Chapter 21 #2
Sorrowful yellow eyes turned toward her. She’d never seen another being possess such ability to express pure agony in such a way. Thrasik’s scales and spines almost appeared deflated amongst the scratches and blood decorating his body.
Reaching around him to shut the door, Griselda tried to overlook the carnage of everything but couldn’t help it. Mish’Ta’s skull was shattered. Pieces jutted out of the walls and dirt floor as a shadowy orb dissipated where her jaws had been.
Standing amongst the ooze and rubble, Lazarus stood as a pure skeleton.
His bones were now a disturbing purple with bright runes dancing around each joint.
In his outstretched hand lay a red orb. He raised it high into the sky as a creature shrieked from above.
A bone chilling cry that instilled instant despair.
Landing on top of Mish’Ta’s crumpled corpse was something akin to a zombie. An amalgamation of different skins and bodies sewn and twisted together in an attempt to replicate a dragon. The creature sent a horrid fear through Griselda as it began devouring the remnants of the necrotic dragon.
Slamming the door shut, she turned back to Thrasik, who she hadn’t realized was taking in the same images. He met her glance with a tearful pout. She reached out and grazed her hand along the side of his maw.
Thrasik’s spines inflated with a heavy breath as he sighed into her palm before bending to scoop her back up in his arms. As much as she wanted to run her fear and panic off, Griselda knew they’d make more distance with his speed and stride.
Clinging to his chest, she wrapped an arm around his neck and nuzzled into his throat.
A slow whine escaped him.
A sound so hollow and harrowing that it made her very soul want to weep.
* * *
Thrasik’s chest clenched with a dread he’d never experienced. Fighting through the voidlings and their gnoll captain was a hell he’d rather go back to instead of witnessing his own last bit of family cease to be.
His brow creased.
Mish’Ta hadn’t deserved to become whatever horror it was that Lazarus turned her in to. As much as he wanted to turn around and try to crack the bones of that wretched skeleton himself, he knew he was no where near powerful enough in his current state.
Nor emotionally stable.
Griselda managed to keep a hand against him at all times.
It somewhat helped him feel more grounded, at least in the grand scheme of finally being back with her.
His mind was such a mess right now that it was hard to truly see reality without reliving the view of Mish’Ta’s remaining viscera becoming dinner for the beast that had been following them this entire time.
The scales along his belly gripped tightly to the stone flooring as the came back across the cells where he and Vratra had been.
“What happened here?” A gasp whispered from Griselda as her head swiveled to take in the crime scene.
“A relinquishing of a worthy opponent and his entourage,” he responded.
Thrasik’s mouth dried out as they approached the crumpled but grinning gnoll. He put up a valiant fight. One that Vratra almost stepped in to help with before he was ordered to flee with Ophelia.
“I met another naga down here.” Pointing to the other cell, Thrasik wondered how many others could have been captured and tortured without their knowledge. “He’s fallen for one of you man-things.”
“Oh?” Griselda turned her grinning face up toward him. “Does that mean we’ll be more accepted once we head back to your home?”
“We’ll still need to stand our ground with them.
The other thing though, the woman was the daughter of the High Priest. I don’t think she’s well.
” Thrasik scratched at his throat, knocking dried blood from between his scales.
“She was living in a world of illusion that broke when her necklace shattered.”
He pointed toward the crystal shards on the ground by Vratra’s cell. They glimmered with an eerie light.
Griselda bent over to check them before turning and making a statement that made his eyes go wide.
“Lazarus said he created me.” Her hands folded around each other before her belly. “He used the blood of his own woman and that of a male dragon.”
Thrasik felt a cold shiver run down his body. His vision bounced around her. She didn’t have any features of a dragon. She didn’t even feel like a naga. How could she have the blood of one in her?
Does that mean we can… mate?
“I don’t know which dragon it was, but that’s what I know.
Which technically means this woman with the other naga would be my half-sister.
” He watched as she uncomfortably rubbed her hands together.
“Which feels… wrong. I haven’t ever had any family, and knowing there’s someone out there — that’s been here — it just makes me feel very uneasy. ”
“I don’t love you any less.” The words slipped from him before he could process them.
“And I know you just witnessed that whole, like, entire horror show with me. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.
