Fantasy A Bond Unbreakable

[BittyBobcat]

Reyla Nefram
Rey surveyed the dens below warily. Even in the early morning, more dragons than she'd ever seen together before in her life were milling about. Had there been a few less, she would've started following the usual threat-assessment steps—gauging color, anatomy, and surroundings to guess the abilities of the dragons—but with so many, and no way to tell which would be their opponent, it would be a fruitless effort. Dimly, Fletcher's voice rang disapprovingly in the back of her mind. Knowledge is what keeps you alive on the battlefield. Forgetting, even for a second, which dragon has a breath weapon and which doesn't could mean your—or your teammates—demise.

Well, she'd already broken their most important rule. What was one more? Besides, no human—not even Fletcher—had been expected to keep track of this many dragons before.

Her satchel hung heavy at her side, reminding her that she at least had one advantage. No dragon would be expecting magic from a goblin... Though, pulling that off without getting caught would be the trickiest part. It occurred to her, now that she was finally beginning to determine exactly how she planned to accomplish that, that she wasn't entirely sure about the rules of the fights. It seemed unwise to waste soldiers on glorified sparring matches, but dragons were strange creatures, and the idea of them holding deathmatches wasn't completely out of the question in her mind. Perhaps they'd be better off that way; no one to call her out on her use of magic.

Rey turned uneasily toward Thunder, who looked more lost in thought than she was. Killing dragons for him... it must be the same as killing a fellow human for her, right?

For his sake, she hoped the matches were based on forfeit.

She climbed onto his back without a word. Whatever happened, at least they had eachother.​

 

[Caffeine_Obsessed]

Asani Riku Daskalov

As Asani neared the den's center (where all the festivities out of the competition lay) the smell of fresh food filled his nostrils. His stomach tightened out of hunger. These past few days have really had him ignoring the idea of hunger lately. It wasn't like he was a food junkie before- but he never used to completely forget it before. He supposed it wasn't all that unusual- with all that's happening at the moment.

He landed near one of the makeshift stalls, similar (in his opinion) to the ones humans made. A goblin was running the stand, waving at them frantically whilst standing on a rock behind the counter. Surprisingly, it didn't seem afraid of the dragons. Maybe it was too young to understand. As the goblin started speaking, it took a moment for the gibberish to process in Asani's mind. From what little he understood of goblin tongue, he's pretty sure it said, "Hog meat!... just for 3 gems!.. Family.. proud! Brave Gelfi!" That made Asani huff, unimpressed. If he wanted, he could rip this little toad into tiny pieces. That would teach him to fear dragons. Actually... why did he want to be feared? Enough existential breakdowns. There was a more serious problem at hand. Other than his precious gems at stake, another goblin would surely notice that Holly wasn't one of them, right? No, the disguise is good enough- it has to be. There's no way this little goblin would notice anything odd.

Asani cast a wary glance towards Holly, unsure of what to do. His heart wanted the hog, but maybe they could find something else where a goblin wasn't the one selling.

 

[BittyBobcat]

Reyla Nefram

The market stalls were strangely reminiscent of the rows of human merchants that would gather at festivals and call out to any passersby that looked like they had coin to spare. Sure, the colors were a bit dimmer, and there was an odd decoration here or there that differed from what she was used to, but—even now—one of the merchants (or perhaps a child of one? They seemed awfully young, from what she knew of goblins) was calling out to Thunder in what she could only assume was an attempt at a sale.

...Which reminded her. She had no clue how to speak goblin. In fact, she wasn't even sure she looked like a goblin (after all, Rey couldn't picture herself mistaking a disguised goblin as a human, why should it be any different the other way around?).

Rey was just about to take a half-step closer to Thunder—to hopefully stand out of sight—when the kid's eyes caught, and stuck, on her.

Shit. She needed a distraction. Fast. What did kids like?

