Melting Heart: Becoming a Dragon

The pair arrived at the city of Cleninlod by noon the following day. The heat was even more intense than the days prior. Safraxi could hardly stand to keep her helmet on, but knew ultimately that hiding her coldmark was the better play in The Mercani Empire.

The dragon had spent the sunrise staring longingly to the northwest, where she knew Idami might be transforming at any moment. And she would be missing it. What kind of friend was she to miss something so important? Idami was the one person on that whole island that seemed to get her, and she went and blew everything before the most important day of Idami’s life. She wouldn’t even get to know what she would look like as a dragon.

Tifse couldn’t help but take note at Safraxi’s misery. Was this how the dragon had felt the last two weeks while she couldn’t stop thinking about Audirei? It was oppressive. Safraxi was doing so much to help her talk to her friend and crush. If only there was something she could do to pay her back.

It felt odd now of all times, with everything that’s happened, and how much pain the dragon was in, to just keep on the route to intercept Audirei. Despite the oddity of it, she didn’t know what else to do with herself either. Go home? She was a rider now, maybe that would earn some respect back from her father and sisters. But… For now it was best to just put one foot in front of the other and find what little happiness each of them may have left in their lives.

Cleninlod was the very center of The Empire, its capital. The two of them could see the dome and columns of the senate from the hills as they approached. The streets were even denser than Fellrock. Much of the land around it was either rocky, hilly, or swampy, which made options to build on far more limited.

Safraxi had thought people in Fellrock flaunted their wealth, but Mercani aristocrats were on another level. All but the slaves on the streets wore fineries of silk, died with purple, woven with golden thread, and wore so many rings and necklaces that it made her salivate looking at them.

She kept being distracted by twinges of pain in Tifse’s elbow, where the axe had dug in the day prior. She had gotten it bandaged up, but it would need proper care. Tifse refused to say anything about it out of pride, but the pain was getting worse.

“Hey,” She pulled her aside into an alley to speak in private. “We need to get you to a temple. A city this size probably has a rider, or at least a priest trained in magic.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t take you near that! They’ll recognize you as a dragon immediately! Especially if there’s another dragon!” She shook her arm out of Safraxi’s light grip. “My arm isn’t that bad, it’s-”

Safraxi gently squeezed the joint and Tifse gasped before whipping her arm out of range of the dragon. “I can feel that too, Tifse. You can’t hide it from me. You need to get it looked at.”

The fox glanced behind Safraxi at her tail. It was back to being a large fluffy fox tail. Okay, so when she was a fox she was nice, but as a dragon or a rat she wasn’t? It still didn't quite make sense to her. “And how are we going to avoid you being spotted?”

“I won’t go with you.” She shrugged. “I’ll go get supplies for us in the meantime. We need a tent, a sleeping bag, and food. I can find that by myself, and we will still be able to talk through the link the whole time. Its range will be longer than normal.”

That was true… rider bonds were supposed to still work up to a few hundred miles away from one another. “Fine, but… keep level headed. Don’t start trouble. It’ll be harder to run away from trouble in a city like this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Safraxi patted her rider’s head. “Let the expert do what she does best if it comes to that. I’ll meet up with you in an hour or two, okay?”

“Fine, meet up in an hour or two.” Tifse batted the hand away, but it wasn’t with the same vigor as usual. Maybe she was starting to like it?

Tifse arrived at the temple before Safraxi could even get started on her shopping. The city was massive, and navigating it was a nightmare. Luckily the Mercani’s ziggurat wasn’t as tall as Tiamat’s back in Fellrock. By the time she arrived at the top, however, she was exhausted and out of breath.

There was another dragon here, a white and yellow banded male a little larger than Rubis was, and a rooster rider in fanciful gilded rider plate. “Shit, I didn’t bring an offering. Safraxi, can I use some of your coins?’

“Of course!” Came the distant reply. “I think about ten copper should do it? I’ve never actually made an offering for something like that before. I think they normally only see people who are in rough shape, to save time.”

“And you think this is bad enough?” Tifse growled across the link as she approached. There was already a line waiting to get up to the rider and dragon. There were a few that looked much worse than her, but maybe if not too many people were here today the rider would see her?

The dragon’s head shot up as she joined the line and locked eyes on her. It had looked bored and disinterested before, but she was clearly worth its attention. “My scent! He can smell you on me, I bet!”

