PSL: KINGS OF ABORG

[wolfintheattic]

Comments

DRAGON AU

[toothaches]

it has dragons

[toothaches]

"COME OUT, DRAGON!"

Maurice thought he sounded bold standing at the mouth of the cave that overlooked his parents' kingdom. The prince had his hand on the hilt of his sword and his crown (which was really just a cardboard replica from his parents' restaurant) tipped forward like an old timy thug's cap.

If he brought the beast home, there would be a grand party. He would have a real crown and a seat at the head of the Queen's wide-reaching fastfood empire. It was complicated.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna, who had been taking a wonderful nap, lifts his head to blink out towards the mouth of his cave. The walls were lined with carvings of runes and things, magic running through the whole thing all the way back towards his horde, which didn't amount to much, but he was a humble dragon of not too much strength or size. Larger than a human by far, yes, but not quite so terrifying when he got out into the light.

He yawns, his claws searching for his glasses before he plops them on his face, settling on his snout easily. "I don't feel like coming out to play," He responds in a rather board voice, deeper than one might think when they saw him, but not quite so deep that you would register it for a monster his size. "Do I have to?"

[toothaches]

Maurice had been bracing himself for a response. He wasn't quite sure what he'd been expecting...but it wasn't this. He drew his sword clumsily and puffed his bangs out of his face.

"Uh--yes!" He forced the warble out of his voice. What if it was a really, really big dragon? He leaned nearer to the entrance. He could see the flickering runes in the dark and rocks that could be the dragon. "Come out so I can kill you! You're a dragon, I'm a prince, you know the drill!"

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

The sounds of scraping claws can be heard, but the ground doesn't rumble like one would expect. His long body can be rather stealthy when he wants it to be, and he is light on his feet, even if he can't help the sound of his claws. "You don't have to be so demanding, patience is a virtue, you know." He returns, another louder yawn echoing out of the cave as he stretches his wings wide and arches his long back a cat might.

Finally shaking the sleep from his eyes, he straightens his glasses and makes his way towards the mouth of the cave, appearing in front of his challenger with a raised brow. When he snorts, fire comes from his nose and he holds claws and wing in front of his mouth to hide the smile. "Is that crown made of paper?"

[toothaches]

Oh, man. Here it came. The horrible abomination was going to lunge at him. And Maurice was going to lop its head off and mount it on his--

"Are you pink??" The tip of Maurice's sword thunked harmlessly off his boot. Hanna was a lot smaller than he expected. And he could talk--another thing he hadn't expected. But those scales. He actually lifted a glove-clad hand to shield his eyes from the way the sun was glinting off of them. It was like their court jester threw up on a stain glass window.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

"I see you don't have abs of steel and perfect teeth." He returns, snorting again, this time with less humor. "Seems like neither of us are what we were really expecting." His barbed tail swishes from side to side, considering the young prince before him. Definitely not the usual that comes calling at dragon's doorsteps.

"I suggest you get over it quickly. I doubt your sword tip is going to cut any less because I'm pink." And if he tried anything, Hanna's teeth didn't discriminate either.

The Magician's Assistant

[toothaches]

The prince's sleep was dreamless and honestly, it was better that way. His body was battered as was his pride and so he slept like the rocks he was surrounded by. Hanna needn't worry about getting all his things together by day break because the prince dozed until noon in his heap of furs.

When he finally did stir, it was slow. Sleep clung to him like spiderwebs and a gloved hand emerged from the bearskin. It made a weird gesture--and kept making it until it occurred to Maurice that it was gloved. He tugged it off with his teeth before lifting his hand into the air again.

He snapped his fingers--loud and well practiced.

"Arnold..." his voice was heavy with sleep. "Arnold, my clothes, please. And some willow bark tea, my head is killing me."

One thing his mother had beaten into her children was to call each and every servant by name.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna hadn't taken much longer past daybreak, which suited him fine since the journey had tired him. He had left the village in scale and wing, not wanting to over-exhaust himself in the trek home. If Maurice had woken earlier than the dragon, he would have come across him asleep much like he had been the night before, though far less collected this time around. He slept on his back, wings spread and sprawled with his tail and long body laying all over, enjoying the warmth radiating back at him from the cavern walls and gold that pillowed him.

