From her perch, the great shining wyrm loomed high over her opponent. With her scales like a fine mesh of metal shields, her teeth like the sharpest swords, her wings poised to unleash the fiercest winds, her tail looped tight ready to crack like a thunderbolt and her breath an incandescent, all consuming death glowing with-
"Jewel! Not indoors!"
Jewel cut her flame with a choking gasp and buzzy hiccup at the chastisement from the sudden appearance of Her Governess. The aborted breath (which would only have been a spark of light!) rattled her scales slightly with the swallowed magic, wings flaring wide in shame.
"Ah! S-sorry, Muriel! It was only going to be a bit of shine, nothing dangerous! I swear!"
The brave knight, Once fearless against the dragon, cowered before Governess Muriel's presence and immediately pointed at Jewel with the gleam of forced tears rushing to his eyes and a quaver in his voice.
Jewel would forgive the betrayal of course — he was her brother after all.
Also he was eleven.
"She was the one that wasn't paying attention! She was playing with the books and making a fort and-"
Muriel softly coughed from her position in the doorway of the study. Her cough brought silence to both of her ward's protests.
"Alexander, that helmet is an antique! It was stored on the top shelf! I was away for five minutes. Just how did you even get it down?"
Jewel shrank and curled up on herself even more. Wings clenching up against her bundle of coils, eyes looking down at the stone floor.
She still had the presence of a large pony or a small war horse, but besides bowing or groveling with her chin on the floor it was the smallest she could make herself.
"Uh, I got it down from the display for him. There was a mention of it in the book and he was curious about what the knights wore in the Tyrant War. But Alex is right! It wasn't his fault. It was all my idea. It's just we'd been reading about the war and-"
Alexander's tears were mostly forgotten at her stated guilt; he quickly rallied with his sister.
"See?! She admits it! It was her idea!"
Muriel however was unconvinced, squeezing the bridge of her nose for a moment then shook her head.
"I thought better of you both. But apparently you two have too much energy for history today. Pack up your work; We're going down to the courtyard so you can run off some of this energy."
"But It was her fault!"
Jewel nodded at Alexander's claim, Glancing furtively at her governess, trying to catch Muriel's eye and convey her agreement with her brother.
"Alexander, you were obviously not forced to play with Jewel. You will be giving me at least three circuits of the courtyard at a charging pace"
"But that's not fair! she-"
"And Jewel will be flying ten circuits of the manor with two lodestones."
The wyrmling could not help a flinch, but quickly resumed her resolved gaze on the ground, and tried to give a dutiful nod of acceptance.
She started to pack up their quills, inkwells and blotting paper. Sliding around the room with soft shoves against the floor to keep her sailing gracefully.
The tools and materials were quickly wrapped, packed, and put away in the drawers of her father's study.
Alexander continued to try and wheedle his way out of the 'punishment'. But the sibling's Governess might as well be an indomitable mountain for how well either child could sway her. Jewel had learned to stop trying when she was six.
"No, Alexander. if you keep at this, It will be ten circuits."
Jewel did not interfere, focusing on using only her claws instead of her mouth to handle the latches. There were battles you did not fight and Muriel's orders were one of them.
"But-"
Her older brother protested anyway.
"Four circuits."
Jewel snuck a glance, but no Muriel was still watching, she had to keep to her claws.
"B-"
The slightly raised brow was more than enough to dissuade even peeling back her lips for a gentle bite to pull the drawer open.
"Five."
That was too much for Alexander and he finally accepted with a muttered breath.
"Fine, I'm sorry."
It was always so fiddly to grasp with any four of her claws. But that was the 'proper' way to do it.
"Sorry what, Alexander?"
With a soft breath Jewel gently pushed the last cupboard closed.
"I'm sorry Ms. Muriel, four circuits is perfectly reasonable."
Jewel shook her head; Muriel really wasn't being fair to her brother. She agreed with Alexander that he was not to blame: it had been her idea, and she'd wheedled him into it by talking about the battles against the great tyrant. She'd encouraged him when he suggested getting the helmet from the old armor on display to try out a re-enactment.
It was her fault, not his.
But she knew that Muriel could not be swayed.
Still, she did give Jewel a bit of a look. But this was one thing the wyrmling felt deserved her own meaningful glance back. Unspoken but heard, she nodded to her Governess.
Why yes she had cleaned up Alexander's stationary as well as her own, Governess.
If they were alone perhaps Muriel might have said something but instead she turned her focus to herd Alexander into the hallways.
Jewel of course followed dutifully.
Their lessons had begun to delve into the historical importance of Fort Rochford. During the Tyrant War it had been a bastion and redoubt against the Conquering Wyrm and his armies.
A staging ground, too, for incursions and offensives deeper into the territory of the Tyrant.
But that had been many centuries ago and these days it was more of an overbuilt manor house for the Rochford Barony.
They remained rich; the sheep herds were said to have some of the finest hides for vellum this side of the Ridgetail Mountains.
But the histories were making Jewel appreciate just how underused her home was from what it could be.
Their battlements had been turned to gardens. The numerous rooms and twisted passage ways were rarely walked by anyone.
Entire wings closed off for half a year or more.
And then there were the hints of what it was once for.
The narrow windows.
The winding passageways that could have been straight.
So many things you just did not even think about. Honestly, Jewel had been enjoying the history lessons (except the writing, her limbs were poorly positioned for easy writing.)
But as the younger sister it was her duty to help her brother, and he had been getting incredibly bored and just seemed not very interested in the histories at all.
So she'd made a simple suggestion to help engage him.
It was totally Jewel's fault it got so rambunctious.
The openness of the courtyard contrasted with the narrow halls and heavy thick stone walls of the indoors. A wide space partly overgrown where armies and cavalry would have mustered both winged and ground troops.
Now the marshaling grounds at attention were abandoned. Almost lonely with just Samuel the groundskeeper and his two dogs, tilled for vegetables with a few hunks of wood for weapons practice by the footmen and visiting knights.
The noonday sun was warm and enthusiastic as it greeted her scales and fresh air contrasted with the stern eyes of Muriel as she ordered her 'squire' Smithson (she knew for a fact he was still the stablemaster's apprentice) to fetch her training gear.
Jewel settled into a proper and regal pose. As Alexander was ordered to start his laps, his sister waited for her equipment.
Eventually Smithson and three stablehands Jewel recognized but never quite recalled the names of arrived, hefting her weight harness and setting it aside the pile of Lodestones.
It was a finely crafted thing commissioned by her father to help her 'train her strength', fitted to be as comfortable as could be managed given the purpose.
Muriel rallied Alexander back to pace with a curt shout: he was now puffing around the courtyard at speed fit for breaking a defensive line with a spear.
Now it was her turn.
She shouldered herself into the leather loops of the harness, then bent her head down in a swoop to fit it through the straps. She wished she could fasten the buckles with her teeth. But with Muriel watching she had to fiddle with her foreclaws. Then the same for the buckle around her 'midsection', using her hind limbs this time.
Jewel had seen cats twist around themselves in grooming, but was not terribly impressed with their flexibility.
On good days, she agreed with her mother that she could poise and twist like the finest serpent. Right now she felt more like a worm (not a wyrm) or a particularly gawky ermine.
Smithson managed a few of the more fiddly buckles and clasps, and helped her tighten and adjust them. She honestly could have done it all herself, but only if she was allowed to use her teeth. Her neck was long and supple enough and her jaw was incredibly deft and flexible.
But 'biting at yourself like a mangy dog' was unbecoming for her stature and title as a Lady of Rochford.
So Smithson had a job to do on little notice as her 'Squire', when she knew for a fact his real master still had work for him to do with the horses and the family's one Gryphon.
She would have to make it up to him later, maybe see if he needed any help with the larger horses. Muriel was making such a hassle for everyone except Jewel!
Finally she was settled and her harness secured, and Smithson could get back to doing something actually productive.
With a nod from her Governess, Jewel walked over to the pile of lodestones and slipped one into a pocket over each shoulder and thigh. The weight pulled down on her body, but not unevenly. It was honestly rather light as far as a punishment goes, a completely unfair token compared to how hard Alex was having to work to run around his circuits of the training grounds. Or the interruption to Smithson's heavy workload.
What did Muriel have against both of them?
Taking a deep breath in and letting out a sigh kept distinctly clear and soft, Jewel put it out of her mind and 'exhaled' her wyrmflame. Not out of her mouth, where it could burn, of course; but inward and out along her wings and body, pulling her flesh and wings up against gravity. And then with a heavy flap of her wings she was airborne, dragging the quartet of lodestones along with her as she moved over to the archery posts before starting her own circuit.
Unburdened flight was freedom in itself, so effortless that Jewel had struggled not to simply float and glide through the air since she was three! Which had promptly been followed by a ban from going any higher than a hand span while indoors.
Without the lodestones this would have not even been a punishment at all but a wonderful diversion!
The sky welcomed her and the sun's golden glow filled her with its warmth and gently stoked the heat of her flame with its own.
Jewel soared up and felt the currents of the world with her. Pulling her with the wind, or the wind with her. Filling her wings with the feeling of the storm and letting her draw on it and her own wyrmflame to sweep around the manor.
She carefully kept herself in sight of Muriel. And it was impressive how often her Governess was looking right back at Jewel as she flew. She had been told that humans could barely see anything about her at this distance.
But she was not sure she believed it: as she flew, Muriel's stern but approving continence always matched her gaze whenever she peeked over.
The walk to the bathing room after 'exercise' always made Jewel uncomfortable. Alexander had a tangy animal scent and Muriel shed a soft oiled wood ambience in her sweat whenever it was particularly hot or she'd been working Alex over in sword practice.
But after a heavy stint at flight Jewel always reeked of rain on dry soil and the sharp sting of lightning. The same smell that clung to whatever unfortunate targets were being used for her 'practice' in the archery field.
As such Jewel felt like she stank like how they say a scorched bog down in the terrible southlands did.
It did not help that she was always too worn out to do anything but walk afterwards either.
Jewel hated walking. Actual walking, that is, instead of the mock-stride she usually affected when her flame was not a guttering, overworked thing.
Not because it was difficult. But because there was almost no way for her to actually do it without looking like an 'ermine with a distressed chicken tied to its back' as she heard one of the stablehands that worked with Smithson say.
She never told Smithson, of course, not after she got a stablehand in trouble with him when she was five.
Because for one, she didn't like knowing they were punished, but more importantly, it really was true.
Without the breath of her wyrmflame to hold them aloft, her wings were really imbalancing and wanted to droop down and act as a third pair of awkwardly splayed legs. Her other limbs by contrast were absurdly short for her body length, and on a charitable day the best she could describe her gait was to repeat to herself she had "the curving grace of a serpent".
Today Jewel could not muster up niceties for herself. She stank like a soggy forest in a thunderstorm and her flame was too sparse to lift even her wings!
So she was wobbling and waggling from side to side with her wing-knuckles dragging against the stone and hunched up in the middle to keep her fore and hind legs closer together. Her tail twisting and lashing around behind her in short little snaps instead of languid loops.
She was also failing to keep a slight buzzy whine out of her voice as she galumphed towards her bath.
The sooner she got into the big wooden tub the better. With the hot water and the cleansing soap and masking lavender oils and wire scrubbing brush and her favorite copper pail.
Really as soon as possible would be best!
"Jorge!"
The bath man nodded a bit to her as she turned a corner in the hallway toward the bathing room (it used to be one of the Armories!).
"Yes, Lady Jewel? It was a vigorous day in the courtyard today?"
"Yes, Jorge. Please tell me the water is ready and hot? yes?!"
"Started bringing up the boil soon as I heard you were leaving for the yard, Lady Jewel"
"Superb! I'll be as long as I'm able! Can you hold back any inquiries until it's time for supper?"
"I hear from the cook we may be having guests this evening, Lady Jewel"
"What?! No one told me!"
"Perhaps it was to be a surprise?"
"I guess? Um, do you think I can get by without a scale polish today?"
Jewel momentarily un-hunched herself, sparing a huff of flame through her wings to raise herself up to a more regal posture as befitted her family's standing. Showing as much of her flanks as she could to the bathman.
Jorge gave a quick evaluation of her nearly brass scales before shaking his head confidently "You're plenty shined already, Lady Jewel, just make sure to scrub the mud and dust off good and tend your mane and you should be fine."
"Splendid, now please let me through, and make sure the door is watched? I don't want to be disturbed while I'm indecent!"
Jorge nodded firmly before opening the door which she slipped through with something almost resembling the grace her mother always attributed to her.
The air in the bathing room was heavy with moisture and heat. Steam billowed throughout it. And there before her was one of her favorite pieces of furniture.
Her bed was a bit too soft and clingy despite her parent's best efforts. But the bath?
It was perfect.
Finally alone and most importantly in private, Jewel could finally relax a bit, breathing full and deep" as her wings flopped flat over the flagstones. On the floor she could feel the subtle indents and signs of shelving and weapons racks long since removed.
Telling her a story she could finally appreciate thanks to her lessons.
Jewel indulged in a secret buzzing rumble of contentment, stretching herself fully across the room before grabbing up her copper pail from its place on a hook on the tub. Cradling her childhood treasure in her fore claws.
It was much too small for her now but bathtime just would not be complete without it.
Normally what came next would be easy, but with her wyrmflame so taxed she could not muster the effort to simply glide smoothly into the water.
Instead she had to actually work her heft and bulk with her muscles which sapped as they were quivered in protest at the thought.
After several false starts, Jewel tried hunching herself up over the lip by using her wing fingers to push her middle high enough. Then tilting her ponderous abundance of forebody, neck and face she let gravity carry her limp landslide of scales over the lip and poured her coils face first as slowly as possible under the steaming hot water.
Blessed hot water all over!
She took a heavy breath all the way into her lungs and let the hot, thick, toasty fluid burst through her insides herself.
Mother often told jovial stories about when they had discovered that Jewel did not need to breath air.
Jewel herself remembered a lot more panic, crying and being quite terrified she had done something terribly wrong for how frightened her parents had been.
But now no one screamed or cried or pulled her out of her baths. Jewel simply spent a luxuriantly long moment simply cradling the smooth sweetness of delectable copper from her pail against its special place in the small of her belly. Her scales just below her seventy-third rib tingling in a way distinct from the seeping heat of the water coming from within and without.
After just a moment more lingering below the surface Jewel popped her head out of the bath and gave out a soft bubbling croon of satisfaction, letting the water burble out of the squeeze of her lungs and her growing wyrmfire scald them dry. Releasing the electric-scented mist to pillow from her nose and spark along her teeth and tongue.
Wings unfurled in the warmth of the water to touch nearly every familiar line and whorl of varnished wood grain.
This was just a perfect moment she always treasured.
The sound of her emergence prompted the usual ritual.
"Everything to your liking Lady Jewel?" the bathman called, muffled from behind the door.
Her reply resonated through the room with a throaty buzzing burr she tried to restrain everywhere but here. "Delightful as always, Jorge! If you don't hear me scrubbing in a bit, a gentle reminder if you please?"
A muffle of affirmative noise answered her and she turned her attention back to bathing.
She could happily luxuriate and stoke her inner flame in just the heat of the water until it went tepid. But they had guests and Mother always said she needed to be presentable for guests.
Refined and civil to prove she was nothing like what they feared.
First the mane, it always seemed to get chock full of dust and detritus even when the rest of her rarely ever seemed to catch more than a slight dulling unless she literally rolled in manure and mud.
Jewel reached over to grab the soap with her left hind claw and a comb with her right fore, twisting her head around so she could scrub it into the mane at the top of her head before passing the comb to its hind-partner to help draw out tangles, burs and the occasional bug.
She had once reminisced with father after he had returned on Griphonback how flying involved far more dirt, grime and bugs than most people appreciated.
One time that she even joked with Smithson over the time she'd gotten distracted and flew into a goose! The beast had hounded her for half an hour afterwards!
Truly knights should study the bravery of geese!
Which reminded her, the manor had some potentially unexpected guests?
Jewel softly murmured to herself as she worked her soap and combed her mane to between her foreshoulders. Getting the hairs clear before she scooped up a pail full of more water and poured it over her head was somewhat ineffectual but it gave her the excuse to use the copper pail for longer.
"I didn't think anyone was scheduled to visit this season. Well at least it can't be the Countess or anyone of that import, no one's shown up to open up the guest wing."
Swapping her left hind limb for her right so she can get the soap scrubbed into the dusty roots of mane between her wing shoulders she scooted and curved herself up out of the bath water.
Luxuriating a moment with her head submerged before she surfaced.
"Maybe it's a knight ? Or a traveling bard troup?"
A thought suddenly struck her and excited her voice.
"Oh what if it's elves!" Her voice had a slight squeal at the possibility.
"Yes, Lady Jewel?"
Helpful as ever her bathman had his ear out if she needed anything.
"Nothing, Jorge!" she huffed and hummed, mulling the idea over a few different ways.
She continued to work through her mane, down to past her wings, shifting and slipping the portion needing a scrub out of the water so it did not get overly diluted by the rest of the water.
Jewel liked keeping the fresh suds from rinsing before twisting the already lathered portions of it around in the water.
On reflection she discarded the earlier spark of hope muttering as she worked suds into her mid-back.
"Meh, as if elves would visit a barony in the middle of nowhere like us."
A huff of admonishment at her own childishness and she switched the soap and comb from her hind claws to her foreclaws. Working the soap into the roots of mane over her hindquarters and then up and down the line atop her tail.
She grumbled to herself just to drive home her own stupidity.
"It's probably just some merchant or mayor or something. No one important or interesting would be showing up on such short notice"
She considered her tail mane with a critical eye and a pursed lip, it was likely it would be presentable and the rest of her bath water was ever so slightly starting to cool in spite of the heat that was now toastily burning inside her.
"Well I wouldn't say that. After all, it could always be a wizard," said the deeply rich and unmistakably male voice.
A male voice here in the room.
A voice that apparently came from the black cat wearing a tiny red floppy cap.
The cat who conspicuously sat on the edge of the bathtub.
Jewel blinked at the cat momentarily. Then finally shrieked in a proper and very ladylike manner that she would later insist did not at all resemble a cockerel screeching from inside the throat of a moose.
The first chapter was actually a snippet I half wrote YEARS ago, never found how to make it work. Abandoned entirely and only this year picked up again, refurbished and shifted around to be something else entirely. This was the proper chapter that I actually wrote entirely this year and began the start of actually getting things done on the daily.
"I really don't see what all the fuss is about," spoke the cat from its position on a stool. Why did her bathing chamber have a stool? No one had needed to assist her in bathing since before she was big enough to need the new tub!
The intruder, somewhat frustratingly, was completely and utterly dry. Not even a single drop of water marred that black fur.
This was despite every single other surface in the chamber being drenched, including the area immediately behind the aforementioned intruder.
