Art Sales

When it concerns Crossiant’s job, time is money. No, seriously. Getting paid to make sure the timelines don’t mess up while simultaneously having fun? It’s practically every dragon’s dream to have a career that they both enjoy and benefit from. Fortunately for this Sandsurge, he’s got a pretty good gig going for himself, even more so now that he has a work partner by his side to keep his antics in check. Despite their differing breeds, they get along quite well for an Auraboa and Sandsurge duo.

Croissant can be found majority of the time in his workshop, which looked more or less like what you’d expect a mechanic’s workplace to look like. Just like the rest of his species, he’d burrowed underground and made a place for himself to focus on his passion projects, as well as his actual work. Because he hadn’t been called in to work for the Time Division today, he figured it was a nice day off. Due to this, he was currently sails deep into one of his projects at the moment, with Uyn at his side, handing him the tools he needed.

“Sprocket, please,” he murmurs as he holds out a talon to retrieve the item as his serpentine assistant gives it to him. Croissant is currently underneath a pretty sizable metal contraption, which he’s working on. After attaching it to somewhere inside what looked to be a specialized clock of some sort, he wipes his oil stained claws off on his scales and then holds out his talon again. “Wrench,” he says as he takes this brief moment to flex his claws.

“Are you sure this will work?” Uyn’s voice rang out in the hollow space that had been carved out to serve as a workshop. She clutched a battered up wrench in her claws and observed it for some time before eventually handing it over to the awaiting Sandsurge, who chirped his gratitude and began working again. When he next spoke, his voice was a bit muffled due to him being under some personal project of his.

“Of course it’ll work! C’mon, haven’t you ever wanted a universal clock? There’s different time zones throughout Sornieth since the elements have a curious effect on how time passes, so if this clock can track all of them, it’ll make our job much easier.” Croissant emerged from underneath the large machine, most of his body splattered with oil as a result of him tinkering with it. He brushes himself off a bit and then stands up to his full height, grinning widely at Uyn. Croissant was practically beaming with pride at what he had accomplished.

Furthermore, despite the two being different in appearance, Uyn could tell by the way his head frills were held up high that it was a good indication of an uplifted mood. They fell a little once he saw that the Auraboa before him didn’t exactly share his good spirits. “What’s wrong?” he asked, allowing his sails to relax a bit as he underwent some well needed stretches. He really needed to loosen up after an hour or so of being in just one general area.

“It’s… nothing,” Uyn muttered, although her drooping crest of feathers said otherwise. Her branch horns also had wilting flowers, which was another clear indication of her downtrodden mood. Other than that, it would be nigh on impossible to discern what emotion she was feeling at that moment. She gave a quick, dismissive wave of one of her wings and slithered over to another project of Croissant’s, one that looked abandoned for the most part. While the topic of time was a rather sore subject for her, machinery was not. Uyn tapped on the metallic surface of the contraption, before she turned away again and looked uninterested by even its appearance.

“Thinking about the rift again?” Croissant inquired, only now beginning to fix the cogs and gears lining his sides. He hadn’t even been aware that his outfit of choice was starting to look unsightly, since no one had bothered to tell him.

“What rift do you speak of? We’ve been through so many, I’ve lost count.” Despite her cool tone, Uyn’s answer was vaguely snappy, even as she feigned ignorance as if she had no idea what her friend was talking about. She also noticeably refused to face him as she pretended to be interested in the other creations that were scattered around the workshop.

“Oh, well, uh… y’know, the… um…” Croissant fumbled over his words, unsure of how he wanted to word what he was attempting to ask. Eventually, he just settled on going over to his self made ‘snack corner,’ and munching on a baked good that he’d made himself. Funnily enough, it was a croissant, the very thing he took his namesake from. He enjoyed them, as well as other foods like them. Especially a good biscuit. Oh, or a cookie or two.