“Just tell them the truth, that you were at the academy until recently.” Safraxi also sounded somewhat panicked. “You were around a bunch of dragons at the selection, some of their scent might have rubbed off on you there. It’s just taken you this long to make it to Cleninlod.”

The rider seemed to have taken notice of her as well now, and was excusing himself from the line to come up to her. The other people in line didn’t seem all too happy about it, but knew better than to complain. “You there,” The rooster directed at her. “You’re Tifse Bontifur?”

“It’s bad! It’s bad! They know who I am! Fuck!” She put on a colossal, stupid, fake smile. “Yes, that’s me. Why?”

“Your dragon’s mother came through just a few hours ago asking about you two. Said to look for a young blue dragon with a desert fox.” He didn’t seem suspicious, just as if he was trying to get a message across to a fellow rider. “Is everything okay? She sounded worried.”

“Uh- yeah. We just got separated. I’m pretty new, you know how it goes.” She winced at the yellow dragon’s eyes settling on her. “They uh- didn’t say where to meet up, did they?”

“No…” He rubbed a clawed hand on the chin of his beak and chuckled. “Oversight on their part I guess. If you want you can stay here and see if they come back.”

Tifse’s chest felt like it was going to explode from her own anxiety and Safraxi’s pouring over into her. She barely choked the next words out. “No, no. I just need to get an injury fixed up and we’ll make it back to Fellrock ourselves. If they come by, tell them we’ve gone home.” She held out the injured arm to the fellow rider.

“Are… you okay? You look nervous.” He began to slowly remove the bandages from the wound and grimaced at the sight. It had gotten massive and swollen through the night since Safraxi last changed the bandages. Some of the flesh even had a hideous yellow tint to clash with the rest of the swollen reds, and pus leaking out.

“Just- in pain.” She let out a nervous chuckle. “This was my first outing as a rider, so this is a little embarrassing to have to come to you about. You know how it is?” She didn’t mean for the last sentence to come out as a question.

“Of course. I doubt Amjazel and Emren have gone that far anyway. Hopefully they’ll swing back through and you can fly back together. It sounded like your dragon’s just a hatchling by the way they talked about her.” He began the process of casting the healing spell. He wasn’t as adept as Emren or Tiamat was, the spot was still a little swollen and sore afterwards, but nothing compared to before.

“Th-thanks, how much do I owe-”

Safraxi’s concentration on her rider’s concentration was broken at the sound of wing beats over the city. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.

“Amjazel is here she’s here I can hear her.” The shapeshifted dragon ran for cover into a seedy back alley. Her heart was beating even louder than the dragon’s wings as she gripped a wall beneath a small ledge. The sound of sniffing was now barely audible over the sound of the wings. “She can smell me!”

The dragon seemed to now be circling her. Safraxi struggled to her feet and took a few tentative steps, but her legs were barely working. Hiding wasn’t working, cover wouldn’t work if a dragon had her scent. She needed to find some way to lose them. What had Aquixi and Rubis told them? Did they think she was some rabid animal? What would they do to her after she’d hurt Rubis? Would they drag her back to Fellrock and try to make her a part of the family again when she wasn’t meant for it?

The wingbeats reached a crescendo of multiple hard quick beats, she must be slowing down for a landing. Now was her chance, if she could make distance while Emren was dismounting then maybe she could get away!

She put one foot in front of the other until she was walking steadily, and finally sprinting. She’d forgotten completely about the heat and weight of the armor in the frenzy. She was weaving between people in the alleys, looking for anywhere she might be able to hide, maybe if she could wash off she could-

Amjazel, in her tiger form and clad in her own full set of armor, had stepped out from around the corner and clothes-lined her across the upper chest. She went spinning backwards and slammed down, neck first. It didn’t hurt as it should for any fox, she still had a dragon’s durability, but it was enough to stun and disorient her.

Amjazel reached down, and with one hand hauled Safraxi up off of the cobblestones and slammed her into a wall before bearing her teeth and roaring: “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT ARMOR? WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY DAUGHTER?” into her face. She had never seen the ancient dragon so furious. She knew from a few stories here and there that she could be dangerous, but facing the wrath of an angry dragon mother from this perspective was entirely new, and terrifying, for her.

She could feel Tifse sprinting to cover ground and reach her, but even she knew that it would be useless even if she did reach them in time. The best Safraxi could do was sputter out an uneven few words, “I didn’t- I- I- I’m sorry- didn’t- didn’t-” The wind had been knocked out of her so thoroughly she was gasping as she tried to get the words out, and her faculties were too scrambled to communicate with her mind. She was too scared to speak or think straight.