Jorge had forced the door open but stood momentarily baffled on precisely what to do.
"What are you doing in here whilst I am bathing!" Jewel tried to put on the tone of dignified affront and high culture airs that her mother used when a courtier with a disdain for their rural barony needed addressing. She suspected that it sounded more like a badly tuned trumpet.
The cat licked a paw that was not dirty or wet at all and then with that same paw nudged a set of minute spectacles further up its muzzle.
Dragging the silence out very intentionally for all involved as it fiddled with its eye-wear.
Finally, the black cat raised its gaze to fix Jewel with a flat stare. "I'm sorry but was I misinformed of Lady Jewel's propensity for nudity on the castle grounds? I was quite sure that my sources were very clear on thy manner."
Jorge barely restrained the chuckle while Jewel seethed in her bath and roiled the much depleted water with her coils. Wings flaring out and curving over behind herself to try and make herself in flustered shame.
"That is not the same! This is my bathing time!" If she was not already exhausted from the earlier flight Jewel was pretty sure her mouth would be glowing white with barely restrained wyrmflame. Her foreclaws clenched gently but firmly over her pail, pressing it against herself for security.
To add to her mortification two footmen chose that moment to come rushing into the bathing room.
They were good footmen. Looking for a sign of untoward conduct and prepared for violence. There was also a third peering in from outside, all of them had hands on the hafts of their spears and muscles tense ready to fight and die for her honor.
Sadly it was enough to break what composure Jewel had managed to scrape together on short notice. She hoped she would be forgiven for the fresh wave of water drenching the room and all present with her tail lashing she was sure.
"Out! All of you Out!"
The resulting surprise at being soaked by an irate dragon set the two footmen to stumble backwards.
One almost fell as his foot hit a piece of soap but his comrade provided just enough support to hold him up while he braced the butt of his spear into a corner. They vacated to the outside dripping on the stone floor outside.
But they distinctly did not close the door!
The third footman had a slight crinkle to his eyes that suggested there would be laughter and stories in the barrack tonight. Jorge was just as soaked through as the two footmen but being the bath man unwarned splashes of water ultimately unphased him. He had the same dignity he always bore in matters of his role.
The cat was still completely dry. Although it appeared to be slightly bothered by the fact that its chosen perch was at least pooling with water and suds.
Its feet were alternating flicking water from each as it circled around a few times on the stool before fixing Jewel with another intense look.
The yellow eyes set Jewel on edge the way they settled on the slightly dented copper pail in her foreclaws against her the slight cleft between her belly and rib cage. "Ah, I see! my apologies you were settling with your hoard then?"
Jewel's wings shook with the effort it took to hold them in and avoid possibly shattering the wooden slats of the bath by extending fully out in every direction.
Mother and Father had commissioned this tub specially for her!
Yes it had been when she had broken her old one from stretching just a little bit too hard against its walls!
But they had to give up some of their coins for it!
She would not go breaking this one and forcing them to replace it.
"I'm not settling in my hoard! I'm having a bath after a strenuous day of exercise to clean me of the sweat and grime of my labors! To make myself presentable for some unexpected guests to my family's court!"
The ostensible wizard but very much a cat closed his eyes to near slits and tilted his face up in a way that somewhat resembled how she'd seen courtiers smile.
All assurance and smug superiority.
"Ah, of course, Lady Jewel is indeed correct on the matters of hoards and whether or not her own possessions qualify for it. I humbly beg forgiveness for the misstep of this simple mortal. She is a delicate flower of a lady that is simply distraught over the impropriety of others seeing her beautiful scales less than they do every day in court."
That certainly did not drag another buzzing growl like a finger over her metal comb from Jewel.
She absolutely only huffed like a properly refined but affronted lady.
"It's not about that! It's IMPROPER for you to be in here with a lady of my standing while she's bathing!"
The cat looked down at the half full and rapidly cooling water. His eyes roving across her coils in a way that made her scales tremble in great tremulous waves with their passing.
"Well, since her immortal ladyship Jewel, Wyrm of the Barony of Rochford has finished her bathing there is no impropriety! Now If you would I had-"
Jorge, blessed be his name and all of his line interrupted with the most soft spoken of interruptions that nevertheless still bore the weight of an interloper into his sworn and sacred domain.
"Pardon me, Lord Sorcerer and Weird of the Demesne of Ghergeintat, but it is customary in these lands that the act of bathing is not concluded until proper drying, dressing and styling of the lady is concluded by her staff."
The still incredibly, suspiciously dry cat with his spectacles and small beret flicked an ear at the interruption but did not take his eyes off of Jewel, despite how much it set quivering spasms of her hide to flow up and down her coils.
Jorge, receiving no rebuke continued as gently and politely as Jewel had ever heard him to anyone.
"Furthermore, my Lord Sorcerer, an audience with a member and ward of the Lord Rochford's household is customarily made after an official introduction is announced to the benefit of both parties, which I am sure were already planned for this evening during the welcoming feast being held in your honor."
The cat slowly turned to look at Jorge with marginally wider eyes, then a slight head tilt and a widening of luminous gold.
Jewel was not sure why but the way that the pupils widened from slits to wide black pupils was enthralling.
"Oh! Terribly sorry! Thank you for helping to smooth over any diplomatic concerns, good servant! But I'd prefer to not step any harder upon Lord Rochford's hospitality then I already have. I shall retire to my accommodations and present a proper boon and compensation after custom is observed in recompense."
And then with that the cat made a turn around a corner and was gone.
A corner which was distinctly and clearly absent from atop the stool where the Cat Wizard had been sitting just a moment before.
But it had gone around a corner anyway.
Jewel blinked a moment, tilting her head at the curious feeling to the air where she could see a corner was not but could clearly feel one had been.
The soft cough from Jorge was needed to draw her attention back and with it her awareness on the sopping state of himself and the entire bathing room.
"Oh Jorge! I'm so sorry, I've made such a mess for all of you! I can help dry everything out if you like it would-"
The bathman gently waved her off with a laugh and a dip of his head.
"No no, we needed to do a proper wash of the room anyway, don't want mold and the like to take any root here! It's fine, Lady, get yourself dry and ready for the feast, I suspect you will need the time to prepare and check in with your family."
That certainly was likely true, but it still pained Jewel to leave him with such a mess, huffing a bit of wyrmflame through herself to wick away the water into steam and gently crackling from her scales.
Normally meals were pleasant and unofficial affairs, the family could spend some time unwinding and in general Mother, Father or both would inquire about how Alexander and her studies were doing, or otherwise relax and talk.
Jewel could lounge on the familiar friend that was the feasting hall flagstones, her coils reading the old stories of past revelry and if it was winter there would be a roaring fire in the hearths to tickle her inner flame with their own joy.
If there were any entertainers or otherwise interesting guests in the barony they would also be present, either during or after the meal, in exchange for her Father's hospitality.
And everyone was far more relaxed and comfortable, sometimes even the staff might attend if there was reason to grant them the boon.
Father was very generous like that.
But then there were official Feasts, like this one. Usually brought up when esteemed guests arrived that required the pomp for appearances.
Bigger affairs with proper criers were brought up to announce guests then and everyone had to sit precisely to show and posture or placate as needed by the family. Jewel didn't know the crier tonight, he was some new kid brought on as an assistant to Jorge, maybe? Or one of the other senior staff, she thought. No Smithson as crier this time, which suggested no one was sick.
The official crier tabard was an alright fit for the boy, and he apparently knew his letters well enough from the way his eyes roved the scroll he would announce from.
Yes, an official Welcome Feast.
That meant proper seating, which meant that Jewel had to be seated like a proper lady.
Tonight, she was positioned to the right hand of her Father as a sign of familial allegiance and power. Which was a point towards the guest being a potential rival, or at least a not entirely trusted neighbor. Or a mostly genial foreigner.
Jewel being seated meant that there had to be a seat to sit upon.
Much to her dismay.
But for her father's sake, Jewel sat carefully on the specially made 'furniture', taking great care to neither rip the fabric of the cushioning with her claws or overly rest her bulk upon its wooden frame, despite the assurances upon delivery that it could take her even without lift from her wyrmfire keeping her weight from settling entirely upon it.
No, she would never force her parents to replace this piece like she had the chairs and stools she'd destroyed as a hatchling.
This one had been commissioned especially for her so that, to quote her mother, 'No daughter of Rochford shall be seen to lay on cold stone'. Jewel wished it was acceptable to just let her lounge in a pile by the fire, the cold stone of the feasting hall was comforting and venerable with soft tales of trials and joy and the hearths were warm and complementary.
Instead there had to be this ostentatious thing she was worried she would accidentally break.
And the expense?! She'd heard Mother and Father one night behind their bedroom doors that it cost more than the throne of the Duchess, which had stung so much. To give up so much coin for her sake?!
Jewel looked upon the preparations and the still-to-be-taken seats waiting for the arrival of their guests. Glancing at Mother and Father curiously before turning back to the entrance so that they could sit united and framed by the footmen at the ready in proper splendor.
Alexander was seated to Father's left, as close as her as appropriate for his heir, but less favored for while a year older than her, he was not as physically imposing a show of strength as a dragon.
That he was present at all spoke to trust where her positioning had been a posture of strength.
He looked bored and uncomfortable in his feasting finery, a match to father's own outfit, though of significantly less expensive fabrics and gilding.
Mother was seated next to Alexander further along the table. Which was a bit awkward but further cemented the suspicion Jewel was developing that the status of their guests were foreign powers.
She was subtly buffering the heir from direct engagement.
The preparations and dress of her family said a lot as well, where Jewel had not felt comfortable asking just exactly who (besides the wizard cat) was attending the feast.
It had been a bit of a hassle and a rush to get Alexander properly washed and fitted into his clothes. Mother had been upset he'd gotten all sweaty, instead of simply being perhaps a little ink blotted from history and scribe work.
It was mostly the usual but not overly unique signs of wealth from her parents. She'd seen that shirt on her father many times and mother generally favored that veil when she was not needing to overly impress.
So probably a contemporary to their own rural backwater, maybe?
But not a neighbor, Rochford was on near kin-alliance terms with all the surrounding manors, villages, towns and the one other Barony.
Jewel ever so gently kneaded her forelimbs on the cushion, expertly keeping her actual claws from tugging on the fabric. There was also only the usual family regalia on display so it was unlikely that the attending guest had direct rulership over Father which meant it definitely was not the Countess or the Duke and King above her.
Likewise it could be no representative of either.
Jewel surreptitiously rubbed her left wing at an itch on its foreshoulder in front of her where a casual observer would not notice if anyone should show up that second but it still got a bit of a look from Mother.
That was more tense then she should be with a contemporary yet foreign barony.
Which was concerning, although again Jewel could not find the will to break the silence so close to the official start. Alexander's impatient shifting under so much oppressive quiet got a soft whispered admonishment from mother again.
So given the timing, dress and accommodations, Jewel mused that despite the fact of the Wizard cat, this was not a terribly powerful political figure or their representatives.
So it was thankfully not The Countess Bathory herself!
Just thinking about the time of Bathory's visit put an involuntary quiver rippling along Jewel's scales.
That was the biggest welcome feast the wyrm had ever attended, at least after hatching. Her egg was apparently gifted to Father's Father's Mother's Father from the King himself at the time.
The tapestries and histories made quite the ado about that feast, but it was tied up into the three YEARS of victory feasting that followed the victory in the Tyrant War.
But Jewel was not really THERE for that except by technicality.
So it was not the Countess or anyone equivalent. When she attended, the staff of the household had tripled during the preparations seasons in advance. Most of them were foreigners from the Countess' own household coming to make way for her ahead of her arrival.
Entire rooms had been opened up and furnished, rooms that Jewel had not even known existed! A whole second guest wing was opened just to house her courtiers and the extra staff!
Strange new foods were prepared and Jewel had to be followed around everywhere by Smithson and Muriel at all times she was not in her room. In addition to often having at least one of the footman and the Countess' own guard as well.
That had been incredibly stifling but at least Rochford was out of the way enough the Countess never saw fit to visit since.
This Welcome Feast was nothing like that, even assuming they somehow had hidden it from her in her own home, the banners were only her family's own crest despite apparently being in honor of another lord.
So less ostentatious than a direct superior to father.
But that still left a lot of room.
The far more common situations for a welcome feast were Knights or other esteemed lords of their own baronies.
Those however rarely needed the kind of posturing and defensive stand-offish display that fully kitted footmen brought up. Further there was Jewel's own position on Father's right or the awkward placing of mother as a buffer to Alexander instead of having her place either on Father's left or right.
Jewel had seen the other seating arrangements other times when she was just supposed to impress, then depending on the standing either Mother or Jewel would be seated on Father's right while Alexander either was seated next to Jewel or Mother.
All of it itched and worried her, almost more than the fact the blasted Cat Wizard had interrupted her during her Bath!
Which was also concerning.
Jorge had been incredibly civil with the Wizard, which she had read some about their standing.
Jewel was unsure precisely what the standing of a Wizard was usually, she'd never met one before today. In the books they were generally titled at least a lord even when they were not landed with any territory. But often they also would have two or more other titles, half of which were either unique or particularly strange.
The visiting guests could be the Wizard as the head of it, with attendants to support him, or he could simply be an attaché to another individual.
Wizards were inconsistent and difficult to fix down in hierarchies.
She'd read about some that even insisted on being freemen or commoners rather than lords and at least one who was explicitly a serf despite having five other titles!
The sound of Alexander's knee bobbing ever so slightly did not seem to be drawing anyone's attention but the sudden cessation of it despite no visible sign from mother or father suggested something got him to stop and settle.
For the time being.
Before Jewel could start on chewing (figuratively) what might be able to be gleaned from the plates set out for the family and their guests the sound of metal on stone echoed into the feast hall signaling the guests (finally) were about to be announced.
The crier uttered a half muffled squeal in surprise and fumbled a moment with the scroll before settling into the familiar rhythm.
"The honorable house of Rochford welcomes their esteemed guests."
The door opened and in strode a questing knight if Jewel had ever seen one, He was not dressed in full plate armor or even a chain shirt; it would have been a grave insult to suggest that Father could not protect a guest in the feast hall.
But the figure was muscled in that way the fitter footmen were, a good head taller than any in the room save Father and herself. Beneath his dark hair, a light scar crossed down from his brow over his nose before glancing off onto a cheek.
She did not recognize the heraldry upon his tabard. But Jewel had hardly had time to memorize any but the houses of their closest neighbors.
The crier however was ready to do his duty and began to introduce him.
"Knight of Garmendan, Lothlar"
Father tilted his head in acknowledgement and uttered the traditional greeting.
"Be welcome to my house, eat and be at peace." A gesture to a seat with a gap between the knight and Mother spoke of confidence, but uncertainty. So Father did not know what standing Lothlar had but was not at least overly hostile to Garmendan, wherever that was.
The bang of a spear butt on the stone echoed in the hall cuing the Crier to his next announcement.
Jewel idly flexed the toes of her hind limbs and clenched her tail around herself but she did not brush even a single scale upon the floor to feel the subtle tremble.
It would have been improper.
"The Esteemed Lady Sorcerer and Weird of the Autumnal Briarwood of Bothgola, Euewyn"
Wait what?
That was not the name that Jorge had addressed the Cat by!
Jewel could not help herself but gawk as a vaguely conical form made entirely of red, orange and yellow leaves glided into the room, only on a third glance did Jewel properly apprehend that the leaves in shape and size subtly framed specific kinds of flowing features.
At the top was a tall pointed 'hat' with a wide brim, made of broad three split leaves that favored a bit more red than orange, riding over a heavily shadowed darkness that smelled of peat and old mulch and showed no visible eyes or features.
Framed in a more flowing fashion by somewhat hair-like strands, not unlike willow, were tiny little pricks of orange and red color, strung in chains of color that reminded jewel of clover, if clover turned the colors of maple leaves in fall.
This further draped over what she guessed must be a robe of slender oval leaves, continuing the theme of oranges and reds, mixing in a few deep amber and browns. Jewel presumed it was maybe a cloak or perhaps a very long and billowing gown? But really there was just no details upon the figure to tell, besides assumptions and the overall shape of a pine tree clad in the raiment of an oak.
Father seemed momentarily taken by the appearance but offered his traditional greeting and a gesture to the seat between mother and Lothlar.
Jewel was so flustered by the idea that there were two wizards among their guests that she barely had time to consider what that seating arrangement meant when the next strike announced another guest.
"The Esteemed L- ehr uhm" The crier seemed thrown off for something written on his scroll but then marsheled on "Esteemed Sorcerer and Weird of the Uloghai Bog, Su-" The poor crier again coughed on his tongue trying to say the name and then with a face turning bright red struggled through the rest on a few more breathily whispered tongue twisters before finally doing his duty.
"Tsulogothulan"
If the name was difficult, the figure that entered was something that — well, until this moment Jewel had been sure tapestries and histories were just exaggerating about the countenance of wizards, especially those that attained the difficult and strange to find details on title of Weird.
But no, apparently those depictions had merely been as close as artists and weavers could manage to the actual thing.
What entered the feasting hall slithered in a way that Jewel came to realize she probably would never be able to manage.
Because, for all her slender serpentine form, she still was restrained by the encumbrance of bones that did not bend like rotten swamp grass.
It was wrapped in black clothes around a figure that was ostensibly human-like. At least in that it had two arms, two legs, and a protrusion that was probably a head. But each bent and swayed in a sinewy, sweeping manner that made Jewel even at her most bedraggled look absolutely rigid and graceful.
Legs, arms and necks were definitely not supposed to sway that much in the process of ambulation (she could not bring herself to call it walking).
And the diaphanous material it wore as robes Jewel thought was on closer inspection a many layered thing that looked suspiciously like cheese cloth and lamb gut-lining that had been dyed black and wrapped in layers sufficient to obscure whatever was underneath.
All of that would have been quite enough for Jewel and already strained her composure, but the head and what could charitably be called a hat (wide brimmed and also pointed as Euewyn's but in every other respect nothing like it) were what froze her and the rest of her family transfixed.
It was like the result of someone, having heard a nose described like a beak, then took it terribly literally and sought to sculpt a smooth, pale, blue-veined mass of flesh into just such a shape; the proverbial sculptor however did so without understanding that such things as nostrils were necessary features of such.
It was sharp and fleshy and was the only visible skin in the entire figure, jutting out from a darkness framed by a billowing veil from the 'hat', everything else wrapped in the black cloth or otherwise covered.
And then the head tilted one way and brought a massive, singular eye embedded on one side of the 'nose' to look upon all of them.
It was honestly a very pretty eye, bright violet iris. Clear and hardly veined sclera, a keen and intelligent gaze in the pupil, and very full lashes.
