by Loki Renard
Brianna nodded slowly. “That’s true,” she admitted. “And I guess… if they could bring planes and bombs and computers… yeah…” She trailed off, not voicing what seemed to her to be the obvious outcome of such an invasion.
“Humans have been aware of the dragon realm for several generations now,” Chak agreed. “It is not surprising that there are those who would have tried to find a way to enter our world. Our king forbade travel between the realms. He has no interest in invading your realm. But the same is not true of humans, and there are some generals who believe we should mount an invasion before humans find a way to do it. So, you see, pet. Your existence heralds great danger for both our worlds. If you are here, and thriving, there must be others in your world with these abilities.”
“So this isn’t really about me,” she said. “This is about everyone else.”
“It’s about you and us and two worlds,” Chak said. “But you deserve to know where you came from, pet. It must have been fate which drew us to you in that bar. Over and over again, humans and dragons and those of mixed blood have been drawn together. This is bigger than any one of us. It may even be bigger than King Casimer and all his nobles and…”
“Enough!” Valkimer growled suddenly. “You’re getting carried away, Chak. This can and should be our secret. It need go no further.”
“Secrets yearn to be told, Valkimer. We cannot keep this secret even if we want to. It shouted itself to us in the human bar. It may even have influenced us to come to Brianna’s town. This secret has guided us and now it has revealed itself to us and we have to be its tongue.”
“Oh, yes, tell everyone the laws we have broken. Destroy all our work! All because some Earth military experiment went awry twenty years ago.”
“I am not an experiment!” Brianna’s temper flared. “Stop talking about me like that. I’m not a thing!”
“I didn’t mean that, pet…”
“Yes, you did! From the beginning, what have I been to you? A product to sell, a thing to stuff your cock into!” She was upset by what she had heard, the trauma of her early years wrenched to the surface of her consciousness thanks to Chak’s revelation.
“Silence her, Chak,” Valkimer snapped toward his partner in crime.
“I will not,” Chak growled. “She has a right to her rage. She has learned much today, Valkimer. And our concerns are not hers. We shouldn’t be having this conversation with her.”
“What conversation?” Brianna narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“What Valkimer is so angry about is the fact that we had hinged all our hopes on keeping our activities here secret, but what we have learned now means that King Casimer needs to be informed of what the human armies are doing. If they were performing these experiments almost twenty years ago—successfully—they could be on the verge of having a fully formed invasion force breaching our borders any moment.”
“They’re still only human. They can’t fly,” Valkimer snapped.
“Their flying machines can out-fly us. We breathe fire. They breathe bullets and bombs.”
“Yeah,” Brianna said, her annoyance at Valkimer ending her embargo on the truth. “You’re screwed. If humans get here… this place is screwed too.”
“You think so, pet?”
“Well, maybe not screwed, but pretty messed up. Our technology is so much more advanced than yours. And we don’t have a king, so it’s not like there’s any single authority who can stop this. Any country could try to invade. Several of them could try. Maybe at once. You could end up with people fighting each other over this place.”
Valkimer and Chak stared at one another and she knew that something she’d said had hit a nerve.
Chak nodded slowly.
“You have given us much to think about, pet. I think you should get some rest. Valkimer and I will decide what is to be done.”
“You mean you’ll decide what you’re going to do with me. When do I get a say?”
“You are our pet,” Valkimer said. “That has not changed and will not change. Your human insistence on saying something about everything is tiresome.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and visually sent him the full force of her anger.
“So you just came to let me know I’m a freak,” she said bitterly. “Thanks so much.”
“You’re not a freak,” Chak said, brushing the hair out of her face. “You’re a stronger human than almost any other.”
She snorted. “I’m tired of being strong. People have been telling me how strong I am my whole life, usually right before they throw me to the wolves.”
“Well, we’re not going to do that to you,” Chak said.
“No, you’re going to sell me to the wolves,” Brianna said. “So much better.”
Chak and Valkimer exchanged looks.
“Valkimer and I need to talk,” Chak said. “Get some rest, alright?”
“Yeah, I’m sure I’ll get a really good sleep now,” she said. “Have fun deciding what to do with me. I’ll just be here in bed, being a genetic freak!” She shouted the words after them as they departed, leaving her alone with a revelation that was too uncomfortable to really wrap her mind around.
All her life she had felt different. Now she knew she was.
“Things are supposed to get better,” she mumbled to herself. “But they’re not. They’re just getting worse.”
Chapter Twelve
“Don’t let her make you feel guilty,” Valkimer said with a fierce scowl.
Much had changed, both between them and in their hearts, but only Chak was able to admit it. Valkimer was holding firm to the plan they had first established. He must have sensed the walls of their plan closing in around them just as Chak did, but he was unable to admit the need to change their plan.
“She’s not making me feel guilty. I feel guilty because what we’re doing is wrong,” Chak said. “Humans are more complex than we thought. They’re just like us. We can’t train and sell human women as if they were animals.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Valkimer said.
