Chapter 20
Acold, hard, damp floor oozed an uncomfortable chill into Thrasik’s scales. His head throbbed something fierce. The last thing he remembered was reaching out toward Griselda as words chanted into his mind from the dragon above.
The dragon.
That haunting shape of the eldritch creature hanging above the room like some prized trophy disturbed him more than anything he’d ever witnessed. Thrasik dragged a clawed hand down his face, noting the chained cuffs around his wrist.
Shaking his head, he took in his distorted surroundings.
Whatever illusion that had been attempting to be in place had long since dissipated.
Mildew grew along the brick wall beside him, seeping to a makeshift drain in the center of the room.
A wall of bars blocked his exit. Any other day, he would have attempted to squeeze through them or try to bend them.
His head hurt too much in the moment to even bother.
A cough sounded across the way. Thrasik perked his head up and swiveled toward the sound. A pair of yellow eyes peered at him from a cell opposite his, shadowed by the flames of scattered torches.
“Finally awake?” The voice was hoarse but with a faint sense of familiarity.
“If by awake you mean walking amongst a living nightmare, then yes,” he retorted.
A wheezing laugh came from the other cell.
“I’m surprised to see you here, my prince. Never thought they’d capture the likes of you. Hell, never thought they’d manage to get your scales to set hide in this forsaken place.”
Thrasik’s mind tinged. Surely he’d misheard. Rushing to the bars, he smooshed his face against them as he tried with all his might to get a better view of whoever was in the cell.
A pale orange tail with white splotches slithered out. Its tip twitched. Halfway up from the portion that was out, a hefty kink knotted into the bone and twisted it at an uncomfortable angle. White claws wrapped around the bars as a snakelike face pushed against them in the same way as him.
“Vratra, how did you end up in here?” Thrasik’s heart pounded at seeing the older naga.
The last time he’d seen this naga was right before he’d been exiled. Vratra had been sent on a mission to scout an area to the north of their home based off word of a strange beast wandering around.
“The missions was a falsity. A ruse, if you would. As you can see, this city is a cursed prison, my Prince.” Vratra’s voice echoed at his final word.
Thrasik’s claws clicked around the bars. That mission had been ordered months ago. He himself had been on a desperate run around the tribes to try and figure a way to reclaim his throne.
“You must know, I’ve been exiled. I’m a prince no more.” His tail thwacked against the cold slab underneath his scales.
“Lies! You are the rightful heir!” hissed Vratra. “What fool deemed that? Who dared to usurp? I’ll rip their hide from their flesh the moment I’m free, so I swear upon my final fang!”
“Silence, Vratra. The Elders came to this city to speak to the High Priest and declared it so once they arrived back. I’ve come here for answers, reluctantly.
Not just answers of my own either. Another accompanied me, seeking her own answers to a possibly connected problem.
” Thrasik tried to peer down the corridor on either side, wondering if there were any guards nearby to hear their conversation.
“A female? Certainly not a naga. They would’ve been a fool to follow one in exile, despite your charm.” A snarky laugh seeped from the shadows of the other cell.
“No, not a naga. Though, she’s even more charming than one. I think she may even become my betrothed, Vratra.” Thrasik sighed.
He desperately wanted to see Griselda. To know she was okay. To confirm the High Priest hadn’t harmed a hair on her head. He didn’t know what magic the guards managed to use on him to knock him out, but at the same time he wasn’t convinced it wasn’t the dragon trying to manipulate a situation.
“A man-thing? Thrasik, surely you jest. You think they’ll be mad at you as it stands for showing up after exile. They’ll rip your scales asunder if you dare bring an outsider into our home.” Vratra peered at him from the bars, his pale eyes like waning yellow topaz in the flickering torch light.
Before Thrasik could respond, a soft humming wound its way down the far side of the corridor. An excited gasp sounded from Vratra as he shuffled away from the bars.
Thrasik tilted his head in attempt to get a better view of the figure that glided along the stone pathway.
Another woman. Her clothes were regal, but intently flattering on her figure.
She wore a robe similar to the High Priest, but it had scarlet stitching along the hems in the shape of stars.
Her hair hung over her shoulders in thick mahogany curls.
“Vratra, I’ve brought you some dinner!” Her voice chimed down the walls of the prison.
Thrasik whipped his head to Vratra, cutting his eyes to peer at him through the shadows. Vratra slid a finger to his lips in silence as a coy grin spread along his pale lips.