“This armor doesn’t belong to you.” She ripped the helmet off of Safraxi’s head, exposing the terrified face beneath. “Where did you get it?” She leaned in and growled. Even as a tiger her growls held the volume and rumble of a dragon of her size. Safraxi could feel it in her bones.

Emren finally appeared from the opposite direction. She immediately got between the two of them and pushed Amjazel back, Safraxi crumpled to the ground before the two of them and curled up into a ball as much as she could, trembling and whimpering as the two began t argue. “AMJAZEL! We can’t just assault random people in another country because of a scent!”

“She has Arxet’s armor!” Amjazel roared and tried to get around her wife. “Where else would she get it but-”

“Calm down, Am.” The lynx pulled the tigress down to her level by her ear and kissed her on the forehead. “Getting angry isn’t helping. You’re going to cause an incident like this. We have to at least get the story first. Do I need to do the talking?”

Amjazel seemed taken aback at her wife’s words, but eventually nodded, a look of shame crossing her face. She stepped back from the pair and lowered her head slightly and muttered a “Sorry” to the crumpled up fox at Emren’s feet.

“They don’t know it’s me.” She conveys to her rider, bewildered. “They just followed the scent, but don’t recognize me.”

“They must think your scent is coming from the armor. Lie! I’m going to hang back unless you really need me.” The fox had only just managed to reach the bottom of the ziggurat’s stairs and was already wiped out.

Emren had knelt down by her daughter, completely unaware of who she was looking at, and placed the helmet back at the frazzled fox’s side. “Can you tell me where you got this armor, friend?”

Friend? Emren hadn’t called her that since… was it when she was still a rat? It felt odd to be addressed that way after so long. She took advantage of her obvious confusion and the blow to the head she’d taken moments before to take her time thinking of a lie. “I- I- another fox gave it to me. A desert fox. She was with a dragon.”

“Where?” Amjazel was back in her face now, a look of determination and concern on her face. “Where did you see them?”

“I-in the city, yesterday.” Safraxi crawled back some from the both. “They said it would help hide my cold mark. They- they-”

“That does maybe sound like Arxet.” Emren slowly stood back up from her crouch and tried to give Safraxi space by ushering her wife back. “Did they say where they were going? Are they still in the city?”

She had to fight back the urge to flinch at the name. It didn’t feel right, that wasn’t her anymore, even if she’d only cast the name aside two days before. “I- I don’t know. I think they said something about going north, but told me to say south if anyone asked about them. It seemed like they were running from something.” Oh it was nice to be able to lie with her face again. She was much better at lying the old fashioned way than with her mind. Say two lies, but make one sound like a confession, and they might just believe you. Especially if you look ready to die of fright.

“Thank you, now if we could just get that armor-” Amjazel reached for the helmet in her lap before Emren slapped it away.

“We can’t just take it from her. It was a gift.” Emren grit her teeth and got between the two dragons again, unknowingly.

“That’s your old armor,” Amjazel scowled. “We can’t just let anyone-”

“We agreed that anything we gave Arxet was hers, and that she could do with it what she wished.” Emren shook her head. “We can’t go back on that. How would it look if we got her to come back and the armor she gifted someone was waiting for her?”

“It… would look bad.” Amjazel sighed and squeezed her wife against her chest. “I’m sorry, I’m not… I’m not myself right now.”

Safraxi wasn’t sure whether that apology was for her or Emren. She just slowly attempted to rise back to her feet. “C-can I go?”

“Yes, friend. We’re so sorry about that. Here.” Emren dug into her purse and handed the scared looking ‘fox’ a bit of dried meat and twelve silver coins. “Sorry again. Thank you for speaking with us, friend. I hope you can find someplace safer to live.”

“I- uh- thank you. It’s no problem.” She pocketed the cash and food and started slowly backing up. When it was clear that the dragon and rider had no intention of following her she broke into a sprint.

“If you see her, tell her to come home! Please!” Amjazel called after her as she fled the scene. She didn’t slow down to respond.

“Tifse we are getting out of here tonight or we are going to die trying!” She angled to meet up with the fox again.

“What? What the hell just happened over there?” The rider was now moving again, sprinting out of the city’s smaller religious district to meet up.

“I’m not entirely sure how, but they didn’t recognize me!”