His tail brushed against the floor of his den as he once again pondered what he might say to Uyn. He let out a sigh, a few stray crumbs tumbling from his mouth in the process. “You already know what I was trying to ask. Were you thinking about the time rift you were stuck in for… well… who knows how long?” Croissant then settled down on his haunches, before laying down fully on his stomach, his tail curled around him.

Uyn shot him a nasty glare, but shook her head as her expression softened. “...Yes, in fact, I was thinking about the time pocket I had been stuck in indefinitely until you came along and saved me. What of it?”

“Oh, um, I didn’t mean anything by it, I just wanted to ask…” Croissant mutters after wolfing down the rest of his snack. He messes with a few nearby pieces of metal strewn across the floor, before huffing and resting his head on his talons. “Can we just… talk about it? I know there’s a lot to unpack there, but… I mean… I think it’s important for us to finally address those feelings of yours.”

Uyn’s answer was swift. “No.” She had barely even turned her head to glance at him as she uttered that simple and curt one word response. In fact, she seemed intent on ignoring him. Uyn then flicked on the giant clock machine that Croissant had just finished creating. As it springs to life, the many clock faces on it begin moving, tracking time across Sornieth in all its elemental areas. It seems like all is well with the timelines at the moment.

The Sandsurge springs up at this, rushing over to the contraption that he made with love and care. He briefly forgot about the last thing that he was worried about and threw the previous conversation topic to the wind. In all his excitement, sparks buzzed off of his body. “It worked! It worked! Oh, thank the Stormcatcher! Now this’ll make everything about our jobs so much more simpler!” While Croissant looked ecstatic that his gadget worked, Uyn looked on with cold indifference. One of the gauges on the machine wasn’t moving.

If she looked at it long enough, she could tell that it was twitching slightly, but other than that, there was no other movement from it. Even the dragons that were the most confused about how time worked and how there were different timelines could most likely grasp that this was a time loop; a rift in the very fabric of the space-time continuum itself. This was where she had come from. Even Croissant, in his gleeful state, saw this gauge and knew what it meant. The pocket of time still existed somewhere out there. It was unlikely to ever close since it neither began nor ended.

“Hey, Uyn… I… I had no idea that it was going to track… well… that…”

“...It’s… fine, really.”

“No, it’s not. I can tell that it’s bothering you. It’s not like we can fix it, though…”

“I said it’s fine. Please, just don’t bring it up anymore.”

While Croissant wished to say more, he realized that maybe it would be better to keep his mouth shut in a situation like this. He wouldn’t want to overstep some invisible boundary, after all.

Some dragons are born with their element.

Others are consumed by it.

Most dragons can control the power that they were imbued with.

In Apollo’s case, it’s the inverse that’s true.

Lungs heaving for oxygen, a significantly weakened pulse, occasional violent coughing and hacking that wracks their frame… It’s all become normal for them. The worst part is that they weren’t entirely too sure on how their disease overtook them, since it waited until their adulthood. It wasn’t like it was uncommon for dragons born in the Plague flight to die off from pestilence?in fact, the denizens of the plague lands have an unspoken motto: the weak die and make way for others. In their society, it’s kill or be killed, and that is just the harsh truth of their reality.

Oftentimes, if a certain strain of plague doesn’t kill off a dragon as a hatchling, it makes itself known in the dragon’s young adult years. Apollo was the unfortunate victim of such a scenario, their body riddled with disease following the extended incubation period that lasted for their entire childhood. Now, they lay in a secluded area, close to a dragonmade complex, but not close enough to call out for help. Apollo’s voice is much too hoarse to allow for that, leaving them to slowly die on the subtly writhing ground beneath them. The previously harmless veins and tendrils lying on the earth slowly begin to move and thrash, so finely tuned to the environment around them that they are able to pick up on the presence of a dying animal. Everything in the Plaguebringer’s domain was opportunistic, which meant that not even the meager flora and fauna that thrived in the pits of boiling sickness were docile and safe to be handled.

