Chapter 6 #3
Aria wanted to hate him. Wanted to tell him that he was wrong.
Wanted to say that her side had done nothing wrong, but the truth was more complex than that, and there could be no doubt that it was humanity who had opened the portal between the worlds, and it was a human who had breached the border with a weapon of war, engaged with an unknown enemy, and plunged the world into chaos.
“And that discipline comes in the form of your cock in my mouth?” She asked the question with a little smile, trying to break the internal tension she felt sitting at Vyktor’s feet.
“That’s something you understand at the very core of you,” he replied.
“It touches you more deeply than anything else could. You have already been trained by your military, conditioned to think and behave in certain ways. I will train you much more deeply, pet. I will train the very heart of you. Come here,” he ordered. “I want you on the bed.”
Aria found herself rising from the blankets and doing as she was told.
She wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing as he told her.
Nothing had really changed since their discussion, but there was a part of her that seemed to yearn to surrender to him.
It was a part she had not felt very often in her life.
How on earth did he understand humans so well? In such a short time?
“How do you know so much? And how do you speak our language?”
“You have a very simple script language,” he said. “It is not difficult for a dragon to understand. Understanding your written word and speech is the same to us as understanding a dog wagging its tail is to you.”
“Oh.” Aria scrunched her face up, feeling vaguely insulted. “Well.”
“Don’t take that as an insult, pet,” he said. “You are what you are, and we have been impressed with how much you have achieved as a species with such simple tools to work with.”
“So glad we’ve impressed you,” Aria said, sounding snotty even to herself.
“It’s going to take some time for you to get comfortable with the fact that you are no longer top of the food chain,” he observed. “Arrogance is built into the human condition as far as I can tell.”
“It’s not arrogance to not enjoy being told that you’re as simple as a dog.”
“I didn’t say you were as simple as a dog. I said your language is clear to us. Come here. We have talked enough.” He crooked his finger at her, then pointed at the bed, keeping his communication simple, she noticed.
Aria left the cage and moved toward the bed, half afraid that she was about to feel Vyktor’s hand across her ass again. She was almost shocked when she made it to the bed without one of the hard slaps from his palm searing its way across her unprotected cheeks.
In spite of her vulnerable nudity, she was beginning to feel a certain level of comfort with this man. No. Creature. His near constant nakedness made hers less odd. She almost wondered if she would feel strange wearing clothes… then she quickly dismissed the notion.
“Am I going to get something to wear?”
“Why do you need clothing? That does seem to be a very strange human habit.”
“We don’t have any protective coats, or layers of sufficient fat. We get cold,” she explained. “And when we get cold, we get sick.”
“But it is not cold in here, is it?”
“No,” Aria admitted. “But it’s still not… hygienic to wander around without clothes. Dirt sticks to our skin and gets into places it shouldn’t. I need clothes. And I need a bath.”
That was true. She had spent a hard eight hours in a flight suit, done battle with a dragon, and been captured and claimed by him. It was all dirty work, and she was coated in what felt like a thin film of sweat and muck.
“Clothes and a bath,” Vyktor nodded. “Not an entirely unreasonable request, I suppose.”
“Is there a bath here?”
“We have created a communal bath,” Vyktor mused. “It is large enough to swim in. That should suit your purpose.”
“Not a communal one!” Aria was quick. “It’s not a pool I need to swim in, it’s a bath… you know, a small area of water, enough to sit in and soap myself in and then get rid of the dirty water when it is done?”
“I see,” Vyktor said. “Wait here, pet.”
He left her outside her cage, unattended in his room while he went to make the preparations for her bath. Standing in the dragon’s lair, a small smile crept over Aria’s lips. She hadn’t planned that, but it couldn’t have gone more perfectly if she had.
She immediately began rummaging through the dragon’s possessions. Small niches had been carved into the wall like shelves, and there were pieces of what looked like very thick paper rolled up on them. They might be military intelligence.
She unrolled one of the papers and frowned.
English might be simple to the dragons, but whatever script they used was not simple to her.
The marks were thick, bold, and angular, but they meant nothing to her.
