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He was dying.
He didn’t know how he got there, or where everyone had gone. One moment, he…
Damn it. Where was he just a few moments ago? He couldn’t remember. He could barely even think straight. The pain thundering in his chest didn’t help. Each breath speared his lungs, and each round of agony sent him further to the ground until he was on his knees, gasping.
Toxic air. Only the most severe of some regions had this, and he just so happened to be in one of them. No wonder it smelt like poison.
Everywhere around him was dead. Though his eyes watered with each painful inhale, he could make out skeletons of both dragons and familiars alike in the distance alongside rotting trees that the toxic air must have choked of oxygen. Some kind of red sand filtered its way through his digits as he doubled over and coughed up phlegm, blocking his already-choked throat with specks of dust.
So the ground and
the air is out to get me, he thought, wiping his mouth with his trembling paw.
What next? A dragon?
His throat was as dry as the desert cornering him. He tried to savour what little moisture he could from the pool of saliva forming in his mouth, but it was little use. His tongue grew heavier with each second that passed in this wretched hellhole.
He was going to die out here. The thought was enough to make his heart pound in his aching chest.
The strength in his arms fell into shaking first. Their numbness gave way to pain as he landed on his left wing. A crack whipped through his ears. The tang of copper filled his mouth, pain bloomed in his cheek. He couldn’t move. Not in the state he was in, and besides, there were no rocks to cling to. Just infinite amounts of red sand that got stuck in his throat and his eyes and his nails.
Something grey flickered into existence as he choked and spluttered on the ground, though his hopes didn’t rise. He was alone out here. He must be.
It got a few steps closer, and through his blurred stare, he could make out an outline. It was some kind of dragon that was heading towards him and, despite himself, hope fluttered in his heart. Maybe he could be saved!
They got closer again. He could spot a top hat and vest, a startling red scarf wrapped around their neck for some unknown reason. All of their garments were speckled with the same red sand that was slowly killing him.
He could only watch. The figure got closer until he stood a few meters away. From there, he could make out his face through his tears. A grey Ridgeback, but a small one; he was about the size of him, if not slightly taller. He was covered in dots of red from the sand getting under his scales with swirls of yellow—almost like mustard—drifting along his body. The scarf he wore… it looked familiar, even smelled familiar, but he couldn’t put his digit on it. Where had he seen that before?
The Ridgeback crouched before him and angled his head in question. His eyes were a striking ruby red, a slice running through the middle of them. They were all he could focus on.
“Please,” he choked out. It agonised him to speak, his voice scratching along the inside of his throat.
The male seemed to understand. He slowly pulled a prismatic flask out from a secret vest pocket and shook it. Water sloshed around inside. The sound of it was like music to his ears. He tried to reach up and take it, but his arms stayed still. Death was coming.
“Please.”
He made no move to help him and, with a single movement, downed the water right in front of him. Droplets splashed onto the sand between them and, if he had any tears to spare, he was fairly certain he would’ve cried over the loss.
A hoarse whine left him before he could stop it and the male gave him a look over the flask. Something flashed in his beautiful red eyes. It terrified him.
When he finished with a loud, mocking sigh, he slipped it back into his pocket and gave him a twisted grin. Teeth flashed with it. They looked sharp enough to tear through scales and skin.
“You’re not worth saving,” he hissed, a forked tongue slipping through his teeth. He sounded almost like a snake. “You’re not worth the drag on supplies.”
Standing slowly, he spat at him. It landed on his cheek with a sickening slap.
Then he was gone. He disappeared with the wind, becoming one with the sand that fell into his mouth and choked him of air. He left him to die alone in a wasteland that only Plague dragons could survive.
At last, his throat clogged up completely, cutting off his air and leaving him to scratch and scream at the barren land around him.
*
Panting and sweating like a dog, he shot up onto his knees and clutched at his throat. It wasn’t swollen or clogged. He could breathe. He wasn’t dying.
Tears welled in his eyes. He felt sick and dizzy, confusion clouded his mind and sent his stomach reeling. Where was he?
“Hey,” a voice groaned softly, “you nearly crushed my rib.”
He looked around for the source of the voice and spotted the same male from his dream. Yellow patterns, his skin dark and speckled grey below it all. Gorgeous red eyes, a hat beside him and the same waistcoat from his dream slung over a chair...
Starting, he backed away to the end of the bed, wide eyed and shaking. What was he doing here? Where was he?
“Vlad,” he began, edging slowly towards him, “it’s okay. It’s just me.”
“You left me to die,” he sobbed, his back pressed against the wall. Wood; specifically, Starwood from the Arcanes judging by the scent of the sea. “You let me die!”
