his wounded paw. He quickly realized that wasn't going to work. Someone was probably waiting outside but the dragon's pride would not allow him to call for assistance. So Alvaranox settled down upon his haunches, leaning back against his tail long enough to use his left paw to open the door.

Evening sunlight bathed the world outside his home in fading shades of gold. Alvaranox squinted against the light, peering around. There were armored guards in their blue and gold surcoats keeping a crowd at bay in the distance. Nearer his home, a few tables had been set up and topped with all sorts of medical supplies. Rolls of bandages, tubs of salve and baskets of herbs both fresh and dried. Enough herbs had been gathered so that the air all around his home was already tinted with a slightly bitter, pungent scent. Both Nylah and Kirra were standing around one of the tables, and when the door opened, they approached the dragon.

"You shouldn't be up and walking around," was the first thing Nylah said.

Alvaranox limped outside, glancing down at the increasingly gray-haired woman with a smirk that showed a few of his fangs. "Hello to you, too."

Nylah reached out and gently rubbed his nose, smiling. "Hello. Now go back to bed. Whatever you need, we can get it for you."

"Then you shall have to fetch me a large bucket to piss into," the dragon said with a snort. "As that is currently my most pressing need."

Nylah either missed the dragon's sarcasm or chose to ignore it. She waved her hand to one of the attendants. "Fetch a bucket. A large bucket."

"Oh, no," the dragon growled, pulling his head away from Nylah. "We are not starting down that road. I shall go to my usual place and I shall hear no argument about it."

"Very well," Nylah said, then waved at Kirra. "Accompany him."

Kirra blinked, her eyes widening a little. Then she gave a sheepish laugh and began to walk alongside the dragon. "Come along then, you old beast."

Alvaranox took a few limping steps towards the area that served as the dragon's latrine from time to time. Usually he'd take to his wings and fly somewhere near the lake, or far from town. But in the middle of the night or when that was not an option, there was a secluded grove of trees behind the building that housed his bed. A small spring and subsequent creek there served the purpose of keeping everything flushed and clean when he did not have time or energy to go further from home.

"Where do you think you're going?" the dragon snapped at Kirra when it settled in that she was following him step for hobbling step.

"To accompany you, and observe," Kirra said as matter-of-factly as she could.

"Oh no," the dragon said with a snort. "I don't know what manner of thrill you're seeking, but you shan't be watching me..."

"Don't make it any more awkward than it is, Dragon," Kirra said, putting her hand on his side. "We have to know how much blood is in it."

"What do you mean how much?" Alvaranox tossed his head, flaring his spines. "Perhaps there is none."

"That would be wonderful," Kirra said, smiling. "We expect some, but, we also expect that it will decrease by the day. But, there's really only one way to know for certain."

The dragon breathed in slowly until his lungs were pressing against his ribs and his dark green scales had nearly stretched away from each other. "There is no way in the darkest of hells that I am letting you watch me urinate." He gnashed his teeth, growling. "I...would have trouble."

"You would?" Kirra seemed surprised.

"Yes!" The dragon hissed. Then he dropped his head down, giving a very uncharacteristic mewl. The dragon's frilled green ears and spiny crests were quickly growing quite hot with embarrassment. A crimson flush rushing to his ears and nostrils gave him an almost purple tint. Just when he'd thought he couldn't be any more humiliated by this entire ordeal.

"I should think for a creature who's never worn a scrap of clothing and grumpily tells people to "kiss his green stones" it wouldn't be such an ordeal." Kirra smirked at him, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

Alvaranox could not bring himself to meet her gaze. "This is different," he muttered. Then he glanced back towards the healers tables set up in front of his home. He half expected to see Nylah laughing at him, but she was occupied with sorting herbs. "Did Nylah put you up to this?"

"If you're suggesting Nylah thinks you could learn a little extra humility from this whole affair, then I refuse to confirm or deny that." Kirra's smirk grew a little wider. "But we really do need to see how much blood is in your..."

"Fine!" Alvaranox snapped his jaws. "But you will wait here. When I am done, you may go and...look."

"If you'd rather, you can just tell me." Kirra giggled to herself.

"Oh, that's just hilarious, Kirra."

The dragon did his best to stalk off in anger though the fact he was slowly hobbling along stole much of the ferocity from the gesture. In truth, that wasn't really something he wanted to know. Bad enough knowing that somewhere in his body, he was still bleeding. To actually see the evidence would twist the dragon's belly and give him something else to worry about. So Alvaranox made his way into the grove of trees, and tried to relax long enough to empty his bladder. It took the beast a little while, as he couldn't help but think about how much blood might be involved. He closed his eyes, and when he was finally done, he kept them closed a few moments as he turned around and hobbled back out.

As he passed Kirra, he snorted at her. "Have fun, Inspector."

By the time the dragon had limped all the way back to Nylah, Kirra had rejoined him. Much as he did not want to hear her report, he found himself unable to escape it. At least the results were mostly positive. While there was clear evidence of blood, there was not as much as the two woman had feared. They seemed pleased with that, even if the idea sat heavy and uncomfortable in the dragon's belly like rotten fruit.

"Drink lots and lots of water, Alv," Nylah told him, stroking his neck. "Your body needs it and it will help keep you flushed out. Are you hungry yet? You should eat a little food. Your body needs the strength."

"I am..." The dragon scowled, twisting his ears back. Usually he was starving by this time of day, and he hadn't eaten anything since his injury. "Not very hungry. Too much pain, I think."

Nylah nodded in understanding. "Nonetheless, we'll get you something to eat. Just enough to keep your strength up. We don't want to completely fill your belly yet anyway. We'll let your stomach take it easy for a while. Now." Nylah pointed towards his door. "Back to bed. Kirra and I will get you cleaned up and re-bandaged shortly."

Alvaranox did not like being bossed around like some bratty hatchling. Yet his trip to the creek turned latrine and back had sapped what little strength he had and so he could not bring himself to argue. He hobbled back into his home, pausing to glance at the carved images upon his doorway. Damn dragon still looked like he was one second away from a drunken roll down the hillside. Alvaranox licked his muzzle at the thought of drink.

"Bring me some wine, will you?"

"Alright," Kirra said.

"No," Nylah countermanded her, shaking her head at Kirra. "He can't have wine right now. Not with some of the herbs we're giving him."

"Oh, of course," Kirra said, flushing a little. "I'm sorry to get your hopes up, Alv."

"Not as sorry as I am," the dragon muttered. He limped his way into his home, then stuffed his head into the water trough. At least it was freshly refilled. His tongue was not as badly swollen as before, and it was much easier for him to quench his thirst now. When the dragon had drank deeply enough, he lifted his head to glare at the two woman. Beads of water clung to his pebbly scales for a few seconds before falling to the floor. "By tomorrow, I expect this trough to be filled with wine."

"Expect to be disappointed then," Nylah said, then swiftly pointed towards his sleeping things. "Bed. Now."

"Slave driver," muttered the dragon under his breath.

Alvaranox hobbled back into his room, and eased himself down upon the softest section of blankets and pillows he could find. He dropped his head to rest upon his favorite green scale-pattern pillow, staring at the bookshelves for a time. Two pointed objects lay upon one of the shelves that had not been there before. He lifted his head and stared a moment before he realized what they were.

Arrowheads.

The dragon was still staring at them when Nylah and Kirra came into the room. Nylah was hauling a bucket of water, and Kirra had an armful of bandages and cleaning clothes. The dragon waited till he had their attention then flicked his paw towards the shelves, indicating the steel arrowheads. Hints of rusty red blood still clung to them.

"Are those what I think they are?"

Nylah nodded, her voice soft. "Yes. We pulled one from your leg, and the other from your ribs. I know you used to like to take trophies from some of your battles, even if you rarely displayed them. I thought you might like to keep the arrowheads as a trophy." She trailed off a moment, then looked up at the dragon. "If that's too morbid, I'll dispose of them right away."

"No," the dragon said, shaking his head. "Keep them. Thank you." As he spoke, Nylah signaled for him to lower his head, and she dipped a cloth in the bucket of water, then gently began to clean the lingering dried blood from his muzzle. Alvaranox tilted his head back and forth, too tired to complain about being bathed in such a humiliating manner. "I should have liked to have gotten one of their helmets. And their cloaks. Perhaps when I can fly again, I shall go back there and see if there's anything left of them."

As Nylah washed the dragon's face, Kirra began to do the same for his body. A lot of dried blood still coated the dragon, and soon the water in the wash bucket was tinted the color of old rust. They emptied it and refilled it several times as they cleaned the dragon's scales. As she gently scrubbed him, Kirra asked, "Who did this to you anyway? Can you remember?"

"Unfortunately yes," the dragon said softly. "I remember it quite well."

"There's a lot of questions being asked by the Council," Kirra said, dipping her cloth in the fresh water. "Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"Yes, thank you for reminding me, Kirra," the dragon said with a snort.

"Their questions will be answered in time," Nylah said. "Alvaranox's health is first and foremost right now."

"I do not think it is any direct threat to the town, if that is what the Council worries over," the dragon said. He flicked his ears, twisting his body a little to give Kirra access to his lower belly. He winced as she bathed the area around his stitched-up wound, though she was as gentle as she could be. "They ambushed me, actually. It's only a guess, but I think they were professional dragon slayers. Probably heard Asterryl has a dragon who intercepts bandits and things. They laid in wait in the ruins near that old bridge, as though setting a trap for travelers. A couple of archers were peppering me with arrows as soon as I arrived. Damn collar was buzzing the whole time trying to warn me. I gave chase to the archers, ended up in the ruins of the fort. Followed one of them around a corner..." Alvaranox gestured to his belly. "Another was hiding crouched down in some sunken alcove. As soon as I went by he had a clear shot at my belly."