“And you can.” Chak tilted his head to the side. “You’re telling me you could hand Brianna over to someone else right now and see him spread her naked before him and go where you and I have gone? The thought of another man inside her doesn’t make you sick to your stomach?”
“Shut up,” Valkimer growled.
Chak knew the argument was over. The pure rage that flashed through Valkimer’s eyes was on the same level to that which he had seen when they were on the battlefield. Valkimer would eviscerate anyone who so much as looked at their pet with disrespectful lust in his eyes. There was no chance of them selling her, not ever.
Getting Valkimer to admit that wasn’t going to be easy. Even harder than that would be convincing him that they needed to turn themselves in.
“We have to tell Casimer what we’ve done.”
“Oh, yes, tell Casimer.” Valkimer threw his hands in the air. “Brilliant notion. And have everything we worked for over hundreds of years stripped away from us. Go into exile at the furthest corner of the realm—if we’re lucky. Or maybe he’ll do to us what he did to Lazarus. Banish us to the Earth plane to live a simple human existence. We cannot tell Casimer.”
“We can’t not tell him,” Chak replied calmly. “If a human invasion force comes and we are unprepared, hundreds, maybe thousands of lives are at risk. If we can prevent another loss of life of the same magnitude as the first war, then we have to do it.”
“I am tired of your arguments proving unbeatable,” Valkimer snarled. “We will settle this with our bodies, not our words.”
Chak snorted and shook his head. “You want to fight me now, Valkimer?”
“We cannot make these decisions by democracy. We cannot half-tell these truths. So either we do as I say and keep quiet, disavow all knowledge of the portal and Lazarus’s access to it, or we do as you say, and ruin our lives.”
“You’re
advocating the coward’s way out,” Chak said. “You’re saying we should do as whelplings do, cover our eyes and say we know nothing of the mess we’ve made.”
“Come,” Valkimer snarled. “We settle this once and for all now.”
* * *
The ring was in the dungeon of the estate, a great circular space designed for one purpose: the testing of flesh. As they entered they pulled the clothes from their bodies. There was no point in being dressed, it would only allow the other scope for hand holds. Valkimer even went so far as to tie his hair back, double it over and double it again until it was tightly nested against the back of his neck.
Once prepared, Valkimer and Chak circled one another, staring one another down as they prepared to settle the greatest differences between them.
“I win, we sell the girl and keep our secret. You win, we keep Brianna for ourselves and beg Casimer for his mercy. These are the terms,” Valkimer hissed across the open space.
“Agreed.”
Valkimer had won most of their physical battles, but Chak knew all too well that his heart would not truly be in this one. This was a matter of saving face. Valkimer would have to be bruised and perhaps even bloodied to follow his own better instincts. This was the reason they worked so well together. They acted as counterweights to the other’s weaknesses and foibles.
Valkimer had always mocked those who fell for human women. He had smirked the entire way through the royal wedding. And now, here he was, just as hopelessly in love as their king had been—and Chak knew that fact was eating him alive.
“Come on then,” Chak taunted him.
Valkimer flew across the ring, his arms outstretched. He would attempt to grapple, to take Chak to the ground and choke the strength from him. Chak anticipated that and instead of meeting him in a clinch, dodged to the side, grasped Valkimer’s outstretched arm and whipped him around, using his own momentum to toss him to the ground.
The pale dragon hit the ground with a grunt and slid several feet before rising with a snarl. “Is that what you are going to rely on? Tricks?”
“If by tricks, you mean being faster and stronger than you, then yes, that is what I plan to rely on,” Chak laughed.
* * *
As her masters fought, Brianna roamed the rooms of the estate entirely innocent to the moral battle made literal below. She was in a stunned state of shock, and her owners must have been too, for she had for the first time been left to wander without any kind of mechanism to prevent attempts at escape. She wore no nipple tormentors; instead she wore a sheet wrapped around her in what had become a practiced and even elegant fashion. She was not trying to escape, but she needed to move. What she had just learned about herself was shocking and yet, made so much sense. It explained her strangeness, and the strangeness of the world she had grown up in. It explained so very much.
She wandered down flights of stairs to the ground floor, which was a grand open space with couches and what might even have been a bar. Whatever it was, it drew her with the promise of a stiff drink. In the course of taking her meals in confinement, she had learned that dragon wine was a thing—a very delicious thing.
Motion caught her eye on her way to the bar. Suddenly she saw a younger man sitting near the front door. He looked agitated and worried, his hair falling into his face as one leg shook back and forth with what looked like an all too human nervous tic. It was her first time seeing literally anyone other than Valkimer and Chak and for a second she was a little bit scared. Then she saw how small he was in stature, and how uncomfortable he was and she realized who he must be.
“Hi,” she said softly, so as not to startle him.
He started up and turned around, bowing so low his hair flipped over his head and brushed the floor. He was adorable.
“M’lady,” he mumbled. “I am sorry for intruding.”
“I think I am the one who is intruding,” she said, walking over to him slowly, so as not to startle him. “You’re the one who found out what happened to my parents.”
“Uhm… yes, ma’am,” he blushed.