“Vladimir, honey, it was just a nightmare.” The Ridgeback gave him a small smile and reached for his paw. He let him take it. He was too afraid to move. “You’re okay, you’re safe here.”
You’re gonna be okay. We’re going to find you some help.
“Go away,” he whispered, screwing his eyes shut. “Go away.”
The male didn’t leave. He did the opposite; he lifted his chin so that he would be staring into his eyes. Slowly, he cracked his open and panicked. They were exactly the same as in the dream, but something was wrong.The pupils weren’t slits. They were rounded like a ball, filled with hope and… love?
Realisation hit him and tears spilled over.
Walter?
Without thinking, he dived at him and forced his mouth open. No forked tongue, no spiked teeth. The panic stopped as quickly as it began, and the relief almost broke him.
You’re safe here.
“Vyad,” Walter groaned, tugging his paws away from his face and making a show of discomfort. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “One, I’m not into that. Two, do you feel any safer now that you’ve checked basically everything?”
He nodded. Vlad... his name was Vladimir. Of course it was; Vladimir “Viper” Azama. Walter gave him his name upon saving him.
We have an old story back at my old lair, he’d told him one night when his asthma kicked in. An after-effect of breathing in so much toxic gas, which they both knew after his initial attack.
Vladimir the Unkillable; it’s said that he fought off hordes of Beastclans with just his bare paws.
He sounds cool, he’d said, downing a vial.
I think that story, and that name, suits you perfectly.
He remembered snorting at that.
Really?
Yeah! Why wouldn’t you, after surviving neither of us knows how long in the Mist?
So you think I should be called Vladimir.
Why the hell not? All I’ve been calling you for the past few weeks is Viper, and that’s not exactly a cool name.
It’s really not, is it?
You weren’t meant to agree with me!
A spike of pain brought himself back to the present. Walter sat cross-legged before him, rubbing his arm where it hurt. He was still trembling.
“I pinched you,” he told him gently. “I thought it’d help.”
“I’m sorry,” Vladimir muttered as he bowed his head in shame. “I thought I was still dreaming; I didn’t mean to attack you.”
“You’re
sorry for something?” he cried, feigning shock.
When he didn’t laugh, Walter cleared his throat and continued in a softer tone. “It’s not your fault, Vlad. You looked terrified, you still do, and even if you didn’t I still wouldn’t say it was your fault.” He sighed, guilt flashing in his eyes. “Especially not since you relive that horror story of a memory almost every night.”
Sniffing, Vladimir threw his arms around Walter and wept into his chest. He didn’t know how long it took him to calm down, or how many times his lover had to reassure him that he was safe, that he was alright, that there was nothing to be sorry for. He didn’t even know how many tears he shed before they stilled, but it was enough to leave a massive wet patch on the strange tunic Walter wore for bed.
Walter didn’t mind. The nuzzling kissing of his mane told him as such. “You know I love you, right?”
“Mhm.”
“You sure?”
Vladimir loosened his hold on his ringleader and looked up at him, confused. “Of course, why?”
“I know that sometimes you doubt it,” he sneered playfully. “I just wanted to make sure.”
He tried to swallow the tremor in his voice before speaking. It still appeared anyway. “I know, Walt.”
“Good.” Before he could react, Walter cupped his face in his hands and kissed him gently on the lips. They were unlike the rest of him; they were chapped from the cold and dry from numerous times of absentminded picking, and Walter’s were the complete opposite. Soft to the touch. He let himself sink into them, and away his worries went, disappearing until it ended. His curiosity, his nightmare and even his shaking left him.
They didn’t return when it’d stopped just a few seconds later. His lover’s smile seemed to keep them at bay. “Now you can remember it.”
Vladimir chuckled for the first time since he’d woken up and leaned on Walter, drifting into an unwavering calm. The soft rhythmic thumping of his heart against his cheek kept him anchored to this reality. All that happened was a bad dream.
Walter took it upon himself to rake a paw through his matted mane. It must’ve knotted from his tossing and turning, but each drag through untangled it until it was softer. Each stroke became less painful, too, with more knots tearing free from their hold.
“You were sweating like crazy,” he mumbled, twirling a tuft of hair around his digit. “Someone’s going to need a shower later on.”
“I think both of us need one after setting up the tent.”
Walter snickered. “You’re not wrong.”
Vladimir opened his mouth to say something when...
THUD!. It came from the roof of the caravan before falling into the snow outside with a soft crunch.
“What was that?” he muttered, mostly to himself as he peeked outside into the flurry of snow. Whatever had crash-landed didn’t sound particularly big, more like the size of a new-born dragon, but he couldn’t hear anything coming from outside. The storm acted like a wall, no doubt blocking most of what would come from outside.