Both women winced. It certainly sounded well planned. Luckily for Alvaranox and for Asterryl the ambush had failed, though only just. Nylah began to tend the dragon's wounded paw, washing away all the recently leaked blood and fluids that she could. "It does sound like something dragon slayers would do. If they knew they could draw you into a trap, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate."

"As am I," the dragon murmured. He growled a little. "Well-organized bastards. Nice armor, and helmets. Silvery looking in the moonlight. Three or four of them with matching black cloaks edged in red."

Nylah clucked her tongue. "Perhaps a mercenary band then, looking to expand into dragon slaying for some quick coin."

"Perhaps," Alvaranox agreed. "Cold blooded, whoever they were. Got the feeling some of the archers were just hirelings they were happy to be rid of after they did their job."

"What makes you think that?"

"The men with the armor were good. Calling out orders. Darting through the ruins to make it seem like there were more of them. Escaped my flames. All had the same gear. A couple of the others though, barely knew how to stay out of sight, or find a well protected location. Lacked the same armor and cloak." The dragon flexed his wings against the floor. "I could be mistaken. It was just the way things seemed at the time. Things were moving awfully fast and I was a bit distracted by trying not to die."

"It seems an awful lot of work to put into trying to kill one dragon," Kirra mused, as much to herself as anyone else. "Putting that plan together, designing the ambush, finding a way to lure you out there in the first place. Besides, it's not like you're some rampaging monster in need of slaying. You're our protector! I know you don't see yourself as our friend, but that's how Asterryl sees you. I don't know why dragon slayers would...well, try to lure you out there. To choose you, I mean. Why not go kill some other dragon?"

Nylah gave Kirra a sudden, stern look but by then it was too late. Alvaranox cocked his head, glaring down at Kirra. His voice was sharper than the blade that had pieced his belly, yet laden with underlying sorrow. "Have you seen any other dragons lately, Kirra?"

Kirra stumbled over her words, nearly choking on her tongue as she realized just how far she'd shoved her own foot into her mouth. "I...No...I didn't mean...Sorry, I thought..."

"Neither have I," Alvaranox growled. "If there are active dragon slayers here, in the moors, and the wilds, I am the only target they have left. All my kin who once called this land home have long since fled." He flared his spines, glaring down at Kirra as though she was the source of all his pain. The red-haired woman shrank before the dragon, wishing she could just hide herself under all his blankets. "Or they have already been slain. If the dragons I once knew continue to draw breath, then they are wise to have fled. After all, the only humans here who do not seem to want them dead would put them in a collar."

Alvaranox lay his head down against his pillow, heaving a sigh. He closed his eyes for a moment. Nylah finished her washing and began to bind his paw with bandages. She spread fresh, cool salve against the stitched wound, and then slowly wrapped the layers of gauzy fabric around it. Kirra returned to bathing the dragon, though Alvaranox could feel her hands trembling as she scrubbed at the last of the dried blood. Now and then he heard her sniff a little bit. After a while, he cracked one eye open and caught her wiping a tear from her cheek.

Much to his dismay, Nylah caught him peeking. She gave the dragon a look just as stern as the one she'd shot Kirra earlier, and then waved in Kirra's direction when the younger woman wasn't looking. When Alvaranox tried to ignore the suggestion, Nylah wrapped the bandages a little tighter around his injured paw to make her point.

Alvaranox grit his teeth. "I am...sorry, Kirra," the dragon said, hissing a little. "I did not mean to lay the blame upon your wings."

Kirra managed a little smile, looking up at the dragon. "I haven't got any wings, but thank you just the same."

"It's a saying," the dragon murmured. "At least it was, when I had other dragons to talk to."

"I'm sorry I brought that up, Alv," Kirra said. She spread out some bandages in front of her, and began to carefully smear some of the herbal salve across them. "I just wasn't thinking. I'm sure there are still other dragons out there, though. Somewhere. Maybe some day we can give you a chance to go and visit them, or get one of them to visit..." Nylah gave Kirra another sharp glance, and Kirra trailed off. Then she smiled a little, patting the dragon's ribs. "Anyway, I'm sure you'll see others again sometime."

"It is a nice thought, anyway." Alvaranpox settled himself with a sigh.

Alvaranox tried to relax as Kirra began to apply the bandages to his belly. He was far too large for them to easily wrap them around his body, and so instead most of his bandages were applied to him with a layer of sticky resin created from a mixture of pine sap and a few other ingredients. It stuck particularly well to the texture of the dragon's scales, and by lining the outer edges of the bandages with it they were able to keep them affixed to the dragon's wounds.

By the time they had bandaged him up, some food had arrived. Though the dragon still wasn't feeling particularly hungry, the delightful aromas of smoked mutton that permeated the room when his meal was delivered quickly began to change that. His sore belly rumbled a little as Nylah fetched a large knife and began to slice up the mutton haunch. Much as Alvaranox still loved the thrill of hunting his own prey and the satisfaction of feeding upon still-bleeding flesh, years bound to the protection of a human town had a way of endearing the flavors of cooked food to him.

"I know one mutton haunch is hardly a filling meal for you," Nylah said, setting the knife down. She hoisted up the tray and walked to the dragon's head. "But it will give your body something to draw strength from without overtaxing your belly right away. I've cut it in chunks that are fairly small by your standards, for the same reason. Do you want me to feed it to you?"

Alvaranox snorted. "I think I can manage that."

Nylah nodded, setting the tray down. "Alright. You eat, and I'll mix up your next batch of herbs in some water to take before you go back to sleep."

Alvaranox scowled and thumped his spined tail against the bedding in irritation. He did not like having to ingest all those herbs, though he did not complain. If he complained Nylah would probably double his dose just to knock him out and get him to shut up for a while. The thought made him smirk. That'd be just like the old lady.

While Nylah ground some herbs and mixed them with water, Kirra settled next to the dragon to spend a few moments listening to his heart beat and the sound of his breathing. He plucked a few slices of mutton from the wooden tray with his left paw, and dropped them into his muzzle. When Kirra lifted her head away from his chest, the dragon offered her a slice of mutton. At first she hesitated, but soon she gratefully accepted it, devouring it hungrily in a few large bites.

"If you're anything like Nylah you forget to feed yourself until you've taken care of me," the dragon said softly. Nylah glanced over at them, quirking her brow, and the dragon gestured at her with a slab of meat. "You know its true. Come eat this."

Nylah waved him off, and Alvaranox handed the meat to Kirra instead. She took her time with it, and made sure to thank the dragon as well.

Alvaranox ate a few more pieces, grinning to himself. "When I was younger, perhaps a few years after Nylah had first taken over being my Handler full time, I took ill with a terrible fever, and a cough that left my lungs burning."

"Oh, not this story," Nylah muttered as she walked over, hauling the dragon's water pail. "Don't listen to him, Kirra, he's an excellent liar with a vivid imagination."

Kirra giggled and Alvaranox just grinned at Nylah. "I did not trust her, and yet she would not leave my side for a week, trying all she could to help break my fever. Dragons do not often get ill, but when we do it can be quite extreme. Though she poured over my previous Handler's notes, she had no idea what manner of sickness I might have developed, nor even if I could transmit it to her. Her attendants were terrified to get to close to me, afraid they might catch it, that it might claim them. Nylah, though...Nylah stayed with me night and day doing everything she could. Everything except taking care of herself, that is."

"I took perfectly fine care of myself," Nylah said, making a show of yanking a piece of mutton out of the dragon's paw as though he hadn't just offered it to her. "As I am doing so now."

"You did not eat for four days, and you scarcely drank any water," the dragon said, grinning. "By the time I was getting better you'd damn near starved yourself into an illness even worse than mine." The dragon finished off the last of his meat. He grinned at Nylah even while his words were meant to Kirra. He flicked his ears. "Took her three days to get her strength back, and even then she had to lean against me for support."

"It only took one day," Nylah muttered. She nudged the bucket. "Drink your herbs and go to sleep."

"Don't look now," Alvaranox said, a smirk crawling across the edges of his snout. "But the old lady's getting cranky."

"Don't call me that," Nylah said, folding her arms. "And don't forget I owe you a very stern talking to about my poor roses."

Alvaranox stuck his muzzle into the bucket, his voice reverberating out of it in between the sounds of lapping. "Isn't that just like an old lady. Always yelling at someone to stay out of her garden."

"I'm yelling at you for ruining my garden," Nylah said, trying not to laugh. "There is an important difference."

Alvaranox lifted his head, licking beads of water and shredded herbs from his muzzle. "There's something new in here."

"Yes," Nylah said. "There's some Bluestrand Vine. It will help you get your strength back as well as keep your fevers down. You'll be taking that for a while, I think."

The dragon cocked his head, flicking his ears against his ridged black horns. "Bluestrand? Isn't that the weed that left me flying loops above the city all day long when I was younger?" He narrowed his eyes at her. "Among other things?"