The Spiral managed to slither along the ground slowly, employing the use of the weak muscles in their arms and legs in order to drag themselves along. They had to keep moving in order to not be consumed by the very soil beneath their claws. Apollo’s destination was the facility in the distance, where they hoped to find some help for their condition. However, if they could not find any relief, then they would at least hope for a quick and relatively painless end. There was no reason to suffer needlessly for the flight that they never even wished to be hatched in.

Their body’s appearance had been vastly altered by their ailment, with them now looking much more insectoid than they should have been. New appendages had sprouted and spanned across their wings, as well as around their mouth, the four spontaneous growths acting as newfound jaws for Apollo. Their scales were covered in patches of an abnormal sort of hide, its glossy sheen reminiscent of a centipede. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they had caught a bug, albeit in the literal sense.

They slid across the festering earth until they were close enough to the strange facility, and from there they could only hope that they could be seen suffering outside, as they could not use their voice well. Although they tried, the only thing that ever left their mouth was a hoarse wheeze. Thankfully, there were other dragons nearby: another Spiral, and a Guardian. The pair approached the fallen dragon, and gave them a quick one-over.

Apollo noticed that the Guardian was viewing them with a look of contempt written on her face, the edges of her mouth downturned in a scowl. She stood over them, the other Spiral trailing behind her, and then she promptly sank her teeth into Apollo’s flank to begin pulling them inside the facility. All they could muster up was a weak cry as a sharp pain shot through their leg, starting from where her fangs embedded themselves into their haunch.

As they looked around, they realized how… unkempt everything looked compared to the exterior. Some of the walls were lined with papers connected by red string, having been nailed there haphazardly. It was also quite dark compared to the outside. Overall, this looked like less of a facility, and more of a base of operations, so to speak. Whatever had once happened in this building had long since been abandoned for the property to allow it to serve other needs. Funnily enough, the building wasn’t too run-down or in a terrible condition, and from the looks of it, it seemed to be the remnants of a clan’s meeting hall.

Apollo was unceremoniously dropped onto the floor in a dimly lit room, then held down by the Guardian that had brought them here in the first place. It was during moments like this that Apollo was grateful for their natural night vision, since they could still see every tiny, excruciating detail of the walls around them. It was becoming a little too much for them to handle. Even the fact that there was yet another Spiral sketching away on a chalkboard in front of them didn’t seem to ease their mind much. It felt like the room was closing in on them, and yet they couldn’t bring themselves to even move an inch. So much as struggling would be a helpless endeavor.

“Carnage,” the Guardian spoke, her voice a deep, rich rumble as she addressed the Spiral busily drawing out what looked to be some sort of plan, “We’ve found a viable test subject; a straggler from a neighboring clan, I presume. They look like they’re near death already. Pitiful, really.” She jabs a claw into the side of Apollo’s neck, just enough to draw a thin sliver of blood. This time, they made no sounds of protest, simply shutting their eyes and coughing a bit.

“A test subject?” Carnage questioned, turning his head and briefly looking over Apollo’s form. “Hm…” he hummed, stepping a bit closer to the other dragon. “A test subject… or a corpse? I can barely tell if they’re breathing or not…” he murmured, tapping their snout lightly as if trying to wake them up. “Well, there’s no harm in trying something out. Jezebel, remove your foot, would you?”

Apollo could hear a faint grumble as the weight on the back of their neck disappeared. Almost immediately afterwards, they felt a small ***** in the same area, causing them to wince. When they finally decided to open their eyes, they saw that Carnage had poked them with a needle. It contained a strange, murky green substance inside of it. Within a few minutes of the liquid entering their bloodstream, Apollo felt relief from their ailment. Their lungs no longer felt weird, so they could breathe normally, and their heartbeat started to pick up a bit. Although they still felt considerably weak, they made an attempt to support their own weight. Despite the mystery mixture working, they still retained their somewhat insectoid appearance.

“So it works…” Carnage murmured to himself, his red eyes scanning Apollo as they managed to walk around the small room and towards the chalkboard. From the looks of it, they were looking at the plans there. They turned their head, and gestured to the diagrams written on the board, tilting their head slightly to indicate that they were asking a question about it. Their voice still wasn’t up to par, and besides, they preferred to be mute anyways.

