Chapter Text
As the sun begins to set through the winding blocks of water-tolerant trees, as the path turns from a sickly mud to a subtly squishy dirt, the tabaxis are relieved that their journey through the dominating flooded lands has begun its conclusion. Moving through this heavy wetland, the smell is the first thing that hits. The sticky nauseating scent of molds and fungus mixed with sugary but fetid aroma from rotting logs and the bodies of failed travellers. Broken branches and fallen leaves litter the incredibly faded path and float on the foaming water, their only sign of guidance being experience. Hairy insects buzz in the air and skip across the bog, dodging the hungry mouths of the creaking frogs and unblinking reptiles, their wet eyes forever watching as the pair pass by.
With the solid ground in reach, Crescent unplugs her nose, letting out a deep sigh as she shakes off the tickling roots caught on her shoes, her white spotted fur covered in a layer of grime from their long journey. Morning Frost leads the pair, his robe held up to avoid contact with the waterlogged ground, his boots squelching as he pulls his feet from the deep mud and places them onto the dirt, silt caked into the lower half of his legs with flicks of the stinking water on the tip of his striped tail, his orange fur glowing gold in the edge of the sunlight. With each careful step over every fallen branch a delayed snapping crunch follows, the louder of them often accompanied with a giggly comment.
“Oh! That was a good one!” The young excitable leopard laughed as she jumped onto every stick and old leaf, a sarcastic sigh following.
“These poor trees, you keep breaking all their arms.” The wisened tiger remarked, a sly look on his face.
“Wha-?!” The girl tightly crosses her arms, “Bu- The sticks aren’t even connected anymore… trees don’t feel pain! I- I think?” Her ears lower with the thought.
“Have you confirmed with them?” He brings a hand to his chin, raising a brow. She gasps, jumping off the beaten path and in front of the nearest tree.
“I haven’t been hurting you, have I?!” She wraps her arms as much as she can around the giant wooden plant. “Tell meeee~!” Face overflowing with fake tears, her eyes quickly widen with a thought. “I know!” She brings her index finger to a low part of the log, suddenly digging a claw into the bark and dragging it downwards. “Tell me if this hurts!” Whispering into the tree's metaphorical ear. She hears a voice from behind her eyes.
“Aaaaaa! Stop it, aaaaaaaa!” Cress squints, head spinning to face Frost, who is snickering.
“HEY! I was trying to communicate!” She hissed at him as he covered his upturned mouth in the collar of his hood. She jumped up, pushing herself off the rough edges of the treeline and bounding towards Frost. She swings a clawed hand through the air, leaping to reach just in front of his face. He steps one foot back, and as the leopard lands, she stumbles, tripping over his remaining foot and falling face-first into the mud, tumbling off the path. She slides through the trees, sinking into a gunky, clodded puddle. Bubbles rise from where her face is planted, and she pulls her head out with a thick slurp, breathing deeply then spastically shaking and rubbing herself off. She looks back up to the path, Frost staring at her, biting the inside of his lip to hide his smile. She sticks out her tongue, blowing a wet raspberry before pushing herself out of the muck. Grabbing onto the trees and pulling herself back onto the path, she tries again to shake off the mud, giving up and rubbing off her face on Frost’s pants. He doesn’t contest, standing and waiting until she lets go.
“We’re nearly there.” He nods to her before continuing down the road. After pulling a leaf from her nose, she skitters back to his hip, wringing out the base of her jacket as they walk.
“‘Kay.” She chirped, managing to grab hold of his robe as it swung methodically with every step. As the splattered trees begin to clear away, the final path becomes obvious. Down a slight hill across the marshy plains, is the city they’ve been aiming for. Agwé. Holding tight to his side, the two gracefully make their way down the steep, slippery landslide, taking care not to trip. As they land on the flatter, much drier ground, Cress releases her grip on the sorcerer. She stands, her face preoccupied, the pause making Frost stutter in his path and turn back to the child. His ear flicks.
“Are you alright?”
“Hmm?” She looks to him, then looks away, her tail curling around her legs. “Er, y-yeah.” He raises an eyebrow, taking a breath as he squats to her height. He looks over her expression, her eyes looking at him with occasional flicks to the city behind. He tilts his head.
