It must be old, or it would smell much worse than this. It does reek, but I’m able to stand it, and that’s a point in favor of this place.
The ground inside is dry, and whichever dino made this for her offspring knew a thing or two about comfort. There’s dry grass on the floor in a layer about a foot thick.
Fine.
I walk back to the dragon. He hasn’t moved, and the wound on his forehead is still seeping that curious golden blood. He’s incredibly alien. And also helpless.
I grab one of his feet. Claws there, too, where the toenails would be on a more decent alien.
I lift his leg. Fuck, it’s heavy.
I try to lift both his legs, tucking them under my armpits. It makes me break out in a sweat.
I lean back hard, and to my surprise he moves with me, sliding along the ground. I can only hope that those spikes at his spine don’t get badly hurt by this.
Huh. This is easier than it should be. Maybe that fancy metallic paint job makes him more slippery.
That’s not to say that it’s easy. He’s still as heavy as hell itself, and I’m making slow progress dragging him along the ground, making sure there are no rocks he can hit his head on while I drag him. His spikes leave deep gouges in the dirt.
The rain picks up, and I can hear it as a thunder on the leaves high above. The many drops that hit me are so huge it hurts when they strike bare skin.
I drag and pull and lift, slipping on the mud and falling on my ass again and again.
“Shit.”
By the time I’ve dragged the dragon to the cave, I am totally soaked many times over. Both by my own sweat and by the rain.
I pull him the final feet onto the dry grass, and then he lies there, a silvery apparition of the most heartbreaking beauty.
I bend double, supporting myself on my knees and breathing hard until my heartbeat returns to normal.
Okay, he’s not in the rain anymore. Now what?
I can’t forget the way he made me feel. It was sheer terror, and I’m still shaking from it. If he suddenly wakes up now, he will not only be a dragon. He will be an angry dragon.
I scratch my head and take him in. That’s not something I really want to face right now. Certainly not an angry dragon equipped with… that.
I really shouldn’t be this creepy.
I find a familiar kind of bush and break off a branch with extremely dense foliage, shake most of the water off it, then put it across his crotch. He doesn’t need me staring at that thing. And one fig leaf just wouldn’t be enough here. Indeed, two might only get the job half done.
I go out of the cave and put my hands to my mouth, trumpet style. “Brank’oooox!”
Of course, I don’t expect a reply, and I’m right.
I look back at the unconscious dragon. He’s dry now, at least.
It suddenly hits me that I have a backpack on. I don’t actually know what it contains.
I take it off and rummage through it. There are two packs that I recognize as containing food, a water flask, spare steel strings for the crossbow, a small knife, and the thing I was looking for: a round rock tied up with strong sinews from some kind of dino.
I immediately feel better.
The two spare steel strings are curled up and unfold to a length of about two feet. I tie the dragon’s ankles with one of them, then his hands with the other. To keep me safe I should probably tie them behind his back, but I can’t bring myself to do that to an injured person.
I just make the knot as tight as I can. The string is pretty thick, so I can only hope it holds.
I get the rock and untie the sinews that hold it together. Inside is a carefully carved hollow with just a little bit of the MSG, the miracle space gel that Bune keeps producing.
I kneel by his head again, dip my fingertip into the gel, and carefully dab a little of it around the wound. Huh. Golden blood. Is that why they’re so into gold? Because they need it to produce blood from?
I don’t want to use too much of the gel. Partly because there isn’t that much of it in the first place, partly because it was made by the aliens that built Bune. And they and dragons were mortal enemies. It’s not impossible that this is poison to a guy like this.
His skin is warm and smooth. Silky and nicely stretched over his huge muscles. It’s not really silver now, more a dark gray with silver specks. It doesn’t feel like scales at all, except on his upper torso, where there is definitely something hard under the surface.
I put the lid back on.
“Okay,” I say softly. “I’ve done all I can.”
One part of me really, really wants to pack up and leave him here. I’ll go and find the others, tell them there’s an unconscious dragon here. A prisoner or war to interrogate about the dragons and their intentions.
Of course, that would be the rational thing to do. It would be a calculated risk about me being able to:
find the cavemen again and
find my way back to this place.
In the darkness and mists and now quite alarmingly cold air.
And if not? Then this guy either dies like this without regaining consciousness, or he comes to and can’t move because he’s all tied up. Probably all concussed and whatnot. That is a head injury, after all.
My mind is racing. I have pretty important information for the tribe: Dragons are vulnerable to crossbow bolts, they have liquid gold for blood, and they smell like the sublest, most manly perfume you ever knew.
Good lord, his face is heart-stoppingly beautiful even when he’s unconscious. I have an urge to sit down, take his head into my lap, and stroke his hair. Can someone this gorgeous even be dangerous to me? Did I misjudge him? Did my earlier experience with Troga make me far too sensitive to what was maybe just friendly banter from an innocent alien?
Okay, what would I have done if this were a normal guy I’d just shot? Someone who hadn’t actually harmed me, but who said weird things about playing a tune on me. Would I leave that guy like this? Tied up and helpless?