"Yes," Nylah said with a little laugh. "Like I said, it will help give you your strength back. As weak as you are right now, I think it should just provide you a nice energy boost. I don't think you'll be feeling the need to fly any loops again this time, but we shall deal with any other effects as they arise. Now, the other herbs should take hold soon, and you need your rest. So we'll let you get some sleep." She rose to her feet, and held her hand out to the younger woman. "Come along, Kirra."

"Very well," the dragon said, curling up just a little against his bedding. "Pull those blankets over me, will you? I think I had a bit of a chill from the fever last night."

Kirra quickly moved to do just that. She spread a few different blankets out over the dragon. She tossed a sky blue one across his hind end, spreading it over his haunches. Then she worked a blanket with purple and silver checkerboard markings across his body and his wings, before finally settling a smaller golden hued quilt across his shoulders and the bottom of his neck.

"How's that?"

"Perfect," the dragon murmured. Already he was feeling drowsy.

Kirra smiled and patted his neck before heading to the door. "Good night, Alv."

"Good night, Kirra."

Nylah did the same, patting the dragon before she followed Kirra out of his sleeping chamber. "Good night."

Alvaranox smirked at her a moment before closing his eyes. "G'night, Old Lady."

---

Chapter Seven

---

Within a few days, Alvaranox began to adjust to the new rhythms of his life. His recuperation was a frustrating arduous process and he spent much of it laying amidst his bedding. In the mornings he awoke, ate a bit of breakfast, and limped his way to his copse of trees. Nylah and Kirra attended his wounds, cleaning and re-bandaging them once a day. That in and of itself was a laborious process as the dragon's injuries were still very fresh and quite tender. Though the women did all they could to minimize his pain it was still an unpleasant undertaking.

When Alvaranox grew weary of laying around in his home all day, he hobbled out into the fields beyond his sleeping chambers. Much as he hated being stared at it, he did enjoy the chance to lay in the sun for a little while. And the guards made sure to keep the crowds at a distance so they did not bother him. The dragon was a bit surprised to see how many people showed up every day as if to keep track of his recovery. He was also pleasantly taken aback to find them delivering gifts to him. Mostly food and treats from pungent and flavorful smoked fish, to iced cakes and honey rolls. A few even delivered bouquets of flowers or potted plants. The dragon had no idea what the hell he was expected to do with those, but Nylah and Kirra set them up around his home.

By the end of the first week he was starting to feel a little better. His wounds were mending at a good rate, and the pain had slightly lessened. Nylah and Kirra had put together some simple slings for his foreleg. They used thick loops of cloth bandage to hold the dragon's leg up, and secured it by tying them off around the base of his stout green-scaled neck. It was not the most comfortable thing for the dragon to wear and he felt a little humiliated to be seen with it on. Yet he bore it with only a few complaints because it allowed him to hobble about on his own. Better he look foolish than have to ask for assistance.

The dragon's fever gradually abated and his strength began to return. The herbs he took in the morning left him with a little extra energy, though even that was easily expended. After breakfast Alvaranox sometimes spent a little while walking around in the lands beyond his home. It helped him to burn off that extra energy, gave him something to do, and also ensured the blood would continue to flow properly through his wounded limbs and organs. Nylah and Kirra kept very close watch on him at all times, and never let him wander too far.

As the fever slowly broke and his strength slowly returned so too did the dragon's appetite. When it was clear his stomach could handle his meals, Kirra began to bring him a bit more to eat each day. The two woman mixed up a new batch of herbs for him with every meal. The mixtures varied a bit by time of day. After breakfast the medicine gave the dragon some extra energy while keeping his pain levels down. The herbs after lunch were to help his body mend, though they also made him a little drowsy. Those he took in the evening made the cleaning of his wounds less uncomfortable. They also helped him slumber deeply through the night.

Alvaranox got into the habit of taking short naps after lunch. They helped alleviate the drowsiness but did not prevent him from sleeping well later in the evening. Truth be known it was not long before the dragon was fed up with limping, fed up with dozing off all the time and sick of being in various amounts of pain all day long. He felt as though the barrel in which he was cooped up was growing smaller by the day. No longer was he simply trapped in Asterryl, now he was stuck inside his sleeping chamber and occasional the fields around it.

In the mornings he made a point to visit Stupid Fish. Though it had not rained in over a week, he made sure Kirra's attendants kept Stupid Fish's trough filled with fresh water from the lake. Alvaranox lowered his head to the trough, watching the fat, silvery fish lazily drift about.

Under his breath, Alvaranox whispered to the water as though the fish could understand him. "I think my barrel is nearly as small as yours, Stupid Fish." The dragon tossed his head. The movement cast a shadow over the water, and the startled fish bolted around in circles a few times. Water boiled where his tail nearly broke the surface. Alvaranox chuckled. "Sorry, sorry. At least we're still alive though, right? ...Survivors, you and I. No matter what they throw at us, no matter how deep they cut us, we keep breathing don't we."

Alvaranox settled upon his haunches. The white-cloth sling kept his foreleg snug against his body. With his free paw, he dropped a batch of grain into the fish's oversized, oblong barrel. Stupid Fish soon glided towards the sinking pellets, probing at them with long, silver whiskers. The dragon chuckled. The fish always investigated his food that way first. As if he didn't know by now just what he was being fed. One by one, the fish began to suck up the bits of grain. When they were all gone, the fish rose to the surface, big black eyes shifting back and forth. A few whiskers broke the surface of the water and flicked about before splashing back down.

"More? Alright, alright." The dragon scooped up another pawful of grain with his free paw and dumped it into the trough. "As if you're not fat enough already." Then Alvaranox peered down at his own bandaged body. With the bandages affixed by resin seemingly everywhere, his green scales resembled poorly patched up armor. "If I don't get to start flying again soon, I'm going to end up just as fat as you, Stupid Fish."

"About time to head back and take your nap, isn't it?" Kirra asked as she walked up towards the dragon. She set a hand upon one of the copper pipes that ran from the rain collection funnel down to the nearby trough. "Wouldn't want to wear yourself out."

"...Just on cue." The dragon slowly eased up to three paws, and at Kirra's confused look, he smirked at her. "Don't give me that look. I know you're trying to fatten me up just like the fish."

"You've got a ways to go before you're half as fat as that fish. If you feed him much more grain I think he's going to pop." Kirra moved to peer in at the fish, who idly waved his whiskers at her.

"If the fish pops we shall have to build a fire around his barrel and make stew," Alvaranox said, smirking to himself as he began to limp back home.

"That's horrid," Kirra exclaimed, though she couldn't help laughing. "Besides, you'd miss your..." She paused just before she said the P-Word again. "...Fish."

Alvaranox glared at her a moment. "Smoothly done."

It was not long before Alvaranox had returned home, eaten some lunch, and settled down into his soft things again. Nylah and Kirra draped a few of his softer blankets across his body, and left the dragon to his nap. Before he dozed off, Alvaranox felt both smug and humiliated. An odd combination even for a dragon.

The smugness came from having his every need catered to as he felt a dragon should. The humiliation came from the fact that he was only getting those needs catered to because he was too wounded to properly take care of himself. Made him feel more like some toddling hatchling than a powerful dragon in his own right.

As he napped, Alvaranox dreamt in vivid colors. His dreams were often that way, especially when they were not influenced by the collar. Surreal and bright, streams of images that played through his mind like interconnected stories. One dream continually dissolving into the next. Each story so vibrant and so important for the moments in which it lasted. It seemed a shame each scene would soon melt away and be forever forgotten as the next moment of dream became all he knew.

Alvaranox awoke thinking of females. Not that the dragon did not often think of females. Bound to Asterryl or not, he was still a male. Drifting on hazy layers of half consciousness, Alvaranox tried to recall the dream. Yes, there was definitely a female dragon involved. He tried to focus on her, but the images were already falling apart. She was blue, he thought. He liked blue. Or was she purple. Perhaps blue but painted with the lavender brush of twilight. Yes, he liked that idea. She had a nice tail. Had she been teasing him in the dream? Lifting it a little for him? Naughty thing.

Alvaranox shifted. He felt a little odd. He yawned, barely even lifting his horned head as his pink tongue curled in his green and gold-blotched muzzle. The dragon was still too groggy to figure out what felt off. His body did not hurt too badly. The herbs he'd taken just before dozing were still quelling the worst of his pain. And now that his fever had mostly broken, his head did not pound and his joints did not ache. There was definitely something different, though. Not entirely unfamiliar, just a sensation the dragon hadn't experienced in the last week or so, not since before his injuries. He felt a little tingle and a strange sort of exposure.

Wait, was he...

"Hello, Alvaranox," Kirra cheerfully called out as she opened the door to his sleeping chamber. Afternoon sunlight streamed in behind her, silhouetting her against the oversized doorframe. "Sorry if I've woken you. You've been asleep for a few hours, and you'll want to be able to sleep well tonight."

Alvaranox murmured, lifting his head, and shifting himself subtly under the blankets. What timing Kirra always had. "I was awake," he muttered. "Though I'd planned to return to sleep."

"You'll get plenty of sleep tonight, I'm sure," Kirra said, laughing. "Let me take a look at you."

"Haven't you taken enough looks at me?" The dragon glared at her a moment, flaring his spines as she walked into his sleeping chamber. She closed the door, but the sunlight pouring through the leaded panes of the windows provided plenty of light.

Kirra ignored him and walked to the dragon's head. She took it in her grasp, leaning forward to peer into his eyes a moment. "Open," she instructed him. Hissing, the dragon opened his mouth and she looked at his tongue and throat, then smiled. "Looking good. You still feel a little warm, but not too bad. I'll take those blankets off you now."