“Oh, are you asking about this? Those are just my plans to invade a prison about…” Carnage has to think about it for a minute, juggling the answer around in his mind.

“It’s not far,” Jezebel interjects during the Spiral’s silence. She then turns her attention to the other Spiral near her. “Wren, have you gathered any information on the location yet?”

Wren was startled from her daydream, having spaced out while the others were talking amongst themselves. “Well, besides from it being heavily guarded and full of prisoners that we could use later… I’ve got nothing. It’s difficult to go on surveillance missions with places like that…”

Carnage cleared his throat. “As I was saying… Those are my plans to take over the prison and transform it into something that will better suit the Plague flight’s needs. In other words… biological warfare.” He then grinned, flashing his sharp teeth. They glinted in the flickering candlelight.

Apollo looked a bit taken aback by this response, but nodded and had no further questions.

“Now… you might be wondering why I have taken it under my authority to enhance what element our very flight is based on. It’s simple; the Plaguebringer needs more faithful followers, and I need to honor my father’s work. Both of which involve contributing to the wonderful environment you see around us.” As he speaks, he makes a wide, sweeping gesture towards a small window, where a plague bat had just gotten snapped up by a large carnivorous plant outside. Apollo grimaces at the sight.

Carnage, noticing this, takes Apollo’s chin in his talon, bringing both of their faces closer together and staring into their eyes. “Oh, don’t you worry. You have a place in my plan now, you know?even more so now that my cure has worked on you, if only temporarily. You’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it,” he murmurs, nuzzling his snout against Apollo’s as not only just a way to emphasize his words, but also in a display of affection.

The cheerful clinking of glasses filled the main portion of the lair, their contents filled to the brim with the crushed fruits of the forest turned into delicious juice. Among this gathering were the guards of the clan, celebrating after successfully defending their territory from a couple of troublesome monsters. A few relatives or even mates of the guards were there as well. At the center of it all, an Obelisk with gold plated armor was seemingly the life of the party, as well as the one providing all of the drinks. Chai was putting his hefty paycheck of treasure to good use, buying everyone some juice and saying that it was on the house.

“No need to thank me!” he laughed, on his third goblet of juice already. He raised it for a toast, and his fellow guardsmen followed suit. “To our victory!” Loud cheers erupted from the crowd following his statements. While everyone was busy partying, no one noticed the Guardian slinking across the lair, hoping to avoid everyone else if possible.

Well… almost no one noticed her.

“Hey Arachne!” Chai called out, his voice quickly becoming mocking even in the midst of others. Although, his friends were probably in on this as well, so they wouldn’t say anything to him about his behavior. “Still avoidant towards others? What a joke…” He placed his goblet down, then approached her, but maintained a small distance between them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the clan leader’s daughter? Why not act like it for once, yeah? Live up to your bloodline…” he snickered at her.

She only responded by huffing and making her best attempt to ignore him. He simply wasn’t worth her time of day. However, Chai was persistent in garnering her attention, as most bullies are. His armor clanked lightly as he kept walking near her. “Don’t you have a legacy to live up to? Or are you just going to throw it all away to hang out with that ‘Faunus’ guy? What’s so special about him, anyways?”

“Will you shut up? Can’t you tell that I’m not interested in speaking to you?” Arachne spun around in her place and snapped at him, having had enough of his teasing and spiteful jabs. Her own set of armor made a sound as she moved, although it wasn’t a brilliant gold like Chai’s. The mere thought alone made him smug about it.

“Listen, I’m just asking why you honestly wanna waste your time with that guy. I mean, have you seen him? He’s a nerd. Nothing but a boring nerd who’s overly obsessed with plants and all that. Flora and fauna don’t need documentation, some other dragons from other clans have already done that.”

“You don’t get to speak about him like that!” Arachne snapped back, baring her teeth. She’d had a bad day, and Chai certainly wasn’t helping. “He’s a wonderful dragon! I can’t help it that you don’t have actual friends!”

