Lindír dropped low, as aware as Ulkred was of the patch of scaleless skin over her heart. As Ulkred moved, a subtle glow lit the gaps in his scales, rising up his throat. An instant before contact, Lindír knew that he planned to use his flame; but there she froze, never before having faced an enemy with access to such a weapon.

Ulkred’s flame came in a quick burst, hardly even enough to warm Lindír up. But his purpose was not to burn; for an instant, Lindír’s face was immersed in the hot glow, blinding her. Then the pain came. While she was blind, Ulkred had shot past her teeth and claws with impressive speed, and struck with all his might in a rising grapple. Lindír howled, snapping at Ulkred’s side as she twisted over herself, but he could not be dislodged. With his wings he pushed, wrenching Lindír’s shoulder socket as he lifted her half off the ground before sending her crashing to the earth.

Ulkred fell upon her with impossible ferocity and speed, tearing at Lindír’s underbelly with tooth and claw. His front limbs left long raking marks in her scales, thin wounds that bled and bled, while his narrow jaws found Lindír’s throat and began to squeeze. All thought of strategy had fled her mind, and Lindír thrashed and swung with wild abandon. But so close was she, and so disoriented, that most of her strikes glanced off his armor. At last, as she began to suffocate, her hand slammed against his face with bruising might, and Ulkred disengaged.

For far too long he circled, leaving a trail of her blood across the soil, while Lindír fought to stand and catch her breath. “Come now, worm,” he said, fire slavering from his lips as his eyes glimmered terribly. “Surrender. Show Biorra how weak, how cowardly you are. Remind her that you are a wolf of the wilds.”

“A wolf?” said Lindír, between panting breaths. “I will indeed show her a wolf.”

Lindír moved with all speed, every muscle placed behind the missile of her teeth, knowing that if she could get a grip on his chest that she could tear chunks from Ulkred. He was moving before she even struck, flashing his wings in her face to disguise his movement as he writhed, serpent-like, to the side. They passed flank-to-flank, as two knights at tournament, but Ulkred’s tail was as deadly a weapon as his claws. It curled up and around, and while Lindír tried to follow him it slammed into her jaw with force enough to break teeth.

How Ulkred could move as he did, Lindír had no idea. It seemed impossible, the way he doubled over on himself, body bending to bring his fangs to bear even as Lindír halted her charge. His teeth found her calf, biting deep into muscle and tendon. She staggered, moaning in agony, but refused to fall.

Again, Ulkred retreated. His teeth were fully bared now, malevolence written across his face in blood as his whole body quivered with excitement. “I will eat you alive,” he said. “Stop me, prove yourself worthy of the title of dragon, or roll over and die so that this can be over with!”

Lindír roared, charging once more into the fray. But every exchange was the same. No matter which angle she took, no matter what stratagem she attempted, Ulkred knew its counter. She would score only a light cut, or a bruising blow with wing or tail, while he would exact a steep toll in torn scales and shredded muscle. In the sagas, in the battle-poems and romances, this was where a knight showed his true mettle. When he bled from a score of wounds, when his opponent mocked his love and all he stood for, this was when divine providence, or a hidden well of strength, or some scheme set long into motion, would reveal itself. But none did. With every drop of hot red liquid spilling down her hide, with every muscle which could no longer properly move, with every ache that revealed itself whenever she inhaled, Lindír only grew weaker and weaker.

Biorra watched it all. Lindír was overwhelmed with the fury of battle, hate and adrenaline soaking brain and body alike, but still she found the time to steal a glance at the one that all of this was, in the end, for. Had she the time to contemplate Biorra’s expression, she might have expected to see pity at Lindír’s poor showing, or pride at Ulkred’s dominance. But she would have found neither, had she been able to look: she would have found only a growing sense of disquiet.

“Lindír!” Biorra finally cried. “Surrender, please. He has already won.”

“Yes,” growled Ulkred, “she’s grown sick of this pathetic game. She can hardly bear to look at you.”

Lindír lunged, hoping to catch Ulkred by surprise; but her injured back leg gave out midway through, and she could not even get within striking distance. Biorra lifted herself high off the ground upon her wings, facing Ildrodor.

“Call off this farce, please!” she said, voice gone shrill with tension. “There is a clear victor!”

Ildrodor tore her eyes away from the combat for only a moment, long enough to say, “The trial will continue until one submits, such is what was agreed upon.”

In the moment of distraction, Ulkred lunged. He saw Lindír’s weakest limb, her left arm, and bashed his wing against the elbow. Lindír fell, very nearly crushing him under her weight, though he slipped out at just the right moment, and soon found the superior position. Lindír lay on the ground, bloody froth pooling at her lips, and wondered what had gone wrong. How could she, who had slain armies, have been defeated by one such as Ulkred? It was a fitting end to the story, at least.

And then Ulkred’s claw came down on top of Lindír’s throat. All introspection was driven away by a wave of panic. Every muscle strained to resist his weight, to claw and punch and slam and slip and tear his flesh until he let go; but Lindír was so weak that from without she appeared only to twitch in pathetic defeat.

Biorra moved to rush the circle. Camreth stopped her, his head against her chest, his claw over hers. “Do not interfere!” he said. “You know the penalty!”

Biorra’s eyes fell upon Ulkred, pupils narrowed down to vicious slits. He preened at her, puffing out his chest and licking his teeth in utmost vanity, though one eye still bled from a vicious blow.

“Stop this,” Biorra said. “You’re killing her!”

“Perhaps,” said Ulkred. “But after so long, it has become clear to me that this choice is too difficult for you. I am merely clarifying your options, my love.”

Biorra exhaled as though she had been struck in the chest, but kept her head low to the ground, jaws clenched together in frustration. Lindír looked up at that expression and wished that she would make another one. As last visions went, it was not particularly pretty.