"No," Alvaranox said swiftly, curling a bit beneath them. That was not something he wanted her to do just yet. He winced in pain at the motions. "Leave them. I am...comfortable. You may go now."

Kirra put her hands on her hips, tilting her head. Red curls spilled down over the shoulders of the gray and blue blouse she wore. She had the sleeves rolled up. Alvaranox noticed her skin seemed to have darkened just slightly in the last week. All those afternoons in the sun with the wounded dragon seemed to be adding a bit of color to her. She clucked her tongue and chuckled.

"You're acting odd. Very well, if you wish the blankets to stay, you can keep them a little while longer. Do you have a chill? You don't seem to be trembling."

"No," the dragon grumbled, laying his head down against his pillow. "I do not have a chill. I just wish to...remain comfortable. And under these blankets for a little while longer. I also wish you to go away."

"You're in a weird mood," Kirra said, laughing to herself. "Let me see how much water you have."

Kirra walked to the trough, peering inside. Alvaranox glanced over at her, then hazarded a look beneath his own blanket, hissing to himself under his breath. "Go away already."

"You needn't be hostile, Alv," Kirra said, thinking the dragon was speaking to her. "You've still got plenty of water. Why don't you get up and get a drink. Do you want me to help put your sling back on?"

"No!" Alvaranox glared at her a moment, his face flushing beneath his scales. The crimson tint inside his ears made them look a little purple, his nose the same. "Kirra, will you just go away for a little while?"

Kirra walked back over towards the dragon, narrowing her eyes. He was acting awfully strange, even for a dragon. She licked her lips, folding her arms beneath her breasts, watching him. Was he hiding something? She hoped he wasn't feeling ill again and trying to hide it from her to avoid treatment. She knew the dragon was a bit embarrassed by his need for assistance but she did not want him to risk his own health just to avoid that embarrassment.

"Alright, Alv," she said, a little sharpness creeping into her voice. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing," the dragon snapped. It was true enough. "I am feeling...rather well, actually." Too well, in fact. Why wouldn't it go away?

"Then why are you acting so odd, and looking so embarrassed? I may not have known you as long as Nylah, but I've known you long enough to learn your various looks. The inside of your ears and your nostrils are blushing so hard your green is practically lilac."

The dragon just hissed in frustration, twisting a little beneath the simple, thin blue blankets that were draped across him. "Nothing I wish you to know about."

"But that's the problem, isn't it." Kirra rolled her eyes along the dragon's half shrouded body, looking for any signs of injury or distress. "I'm your Handler, and I need to know about all your afflictions."

"I would hardly call this an affliction." The dragon gave a sigh, and lowered his head against his favored pillow. "Please, Kirra. Don't make me spell it out."

Kirra blinked. What was he babbling about? And why wouldn't he let her take the blankets away, anyway? What was he hiding under there that might actually be embarrassing for a dragon? It had to be something that Kirra didn't already know about. ...Oh. Oh! Could he...be? Did he have...? She supposed normally when that happened when someone was around, he could just lay upon his belly to keep it hidden. Yet now with his wound Alvaranox had to lay upon his side.

A smirk began to twist at Kirra's soft pink lips. As she considered that particular option, a flush was soon tinting her own cheeks darker as well. She started to giggle. "Do you...have..."

Alvaranox growled at her as if threatening her against even saying it out loud.

Of course the dragon's consternation only added fuel to Kirra's fire. It was ever so rare for her to be able to get something over on him, something she could hold over his head. Her giggles grew and grew despite her struggles to constrain them. "Alv! Do you have...do you have an erection?!"

Alvaranox heaved a sigh of defeat. "...Yes."

Kirra's bout of the giggles exploded into full on laughter. She clutched her sides as her ribs began to ache. The laughter boiled from her so explosively Alvaranox half expected her jaws to snap and her head to pop right off. He almost wished it would, as Kirra's unexpectedly gory death would have ended his embarrassment then and there.

It also would have ended any chance of her gossiping to Nylah all about the dragon's unwanted erection and how hilariously humiliated it made him. Not that Nylah was ignorant of the fact that even dragons grew aroused from time to time. But at least Nylah had always had the tact to pretend to be unaware and offer to give the dragon some privacy and time to "rest".

But Kirra? Kirra was laughing her damn head off about it. "It is not funny!" Alvaranox snapped.

"Oh, but it is!" Kirra said, still laughing. "Your face! You looked so humiliated it was as though I'd caught you playing with it. Oh! Did I?"

"Certainly not!" Alvaranox snarled. Though, if she'd arrived a few minutes later things might have been different. He jerked his head up, glaring at her. "Now stop laughing at me." Alvaranox turned his eyes away from her as a note of more sincere and intense humiliation began to creep into his voice. He didn't like being laughed at, especially not by humans. It reminded him of his...place, here. That even when he was healthy and strong, he was little more than their Guardian Slave. A pet owned by the whole town. Just like Stupid Fish. "...Stop laughing..."

The pain that cracked the dragon's voice squeezed at Kirra's heart. She winced, her laughter quickly trailing off. She hadn't meant her laughter to hurt the dragon. She walked over to him, and put her hand on his muzzle to pull his head back around towards her. "I'm sorry, Alv," Kirra said softly. She smiled at him, rubbing his cheek. "I didn't mean it that way. I just...well...you're a dragon!"

"Yes," Alvaranox said with a derisive snort. "I am."

"And I just...never thought that would be a problem a dragon has. It's amusing enough when a man has an erection in public, trying to adjust his breeches in the tavern, turning all red. But a dragon? Well the idea of a dragon desperately struggling to hide it was just too damn funny!" She started to giggle again at the very idea, only to clamp her teeth shut to avoid embarrassing Alv further. "I suppose I never really even thought you'd get...those."

"How else would we make more dragons?" Alvaranox snorted again, flaring his spines. Kirra could be incredibly dense sometimes.

Kirra furrowed her brow, and worked her fingers against a loose thread sticking from the rolled up section of her blue and gray sleeve. "Well, I didn't think about it. I guess I just assumed dragons really only got aroused when...other dragons were around." Kirra winced as soon as she mentioned other dragons. Alvaranox made a little cooing noise, and Kirra rubbed his muzzle. "Sorry."

"Then you thought wrong." Alvaranox said. "We get them...in a similar measure to any other thinking male creature, I am certain. Now that you know..." The dragon pulled his head back, curling his neck into an S to glare down at her. "Please go away until it has a chance to go away as well."

"Till it goes away, or you make it go away?" Kirra asked, unable to help but giggle again.

"Grow up, Kirra," the dragon muttered. Though, it hadn't exactly shown any signs of going away on its own yet. He lifted his bandaged right paw, glancing at it. That wouldn't be any help. At least he had another.

"How long have you had it?"

"What kind of question is that?" The dragon snorted.

"A medical question." Kirra eased down towards the blanketed area of the dragon's body.

"Since I awoke. I am surprised this conversation has not melted it by now."

"That's what I was just thinking. I don't know about dragons, but for a human man, humiliation and embarrassment...hell, casual conversation even can often be quite the cure for unwanted arousal."

"You're a fountain of useful information, Kirra." The dragon eased his head back down once more, grunting in annoyance. "Now go spout it to someone else for a while. But not Nylah. Wait, where is Nylah?" That would be just what he needed. His former Handler here to laugh about his erection as well.

"She's off putting in orders for more herbs," Kirra said, waving her hand. "Speaking of which, they are probably partly responsible. The Bluestrand Vine in particular. It is excellent at providing a boost of energy for a creature, but, at least among human men, it can also provide a boost in...other areas."

"Fantastic," the dragon said, baring his fangs. He thumped his spined tail against the blankets. Come to think of it, when Nylah gave him that herb in his younger days, he seemed to recall a bit of that effect as well. Of course, back then he was young and especially...energetic to begin with, so he hadn't really ascribed any increase in desire to the herbs. "Now go away."

"If it's the Bluestrand, it may be there for a while unless you tend it." Kirra smirked at him a moment.

"So your medical advice is that I masturbate?" The dragon's tone was flat, his copper eyes narrowed. "Fine. Now leave so I can do so."

Kirra ignored him, and walked up his body again. She reached to his foreleg, and gently picked up his bandaged paw. "What, with this?"

"With the other one, obviously," the dragon said, his ears flushing. At least Kirra's face seemed as deeply red as his own ears and nose felt. The topic seemed a bit embarrassing to her as well, though she was doing a better job hiding it than the dragon might have expected.

"Well go on then," Kirra said, moving back a little. "Reach for it."

"I certainly shall not! Not with you standing there." The dragon flexed his wings, and flicked one of them out to try and buffet her with it.

Kirra stepped back a bit, swatting at the dragon's wing. "Cut it out. My point is, I don't want you hurting your belly curling up to touch yourself. I just want to make sure you can do so safely before I...leave you to it."

"I refuse," the dragon said flatly.

"Then I suppose you'll have to put up with it until it goes away on its own," Kirra shrugged, chuckling. "Perhaps in a few hours."

"A few hours?!" The dragon's eyes flew open, his spines all flared out in alarm.

"Only a guess. Can't say as I've ever recorded the amount of time a dragon's erection might last without being tended to while under the influence of Bluestrand." Kirra tilted her head, a smirk returning to her lips. "Though it could make a fascinating study. Perhaps I should fetch my journals." Kirra put her hands on her hips, grinning at the dragon. When he chose to ignore her, she chewed on her lip a moment. "I am...curious, though. Do you think I could...see it? It's about the only part of you I haven't seen. It's also the only external part of your anatomy we haven't gotten any...charts or anything on."