“Are you scared to meet them?” She looks down, pulling on the pockets of her wet jacket. Frost tries to keep eye contact, lowering his head, but she looks further away. “Cress…?” Eventually she looks back to him for just a moment, then nods at her feet.
“Are you sure they’ll accept me?” Her throat unclogs with her question.
“I already said, yes- I know they will.”
“Really though?” She cowers. Frost places a hand on her shoulder, giving her a little shake.
“It may take them some time to warm up to you, but I’m sure they’ll take you in like I have, and if they don’t-” He puts two fingers up on his forehead, eyes glowing in the shadow of his hand. “I’ll crush all of their minds before they can form another thought.” Cress tilts her head.
“You won’t, though.”
“Well…” He blinks, the glow subsiding. “I’ll just tell them that I would.” He warns, placing a finger on each eyebrow and pushing it downwards, squinting his eyes to make an angry face.
“I… don’t think that’d make them like me.” A chuckle escapes her. Frost pats her on the head,
“I’ll figure it out.” He stands, “But you have to meet them to find out if they like you.” She nods, straightening her spine, her tail sweeping out behind her. She raises a fist into the air, bending her knees, then jumps off the ground to start sprinting towards Agwé, her cheers and excited yells lost to the wind. Frost picks up speed and jogs to catch up, kicking up the dry dirt behind him with every step. The buildings slowly advance towards them, growing tall and their detail gaining definition. Packed dark stone bricks lining the edges of the hollow windowed pillars to a shoulder’s height, speckling into a mixture of sandstone and old woods. Windows’ roofs outlined with a delicate arch, panes intricately reflecting the darkening orange sunlight that reaches through the gaps of the city walls. Cress’s gaze is lost as she steps around herself, trying to soak in every detail she comes across. Nearly tripping over her tail, she stumbles back into Frost, able to keep his composure from his past visits with the city. He places her back onto her feet, and she waits for him to step further before continuing forward. Frost clicks his tongue, scratching his beard as he talks, “I have come to a realisation that we have simply moved from one dirty city to another.”
“Oh. Well, I’m with you this time, so it’s going to be better even if the city sucks!” She sticks out her tongue.
“I am hoping it doesn’t suck.” Frost copies her and sticks out his tongue, making Cress laugh. Suddenly breaking the silence, an opera of dissonant screams and quickened footsteps come from around a corner. A mixture of species run in panic, yelling various warnings, the most common word the tabaxi’s could make out in the shouts being ‘DRAGON’. Frost gulps. As the crowd clears, a deafening roar passes through the two’s every organ and ripples through the air from deeper in the city. Frost steels himself and steps forward, the faint sounds of battle reaching his ears. The echoes of magical impacts, animalistic roars, half drunken yelling and a wavering train whistle telling Frost all he needs to know. He sighs, beginning to dust off his robe. “This isn’t the introduction I was planning for…” He turns to the fearful cub, who’s frowning, holding tight to her tail. “Well, from what I can hear, my friends are about to be ripped in half by a dragon, so I have to help them out before they become dessert.” He stretches out, pulling his arms across himself. “Stay here,” he sits her down next to the corner of the compact stone building. She tries looking towards the fight, but unable to see, she leans back. He puts a hand out to her, “Please.” She nods, ears still turned back. “I promise I’ll be back here in about… 20, 30 minutes, okay?”
“Okay…” He nods in return to her response, rising to his feet and pulling up his hood. His eyes flick with an emerald glow from behind the shadow on his face as he takes a step back, a dense cloud emerging from where he stands, climbing and swallowing him up with a misty green fog. Cress coughs, waving the mist away, but as it clears, Frost had disappeared. She brings a hand up to her ear, and after a moment she hears the distant dragon screech, a crash and rumble through the street, eventually followed by someone shouting Frost’s name and angry incoherent cries and yells. She smiles, falling forward and crawling to try peek around the corner once again. The fight is another right turn away, but the remnants of the battle flow through the cobbled avenue. Tongues of fire whip around before dissipating, a spark flying and causing a decorative tree to catch aflame. A rattling blast shoots particles of a purple light through the air, fading as they fall to the ground, being replaced by flashes and sparkles of green. A magenta liquid bursts from the right, splattering onto the cobble and sinking into the cracks, and after a cacophony of yelling, a powerful stream of bubbling, steaming acid covers it all up, washing over the street and splashing onto the walls, everything it makes contact with beginning to sizzle as the runoff flows into the drains tracking the curb. Cress’s worry grows. She thinks, ‘Are they winning?’ She scoots further forward, ‘Do they need help?’ For either answer, she needed a better view.
