Lineage

Luna sat with her legs crossed, having taken to copying down as many of the notes from the scripts and maps she’d found while handing me the journal to read through. I sat against a wall, the room having warmed up enough for me to remove my armour and allow me to lounge about in my longjohns and boots. My eyes were glued to the pages I flicked through, the older pages being yellowed and crisped due to being exposed to the moisture and air from the decomposing twenty-year old corpse, if the dates were accurate. The particular passage I was reading spoke of the dragoness’ behaviour when it came to dealing with villagers and visiting parties:

The beast cares not for aggressive men or women, taking no time to rip and tear them to pieces without batting an eyelid. The men attack, she destroys them and their camps, and the restthen attempt to claim vengeance for their fallen comrades, only to share the same fate. The weapons they possess are nothing. Rusted swords, chipped clubs, and sharpened sticks can’t but touch her beautiful scales before their organs are spread across the frozen countryside. But a strange behavioral pattern is that she shows no aggression towards those who show none to her. There has been an account from one of the villagers of her daughter, eight years old, becoming lost in the ‘CicleWoods and stumbling across the great beast. Instead of the Omega tearing the morsel to shreds, upon hearing the child’s frightened wails, she began comforting her. The girl said that the beast asked her what she was doing in the woods all alone and she asked the dragon to take her home before her mother became mad. The dragon was said to have carved a large sheet of bark from a tree and used some kind of magic to shape it into a boat before placing the boat into a nearby river and then the girl into the boat. The girl said the dragon promised she’d enchanted the boat to keep her safe and get her back to the fishing stream in her village without being harmed by the creatures of the forest.

Another strange interaction between the dragon and a villager was the case of Fjorn, a young boy of about eighteen at the time, being separated from his father in a heavy blizzard and being forced into an old cave to avoid freezing. It was once the cave opened up, he said, that he came across the dragoness dozing quietly before she caught his scent. He claims he was frozen in terror as the dragon raised her head, mumbling something in a language he didn’t recognize before speaking in his tongue. She asked him what he was doing there and he said he’d gotten lost outside. She then said if he promised to tell no one about her location, he could stay the night in the cave until the storm let out without her harming him. The boy did so but upon his return home to his village, he broke his promise and told the men where the “monster” was sleeping and that they could kill “it” while it slept.

I gritted my teeth angrily at this: yet again, another uneducated fucking inbred not knowing the difference between a monster and an animal. They just saw something that wasn’t human and his first thought was to slay it. I gave myself a mental reminder to punch this cunt whenever I went to the village and, if his inbred uncles/brothers had a problem with it, I’d kill them all too. I then put a hand to my head and exhaled slowly, feeling very surprised at the random violent thought towards the villagers.

“I suppose I don’t want anybody being mean to my future sex-friend,” I said, shaking the thought from my mind before going back to reading the journal entry.

They took everything they could to meet the dragon, but she seemed to be ready for them, standing at the mouth of the cave and immediately locking her eyes onto the boy she’d helped, seeing him clutching a chipped sword and holding a shield upside down. She shook her head with a disappointed sigh and, as soon as the first volley of amateurly-fletched arrows were released, she leaned her head forward and turned them all to ash with a mighty bellow of fire, according to Scout Neil, who was watching the scenario from one of the nearby rock formations above the cave. She then spread her wings and took to the sky, seemingly to find a new place to rest. This will require additional scouting from some of the more experienced members of the platoon to find her.

That was the end of that day’s journal entry and it had caused a flux of ranging emotions to erupt in me, feeling pity well up in my stomach towards the poor creature that only wanted a peaceful life and to be left alone. I turned over to the next page, reading that day’s entry that seemed much shorter than the previous one:

We’ve received reports of a woman collecting herbs out in the snow from what remains of the village that attacked the dragoness. They say she’s a tall woman with long, flowing hair that is often clad in a white dress that is much too thin to protect her from the cold. She doesn’t approach the village and instead keeps her distance, one of the village women getting close enough to say that she has a very strange mark on her head: a white Y marked on her face just above her brow. Comparing this to the sketches of the dragoness we have, we believe that this woman has been made a disciple of the dragoness and has been branded with her symbol.

I rolled my eyes at this statement, myself knowing that dragons and Vampire Houses were two completely different things, as it was a Vampire House that marks you on your body with their clan’s coat of arms, usually on the lower back or the shoulder for women, or the arm or the inner wrist for men as a way to quietly tell which house a vampire was representing if they were awarded or punished for violating the Vampire Creeds, or something such as that.