But it was the size of father's fist and every detail was so perfectly, exaggeratedly huge — right down to the lashes being bristly quills in their hugeness.
A few wet and soppy blinks audibly filled the stunned silence of the hall.
The figure poised in a posture that was absolutely bizarre in its normalcy compared to the fluid boneless jaunting slink that had gotten it there.
Finally, father found his words and, with a brief apologetic glance to Jewel (who could only stare blankly in dawning realization) gestured for Tsulogothulan to be seated next to his wyrm daughter.
Which to be fair, Jewel was a dragon and the least needing of protection from something horrific or uncertain. But Still!? REALLY?!
It took the poor crier quite a bit to compose himself.
But Jewel did not blame him, she had snuck her tail down off her perch to the stone of the floor so it could comfort her with the etched laughter of happier times.
The boy needed a solid three strikes of announcement before he could actually find his voice and his place on the scroll.
During all of which Jewel noted how the knight was frustratingly indifferent to the strangeness of either wizard. Even smirking a little in the direction of Tsulogothulan! Who blinked wetly and audibly in response. The lids were almost popping and slapping like lips.
After this Jewel was prepared for it to be a veritable parade of ever more absurd kinds of Weirds but the announcement spoken by the crier was familiar, if not precisely welcome.
"Esteemed Lord Sorcerer and Weird of the Demesne of Ghergeintat, Fizzbunches"
However, that Jewel now felt the presence of softly settling paws then a fuzzy rump and a tickling tail on top of her head was not at all expected.
Her father glared at the cat wizard, who had apparently not seen fit to arrive by the entry door but find a corner to sneak around to the top of Jewel's head, Her fathers eyes fixed above her before offering the traditional greeting and then very pointedly gesturing to the seat next to Tsulogothulan.
Fizzbunches took just a moment too long to acknowledge father's gesture before he leaped in a sweeping arc that barely pressed any force at all upon Jewel's head.
The cat wizard landed in the seat so poised it was almost difficult to believe he had ever been anywhere else.
He was however only just barely visible due to the tops of his ears and his floppy and rather untraditional wizard headwear.
With that, the closing statements came.
"The house of Rochford welcomes you all! Let us eat and be merry."
The voice of Tsulogothulan was soft with a strange foreign lilt that dragged on the vowels ever so slightly. But far too normal for the uncanny nature of the rest of it. Just low enough probably only Jewel and Fizzbunches likely could hear it.
"Must you always be such an over theatrical ponce Fuzzbunches? We are not here to antagonize the lady or her father."
The cat fixed the blank faced side of Tsulogothulan's 'nose' with an unamused glare. His voice, however, was quite clear and carried out to everyone in the hall
"If Lord Rochford wanted me to make a polite entrance, then proper seating arrangements for my personage should have been prepared beforehand."
It barely required a glance from Father towards Jorge before Fizzbunches had enough cushion to see over the lip of the table.
Jewel found herself sharing a look of baffled commiseration with Tsulogothulan's wide glistening orb of an eye. Utterly baffling that the most disturbing of the four guests was suddenly one she immediately felt a kinship with.
It was further cemented when a cloth covered hand bonelessly snaked its way up from under the table and muffled the cat wizard before he could say something else.
Father very diplomatically did not look in the cat wizard's direction, but seemed to share Jewel's sentiment of camaraderie with Tsulogothulan. Who slowly blinked her one eye in acknowledgement to him.
Jewel could hear the faint slimy gliding of the wet skin against the orb so close to her.
"Well then, before we get to the business our guests brought before me, let us eat! A meal to settle the weariness of travelers before I answer your request."
A muffled yowl of annoyance was met with a disturbingly uncomfortable spinning twist in Tsulogothulan's neck as it brought that oversized eye to glare reproachfully down at the cat.
The look silencing whatever protest Fizzbunches was trying to get around the coverings wrapped around his face.
Only after he closed his eyes almost entirely at it did the other wizard release its 'companion'.
Pitchers of small ale arrived. Which was a bit odd for a feast unless it was to the taste of a particular guest, not out of the ordinary for their usual evening meals together as a family but normally anything warranting 'honored guests' would have called for at least one of the lighter wines.
Fascinating for Jewel, despite their strangeness, all three wizards partook, although Fizzbunches required his to be served in a shallow bowl.
Euewyn drank it the most normally of the three. The mug rose upon air gently whirled with hints of old leaves and the smell of coming winter.
Tilting her mug back in the cradled winds, the small beer was poured in an elegant arc into the shadowed void beneath the wizards hat and hair. There was a sound a bit like water bubbling in a brook but no scent of spilled beer, or the splash one would expect on the seat or floor if she was indeed actually hollow.
Fizzbunches naturally lapped it up hilariously getting foam on his whiskers, but he drank heavier than was seemingly possible for such a small frame as a cat and was already on his third serving.
It reminded Jewel of how she used to drink her small beer before she figured out how to drink from a proper mug like a lady.
And Tsulogothulan?
The Bog Wizard stared at the mug and occasionally took incredibly languid blinks accompanied by deep gulping sounds in the general area of her throat.
And the level of small ale in the mug dropped in ponderous trembling jumps with each raising of her oversized eyelid.
Jewel had no idea how that worked, but Wizards were supposed to be strange creatures.
There was a further uncomfortable silence, even after everyone was drinking!
The void of conversation between her family and their 'guests' got tenser and more squirming with insinuations until finally Lothlar broke it, laughing so jovially it was like a hammer through one of the colored glass windows in the village temple.
"Hah! Well I honestly can't say how much I appreciate your hospitality already Lord Rochford! A good solid drink being one of the least of them but still welcome!"
His words were sharply clipped and a little more rounded in places than anyone Jewel had heard speak before. It was not anything like Fizzbunches or Tsulogothulan.
He chugged a hearty gulp from his mug of small beer before belching appropriately and heavily.
"Truly no offense to them but my companions, being esteemed Lord, Lady and Other Sorcerers have hardly been bothered by the trials, pains and filth of the road. And our road has hardly passed an inn or village on our way here."
Fizzbunches gave a pronounced snort of disagreement. Which prompted a breathy wordless admonishment from Tsulogothulan
"So I must say, getting a decent and even HOT bath and a solid meal is more than welcome after the journey we've had to reach you! Praise be to you, Lord Rochford!"
Which prompted a toast that all raised their drinks too. Fizzbunches and Euewyn did so by levitating their drinking vessels without touching them.
The tension partly broken, Mother took on her role in family hospitality to further carry the conversation.
"So, from whence have you traveled to meet us? I must admit that I'm not familiar with the lands of any of your titles."
Jewel could see this drew Alexander's attention as well, her brother leaning a bit over the table to see the knight past their mother and the leafy autumn wizard.
Although Mother had left the address open to all their guests, it was only the knight who filled the emptiness that no one else seemed willing too.
"Well, I was drawn up on this quest when Honorable Lord Sorcerer Fizzbunches came through Garmendan. He had a small caravan for this business already but at the time it was just his lordship as part of the noble personages."
There was a palpable lack of comment from the lapping tongue of the wizard as he seemed engrossed in his small beer.
"Then we met up with lady Euewyn shortly passing through her briar forest."
The just mentioned autumn wizard continued to not make anything resembling the sounds of speech. But it was with far less disdain then the cat had managed to pack into his own silence.
She even turned to look between the knight and mother and offered some rather enthusiastic nods that rustled her leaves violently.
"And again with the Bog for the honorable Weird Tsulogothulan. They both had arranged it beforehand with the Lord Sorcerer, apparently. Although I admit the business of wizards was not part of my quest."
Which got a nod, earning a pause in the Bog Wizard's literally consumptive staring contest with a yet 'untouched' mug of small ale, along with a soft whispered comment.
"To be honest I'm quite glad to have had your companionship for the journey, my good knight. Lady Sorcerer Euewyn, I fear, has almost forgotten how to speak in any audible manner herself!"
The Autumnal Weird nodded in agreement and shrugged lightly.
"Lord Fizzbunches is direct and not one to waste his voice. It would have been an entirely less lively trip if it was just us three Weirds."
A wordless grunt and another impromptu toast from Lothlar was matched by everyone but Fizzbunches (although he did raise his head and nod to the gesture before returning promptly to draining his bowl).
And then the first dishes began to stream in from the kitchen, most of the servant staff of the manor appeared present pitching in with aprons with obvious signs of use and mess upon them.
It was a bit strange, actually. Normally they would have called up serfs from the nearby village for the feast.
But here was just about everyone that served the household except the footmen themselves making a show to carry all the dishes.
And as for the dishes?
Well, first was mostly just a few salted and roasted medley of the smaller turnips and other root vegetables.
Fizzbunches turned his nose up to the offered vegetables and his plate was skipped before insult could be given but the other guests seemed amiable. Lothlar practically inhaled the meager fare with a laugh and loud chewing before continuing his tale of their journey.
"So after the Bog we split from the caravan, traders had business towards places with actual civilization-"
The other food continued to arrive as he extolled the adventure. It was honestly the usual boasting and careful gossip and scouting report Knights always brought to their father.
Jewel began tuning out the hunts for wild game and the tales of various creatures, threats and sightings that knights tromping on a quest through the wilderness accumulated like dust.
There was something very peculiar about the dishes being offered to them.
It was decidedly not anything much more spectacular than her family's usual supper of roast haunch from a recently slaughtered bull, pig or ram. Plus a somewhat peculiar diversity of roast birds of many varieties and more assorted cooked roots, vegetables and other sundry with a smell of heavy pork fat, salt and dried herbs in the mix.
But otherwise there was not a lot of anything particularly artful. The bread was fresh yet plain, there was nothing but a few dried winter fruits from last year's summer harvest. And nothing like what even the casual neighborly feast to share news and affirm alliances generations old.
It was all similar to the small beer serving as a starter.
Fine for private family dinners, but this was not the fare for entertaining guests except in the sheer variety of different animals being offered to devour (which Jewel enjoyed and was making a note to maybe request something a bit similar if with proper flair for her next hatching day).
But even then the additions, despite being an eclectic mix of different fowl that had been cooked and prepared, did not really fit together and had no themes.
Actually the smell of different hearths rather than the usual great roasting pits spoke that perhaps a few of the manor staff's own servant meals were going to this feast. In fact, she recognized that particular whiff of char and firewood!
The hen that Fizzbunches was laboriously chewing every scrap of meat off of most certainly had been in the hearth whose smoke was in the air while she was flying around the manor before her bath!
This was not right at all, not even the most casual of welcome feasts was so slapdash as this.
And Father never called such a tithe as to claim the very supper right off the tables of the village like that! He took great offense whenever one of their neighbors did something even slightly similar.
Her parents would have been livid if this was the food delivered to even a minor knight's feast.
But yet it was here and happening and they were not angry with any of it, even appreciative and apologetic to the staff working in positions quite unusual from their normal roles and duties.
She gave Father a furtive glance of worry and tried to catch his eye looking intensely at the roast hen that lord Fizzbunches was halfway through rendering down to stripped bone.
He raised his hand ever so slightly, keeping it below the edge of the table so only she would notice it. A placating but hidden gesture.
Yes, Father knew precisely what was going on here and he was asking her to not bring any further attention to it?
To trust him? She was not entirely sure.
Mother offered a smile across the way and a slight dip of the head and a gentle brushing of her hair behind one ear.
So she knew as well?!
This was a totally impromptu feast, and yet it was also the best that her parents could expect of the manor staff!? In fact, if she was reading it right, Jewel was not to draw any attention to that?
That spoke to even Father and Mother having been required to arrange this feast on incredibly short notice!
Just what precisely was going on here?
Jewel tried to ignore the weight settling in her gut that had nothing at all to do with her usual meal portions or the grinding churn of bones being rendered down to dust in her throat as she swallowed her own roast hens.
Jewel attempted to not fidget throughout the meal despite the awkwardness and the pressure it represented. There were appearances to be kept with guests such as these.
Mother managed a few understanding glances and took charge with keeping cordial conversation going. Mostly by encouraging Alexander to speak his mind and curiosity in regards to Lothlar's journey and drag further embellishments and even more fantastical expositions that from experience Jewel knew were quickly moving from the factual reports of the early reports and into the more proper boasting.
Nevermind that when he first told them the boar had been hardly larger than Alexander, now it was twice Jewel's length and sporting seven tusks made of solid steel.
Even his first telling it had been quite riveting stuff: there was an impressive number of mountains and quite a few truly bewildering caverns to pass through between Rochford and what they learned was the citystate of Garmendan.
But now, he was making it sound like the journey had trespassed through the outermost edge of the world. As you do when you were a knight, Jewel supposed.
However, the wizard sitting next to her shared certain details from their home that drew Jewel into conversation at last.
Apparently the place was distant enough that they had not been involved at all in the Tyrant War!
Which meant Jewel could assist with Mother's duty by holding her own conversation with their guests. Still, among the wizards it seemed like only the Bog Weird was interested. Still considering how personable the most physically disturbing of the trio was, Jewel found she did not mind.
"Truly, Lady Jewel? A war with a dragon monarch? I mean there are rumors and legends, but there was actually a proper war just over and under a few hills from my bog? I never imagined it."
Jewel was mostly over the all-consuming attention of that incredibly gooey chunk of oversized eye that peered out from one side of the nose like a particularly large and ocular wart.
"Yes indeed, Weird Tsulogothulan. Although the proper address, if you must, is to call it the Tyrant Wyrm if you need mention it at all."
But the way that Tsulogothulan twisted and spun at far more places than just the neck still made her hide tremble in disquieted ripples. However as long as the bog wizard was not needing to turn their gaze too abruptly, or handle the cutlery for reasons that still left the wyrmling a bit baffled.
"Fascinating, my dear lady, In the Uloghai Bog we heard little to nothing of such. Our road was quite removed, I suppose, but I find myself bereft of such news quite… disquieting."
It's not like the bog wizard took any bites or chew, just 'blinked' and food and drink was vanished away and swallowing ensued. But still Tsulogothulan moved a knife along her plate daintily and cut up its food into small portions. Then fluttered their eye at the plate and with wet slapping sounds the portions were replaced with sudden absences.
"Uh, well according to the histories it was four hundred and twenty years ago by the Reichlan calendar. So I can't say it was particularly recent. Rocheford was a Marquee at the time of the Tyrant wars even. Instead of rather more middle of the heartlands."
Which caused the posture of Jewel's conversation partner to do something disquieting like a partial deflation into a less attentive holding of shoulders and arms.
"Oh, well that would explain it. A good three hundred years before I was even born."
A distinct sound of wind and rustling leaves cut over Alexander's latest interrogations of the Knight and Father's encouraging words to his heir.
It was the closest sound to words that Euewyn had made since her arrival and Jewel could not quite even place what was even said.
But whatever it was prompted a chuckle from Fizzbunches as he licked at a paw. Every scrap of meat was stripped from the skeleton on his plate.
"I always forget both of you are so young... Although I myself was still only an apprentice when news of the rebellions first reached my alley. They did not call it the Tyrant war then. Was not until close to a century after it was done and over that name reached my ears."
That drew the attention of Father.
"It was no rebellion, the Tyrant claimed land not owed them and my family was never under its sway. We held the marque against invasion and rallied with our rightful liege in defense with honor."
His voice was a little sharper than Jewel had ever heard with any guest before.
He had been stern with some rowdier knights of course but not so intensely cutting as that!
Father was very careful with that voice; she had only heard it on very rare occasions.
Four times when he reprimanded the footmen for their conduct with the village or serfs.
Thrice for criminals under sentencing for murder or assault.
Twice with Alex, the first time when he had cut her with a knife while playing knight and wyrm, and the second when he talked her into flying with him after she had first grown big enough to manage it.
And even once with herself when she had snapped at Alex during her first year out of the egg.
But he had never used this tone with an honored Guest.
No one who brooked that tone outside the family had ever had the right to their table.
Just what was going ON with these wizards?!
Fizzbunches mrowed and dipped his head in assent to father's authority, a sign of supplication that somehow didn't quite work when a cat seated on cushions performed it.
It dripped with insincerity from each whisker despite how soft and acquiescent the words that carried with the bow.
"Of course my Lord Rochford, it was simple travelers tales and hearsay and I was quite young so very long ago. Not even landed or lordly at the time. I'm sure it was just a common mistake. Perhaps I misremember in fact?"
Father fixed the Lord Sorcerer, Wizard and Cat with a frown normally reserved for when a hard year was going to prove a terrible harvest for the fields.
Then spared a glance to the rest of the table.
Father stood and as was proper Jewel, Her Family, the Knight and the three wizards followed him from their seats. Jewel with some relief to no longer have to avoid damaging hers.
"We've supped and now I think those without business with myself and my Daughter had best retire for the evening. We've set aside rooms for you all. My staff can see you to them Sir Knight."
Mother nodded and shooed the protesting Alexander from the room as one of the footmen led Lothlar away.
After they left, the dishes and remains of dinner were taken away to be washed and some of the extra furniture removed to storage.
Naturally, nothing but spotless platters were before Jewel for the staff; she never wasted food and preferred to make the dish washers and maid's lives easier when she could.
He gestured for attention and declared to the hall and the remaining footmen.
"Everyone, you can be at ease for the night. And it will be a rest day tomorrow for all that worked tonight, call up the spare hands from the Village to relieve those normally on duty and tell the elders of the village that for the day the manor's stores are open to them for their sacrifices this evening."
And then with a flick of his finger he called them all to follow him and strode confidently back to his study.
Ironically the very room Jewel had been to that morning for the start of her scholarly studies with Alex.
Only the slightly different tilt of the old helm to indicate anything having been at all out of order before.
Father took his seat behind the solid old desk and gave a sigh, smiling softly to Jewel before his face turned harder as Fizzbunches had found his way to sitting imperiously upon father's desk. Dangerously close to an inkwell. Tail sweeping languidly from side to side.
Jewel was getting good at noticing the very distinctly arriving corners that the cat wizard made use of but was still not very certain precisely how they happened.
Or where exactly it was they went when Fizzbunches was not in need of one.
Before father could begin in what she was sure would be an interrogation of the Wizards and their business with HER the Cat saw fit to figuratively pounce into the conversation.
"Before we begin, Lord Rochford, I must offer compensation and beg apologies, for I have betrayed custom and failed to act as befits a guest under the aegis of hospitality and honor to your house and my station."
Which caught father rather offgaurd, though he hid it very well, his face and body barely moved towards the shape they wanted, but Jewel knew her father and he had smells aplenty to betray him. There was a single nose twitch from Fuzzbunches; she suspected he smelt the shock too.
"A betrayed custom Lord Sorcerer? I admit your entrance was rude, but it was hardly-"
"No my lord, I mean the trespass and circumvention of proper decorum, before the welcoming feast and proper introductions had been made I, through my own will and sound if foolish decision, did seek out your daughter for an audience before my introduction. A mistake I assure you from an aged mind, and it was thanks to the keen insight of a servant of yours and the lady that I was informed of the violation before it was compounded."