A hazy memory from her own childhood lead her hands to her satchel, where she withdrew a scrap of parchment that was more-or-less in the shape of a square. She put a finger to her lips, hoping that the sign for 'shhh' was universal, and—with hasty movements that nearly tore the paper at times—folded the rough shape of a dragon from it (He had always said that seeing dragons like this—fragile as paper—made them feel a lot less scary, and that that's what people needed... she wondered what He'd think now, seeing this). Shoving back the memory, Rey forced herself back to the present and held the origami figure out to the child with a tight-lipped smile.

The goblin opened their mouth, as if they were about to say something, but shut it just as quickly. Hesitantly, they reached forward and, in one suddenly quick movement, snatched it into their own hands. Then, with one last glance in her direction, turned to face Thunder once again.​

 

[Caffeine_Obsessed]

Asani Riku Daskalov

Stunned, Asani looked down at Holly, a gobsmacked look on his face. Slowly drawing his attention back to the tiny goblin, he choked up a few gems to trade for the delicious smelling meat. Throughout the whole (fearful he would admit) ordeal, his mind stuck to the thought of the meat in front of them.

With a hesitant look, the goblin grabbed a large hunk of the meat previously on display. It chucked it into a satchel of some sort and handed it to them. With another word in goblin tongue, the toad was waving them off, continuing its former yelling to the crowds. Asani grabbed the bag, and backed away slowly, breath stuck in his throat. Once they were a far enough distance away, his body instantly relaxed. He could now only hope the little being didn't go blabbing its mouth around here, or Asani might actually have to eat it. He grimaced at the thought. Not a single being would enjoy eating a vile goblin in any situation.

Finding an open clearing, he slung the satchel down. As much as he wanted to have the thing all to himself, he wasn't selfish enough to ignore Holly's needs. (Although he was extremely close to doing just that.) Nudging the bag to Holly, he sat himself down expectantly. He supposed whatever was left he could eat.

 

[BittyBobcat]

Reyla Nefram

For a split second, Rey was frozen in place. There was no way to tell if her plan (if it could even be called that) had worked. She sidled awkwardly behind Thunder—as if hiding herself might let the goblin forget about her entirely—only to peek impatiently around him as the exchange dragged on. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of Thunder coughing up gems again, but she watched with a reluctant interest anyway. It hadn't occurred to her until now that dragons would have currency.

Rey trailed close behind Thunder as they made their slow retreat. Despite the fact that her heart was beating its way out of her chest, she stuck with his pace. She hated to admit it, but it made sense; unless there was some strange attitude toward running in dragon society that she was unaware of (which she, somehow, had a hard time believing), taking off for no reason would be suspicious. Still, it did nothing to make the experience less nerve-wracking. Every step was another second spent waiting for an alarmed shout from the stalls behind them.

But they made their way to the small clearing unhindered, and Rey's heart began to calm.

"Let's never do that again," She groaned—flopping down onto the ground beside Thunder with a gusty sigh—only to suddenly be reminded that the ground was very cold as the frost-coated grass soaked through the back of her shirt. She shot back up with a shiver (cold winters were something Rey was yet to get used to, and likely never would).

Glancing back at Thunder (and quietly hoping he hadn't noticed—she'd never live it down), Rey's eyes landed on the bag of meat he'd bought from the goblin, which he was nudging toward her. Her stomach—though it was still doing backflips at the thought of the tournament—grumbled at the sight of it. She grabbed a chunk and dug in with nothing more than a short, grateful smile pointed in Thunder's direction.​

 

[Caffeine_Obsessed]

Asani Riku Daskalov

Squinting his eyes, he took his time to fully examine Holly. Asani never really found the time to inspect the human traveling with him. What exactly made humans so dangerous? If it were stripped of its magic, then they would just be gangly hairless rats. They were such small creatures, humans couldn't even fly! Of course, he would never test his theory of weak humans in real life. As powerful as he is (or says he is), he has not seen the full extent of a human's powers. From what he has seen himself, the could most definitely take down a dragon- judging by his scars. So of course any rational dragon would fear them. He wasn't the only one.