Probably not.
Of course, that guy would be human, and I could count on him being pretty harmless for at least a few hours after he’d woken up. With a man-slash-dragon, that is all very much up in the air. He might come to and immediately pounce on me, ripping me apart with those talons.
I walk out of the cave again. “Brank’oooooox!”
How far did I run away from the path? I don’t know. I lost track of time. But I know myself. How far could I realistically run? In this terrain and in these sandals? With a butt this size?
Not very far, it seems to me. I was panicked, it’s true.
But can I really be out of earshot from the band of cavemen that must by now be searching pretty frantically for me? Brank’ox might have a bossy manner, but he clearly took his mission extremely seriously.
What if I build a huge fire? In this darkness, it should be visible for… not that far. Unless I build it on top of this hill. If I’m even able to light it in this rain.
I frown. The sound of the rain has changed. Something is coming in the distance. It sounds like an even harder rain.
No sooner have I thought it before a hailstone the size of a peanut hits me on the nose.
“Ow!”
Then the hailstorm begins for real, and before I can even get into the cave the hailstones are like walnuts, pummeling the ground so hard they explode on impact. The noise is so intense that for a moment I don’t even notice that the dragon is awake and staring at me.
5
- Kyandros -
For a terrible moment I think I’ve been caught.
I take in my surroundings and close my eyes again.
It’s not the void where I travelled for years to hunt down the Inferiors. It’s a forest. And that must be good. A dragon is always superior on any planet. I am always the master. No other being can ever compare to my power and wiles.
But I am in my human form, and that must be bad. It’s not a form a dragon chooses if he has a
choice.
Slowly, the recent past comes back to me. We landed on the planet the Inferiors led us to. Then our exhaustion reduced us all to human form, even the Duchess.
I left her and her servants. And I found creatures in a village of sorts. Humans, even. Around a campfire.
I remember one of them seeing me. A female, small and round. I think I smiled at her. I waited. And the next day I followed her and her unpleasant companions through the woods, before I decided to... well, there is still time for that.
But I must also remember to build my hoard. It is the only important thing.
With a terrible, sucking feeling in my depths I remember that I have no hoard I can enjoy.
I have nothing.
The realization is so bad that I open my eyes again.
And there she is. The female from last night.
She’s looking at me. From above?
I am lying down. Have I been sleeping? Certainly, the human form has other needs than the dragon form, but is it truly this pitiful?
The ground is cold, but dry. I try to stand up, but there’s something wrong with my legs.
I adjust my position to see what it is.
Some kind of rope is tied around my ankles.
And my wrists.
It is true. I have been captured.
And the only reason anyone would capture someone else is to kill them.
Very, very slowly.
- Mia -
“Rrraaaaaahhhh!”
The dragon on the ground roars and then explodes in a blur of wild movement. He writhes and wriggles and tenses up like a bowstring, trying to get loose from the steel wires.
I grab the crossbow and sprint out into the hail, letting the hard lumps of ice pummel me until I’m under the large tree and can look at the dragon from behind its thick trunk.
His moves are extremely fast, too fast to follow. He hisses and splutters and roars. He sprattles desperately, like a fish thrown on land. It’s the most chilling and alien thing I’ve ever seen.
My lower lip trembles in both fear and guilt. It’s too sad to see such a beautiful creature in these circumstances. It’s wrong, unnecessarily humiliating for an alien who hasn’t strictly done me any harm.
And yet I’m really glad I had the foresight to tie him up. If not, he would probably have killed me by now. Or forced me to shoot him again.
But the steel wires appear to be holding. I suppose nothing else is to be expected from bowstrings forged by Trak’zor for Aurora, his wife.
When he gradually calms down, the hailstorm has passed and the regular rain is back.
I slowly shuffle through the inches-thick layer of shattered ice, crossbow pointed slightly over the dragon.
“I had to tie you,” I call to him from several yards away. “I thought you might kill me.”
He doesn’t reply. But the glare he sends me would have reduced me to a heap of ash if I hadn’t toughened up a lot here on Xren.
I take a couple of steps closer.
“I’m sorry I shot you. It’s just, you scared me. And you are a dragon. Not that it should matter. I am sorry.”
Again he tries to get out of his bondage, hissing and writhing, but there’s less energy in it than before.
“How… how do you feel?”
I want to slap my forehead. What kind of question is that?
He slowly gets up on his knees, but he’s out of balance and falls weakly back to the ground.
He might be more seriously wounded than I thought.
“You should probably try to stay still. Do you want some food? Water? I can make a fire if you want.”
As I get closer, I can see that he’s bleeding golden liquid from his ankles and wrists where I tied him. Yeah, he really hates those wires.
But I can’t risk taking them off. He may be injured, but I’m pretty sure he’ll try to kill me if he gets free.
This is actually not a lot better than before. What the fuck do I do?
I turn towards the jungle. “Brank’oooooox!”
I would really love to have twenty huge cavemen here right now. They could carry the dragon away as a prisoner of war. Or at least someone to be investigated. Because what has this thing actually done to me?