Jewel blinked at that, the tone of voice was sincere, contrite even, but there was not a single thing in that posture that read as anything but smug superiority and the assurance of a well laid plan coming together precisely.
The Bog and Autumn Wizard both fixed their individually unsettling stares at the cat in obvious surprise.
The wet slimy slaps of Tsulogothulan's lids clapping together and the slight rasp of lashes dragging through each other on the rebound was especially distracting in the silence that followed.
Jewel settled herself by letting her wings and coils press a bit more intensely into the thick woven rug beneath her. Pressing hard enough she could feel the whispering encouragement of the stone and earth below that.
Father finally found his voice, although he was cautiously neutral. On edge in his own way, and just as intense as Jorge had been.
"If the Lord Sorcerer deems it necessary. The Barony of Rochford will accept the recompense for this insult and all will be forgiven."
Which was not how Jewel felt Father should have been sounding to this revelation, he did not take insult from anyone lightly. Not even from Alexander in jest.
Patiently? Yes!
Kindly? If it was appropriate and possible.
But not with words so carefully put forth that he sounded almost as acquiescent as a serf before their lord!
Not even the Countess Bathory had earned the right to that from Father!
Just what was the rank of these three Wizards that they could bring father to this?!
There was admittedly only sparse word of Wizards in the histories Muriel had tasked them to read so far.
But were three really so dangerous?
"When, by chance, did the Lord Sorcerer find the time to intrude upon my daughter for this audience? You only arrived this afternoon seeking an audience with me."
This afternoon?! Before Alex and Jewel had even left this very study!?
"Well that is what I meant by the time addled and aged mind of mine — I had sought her out as soon as we had secured the hospitality and acceptance to stay and treat with your lordship Rothford. A mistake and misunderstanding of the local custom I assure you. Such will not happen again."
What?!
They had only settled the arrangements right before he showed up while she was bathing?!
Jewel kept her posture full of poise but she could feel the hairs of her mane standing on end and the muscles in her wing shoulders were tense holding them from flaring up and back. Her jaw was clenching to keep from widening to show her teeth. Neck with little trembles wanting to arch back threateningly.
Father's gaze turned towards her and a slightly raised brow was met with the finally slightly shamed flaring of her wings which further gave a tensing of his shoulders in commiseration and and understanding.
Yes, Father the cat before you had interrupted your daughter while she was BATHING.
And with a stiffening of his lip and brow furrowed, he considered the cat on his desk with more of the solid back demeanor she had been expecting from him at the beginning!
Lord Fuzzbunches did not seem perturbed at all.
"I see, that does clarify much, Lord Sorcerer. I hope you are offering something substantial in apology given your trespass."
The smug cat with his tiny spectacles and floppy red hat set Jewel's teeth to itching.
The Wizard's voice of pure contrition, even lilting with genuine and sincere apology just was not at all matched with his continence or posture.
"Why of course, as recompense for such I offer you, Lord Rochford, Your Heir, Family and Your Court the service of and loyalty of a single Wizard. Consecutively and without interruption to not exceed Seventeen years. To command as your vassal in warfare and peace, in defense and attack, in honesty and subterfuge with all the obligations so entailed, aligned solely to you and yours and no other noble above you irrevocable and without renegotiation until under no duress that you or your surviving heir so release this pact, as is sworn by the right of my magic and lore."
Jewel had never seen a look enter father's eyes of quite so acute wonder and abject surprise before.
It was not Jewel's place to speak out of turn. This was Father's study and his negotiations, his lands and his domain; the Wizards were here to entreat him.
She was his daughter and it was her place to trust him.
But she had to pull every reassurance from the gentle stone beneath the study's carpet to hold herself back from demanding an explanation.
A comfort reinforced by the glance of concern and soft kindness from her father as he took in her obvious distress at a glance.
"A single Wizard? I note these terms are not specifically for yourself, Lord Sorcerer Fizzbunches."
All three of the Wizards stood straighter and fixed Father with their version of a composed but steady look. Jewel found a hysterical humor in the least threatening of them being from the partly lidded and apologetic Eye of Tsulogothulan.
The silence was just a hair's breadth from awkward when, finally, Fizzbunches spoke with his head inclined in a vague intimation of a respectful bow.
"Yes, it would be inappropriate for you to be forced to take on the service of the very one who trespassed your family's honor. Nor would it be right to even demand that such a service be maintained with one you consider a total stranger now, without proper interview and consideration. Or to have you left without the full boon of my offer if you should find something unacceptable in any single candidate present before the debt is paid."
None of the wizards seemed perturbed anymore.
There were no subtle glances or shifts in position between them, they stood united and certain.
Jewel had the strange and somewhat exciting feeling of being an afterthought in the room. No visitor or noble had ever kept their entire focus on her father like this when she was present before. A wyrm demanded at least passing glances when they thought others would not notice.
But the Wizards apparently dismissed her very existence while this matter was being presented to Father.
Father mulled it over before looking to the Autumn Wizard and then the Bog Weird.
"Are you both willing to execute the Lord Sorcerer's Debt as he is implying? I admit not knowing much of the hierarchies of Wizardry but your titles have all sounded comparable to my ear."
The amber through red leaves of Euewyn dipped into not just a nod but a curtsy, the hem of her robes curling up to either side without any sign of sleeve or hand to guide them.
Tsulogothulan nodded with a stately dip and bob that reminded Jewel more of a swan or chicken type motion than a human nod.
"There are among Wizards many favors owed to the Lord Sorcerer, Weird of all the Alleys, Roofs and Gutters of the Trifold city of Ghergeintat. Such multitudes are his dealings that far more than just we three are an option to answer this debt Lord Rochford. Although to call some of them could be such an undertaking that the debt would be discharged waiting for the replacement to arrive."
That drew Father to a pause of consideration and a light drumming of his fingers on his study's desk. Solid old wood that desk, friendly and patient Jewel had found.
"This boon is acceptable recompense for your trespass, Although the decision of which of you three will service it is one I will confer on until no sooner then tomorrow evening. Now as to the business that you sought an audience with me about this afternoon."
The Lord Sorcerer was so smug that Jewel was surprised it was not dripping from his every whisker like honey.
"Of course Lord Rochford. I and my company of fellow wizards have traveled here to your lands in spite of the need to abandon our own domains for this chance to study and describe your Daughter."
Father's eyes darkened and Jewel tried to contain her trepidation. This sounded quite intrusive, uncomfortable and perhaps a little confusing.
Why the emphasis on describing her? Any courtier could describe all about her. What need was there of a wizard?
What was so important about her?
As if to answer her thought, the cat continued:
"She is the first wyrm egg within mortal care to hatch in seven centuries according to records searched by my own resources and those of my associates both present and otherwise."
Jewel considered that, she had read that quite a number of eggs were gifted to the houses involved after the Tyrant war. But so far she was the first hatch in the county. But there had been well over a dozen in the spoils!
And it was not like the Tyrant Wyrm was the only dragon. The knights reported on the feral wild wyrm beasts all the time and there was even a slaying just last year in the neighboring duchy of Kahvheim with three eggs in the hoard!
Which all told would have meant a Wyrm household member should be a rare but not a wholly unique boon to a family.
But for Jewel to be the only one to hatch in seven hundred years?
In a span of lands for however far the Wizard Cat's reach spread?
Even Mother was not familiar with the realm he and his party had come from.
If she was the only one? Then that made her a very valuable and dangerous asset. That made her Family terribly vulnerable to it.
The Countess Bathory was there to protect them but Mother and Father were more cowed by three Wizards traveling with but a single knight than they ever were by her.
"We have come to you to arrange terms and conditions for our exclusive access to her person for sorcerous study. Such access as stipulated will extend to at least those three Weird present and if possible other colleagues that bear a magic mark showing they are a part of our cabal."
Jewel had read her letters on rulings in the histories with Alexander. Much of the work of being a Lord dealt with things such as exclusive access to things. Land, Water, Animals, even people in the case of marriage or adoption.
It was a vital skill in a Lord and their family to understand the dealings and responsibilities expected of them.
And this was a deal regarding access to Jewel!
And there were MORE wizards potentially involved?! These three were just those that could be gathered along the way?
Jewel had read her histories, she knew the power of allies and so far every single wizard here was at least granted a title of Lord, Lady or some equivalent.
That put them at least on par with Father on rank alone, perhaps more or less depending on their other titles and the richness of their demesne.
And this Lord Sorcerer Fizzbunches was owed enough favors by other wizards to dictate their placement outside their own demesne?!
For years?!
Longer than she had been alive!
Not even the Countess had that sort of sway over Father!
Which meant that the Lord Sorcerer Fizzbunches, despite his equality in noble rank, was ruler over at least two lords with far tighter sway then even the Countess!
Jewel found herself curling up tightly against the carpet and floor until her shoulders were almost below the level of Father's desk.
"To include support from all beneficiary members thereof to ensure by any magic and arms at our command for her and your house's safety from any and all other claimants or outside powers, authorities or persons."
And they were speaking of war too. It was not spoken out right as that would be a declaration and potential insult to many and sundry. But she knew what the words 'ensure by any magic and arms at our command' meant.
Simply having 'access to' and 'right to describe' Jewel was reason to be preparing for a war with OTHER Wizards?!
That drew a harsh huff of shock from Father. Why would it-
Oh...
Those terms were not just for wizards or sorcerers. They were an open declaration of protection from all comers.
The Wizards would give Father protection from his liege the COUNTESS BATHORY if there was deemed a threat or danger from that way with at least three or more Wizards! Who were prepared to be at war with those that did not bend the (potentially proverbial) knee to the Lord Sorcerer Fuzzbunches for the right to access her?
Jewel's neck quivered with the tension to resist her mounting urge to burrow through father's fine carpet and into the safe embrace of the stone below.
"As well as all proper accommodations, limits, legal custom and clauses as you deem required. For your daughter's comfort, health and protection, of course."
Once again Fizzbunches' voice was all sweetness and cordiality.
But Jewel could not see if his posture matched.
She was too busy hiding her head under a wing and quivering in as tight a ball as she could manage.
Trying to shrink as impossibly small as the egg she had hatched from.
She could not see anything, just heard the words.
Father's words were colder than when she had secretly listened in to him passing judgment on a kinslayer.
"You have given me much to think about but it is late. And you traveled long to get here. We will discuss this later Lord Sorcerer when we have all had time to rest and consider. I wish a peaceful evening to you and your party under my hospitality."
Jewel stayed curled up, even as the sound of departing figures and closed doors signaled that the three wizards had departed.
She trembled and shook at the contact of her Father's hand on her shoulder.
Only slowly relaxing with a shuddering breath as he ran his fingers through her mane.
"It's okay, my little Jewel. They're asking us to give them terms. And we shall give them to protect you. It will be alright. You don't have to worry."
She felt father's weight settle against her tightly wound coils and his arm looped over her to squeeze her from either side while he continued gently stroking through her hair and muttering softly.
At some point she smelled Mother approach the door to the study. Heard the door opening and Mother breathing something sharply before she too settled down against her daughter to softly soothe and calm her.
It was not proper, she should have slept in her own room and bed as she had since she turned seven and let her parents get their rest in their own room.
They had both been dealing with all of this for at least half the day and whatever was needed to bring a feast together so quickly.
But she did not stir from the floor of the study forcing her parents to stay with her until Jewel finally found sleep.
Poor Jewel. Hearing that hordes of wizards want to study you would have anyone react like that.
Hopefully Countess Bathory isn´t too similar to her namesake Countess Báthory.
Jonathan the Third of House Rochford, Lord Baron of Rochford considered the restfully breathing mass of his daughter as he leaned against her side.
It was a funny thing.
He had not expected to become Jewel's father.
He had not expected her egg to hatch at all within his lifetime, if he was being perfectly honest.
Many of his peers had their own theoretical Wyrm Children waiting in eggs. Mostly by inheritance or trade off of such from the clutch claimed and divided in the aftermath of the Tyrant War.
A few others came as spoils from the rare wild wyrm hunt that had met success.
But right up until it finally happened nine years ago, Jonathan had not thought it would fall to him out of all his line to be the Wyrm Master.
And even then in the first year or so, though bewildering and full of entirely unexpected new accolades, responsibilities and sudden political relevance, Jonathan had expected that the Wyrmling would be something like a particularly intelligent pet or warbeast.
Perhaps something he cared for like a hunting hound or his Gryphon Zephyrvam. But it had simply not turned out anything like that.
Alexander was the light of his world and demanded attention too, of course.
But his (then still little) Jewel had acted far more like a toddling child than any animal. And even though that was endearing and surprising it was not the moment that truly made her his or his wife's daughter.
No, they each had a separate moment for that.
It was the words that did him in.
She had called him papa not shortly after Alexander had. And with a far clearer and sharper understanding then his son showed. You could always see it in her eyes that she spoke with understanding then and now.
That was when he realized that somewhere along the way she had stopped being just some beast which he was entrusted to care and raise and instead his own child.
And by her own declaration a daughter.
His Caroline admitted that for her, the moment when Jewel became daughter instead of pet had been a few years later.
Jewel had been singing softly one of the lullabies that soothed Alexander whenever he was frightened. Rocking him gently in her coils, already nearly bigger then he was but gentle as can be.
Their son had been crying over something neither parent could remember, children cried a lot, even Jewel when she was especially young.
But after that the bemused and exasperated tone had fled Caroline whenever Jonathan had called Jewel their daughter instead of their charge and obligation.
It took quite a bit of doing after that, not helped by the stories of the Tyrant War that were still immortalized in songs told up and down the kingdom in every tavern and court.
He had not been stopped by such custom and pushed through the recognition by his right as a lord.
The Countess herself had come to his court to officiate and apply her seal on the adoption papers.
And so that was legally the day which made Jewel not just a spoil of war and a family heirloom but a legitimized child of House Rochford. But she had been his daughter for far longer than that.
Which made the predicament they found all of themselves in just that bit thornier.
A noble by right, blood and compact Jewel might be, but she was still his, as her lord and father.
And it was, to be fair, a far more reasonable and less extreme overture of alliance then he had joked about with his friends and fellow Gryphonlords after the adoption.
No one had yet actually made the hilarious overture of a betrothal to Jewel, thinking a sham marriage to an animal would be an easy alliance.
He and Caroline still were not settled on what they would do if that day ever actually came.
He admitted that, despite trying to become as knowledgeable as was possible regarding her species, Johnathon was not entirely sure if Jewel was actually female, or if that even applied to dragons.
The naturalists, clergy and scholars had frustratingly little detail except that they all seemed to have eggs.
Which was a point in favor, he supposed, for who knew what time there in the dark trying to find sleep where it would not come.
The Lord of Rochford breathed carefully and deeply and shifted as much as he dared. For all that she was near impervious to casual cutting, abrasions and her own apocalyptically destructive flames, his daughter could be disturbed by the slightest out of place brush or shift of weight near her.
She was also hilariously ticklish if you knew where to brush your fingers.
If she was still sleeping when he had to resume his duties Johnathan considered waking her like he did when she was still something he could lift.
This he considered with great effort to smother even a tremble of laughter.
But sadly such moments were distinctly relegated to the past for him and his daughter.
The tickle fights were now absolutely only an outdoors affair.
Given what it had made of his former study.
The extra accolades and military funding to facilitate the upbringing and training of such an asset to the realm as Jewel represented were substantial and helped with many of the expenses needed for her care and comfort.
But the County, Duchy and Kingdom over him would only tolerate so much.
Best to save any ostentatious requests til later.
She was growing to be such a careful and considerate child there was liable to be quite the fortune available when she was old enough to make proper use of it.
Thank every god among the stars and sky that she got along so well with her brother too.
Alexander had never needed any extra reinforcement that his younger sister was anything but family.
Even when she outgrew every horse in the stable he still treated her like the 'little' sister.
Even when she spoke and read quite a bit better than the 11 year old boy did she still conferred to him as her elder.
It was endearing in the extreme but sometimes worried him.
She would let her youthful 'elder' brother get the both of them into trouble far more then she should.
Jonathan was no stranger to siblings egging each other into trouble (he was one of five brothers himself) but if she just took on the authority and responsibility he knew she could, there would be a lot fewer gray hairs taking over poor Murial's black locks.
Then again, it was easy to forget just how young Jewel was.
He recalled what had just happened this evening.
One of those moments that reminded him for all her aptitude and attentive watching and grasp of word and letters poor Jewel was nine.
The Lord Rochford shifted again as softly as he could and envied his wife her ability to sleep like a stone while half stood up snuggled into a loop of their daughter's coils.
He'd never managed that no matter how many times he found himself in this position and simply resigned to suffering through the next day bleary eyed and yearning to settle in early for bed.
He was far too young to be getting this old, not even thirty and blessed with two far too incredible children that were going to age him before his time.
A son that showed such bravery that, if tempered with wisdom, would make for a great lord, possibly even a possible count.
And a daughter who was literally a latent weapon of war that, given time to grow and mature, would challenge the strength of arms of every other soldier and knight of the realm put together.
And that was before a literal cabal of thrice-damned Wizards arrived and insinuated their interests into his and his daughter's business no matter what he did.
He again, as quietly as he could, let the frustration out in a long slow breath, staring at the dark of the ceiling of his study and listening to the soft deep rumble of his daughter and wife snoring.
As if there was any doubt that she was anything but the girl's mother.
How such a small woman could be so loud at rest is a mystery beyond wyrms and wizards.
He tried for the eleventh time that hour closing his eyes but the noise of his spouse and child and the position he had to take to bring her peace conspired with the looming specter of tomorrow.
He would find no sleep tonight so instead he thought and pondered.
Jonathan had not intended or expected to become Jewel's father.
But despite all of it he would never trade that he was for anything.
Jewel knew that sleeping in Father's study was improper.
But waking up to him and Mother leaving to prepare for the day was such a relief that, at least in this one case, Jewel felt she could say it could sod off with being proper.
naturally, she was fully awake by the time Mother had stumbled off her, muttered at least fifteen things Jewel had been explicitly forbidden to ever say for herself and stumbled out the study door to get washed and dressed in something unrumpled from a night sleeping among the coils of her daughter.
Jewel gave an experimental sniff at her own scales and made a face.
The lavender scent from the bath was more or less entirely burned away.
Replaced by petrichor and lightning again.
Still, it would be terribly wasteful and rude to call up Jorge to heat another entire bath just for this subtle scent.
Jewel stretched and unfurled across the study, unbundling her loops of body and twisting her spine from side to side and around itself, getting each muscle and vertebrae unkinked and loosened. Wings next, although even with the voluminous space within the study she still needed to be careful not to flap overmuch.