Swallowing the guilt of breaking Frost’s trust, she stands, trying to calm her shivering legs. Looking around, her eyes catch on a ladder, leading to the roof of the building that stands between her and the fight. She nods, leaping onto the ladder and climbing hastily, feet only catching twice until successfully she reaches the top. Exhaling out her fear, she scuttles across the rooftop and grips to the railing as she looks over the edge. She doesn’t have to look far over to see the action, the large black dragon almost meeting her in height as it rages around the people below. There’s Frost, looking a bit frustrated as he tries to focus himself, the four other people fighting with him taking turns to both strike the dragon and yell at him, the long-faced lizardfolk the only species Cress could recognise.
“Frosty! Where the FUCK were you?! We said a break for one week, not FOUR!” Yelled a large red man with an accent, the area around him visibly charred and cracked, the chains connected at his wrists glowing red from heat and crackling with sparks as they scrape the ground with each punch.
“We thought you died!” Sobbed an even larger man, but much hairier and lankier than the first. His long dark coat ripped to reveal gory canisters of the magenta liquid built into his back, clear piping running under the skin on his arms and legs and gathering in his clawed, malforming fingertips.
“Where’ve you been, buddy?!” Yelped a small green man sitting on the back of a fuzzy brown owlbear, his long dirty blonde hair tucked unevenly into a ponytail. Cress repulses at the sight of the pelt around his neck, the fur resembling her own.
“I got a bit caught up. I didn’t plan to be away for that long…” Frost announces as he ducks under the sweeping tail of the dragon. "-and I definitely didn't plan to arrive at a time like this!" The alligator scoffs.
“Does it fucking matter now?” The well dressed man sang out, “Can you help take care of this already so I can properly slap you?”
“It’s a bit hard to aim when it’s writhing around like this!” Frost grumbles as he holds his hands out in front of him, the Dragon’s movement halting in the air for a moment, it struggles against the invisible force, only for Frost to buckle over, the beast shaking itself free. It stomps down, reaching out with an open mouth at the tiger but its head is suddenly pushed into the building a second before it could bite down.
“Are all lizardfolk so mean?” Cress murmurs, the dragon roaring out once again. She falls backwards onto the rooftop, a hand on her quickly rising and falling chest, squishing down her body as much as possible to stay out of the sight of the beast. She looks back over the edge, watching the dragon as it whips its body around, its neck and tail crashing into the buildings adjacent, waving off each attack thrown at it. The fiery man flicks his arms up into the air, the chains on his wrists flying upwards from the motion, flung in the direction of the dragon’s neck, but his movement was noticed before they could connect. The dragon steps around, catching the chains in its mouth and flinging them out, tossing the man onto his side. It steps towards him, raising a heavy clawed foot over the man’s body.
“Ah, shit!” He yells out, but before it can do anything more, the dragon screeches out in pain, Frost standing slightly hunched in front of the monster, two fingers on his forehead and his other hand outstretched as if to reach the dragon’s mind. The alligator steps over and grabs the chained man by the hand, pulling him out from the range of the dragon as the owlbear emerges from the other side, hissing and scratching out the ankle of its right front foot.
“How is this thing so strong?” The small man complains, taking a fruit out from a satchel on the owlbear’s side and tossing it over to Frost, but it doesn’t reach as the tiger stumbles over, clutching tight to his own forehead. As the dragon returns to its weakened stance, steam begins to bellow from its mouth, turning back to Frost, who is now on his knees, nearly falling into his robe from exhaustion. Cress tenses, shuffling back from the edge.