Disappointed, Aria slipped the paper back where she’d found it.
This was an unparalleled opportunity to collect intelligence about the dragons, but she wasn’t going to learn anything from reading.
She was going to have to question Vyktor skillfully enough that he didn’t realize what she was doing.
It was a couple of hours at least until Vyktor returned.
Aria wondered if he had forgotten about her entirely.
She had been through most of the objects in the room by then, finding little that she understood enough to know if they were of value or not.
She was almost pleased to see the dragon when he returned, his naked form looking pumped, as if he had been engaged in hard labor.
One of his hands was clutched behind his back, giving him a look of formality.
“What, did you have to build the bath with your bare hands?”
“Claws,” he smiled. “Much easier.”
Aria didn’t know if he was serious or not. It didn’t really matter.
“I have had your bath prepared, pet,” he said. “But before we go, come here.”
She approached him curiously and stood before him.
If she was going to get information out of him, she would have to be a little bit compliant.
Vyktor gently swept her hair behind her shoulders and from behind his back he produced something silver, studded with gold and amethyst crystals.
It wasn’t quite a necklace. It was too thick and too short for that.
When he looped it around her neck and fastened it at her nape, she realized that what it actually was a collar.
A very beautiful one, likely worth in the tens of thousands given the gorgeous cut of the purple gems.
Aria wanted to be outraged, but it was rather difficult given that he had just hung a greater value of riches around her neck than she would ever have earned in years.
“What is this?” She fingered it gently, already half-knowing the answer.
“Eldor wishes you to be under effective control when you are outside my chambers,” he said, producing a chain, similarly studded and made of silvery links with gold inlay and amethyst gems set into the very center of the links.
It was utterly stunning, and Aria stared at it with wide eyes as he clipped it to the collar around her neck.
He had her on a leash now. She was literally being treated as his pet, but instead of it feeling humiliating and awful, it felt as though she were highly valued and spoiled.
“That is a hell of a magic trick,” she said. “Are you pulling these out of your ass? Do dragons poop jewelry?”
“I made these last night, after I settled you into your bed,” Vyktor said, apparently taking her question of high value defecation seriously. “I enjoy jewel crafting, and you are quite an inspiration.”
Aria tried not to feel too pleased about the dragon’s gift.
It wasn’t a gift anyway. These silver, gold, and purple chains were no less shackles than the heavy iron ones that had been closed around her wrists and ankles in the beginning.
She inwardly lectured herself not to be taken in by the shiny trinkets, but it was difficult.
Even when Vyktor wrapped the other end of her leash about his hand and drew her gently forward, she gave in to the pressure easily, following him outside his rooms and into the halls of the dragon’s nest.
Everywhere she looked, the walls had been carved with ornate patterns and designs.
It reminded her somewhat of the way ancient Egyptians had made the walls highly decorative, with inscriptions and carvings depicting dragons becoming men and vice versa, great representations of dragon eyes, fire being breathed over the surface of small worlds…
“Come along, pet,” he murmured, urging her forward.
“I didn’t see these before,” she said. “Why didn’t I see these?”
“You were exhausted and half asleep,” Vyktor replied, slowing to allow her to take the carvings in. “These are but a simple ornamentation. They help us feel a little more at home.”
“They’re amazing,” Aria said, running her finger over the image of a large dragon that was depicted arching its head back, flames issuing from its mouth.
There was a ferocity and a majesty to the image that touched her somewhere deep in her heart.
She felt a little twinge of the same feeling that had once spurred her to explore the portal storm and to seek its center—a yearning that made little sense and yet was powerful nonetheless.
“If these are simple, your homes must be beautiful.”
“They are more focused on aesthetic qualities than most human dwellings we have seen,” Vyktor agreed. “So many of you live in little wooden boxes exposed to the elements. Very strange.”
“Most people don’t have the money or the time to decorate their houses like this,” Aria said. “Most people are very busy and count themselves lucky to have the wooden box.”
“People do not have time to build their houses? If you do not have time to build your house, what do you have time for?”
“Most people don’t build their houses,” Aria said. “They are bought and sold many times. Houses are very expensive.”