FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Goddamn it! Please excuse any mention of Hyran in this story series. I keep writing Hyran instead of Jyrtan for some insane reason. (Something like twenty times in chapter two.)

I have thirteen people watching me. *shivers* Scary. Sounds like a new way of stalking. Anyway, you lot must think I'm a half-good writer eh?

Draconis Combinus part three

Jyrtan moaned as he awoke, a ripple of pain passing through his leg at the mere thought of standing up. His leg carried a bad compound fracture, just below the left knee, the white of bone showing clearly through the red of flesh and blood.

He gave a hiss of in taken breath as he tried to move to get more comfortable.

"Don't worry. It won't hurt for long." The lycanthrope in the next cell said, licking his lips bestially.

Jyrtan knew what he was talking about. He was going to be executed in a few minutes, and his corpse was going to be thrown to the lycanthrope.

Jyrtan heard the jangle of keys and the thud of footsteps on the grimy stairs as the guards descended to come and get him.

They opened the cell, and two guards subdued' him. Which was pretty much the two men bashing the crap out of his defenceless, unresisting form.

When that was done, and he was good and sore, they dragged him unceremoniously up the stairs, with him roaring with pain at each step as his broken leg hit it painfully. They just laughed.

"You motherfuckers better watch out." Jyrtan warned weakly.

He received a good rap over the back of the head with the flat of a sword, making his eyes water.

He feigned unconsciousness, and received no more punishment.

They reached the top, and he was hauled out to the railing, where they tied a coarse, damp rope that had been soaked in salt water around his broken leg and used that to lower him to the ground. By the time he got to the ground, he would have welcomed death, if only to alleviate the pain in his leg.

From where he was he could see the instrument of his death. A guillotine. It shined dully in the sunlight, the bloodstained blade poised for the final cut, the wood old and splintery.

They dragged him across to it, and threw him on the little bench where the condemned lay, only they made one little adjustment that made it a hundred times worse. They put him face-up, so that he could see the blade coming.

Jyrtan had already accepted his fate, and didn't put up any resistance, and they had just put down the stocks over his neck and wrists when he saw it.

It was nothing but a blue/silver speck high in the sky, out of the angle of view of someone who wasn't looking almost straight up. He watched, as the shape grew larger, growing from pinprick size, to the size of a knife. He could now see that it was Ilytheria.

She was going to try and rescue him. Some detached part of his mind realised that he should be feeling slightly hopeful at that moment, but he knew that she wouldn't be fast enough.

Already the executioner was raising the axe, ready to cut the rope and send the guillotine down the rails and through his neck.

The axe descended.

Suddenly, Ilytheria was there, blinking into existence right besides him.

Everything seemed to slow down.

Ilytheria whirled, blocking the axe with the two sai's [think of the weapons that Raphael uses in ninja turtles] that she was holding.

The guard stared at her in astonishment, at which point she roared with primal fury and spun, wings close to her body, a sai spinning in her hand, slicing through the executioner's throat as easily as paper. She stopped the spinning motion of the blade, and slammed it into the man's chest, right through his heart.

She left the sai there, throwing the other one, catching one guard right in the throat, knocking him off his feet, where he lay writhing in the dust, blood pumping from between his fingers.

Then she leapt at the remaining few guards, using teeth and claws in her fury.

She leapt at the closest one, wrapping her jaws gently, almost lovingly around his throat, before jerking her head, her powerful neck muscles helping to tear out most of the guard's jugular.

She whirled and threw the body at a group of stunned spectators, spitting gore across the ground as she turned and sprinted towards the guillotine.

She quickly undid the stocks, and helped him up.

"Look out!" Jyrtan cried.

Ilytheria ducked from where she had been cutting the ropes around his ankles, and the sledgehammer sailed over her head.

It impacted with Jyrtan's right shoulder instead.

Jyrtan roared with pain, his shoulder breaking in three places, and leapt up, the ropes snapping from around his legs, because of Ilytheria's earlier sawing.

He stepped forwards, grabbing the sledgehammer just below the head with his left hand as the guard tried to hit him again. He yanked it out of the guards grasp, and then slammed it into his face, caving in his skull.

At that point he heard a rush of wings, and Ilytheria seized him from behind, flapping her huge wings furiously to gain altitude. Her talons dug painfully into his broken shoulder, but he didn't make a sound as she made her laborious way away from the prison.

* * *

She set him down next to waterfall as gently as her strained wings would allow. She then collapsed next to him, falling asleep almost instantly.

