A Shared Fate

Sthuna instinctively surged up, fangs bared.

He could deal with a puny human girl. He'd toss her aside with ease, fend off her attempts to hurt him, he would!

But what Sthuna didn’t expect was for the girl to grab him bodily by the snout. She wrapped her arms around his jaws like a rope, closing them shut. Sthuna reared back, astonished and outraged in equal parts.

Eyna faced him down. There were tears in her eyes, but her expression was set and stubborn. She pulled his snout level with her face, forcing him to look into her eyes. As if he were some sort of unruly horse, and not a fearsome dragon. “Stop it. Now.”

Sthuna tried to shake her off, a snort erupting from him. But she clung to him like some sort of demonic squirrel. Sthuna writhed, powerful muscles coiling and undulating under his silver scales.

“Eyna. You need to let go.” The fae beast growled, voice strained with worry.

Sthuna would have scoffed at that, were he not preoccupied with his squirrel problem. The beast was the one that needed to be afraid. He’d tear right into it and take those crystallized antlers as his prize. Acid bubbled, threatening to drip from his maw as he imagined all the ways he would-

“Enough!” Eyna’s warning was all the advance notice Sthuna got before the human stuck two fingers into his nostrils.

For the second time that day, Eyna made him recoil.

Sthuna, who had faced down barbaric foes and mighty opponents. Sthuna, who had destroyed his enemies with a viciousness that had set him apart from all other imperial wyrms. Sthuna, who never backed down from a fight. Sthuna, who was flinching and recoiling from an unarmed, simply human girl.

The audacity! The sheer audacity of her! Sthuna had half a mind to just fling her across the space for that move. Break those fragile human bones. He backed himself up until they were both tumbling down.

Sthuna landed on his back, Eyna on top of him as she refused to let go of his snout. Flower petals and blades of grass went up in the air, whirling around them.

Sthuna sneezed and snorted. He tried to buck her off. His claws came up, ready to swat at this annoying creature who dared to assail him like so. He dug into her, hindlimbs scratching like a cat. Not to kill. But surely to toss her, or dissuade her.

Stubborn squirrel that she was, Eyna clung to him. Sthuna struggled. Much like a crocodile, his jaws were powerful when they snapped shut, far weaker when attempting to open. She had him in an unusually vulnerable position.

Just as the thought occurred to him, he felt the tree ensnare him.

The roots encircled him as he thrashed and snarled. But the more fiercely he struggled, the more the weave tightened. Eventually he collapsed, all three hearts pounding wildly in his chest. Trapped. Nowhere to go. Now they would pour their foul power into him, corrupting his soul. The magnolia flowers blooming along his newly formed prison served only to horrify him further. Evidence of the blasphemy of this wretched place.

Eyna’s eyes went wide. She backed off, finally, but left him caught by the tree. Where Eyna’s arms fell away from his snout, the tree muzzled him. The tree did not harm the girl, he noted. Clearly this had been a coordinated trap of some kind.

He trained his killing intent on Eyna. The traitor. He had spared her and she had thanked him by working together with the accursed tree.

The Warden tree spoke. “We… Have seen that you do not trust our words. But I will remind you. No harm shall come to you. Yet… It is also true that we cannot permit you to bring harm unto others. I will bind you for now, child. But you will be free once you have calmed.”

Lies, he wanted to snarl. But he merely glared, eyes vicious behind the muzzle of tree roots.

The tree continued, undaunted by his animosity. “You must heed these words well. For they are as important to your fate as they are our own.” The roots curled, drawing him up into the air and suspending him. It didn’t hurt - and as a creature of flight being in the air did not frighten - but he detested being held like this either way. “Look upon your form. See that you have been marked, just as my child has been. You see the flesh upon your left limb? Now perceive hers.”

He did not trust this creature. Not for a second. But as he turned his head, there the evidence was, clear as day. A patch of skin, soft and pink like a human. He hissed his discontent, hearts seizing with a sudden dread. His first thought was that the tree had somehow done something to him. Yet he knew it could not be so. For as his eyes fell upon the girl, he witnessed the same affliction. Simply in reverse.

And, unlike Eyna, he knew the reason. With a deep and abiding dread, he remembered.

A flicker. Red scales. A cry. The rasping voice, pained and pitched. Blood pooling beneath clawed hands. A spear erupting from our chest. We have been betrayed. We have been cut down. And the pain is too much to endure.

"Curse you. Curse you, and all that you are, and all that you stand for. Remember my words well. The skin shall rot from your bones. Yet you shall live. Every breath shall be pain. Yet you shall breathe. Every waking moment you will suffer. You will beg for a death that will never come. This is your punishment."

The tree turned him over slowly. “I see that you begin to understand. Your fate is tied with that of Eyna’s. Just as hers progresses, yours shall, too.”

This was a shared curse. Sthuna wanted to shudder. It was dark magic that weighed heavily on his soul. This was the reason he had spared the girl, he decided. Not out of some misplaced consideration or compassion. Some part of him must have instinctively understood that she was connected to him.

Wonderful. He was tied to a traitorous demon squirrel of a girl.

The fae beast stepped forward, eyes hard and narrowed. “Answer me. Have you recently come into contact with an Xolotl?”

Sthuna went rigid. The spines at his back flared. They knew. They knew what he had done. They knew why he had been cursed in the first place.

The tree slowly unraveled the makeshift muzzle from his snout to give him the opportunity to speak. Sthuna snapped his serpentine head to the fae beast, baring his teeth. In his fiercest, most vicious tone he spoke. A voice like the hiss of water turned to steam under the heat of his rage. “I have nothing to say to the likes of you.”

And, with that, he immediately spat acid.

The beast dodged. The tree, as expected, muzzled him again. And Sthuna had the satisfaction of marring the pristine grasses below for only a moment, before they began to grow once more. But he had made his statement. He was not their friend. He was not their ally. He was here to destroy them.

The tree sighed. He felt almost offended by how… Exasperated it seemed. It wasn’t taking him seriously at all, and that thought just made him angrier. He let his rage simmer as the tree and the beast discussed his fate. Cowards. They refused to kill him.

But he supposed that must be on account of their beloved demon squirrel. They worried that she would be harmed. The nature of curses was a volatile one. There was no way to guarantee what would happen to one party if the other involved was harmed or killed. With the reflective nature of this one... Who knows. Might kill her in the same fashion.

The girl was still staring at him. He gave her a little hiss. Just because.

Just wait… I’ll destroy you. Or, if I fail, my hunting party will succeed.

After all… With Sthuna here, they’d soon follow.