"You want to see it." The dragon's words came as a nearly monotone statement rather than a question.

Kirra simply shrugged. "Now that we're sitting here talking about it, I do find myself a little curious. Has...Nylah ever seen it?'

That was an interesting question. The dragon considered it a moment, and then with a snort, admitted, "Probably. Even if it was while I was sleeping. Or awoke in the morning with one, stretching before her without realizing it." Then he narrowed his eyes. "She, however, has the tact not to bring it up."

"She and I have a different way of handling you," Kirra said, laughing to herself. "You don't have to let me see it if you don't want to. But the way you go about flaunting yourself at people and telling them to kiss your green testicles, I'm surprised you're so embarrassed."

"I say green stones," the dragon muttered. He took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. "Oh, very well. If you must. But if you brag to Nylah about seeing it..."

"She'd probably slap me," Kirra said with a giggle. "Or ask me for all the details. Probably one, then the other."

Kirra knelt down alongside the dragon, grinning to herself. Alvaranox thought she looked far too smug for her own good. She looked like a cat who'd cornered a mouse rather than a woman about to take a peek at a dragon's most intimate organ. Then again, perhaps those two things had more in common than he realized. She would be one of the few people in Asterryl who'd ever seen that particular part of him, and certainly one of the few humans to ever see a dragon so embarrassed. He just hoped she wasn't planning on holding this over his head later in life when she wanted to best him in some verbal sparring match.

Oh, by the way Alv, remember that time I saw your erection and laughed and laughed? Hard for even a dragon to come up with a biting retort to that particular nugget of information.

Kirra took the edge of the soft, lightly quilted blue blanket on her hands. She ran her thumbs against the edge of the fabric, her belly twisting with knots of delighted embarrassment mingling with hints of wicked excitement. She was actually going to look at it, wasn't she. She hesitated for a moment. Then mischief shone in her green eyes as she thought, what the hell. She lifted up the blanket, and peered beneath it towards the dragon's hind legs.

Just as promised, Alvaranox was spectacularly erect. The dragon's unsheathed member jutted up from between his half closed hind legs like a crimson spear pressed against his underbelly. Kirra's eyes went wide at the sight of it. She gave the dragon a grin, which he did his best to ignore, and then turned her attention back to the his genitals. Carefully she pulled the blanket aside to better expose him. Then she reached out and brushed her fingers over the scales of one of his hind legs.

"Could you lift this a little, or roll over?"

"Haven't you seen enough?" The dragon muttered, though he did as she asked. He rolled towards his back a little more, hind legs parting to give her a better view.

Now Kirra could see the dragon's weapon completely unveiled. The size and shape of it reminded her a little of her own forearm, though it was larger than that. But it was also thickest at its very base, where it emerged from the dragon's retracted green sheath. All along its smooth length it gradually tapered towards a sharp point with just a minor flare behind it. In a way it looked a little like the head of the spears some of the town guards carried. Faint but noticeable ridges encircled the base of the dark red organ, though the rest of the flesh appeared smooth.

At the base of Alv's erection lay the dragon's plump green testicles. Kirra was a little more familiar with those organs, given the way they bobbled about under his tail as he walked. Though aside from the times he muttered something about kissing them she hadn't exactly paid them much attention. After all, dogs and stallions and bulls and other beasts all had a pair of testicles too and she scarcely noticed those. That the dragon had a set of balls simply signified that he was a male beast like any other. Half the various monsters that prowled the wilds beyond Asterryl's borders surely had them as well.

Only, Alvaranox was hardly a beast. He was a thinking, reasoning creature just as she was. She knew it pained the dragon that so many of the town simply thought of him as some monster kept here to protect them. All the years he'd been forced to fight for Asterryl and still he was but a beast to so many people. Just a monster who kept them safe so that they'd not have to endanger their own people in their own defense. A captive dragon to keep the dangers of the world at bay.

A dragon who had nearly given his life in defense of a town who seemed to care so little for him.

Kirra scowled to herself, her heart sinking on the dragon's behalf. How long had it been since he'd even seen another dragon? How much longer than that had it been since he'd held a conversation with one? Since he'd had a chance to feel a female's touch, or press himself against her at night?

"Alv," Kirra said gently, looking up at him.

"Yes?" The dragon asked, glancing down at her. He looked as though he did not wish to see himself on display. Probably felt as though he was being inspected in some twisted town fair. "Are you nearly done looking?"

"How long has it been since you've been...touched?" Kirra set her hand upon the pebbly scales of the dragon's thigh. They were warm. "By another, I mean. By a female."

"I've no idea," the dragon said, bitterness dripping from his tongue like poison. "Over a decade, at least..."

Kirra scrunched her face. That was almost half her life. "Do you...want me to?"

"Hrmm?" Alvaranox blinked at her, not sure what she meant at first. "Want you to what?"

Kirra's head thudded in her chest. Her mouth went dry as she considered what she was offering the dragon. She tried to swallow a few times, and found herself nearly unable. It wasn't really that big of a deal, was it? She was hardly a prude, and had been to the beds of a few different men she fancied. Why, just a week ago, she'd had a few too many drinks, and pleasured one of them in the backroom of her favorite tavern. The memory would have made her flush if she hadn't already been so scarlet.

"...Tend you," Kirra said simply.

Alvaranox blinked, and lay his head down against his pillow once more. He closed his eyes, deciding he wasn't even going to dignify that with an answer. Instead, he dignified it with a startled murmur of pleasure when Kirra unexpectedly placed her hand upon the dragon's erection, and gave his sensitive flesh a slow, tender stroke.

"Mmrrrhhhn," he moaned, then opened his eyes, staring down at her in shock. "What are you doing?"

"Resisting the urge to make a joke about "handling" you." Kirra laughed to herself.

She hoped she hadn't just crossed some kind of red line with the dragon. In truth she had no way to know how he felt about being touched in such a way by another species. Yet he'd been in this town long almost as long as Nylah had been alive. Perhaps even longer than that. Kirra wasn't entirely sure. Though none of them would say so out loud, they all knew he might never again see a female dragon. Kirra did not know if the dragon held feelings for Nylah that were deeper than friendship, or if the older woman herself held such feelings for the dragon. Yet there was something that occasionally shone in their glances that made Kirra wonder if they sometimes wished they'd been born in different bodies.

When Alvaranox did not reply, Kirra slowly ran her fingers up his length again. Teasing him experimentally at first, to see if he'd stop her. She would only do this if the dragon himself was not only comfortable with it but desired her continued efforts. It was certainly not something she had planned or ever considered. But seeing him laying there erect, his body longing for attention even if his mind refused to acknowledged it had given her the idea. He deserved to be treated better by this town, this place. She had no intention of making this a habit, but at least in this one private moment, she was happy to make the dragon feel a little better if it was his desire for her to do so.

Biting her lip, Kirra leaned forward and eased her other hand beneath the dragon's length. It felt hot and smooth against her palm. She lifted the end of it away from his belly, and ran her fingers against the slightly flared tip. Alvaranox moaned, his hips twitching, back arching just a little bit. Ooh, it seemed he enjoyed that.

"Kirra," the dragon said, his voice a heady, uncertain whisper. "You don't have to do this..."

That did not sound like a request for her to stop. Kirra smiled a little bit, running her palm down his length again. She closed her fingers around the ridged base, though she could not wrap them completely around him there. The dragon trembled as she gently squeezed him, and slowly drug her hand back along his shaft. This time he lifted his hips a little more as if resisting the urge to thrust into her grasp.

"I'm not going to stop until you've spent yourself, Alv," Kirra said just loud enough to ensure the dragon heard it. "Unless you want me to. This ends the moment you feel at all uncomfortable, or wish me to stop. If you don't wish me to stop, then you don't have to speak or anything. Just...enjoy yourself for once."

Alvaranox slowly relaxed against his blankets and pillows. The dragon was filled with of uncertainty of the greatest kind. Was Kirra really doing this for him? It certainly seemed that way. He hoped she would not have regrets later, hoped she would not feel awkward. For his part, Alvaranox did not expect to suffer any such feelings. Dragons were always relatively open creatures, at least among other dragons. For dragons who considered themselves friends and found each other attractive, it was not unusual to share a night of pleasure without any deeper, life long commitment. Pleasure was a simple, natural thing, and so long as it was consensual, mating was meant to be enjoyed. Humans seemed to complicate things. Alvaranox hoped Kirra was not going to complicate this. Though whatever the future held, in that moment the dragon had no desire to ask her to stop.

Just as he'd admitted, it had been ages since anyone had touched the dragon in such a way. His thoughts drifted for a moment to the last mate he could recall. A lovely female, about his age, her scales shades of blue and lilac. Had...that been the female he'd dreamt of? It frustrated him that his memories sometimes became as fuzzy as his dreams. He'd taken her to his little island refuge, shared company and pleasure with her. Pressed himself against her belly, climbed upon her back. They had laughed and talked and hunted together in sunshine. Till she had to return to her own home. Till the damn bell had called him away.

But that was well over ten years gone, and he'd not seen her or another dragon since.

"May I touch your balls?" Kirra sounded a little hesitant, a little shy.

