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Evereldis & Swarten

• Family Matters

Evereldis' brow was creased as she stared through the darkness, her vertically-slitted eyes penetrating the gloom of the overcast night with relative ease – and those wrinkles weren't simply the result of her advancing age anymore, she reflected wryly. Most signs of the matronly woman in her late 40s she'd once been were already gone – her skin as smooth and soft as when she'd been but a maiden, her teeth neat and pearly white, her breasts sitting proudly on her chest without any sign of sagging. The only indication that remained was a figure that was somewhat more plump than those of her newfound 'sisters', and some streaks of silvery gray amidst her jet-black hair – streaks that started out rather wide near the tip of her waist-long hair, then steadily narrowed and grew rarer towards her head. What was growing from her scalp at this point was pure, lustrous black, of course.

No… it wasn't age that creased her forehead, but thought. I'm still not too happy about this whole mission… She finally complained mentally to her steed and lover, Swarten – a magnificent specimen of a Black Dragon if ever there was one. After the plague had claimed her first husband – along with her two young daughters – she hadn't believed that she'd ever know love again… but, that lovely girl, Tiriana, had found her even as she finished burying their older brother beside them, half-blinded by tears, and made her an unexpected offer. She had taken it, and found love indeed – not from a human, but from a dragon, ancient and powerful. Talk about marrying up! Though, of course, technically…

Me neither… he replied, using the same mental link as she had – one that was anchored to the thick, heavy gold rings that even now strained her nipples and clit. She'd had her ears pierced as a young girl, as part of the traditional coming-of-age ritual of her people – and it seemed very appropriate indeed that a new set of piercings had heralded yet another transition, into a brand-new stage in her life. It's flattering to be given such a dangerous task, I suppose, but I don't care for how it endangers you, my dearest..

Chuckling – out loud as well as mentally – Evereldis patted her steed's neck affectionately. Aw, you're always so sweet… but, I'm not worried about _ that _. Everything was planned out with contingencies and everything, by those nice wizards and strategists back at the Citadel. And it went off without a hitch, too! Indeed, so far, everything had gone to plan. The distraction, the illusory copies of Swarten, the specially-formulated alchemical sedative… well, it was only to be expected, with all those clever young men working so hard on plotting it all out and preparing the potions and enchanted items and so on.

No, I'm not worried about the danger… she repeated, her brow crinkling again. It just doesn't feel very… _ righteous _, does it? It may just be an animal, at the end of the day, but we're still stealing a child away from his mother. The poor critter is going to be absolutely devastated when she realizes he's gone! She could feel a certain amount of surprise from Swarten as she put words – albeit only telepathic ones – to her mixed feelings about this mission. Well, that was to be expected. He sometimes had a hard time understanding what was and wasn't moral, good, or right. But, he was willing to learn, which was what mattered!

I… suppose there's that… He replied somewhat haltingly, knowing better by now than to try to pretend he was in total agreement with her. She could tell when he lied to her, after all – especially when they were communicating like this. But surely that is outweighed by the innocents we are _ protecting _ by this action, right? After all, he'll be well cared for in the Utopia's new Menagerie, whereas if he'd been left to grow up in the wild, he'd have wound up killing countless humans over the course of his millennia-long lifespan. For that matter, the research that the mages back home will be performing on him, might help to prevent the kind of tragedies that others of his kind cause on a regular basis!

Those points were hard to argue with, of course. And with a wordless sigh, she conceded the point. Part of her still felt like there was something iffy about doing something that, in isolation, seemed amoral, just because it served a greater good… but that part wasn't nearly as big, or as loud, as it might have been just a few years ago, before she'd become a DragonRider. Half the time, honestly, her judgments on what was or wasn't righteous were based mostly on thinking "What would I have thought of this before?" Something that was steadily getting harder, as the memories of her past life began to grow distant – and also didn't always help, since she was now getting herself involved in situations she couldn't even have imagined when she was just a housewife and mother living out a peaceful existence in a small, backwater village.