Chai only smirked. “Of course I have friends. More than you. Take a look at everyone behind me,” he says with a flick of his tail, showcasing how many guards were there. “Do you seriously think your one friend could compare to the multiple dragons that are my friends? Come on, be serious, Arachne.”

Arachne glared back at him. “You’re lucky that Ransom is tolerant of you.”

“What are you gonna do? Run back home and cry to him? Is that it?” Chai chuckled. “Maybe it’d do you some good to stuff your tail in between your legs and scamper off. It’d leave you out of my sight for a little while, haha.”

Arachne only continues to glare at him as she lets out a growl and turns her back, effectively ignoring him and his rude words. Chai calls out to her as she’s leaving. “And don’t bother coming back! We’re running out of juice, and besides, your drinks weren’t on the house anyways!” Afterwards, he turns back to his group of dragons and slips back into the conversation like nothing had happened. If anything, his verbal beratement of Arachne only served to make him more popular in the others’ eyes.

Pesuto, his mate, nudged him with his shoulder. “What are we going to do after this? Go home and rest, maybe?” He took a bite of the roasted chicken that Chai himself had set ablaze with his breath and cooked for him as he spoke. “I see no reason to stay any longer than we have to after the festivities are over. Even now, it seems like a waste of time…”

“Oh, Pesuto, lighten up!” Chai said, patting the Pearlcatcher sitting at his side on the back. “The party will be over in a few minutes or so, I promise. I did start this special gathering, after all. Give it some time, alright?”

Pesuto grumbled and tore into his food a bit more. “Mhm, whatever you say…” he mumbled between bites, his voice muffled by the meat in his mouth. “There’s still too many people here.” Once it became apparent that Chai was directing his attention elsewhere, Pesuto poked his side with his horns. “Listen to me,” he hissed, before shaking his head slightly.

Chai, having been a bit startled by his mate’s behavior, signaled for everyone to settle down with a brief raise of one of his wings. “Hey,” he murmurs quietly, taking Pesuto’s face in his paw, letting his mate’s chin rest on it as he moves his head up slightly so they’d be looking at each other. “Do you honestly want to go home now? We can, you know. It’s not too far away from here. I won’t be bothered if you want to end this and leave early.”

After a moment of silence, Pesuto simply nods once with a small hum, “Mm.” It seems like he didn’t feel like talking much after he’d been doing so for a while. The jovial gathering had taken its social toll on him, and he wanted nothing more than to go home with his beloved Obelisk just so they could sleep. After all, they did need to rest up and recharge for their job in the morning, since they’d need to ensure the safety of their clan.

“Alright, alright, I get it. We’ll go home.” Chai releases Pesuto’s chin and then gets up, preparing to leave. He gives an acknowledging head nod to the other dragons as he moves to depart. “Don’t miss me, guys! I’ll still be here tomorrow!” Pesuto follows behind him without so much as a peep. Not a single word leaves his mouth as he heads out with Chai.

The pair head home and settle down, hoping to relax. Chai takes off his heavy golden armor, and Pesuto takes off most of his own armor, only leaving the menacing skull he usually wears on. However, Chai is quick to try and convince him to take it off.

“Come on, just rest. You don’t need that one,” he murmurs, gently trying to lift the skull from the Pearlcatcher’s head, with him swatting him away every time.

“No,” he states simply, before turning away from Chai and burying himself deeper into their moss bedding. Pesuto has made it obvious that he’s sleepy, or well… tired. Exhausted might even seem more apt of a description…

Chai, while reasonably upset, drops the subject, and ultimately decides that it’s his mate’s choice if he wishes to remove the skull he’s usually seen wearing before bedtime. He stretches a bit, arching backwards while extending his wings fully. In fact, this manner of stretching has been shown by some cats that visit the clan, although no one has thought to mention it to Chai in order to see his reaction to it. He might be a little shocked by the comment alone.

Nonetheless, he finishes up his nightly stretches before clambering into bed beside his mate, curling up near him and closing his eyes.