exsiliumlogs | hurry, hurry [OPEN]

Date & Time: 2/20, nighttime
Location: All over the friggin' place – near the houses, the starting point, the hold etc.
Characters: Martin Darkov, YOU?
Summary: Gotta find a way out of here, man.
Warnings: N/A

No, no, no...

Martin's thoughts were in time with his panting – a mistake right away, he realized, once he felt his throat start to really feel raw and tight. That's not how you're supposed to run.

But he'd gotten scared. So scared. Everything was just...just too much at once. He didn't think to calm down, breathe through his nose when he ran, take stock of where he was going. He had no idea if he was going in circles or squares or anything, just--

I have to get back to Olvoski. I have to. I have to. Have to, have to...

"Gnah...hah..." He had to stop again, bent forward with his hands on his knees, panting hard. Nasally whimpers escaped here and there, the worst of which he fought ferociously. I must not cry. I must get back to Olvoski.

I must!

It made his shaky legs move again. Bleary-eyed and blind to real direction, he ran, seeking out the shape of a body who could, who just might be able to tell him what he needed to hear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No sounds of writhing limbs or squelching organs. No stink of exposed gizzards or guts of any sort...just. Just the feeling of something very close and looming.

Martin, breath held, dared a peek from under his arms to see claws and scales and – looking up and up – and teeth.

He let out a yell of fright, his arm swinging and locking forward, firing blindly again. No no NO!

The dragon shrieks, in a noise that's half a growl and half the predatory call of a bird of prey, and twists out of the way. It's fast—there's no skilled finesse to the movement, nothing more than the whipcrack darting of a snake, but that's enough. The lance skims past the beast's shoulder, close enough to shing against the layer of the scales covering it, and sails past.

Then it moves forward, trying to grab at him with the three-fingered clawlets of its suddenly-outstretched wings. For all that they're not proper hands, they're very strong, and with three hundred pounds' leverage of its own bulk the dragon is aiming to pin Martin's arms down, facing out away from him.

"No!"

Martin's legs kicked and his body writhed, trying to wriggle himself free from the weight imposed on his arms, fingers curling and uncurling wildly. His body rolled very distinctly at length, trying to straighten out his right arm and align his bones, but the effort caused a jolt of pain up to his shoulder that made him cry out again. His eyes stung, filling with tears. I'm going to die!

The wings still holding him down, the dragon raises a paw, claws glinting dully in the dim light, and...

...pokes him in the forehead, hard. Ow.

"Ngah-!"

Martin winced best he could a captive, shrinking as closely like a turtle as he possible could. He tried ducking his head down and away from the claw, to smear his face against the ground, as hands blindly tried flailing free.

Poke, poke poke, poke.

There don't seem to be much crunchings and munchings going on, particularly when the dragon casually nudges Martin's chin up to try and look him in the eyes.

"Scared?" it says, in a deep voice with strange qualities to it, like a speaking parrot or crow's voice fed through a filter.

Scared?!

Martin's flailing ceased out of surprise, albeit a bit late. It...it talks! He gawked, blinking a few times to try and get the beast's face in better focus.

It talked!

He never knew a monster to talk before. Parasite monsters, maybe...but only on people. Not animals. Not...not anything like...like what had him in its claws.

He gulped loudly, his reply initially nothing but a sputtering of sounds, hardly words.

"I...I-I..."

The dragon laughs again, looking down at Martin. It's a strange laugh, almost mocking. "Yes," it says. "Scared. Good. Up," it says, and the clawlets of the wings tug upwards on Martin's sleeves, though they let go soon enough that keeping his balance will be his own issue.

"Not hungry," it says, 'grinning' with an open mouth again. "You want hungry?" it adds, watching his arms very closely.

Breathless, Martin somehow found himself on his feet, standing before a great, talking beast. For all the training he'd had throughout his short life, nothing prepared him for dialogue with a monster he was supposed to kill. Not...not like this, anyway. He wasn't supposed to communicate at all, which ought to have made his stupefied stammering a little less mortifying.

He needed to focus – it was talking again! Clamping his mouth shut, Martin stared and stared and hung on every word. He couldn't suppress the shudder that took him when teeth bared anew.

Not hungry. Oh. Oh, that was good, wasn't it? Martin wasn't about to become dinner. But...want hungry?

"N-no!" he managed once he realized the question. "No, please." What am I doing?!

"Behave," the dragon says. Its eyes seem incredibly sharp, as if it can practically see straight through Martin. "Yes?" It lets out another laugh, cruelly amused by Martin's consternation. "Dragon... eats trouble, yes?" it adds, picking its words carefully, as if it only half-knows the language. "And cooks. Very cooking."

It stalks in a circle around him, like some scaled mockery of a big cat.

Martin was trembling whether he wanted to or not. Everything was going against what he thought, what he learned and expected...not that it was altogether a bad thing; he expected to be devoured on the spot. He struggled to follow the monster's words.

"I...I don't understand," he babbled. "I don't know what, what a dragon is, I'm sorry."

The dragon tilts its head back. It's an agile, twisty thing, with the way it can point its jaws right up at the sky while still tucking its neck down where one of the wings can bat aside any attacks aimed for the thinner scales there.

It lets out a little mushroom-cloud burst of flame above the two of them. The heat pours off the impossible flame as it hangs in the air like a cloud for one, two, three seconds before fragmenting into flickering sparks and vanishing like a snuffed candle.

"Dragon, king of beasts," the creature says. "Strong, clever. Your kind... strong, not. Clever, maybe." It sits again. "Polite, for dragon. Or eating, yes?"

Maybe it was all just a really, really strange dream. Talking monsters and strange, foreign buildings, talk of wars and things well over his head...

But his forehead still stung from all the poking claws, which was pretty not dreamlike. Wanting to throw up didn't seem right, either.

Martin felt a cold shudder run down his spine before there was even any notion of fire. His head was down at the sight of sparking flame, covered by his hands. He didn't need to see it to believe it; he could feel it, and it was pretty horrible.

King of nightmares, he thought to counter the remark. He peeked up at the beast--no, dragon--from between his fingers, paler and paler.

"I...I don't know, I..."

The dragon laughs again, watching him. There's something almost kind in the edge of its eyes, though, for a moment. Not gentle, but beneficent, like a sated tiger begrudging the presence of a human in its hunting grounds. "Yes," it says firmly. "Polite. Yes?"

It tilts its head, matching his gaze with those oh-so-keen aquamarine-blue eyes.

"Uhm," Martin was still floundering. The clearest path to not getting roasted, eaten, or otherwise maimed was unclear to him. Just agree with everything? a thought suggested.

He went with that.

"Yes." Uhm. "Sir."

hurry, hurry [OPEN]

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