Stationery and books were liable to be blown about if she did.
With a quick glance over her back and then a bit of a pawing through her mane, Jewel supposed she at least looked presentable enough for walking the halls with guests.
She would have to settle for more lavender-infused oil, unless something particularly strenuous came up with Muriel's lesson plan.
She walked with a smooth graceful stride, undulating up and down with each step through the halls to her bathing chamber. Jorge was not in attendance, but honestly he technically did have duties other than guarding her empty tub in case she wanted a hot soak.
A glance around for any suspiciously arriving cats upon stools or that slight itch that preceded any of those hidden corners he liked to arrive from behind seemed prudent. Especially given the wizards were apparently staying here somewhere.
Satisfied she was not going to be disturbed, Jewel raised herself up so she could reach the upper shelf and retrieved the precious jug of lavender-infused oil.
It was rather large; she believed the trader had said the earthenware container had once carried wine from somewhere terribly far away and supposedly impressive.
If the usual boasting was to be believed, the waters there were full of salt, or filled with gold dust, or something equally absurd.
Jewel had at the time been quite incredulous in her four year old wisdom of just what was and was not likely.
Given that Wizards apparently were just as strange if not more so than books had implied she found herself considering the tale a bit less skeptically.
If cats could arrive from around invisible corners in your bathroom and command more power than a Countess, why couldn't waters so vast and wide be salty as tears?
Either way she had the reek of sleep to scrub through and if not wash away at least to cover up for the sake of guests and her household's noses.
A glance over her scales left her pausing. She did not think she looked particularly less shiny than she had yesterday, but honestly Jewel could not be sure what people were talking about there. It almost always looked the same to her, and when it did look noticeably different she was told it was the same.
Vexing things her scales were.
She used the rough felted wool today rather than the polishing stone. If Jorge, her parents or Governess offered comment later she would go over to buff her scales with the stone originally meant for polishing show armor and mirrors.
A healthy dollop of oil filled the room with the sweet and (more importantly) masking scent of lavender as she carefully worked the now sopping wet rag up and down her body.
Going in smooth circular motions with whichever of her four legs was working the wool helped press the scent into the subtle little crevices between her scales where the pulse of her inner Wyrmflame would slowly burn it off.
It took two more applications from the bottle to replenish the cloth before she managed to get every scale properly lubricated and, at least to a cursory sniff, the deep caustic fizz of her own scent was properly masked.
Properly prepared for the daily activities, Jewel returned the jug to its shelf and slipped out to breakfast with her family and possibly guests.
Yesterday was a trial both surprising and terrible.
But with the light of a new dawn just worming its way into the narrow windows of her home it all seemed a bit smaller than it had been.
She was sure Father would have it sorted.
The feasting hall was dressed back down to normal unofficial levels. There was only one household banner over the head of the table, instead of all seven that didn't have fraying threads or moth-nibbled gaps.
Father was spooning morning porridge into his mouth a bit stiffly, going over a scroll that smelled of foreign vellum and the kind of charcoal that was easy to wash out of the pages rather than fresh ink.
Mother and Alexander were eating their morning porridge a bit more enthusiastically. Alexander had gotten a fleck on the very tip of his nose, somehow.
The Autumn and Bog Wizards were here as well, spooning proper portions from and having a staring match with their bowls, respectively.
Jewel settled onto her 'seat' with an internal sigh and began daintily working through her own proportionate bowl. lamenting the need to uphold appearances. Until the guests were considered a bit better integrated with the household it would not be seemly for her to lounge on the good friendly stone floor.
Still, Jewel always liked eating out of her bowl.
The thick, sturdy wood had inspired numerous complaints about its intractable and tool-destroying nature from Richard Wodseer the Carpenter. Apparently after over a fortnight of attempts, he had finally worked out that if he got hot coals from the blacksmith's forge he could burn it to a carvable consistency without ruining the edge on his chisel.
Jewel found it resisted her claws and teeth almost as well as steel, but she still had to be careful not to scrape at it too harshly.
Not that she ever actually touched her teeth to the fine surface or more than brushed her claws on its fine finish.
Jewel, of course, used a spoon like any proper lady when she ate her porridge.
Even if said spoon was originally a wooden soup ladle requisitioned for the task.
"Good Morning Father. I-Is that the provisional contract for Lord Sorcerer Fizzbunche's ..."
The possible ramifications from yesterday started to make her joints itch to flare out and her tail lash but she held them mostly still, or at least slowed her agitated wag to something more calm and composed.
He looked her way with a slight crinkle to his eyes and nodded.
"Apparently the Lord Sorcerer is not accustomed to the rhythms of such a rUrul province as Rochford."
Which drew Jewel's attention to something both like the cracking of twigs underfoot and bird song, yet unlike both and distinctly full of humor and frivolity.
That it was coming from the shaking shoulders of Euewyn finally clued Jewel into the fact she was laughing at something.
Tsulogothulan paused in blinking up another chunk of porridge out of their bowl and swallowed heavily before speaking, voice lilting in mirth as well despite the strangely round accent.
"The Lord Fizzbunches is not wont to rise any earlier than noon save for imminent mortal peril."
And then the mirth became an actual chortle that somehow smelled of dew and mist.
"And in such cases I find myself deeply sympathetic to the plight of said peril that should seek to disturb him."
Wind whistling in branches followed, to the mystery of everyone present besides apparently the Wizards, in whom it inspired another heavy snort of laughter before they both returned to their breakfast.
Taking a good few spoonfuls of her own breakfast and swallowing in a proper manner, Jewel pried a bit: "And the Knight Lothlar?"
"He chose to eat on schedule with the footmen before dawn and check in with the village for any troubles he could help them with, as a 'spot of exercise'." Mother spoke lightly while she wiped at Alexander's cheek and nose to remove more errant porridge.
Jewel did not understand how he managed that. It's not even like he was a messy or over enthusiastic eater, it just kind of ended up in places during the process in a manner that was perhaps a latent magic gift?
She was unsure.
Still, that covered the state of all of their Guests.
And breakfast continued to finish with hardly much more conversation, but unlike yesterday's feast the silence felt cozier and familiar.
Father was busy with affairs of his position, nevermind that they were affairs directly related to her.
Mother was fussing over Alexander maybe a bit more than necessary.
The Knight was comfortably being a knight as knights always do.
And right on cue as they were mostly finishing up, Muriel arrived for her and Alexander so they could resume their interrupted study of the histories.
You could almost forget that three wizards had just arrived to completely throw into disarray the political position and the very foundational alliances that protected her home and family.
Also Fizzbunches totally knew what he was up to, disturbing a lady's bath. He just didn't think she was a lady, which considering he's a mangy cat is rude but typical.
Of all the Wyrms, the tyrant is the most dangerous. It is as intelligent as a man and can speak the languages of its country. It can learn other languages, if it encounters a speaker. The Tyrant's scales are impervious to any single strike from metal, stone, or wood. It must be brought down by a constant barrage of blows to the same spot until its hide finally gives way and blood can be spilled.
To compare, the Mountain Wyrm's scales are too thick to pierce, while the lesser lepori wyrm's scales are so soft that the challenge is to avoid damaging them during a hunt. Hunters of the former favor long spears with hooks for prying open the armor so that a partner can stab between the scales, while the latter are best brought down with sling bolts or cudgels.
As with all true Wyrm from the mouth can be expelled a blinding white smoke which leaves naught but ash in its wake. As their most destructive weapon it is vital for any would-be slayer or hunter to avoid attacking from the front with the Tyrant Wyrm especially.
While with the merely cunning Wild Wyrm, a forward charge might not provoke this form of attack, the Tyrant is well aware of its own power and will make use of it on any such foolish charges.
No shield of steel, wood or stone however fashioned will suffice to defend for much longer than a moment from direct assault by this all-destroying smoke. Avoidance, surprise and flanking are the only viable tactic, and the Tyrant Wyrm will make this more difficult than any other of its kin.
It is conjectured that the exhalation is not in fact fire, but a fluid which releases the latent elemental fire in all it touches. Nonetheless, all attempts to extract such a venom from the corpses of any wyrm including the tyrant have so far failed.
In records from the accounts of Pythra of Veracules the Wanderer, encounter of two Tyrant Wyrm and their deaths were witnessed:
The Serpent King Ghaurganzor who was fifty feet from snout to tail tip and a hundred feet (or perhaps hundred and twenty) between the farthest tips of the wings at full extension. His hide was that of tarnished copper and mottled in black, and he commanded a legion of armed snakes deft in use of spears and possessing a powerful venom and by them commanded all the peoples and land between the peaks of Fraeidillo and Winchost in serfdom.
He was slain in the year of 1052 by the Dynasties of the Sun Lands. The last of his legion was seen in 1056, as part of the expansion of Aurelia of Cantor.
This is corroborated by records of this engagement stating it was at the cost of three centuries of fully armored soldiers and the act of two military-trained Elementalists, one of whom was lost in the act.
When the Tyrant Wyrm fell, his legions broke and routed from the battle in all directions. The corpse was divided and the skull was carried at the head of the Triumph on return from the expansion campaign.
It would be used as the framing for the Imperial throne of Cantor for a decade after, until it was broken down at the behest of the Academy of Sages for study.
Second, the Mountain Seer Shialtza's physical descriptions were solely reported by Pythra and said to be a hundred and eleven feet long and possessed of voluminous wings that could never be properly measured at once. The scales were white like ivory or snow and it commanded no apparent legions but the inner circle of the monastery was always fully obscured in full dress and never spoke.
It commanded allegiance from all the plains of Inochi within view of the mountain peak which housed its monastery.
On a return visit to the region Pythra found the lands ruled by barbarian kings and the monastery sacked.
The cause of the Mountain Seer's death is not known but according to the locals, in the year 1046 (by the Dynastic calendar) the inner circle descended from the mountain bearing a train of palanquin burdened by its corpse and playing instruments of mourning local to the region.
There are legends, tombs and remains that are said were also Tyrant Wyrms but whether these were the distinctly dangerous foes attributable with the powers of thought, speech and provincial command exhibited by True Tyrants is mere conjecture.
Every domain and province of the empire makes claim to fealty to the wild wyrms as their own special Tyrant Wyrm but the monstrous packs which roam around such animals is sure proof against these assertions of intelligence and speech where such still live.
And in death there is little to distinguish Tyrant Wyrm from their feral and far less dangerous kin.
It is conjectured by Altun the Elder that the Tyrant Wyrm is but a fully mature specimen and that it is within the means of any wild wyrm to successfully mature into such.
But if such is the case, the Serpent Lerner's vast size and completely feral nature offers a counter argument. It has preyed upon man and beast and grown in its marshes from records that predate the founding of the Sun Land's Dynasty to present times (1074 SD).
- Excerpt from Orion's Historica Naturalis Cantora
The Tyrant Wurm is significantly larger than the common Feral Wurm. I observed one such beast to be between five and eight tons in weight (while their size is somewhat difficult to measure exactly as these monstrous creatures are often seen moving about) and approximately fifty to sixty feet in length. It is a fearsome beast, whose scales are as hard as steel, teeth as knives, and claws deadly swords.
Its breath has a terrible reek of it that can fell men of strong constitution and kill women and children.
Such is the terrible and unwholesome stench it can also slay or sicken livestock and bring to waste whole acres of crops. I have further witnessed this terrible reek to even tarnish copper at five hundred feet.
The Tyrant Wyrm eats everything that men might need for nourishment just to deprive them. But most of all these terrors desire meat, hunting and devouring its favorite food of the noblest and most prized of horses and the most treasured of good cattle. However, they will devour all other manners of animals if convenient if these are not otherwise available as well as men, women and children if they are found alone.
A fearsome beast, and one that is a maturation from the more common and tractable Feral Wurm. The Tyrant Wurm is cunning but contrary to stories entirely incapable of speech. Driven by its wickedness and hunger only it will never stop hunting, devouring the flesh of man or beast until its belly is full and straining to bursting. Even after a large meal, it will continue to search for prey and even while stuffed so full one can spot its plunder heaping out of its throat it will despoil wholesome food out of spite.
Tales say Tyrant Wurms can summon beasts to do their bidding, but believe not! For this is nothing more than a foolish tale. The Tyrant Wurm is a powerful and dangerous creature, but it is not a magician.
Do not be confused by those who spread this tale for they have simply seen the habits of the younger specimens in Feral Wurm, which are known by all learned men to nest with animals.
Verily a creature of such chaos, gluttony and destruction. Its actions are yet comical in their absurdity, and often undone by its own wickedness as when such King Wurm have been known to enter a city gate, steal a single piece of cheese out of avarice and covetousness, and then attempt to flee the town in its equally sinful cowardice.
These Wurms have also been seen eating entire carts of produce simply to deprive honest laborers and lords of their succor, as well as consuming whole granary stores chaff and seed together before moving onto pastures to slay and devour cattle and spoil the seedlings.
Flee these terrifying creatures if possible. They do not seek or hunt man especially, preferring to prey on livestock or bring ruination to fields.
They are truly terrible creatures and a blight on all the world.
But fear not there are ways to ward off all such beasts even these Tyrant Kings of Wurms.
As I can attest by the efficacy among many villages which were once plagued by assault from all sundry of these beasts.
The first and most certain of a guard from wurm deprivations is to carve a wurm of your own from stone or wood. The figure must be larger or at least its eyes higher positioned than the wurm you seek to ward off, and it must be carved in the shape of an equally fearsome beast.
The wurm being sinful in all things is so proud of its own image that it will challenge the figure head to a staring contest. The figurehead being carved and unliving will never back down, and the wurm will eventually give up and leave in shame never to return or succumb to starvation or thirst and die.
Another less efficacious but also more accessible manner of deterring the wurm is to use a mixture of herbs hung in a bag over one's front door.
The wurm while it has a truly poor sense of smell, cannot stand the scent of anything pleasant. For this is anathema to its own stench and wickedness.
A mixture of garlic, rosemary, thyme, and lavender will work well. Wildflowers will suit as well although they will not last as long and should be replaced every three days or as soon as the scent is no longer evident to a healthy nose.
This will drive off the more lazy and less determined of Wurm if there is nothing else to entice them most times.
However, this is not a guarantee, as the wurm is a stubborn beast and may take offense to the pleasantness instead of being driven off. If this should happen fear not, stay hidden and wait as it chooses to attack the warding bag, after a tumult of wroth the beast will eventually leave in a fury.
Replace the warding bag and herbal mixture and it will remain as efficacious as before.
However, despite these wards, remember to always beware the Wurm in all its forms, for it is a creature of great danger and boundless evil. If you encounter one, do not attempt to fight it, nor make use of the warding while it can witness you or any animal or edible beast (which to a Tyrant Wurm is all of them). Their efficacy is only such if there is no mortal flesh to entice its hungers and lure it otherwise.
And remember If you should see any Wurm flee as quickly as you can.
Spread this word far and Wide and Blessings be on you.
-On The Sinful Tyrants by Brother Ordelain, Naturalist and Monk of the Hrothfield Monastery in middle Egelheimvin.
Jewel decided that she rather liked hunting after all.
It had sounded like it might be a very frustrating affair if you went by the way that Adventuring Knights or footmen complained about the dirt and the aches from horseback. Or how they all complained about the way the brush of the woodland tangled in cloaks.
However so far none of these problems were ones that dragons seemed to be concerned with.
She mused on these many qualities that did not matter for her while lightly skipping in slow undulating waves, her body trailing in sweeping arcs. Her head first, followed by her shoulders, and then the rest, each rising along in great rhythmic swells as they strolled through the woods.
Jewel kept herself aloft with little flexes of her mostly-furled wings and the occasional dainty kick off of the ground.
Following along atop trotting horses were Muriel, Alexander and four of the footmen supposedly most skilled in woodscraft and hunting.
While Jewel had stayed away from hunts (as it was mostly not considered proper for a lady like mother), Alex had been taken on a few hunts before.
Though it had not really been her brother doing the hunting; he'd not been allowed to actually fire his bow.
But today that was changing.
Jewel was determined to be there for him on his special day. But it was honestly turning out far less of a chore then she had expected!
The churn of the many chewing things that lived all through the woods mingled with the scent of pained cry, panic and warning suffusing the woods and groves.
Filling her nostrils with the anguished cries of fresh spilled blood belonging to clover, beech, betula and hornbeam.
Her brother was riding Fetherfew, the calmest old mare in the family's stable that had not gone to nag, while Muriel was comfortably seated on Halberdine, one of the youngest of the stallions that her family was training as chargers. In a few years if the training went well he might very well be her brother's steed, at least according to the manuals she had read while waiting for him to catch up with his histories.
Although given his role as Father's heir they might need to acquire a place at one of the rare Gryphon hatchings so he could fulfill his duties as a Gryphon lord and obtain a steed that way.
Jewel guessed those manuals and treatises had been written for the training of children for nobility who favored grounded cavalry.
But they had agreed that it was good and proper for the male offspring of nobility to train in the acts of hunting. Those same manuals are why Jewel had spent so long trying to learn embroidery, which was by far one of the most fiddly of activities she had ever attempted.
That is until she started doing it with her hind claws while lounging on her back so she could comfortably look at what she was doing without having to stare down at her own collarbone.
The horses the footmen rode were not from the manor's stables and probably came from one of the pastures that kept a small herd for Father to select the best colts and fillies as a tithe to maintain the horsepower of the house. One of the better Stallions had even gone to the Countess for her stables as part of their Tithe.
Jewel was uncertain precisely how much of their demesne's value could be measured in horse or what the cost was.
The Accounts and Ledgers of the barony were always locked up when Jewel and Alexander were using Father's study, so she had to assume from what books on stewardship and the care of beasts and fields said that this was less expensive than paying another lord to supply their stables with adequate steed.
The sun shone warm and strong down in great streaming light through the scattered pockets of open sky and for once, the smell of impending rain was not because Jewel was overly stressed.
The intermittent golden light and silver clouds set her Wyrmfire coursing with a delighted burbling brook kind of feeling that rushed in echoes through her muscles and bones, bouncing around against her scales like rambunctious pups kept too confined for too long.
The leaves over her sang with her in sleepy wet breaths and sighs as they drunk the light as surely as she did.
It was hard not to simply rush forward and upward into open flight over the woods but it would have not been proper.
They were to go hunting and a hunt meant to ride through the woods after the signs of game.
The hunter Kraok Axeson stalled to bring his horse apace with Muriel to speak.
"The Rabbits have been bountiful this last spring, Miss Governess. Should not be a trial at all to set up a still shot for the lad, if we dismount and step lightly before the meadow. If we miss the shot a few snares will ensure we don't return empty handed regardless."
Alexander huffed and waved to the kit he was burdened with in exasperation.
"If all we're here for is rabbits why do we always bring everything else?!"