Hours later, he had finally woken, using his tail to sweep his horde back into a neat pile, much like one would make a bed. Having started his day, working on some spell or another, he had just about finished with an oddly colored potion when the sound of a snap hit his ears. They twitched, Hanna shaking his head to rid himself of the sound, when it came again, loud and echoing down the hall it came from. "Royalty." He groaned, glaring at the cavern ceiling before heading down the hall with a bundle gathered in his tail.

And, while it wasn't Arnold who greeted him as he woke, he was promptly pelted by a pile of clothes right in his face. "I'm sure that'll do good for your head, my lord. If that doesn't work I'm sure I could bite it off. I'm told that does wonders to get rid of pain."

[toothaches]

The clothes landing on him where he lay wasn't too odd. Sometimes Arnold got fed up with him too. But that nasal tone didn't belong to Arnold and neither did that threat.

Maurice sat bolt upright and his shoulder bumped one of the shelves, nearly upsetting a couple of those fire bottles. In the night he'd gravitated towards what looked warmest. His eyes were wide and he pulled his hair from his face as he looked around. This wasn't his room! This was...this was...

For a moment it looked like his heart might break all over again. He stared up at the bespectacled dragon and rubbed his eyes with his bare hand, hoping he could smear away Hanna's image. He stayed. Maurice deflated and looked down at the clothes that he'd been supplied with. He wasn't a prince. He wasn't a fit to strut around in a prince's clothes. With a resigned sigh, he lifted up the shirt Hanna gave him.

He made a face. It was so...plain. There was no gold thread along the cuffs and the buttons looked like they were made of wood. Or maybe bone? No, that was wood.

"I forgot where I was...I don't know how."

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

The shirt was what Hanna could find in simple fashion. It at least was new, and not some rag he had found, since he wasn't too learned on human wear. "Perhaps it was the fire, it can have a mind of its own," He offered, nodding to the bottles above him. "They protect who they will and burn in the same fashion. Fire is always an unpredictable element."

He settled back on his haunches and considered Maurice, covered still in furs and looking so deflated and done already. No fight left in him. Kind of sad really. "You sleep a lot, did you know?"

[toothaches]

He eyed the fires for a moment before heaving another long sigh and undoing his vest. He yanked his filthy silk shirt off over his head and flung it unceremoniously across the room where some pots sat. This dragon had already stripped him of everything he had. What was a little more dignity?

The family crest, a cockerel in profile, stood proudly at the base of his collarbone in deep blue ink.

He tugged the shirt on and when his head reappeared he fixed his ponytail.

"Sleep is necessary for proper brain development." His nurse had told him that a thousand times trying to corral a wild young Maurice into bed.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna didn't see much point in modesty, not even looking away when Maurice changed his shirt. He looks curiously at the crest on his chest though, leaning forward a little more to give it a closer examination before Maurice puts on his shirt. "Is that your family's mark? I wasn't aware you humans tattooed them on yourselves."

And while his answer seems such bullshit, Hanna laughing, he shrugs his wings and turns, nodding to the back of the room, "In any case, I have a task for you. You know how to alphabetize, yes?"

Smoke and Mirrors

[toothaches]

Scratch scratch scratch.

Long into the night and well into the morning, Maurice did his scribe work. This attempt on mastering the huge scroll went far better but he still didn't finish by the time the birds outside the cave woke up.

He hunched close to the desk with one of the furs tucked around his shoulders like a cape and several spent candles created grim pillars along the desk's edges. Every time he heard Hanna's gold shift, every time he heard some stone tumble down the mountain, every time the birds stopped singing, he had to pause, hold his breath, and wait for the yelling to start.

This went on until what civilized folk who OWNED AN EASY TO LOCATE CLOCK would call nine am. He could no longer take it. With baggy eyes and covered in ink stains, Prince Maurice shuffled into the main chamber and squinted around in the rosy light.