“It’s going to shoot its acid again… F-Frost will-!” She stands, quickly scanning the rooftop around her. It’s almost completely bare, apart from some piles of rubbish, some glass bottles and scraps of fabric poking out. She shakes her head. “Can I distract it? Lead it away? I could… jump on it? No, I’d definitely die.” She looks back to the stomping beast, it’s head surprisingly stable despite the rumbling movement of the rest of the body and wings. She clenches her teeth. “...That’s a bad idea.” As she thinks, she watches the upper edge of the fight, flinching as she sees a drop of fresh acid fall from between its crooked teeth. She takes a deep breath, then sprints as fast as she can to the piles of trash, picking up a bottle, still half-full with some sort of alcohol. She turns, the tapping of her shoes on the stone roof quickening as she gets closer to the edge. “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t- DIE!!!” She jumps, air pushing up her coat like a cape, she holds tight to the bottle as her eyes glimpse down, and meets with Frost's.
“C-CRESS!?!” He yells in panic, the rest of the team looking up and between the two of them, the shocked expressions spreading between them all. The alligator lifts his top hat.
“Is that a-?”
She lands on the back of the writhing neck of the dragon. Using her free hand, she holds onto its ribbed horns like the reins on a horse, managing to stay somewhat put. It whines and shakes its head as she digs her claws into its scaled skin, gathering the courage and pushing herself further up the neck of this monster. The others are yelling at her from below.
“What’re’ya doing?!” The small man screamed.
“Get down, kid! That thing’s gonna throw you off!” The red man called out.
“Jump off, Torbek will catch you!” Cried the tallest man, holding his strangely long arms out ready for her fall. Cress looks at herself, focusing on her breath, she shakes the bottle in her hand, and with another push, she reaches the head of the dragon. Its monstrous roars ringing through her ears, and the repulsing smell of the refluxing acid fries her nose and attacks her eyes, but she holds strong. She bites and pulls off the replaced cork on the bottle with a fizzy pop, tipping it down and pouring it all over the dragon’s face, the bubbling alcohol running down into its eyes and nose. With the faintest sound of sizzling, Cress laughs triumphantly as the dragon roars out, flinging its head around and bringing its feet to its face to try to scratch out the burning liquid. It roars again, shaking its head violently enough for Cress to lose her grip, her claws slipping out from under its skin and sending her flying into the air. As she does, the lizard born swings his cane around his hat, purple flicks and smoke gathering on the crystal skull at the cane’s end and shooting out as he holds it forward, a wailing blast of eldritch magicks swirling through the air and cutting deep as it lands in the dragon’s neck. Cress looks down to the city below, the feeling of being held in the sky feels nice, until you start to fall. Her coat and tail trailing behind her wildly, all sound brushing past her ears too quick for her to make anything out, the air under her eyelids making her tear up. The ground closing in, Frost, focusing from the street, raises both arms up, but Cress’s fall doesn’t slow. From behind her a vortex of fog swirls and swarms around her body, completely clouding her vision. She takes a breath, the clouds filling her lungs for a moment as she feels her stomach suddenly drop. She squints her eyes, and as the fog clears, she’s already in the arms of the large red man.
“I gotcha, kid.” He laughs, before tightening his grip as the dragons’ now lifeless body falls to the road, its head completely crashing into the emptied bar next to the street, a glowing logoed sign cracking and falling off the wall, landing over the dragon’s withered face. The group manages to keep their footing as the city around them rumbles, their vision wobbling until everything goes silent. They all let out a collective sigh as they watch the dragon’s breathing slowly fade. The muscular man looks to Cress, then to Frost, now on his feet, rubbing deep into his forehead trying to get the sweat out from under the fur. The man drops her, and Cress runs to Frost, grabbing tight to his robe and sinking into it, leaning against him even as he can barely stand. He looks to her, running his hand across her head and quickly checking for injuries, his expression shifting as he slowly looks up and meets eyes with his friends now gathered around him. Torbek, the two green men and the large red man stand, confused and silent. Frost looks between them, wiping his nose before and clearing his throat to speak.
“Um… good to see all of you again.” He sighs, thinking for a moment until finally gesturing to the sulking child clinging to his legs. “I am open to questions.”