Jewel's eye following the gesture to his Short Bow (he was neither big nor strong enough for a proper ridingbow), Spear and of course a knife and a short hafted wood ax.
All of it was perhaps a bit over sized for his still growing stature. But was everything Jewel had heard you wanted on a hunt.
If you weren't a dragon.
Kraok shook his head and answered patiently.
"Only a fool only takes what he thinks he needs, young sir."
Alexander looked around with a pout.
"Well why are we hunting something so common as rabbit, Miss Muriel! Why can't we go after something proper and honorable! Like a good stag or a proper Wild Boar?!"
One of the footmen, Jewel thought maybe his name was Gimletson or something spoke with just enough jovial laughter to avoid being offensive to a lord's son.
"Oh! It's not the best season for stag, good Sir. And while we are carrying spears, that is more preparation just in case we come across any bear or perhaps something monstrous wandered far from a lair."
Muriel spoke up over the building groan from her charge.
"Young Sir."
Which quieted Alexander promptly, Jewel did not giggle at her older brother's comeuppance; such would have been improper as a dutiful and supportive sister. But one was not supposed to present so improper a mein as he had been giving on this hunt.
"It is best to listen to those more experienced, and take their consul with consideration. As Lord you will need to weigh what your subjects bring to you and come to decisions even when you yourself are not as experienced as they. When you are older you will set the quarry of the hunt. But for today leave it to those yet wiser and more learned in the way of beasts."
Mollified, Alexander nodded to the footman turned huntsman for the day and gave a still somewhat petulant tone to his 'order'.
"Rabbits it is then."
Jewel presumed they had been riding towards the aforementioned meadow and rabbits this whole time. Not even pausing for the 'discussion' and planning period.
It was quite a pleasant time all around in the woods. The horses were as quiet as can be managed, their saddles less intensive affairs than full war kit to avoid the louder tack.
Likewise was everyone armored lighter, the greater stealth appropriate for a hunt.
Muriel was armored the most in heavy studded leather over a gambeson. While Alexander and the footmen were in lighter leathers with less chance to creak when they moved. But the Governess was not kitted to partake in the hunt herself, only wearing a short sword as arms.
It required further smothering of giggles at the thought of their Governess taking down rabbits or even deer with a sword. She was pretty certain that Muriel could manage it, and even make it look skilled and graceful. But it was such a ludicrous image.
As for herself Jewel was confident in not needing to make much effort to be quiet, she left hardly a trace and her body barely disturbed the air or underbrush with its languid bobbing in smooth undulations. For fun, she made a game of only pressing off against the occasional moss covered stone or root so that not even the slightest tap of her claws would be heard.
All of it fairly superfluous given how such light a noise was drowned out by all the little creaks and squeaks which even the softest leather suitable for armor and riding gear produced.
Nothing egregious enough to disturb the birds in the branches amidst the trees that just barely failed to reach over their trail but still a disturbance other game were acting on.
Jewel could scent that hardly any beast which might possibly be the target of a hunt was coming within range of her nose, unless it was cowering in the muffling dirt of an earth dug burrow or the focused quality that came from a tree hollow.
She neither heard nor smelt recent deer save for spoor left good hours before their arrival.
But even if their quarry was simply rabbits it was all around quite a pleasant diversion.
This was shaping up to be a wonderful cool summer day.
Perhaps there would be a bit of rain later in the evening, but if everything was finished by noon they could be home well before then.
And what's more, for all the lackluster and ad hoc nature of the feast set for the Wizard's arrival three days ago, today's homecoming was planned well in advance to have some pageantry to celebrate the success of the Lord's heir on his first personal hunt.
Not as much as when they would join with a few neighbors for a grand hunt alongside Father come mid summer.
But a local affair for the family and subjects all the same.
Jewel looked forward to seeing her brother triumph and the party afterwards to commemorate Alexander's first hunt where he was expected to actually contribute something to the effort.
He was quite good with that bow so mere rabbits should serve no trouble for him.
So I wanted to get the first complete 'episode' of Shining Wyrm out and complete fast so everyone can get a solid feel of what to expect.
Chapters 1.1 - 1.ii are essentially that. A taste and preview of what is to come and what I'm interested in.
If you for some reason read until this point and hated it this is the time to bail, it's not gonna stop that is the tone and breadth you should expect the majority of this story to be.
Go on, you have whatever weird arbitrary permission you seem to require from me to go read something else you enjoy more.
Now onto why I added this Author's note:
We are now gonna slow down a bit to a pace of about 1 chapter posted every other day and based on some experience I've had in the past I'm planning to be a bit more social in the thread. These forum posts are the opportunity for people to bring up thoughts, catch typos or just ask questions and either get cryptic allusions to spoilers or flat out answers.
I'm planning too as soon as we get too 10.9 to do a daily posting blitz to royal road after I use whatever I hear in these forum posts to do a polish pass.
Also planning a FEW illustrations (probably no more then one or two per 'episode' if I'm being honest.) And I'm willing to take some suggestions on what scene you think is most deserving of getting illustrated.
Cheers and Welcome to the ride everyone.
I've got to wonder what the conditions for Jewel hatching were. Perhaps hers were the first family that would treat a wyrm as a daughter?
Hmm. Wouldn't tradition have multiple little siblings for Jewel? Was Jewel sufficiently exhausting that two children is more than enough?
Here's hoping Jewel gets a fun-filled journey of self-discovery.
Do Weird wizards start human and then become Weird... or does Jewel qualify for entry due to being non-human and capable of magic?
I wonder if Jewel is good at hugz, and if any of the wizards will receive one... I expect that at some point Mr. Cat is going to earn himself being rubbed the wrong way.
When they were drawing close to the border of the forest and the meadow, the riders dismounted and set their horses to loose ties on branches near the trail. Alexander stretched and did a few squats to work the ache out of his thighs.
The saddle was not as well proportioned for her brother, since he would eventually grow into it. He had to sit with a wider splay to his legs than Muriel or any of the hunters did on their own horse.
After that the hunting party moved softly on foot. Jewel settled on far less exuberant strides, keeping herself practically belly crawling, bunching herself with twists from side to side instead of arcing her spine in humps.
It was harder to remain quiet like this. Her tail took extra concentration to avoid lashing at the brush and shrubs.
Her wings were especially awkward impediments and limited the routes she could take, while Alexander and the four hunters could take narrow passes between brambles and underbrush.
The soft leather of their hunting shoes and even steps barely disturbed the grass and hardly made a sound at all.
They had circled around the side of the meadow to stay downwind, and Jewel could smell the warren even before they saw it.
She could smell the beasts gnashing at the freshly sprout soft leaves of clover and meadow grass. The pleas and dire warnings tingling in her nose to try and muster for those around they needed to grow more bitter against the endless devouring.
The smell of the rabbit's prey dieing was almost stronger than their own scents.
A glance to Muriel for permission was rebuked with a gentle shake of the head.
Jewel's pleading eyes got an eyeroll from the governess as she slowed her approach to stalk beside Jewel and whisper softly.
"I know you can smell them, young lady, but let your brother win by his own merit, not yours. It's his hunt and his glory this day. We are here for his honor, to be there for his triumphs."
Jewel could hear the unsaid but still present message in her tone that they would also be there to commiserate with Alexander for his failures too on this hunt. Should he not be able to make any of his marks himself.
So she held her tongue despite the growing scent of rabbits eating. Mingling and interlaced with the scent were the other beasts walking through the meadow and the vegetation there.
There was a great many Quail foraging amidst the taller grass just over a rise away from where the four hunters and Alex were stalking forward. They were careful to avoid disturbing by noise, scent or sight as they entered the sun-dappled clearing of the meadow.
The other animals added their scent as Jewel paused at the edge of the clearing. The grass would perhaps conceal her, but it was too rich a green to fully hide the shine of her scales. If it was third summer or early autumn the grass would blend well and obscure her.
But the shoots of all the plants were still young and fresh despite the carnage chewing and biting through them everywhere.
Muriel nodded at her restraint and then strode hunched and hidden into the tall grass, trailing her brother, leaving her to watch the meadow and drink in the rivers of scent that carried on the wind.
Burrowing beasts she had never seen before announced their presence from the earth. Small field mice practically chirped their presence among the taller stalks.
Even the faint sweet scent of bees and others of the world's smallest of birds settled into her nose as they flitted upon the summer blooms before ascending above the tall grasses and entering Jewel's view.
Standing this close to the quarry, their ears alert, and trying to line up a good shot on the warren and its rabbits, the party no longer spoke. She could not spot them through the drifting grass and had to guess that they were catching one another's eyes and gesturing circumspectly to guide and consider the situation before them.
Her nose tickled with Alexander's sweat, the four hunters and Muriel's own musk. So much like their horses and yet distinctly unique to any other beast Jewel knew.
Their leathers added a unique fragrance that took a forefront with no other senses to distract.
Jewel imagined they must have found a vantage to line up a shot since their smell was no longer moving further into the field.
And it was not very far from the diffuse presence of the rabbits and the midmorning meal she had already caught.
A quick glance to make sure no one was looking and Jewel slid her tongue loose into the air to taste, letting the fuzzy sense of presence sharpen to clear rivulets of scent dancing in the wind, arcing over and through each other like a tapestry's weave.
Making sharp and clear all the presences of plant and beast all through the meadow. Practically rendering the obscurement to sight an afterthought.
Yes, that was her brother down low enough for a crouch, but the distinct shift suggested where his arms were poised, exposing his pits more as he pulled back on the bow string. She could not hear the strain of the string over the sound of the many beasts in the field.
The wind told the story, a spike of tension rising, he was breathing harder. Jewel could taste it on the wind, lapping the details out of the air and then the twang of a bowstring released and the muffled skid and clatter of an arrow that missed flesh and instead drug a furrow in the dirt.
The short plants cut by the arrow's passing screamed their blood voices into the perfume of the meadow. Sharp and sudden and unlike any nibble or browsing. Shocking all that grew with their suddenness.
The rabbit's scents spiked in terror and Jewel found herself little concerned that she could disturb the quarry more than the scattering rabbit already had been.
She strode still quietly but quite openly, not close enough to spook the quail from their huddling in the tall grass. It would be rude in case maybe the hunters might want to have her brother try for a shot at them.
She arrived at the clearing, with not a single rabbit visible but plenty hiding out of sight by their smell, her brother stomping over to inspect his arrow and the four other hunters already unspooling twine rope and their knives to fashion some snares to leave near the burrows.
"Well sour luck that, we will try again at the next clearing, young Sir, and circle back through here to check the snares. On our return though. No worries, plenty of daylight left."
Jewel caught Muriel's attention then turned her gaze up to the clouds, which while still scattered and fluffy were starting to smell with a ponderance of the rains to come.
She could feel the lightning in waiting, gently tugging upon her own flame.
Her Governess considered the sky but offered a slightly raised brow.
Jewel glared briefly, then turned to look at poor Alexander going after his arrow off into the woods.
Her brother was shortly huffing back into the clearing, already inspecting his arrow like it had personally betrayed him. But far as Jewel could see the fletching hadn't even been mussed from its short trip into the loam and shrubbery.
Given the opportunity she sidled up to the group she shot Muriel a defiant look and then spoke softly to avoid spooking the quarry she was about to share.
"There is a flock of quail huddled in the brush over there, just shy of fifty paces."
Which got a brief look from Muriel, but it's not like any of them were likely to have noticed the fowl without her.
Also as the hunters and her brother were distracted she caught the Governess' eye and pointed even more obviously with her eyes up at the slowly building mood of rain above. It was so obvious but Jewel found some times she needed to exaggerate.
Muriel looked again and then seemed to finally have a realization and with a silent sigh and a subtle nod acquiesced. It was best to not have the day be a total waste from weather, and the more attempts her brother got the less the sting of not hitting anything might be.
Tenacity had an honor all its own, after all.
Alexander was looking hopefully up at the elder of the Hunters. Kraok was rubbing his beard and considering Alexander, bow in one hand and a still unbroken or bloodied arrow in the other. A short look to their Governess responded with an ascending nod.
"Alright, worth the shot if we can get in position, Quail are very alert and easily spooked, so we best settle in and try for a hide to see if we can get a clear shot rather than trying to creep up to them. Worst case, you get in position and we drive them to the sky for you sir. You spotted them where, Lady Jewel?"
She did not correct him that she had yet to properly see them at all but pointed where the birds were still huddling close to the ground beneath the field grass swaying in the wind. Just across the meadow.
"Mmm, we will want to take an ambush this way, then. Gimletson, you finish up the snares, you two take up a position on the other side just in case. This way, young Sir."
With that the hunters split up, one staying there by the mostly (there were pups down below, huddled away for safety, but that was not the hunt today) abandoned warren with Jewel and Muriel, and two circling around silently into the meadow to one side while Alexander and Kraok disappeared from sight to the other.
Muriel watched Jewel with a look that was rather familiar. It was the one she got whenever Jewel was signaling to Alexander how to spell a word that gave him trouble or hinted the answer to a pointed question.
Jewel knew Muriel wanted to give her another lecture over cheating the spirit of an activity.
But given they were still on the hunt she held her admonishments to just a glare.
Jewel had brought up to Mother and Father only once how she thought their Governess hated poor Alexander. But when she explained her suspicions and why Mother and Father had both laughed and then gently told her that she needed to not coddle her brother so much.
Worse, they had started gently forbidding her from helping her brother as much from then on.
Jewel settled down into a lazy coiling loop in the meadow. Flattening down the grass in a pleasing spiral of stalks, she waited for the sound of Alexander's bow.
This hunt was Important to Alexander. And it was her duty as his sister to help him find his honor out here.
Jewel did not sigh or otherwise show any of her disappointment, as that would be very rude to her poor brother. But inside, she really wanted to.
So far, Alexander had not managed to hit a quail from the flock Jewel had found. He had missed three more rabbits after the footmen had carefully gotten them into position for another shot, and his aim was honestly only getting worse as the hunt continued.
The weather had also continued to worsen as they moved their way from meadow to meadow in the hunting woods. What had started with scattered breaks in the cloud cover was turning into an all-encompassing gray above them, with roils that called to Jewel with their promise of lightning and the churning rain waiting to break free all over them.
The mood was also souring around her brother's growing frustration, and any calls to try and calm him so that he could perhaps make a shot clearheaded fell upon deaf ears.
Most recently, his latest attempt had spooked the game before even letting loose an arrow.
It was looking like whatever they caught in their snares was going to have to be the prize of the hunt. Which was turning her brother's disposition to an even darker gloom as Muriel's glances at the sky and a few pointed looks at Jewel who very staunchly refused to nod or acknowledge them.
Which she thought said plenty on the matter: yes, they would indeed need to head back if they did not want to be caught in a summer downpour, Muriel.
As if this silent confirmation was the final straw, the noble children's Governess finally spoke up before Alexander could badger the poor footmen into another fruitless scrounging for a prey.
"Young Sir, we are going to be caught in a storm if we do not turn back now. Best to head along our old trail and retrieve the snares and what catches they have for us to conclude the hunt."
Which started a tear filled complaint.
"But I haven't stuck ANYTHING! Not even a stupid rabbit!"
But he did at least turn with them back to the horse who had been having a far more pleasant time of it, having plenty of success getting fat on their devastation and ruin brought to the clovers of the wood, their lips wet with the lamentations of their victims.
Kraok offered another fruitless word of encouragement.
"It's nothing to be worried about, young sir, we set the traps just in case. When I first went hunting as a boy I had to spend a night hungry because I barely even caught sight of anything, let alone hit them with an arrow."
Which honestly just seemed to upset Alexander more.
"It's the stupid rabbits, and birds and all. They're all too small, I can hit the targets in the courtyard from twice this distance!"
And more did he complain.
But as they made their way through the woods and back to the meadows that started the hunt, Jewel started to hear the most distressing sound she had ever experienced.
It was shrill and terrified and full of pain.
Before that day If there could be said to be a sound of panic and horror Jewel would have imagined something far less terrible than that sound.
It rose in shrieking breathy wails, almost whistling out and it put her ill at ease.
Was some kind of monster tormenting some animal?
Not simply killing but torturing with a cruelty that was unmatched.
Muriel pulled her horse over from the fuming whining of her Brother to get close enough to whisper to Jewel.
"Is there a problem, Lady Jewel? You seem ill at ease."
Jewel gave a heavy shudder that passed from the back of her skull to the tip of her tail then reflected back up her haunches. She whispered softly to Muriel.
"Something ahead of us is screaming. I've never heard a sound like it. No bird nor beast I've ever heard sounds like that."
Which brought a look of concern to the Governess and she pulled back to consult with Kraok and Gimletson while the other hunters moved ahead of them, eyes alert.
The whispered conversation abruptly broke with Gimletson's laughter.
"Oh that's nothing to worry about, rabbits in snares sometimes give a blood chilling scream when they get caught. Is the damnedest sound but nothing to worry about. Although it might draw in a fox or wolf if we're not fast. Best pick up the pace!"
Which prompted the riders to bring their clover-stuffed horse to a disgruntled trot along the worn deer path. Soon they needed to go single file for the sake of not injuring the horse on uneven ground. Jewel instead just continued her soft skipping off of trees and moss adjacent to the trail but a bit above the tangled shrubbery of the underbrush rather than doing so along the once thicker trail.
Her brother and Muriel stiffened and looked around, which told Jewel when they could hear the awful rabbit shriek for themselves. And, spurred on by the sound and the hunters, they soon broke into the meadow again, empty now of any and everything which lived above ground. Not even the bees and other smallest birds were to be found or heard.
Although with a glance to the sky, Jewel suspected that was more because of the threat of rain the clouds were starting to bulge and tumble with.
The rabbit was caught with its leg in a snare, but it was stiff on its side, as if somehow frozen by more than the ugly loop of twine and terrible twisting to its leg.
Did the footmen know some sort of magic to weave into their snares?
The small beast's screaming was terrible, the mouth gaping wide on its inhale and the eyes staring in all directions.
It was disquieting, the rabbit unmoving but for trembling shakes and eyes darting, yet screaming all the same until with great mercy, Kraok silenced it with a short stab of a knife through its neck.
Then in blessed silence, casual as any of the kitchen staff, he undid the knot of the twine, rolled it back up and then gutted the carcass down the middle with a swift tug and a practiced hand pulling the innards free with a sudden blooming smell of offal.
Alexander flinched back a bit but Muriel and the other footmen were inured. Simply going to check the other snares. Where apparently the rabbits had managed to die from panicked seizing snapping their spines or simply because their necks had been caught in the snare and they had been strangled.
Those corpses were likewise gutted, the blood drained mostly before they were tied to the horse, but left dangling to finish letting out the last drabs while they rode and then everyone was back in saddle (besides Jewel) and they were moving onto the next meadow.
And the next.