“I don’t know, my love. I can’t see through wood.”
He stuck his tongue out at Walter and rushed towards the door. His orb—a gift to all Pearlcatchers—lit up under his touch as he grabbed it from their desk before it hovered beside his head, ready to be used. A thin white shirt and breeches wouldn’t nearly be enough to fight off the cold, so he quickly grabbed his scarf and raced out into the cold. It was the same red scarf Walter had around his neck in his dream. No wonder it had looked familiar.
The night sky was beautiful tonight, he noticed, with all torches blown out by the storm. Stars mixed with the snow, dotting the blanket of darkness, and the moon was like a spotlight smack-bang in the middle. He loved coming out onto the terrace sometimes and just gazing up at the sky.
No, he told himself with a shake of his head. The snow bit at his feet as he trudged through the flurry, keeping his paws in his armpits to warm them.
I need to find what caused that noise.
Wandering around the caravan, he half expected it to be a Death Seeker. They were blind half of the time, aside from the large eye on their chest, and it wouldn’t be the first time one of them thudded onto the caravan thinking it was a tree. The snow wouldn’t help them, either.
A scream shattered through the night and he spun in its direction. It was on the opposite side of the caravan, and the shriek was accompanied by loud sobs that broke his heart. It sounded like a hatchling.
Walter raced outside as soon as Vladimir turned the corner to the noise. His orb flashed brighter and hovered above the cause of the noise. He’d expected relief upon finding it, but he could only feel guilt for the poor thing. Its wing was at a weird angle, and the tears and screams… he could only imagine how much pain it was in.
“Sweet Deities,” Walter muttered when he rushed to Vladimir’s side, crouching down next to the baby. He looked just as worried as he did heartbroken.
Vladimir sat next to him and tentatively touched the hatchling’s skin and wings for bumps, scrapes and bruises. It was evidently a male, as the face was less rounded, and the feathers on either side of his face stuck up instead of drooped. His wing must’ve broken upon impact—a thought that made his blood boil in anger—and a couple of head-feathers were crooked. If either of them so much as breathed too close to him, he shrieked in agony, and it got worse when Vladimir softly prodded at his wing. Four fractures. They’d have to get him inside quickly after they assessed the rest of the damage.
“I’m hoping a familiar dropped him,” Walter snarled, checking around them to see if anyone else woke up, “because if a dragon did this, they’re crueller than what I have the terminology for.”
Vladimir agreed with him as he gently scooped the new-born up into his arms, his orb keeping his outstretched wing suspended in the air. He kept screaming with every movement he made.
“Walter,” he said, his voice cooler than he expected, “you go inside, clear the desk and get some pain medication sorted.”
“But—”
“Please. It’ll need it if I’m going to fix his wing up.”
Walter hesitated for a few seconds before nodding and rushing back into their home. Vladimir chose to wait on the terrace with the baby until his lover called him inside. Of course, he made sure that he was swaddled in something, and considering how wet the blanket they found him on was, Vladimir opted to using his scarf.
As gently as he could, he propped the hatchling’s wing up on one knee and laid him to rest in his lap so that he could get to work. The poor thing sobbed and screamed at the movement, at the cold and at the cruelty.
“Hey, little one,” he cooed as he wrapped the scarf around him, being careful of his wing. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise. We’re going to fix up your wing and find where you came from.”
He whimpered in his lap, but his gaze was fixed on the orb that danced around Vladimir’s head. It seemed to fascinate him.
Vladimir grinned at the hatchling. “It’s pretty, isn’t it. It can do some really cool things, too. Do you want to see?”
He gurgled in response, his own smile breaking free as he reached for it. The orb did all sorts of tricks in the air, from changing colour to making sparks to even settling itself next to the baby and warming him up. The sight of his little smile in the midst of the agony he must be feeling made Vladimir’s heart flutter.
“You can come inside now, Vlad!”
He initially struggled to stand with the Coatl now bundled up in his arms wriggling to see the orb at all times, but he managed with Walter’s help and, together, they carried him inside and into the warmth of the caravan.
“Poor little thing,” Vladimir mumbled as he set the new-born onto the desktop with as much ease as he could. He didn’t seem to notice. At his command, the orb that fascinated him perched itself on his stomach and continued to warm him. “He looks only a few hours old.”
Walter huffed beside him as he sat down on the chair. “I want to know who did it.”
“Let’s focus on him first, my dear.” Patting his lover’s crossed arms, Vladimir inspected the poor baby’s wing. Four fractures, but none of them were messy. Not that he’d seen, at least.