I don’t fully understand what it’s like to lose someone but—” Griselda’s mouth suddenly dropped open in spite of her prattling anxiety. “—did you just say you love me?”
Thrasik couldn’t help but laugh.
Reaching over to scoop his palm along the cusp of her flushing cheek, he flicked his tongue out to lick against her chilly nose, “I’ve said it in more ways than one, my lavishing starlight.”
He bent down and lifted her back into his arms. As much as he wanted to give into his emotions and grieve, he also wanted to bury himself in her and lose all thought to carnal instinct.
“Let’s leave this place before that demented necromancer catches up to us,” he growled, glancing over his shoulder as their pace resumed.
Griselda buried her face into her hands, peering around her fingers. It was a strange action and one he didn’t understand. Why hide your sight if you’re just going to reveal it anyways? Nonetheless, he held her close and tried to keep his own thoughts shoved away.
The further down the corridor he went, the more he noticed it turning into a sewer. Giant pipes circled around in segmented areas. A rancid scent wafted from each one.
He wondered which one Vratra and Ophelia took to escape or if they were still stuck in this hellish cathedral.
Water — at least he hoped it was water — swept along his tail and hips the deeper they went. Griselda clung tightly to him with her arms wrapped around his neck and face buried in his spines. By how she breathed, he assumed it was to hide the putrid smell.
A ripped grate met his glare as they hit a dead end. Thrasik examined the tears in the metal, assuming a normal creature wouldn’t be able to do such a thing.
“They all have to lead outside, right? May as well take this one.” Griselda’s muffled voice rang true.
Pulling the grate fully off, Thrasik tossed it aside with a splash.
“You’ll have to crawl onto my back. This space is tighter than the rest.” He felt bad disturbing her clinginess to his chest, but at least she would still be on him instead of walking in this uncomfortable liquid.
Making sure she was stable, he dropped to his arms and slithered up into the pipe. Being closer to the water only revealed worse information. It wasn’t clean, but not in a waste type of way. Blood and bones mixed in with the flow as it followed his pathway.
A faint light teased the exit as froth spilled out into a drain ditch. Thrasik’s nerves began to get the better of him as the space reached a tight dip. Griselda clung tight to his back, her thighs clenched hard around him as much as they could.
It took everything in him to not let his cocks spring forth at the feeling of her clenching and trembling against his body.
He squinted hard as he splashed forward, one hand in front of the other.
Not in this filthy water. Gods, please, not in this water.
The walls of the drainage pipe abruptly gave way beneath him sooner than expected. A yelp spilled from Griselda as they went tumbling out of the pipe and into a rather disgusting drainage ditch.
Thrasik sat up, holding his head high so as to keep any possible rot away from his maw.
He turned to look for Griselda. A disgusted pout slapped across her face as she stood and flung sludge off her hands and arms. Red streaks smeared along her pale skin.
Her white hair stuck out in spiked angles from the muck.
She almost looked like a battle hardened warrior.
My gorgeously brave starlight.
She met his gaze and he watched as her face blanched more than he thought possible. Her eyes bounced from something behind him and back. Twisting on his tail, he moved to see what caught her attention.
As far as the eye could see, a massive bone grave stretched far into a carved gash of earth the fed out to the lapping waves of the ocean. This must have led them to the back of the cathedral and beyond Silyre’s walls.
A pit began to form in his stomach as he slithered closer to the bones, curiosity getting the better of him.
Spittle from the waves of the low tide washed up around the draining muck.
Sitting amongst the foam were hundreds of snakelike skulls.
Multiple fanged maws jutted up from the sandy dirt in differing directions.
Some missing their lower and upper halves.
Others missing portions of their skulls.
The majority had cracks along their middle in a similar way to Mish’Ta’s own demise.
Thrasik fell to his hands and began to dig through the bones. He didn’t know what he was searching for or why he was doing it. A desperation to see his people, possibly? To know their deaths weren’t for naught. Tears began streaming down his face as he tossed skulls aside into a pile.
An anger built from the depths of his core. Each skull he grabbed only fueled his fire.
His scales puffed, individual flecks of frustration spreading along his body.
His spines flared, ruffling every nerve in his body to the point of feeling like lighting.