Jewel only heard the terrible screaming panic of the rabbits one more time, but she almost wondered if that was better than the ones they came across that were obviously alive but simply frozen in terror too afraid to even manage the death scream.
It was so different from how plants screamed. More than just how it was sound instead of the distressed aroma.
But when a blade of grass or a clover was torn into and it bled its cries to the air there was a sense of determination and obligation.
Something like what the books said about honor, Jewel thought.
It did not smell like panic. There was none of the despair. Even when it was a mortal wound upon the stem.
But Rabbits.
They feared and screamed in terror more blind and horrible than the literally blind foliage they fed upon.
Jewel considered in silence the difference.
With the gutting and cleaning finished on the last of the rabbits they were in the very first meadow they had come to.
The saddles were loaded with a dozen open carcasses. Three to a side tied to two of the horses.
Alexander had gotten off his horse to stretch his legs and have a look around, he had settled somewhat from half-shed tears of frustration and pleading, turned to obstinate silence.
Apparently screaming rabbits had not bothered him since he had attended other hunts. Jewel was not so sure if she would ever be so accustomed to that sound, but maybe she heard it differently then they did.
She was scenting the air as they she had before, the pregnant tumultuous imminence of rain and thunder was growing so thick it almost smothered out the sparse animal trail still in the meadow.
Thanks to the shrieking no other game was present. Not even the wolves or fox that had been warned of.
Alexander's scent went off downwind of them. He was being very quiet.
Jewel was a good sister and given she could not smell the sharp pin in the nose of piss (that was a mistake she would only ever make once) she confidently skipped through the meadow in great undulating swells, peeking up over the field grass as she went like it was a green pond.
Even as such she could not spot her brother — he was taking the time to practice his hunter's stride!
That must mean he was feeling better after all!
She used her nose to find the spoor from his sweat in the grass, winding sinuously and as stealthy as she could now to play the game with him as well.
Her greeting however froze on her lip when she reached him.
Crouched in his hunter's stance, bow drawn, and eyes clear and angry as he lined up a shot.
But it was not upon another rabbit, or even a deer.
No, instead there in line with her brother's arrow and square in his gaze was the snuffling flanks of the largest boar she had ever seen.
No, the largest boar she had ever even heard legends of!
If this was not some monster wandered free of a lair she would drink lye!
Its hair was bristly and brown, and the thing's shoulders were rippling with muscle and a thick near pitch skin. It was rooting at the earth quietly.
A few hundred paces away, just barely visible in the underbrush for how it disturbed it.
But even so it was obviously incredibly large.
It was taller than any of their horses at the shoulder. It had four tusks that shined near white, flashing through the gaps in the leaves and foliage.
It looked like it might even be heavier than Jewel herself!
Her spine trembled in concern.
She drew up next to her brother and hissed as quietly as she could.
"Alexander, No, That's a Boar."
He had to just not have realized how big it was at this distance and mistook it for a deer between all the leaves and other sundry.
Surely?
But despite all her care to warn him of his mistake, apparently that was a bit too much, as her brother let fly. The arrow sailed truer than any had all day.
And stuck solidly halfway down the bladed head in the boar's rump.
Which in spite of the arrow sticking out of its hide welling with a bit of blood grunted with barely a hint of discomfort and spent what felt like a good while simply finishing snuffling and munching on whatever it was eating behind the bushes.
Jewel gave herself a moment to hope that maybe it would not be enough to provoke the animal. Boar gave even Father concern and the hunts for them were always a much larger and better armored party then this.
And those were much smaller beasts then this Behemoth.
Finally and with a complete lack of fear the thing turned about in its bushes to glare at the Wyrmling and then after evaluating her as not being the source of the offending arrow, turning to her brother and fixing him across the yawning distance with a dismissive snort.
Jewel could just barely find it in herself to repeat what she had said but more accusingly.
"Alexander! That. Is. A. Boar!"
The beast — whose ridged back stood high enough it would just be in petting range for Alexander astride Fetherfew — slowly, laboriously turned around fully and shook all down its back, the Arrow coming loose with barely any resistance against the violent shake.
Her brother seemed frozen in the dawning realization of what he had just done.
But instead of doing something sensible, as Jewel turned and joined the boar in staring, he strung another arrow and lined it up on the boar's head.
Who watched him do it with complete calm, not a shred of fear.
"Alexander!?"
Her voice was rising in panic as she flicked her eyes from watching her brother's grip tightened and the animal he'd already only slightly injured squared up with him.
"That's!"
He let loose the arrow. It hit squarely in the middle of the thing's head and simply skimmed up its brow and sailed off into the woods, leaving an angry welling line of shallow blood with hints of bone just visible beneath.
"A!"
Jewel took in a great heaving lung full of air and let out a shout so loud that all the forest might have heard it, but more importantly it definitely was going to reach their guardians further back in the meadow.
The boar snorted at Jewel's outburst before fixing her brother with those beady eyes.
It was still for a moment longer, Jewel began pulling on her Wyrmflame, trying to drag the annihilating power into alignment in her neck.
But was it even going to be enough time?
There was a solid two hundred paces between the beast and them.
That should be enough space right?
Just in case, she took a step forward to begin interposing herself between the Boar and Alexander, but the monstrously huge beast burst into action as soon as she even shifted!
As if launched from its own bow, one moment it was still quite a ways into the brush of the wood. The next it was already most of the way out!
Jewel's throat clenched and her grasp of the Wyrmfire sputtered and scattered, failing to hold the proper shape to do more than maybe blind it?
She wasn't in position to protect her brother OR unleash her flame!
Alexander's face had only just started to show something other than blockheaded determination.
In the time it took him to finish registering what a monumental mistake he had made the boar was already crossing the border of the meadow. Half her assumed safety buffer was gone in an instant!
Jewel could hear the rest of their party rushing through the meadow.
But they were even farther away than the Boar had been!
And Alexander, had only barely realized how dangerous and foolish this was and turned to run, dropping his bow as he did.
Of course, NOW her brother started trying to flee. After he had spoiled any chance that the animal might actually let them be!
Jewel was not in position, her Wyrmfire was just barely being pulled back together after the shock of the thing's speed had scattered it through her scales.
Her brother was definitely not going to be anywhere near fast enough. For how utterly absurdly massive the boar was its speed was the most terrifying thing Jewel had ever seen.
She could imagine it playing out, her brother would be gored in the back, possibly even the side while he tried to turn. Shattered and skewered by those tusks, trampled by those cloven hooves and probably stamped into a pulp for his foolishness.
He might scream as the rabbits had, He might go still in terror and pain.
She could feel the flames building in her throat, but not enough! her wings started to flare in panic.
Her lips pulled back to reveal teeth.
There was no time!
She let loose with the malformed and ineffective flame, the Wyrmflame bursting incoherently just in front of her snout to flash the air blinding white.
Hoping to at least STUN the behemoth long enough she could get in position to cover her brother.
The boar stumbled hard but not enough to avoid the inevitability of crushing Alexander. Jewel was out of options! She did the only thing she could and lunged hard into the beast with everything she could muster. Leaping the intervening distance between them in a single bound.
She felt herself slammed by a skull like stone, blood hot and slick from the arrow graze, she was hurled up and over before she could do anything else, her wing was caught and pinched sharp, soft soil suddenly pushing into her face, Jagged line of pressure, catching in the join of wing fingers, pain.
PAIN.
Dizzy, she was looking at a tree trunk.
Things were happening all over her.
Gasping breathless wheezing, Bones feeling bruised, something wet in her mouth.
What?
What happened?
Trampling hooves seemingly everywhere on her sides and neck.
Terrible bellowing shrieking roars of anger from where she was feeling the most battered and trampled.
Sharp lancing gouges, her chest, her throat, something wrenched very wrongly in her fore left shoulder and then choking, can't breath, teeth strong, bones grinding together, scales flexing hard, can't breath, can't swallow, Where? What?!
And then shaking, tugging on both her torso and her head like she was a loose rag.
Everything a whirl of senses, sight never holding still as she tried and failed to keep her eyes stable.
Then by happenstance, the shaking tossed her about enough to give some slack on either side of the pained crushing on her throat.
It was violently worrying at her mid throat and putting the greatest effort to crush the life out of her neck.
For a moment with the extra slack Jewel could start to try and figure out what in all the damnations had just happened?!
She was bruising all over, both her wings were agonies that felt like something wrong and would not bend right.
Nothing had broken her scales though, she did not think any of her spine was hurt and besides not being able to breath Jewel was mostly just disoriented.
Jewel tried to get a census of the parts of her not being tossed about by the raging boar. She was all together too long to be lifted entirely by that first blow. But the front half of her was thrown clear into the air before she even had the chance to react.
And then as if by military drill the boar had caught one of her flailing wings with a tusk sliding up the membrane, wrenched it between the fingers and then spun itself around to... body slam her down maybe?
That had pulled wing joints out of the socket, and the shoulder and elbow too maybe. Nothing wanted to move there.
Then was the trampling, Jewel was unclear exactly how or where but hoof prints and concerning dents littered everything from her ribcage forward.
Her right foreleg was a mess, crumpled and wrenched apart at her wrist and shoulder. Flopping about painfully as the boar continued trying to work her neck deeper into its jaws where the grinding teeth were.
But it seemed to be noticing the futility there and-
Uh Oh.
Jewel met eyes with the boar and the beady glare rolled before it spun its entire body around to square with her head, already digging and kicking up dirt as it scrabbled for traction to hurl itself at her face. The mouth wide and tusks already angling to try and gore her through something softer than it had found so far. One point seeming disconcertingly aimed right at her eye!
Naturally, she yanked her face back and whipped it around and away. Not with any grace but in sheer blind panic. Hurling her head more like the tip of a whip then anything particularly natural or with any intent.
The joints of her neck popping up and down as she smacks her own head into the dirt of the meadow, blinded by the plume of dirt.
Shake the dirt off, don't lose track of the maelstrom of angry boar that moved like a lightning strike.
There was the noise and scent of Alexander, Muriel, the four hunters, screams and yells.
But Jewel's eyes were on only one thing. Making sure she did not lose track of the ferocity that was still barreling down on her.
The Boar's own momentum gave her barely the time to actually move backwards.
Barely able to rear back in a pathetic heap. Only three workable legs. One wing.
Her Wyrmfire all scrambled and roiled without intent or focus, like a disturbed coop of chickens panicked and running through Jewel's flesh with no coordination.
The thing was upon Jewel before she could even begin to try and clear her crushed throat enough to unleash the chaotic sputter of Wyrmfire she could drive in even a semblance of a guide.
Slammed under her screaming, again flipping her over in a spine-twisting joust, dragging tusks with an almost musical buzz as it tried to scour the flesh from her ribs. Down her chest and then to the marginally softer flesh of her belly. Scales being dragged painfully, but still not breaking.
Her still-collapsed lungs flinched and flopped uselessly around in her chest, her throat whistling sharply as it barely was able to pull any air through her crushed windpipe.
And then even that minute air was shocked loose and her chest failed to even flex enough to manage that feeble whistling gasp.
Her Wyrmfire was like embers tossed loose of a shattered hearth fire.
Her tail snapped about and her hind legs pedaled in the air before the wet touch of a mouth closed down hard on her right thigh and then wrenched hard. Tossing her lower half over the boar's shoulder, slamming her in the face with her own hips!
Jewel tried to clear her throat and get the rhythm of her lungs back in order.
She could feel the Wyrmfire in disarray, sputtering in shock and unable to find anything to catch on and burn.
Jewel thought she heard noises but they were muffling under the roaring, stuffy silence rushing like rivers through her head. Blood empty and starved galloped in her ears. Heart pounding like a drum announcing a parade of guests.
She reflexively tried to lift herself up, but a great weight dropped on her like a fallen tree. Like her crashes when first learning to fly. Like the time she had knocked the leg out from under one of the feast tables and the whole thing had tilted and fell on her.
Her ribs caved in their joints to her spine and sternum, soft spongy cracks echoing with the blows of cloven hooves.
She did not break - her ribs remained solidly whole - but they were not even, they had been pummeled out of alignment, pressing uncomfortably on her lungs, splaying a few of them loose from her sternum.
It hurt.
It hurt more than anything ever had but Jewel could barely even pay attention to the pain so awash in the sea of it.
A twitch from one of her legs was attacked with sudden furious tugs and bites, shaking its head in a frenzy, slamming her hips and lower section into the ground until a wet snap announced that her last functional limb popped from its socket.
There were voices, there were people over there but Jewel could barely even get her eyes to focus against the waves of pain and her nearly guttered flame.
The boar snorted with satisfaction and shook its hide free of the strange sticks of wood that had embedded themselves in its back.
A tusk gored at her neck and flipped her limp body over.
Jewel did not move.
And only then with her limp and trembling, struggling to even breath, feeling her heart start to stutter did the Boar turn from the Wyrmling.
Towards the vague shapes that had drawn its ire.
Jewel could barely focus but.
There was something important.
She pulled on her barely burning sparks and embers, pulling them to the one eye.
Bringing the burning Wyrmfire to the lens and little flexures inside, pulling her eye this way and that, opening and closing and straining.
Finding the image coming clearer.
They were brandishing spears.
The sticks shaken loose had been arrows.
The boar was undeterred.
It bled but rallied on the six figures ahead of itself anyway.
Jewel could not focus on all their faces, her lack of breath stalled her nose.
But she pulled her one clear eye to focus.
One of the shortest of the six figures was being held back by the rest. But yet it struggled to pull away, a long spear gripped in its hands, screaming words Jewel could no longer hear against the raging silence in her head.
Alexander.
It was still after Alexander.
Jewel felt her Wyrmflame all but guttered out at the thought.
No!
I COULD leave this as a cliffhanger, but I'm not going too, update coming this evening so no one has to spend longer then a few hours in suspense.
Jewel's muscles did not want to move. Her blood felt heavy and sluggish and empty of life.
Her bones were tired and in disarray and her heart was thumping ever harder and faster the longer it failed to accomplish anything.
Everything hurt.
She had barely a single arm that was not crumpled and twisted out of place.
But Alexander was there, barely holding himself back, lips flapping on at the footmen as they braced in a line in front of the boar.
Muriel had drawn her sword and was standing just to the side of Alexander. One hand on the pommel while the other held it out and to the side in a ready stance she had seen so many times before as their Governess trained Alexander in the sword.
Jewel's eye did not want to blink.
It barely would let her see.
Jewel felt barely more animated than the trees around her and the torn up loam of the meadow where the Boar had so casually brutalized her.
What kind of great and powerful Wyrm was Jewel?
That a swine barely heavier than she was could best her so easily?
She was hardly more than the dirt she lay in.
Yet there was life to that torn up dirt. A flickering warmth and glow of Wyrmfire in spite of how it had been tossed and spread about in a heap.
Just as alive as when it was all together in its proper place.
Friendly and eager to share with her of all the things which had grown within it and trod upon it.
Not any more bothered by the turbulent brawl then it had been by the gentle steps of deer the day before.
Or the grass roots all through spring.
That was nice. Maybe being dirt would not be so bad.
The boar was charging.
One of the hunters braced and waited, then jumped to drive his spear into its neck.
Jewel saw with her blank, barely focused eye the way the metal head caught in its thick flesh. The burst of blood around it and the deep bend in the wooden shaft as the weight of the beast and hunter met in its fibers.
But the boar was not stopped, even with the spear finally breaking past its thick hide and plunging the metal head entirely into the shoulder haunch.
Everything felt so slow, Muriel's face seemed wrong, all twisted and mouth wide, eyes blazing. A sword skittering across the shoulder and brow of the beast. Clipping an ear.
There was blood but it did not turn towards her. Instead leaping forward.
The second of the hunters was not as lucky as the first.
Jewel could not place his face in the rush despite how everything oozed along like mud.
The boar caught his spear with its jaws. Pulled it out of his hands with a twist of its head, then continued in a follow-through to a lunging slash back the way it had come.
The tusk caught in the man's thigh, below where his gambeson and the leather might have protected him.
Then the tusk carved up.
Jewel could not hear anything over the rushing pound of her deadened blood in her head.
But she almost felt the way his hip cracked apart in the path of that tusk.
The blood pooling out from the torn-open flesh in arterial splashes and spurts and the armor lifted from beneath by the point of the tusk as the beast's head swung and its own charging pace drove it up and through the poor man's torso.
Ribs cracked apart and his guts spilled over the animal's snout just as the intestines and other offal had spilled from the rabbits they snared.
Jewel tried to laugh but nothing about her throat or lungs would let her.
Her blood pounded so thick and loud she kind of wished it would stop. That her heart would quit trying to beat so hard and let her be quiet and still, like the dirt of the meadow.
Just so she could hear what was going on, you see.
Maybe it would hurt a bit less too?
The beast tossed the man. He was certainly dead even if his flailing limbs and panicked eyes had not yet caught up to it. Turning on the last two footmen and dipping its head down. Digging in its hooves to arrest the charge.
Tearing up more meadow which was just as pleased as it would be for the coming summer showers.
The two footmen failed to manage much, yet again.
One spear tip fell short of even touching its blood-drenched flanks. The other caught the thing in its skull and nearly skittered out of the man's grip as it bent and skipped without finding purchase.
Scratching more angry red lines over the pig's brow.
Jewel flexed her Wyrmflame, dragging her eye to follow the action, to help her blink where the exhausted and aching muscles in her face could not manage.
Pulling things into a wobbling blurr before scraping focus back into place from indistinctness.
Muriel had tried to strike again, with a full bodied stab this time, driving forward with both hands, one gripping tight around the hilt, the other's palm at the pommel. Everything committed to the lunge.
But Jewel regained clarity in time to see that she had landed the hit wrong and there was a slight flex to the sword as it caught in the thing's shoulder blade.
A shifting of trotters spun the beast about face in the grass and a shove into the blow from the boar pushed the sword back into muriel and nearly disarmed her, forcing the Governess into five steps of retreat before she regained her balance.
The three surviving footmen were scattered and off balance from the last charge.
Muriel was out of position by the deflection.
The hateful eyes of the beast settled on Alexander.
He had to run!
Her brother was trembling, throwing glances all over, hands holding far too tightly to his spear.
She wanted to admonish him for it, they had practiced better than that.
You need a firm but still loose grip on a spear or the shock of a hit would travel all the way up your arms!
Alexander met Jewel's gaze with his own.
Oh no.
Her stupid, stupid brother.
Jewel felt her panicked beating heart clench so hard she swore it must have burst something somewhere in her battered body.
She knew that look.
And putting her fears to truth he braced up, loosened his grip and lowered his hips and set the spear in position.
Facing up against the boar, his lips moving to words she could not hear and with that stupidly stupid determined look he sometimes got.
Tears were in his eyes but his brow was fixed and wrinkled in anger, every muscle in his jaw taught.