Alvaranox smirked, lifting his head just enough to peer down at the girl. Her face was nearly as red as her hair. "You may," the dragon said, chuckling. "Never been asked that before."

"I wouldn't think a human woman has ever done anything like this for you, before."

"They haven't. But, I meant female dragons have never asked that, either. They just...touch what they want." He chuckled to himself, watching her.

"I just wanted to be sure. Not all human men like having their balls played with."

"I do," the dragon admitted, a hint of a smirk crossing his muzzle. He lay his head back down. There was something oddly surreal about watching Kirra touching his mating organs, and for now he'd rather just experience the sensations.

"Good," Kirra said, smiling to herself.

Kirra let one of her hands drift below the ridged base of the dragon's member and across his dark green balls. Now that she was actively exploring the creature as a lover of sorts, she thought he had a fascinating set. The testicles of a dragon were certainly impressive things. They were quite fat and hefty like the eggs of a goose, held within a silken smooth pouch of forest green skin. The dragon's orbs also seemed rather loose though she thought that might be due in part to the lingering remnants of his fever. Perhaps she'd pay a little more attention to them now, and see if they weren't normally a little more snug. Would help to streamline him when he flew, she thought with a smile.

Kirra gently rolled one of the dragon's balls around in her hand. It was oddly enthralling watching the dragon's testicle shift and move against her palm, and beneath her fingers. Such an intimate part of him, and so important to his overall make up as a male beast, and yet even in the time she'd been his Handler she'd never touched them. Then again, she supposed that shouldn't surprise her.

"Nylah has touched these though, hasn't she?" Kirra giggled a little, gently caressing the other hidden egg. "Medically speaking, I mean."

Alvaranox scrunched his muzzle at the memory. Trust Kirra to ask an embarrassing question in the middle of her attempts to pleasure him. At least thanks to the damn Bluestrand he knew he wasn't going to lose his erection. "She has...given me thorough physical examinations, yes. Early on as my Handler, as I was growing. Though I would hardly compare the way a farmer might examine the testicles of a stallion to ensure his health to what you are doing with mine, right now."

Kirra merely giggled to herself. Her other hand drifted down to the dragon's balls as well, and she held one firm orb in each palm, hefting them. The dragon's left testicle had just a hint of a size advantage over its twin, a phenomenon she'd noticed often enough among men and the natural world. She toyed with them a little while, and then let them drop back into place, hanging against the area where the dragon's scaly thigh met the base of his tail.

As Kirra moved both hands up his length again, Alvaranox kept his eyes closed. Kirra was quiet. So was the dragon as Kirra started to stroke him a little more seriously. She used both hands to try and work his whole length, from the sensitive ridges that circled his base all the way up to the pointed tip at the end of his fleshy spear. A little dribble of pre seed began to ooze from his tip, and Kirra deftly worked the slick fluid all the way down the dragon's member.

Waves of warm, rolling pleasure began to wash across the dragon as Kirra worked his tool. The woman's hands were lovely and soft, their agility teased him in ways he could not recall having experienced before. She brought him lingering moments of steady pleasure as she worked her hands in time together against his shaft. Then she drummed and danced her fingers around the faint flare just behind his tip, making his member pulse. After running her hands back down the dragon's erection, she twisted her fingertips against the sensitive ridges that marked its base. The pleasure made Alvaranox trill, the dragon's body trembling lightly.

Very gradually Kirra increased the pace of her motions. She did not work to hurry the dragon to his climax, neither did she seek to tease him incessantly. Alvaranox's breath came harder, his plated green chest rising and falling with greater urgency as Kirra worked her fingers along his maleness. Now and then she paused in her stroking to squeeze the organ as though marveling at its heat and hardness. A hand drifted to the dragon's balls now and then, swirling the orbs beneath her fingers and giving them gentle caresses.

Kirra wrapped her fingers just around the dragon's tapered tip and its minor flare. Lazily, she pumped her palm against it, feeling the slickness of the pre-seed she coaxed forth. As she worked her grip back and forth against those few highly sensitive inches, she took one of the dragon's balls into her other hand. Kirra began to massage the tender gland in time with the stroking of her other hand, relishing the little grunts of pleasure it drew from the dragon. She was glad to see he was enjoying himself. She felt he deserved some pleasure and some happiness by now.

With his eyes closed, Alvaranox simply savored the pleasures she brought him. He tucked his front paws up against his chest, relaxed as could be despite the stiffness of his mating tool, and the desire to thrust himself through that which brought his delight. The dragon was rather surprised by just how good Kirra seemed to be at this. He wondered if she spent many of her nights sharing the company of men she fancied, or if it had simply been so long since the dragon had been touched this way that even a simple stroking felt like heaven.

As his pleasure grew, so too did the sounds it brought from the dragon. He began to croon openly, whimpering under his breath. The dragon twisted and squirmed just a little, despite Kirra telling him to stay quiet and to avoid upsetting his wounds. He groaned louder nonetheless when he felt Kirra pull his member up away from his belly scales. Then he sucked in a sharp breath when he felt the warmth of soft lips brushing against the underside of his tool. A moment later, he felt those lips part, followed by the wet velvet heat of her tongue hesitantly gliding over his tip. He sucked in his breath, shivering.

Holding him in place with her hand, Kirra swirled her tongue around that tapered tip a few times. A slow, blissful swirl of heat twisting around his most sensitive flesh. All the while her free hand stroked his length, roaming it with fingers that alternatively squeezed and danced against him. By then Alvaranox's whole body was tensing up, his tool flexing as his back arched. The dragon's balls drew tighter.

"Kirra!"

The dragon's voice was both an expression of delight, and a cautious warning about how close her tongue had pushed him. He hadn't expected that, and he rather imagined Kirra had simply gotten carried away. That was fine with him, he enjoyed it when females got carried away in that regard. He felt her hair brush his length as she pulled her head back a little. She gave a soft laugh.

"Oh, go on then you old beast," Kirra murmured, wrapping both her hands around his length again. "Find your satisfaction. Gods know you've earned it lately. Just keep quiet when you do!"

Holding the dragon's engorged crimson spear between both hands, Kirra began to stroke it as firmly and swiftly as she could manage without losing her grip. She worked the slick thing back and forth between her palms, fingers circling around both sides of it, one hand atop it and the other below. Alvaranox's pleasure rose swiftly once more, and close as he'd already been the dragon could not have held back from his release now even if he wished it.

The dragon's maleness flexed suddenly as his body prepared itself, and the beast's pleasure began to peak. He balled up his left paw into a fist, thumped his spined tail against the furs, and slammed his jaws shut to hold back his roar. Trying to keep himself quiet as he suddenly began to release his seed caused the dragon's muzzle to flush even more of a purple hue, all the spines standing out at full attention around his head. His mating tool jumped in Kirra's hands as if struggling to free itself from their soft prison. The movement jettisoned a thick spurt of off-white dragon seed which splattered against his lower belly.

Feeling the dragon's orgasm rocking the flesh she held in her hands only spurred Kirra to stroke him harder. Her hands were a blur along the last third of the dragon's length, working that sensitive minor spear flare with increased urgency. Alvaranox gave a muffled cry of bliss through his clenched jaws, his whole snout scrunched up. His ears pinned against his skull even as his crests remained completely extended. The dragon's balls were tight against his body, fat ovals outlined against the green sac.

For several long moments, ecstasy was all the dragon knew. The pains of his many wounds were overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of draconic ejaculation. The sensation was made all the more delightful by the fact it was brought on by another for the first time in many years. Powerful blasts of the dragon's seed marked his belly and his chest plates as he came in the woman's hands. The thicker globs of it clung stubbornly to him while the thinner liquids drained down his body, running between scales and sluicing down to his wings.

Only when the dragon was utterly spent, and squirming beneath her attentions to his overly sensitive member did Kirra finally stop stroking him. She sat back on her heels, looked the white-spattered dragon over, and began to laugh. At least this time it was not the sort of laugh that humiliated the dragon himself. Kirra patted his balls as they began to relax again, grinning at him.

"Bet your boys feel lighter now, hmm?"

The dragon murmured something incomprehensible between panted breaths.

Kirra only giggled. She slowly rose to her feet to fetch some cloths and water to clean the dragon with. "I'd wager you feel better, as well. Let's see if that thing is willing to go down now, hmm?"

"I suppose if it does not, you shall have to try again," Alvaranox cracked his eyes to copper slits as he smirked at her, still panting.

"Don't press your luck, Alv," Kirra said cheerfully enough. "Its not something I plan to make a habit of. But I couldn't well just leave you there like that for hours on end, unable to properly attend yourself."

"No, I suppose not," the dragon replied, closing his eyes again. "This isn't going to be...awkward...for you, is it?"

"Not unless you insist on making it awkward," Kirra chuckled, returning to the dragon's side. She began to mop up the mess the beast had made upon himself, first with dry clothes and then with wet ones. "You needed a little help, and I offered it." She worked another cloth over his scales, chewing on her tongue as though it were a bit of gristle as she tried to sort her thoughts. "Frankly, I thought you deserved a little time where you felt...appreciated. To feel like someone sees you as something more than just the monster that guards this town." Kirra smiled to herself, drying off the dragon with a clean cloth before she stood up, and carried the wash bucket and the dirty rags to the door. "You deserve to be treated like our protector, not our slave. Better than that, even."

"Thank you, Kirra," the dragon murmured to himself, feeling drowsy again as his maleness finally began to retreat into its sheath. Not that anyone could blame him for his drowsiness now.