Knowing better than to call out for 'Dragon' again, instead he croaked, "Hello...?" Did the guard show up when I blacked out for five seconds and behead you? Are they setting fire to the countryside? Is there any wine?

At least Maurice's predictions weren't far off. To ears far better than Maurice's, the sound of hooves on the hills in plain sight of the peak thundered.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna hadn't actually heard Maurice's hello. The sounds he was more intuned to were the thundering of hooves coming closer. He lay close to the mouth of his cave, pressed to the floor and seemed to be working on some last minute runes. The whole mouth of the cave was covered in them. It seemed that while Maurice worked on his scrolls, Hanna had been quietly carving runes into the mouth of the cave.

There were three in total, One rather large on that he was finishing, he stood on, just finishing the last few lines as the sounds of hooves became more audible for regular ears. Maurice should have heard it by now. Hanna's tail lifted, curling around him after all that work he had done, and the barbed end looked a little worse for wear after carving into the stone for so many hours, but if it let him keep his head, it was worth it.

In any case, it was also worth the screams of the horses as he opened his mouth to shout when they road over the top of the peak, the ground flat entering the cave. "WHO DARES ENTER MY LAIR? WHO DARES TEST DEATH AND FIRE?" The words that came out were not Hanna's usual tone. It was loud, it was booming and it was deep and threatening. The rune carved into the ceiling of the cave pulsed with every word, and the other two were alight now as well. "DRAW YOUR SWORDS AND YOU SHALL MEET LUCIFER IN THE DARKNESS OF HELL!"

[toothaches]

Maurice noticed the pink abomination hard at work and in his sleepless state wandered up behind him, ducking as the tail swung around for Hanna to inspect it. He eyed the runes but naturally didn't comprihend any of them.

He opened his mouth to ask a question.

The words that drifted out were slammed right down his throat by the force of the dragon's trumpet and the Prince caught himself against the dinner table, now thoroughly awake. For a moment he thought this was it. He was finished. He was dying! But usually one didn't meet their end faced with a dragon's ass.

Hanna was facing the outside world and now Maurice heard the panicked horses over the echoes of the dragon's voice.

Six men on white horses buzzed around the mouth of the cave like agitated bees. Each of them wore armor and one horse dragged a sledge behind it--either for a prince's corpse or a dragon's head. One couldn't tell. The bravest of them managed to still his pony and jump off to stand beside it with wobbling legs.

"Dra-a-agon!" He called the same way Maurice had only three days ago. As Maurice collected himself he recognized the man's voice at once. Their general! They'd sent the general to fetch his bones! He wasn't sure whether to be upset or honored. The general drew his sword and was thankful for his helmet hiding his white face. "You are under arrest! Surrender quietly and your death will be quick!"

Maurice clapped his hands over his face. "Oh, no..."

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna didn't seem too worried at the six men trembling outside the cave. He laughed, the rune amplifying his voice turning it into something horrid, from nightmares, and he started to move in place, the claws of his right wing touching the third rune on the wall that seemed to create a thundering shockwave with each touch, made in time with the foot steps he took. Inside the cave he might look rather ridiculous, but outwardly? A behemoth emerged, head the size of of a Clydesdale, claws big as swords sharpened to a dangerous edge. Like no monster any man had ever seen, the illusion Hanna cooked up was enough to make a war seasoned man shit his pants.

"MY DEATH WILL COME AT WORLDS END, WHEN I HAVE BURNED ALL TO ASH WITH ME. IF YOU WISH TO TRY ME, YOU SHALL FACE THAT SAME END, FOR I DO NOT FEAST ON FLESH BUT DEVOUR ALL BENEATH ME WITH FLAME AND SMOKE."

Taking in a huge breath, the claw on the third rune shifted, adding an extra line quick and straight to the rune, fire erupting from his mouth but amplified far beyond what he should be able to create himself. R.I.P his poor herb garden that stood to the right of the caves mouth.