And the fact that dragons didn’t take disciples. That was probably, y’know, the bigger point in all this. I turned my eyes back to the page, turning over the one I’d just finished to see a very detailed sketch of the woman they’d mentioned. An appreciative whistle came from my mouth as I examined the drawing:

“Fuck me,” I said in awe. “The tits on her are fantastic.”

The dress the woman had on in the sketch was a tight-fitting one, clinging very nicely to the hourglass figure of the busty beauty I lay my eyes on, seeing her bright blue eyes and colour scheme matching the dragoness down to a T. So obvious, I thought, that I began to wonder why the soldiers hadn’t immediately assumed she’d changed her form.

“I hope we get a view from the back,” I said with a cocked eyebrow. “If she’s got an ass as nice as her chest, I’m taking her home with me.” I turned over the page and, sadly, there was no sketch of the ass I was hoping to behold.

“Ah, dammit,” I growled. “Still, that first one is going straight in the wank bank.”

“Richter,” Luna said sternly from across the room.

“Sorry,” I called back before continuing to read the journal.

The woman has been spotted dotting around areas where a certain type of herb grows, used for burials and wakes, as if she is in mourning for something, and has also been spotted around a strange, spiral-shaped rock in the middle of a field due north-west of the great lake in the area.

“Spiral-shaped rock?” I asked aloud.

“It’s a draconic form of gravestone,” Luna answered. “The spiral is supposed to represent the Tornado of the Elder Gods, which destroys the dragon’s earthly body and takes them up to the Great Plains, their version of the afterlife.”

“So… that means that rock is-”

“Her child’s gravestone,” Luna finished. “That’s where he was killed by the wolves.”

“Fuck,” I sighed. “That’s gotta be horrible.”

“Mhm,” Luna nodded. “So try not to bring it up when you’re near her.”

“Will do,” I sighed, looking away from the book and up at Luna. “You find anything interesting?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” she said with a happy tone in her voice. “If I remember my old maps of the Whispering Valley correctly-”

“Whispering Valley?” I asked quickly before she moved on.

“It gets the name from the rock formations. They formed with holes in them at certain points in the rock that changes the sound of the wind slightly,” she explained. “And from a distance, it sounds like the hushed voices of someone inside the valley.”

“Right, go on,” I prompted.

“If I remember the Valleys like I think I do,” she continued, “the dragon’s lair isn’t too far south of the Cillian Knight Academy, about five miles away.” I noted the tone in her voice as she said the name, as well as the faint smile that touched her lips as she ran her hand over a section of the map.

“Does that mean something to you?” I asked after a moment.

“Of course,” she nodded. “It’s also the same place I trained to be what I am now, well over four thousand years ago.”

“It’s still standing after all that time?” I asked in shock.

“Of course it is,” she nodded. “It’s still being used to train the new generation of knights and warriors to protect whoever they choose as their charge, be it a baron, king, or young princess. I’ve personally made sure it never falls into disrepair, as it’s too precious a place to see age and die.”

“Wow,” I nodded. “How old were you when you started training?”

“The same age you were: nine,” she answered. “My father gathered the best tutors, teachers, and trainers he could find to make sure I was made to be the best.”

“Your father?” I asked. “My grandfather? Other grandfather?”

“Yes, Emperor Cillian of Harroway himself,” Luna nodded. “I trained there every day until I was eighteen before returning home to prepare for my princess training.”

“That must’ve been an adjustment,” I whistled.

“You have no idea,” Luna chuckled, setting the map down and smiling to herself. “The first thing my mother did when I got home was hire someone to help improve my accent.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’d never been taught to speak in a proper manner and had spent nine years of my life hanging around grizzled murderers,” she said. “The correct and formal accent I have now is a far cry from the way I was taught to speak by the men that trained me.”

“What accent did you have?” I asked.

“Scouse, I think,” she said with a sigh. “I’m not proud of it.”

“That must’ve sounded terrible,” I said.

“It did,” she said with a childish smile. “It didn’t help that I’d been brought up around men that used the word ‘cunt’ as a sign of affection. Mother was not happy with me when I referred to Celestia as a ‘loveable cunt of a sister’. Celly wasn’t either.”

“How long did it take you to learn to speak in the accent you have now?” I asked.

“Honestly? About twenty years,” she said. “Aye, the language tutor was taken away from me, as most stuff was, when mother and father found out about Celestia and I being a couple, but after about four or five years, I just got sick of being looked at funnily because of my accent and decided to hire a new tutor.”

“Wow,” I chuckled. “How come I’ve never heard of this before?”

“There’s a lot of things we’ve never told you, Richter,” Luna answered. “When you’ve got four millennia of history under your belt, you can’t possibly remember every exact detail from that time too well.”

