Ekolon

Story TWs: Abuse, Gore (Mild), Blood, Illicit Substances (Mentioned Only)

"Ekolon...!"

The small midnight-shaded Mirror startled awake, talons flicking out across the uncomfortably warm ground and digging into it. Her sickly red-green eyes - all four of them - scanned her near-black surroundings. She could sense the heat of other creatures, likely other dragons, beyond that darkness, beyond the tiny cage's walls and the tarp that covered the cage. She could hear the Master's voice hawking his "wares." The mirror attempted to right herself, slowly and painfully rolling from her side to her stomach without tearing the bandages wrapping most of the front half of her body. Bare muscle peaked out from underneath bloodied bandages in spots, and her shredded wings stayed limp at her sides.

The voice she had heard for as long as she had been alive had only ever said one word - Or rather, one name. Her own, Ekolon. Ekolon didn't know where the name came from, let alone where she herself came from. The first thing that the half-skinned mirror remembered in her entire life was a large group of other dragons standing, gawking over her, staring up at a darkened sky, before her memory fades once again.

While adjusting the bandages around her face (and taking care not to scrape herself with her own talons), Ekolon maneuvered her body into a more upright position to sit on her haunches. "Much better," She thought to herself. Her attention then moved to her frayed wings, which looked more like the result of a hatchling's attempt at making a paper snowflake than her own wings, and slowly rotated them forward. The bandages lining her arms started to slip as she did, revealing the gore beneath them in their full horror: The long muscles twitched with the movement and were covered with a thin sheet of mucous and a coating of healing salve. Not that said salve helped much.

The corner of her mouth twitching, Ekolon began to rewrap her wings. "The only good thing about your wings being shredded," She rasped out, barely audible even to herself, "is that they're quite easy to bandage." The little wing membrane that remained shimmered, turning from black to green even in the low light of the covered prison. Ekolon made a low sound akin to gravel underfoot, her vocal cords struggling to make the simple sound.

What was not struggling to produce sound, however, was the particularly noisy neighbor in the 'cell' next to her: A jet-black Mirror by the name of Lucious, currently busying himself with berating the passersby of his cage, lobbing various expletives in their general direction. One of those strong-willed types, Ekolon thought to herself. Not like it gets him anything other than beatings, but to each their own.

The long crack of a leather whip struck the outside of Lucious' cell, causing him to only rile more. The Master's voice echoed Lucious' volume for several moments before the bars of the cage rattled. Ekolon could see through her secondary sight Lucious being pulled from his cell by the Ridgeback known only to them as Master. The first deafening crack made Ekolon flinch and pull her vision back to normal. Shakily, she stood, maneuvering over broken bones and shattered glass to the far corner of her cell.

The back and forth between Lucious and the Master lasted for longer than usual, until Lucious had ceased his howling, with the only evidence that he was still there being a rasp of various expletives, only produced by a voice broken by spending far too much time loudly proclaiming the same things.

The dark cover on Ekolon's cage whipped upwards, held by a terrified assistant, as the Master dragged a barely-moving Lucious towards the cell entrance, before unlocking it and tossing him through. Lucious landed, skidding along the ground for a moment, coming to a stop and hauling himself off of the ground, scrambling back for the door. He made it just in time for the door to be slammed in his face.

"This time you'll have the pleasure of my favorite in my menagerie, pet," The Master grinned smugly, before pulling the curtain away from his assistant and letting it drape itself back over the door. Lucious slammed himself into the bars a couple of times, wounds along his back and limbs slowly oozing blood. Slowly, huffing, and with wings flared, Lucious turned towards the not-quite-shocked Ekolon.

"Right a--hole, ain't he? Swear I'll kill 'im one day." Ekolon stood and carefully stepped over the ground towards Lucious.

"Quite the understatement," Ekolon replied, speaking about as loud as she could, "and I'm sure that everyone else here would gladly watch, or even participate given the chance." A smile cracked over her face before she winced in pain as the bandages begun to slip from her face. Lucious grimaced at the sight.

"Do ya want me to fix that?" Lucious asked, a caring scowl crossing his face. Ekolon considered the question for a moment.

"...If you'd like to, please."

At that, Lucious approached and flicked the dirt from his claws before slowly unwrapping Ekolon's face, taking great care to not scrape the raw muscle underneath. The bandages clung to each other in the heat and humidity. Reaching overhead, he dipped his knuckles into the tub of healing salve strung to the bars at their heads, placing small globs of it on Ekolon's face. She closed her eyes, enjoying the cooling sensation as Lucious smoothed it over into one relatively uniform sheet.