"You're welcome, Alv," Kirra said gently. "I'll let you rest, now. Nylah and I will be back in little later with your dinner." Kirra opened the door, and stepped through, only to pause and glance back at the dragon. "I mean it, Alv. ...You deserve better."

As Kirra closed the door and left him alone again, Alvaranox gave a weary sigh. Damn that woman. Damn Kirra. If she kept this up...

Alvaranox was going to have to admit he was starting to trust her. Still, it would not be so bad to have another he could call his friend.

---

Chapter Eight

---

Warm sunlight poured across Alvaranox's back as he wandered the wilds beyond the moors. He had been born here, far from Asterryl. Where the land stretched on, green and gray in all directions. Everything was wreathed in moss and heather, in grass and boulders. Flowers were sprinkled amidst rocky bluffs that rose like the chitinous plates atop some monstrous insect. There were no humans here. No towns, no roads. No ruins of their fallen civilizations. The wilds went on forever.

He was young. Barely even on his own, but like all young dragons the urge to strike out came with the onset of adolescence. And so he wandered the wilds and explored the world around him. Days passed him by in moments, months in slow breaths, and years passed in minutes. His body grew strong as he learned the ways of the wild. His mother had taught him to fly and to hunt and to fight, but experience made him better at all those things. Encounters with others of his kind taught him to make friends, and enemies, and allies. Instincts and desires taught him to mate.

Curiosity sent him on. Pushed him beyond the boundaries of the wild lands where his kind yet flourished. He felt drawn to the east. Towards Asterryl. He found roads cut through the moors. He found farms filled with livestock that made easy prey. He found men with steel in their hands and on their bodies and when they tried to slay him, he killed them instead. It seemed a wretched place, this...civilization. He longed to return to the wilds, yet he could not remember the way.

Where...was he?

When he tried to recall his home, he saw flashes of red earth, broken beneath the ever-present sun. Where were the green grasses and gray heathers of his home? The boulders that marked the land like carefully placed monuments flashed before his eyes in shattered, crumbling forms. There was a tree he used to lay beneath on sunny days, when he was but a hatchling. Curled in the shade against his mother's chest. A skeletal form loomed against the horizon, silhouetted like black claws against the sun. Where was his tree?

Chains bound him, and he was in Asterryl. The town was smaller then just as Alvaranox himself was. They had captured him, but they had not yet taken his life. They bound him in rope and chain, and heavy iron shackles that bit through his scales and rubbed his flesh raw. They had dragged him to some plaza in the center of town. Old walls rose all around the plaza, built of strange irregular lines and intersections like some twisted geometric pattern scrawled by forgotten Gods. The dragon was drawn across the earth by dozens of men, staked down in the center of the plaza.

Alvaranox fought. Terror squeezed his heart so tightly he feared it could no longer beat. The dragon's lungs could barely pull in a breath. With newly matured claws and teeth and tail spines the dragon struck out at everyone he could. Some of those he injured crawled away, or were hauled to their feet by comrades, bleeding. Others remained where they fell. Yet there were always more to take their place. More men to grasp the chains and hold them tight as the dragon was slowly bound against the plaza, left helpless.

Alvaranox was still young. When he could no longer fight, fear was all he knew. In his youth he was not afraid to plead for his life. He begged the men not to kill him, shameful pleas which would haunt him in the days to come. Yet he simply did not want to die. His desperate cries may as well have been feral snarls and growls for all the good it did him. He could not speak their language.

Yet his death was not their desire.

They wanted the rest of his life.

Men dragged a box built of shadow across the plaza. It caught no light, it cast no reflection. It did not gleam or flicker. It was simply black. Across the front of it was carved a bell. Men spoke strange words as they opened the box. From the box spilled forth red earth and heat and a terrible tolling sound. A wasteland that roiled and cascaded from the box to wash Asterryl away.

...No. That...wasn't...what happened.

Alvaranox stirred in the patch of warm sunlight in which he dozed. He struggled to wake, but could not cast off the twisted nightmares that gripped him. Memories of reality enmeshed with age-old fears and the visions that had haunted him since that horrible day. Alvaranox had suffered nightmares since they first collared him, yet since the day he nearly died it had grown more difficult to distinguish memory from dream.

As the box spewed images of a ruined earth as though vomiting out some world-consuming illness, a man reached into it and retrieved the black collar. The collar of the Guardian Slave. In reality Alvaranox had no concept of the thing when they first put it around his neck. In the nightmare, he knew what it was, and he fought all the harder to escape it.

The images around him melted away. Like old paint peeling from a wall, the world chipped and fluttered away in tiny fragments of crumbling images. Behind those images lay blackness for a moment, soon to be replaced by a new and more horrifying world. Alvaranox remained chained upon that plaza, but Asterryl itself was a derelict ruin. The walls built in obfuscating geometric patterns all around him lay in broken pieces, only their foundations remained true to their carefully constructed design. Beyond the walls were the burnt out husks of homes and shops. The air stank of stale char and lingering death. It was as though the whole town had burned to the ground ages ago and yet there was no wind to wash the fetid stink away.

The man who had been placing the collar around his neck was gone, and in his place was a dragon. More dragons surrounded him, holding his chains, pinning his limbs. It had been so long since he had seen other dragons. For a moment his heart leapt to see his own kind again, but it sank just as fast. These dragons were not his friends. These dragons were putting the black collar on his neck.

"No!" Alvaranox screamed, thrashing against the others. They held him tightly. Why would they do this to him? "Stop! Let me go!"

"Because we must," answered the dragon holding the collar, as though she had heard his thoughts. Sorrow hung heavy in her voice. "When the time comes, you will complete your duty. And you will be free again."

She. The dragon was a female. Alvaranox tried to focus on her. Yet in the dream that focus would not come. Her colors seemed to flicker, and change with the beating of his heart. She was black. No, now she was blue. In her paws she held the black collar, and it was open. Then markings of gold flickered across her scales as she placed the collar around his neck. It snapped shut of its own accord, sealing itself to him. There was no clasp, no buckle, no way to remove it. Alvaranox could not even recall how it had looked when it was open despite seeing it that way only a moment before. Pain flashed through his body as the collar bound itself to his heart, to his soul, to his mind, and in turn bound him forever to Asterryl.

The Guardian Slave.

That was what they called him when he was first put in the black collar. The Guardian Slave screamed as terrible pain cut through him. The ancient magic burned him as it sunk spectral claws into every part of his being. When the bell rang in his head for the first time it felt like it was shattering his skull. Through pain-glazed eyes he looked up at the dragon who had done this to him. Now her scales were green, like his. Gold marked her body, and pain and regret twisted her face.

No.

No!

It couldn't be.

It_wasn't._

That...wasn't...how it happened...

The world around him trembled, and the image shifted again like the turning of a page. One image swept aside and replaced with another. Once more Asterryl was whole and vibrant, but still young like the dragon now bound to defend them. Those surrounding him were human once again, and the man who had placed the collar upon his neck was now his first Handler. The man who first called him the Guardian Slave. The man who cared nothing for Alvaranox. His first Handler cared only that the Guardian Slave protect Asterryl from all the dangers of the wilds that had claimed so many other towns in the past.

How Alvaranox hated that man. How he had longed to slay him, yet the collar would not allow it.

With the black collar around his neck, Alvaranox felt hot sand under his paws. He looked down, saw cracked and burnt earth. He was in the wastes again. He padded forward as if guided by some spectral hand. He ascended a barren rise, pebbles and cracked gray stone marked the reddish, sandy slope. At the top of it, he surveyed the wasteland. It stretched as far as he could see. Here and there broken walls rose from the earth. It seemed a speckling of ruins had joined the skeletal trees. The world shimmered and faded from his sight as the dragon at last began to wake.

Unlike his last nightmare, there was no sudden violent image to jar him from his sleep. He almost wished there had been, just so the frightening dreams would have faded sooner. Instead, he simply felt himself waking. It felt as though he'd been swimming, holding his breath as he searched for the surface through dark waters. Finally, he spotted light above him and surged towards it. When he finally broke free of the cold black water, the dreams collapsed around him and he opened his eyes.

Alvaranox lay in a sun-strewn patch of soft moss and grass near his home. The sunlight was warm and welcoming rather than harsh and scorching. Familiar pain throbbed in his belly and paw as he began to sit up, though the worst of the pain was ebbing away by the day. Trying to get his bearings, the green dragon gazed around. He squinted a little, copper eyes still bleary from sleep. The crowds that often came to see him looked a little thin in the distance, and there were not as many guards keeping watch as before. Apparently a wounded dragon sleeping in the midst of their town just wasn't that exciting anymore.

Kirra and Nylah were both nearby.

Kirra was dressed in a fiery red blouse that was outshone only by the vibrant color of her hair. Black buttons down the front of it matched the black color of the breeches she wore. A few red spirals were sewn into the legs of her breeches like stylized sun prints. Mud marked her well-worn leather boots, she'd probably been trudging around by the lake or the stream for some shore-dwelling herbs. She stood over one of the tables they'd set up outside, sorting through the fresh herbs she'd picked. When she spotted the dragon looking at her, she gave him a little wave and a smile.

"Hello, Alv," Kirra said, sniffing at a green bushel. "How'd you sleep?"

"I'm not sure," the dragon murmured, licking his nose. "I seem to have slept deeply, but..."