Well, he did approach me naked in the jungle, saying weird things and reaching out to me with claws. But all that could be just me imposing Earth standards on an alien.
And what have I done to him? Shot him, made him lose consciousness, tied him up, and held him captive. Maybe ogled him a little.
It does look like I’m in the wrong here. At the same time, I can’t try to make things better without untying him, and that would probably mean the death of me.
I sit down a couple of yards away. “How does your head feel?”
He reaches up to his forehead and touches the wound. But the nanogel has cleaned it up, and the finger comes away with no golden fluid on it.
“You… you hurt me,” he says hoarsely.
It’s definitely cavemanese, spoken normally. It’s strangely neutral, with no accent.
“Sorry. I just thought you would attack me.”
“You tied me up.”
“I did. Again, sorry. I really did think you would do bad things to me if I didn’t.”
He chuckles, genuinely amused. “You think I will not do bad things to you now?”
I swallow in a dry throat. He’s not kidding.
I have to ignore the threat. “Can you sit up? Might be more comfortable for you.”
“And for you, no doubt.” He makes no move.
“Not really. Have it your own way. Would you like some water? Food?” I take a pack out of the backpack. “Looks like turkeypig. Meat. Do you eat meat?”
“Poison,” he spits. “I know your games. The best thing for you to do now is to untie these primitive wires and throw yourself at my mercy. Perhaps I’ll find that I have some.”
I nod. “I actually did consider untying you. Then you said you might do bad things to me.”
“There’s no ‘might’,” he says levelly.
I take a little swig of water. “Then I’m pretty comfortable with my decision to keep you tied up.”
With a strong, fluid movement he sits up and takes me in. “You can’t keep me here for long. Do you not know who I am?”
I scoot a few feet away. Just to be sure. He might try to pounce, even now. “Should I?”
“I am Kyandros.”
I fake a gasp. “Kyandros the dragon?”
He smiles with some satisfaction. “Indeed. I can see you’ve heard of me.”
“No, never. Just had to establish beyond doubt that you are a dragon. I’m Mia. The human.”
He glares. “Mia the lesser being. I can’t imagine why you aren’t cowering before me. You must feel my power.”
I touch the crossbow in my lap. “I’ve shot you once. I can do it again.”
He laughs. “You think you have captured a dragon. And now you’re thinking about how to profit from that. But nobody ever captures dragons. Unless the dragon lets himself be captured.”
“Yeah? You let me capture you? Why?”
“Pray to whichever deity you worship that you will die before you know.”
If things were different and he were freed, his tone and his confidence would just about make me weep from fear. It’s actually an impressive display. “You know, I could just leave you here. Tied up and injured. Bleeding. Is that what you want?”
“Do whatever you must. The little lives of inferior species are beneath me.”
I look around our surroundings. It’s still dark, and the rain continues. But it is definitely colder now. “See, I don’t think you planned this at all. I think you were stalking me, planning some mischief. But in your human form, you’re much weaker than in your dragon form. And without a hoard, you can’t transform into the dragon shape. So you overrated your abilities and I surprised you with the crossbow.”
The glare he sends me tells me I’m right.
I shrug. “I’m not planning to harm you at all. In fact…” I take the MSG out of the pack. “You can put this on your ankles and wrists. Help them heal.”
His eyes narrow. “Alien witchcraft and poisons.”
“Actually, you already have some of this on your head. That’s why you woke up. It’s a healing potion.”
I take the branch I used to cover his crotch and use it to push the rock over to him. “Use it if you want. If not, that’s fine, too.”
He ignores the rock and touches his ankles. “You have injured me gravely.”
“I don’t think that’s a bad injury. And anyway, you did that to yourself.”
“No inferior has ever seen the ichor of a dragon and survived.”
I glance at his very alien crotch. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to stare. I did try to cover you up.”
He frowns. “What?”
I nod towards it. “Your… ichor.”
He shows me one fingertip with a little of his golden blood on it. “This is ichor. It is what superior beings have where mortals have their filthy blood. But that other thing holds more interest for you?”
His alien cock starts to rise.
My cheeks heat up and I look away. “No. I mean, I thought… never mind. You want to put that branch over it again?”
“It is interested in you, it seems,” Kyandros says. “It’s strange. You are an inferior being.”
I make sure to look out at the jungle. “M-hm. I don’t think I’m that inferior. How did you learn to speak this language so well?”
“Lesser species hold no secrets from me.”
A chilly gust makes me look up. The downpour is now more sleet than rain. I’ve never experienced this kind of cold air on Xren.
No sooner have I thought it before the rain turns to snow.
I can hardly believe my eyes. It’s snowing in the jungle.
I really have to think about getting home.
I get to my feet, pick up a couple of loose rocks from right outside the cave, and toss them on the ground beside him. “I’ll be leaving now. You’re dry, you have the means to heal yourself, and I’m sure that if you rub the wires hard with these rocks, you can weaken them until you get loose.”
Caveman Alien’s Enemy Page 4