A sound vibrated through the air as they flew. It could have been mistaken for distant thunder, were it not for the keening undertones. No… it was a roar, of agony and fury. Far away, but incomprehensibly loud. There was a singing note of anxiety – a familiar fear, not for his own safety, but for hers – in Swarten's mental voice as he commented on it. It seems our theft has been discovered. The simulacra the mages prepared lasted longer than expected. Evereldis nodded mentally. It had been a pretty impressive fake – far more than a mere illusion – but of course, it was never going to last more than a few hours. Enough for them to get a head start, at best.

Time for the next part of the plan, then! She declared through their link, unable to quite hide the rush of excitement she felt. Moral or not, this was quite the adventure, and there was something inherently fetching about playing a part in such a complex stratagem, watching from inside it as every part smoothly clicked into place. Swarten did not disagree, though she could feel his anxiety rise a notch. I _ particularly _ do not care for _ this _ part of the plan… he grumbled telepathically as his eyes scanned the land beneath them, sharper even than those she had received when she became a DragonRider. There. Looks like a recent landslide took a chunk out of the forest. Nice, clear landing-site, and it looks like there's a mountain-stream nearby too.

As he descended, she was able to see it too. The mountainside beneath them was covered in a thick fir-forest, but it was apparently also a bit unstable – in a number of places, mud- or rock-slides had swept patches of wood down like they were matchsticks. The 'bottom' of those areas were tangled walls of boulders and shattered tree-trunks, forming a natural barrier, but above those were, as Swarten had suggested, some perfectly decent landing-sites. Good thing too, since dropping off their cargo was a touchy process at the best of times – trying to do it on more difficult terrain would have been a major headache.

Swarten was a powerful flier, Evereldis thought admiringly as her beloved steed began to backwing, killing their forwards momentum. He wasn't the most agile out of his brethren, perhaps, and on the ground, he couldn't match Brute's raw brawn – but his skills at aerial close combat were supreme, and his lifting capacity was the greatest among all the Blacks, who could already carry a lot more than one might expect from their size. That, most likely, was a big part of the reason why they'd been picked for this duty. Who but Swarten could've hoped to fly as far, as quickly, while carrying around something that was roughly the size of a young elephant? Something that, while too heavily drugged to struggle, was certainly squirming.

Their cargo, carried in a sling underneath Swarten's sleek, black-scaled body, was carefully deposited on the ground – with Evereldis nimbly leaping down to help secure it, followed by Swarten landing next to it a couple of seconds later. Their chosen landing site was right up against the tangled barrier that the landslide had created – surrounded by dense forest on two other sides, and in the final direction, the mountain simply rose towards steep, barren cliffsides. A nice, isolated spot, out of the wind and out of sight – and sure enough, the gurgling of a mountain stream could be heard nearby, a bit inside the woods.

"How's he looking?" Swarten asked, out loud but quietly, as he walked over. Evereldis had just finished pulling the cargo-sling open, revealing their rather perilous passenger. "Still sleeping like the baby he is!" She replied, her voice soft. She remembered how to talk around sleeping babies without waking them. Not that the huge, scaly, spiky-shelled creature before her looked all that much like a baby, but the signs were there. Limbs that were a bit too short and clumsy, eyes that were a bit too big – though currently closed – and the spikes that covered this baby Tarrasque's shell were noticeably dull, while the horns that would one day stand proud on his brow were currently naught but stubby bumps. Both of those last things were probably quite fortuitous for his mother.

"You know, that nice young man who helped make this plan…" Evereldis remarked as she casually stroked the Tarrasque-cub's nose, making it twitch sleepily "…told me that because these creatures are so rare, and sleep underground for such long periods of time, even the Sages used to think that there was just… one of them, which was immortal and just kept coming back." But, of course, it had eventually become clear that however huge, powerful, and absurdly difficult to kill they were, Tarrasques were indeed living, and mortal, things. They had two genders, they mated and produced live offspring, though they clearly weren't mammals – and now, one such offspring was in their keeping, while somewhere behind them, his mother raged and searched.