"Nightmares again?" Nylah asked, looking up from her work. The older woman was wearing a sky blue dress with hints of creamy gray lace along the end of the sleeves and the hem of the skirt. She shifted her bare feet against the grass a little. Yarn in various colors and darning needles were strewn about on the grass all around her. A pillow she was embroidering rested upon her lap. "We can give you something to help you sleep more deeply and hopefully quell some of those unpleasant images, if you like."

Alvaranox growled under his breath, flaring the spines along the back of his neck. "I think I am consuming too many herbs to begin with. Any more and I fear I'm going to get the runs."

Kirra giggled, waving a strand of vine with blue tinted leaves at him. "We can give you something for that, too."

"Yes, I'm sure you can," the dragon muttered. His crests slowly drooped back against his head, and he pinned his ears back. Alvaranox licked his nose, and turned his head to stare into the town. It had grown so much larger since that day he'd dreamed about. So had he. He thought back to that day. It hadn't been like in his dream, not entirely. There had been chains yes, but he hadn't been dragged. Had he? As he thought back on that horrible moment, the images blurred in his memories. Other images from the dream flickered in their place, and he hissed in frustration. "Damn it."

"What's the matter?" Nylah set her pillow aside, and rose to her feet. She walked over to the dragon, knitting her brows. There was a strange sort of confusion flickering in the dragon's copper eyes, mingling with the kind of pain that did not come from physical wounds. She gently cupped his chin in her hands, and began to stroke his nose over the golden blotch. "What troubles you, Alv?"

Alvaranox offered his favored Handler only the tiniest of purrs, not wanting Kirra to catch it. Even if he was growing to trust the red-haired woman just a little lately, he'd be damned if he was going to let her hear him purr. He nuzzled at Nylah's hands like a feline seeking a more attentive scratching. "My memories."

Nylah was happy to offer the dragon more attention. Her hands roamed up and down the pebbly scales of his muzzle, and along the underside of his jaw. As she stroked his face, she paused to gently scratch each of the areas she had long since learned the dragon most enjoyed. She rubbed around the base of his horns, and across the ridges above his eyes, and at the very back of his jaw. Then she stroked the sensitive membranes of his crests till he began to relax just a little, sighing to himself.

"What about them?" Nylah finally asked, when she'd soothed the dragon a little more.

"I am having trouble grasping them." Alvaranox's eyes soon settled upon Nylah's. Fear and uncertainly swirled in the dragon's gaze like copper-hued storm clouds. "Especially from the time before I was put in this collar. I dream of my past but it never seems right. It is as though the images from my nightmares are slowly finding a way to replace my reality in my memories."

Nylah scowled to herself, her belly twisting a little. "How long has this been going on?"

"Since I was wounded, I think." The dragon pushed himself into her hands a little more. "At least that is when I first noticed it. Sometimes I can remember things just fine. Other times, I try and remember where I was before I was captured and brought here, and the images...blur. As though I am watching my own life through a pane of glass covered in fog and rain. The details fade and I find myself uncertain if I am even remembering it, or simply imagining it."

"I do not like the sound of that," Nylah said, beckoning for Kirra to approach. "I hope we don't have you so full of healing herbs that its affecting your state of mind. Perhaps we should back your dosages off a little."

"I don't think it's the herbs," Alvaranox said, turning his eyes towards Kirra. He flicked his tail against the ground, and the black spines tore up little chunks of sod. "I think it's the collar."

Kirra and Nylah exchanged a worried look. While Nylah stroked the dragon's muzzle, Kirra put her hands upon his neck. She brushed her fingers over the collar, speaking softly. "Since the night you were injured, you say?"

Alvaranox gave a single nod. He did not know if Kirra ever told Nylah how much she felt she had to do with saving his life. So he kept his answer simple. "Yes. Since then."

"I wonder if..." Kirra's voice trembled. She hoped she had not made some terrible mistake, or altered the collar's power in some negative way. "...I changed things, somehow."

Nylah raised her brows, staring at Kirra. Perhaps they had not yet had that talk. The dragon would let them do so on their own time. "I think it may have changed, yes. But I cannot tell if it is losing its grip upon my mind or tightening its hold. I see things in my nightmares I'd never thought of before, and yet they seem as real as the very memories I now struggle to keep hold of. It is almost as if..."

Alvaranox trailed off, rolling an unsettling thought around inside his mind. He worked it around in his head as though he might chew a bit of tendon and gristle before deciding to spit it out. "Am I the first?"

"The first what?" Nylah didn't follow his line of thinking immediately.

Alvaranox slowly pulled back from the two women to better regard them. He trusted Nylah completely, and he did not think she would lie to him. Yet she could not tell him the truth if she herself did not know the answers. "Am I the first dragon to wear this collar? The first Guardian Slave to serve Asterryl?"

Nylah's face crumpled at the question. She looked as though she'd just been hit in the gut. Alvaranox thought at first she had some terrible revelation to offer him. Yet the dragon soon realized it simply pained her to hear the question because she could not provide him a comforting answer. She had probably worried he might ask that one day, as it was a question she herself had often considered. She sighed, and gave an uncertain shrug and shake of her head.

"I do not know, Alv," she said softly, reaching out to put her hand upon his nose. "I wish I could tell you something, one way or the other. There are no records of any other dragon as far as I know. By now, anyone who would have been alive to see such a thing is long since dead. But the collar...someone had to tell them how to use it in the first place, I am certain."

Alvaranox sighed, hanging his head a little bit. His frilled green ears swiveled against his horns. "...Was...my mother ever here? Did you ever meet her, Nylah?"

Nylah blinked, tilting her head. "Your...mother? Not unless I did not know her to be your mother. I do recall you flying with an occasional female. I think you took her to your island, but I will assume that was not your mother." Nylah smirked a little. "Why do you ask?"

The dragon growled in worried frustration. He bared a few of his fangs, his snout scrunching. Growing fear gnawed at his empty belly, and pain darkened his copper gaze. "I was hoping you could tell me what she looked like. I still remember her, but...sometimes it grows difficult. I do not wish to forget her. She was...in my dream. But..." She held the collar. It was a nightmare, and he did not wish to speak it aloud. "I can scarcely recall what became of her in reality. Never mind." Alvaranox lifted his paw, rubbing at the collar a moment. "It's just that...some of these images...some of these things I see. I feel like they are someone else's memories. I fear they may be supplanting my own."

"We will not let that happen," Kirra said with sudden fire in her voice. "I will not let that happen. It doesn't matter if someone else has worn it or not, all that matters is that you wear it now. It may control your life and it may make you fight for us, but I'll be damned if I'll let it mangle your memories or change who you are." Kirra put her hands around the collar again, growling through her teeth. "You hear me, Collar? Alv is not your toy, and his memories are not some painted canvas for you to whitewash and start over! I will not let you!"

Somewhere, deep in Alvaranox's mind, a warning bell tolled. The sound was faint yet still he registered it above Kirra's voice. It made the dragon smile a little. "I do not think the Collar likes you, Kirra."

Kirra only grunted. "Good. Then it knows how I feel right now." She pulled her hands away from his neck, and gently put them around his muzzle. Kirra turned the dragon's head so that she could peer into his eyes. "I mean what I say, Alv. I won't let it do that to you. Like I told you before, you deserve better. You risk your life protecting this town, but who is here to protect you?"

"We are," Nylah said softly.

"That's right," Kirra said. "We are. You fight for this town, and we fight for you. You protect Asterryl, and we protect you. And protect you we shall, even from this collar. I won't let it ruin your mind or drive you to madness or erase everything you've been. I refuse. And if it doesn't like that, it can damn well let you go and find itself another dragon."

Alvaranox smiled to himself. Hearing Kirra so adamant about protecting him from anything, even the collar itself, buoyed the dragon's spirits. It had been a long time since he'd felt anyone cared about him aside from Nylah. Though he was not yet ready to admit to himself he trusted Kirra completely, it seemed that day was fast approaching.

Kirra began to stroke his muzzle, and scratch around his horns the way she'd seen Nylah doing so many times before. Alvaranox leaned into her touch, and before he could stop himself, he had purred a little. The sound sent a brilliant smile stretching over Kirra's lips, bright as afternoon sunlight.

"Thank you, Kirra," the dragon murmured softly.

Nylah stroked his neck a little, speaking softly. "Alv, if you wish...I could look into it. Find out if there is any information out there, about whether there have been others who have worn that collar."

Alvaranox was torn between fear, and curiosity. His heart fluttered, and then sank slightly. "Not yet. Perhaps it is best if I do not know."

"Not yet, then," Nylah said, nodding. Alvaranox suspected she would look into it anyway.

"Don't worry, Alv," Kirra said, rubbing his nose. "You'll be alright, I promise. We'll keep you safe from anything that Collar tries to do to you. You just work on keeping yourself safe from everything it sends you against. I don't think I could take seeing you crashed into the earth in bloody tatters again."

"Believe it or not, Kirra," the dragon replied, chuckling. "I do not wish to experience that again either."

"That's settled then," Nylah announced. She grinned at the dragon. "Now. I have something far more important to talk to you about, and I think we've waited long enough to have this little discussion."

"Oh?" Alvaranox lifted his head, too distracted by his thoughts to see the trap he was blundering into. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Nylah just smirked. "My roses."

---

Thus ends the first installment of The Black Collar. If you've enjoyed, by all means, please leave me a comment and let me know. I'd love to hear what you thought of the story! Comments like that keep me writing.