Eyeing the wing, Vladimir grabbed a couple vials of medicine, a syringe and got straight to work. The painkiller knocked the baby out almost instantly, yet he still whimpered and whined every time Vladimir managed to slip a fracture back into place. He wondered why he wasn’t squeamish to the cracking like Walter was, who ended up diving under the duvet to escape the noise.
Out of the entire hour or so he worked on the wing, it was cutting into his wing that made him shiver. He had to, however. If he didn’t, there was a possibility the wing would heal incorrectly, so he’d make a small incision in his wing just above the place of the fracture to check it was in place and then douse it with a special salve. Each time, he had to cut deep enough to scar the poor thing when it would heal over, but Vladimir wasn’t about to jeopardise his flight because he didn’t want him to wear scars. Besides, he might make up fun stories for them in the future.
The thought of what he could come up with made him smile as he worked.
Vladimir was working on the last incision when Walter finally came out of his hiding place, crept up beside him and gazed down at the slumbering hatchling. He looked up to see pain in his eyes. Walter knew exactly how this hatchling felt.
“He’s so small,” he murmured. He sounded almost as broken as the hatchling’s wing. “Why would someone do this to him?”
“A familiar could’ve dropped him, Walter,” Vladimir told him, gripping the scalpel in his jaw whilst he covered the fracture with the mint-smelling salve. His eyes were so heavy. “It’s not unheard of, and you even suggested the idea yourself.”
Walter sounded like he wanted to protest. It never came. He sighed instead and threw his arms around Vladimir’s neck to nuzzle his cheek. “Are you nearly done with him?” he asked, placing his head on his shoulder.
As much as he hated himself for it, he couldn’t keep the groan out of his voice. “Nearly.”
All he had to do was sew the incisions up. It wouldn’t take long, but exhaustion was beginning to weigh heavy on him.
“Do you want me to do it?”
He snorted. “You’re squeamish, Walter. You wouldn’t last more than a second.”
“How humble of you, Vladimir, to think that I’d even last as long as
that.”
They giggled amongst themselves as he fished through the drawer to find a needle and thread. It was at the bottom of the desk, as always. It took a few attempts to drag it from its place, half of the thread fraying from Vladimir tugging it out from underneath books and a thick stack of letters, but he eventually managed to sew up the incisions. He did it in good time, too, for the new-born woke up a few minutes after, whining for food.
As cute as he was, the whinging made him grimace.
His lover kissed at his cheek, the curve of his lips suggesting a smile. “You look done with life, my dear.”
“I want to sleep,” he moaned as he leaned his head on Walter’s.
“Go to sleep, then. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
Vladimir turned to face him, grinning through the exhaustion. “One that I’m no longer participating in.”
“Aww, but you’ve got to! We’ve got a few people moving into the circus!”
“One of us has to stay here with little’un, sweetness. It might as well be me, just in case anything goes wrong.”
Walter pouted at him and he snickered. He half expected him to be overdramatic and ask for his apology, but he simply kissed his nose and dragged him from the chair towards the bed. Vladimir let him go about it; he was too tired to care.
As soon as he got close enough, his legs gave out and he collapsed. The duvet cushioned his fall and a groan that lasted about five seconds escaped him. Walter was beside the baby when he stopped.
One of Walter’s best smiles was tugging at his lips at the sight of the Coatl, who returned it with gurgles and coos. “We’re going to have to get some food for him.”
“We should do that soon,” Vladimir yawned, tugging the duvet over himself. “He’s going to need it.”
“I’ll go in an hour or so.” His mate was giving him one of his rarest smiles as he messed around. Small and cute, one that was barely noticeable unless you looked closely. Whether it was because of the hatchling, him or any other variable on the table, Vladimir could confidently say he didn’t care as long as his mate was happy. “You need your sleep.”
Vladimir nodded. “You’ll wake me up if something’s up with him, yeah?”
“Of course I will.”
Without much hesitation, he curled himself up in the quilt and watched Walter from the bed. He was carefully wrapping the Coatl baby up in a spare blanket-like cloth he must’ve found in a drawer, avoiding his wing at all costs and humming an old lullaby to him just in case he started crying. As much as he was Shatterskull’s over-the-top, stubborn ringleader, one who went beyond the call of duty to satisfy his audiences, the secret side to him—the soft words, the affection, the genuine laughter—was something that Vladimir was able to steal for himself just a few months ago when they confessed (awkwardly) to each other.
It’d happened in the marketplace. Walter was looking at different costumes for Seigmund and an outfit for Aries whilst Vladimir waited for him, and he just so happened to overhear his mutterings to the seamstress.
He smiled to himself.
What a funny day that turned out to be.