[toothaches]

Hanna's voice shook the cave and Maurice could hear the clatter of some of the scrolls he'd filled falling to the floor at the far end where the study was. He cringed. Still, he had to see. He hadn't seen another human being in days. He crept closer and closer to the dragon's haunches and there he saw all six of them trembling. One man was sitting sideways on his horse, having possibly passed out. Maurice was baffled.

Hanna was loud and his threats sounded very very real, but he was pink. And not very big at all. There were six of them with shining swords and spears and war-trained horses. Why weren't they staring or jeering or arguing with the dragon the way he had? These were the thoughts the sleepless prince circled in his head until the fire appeared. He cried out and held his arm to the level of his eyes least he be blinded by the flashing runes.

The prince suddenly counted himself very lucky to have only suffered the embarrassment of the flypaper rune.

Four of the six horses rared at the sight of the flame and bolted. Two threw their riders. One was trampled. The general remained at the head of the bunch, clutching his spooking horse with a heavy hand. Again he was very very glad for his armor. At least his boots anyway. He did not look forward to squish-squashing his way home though.

"DRAGON!" He warbled back. "I ASK THEE ONE LAST TIME. SURRENDER PEACEFULLY AND COME TO TRIAL OR FACE YOUR DE-DEATH!" The general considered his situation. "OR PERHAPS HAND OVER OUR YOUNG PRINCE'S BONES?"

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Another laugh, louder than the previous, "YOUR BRAVERY ASTOUNDS, THOUGH PERHAPS IT IS STUPIDITY. SEE HOW YOUR FELLOWS FLEE AT THE SIGHT OF ME?" Hanna's tail, not aware of Maurice being there, lashes out behind him, almost beaming him in the face, curling around a bottle on the work table. It was a wonder it hadn't fallen over.

"HAVE YOUR PRINCE, AND LET IT BE KNOWN HE AT LEAST ATTEMPTED COMBAT, AND DID NOT SHAME HIMSELF AS YOUR MEN HAVE, SIR KNIGHT," The illusion tossed the bottle to the general, filled with ash, dark eyes narrowing, snarling to the man who's armor rattled from his shaking.

"NOW LEAVE, AND SHOULD I HEAR OF YOUR INTENT TO RETURN I SHALL COME LIKE A PLAGUE ON YOUR FIELDS AND BURN ALL IN YOUR KINGDOM, DOWN TO THE LAST CHILD!" While that was definitely an empty threat on Hanna's part, he doubted that anyone would try the illusion he had conjured and test whether or not it would be true to it's word.

Toil and Trouble

[toothaches]

It wasn't a bad life, he decided.

After a decent night's sleep, Maurice found himself waking with the birds again. The finality of yesterday's clash with his mother's men still gave him uneasy shudders and his fingers ached from all the writing he'd been doing so this morning, the young prince turned apprentice decided to do something different.

After fluffing his now clean hair and tying it, he crept into the dragon's main chamber. No runes in the works this morning. Not much of anything in the works from the looks of it. He was starting to miss conventions like breakfast. Last night's supper had been peaceful but he'd stopped eating halfway through and excused himself to bed.

But not wholly because he was tired. Maurice began to worry as he picked at his deer ribs, what if other animals were people just like Hanna? He'd been too embarrassed to voice this concern and so he bottled it up.

Speaking of bottles...Maurice frowned at the right mess the whole cave was in. The store room wasn't so bad now that he'd been living in it for nearly a week...but this 'kitchen' was a disaster waiting to happen. He had a feeling that his job might move to other parts of the cave once he'd finished his copying and organizing in 'his' room...so why not get a head start out here? It needed it and Maurice needed the distraction.

And so it went. The prince bustled around the dragon's keep eyeing labels on things and trying to put them in order just like he had the scrolls. But some thing weren't labeled. So he lined them up according to size, color, and how they smelled. He threw out a couple of things since they seemed 'spoiled' to him. It was a nice hour or two's distraction but his scribe's duty called and eventually he retreated back to his end of the cave.