She thought he must be screaming.
He was going to die.
The Boar took a moment to shake itself off, splaying blood both its own and human, then breathed so hard Jewel could see the steam.
Her brother was going to die.
Jewel pulled on her Wyrmflame like she never had before.
So what if her throat was crushed closed.
So what if her blood was stagnant and starved for breath.
So What?!
Alexander was being a total idiot of a fool and standing up to a boar that had laid low a Wyrm a dozen times his weight in stone over.
And the horribly idiotic fool was squaring up because he was upset it hurt her?!
The total Imbecile!
The utter Knave!
The HEROIC IDIOT!
Jewel threw herself from the ground at the Boar as hard as she could.
Not with muscles which could find no proper purchase or leverage but the raw Wyrmflame.
Her jaws flung open like a badly coordinated puppet, she felt meat tearing at the joint.
She barely registered that she was not the only one moving.
Muriel was running as hard as she could to push Alexander out of the way in favor of getting herself trampled.
One of the surviving Footmen was also charging with her. Spear in both hands, running right at the beast.
Jewel collided first. She grabbed her own body like a rope that had incredibly offended her, and wrapped it around the beast to try and pull it off course from her brother (or Muriel, but mostly her brother).
The rough treatment was not gentle on her injuries, her spine creaked and her muscles strained in protest. Her own innards did not take kindly to it either but Jewel pulled herself taut by Wyrmfire and Will alone around the boar's neck and then slammed her jaw so hard down on its stupid impervious face she felt a tooth flex hard in its root.
Her desperate heart was still pounding, shoveling empty, worthless blood through her head and neck and other sundry.
But she was not moved by the strength of her blood.
The one Footman brave (or stupid) enough to join her attack had thrown himself under the beast and was nimbly rolling under the suddenly panicked stamping and flailing boar. Half blinded by her upper jaw pressed hard into its face.
Jewel realized her mistake and pulled her mouth to try and close it over the boar's skull entirely...
But the thing's head was far too wide for her to manage!
So she just pushed hard on her chin until she felt the snap of her jaw pulling loose and tendons screaming til she could hold her head in an improvised blindfold/vice.
Wyrmfire hissing and sizzling from her scales stung and blackened the stupid pig's bristly hairs. But nothing like it would have been had Jewel been able to clear her throat.
How the wyrm wished that she could burn the thing to ash though. Leave it in cinders and dust scorched clean by her hate.
Alas she just could not manage the focus for that, only the spiteful purity of simply stopping the monster from hurting her brother!
Finally the Footman under it found a proper spot (he was still alive?!) and there was a thunderous squeal of pain.
Jewel could feel the blood in the body pressed against her own scales.
Thundering in panic and the heat of battle, just like her own stale blood was.
And then guttering to a stop.
Finding a silence that Jewel's own heart refused to mirror.
Next the legs began to buckle.
Jewel nearly didn't pull the thing over, but then it would have collapsed on and certainly crushed her ally.
And he had killed the stupid pig!
It was dead.
Alexander safe?
She let go of her body with her Wyrmfire.
Without the force holding it tight she collapses like soggy grass.
Her eyes abandoned by the flame staring blankly and out of focus at the sky.
The rain was just about to break.
Jewel was glad.
At least she would be clean.
The dirt was happy too.
Told ya that I woulden't leave you in a lurch on THAT cliff hanger.
Alexander rode as hard as Fetherfew would gallop in the rain and the mud that the breaking storm had made of the road.
Muriel had stayed behind to guard Jewel.
To help keep his sister safe.
Safe, so he could bring help!
His sister that might-
His sister was hurt because of him!
The three surviving hunters were riding with him. Poor Gimletson. That was also his fault, he hadn't listened to them.
Muriel had told him he was supposed to listen.
It was his hunt, but they knew better.
And now Jewel-
Jewel would be fine, he would bring help. There were three Wizards and Father!
They would fix everything!
If Alexander just could bring news fast enough.
Fetherfew's breath was a frothy bellows filling her barrel beneath his legs.
His thighs burned terribly.
He was going to be bruised with how hard he was riding.
The pounding of the mud was splattering his legs and face at the pace they were making.
Dark mud washed away in the downpour even under the heavy cover of the forest.
"Young Sir! We have to slow down!"
Kraok yelled over the storm. But Alexander could not bear the thought.
"Jewel's my SISTER!"
The hunter that had finally felled the horrible boar by sliding under the damned monster to stab it through the chest simply bellowed back.
"If the horses break their legs or you're thrown into a rock in this mess none of us will reach help in time! We have to slow down Lord, to a canter at most!"
He wanted to scream!
Alexander wanted to strike down the man with the spear that failed to even pull a drop of blood from the monster that had brutalized his sister.
But...
That had been exactly how he got his poor sister hurt and Gimletson dead.
He pulled back on the gasping nag he had been forced to ride. Fetherfew's eyes were rolling, she could probably sense his terror and the urgency, but there was a heavy, wheezing nicker as he slowed her back from the near gallop to a safer trot.
The other horses were breathing hard too.
Soaked down in the rain. The stupid matted down fur of the rabbit carcasses seemed so inconsequential.
Such a stupid reason for his sister to-
For him to have brought her out here and gotten her hurt.
If he'd not asked her to come with him for his hunt...
It would have been him trampled by the boar.
He tried to close his eyes off from the tears.
Alexander nearly fell out of his saddle when the hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
It was not as large as Father's own, but Kraok was not a small man.
"Eyes on the road, breathe even. We won't leave her and your sister won't perish. Even the slightest and smallest of Wyrm takes a long time to die. And that's if you spear their heart dead."
Alexander shook his head, then coughed and sobbed and nodded instead.
He was glad it was raining, no one could see what a coward he was to cry when it was his sister that had suffered the most.
The squeeze of the hand on his shoulder left and he was given a firm slap on his back.
"Eyes on the road, hands on the bridle, knees ready, feet solid, we will make it. Just focus on riding at this pace. Any harder and poor featherfew will keel over afore we get there."
And so they rode.
Alexander could not see the sun, the day had practically gone to twilight with the storm clouds, torrents of rain blinding but for a dozen yards ahead.
They broke from the woods into the open fields around Fort Rochford and it was everything he could do to not push the wheezing nag even harder through the rain.
But Kraok set the pace to what felt like a crawl as they trotted far too slowly for Alexander up the winding road.
Drawing through the gates that had never been closed in his entire life and finally pulling to a stop in the courtyard.
He leaped from Fetherfew's back before the stablemaster could even finish arriving to take her reins.
His sopping boots clinging to his toes as he threw his legs ahead of him, desperate to make the distance go away faster. Throwing open the doorway without a care for how he did not close it. Rushing through hallways that now felt far too twisted and long.
Bursting into Father's study where the wizards were.
Alexander was sopping wet and face dripping with more than just rain.
He was ruining the good carpets.
But he couldn't stop to care, the words tumbling out of him.
He couldn't hold any of it in anymore after taking so long to find aide.
"Papa! I'm Sorry! There Was a Boar! It's My Fault! And Jewel! She's Hurt! She's Hurt so BAD! In the Woods! Muriel Is There! She Needs Help!"
Papa was there, lifting him up so suddenly it was like he was magicked into his father's arms and squeezed so tight against his chest.
Papa hadn't done this in years; he was too old for it, Nearly Twelve!
But that didn't matter because Papa was pressing Alexander to his big chest despite how much mud, water (and tears) was getting into his fine clothes.
In all the rush Alexander only just realized he was shivering, teeth chattering from the cold.
And only just because his Papa's arms practically burned in how warm they were around him.
He felt as much as heard the booming voice terribly fierce but also fragile in a way Alexander had NEVER heard his Papa speak to anyone.
"I don't care who is in my service, all of you go NOW! Find her! Help Her and save her or so help me wizard or not I will lay waste to all your domains."
There were sounds that Alexander had never heard before and then a deep brooding silence that was filled with his shivering and chattering teeth and the soft noises of his Papa holding him close and trying to rub some warmth into his trembling body.
Usually I really don't think about visualization at all when reading a story.
But Jewel heroically intervening by flailing around her own body like a telekinetically-weilded rubber chicken would be quite a scene in a visual medium compared to prose.
The one Footman brave (or stupid) enough to join her attack had thrown himself under the beast and was nimbly rolling under the suddenly panicked stamping and flailing beast.
Usually I really don't think about visualization at all when reading a story.
But Jewel heroically intervening by flailing around her own body like a telekinetically-weilded rubber chicken would be quite a scene in a visual medium compared to prose.
Things like this sort of contrast between our idea of dragons as epic critters of myth and poise with the sheer absurd awkwardness of their locomotion and mechanics is the seed of an idea that started this story.
It all began with me contemplating the completely hillarious image of one of those noodly dragons actually walking.
Jewel was not sure exactly when breathing started to actually work again.
But one moment her lungs flopped and folded and pulled painfully on the haphazard jumble that had been made of her ribcage uselessly, sucking hard on her crushed throat.
And then the next her chest burned with the clear, frost-parched wind of autumn, driving chill and pain down her throat and into her chest in a great billowing gust. But more importantly, it filled her lungs with air.
Gloriously crisp just before winter air that was a bit out of place in early summer but Jewel was not going to complain about the gift rushing through her lungs.
Honestly Jewel would have been happy to breathe mud if she had too, maybe pond scum or bath water would have been a bonus. To have actual air of any description was just too much good fortune to complain about.
It was like an entirely different kind of fire running through her body. Veins were coming alight with a fierceness that almost smothered her Wyrmfire.
Eyes twitched, nostrils flared and her body shuddered without needing to be dragged around by will and Wyrmfire alone.
Instead things properly just happened because she did them.
Not acting as an intermediary holding her slack body and forcing it to move like a tool rather than a body one inhabited.
She was wet and the storm and the mud around her sang with joy at it. And she too was full of joy as flesh seemed to come awake in lethargic surprise to still be existing and actually there inside her.
Everything was painful but it was a living pain that was bracingly joyous despite its terrible overwhelming depth.
In time, she even managed to do some things besides breathing.
Hearing and seeing were two of them!
"-old you the neck was the most critical issue!"
Tsulogothulan's overly round and at the moment incredibly common-sounding vowels were a feast upon the senses.
But honestly, anything at all was a delight to hear instead of the constant pounding of stale blood in her head.
"Fascinating, by any normal reckoning she should be quite utterly dead. For any other creature several hours of trying to live without breath at all is death. I wonder what's different for Wyrms."
Even Lord Fizzbunches's dry dissection of her own suffering was a joy.
Jewel blinked the rain free of her eyes and slowly turned her head. Finding it curious (and painful) how her lower jaw had already been facing towards the wizards.
"Gzlya?"
Speaking with your jaw dislocated to the extent it is more loosely associated by flesh and tendon with its proper place made even that much speech terrible in its shooting pain and also, of course, utterly unintelligible.
The sound of rain in the branches occurred with a far colder and unseasonal quality announcing that the Autumn Wizard was somehow present but not visible from this angle.
Jewel however could see two of the wizards.
The impeccably dry Fizzbunches, seated upon a rock where for reasons beyond her no rain would fall.
Wetness just failed to touch him in a way that seemed more a fundamental law of the world than a simple state of things, even in this utter downpour. She wondered if that made it difficult for him to drink and thus was why he put away so much small beer during meals.
By contrast, Tsulogothulan seemed to be so eagerly welcomed by the wet mud, muck and downpour of rain that the clothing seemed wholly more solid and almost like it was just a blink away from eagerly sprouting tall reeds and bubbling over with frog, fish and heron.
The humanity of their posture all but lost now, everything about them obviously being far more a sculpture of some tall reedy bird or a moss twisted tree bent by humidity than anything in the shape of a man or woman.
It was laughable to think Jewel had ever thought the Bog Weird was anything so human.
"Oh you're awake Lady Jewel? I would recommend against moving much, or even trying to speak to be honest. Just slow careful breaths. As that seems to be doing you the most good of everything else we tried. Just rest and we will see what we can do about the rest of you."
Jewel could agree to that. Simply laying in the cool jovial mud and friendly rain and only moving as much as was required to inflate her lungs in the jumble that had been made of her ribs sounded quite good.
Although she thought maybe she should go a bit easier than she had been with the breathing.
Very slowly now in fact if her heart would just settle down and stop panicking with the sudden abundance of breathable substances.
She did understand its worry over never having more again, truly. But the desperate muscle did not need to empty her blood of every single scrap of good feeling and set her aching to gasp as big and heavy as possible.
That made her pain considerably worse than just simply existing entailed.
At this point Jewel was pretty sure there was barely a joint or part of her body entirely put together the way it was supposed to be, besides the wholeness of her individual bones and the unbroken scales of her hide. Which was a bit of a puzzler when it came to how one was even going to fix anything.
A conundrum that was giving the trio of wizards pause as well.
The Bog Wizard slid through the mud, totally in their element. Appearing in great wet splashes at one side of Jewel and then pouring back into the mud before sprouting on another side to peer in a truly avian manner at the mess the boar had made of her with that singular eye.
"I must confess I'm not sure where to go next after this, Fizzbunches, The neck was obviously needing to be pried open so air could flow. But the rest? She's a terrible mess. How are you feeling, Lady Jewel?"
"Eaaahegh! eghah!"
In horrific pain Lady Sorcerer! Thank you for asking! But she was still so heady with the joy of simply having anything going in and out of her lungs that was a trifling matter. Even flapping her tongue around ached and hurt in sympathy to the truly astounding amounts of screaming pain coming from everything to do with her jaw.
Fizzbunches jumped from his stone to land on her tumbled ribs. And wasn't that a new form of pain, but not atrociously overwhelming pain. Jewel was finding there were nuances and qualities to pain that she had never imagined existed before.
"Since breathing is doing so much for her, I say we work at her ribcage next. Euewyn, I want you to push as much of the north wind as you can down her throat. Tsulogothulan? With me as I pull these ribs into a proper place and set them to heal."
Oh, that did not sound good. Jewel found her previous admonishment to her heart a bit hypocritical. Go on oh dear little clenching fearball of meat! Beat with all your terribly painful vigor because both of us are about to be-
!!!
Jewel was pretty sure the only reason she did not thrash out of her position sunk into the mud was because nothing in her body could manage better than minor shivers with the state she was in.
So much inside her chest was bruised terrible soreness now.
This was only an improvement in contrast to how terrible having most of one's ribs flipped, twisted over and sometimes even shuffled under each other had been.
And it did make breathing in full lungs a less arduous affair.
Barely.
All of the muscles inside were quivering and strained into nearly exhausted jelly after no longer being over extended and sprained by improper relation of their anchoring bones in her chest.
Jewel didn't even know she had muscles for breathing there until today.
But their abused presence and complaints made it clear she absolutely did, and she promised she would find something nice and soothing to do for them as soon as she figured out how.
Maybe a good submerging in a bath?
Until then…
Euewyn was more than welcome to keep sending that slightly-biting wind down her throat, please. She could barely muster the strength to inflate her chest even half as well as the Autumn Weird was managing.
But eventually Jewel was forced to do it on her own as the Wizards went back to puzzling over just how to put the scrambled puzzle that had been made of her skeleton back together and in which order.
Jewel turned her eyes (the only thing that only sort of hurt, instead of absolutely hurt) to find Muriel sat in a heap breathing hard in the rain, just sat in the mud getting her leathers horribly muddy, leaving her sword to rust!
She wanted to draw attention to that, Muriel had been very strict with Alexander about proper care of swords.
But no, after fully seeing the shock, misery and relief in that face. The way that it was more than rain that made her face look so wet?
Muriel was breaking down in a way Jewel had never seen before.
Because of Jewel?
Because of Alexander?
ALEXANDER?!
"Alelahaha!"
She tried moving and was promptly admonished for it. Not that she even mustered the motion to shift Fizzbunches where he was pacing up and down her flanks staring at the state of her spine and then hips.
"Lady Jewel! While I'm certain it won't make it any worse for you, please stop moving, this is going to take quite a great deal of time as it is!"
She stopped flailing as hard as particularly lethargic moss, but tried speaking again.
"Alelahaha!"
Her tongue slapped around in her gaping jaws and half the time met the loamy taste of mud and torn up grass, the other half doused in the soothing humor of rain and storm.
She could see Muriel trying to draw herself together and pry her backside out of where it had sunk into the mud. If this was not serious Jewel would have accepted the pain that laughing involved.
"Alelahaha! Eh ah Alelahaha!"
Which seemed to fall deaf on all ears, or the equivalent amongst the wizards and Muriel.
"Well fine if you insist I guess we will work on the jaw next. Now stop trying to speak so we can do this right the first time. Tsulogothulan!"
And this time Jewel was able to stay just barely aware enough through the blinding all encompassing pain to see what happened.
She had to admit that if you told her she was going to be healed by magic, she would have expected it to involve a whole lot less mud in her mouth and paws all over her face and a lot more shining light and warm fuzzy feelings.
Or maybe some kind of herbs?
But the sudden, densely packed wet earth was quite good at shoving, twisting and holding her dislocated jaw from every side.
And Fizzbunches could press almost as hard as the boar did with those dainty little pads on his paws.
Which made her head ring with an all-encompassing pop as her jaw was forced despite its protests back where it was supposed to go.
It was a whole lot less magical than she had been expecting. Although there was the way that despite her entire mouth, nose and everything below her eyes being filled with rain and mud it came away from both her and the cat's paws entirely clean leaving her tongue feeling kind of weirdly tingly from the absolute absence of flavor.
"Aughnclagh Blecgh!"
Oh my, her mouth all hurt almost as much to use as her ribs did for breathing!
"Ahw ohhww! Alahs- Ahem"
Jewel sputtered and struggled, suddenly, hilariously finding her mouth and tongue just a bit too confined and feeling small after so long letting them hang loose and over stretched. A few wet slaps and a gulp of soggy mud was nice though.
Okay, again!
"Alaxandur! Whur Alaxahndur!"
Which got Fizzbunches' yowl of annoyance and stomping with his dainty little paws down her neck to examine the horrific mess made of her many shoulders.
Tsulogothulan however looked over at Muriel who had finally found her way over (still bereft her sword! Don't leave it in the mud! What if Alexander saw?!).
Before saying the words that made Jewel relax so much she forgot to breathe and got yelled at and her lungs filled with more icy sharp autumn wind.
"He's fine, Lady Jewel. He rode near a gallop through the storm to get help."
A gallop?!
In the rain!?
Her Idiot brother was lucky he didn't break his neck!
Why If he had been anything but fine she would-
Jewel did not know what she would do.
But it would be incredibly unladylike and improper!
![The Shining Wyrm & The Blood Immaculate [Original Fantasy/Dragon Ficiton]](/data/threadmark-index-icons/l/71/71579.jpg?1710797022){kind=icon}