Brianna felt herself smile. He was cute, and there was a vulnerability about him that made him feel so much more familiar in some strange way than either Chak or Valkimer. If she had met him down on Earth, she would have been friends with him, she was sure of that. He was exactly the kind of weird she was used to.
“Thank you,” she said. “I never knew what happened to them. Nobody would tell me anything. I thought they were just drug addicts or losers or something like that. I thought… I thought I didn’t matter. At least now I know that they died for something. And they tried to keep me safe, even if they couldn’t save themselves.”
“From what I heard, m’lady, your mother was a brave woman who sacrificed all to ensure you survived.”
“Is she…” Brianna could not quite bring herself to ask the question, but the servant seemed to know what she was getting at.
“She passed away,” he said. “I am sorry. The tests done on her were known to be lethal. They were intended to result in progeny resistant to this realm at the expense of the mother.”
Brianna sank down on the bench, her face pale. “What evil people would do such a thing?”
“There is great evil in both our realms, I think.”
She looked at him. “What’s your name?”
“Paix, m’lady.”
“You don’t have to call me m’lady,” she said. “I’m not a lady. I’m barely a woman here.”
“I prefer to, m’lady,” he insisted gently.
Brianna felt a smile spread over her lips. “You’re so different than the other two.”
“Valkimer can be harsh,” Paix said. “But he’s a much nicer man than he allows almost anyone to know. I think Chaksley and…”
“Chaksley?” Brianna snorted. “Chak’s full name is Chaksley?”
“Yes, m’lady.”
“Chaksley,” she giggled. “I bet he thinks it sounds too noble.”
“I couldn’t say, m’lady.”
Brianna turned her eyes back to Paix, saw how awkwardly he stood, how difficult movement was for him. His difference from Valkimer and Chak wasn’t just in demeanor. She got the sense he was somehow physically impaired. He averted his eyes from her gaze, preferring to look at his toes rather than her.
“You got hurt once, didn’t you?” She asked the question softly. “I mean, someone wounded you. Was it in war?”
“No,” Paix said, his lips twisting. “I was born with a defect which makes me not as other dragons. I cannot take wing as they can.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, immediately feeling an understanding pity. She had known they were similar in some way. They were both freaks.
“When I first tried to join the king’s guard, there was a group of young soldiers who didn’t believe that I couldn’t take my flight form. One of them caught me in his talons, carried me out over the ocean several miles high, and dropped me. If it was not for Valkimer, I would be dead. He dove into the ocean and retrieved me before I could drown.”
“That’s horrible!” Brianna gasped, shocked.
“Dragons can be cruel. They worship strength, and I’m not strong.”
“You’re stronger than most people, dragon or not.”
“I’m not, but thank you for saying that.” He bowed his head.
“You went to my world, you found out what I would never have known. You have saved me, Paix.”
“You were always safe with Valkimer and Chak. You did not need saving.”
“That’s not entirely true,” she smiled. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. You saved me from a lifetime of never knowing where I came from, or why I am as I am. I grew up thinking I had been thrown away. I thought I was human garbage. I didn’t know… anything. What you’ve done for me, I’ll never be able to thank you enough for doing it. I know they asked you to do it for them, but you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to risk your life to find mine. So, thank you.”
“I am glad I could be of service, m’lady,” Paix said, his smile seeming genuine for the first time.
* * *
Valkimer was not giving up easily. They had been wrestling for the better part of an hour and though Chak had won throw after throw, Valkimer insisted on getting up and renewing the battle. It was obvious to Chak that he was going to have to pin Valkimer so that there was no possibility of him rising.
On the next bout, Valkimer’s leg swept behind Chak’s, an attempt to dump him to the hard stone floor. Chak went with gravity, but kept a strong hold of Valkimer, and as he fell he twisted and rolled, throwing Valkimer clear over his head and rolling up and over him, pinning Valkimer’s neck and chest beneath his knee. Valkimer growled and attempted to kick his way up, but Chak was putting pressure on his windpipe.
“I will choke you out if I absolutely have to,” Chak warned him. “I’m done with this battle. And so are you. Do you yield?”
“I yield,” Valkimer growled. “Now get your ass out of my face.”
Chak smirked. “Make me.”
Valkimer threw him off, finding a strength in defeat that he had somehow not been able to tap during their battle. Chak stood up with a smirking laugh, shaking his head. “So much physical pageantry just for you to make the decision you know you must.”
“Kiss your freedom goodbye, Chak,” Valkimer said icily. “We are going to see the king.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Holy… this place is crazy!”
Brianna squealed her thoughts to the wind, probably unheard by Chak, to whom she was held in what amounted to a fanny pack for people. A great leather brace had been sown around his dragon chest, allowing her to be strapped safely against him. She had flown with her masters across the dragon realm, taking in the incredible sights of what seemed to be a largely unspoiled world. She had seen some small villages, and some farms, but there were no cities. No manufacturing plants. No roads. It was so strange to see miles and miles and miles all the way to the horizon without a single tarmac ribbon laced across it.