"An understandable assumption, considering how hard this fellow's mother tried to kill us before we even laid eyes on him…" Swarten remarked dryly as his rider stepped away from the cub and started going through his saddlebags. He nodded approvingly as she pulled out a number of items, all of them glowing with stored, arcane power, handing him several of them. "Yes… let's hurry, my dear. The sooner we have all the wards in place the better." The wizards and strategists who had planned this 'heist' had known that the mother-Tarrasque would definitely come after her cub – but so little was known about these bizarre and terrifying creatures… there was no saying how she would track him. By scent, like any animal might? By telepathy, or some other sort of magical bond? Dimensional imprint? Nothing was really off the table, seeing as Tarrasques were inherently magical creatures, and insanely powerful ones at that.

So, the plan called for a 'take no chances' approach to concealment. A portable magical circle was placed around the cub – a rather clever device, invented by a gnomish engineer. You just had to put it down, push a button, and then watch as it simply unrolled itself until it arrived back where it started and joined together with a click. It was made from platinum, reinforced with mithril and inlaid with a rainbow's worth of gemstones – all of which started lighting up, one type after another, as Evereldis and Swarten took turns connecting the various arcane crystals, orbs and other artifacts they carried to the circle, charging it with a dizzying variety of spells.

By the time they were done, both the circle and its contents had been warded against… everything. It was invisible, inaudible, odorless, and undetectable by any magical means – even Swarten could only vaguely perceive the thing when he focused his magic-sensitive eyes on where he knew it was, and even then, it was only a bit of scattering from the magic circle itself he was detecting. "Hopefully, that's enough to do the trick…" he mumbled, relaxing his eyes before the strain gave him a headache. Then he looked down at the enchanted bangles now hanging from his wrists, focusing the way he'd learned to do – channeling his power into them, to make sure they were topped up. They'd been crafted just for this mission, with a far greater focus on doing their job perfectly than on economic use of arcane power.

"I really don't like this part…" he grumbled, glancing over at Evereldis, who was already setting up her tent near the invisible magical circle and its contents. She chuckled and straightened up, glancing saucily over at him. "What, you don't think I can look after myself for a few hours while you create the false trail?" She asked, her voice light enough to take the sting out of her words. "I am a DragonRider, you know – fully-armed and armored, even!" She patted the hilt of the large axe that hung on her back, and the formidable suit of halfplate-adjacent armor she was wearing. Swarten had some fairly large and thick scales, compared with most of his brothers, and the dwarven smith, Drewyn, had taken full advantage of that, fabricating them into something more like solid-plate armor, rather than the flexible scale-mail or skin-tight dragon-leather that her sisters wore.

Swarten sighed, rustling his wings reluctantly. "I know, my dearest – I know. There may be wolves, bears, even the odd mountain-troll or solitary ogre up here, but none of them would last an instant against you. Even so…" Smiling as she heard the strain in his voice, she turned her back on her half-erected tent, marched over, and planted a big kiss on his muzzle, making him croon softly in response. "Even so, you love me, and you're terrified at the thought of anything happening to me, however improbable…" she quietly finished his sentence, cradling his jaw as she spoke. "I know. That's what it means to be in love. And you know what? Actually losing someone you love… it hurts even more than you can imagine. However bad you fear it might be, it's worse."

She was speaking from experience, of course, as well he knew. A husband, two daughters and a son she'd had to bury – and she'd loved them all dearly. "…but even knowing that pain, I chose to love again." She reminded him, hugging his big, beautiful head as his jaw trembled in her hands. "Because love is worth the risk, and worth the pain. That fear – it's something you just have to get used to. A price you have to pay. Some day soon, you and I will have to fly into battle together – and neither one of us can afford to be paralyzed by fear for the other when that happens. So… take a deep breath, my love, and go do your part. I'll be here when you get back, I promise."

