Draconess

Chapter 36

I wake up to a bucket of water being thrown over my sleeping and vertical, naked body. I gasp awake in the centre of a red velvet tent, the candles lighting everything around me with a demonic glow.

I look up to see chains wrapped around my wrists, holding my feet inches from the ground and attached to a hook at the top of the tent's main support pillar.

Before me, I see Andoll dressed in soldier's garb, too big for her small bones. She drops the bucket, breathing heavily. She glares up into my soul and spits at my feet.

I hiss between my teeth; the disrespect from my own Venatores was unfathomable.

"You left me with the oh so kindred males of our kind... my patience is all but gone," her snarl suddenly stops and a kind voice pipes through, "But I am happy now that you have returned, Draconess!" Andoll jumps forward and wraps her arms around my wet neck, squeezing me tight. We both hang from the air for a moment while she chooses to also hiss in my ear, "Do not leave me with them again!"

"Andoll, what are you doing with that bucket–?" Lixar lifts up the tent to see what's going on, "...don't talk to the prisoner now... what did I say, odd creature of the night?" Lixar pulls in a hand maiden who's cowering behind him submissively while smiling in the shadows.

Lixar avoids making eye contact with me. He's angry too, then. And clearly trying to make me jealous of a young maiden on his arm.

Andoll pounces off from me, turning in slow motion. Andoll sees Lixar raising a mocking brow at her and the shy hand maiden smirking when she witnesses Andoll's instant glare.

"Cursed bitch. I feast on the smiles of virgin demon wenches!" Andoll snarls, bowing down to the dirt, she touches her forehead to the soil... summersaults forward... and black webs of magic shoot out all around us.

My vision is blocked by the horse sized Split Soul Dragons that Andoll harbours in her soul, harnessing them now. Lixar growls uselessly as Andoll swoops out of the tent. She uses her Split Soul Dragons to sweep away the girl from Lix. The hand maiden is screaming in between the jaws of both ravenous heads.

Lixar remains standing, alone, his hand empty of the maiden.

He pouts and whines as if to the shadows behind me, "That was my dinner!" he turns to me and finally looks me over, acknowledging my existence, "A shame I can't eat up my own Queen for supper... oh, well..." Lixar turns to leave, leaving me hanging, literally.

"Release me at once, Mystifyer!" I call out.

Lixar keeps walking, clearly drunk with the way he wobbles.

I jerk at the chains and I end up swinging slowly around.

Now I see the other end of the tent. A makeshift bed with red covers. And someone else accompanies me.

A half-naked Warlord sprawled across his bed as he plucks black feathers from two dead swans sitting on his lap.

"Hey!" I hiss and he glances up at me, only to focus back on the swans he's picking feathers from, "What are those innocent birds doing on your bed? Why do I hang chained? "

"There is a time for being a demon hunter... and a time for being the infamous sorcerer that I am known to be..." Zarcar murmurs to himself, "Did you dream well?"

"I do not remember my dreams after that bucket of water," I swing before the bastard, while he patiently picks at those feathers, "We had fun in the forest, now let me go. An imprisoned Draconess who has no will to submit is useless, as you well know. Rey will only want to kill me for being rebellious. Unless... of course... now you don't care... since you never loved me in the first place..."