“I guess not,” I shrugged. There was a moment of silence before Luna spoke up again, suggesting something for us to do.

“I think we should pay them a visit on the way to the dragoness’ cave,” she said.

“How come?” I asked.

“I would like to check in and see how everything’s being run there,” she answered. “I left it in capable hands, but haven’t been there in over sixty years, so I wanna make sure the walls are still standing now that the Master is in his late seventies.”

“Fair enough,” I shrugged. “We’re in no particular rush, are we?”

“Thanks, Richter,” she said with a smile. “It means a lot to me.”

“Not a problem,” I chuckled. I turned my head to look at her, the ancient being leaning her head back against the wall with a reminiscent smile on her face as she no doubt relived the past she’d once experienced in the academy. The room returned to quiet at this point, minus the sounds of the crackling fire and the howling wind outside. I turned my eyes back to the journal and continued to read the entries for several hours, trying to learn as much as I could about the dragoness and her habits, spotting Luna getting up to throw another cedar log on the fire every now and again before returning to her seat.

I wasn’t sure if the sun was anywhere close to going down, but after sitting on my ass all day reading, I’d become quite cosy and tired, wondering if it was anywhere near bed time, so I looked up at Luna to ask her.

“D’you have any idea what time it is?”

“Just after midnight, I think,” she said, stretching out and yawning. “Ugh. Think I’m ready for bed now. What about you?”

“Yeah, definitely,” I said, folding the tip of the edge of the page I was on to keep my place before closing the book. “Which bedroom are you taking?”

“Yeah… about that,” she said in an awkward manner. “There’s only one bedroom.”

“Right… is there more than one bed?” I asked.

“No,” she answered.

“... Yay!” I said with a happy grin.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” she said with a chuckle, placing her hands on her hips and shaking her head. “I was initially worried you’d feel a little awkward. Then I remembered who you are.”

“Yup,” I nodded. “So… what kinda bed are we talking about here?”

“It’s a relatively large one,” she said. “It’s no empress bed, but it gets the job done.”

“My bed’s only a queen size… what the hell size is an empress bed?” I asked in confusion.

“To put it in perspective: I could do a standing backflip, move two feet in any direction while doing so, and land on my back without any risk of falling off or hitting my head on any sort of board,” she explained.

“Why the fuck would you need a bed that size?” I asked.

“It was invented by the Romans, if I remember correctly,” she said.

“Why would that… ohhh. Ew.”

“Indeed,” she nodded. “Anyway, shall we be off?”

“I get the feeling I’m gonna sleep like a log tonight,” I said, stretching my arms out.

“Me too,” Luna nodded. “Riding always takes it out of me and I have no idea why.”

“I’ll avoid the obvious joke there and just agree with you,” I chuckled. “You’re gonna be acting as my hot water bottle tonight, right?”

“If you want me too,” she nodded. With that, we both headed off upstairs, Luna using her magic to snuff out the fire before heading up the creaking wooden stairs. The bedroom was next to the bathroom, something I’m guessing Luna was ignoring now due to how late it was. The room itself was cold yet cosy, being a smaller space with a few drawers, a small lockbox on a nearby table, and a very old-looking wolf-fur comforter instead of a blanket.

“Ugh,” I said in disgust, running my hand over the wolf fur and being reminded of my best friend.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing…” I answered, curling my lip up at the bed spread. “I’ve just never been a fan of animal skin. Especially not one of my best friend’s species.”

“Please, Richter,” Luna snorted. “D’you think anybody in this village could afford Direwolf fur? Especially this number of pelts stitched together?”

“That doesn’t really change the fact-”

“Stop being such a fanny and get in the bed,” she growled, shoving me onto the less-than-soft mattress. I kicked my boots off and crawled underneath the dual-layered fur comforter, the familiar feeling of warm wolf fur against my back that I often felt when Grael used to sleep on my bed before he’d gotten too big. I tried to ignore the feeling of what felt like my best friend’s corpse on my back as Luna stripped down to skin before sliding in next to me with a satisfied sigh.

“Are you serious?” I asked angrily.

“What?” she asked. “Just because you don’t enjoy it doesn’t mean I can’t.” I was annoyed with her at that point, but the aggression quickly melted into nothing as she wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close to her, her enormous bust pressing into my back as she tucked her body against mine, her dark skin radiating heat from her very core that warmed me to mine.

“Get your head down, Richter,” she said in a hushed voice. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”

“Right,” I nodded, closing my eyes and allowing a mix of her warmth and the warmth of the still-revolting comforter to lull me to sleep, my mind drifting off to thoughts of dragons and knights in dreamland.