...Also, he supposed humans were more clever than dragons. (Though he would never admit that to anyone and he would kill anyone who found out)

Once Holly had her fill, Asani snatched the bag back to himself. Tossing it up, he swallowed down the bag in a single gulp, sticking a claw in his jaws to pull the bag back out. Smacking his jaws, he scanned their surroundings. As he expected, it was bustling with all kinds of dragons. Some big, some small, some really small (barely even the size of his claw), and some... odd looking. The last one mostly directed at a dragon with one eye and an extremely long neck... Where in the Gods' was its mouth? Asani shook his head and aimed his attention on the "arena" entry way. Dragons upon dragons were shoving their way inside, his eyes catching sight of a few other creatures mingled in the crowd. How he pitied the poor souls.

He didn't exactly know how they were supposed to come to of this alive. Asani had to admit he wasn't the... largest dragon in the world. He also had never seen Holly do any kind of offensive magic. He huffed a puff of air in Holly's face, obviously frustrated. He was the one who signed up for this godforsaken battle, but that didn't mean he couldn't place blame on Holly. For what? He wasn't sure, but... he could come up with a reason later. They couldn't exactly plan anything, since- well.

They couldn't understand each other.​

 

[BittyBobcat]

Reyla Nefram
They couldn't understand eachother.

It wasn't a new realization—in fact, it had been looming in the back of Rey's mind for a while now—but, until now, she hadn't had much time to ponder it. Now that Rey could take a moment to simply sit and chew, various tidbits of advice bounced around her head. Communication, Fletcher always said, is the backbone of a unit. Without knowing eachother's plans—or without enough familiarity to anticipate them—you're just as likely to hurt the enemy as you are an ally. What a great help that was.

She turned to Thunder anyway, watching his face as he stared at the dragons around them with an air of nervousness about him. Rey could hardly blame him. She had already spotted a dozen that were at least somewhat larger than he was, and being backed by someone less than half his size couldn't be much of a comfort. What was he thinking about, anyway? Plans, perhaps? Or maybe about how dead they were going to be in a few minutes. If anything—

Her rapidly spiraling thoughts were interrupted by a huff of air blown right at her face.

Rey sighed right back. "We're screwed, aren't we?"

Magic was the only advantage she had, and using it in front of an arena of dragons would surely cause more problems than solve. Unless she could do it without getting caught, of course, but the fact that spells glowed meant that there was little chance of that. Even in the daylight, they would stand out too much because of their color—

She paused, still staring at Thunder. Her eyes trailed down to his ribcage. His glowing blue ribcage.

A grin broke onto Rey's face. Thunder was huge. Maybe not when compared to other dragons, but—to her—he was large enough that the glow of his heart would cover nearly any glyph she could draw.

How hard could it be to use only blue-tinted spells?​

 

[Caffeine_Obsessed]

Asani Riku Daskalov

Asani narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the way Holly was smiling. Now, he didn’t know this human for long, but he was sure whatever she was thinking had to be bad. Either way- he had no choice but to trust her. He had done just that so far and that didn’t lead him to death’s door just yet, so it was quite easy for him to go along with whatever it was. He only hoped there was still a speck of luck in their fate.

Heaving himself up, he grumpily lead the way to the tournament’s entrance. It had been forever since Asani entered the arena, so he wasn’t sure if there were going to be any changes since the last time he saw it. Irritated, he flexed his claws along the ground. The line was long- dragons and creatures alike eager to display their strength against one another. Luckily, they arrived earlier- Asani would have blown a fuse if they were near the back. Even now, dragons were crowding behind him, trying- not so subtlety- to shove their way past. They really should think about having some kind of security here.

As they finally made their way in, Asani inspected the arena. It seemed the same as he remembered it all those years ago. Dragons and creatures alike were watching from the sidelines, waiting on- he guessed- for the fights to begin. In the middle of it all, stood a raised stone platform, where said creatures were meant to fight. He could still spot old blood stains that never seemed to be able to be washed away. A grim reminder of all the meaningless deaths that were caused here.​