A couple more days and the big scroll would be complete. He couldn't wait to see the look on Hanna's snout when he saw how ahead of the game he was.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna, who had decided it was a good day to sleep in, had, completely oblivious of the cleaning that Maurice had done. There were some sounds that had made his ears twitch, but it wasn't enough to wake him, and he settled, breathing easily. He had used quite a bit of magic to create such a large illusion, and while it was easy, he hadn't used that much magic in a while, unused to it since he lived alone and potions required none to create. It was like exercising a muscle you never used, and had left him tired.

When he woke, he did his usual routine despite it being so late in the day, half awake and not realizing the newly organized work space, yawning as he poured his morning potions on a cloth, wiping it down his scales and yawning once more before heading off to check a list of orders he had recieved from the nearby town. He was just about to sit and go over it when the swish of his tail caught his eye, blinking, he watched as it swished again, back into his vision and he blinked once more. That was not pink.

His tail was a bright, bright Orange, his underbelly, while normally blue, was a hideous shade of sick lavender.

He took in a calming breath, and then screamed.

[toothaches]

Maurice had been in the middle of creating an admittedly lovely block letter H at the beginning of a fresh scroll. Hanna's scream made him drive the quill straight through the paper and drag it down through the desk, leaving an ugly cut in both.

The first thing that came to his mind was that somehow his mother had arrived. Somehow the rattled horsemen had made that two day trip already and she had made another two day trip on her own and now she was strangling the dragon in his own keep!

He tripped over his chair and knocked over a stand of scrolls (which he'd have to re-sort later) as he fought his way out of the study and came running, swinging a candle holder. His sword lay next to his heap of the bed.

"GET OUT, FOUL MURDERERS! GET OUT OR--"

His mother wasn't anywhere and what was that eyesore sitting in Hanna's workspace???

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

Hanna's bright orange scales seemed to glow they were so blinding. The lavender had darkened to a shade of indigo that really didn't match, and his spikes? Well. They were a shitty brown color.

Moving around the room, he looked at the bottles on his other work bench, realizing what had happened. They were moved. Some of them were gone... And then Maurice entered the room. "What did you do?" He shouted, claws coming up to drag down his long face, spreading his wings and showing the full majesty of...Eww that he had become.

"Those were in a specific order! I...I never asked you do to move them around, now I don't even know which is which!" His ears were doing that thing that he had done the day before, drooping down, though he looked less sad and mournful than at the end of his rope. "I'll have to strip it all down! It'll take days to figure them all out..." He is now just lamenting, really, over dramatic and he just flops on the floor in his tantrum, orange body spread all over, hitting his nasty, now blue and green striped horns and forehead against the floor. "I look like someone threw up on me"

[toothaches]

The scribe stood in utter silence as his employer fell apart right in front of him. He looked from the miserable reptile to the incredibly nice rows of organized tonics, bottles, brews, and powders. In hindsight, it probably hadn't been as great an idea as he thought.

And he felt bad for that.

But another of Hanna's illusions was crumbling right before his apprentice and that was the illusion that he was actually majestic in any shape or form. Such a fuss! A single yip of a laugh escaped Maurice before he covered the rest with a harsh cough and his hand.

"I'm...I'm sorry! I was just trying to help. I'm almost done copying and you always leave everything in such a huge mess and I just thought..."

He looked so terrible. He looked like a stuffed toy his sister had owned when they were small.

"Maybe you should. Um. Maybe label. Things?" He offered carefully.

[thelittlegingerthatcould]

"I don't label the ones I use so it isn't obvious," He whines, a rather awful scraping noise filling the cavern when he grinds his horns against the floor. "L-lineage is by color patterns," He rolls over, showing his underbelly and just letting himself flop, pathetically. "Some knight would come kill me to complete their set. I might as well be dead already."

Never say he wasn't one for dramatics. "Geniuses are messy, that's what my mom always told me," his tail slaps against the cave floor, feet just kicking back and forth. Like a child throwing a fit, "Kill me now."