Swarten – following her advice in a rather literal manner – drew in a deep breath, then nodded, nudging her away in the process. "I never imagined these kinds of… feelings before…" he mused as he spread his wings. "I'm glad I have you to guide me through them, my dearest. I'll try to be back before sunrise, but if not…" She smiled fondly up at him, gesturing towards her half-finished tent and the packs strewn next to it. "I've got more than enough supplies to last until tomorrow night, even without dipping into my reserves. Don't take any foolish risks just to get back here sooner!" Normally, it wasn't that big a risk, for a Black Dragon to fly during the day – but under these circumstances, it would be far too dangerous. He'd be visible in the sky, even if just as a speck, for miles around – and if the mother-Tarrasque noticed him at that point, just after he'd shaken her off and sent her down a false trail meant to lead her towards a barren and uninhabited region where she could rage and rampage without causing trouble, it could wind up endangering the whole plan... and any settlements unfortunate enough to be in her way when she came after him.

Of course, Swarten knew all of that too, and nodded firmly. "Of course not, dearest. I'll lay low through the day somewhere if I have to…" he promised as he began to beat his wings, sending powerful gusts of wind through the unnatural 'clearing' created by the landslide. "Until I see you again, my love!" He then declared as he took to the skies – to which she replied by blowing him a kiss, safe in the knowledge that even if his sharp eyes didn't catch it, the message would still reach him thanks to their mental bond.

She reflected on the plan as she finished setting up her tent, unpacked, and got a fire going. Despite his concerns, he was doing the riskiest part by far. The bangles he was now wearing would allow him to 'project' a copy of the Tarrasque-cub's presence, just as broadly as the magic circle was now hiding the real thing. He'd double back, catch the mother's attention, then lead her towards the pre-appointed 'safe area', always staying close enough that she wouldn't lose his trail, without actually allowing her to catch up to him. Then, he'd disable the bangles, slip away, and return to her and the cub as stealthily as possible. By the time they removed the drugged cub from the magic circle, the mother would hopefully be too far away to sense it anymore – and if not, they'd at least have enough of a head start to get back inside the Utopia's impenetrable barrier.

In the meantime, there wasn't really much for her to do, though, Evereldis wryly reminded herself as she returned from a brief trip to the nearby stream to fill her waterskin. She just needed to keep an eye on the concealed magic circle – the location of which she only recalled at this point because she'd stuck a few sticks into the ground around it – and otherwise to pass the time until Swarten returned from his task. A dull duty to say the least, but life as a housewife had taught her how to deal with long periods of monotony… and while she could've maybe wished for a better view – the pine-forest was blocking her sight-lines in three directions, and in the fourth, the mountain rose sharply towards the cloud-cover – she had a cozy bonfire, a rain-proof tent, fresh, clean water to drink and a sizable packed lunch. Perhaps she could spend some time reflecting on some of the things that had been on her mind lately…

As she pondered her options, she prepared a meal. Not simple travel-rations – not if she could help it! Chunks of salted meat, carefully washed to get the worst of the salt-encrustations off, then drenched in a strong marinade that would help deepen its flavor greatly, before sticking them on a spit over the fire to roast. It was a nice cooking spit, she had to admit – moderately enchanted, lined with silvered sigils that let it collapse to the point where you could practically keep it in your pocket, and it turned on its own… though, right now, she honestly wouldn't have minded if that feature weren't there. Turning it would've given her something to occupy her hands with.

"You! Human! Do… not move!" A deep voice roared, somewhat undercut by the way it broke halfway through. Her eyes immediately jumped to the source of the noise. A large creature had emerged from the surrounding woods and stepped into the firelight. Another was hanging back, in the darkness – just as large. "Give us… your food and pack, human… if you want to keep your life…" the voice belonged to someone who was trying way too hard to sound intimidating, but most would probably have considered the source rather frightening all by itself, Evereldis judged as she slowly rose from where she'd been kneeling by the fire, keeping her hands away from her body so as not to spook her new visitor.

It was a Minotaur – that much was abundantly clear. A human-like body, albeit more than seven feet tall and heavily muscled… partially covered in a shaggy, bovine coat, and of course, the head was that of a bull, complete with a pair of curved, upturned horns. An axe lay in his hefty fists, threateningly raised. Most adventurers, Evereldis silently admitted, would probably had reached for their weapon already, preparing to cut down this hostile monster. But her senses were far sharper than any human's, and both her eyes, ears, and nose were telling her all kinds of interesting things...

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