“You’re too kind to me, Ophelia. I don’t deserve such niceties from someone as caring as you.” He curled in on himself near the door of the cell, playing with the ends of his claws in a sly manner.
The woman he called Ophelia approached his cell, placing a wooden bowl on the ground before digging in a pouch on her waist and retrieving a key. Thrasik slid deeper into the shadows of his own cell. This was an interesting turn of events.
Ophelia opened the cell door, glanced around both sides of the corridor, then dashed in and wrapped her arms around Vratra.
Oh, you sly old crone!
Thrasik’s brows shot up. Here he was, about to get an earful from a naga almost twice his age when he was gallivanting around in the same scenario!
“I heard he stopped by here earlier. Hopefully he wasn’t rude to you. He knows my experiments mean the world to me!” Ophelia’s voice trailed around the enclosure, warbling with the threat of tears.
“Nothing aside from chastising me for leaving a scratch on your breathtaking face. He’s blind to our antics and your experiments.” Vratra glanced at Thrasik over her shoulder, a threatening glare that dared him to speak a word.
Thrasik rolled his eyes. If only he knew the antics that Thrasik himself had been up to.
“Stay here and eat. I’ll be back with some new balms for you! I think you’ll enjoy the scents of a few of them, and they might even help your scales from the stone chaffing.” Ophelia gave Vratra a light tap on his snout before planting a kiss between his brows.
No sooner was she checking down the corridors than she was hustling along with her hands delicately lifting the skirt of her robes. Thrasik turned back to face Vratra who had a look so smitten smeared across his pale face that he wished he could tease him for it.
Vratra shook his head, coming back to reality. “Don’t you dare say a word.”
“Oh, I’m in no position to do such. I’ve tasted the flesh of my own divine light and have worshiped her in ways none would think possible.” Thrasik licked his lips, folding his palms before his chest in a mock prayer.
Those pale yellow eyes across the way widened in a mixture of shock and curiosity.
“You mean… We are compatible? We can truly mate with them?” His voice sliced down to barely a whisper, as though he had his own contemplation about attempting to be with the woman he kept glancing down the hall for.
“Take it slow, Vratra. We may be similar, you and I, but our equipment is different. You will need to experiment and not let the mating frenzy take over.” Thrasik pointed a claw at him, accusingly. “You won’t forgive yourself if you hurt her.”
Vratra lowered his head and stared at Thrasik from the corner of his eye.
Most of the female naga refused to mate with him due to his aggression.
It was a double edged blade though, because he’d always beat himself up afterwards and regretted letting his instinct take control.
Many times he and Thrasik had conversations about such an issue.
“I adore her, Thrasik. Her touch is so tender that it makes me forget I’m in this hell hole.
Though, sometimes I wonder if her reality is the same as ours.
The things she says… they don’t always make sense.
It’s as if she lives in a world so pristine and untouched by whatever these demonic forces are that she can be so carefree.
” Vratra slumped his jaw onto his palm, his tail consistently writhing into different ringlets from discomfort.
“When you first arrived here, did the world seem different to you?” Thrasik tilted his head as a strange shout echoed a distance away.
“Vaguely. Everything seemed brighter. More grandiose. Like what I’d always been told this city was supposed to be. But then something changed and it was like a veil lifted away.” A sigh escaped from Vratra’s maw.
“Vratra. Did you see the dragon?” Pushing his arms through the bars, Thrasik pointed upward to see if it would jog the older naga’s memory.
Vratra’s eyebrows shot up, his mouth gaping open. “Dragon? What dragon?”
“There’s a skeletal dragon suspended above the main entrance. She speaks into our minds, Vratra. I think she may be Mish’Ta.” His claws wrapped tightly around the bars.
It was a long shot and a baseline hope, but Thrasik truly begged any higher power that he was wrong. The voice had been twisted, but its soft undertone reminded him of Mish’Ta’s in an oddly comforting and horrific manner.
“There’s no feasible way. Mish’Ta came here seeking solace once her disease extended too far.” Vratra’s eyes bounced back and forth between his. “She—She wouldn’t have allowed something like that to happen, Thrasik!”
His tone became panicked. His tail writhed faster.
“I don’t know. All I know is there’s a damn dragon at the entryway and I have some twisted obligation to know why.” Thrasik pulled away from the bars and sat in upon himself.