She was laying almost a metre away from him, but he could feel the searing heat from her body. He crawled over to the stream, and drank some water. He grabbed some leafs and made a cup from them one-handed, taking it back to the now-moaning dragoness.

He opened her mouth roughly and used his bad arm to pour water into her mouth. Even though his shoulder was screaming with pain he still had to smile as she spluttered for a second and then drank down the water greedily.

He went back for more, and then again, and then three times more. He was amazed that her body could hold so much water.

Her temperature dropped back down closer to normal with each mouthful of water. He kept giving her water until she refused any more, and then blacked out.

* * *

When he finally awoke it was to the sound of birds nearby and a paw gently rubbing dampness across his forehead.

He sat up so fast you would think that he had just been bitten on the ass by a tarantula.

Ilytheria gave a little squeal of surprise at his sudden movement.

"You startled me." She said, a hand clutching convulsively at her chest, where her heart beat against her chest like a butterfly on crystal meth.

Jyrtan held his broken shoulder in his left hand, his right hanging uselessly at his side.

He tried valiantly to get into the subservient, kneeling position required by any human speaking to a dragon, but failed miserably.

Instead he just stared at the ground. "May I ask how long I was out milady?" He asked.

"Five hours, give or take." She replied. She cupped some water in her paw and dribbled it across his neck and back, cooling him down, and then causing heat to rise in his body as her paw gently brushed against him.

"You have to leave me milady." He said.

"No I don't." She said.

"ButmiladyI'm injured. I cannot walk or hold a sword, what possible use can I be to you?" He asked.

"Plenty." She replied, tapping her talons on the ground now.

"Like what? Milady?" He asked.

Ilytheria obviously hadn't thought that far.

She resorted to a haughty command. "I need not explain my reasons to a mere human." She said.

Jyrtan sighed. "Why do you keep me milady? While you are with me, you cannot move anywhere at all." He said.

"Because I want to." She replied.

Jyrtan risked a glance upwards, saying, "You're not like the other dragons are you? Milady?"

"No." She replied. "Now, come here." She ordered.

Jyrtan did as told, crawling painfully over to her, using just hi one good leg.

She pinned him gently, tearing his shirt off completely with a single swipe of her talons.

Jyrtan stared respectfully downwards, the only thing he could possibly look at being her flat stomach shading down into her long, shapely things, and, beyond that, the long claws on her strong feet.

She seized his broken shoulder, and yanked it roughly, putting it back into place in a most painful way.

Jyrtan roared with pain, almost blacking out.

She did it again, and he did black out for a second, delivered from the pain into blessed darkness, but it didn't last.

Ilytheria began to lick at his shoulder with slow, sensual licks, lightning arcing at points from her tongue to his shoulder, giving it a pleasant tingling sensation.

Jyrtan had to look as he felt the bones of his shoulder knitting back together.

Ilytheria finished her licking, and moved downwards, his shoulder now as good as new.

She slid down his body, and he stared respectfully upwards as she reached his broken left leg.

She slid her tongue out again, and gently ran it across the wound, the magic already starting to heal it with a very painful process. She broke his leg again, and then shoved it roughly into place. Jyrtan didn't make a sound, but he almost blacked out again.

He waited until all sensation had stopped, and he had felt the dragoness move away before he crawled onto his hands and knees, kneeling respectfully, testing out the newly healed bones.

"Thank you, milady." He said, in the most sincere voice he could.

"You are healed." She said in a tired voice. "Come now, my pet, we must make for the Draconis Combinus before the Tiryan's can mobilise their army." She continued, standing up wearily, and almost immediately falling back again, caught by Jyrtan just before she hit the ground.

"Milady!?" He asked, alarmed, forgetting that he wasn't supposed to lock eyes with a dragon.

It was the first time he had seen the dragon's eyes. They were a deep sapphire colour, which seemed to be completely endless. He stared into her eyes for a good minute before he snapped out of his trance. Now he knew what it was like to be a mouse staring into the eyes of a snake. He felt completely powerless against such a beautiful, yet deadly creature.

"Keep me warm." She whispered to him as he averted his eyes.

He could feel her shivering, and her body temperature was falling rapidly. He laid her on the ground, and grabbed the rags that was his shirt bare minutes ago, and threw it over her, laying down besides her and wrapping as much of his body around hers as possible.

He was scared to be doing this to a dragoness. Merely looking one in the eye was enough for ten lashes, physical contact was fifty. But she had ordered him to. He was torn. But she was sick or something, and dereliction of duty was a death sentence, and letting the dragoness you are protecting die fell neatly into that category, so he pulled her closer, knowing that he was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. And anyway, after what he had done in the prison cell, he was dead anyway.