“Indeed,” Biorra said. “You have.”

Then she swerved, dodging out of her father’s grasp before rushing into the arena. She was not so fast as Ulkred had been, but she did not need to be, for all that he could do when he saw her approach was flinch back—Lindír sucked in an unrestricted breath—and let out a squawking noise of surprise. Biorra did not so much strike him as she did slam into him, her enormous bulk forcing him off-balance as she nearly trampled her suitor.

Ulkred fell, too exhausted or surprised to dodge. Before he could resist, Biorra got her weight on him, hind leg pressing on his stomach. Then she bent down, extending her neck as though she planned to rip out his throat. Instead she whispered into his ear, so quietly that only she, he, and Lindír could hear.

“Pray, Ulkred. Pray to the stars, pray to your ancestors, pray upon your family idol that Lindír lives. Because that is the only thing in this or any other world which stays my teeth.”

Then she got off of Ulkred, leaving him to stagger onto all sixes and retreat from the arena in silent humiliation. There was more conversation, stern warnings from Ildrodor’s direction, hushed conversation from all around, panic-stricken orders flying from Biorra’s lips, but Lindír paid it little attention. Neither she nor Ulkred had surrendered. Did Biorra’s interference mean the end of the trial by combat, or would they resume it at a later date? Why had Biorra decided to attack Ulkred, anyhow? Was this what dying felt like?

Lindír was very tired. As four dragons worked in concert to roll her onto a great wooden sled, she decided that she would answer those questions in the morning. If there was a morning. Lindír slipped into unconsciousness.

...

There were days that passed in moments, and moments that lasted for days. Lindír languished in blood and pus and other unwholesome things, a foreign stone roof over her head, assailed by thirst and pain. There were heavy iron beams lashed tightly around her limbs, foul-smelling pastes smeared in long stripes across both flanks, a pile of cloth rags under her head. Occasionally someone would come, someone big and blue and beautiful, who would help her to drink by tipping cold water through Lindír’s lips from her own mouth, who would whisper hopes and apologies while she attempted to clean her scales.

Lindír grew feverish, her muscles trembled. She dreamed while she was still awake, dreamed with her eyes open. She dreamed of Al-Khanjar, shining and brilliant in her panoply of battle. She dreamed she was in a cell, and Guthrún the Maimed had come to visit, but she carried a baby in her arms and she and the baby were silhouetted against fire. She dreamed so vividly of the dark-eyed homunculus, emissary of the Under-Queen, that she could feel its inhuman hands pressed to the patch of scaleless skin on her chest.

And then the fever broke, and Lindír fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she awoke, her throat ached with thirst, her stomach seized with hunger, and she was so weak that she could barely stand. But her limbs would move, and her wounds were grown over with fresh scales, and she could breathe without pain. Camreth was there, with a jug of water and some mutton, pre-burned and finely diced for ease of digestion. It was an effort of will to eat and drink as slowly as her stomach required, but the effort proved worthwhile. As she ate, swallowing two meals’ worth of meat and water in small mouthfuls over the course of hours, strength returned to her, and she could soon walk about the cavern for minutes on end. She did not speak a word, and Camreth only mumbled that which was necessary for her health.

Then Biorra returned. Her eyes went wide when she saw Lindír standing. Camreth rapidly excused himself to fetch something. Even after he had gone, even after the sound of his wings on the wind proved that he was out of earshot, neither could bring themself to speak to the other for some time.

“So, how did it turn out?” said Lindír. “The trial by combat was never settled properly, with your intervention.”

“It was a draw,” Biorra said, eyes cast low to the floor, staying as far from Lindír as she could. “There were fines to be paid. Many, many fines. Our hoards are much reduced. But do not worry about that.” She suddenly turned up, meeting Lindír’s gaze for but a moment as she said, “I am merely glad that you still live.”

Lindír turned aside, looking for something she could not quite find on a horizon which she could not see. “And the urn? Was it ever found?”

“The urn was enchanted,” said Biorra, “such that its contents were rendered invisible and weightless from without. Three nisken boys confessed to having been hidden in it at the time of purchase, and secreting away with the urn while I slept.”

Lindír was unsure whether to laugh or to scream. “Why?”

“Nisken are tremendously clever creatures, with all of their magic and machinery. Their greatest pastime is coming up with new and more innovative pranks, and they consider nothing more conducive to friendship than outwitting someone. There had been an understanding that you would be left out of it, on account of your flaws, but something apparently went wrong.”

Lindír looked down at herself. All of the new scars were still ugly and red, her chest still sore, her limbs weak. “All that, over a juvenile prank. I really am mad.”

Biorra stopped in her tracks, still looking at Lindír. Her tail was low to the ground, her wings limp with heartache. “I am sorry.”

“What?” Lindír looked up, staring at Biorra with a pounding heart. She retreated to her sickbed, though she had the strength now to keep her head upright and her limbs delicately folded under her body. “After all that I have done to you, what could you possibly have to apologize to me for?”

“For refusing to choose, no matter how much it hurt you?” Biorra said. “For accepting Ulkred’s courtship, even when I knew it served no purpose. For being so afraid to love you that I made you think I hated you.”

Two colorful blooms burst, one behind Lindír’s eyes and another in her heart. She felt momentarily lightheaded, and her limbs felt about to give. If it had been a score of minutes earlier, she may have fainted.

“You love me?”

The words echoed through the chamber. Biorra tittered softly to herself, then took a step closer and said, “Lindír, do you know where you are?”

Lindír had not paid it any mind, being much more focused on her own state. But as she glanced up, she realized that she did know that domed cavern ceiling, that curving entryway, the stepped floor. “You let me into your lair?”

“It is our lair, now,” Biorra said, trying and failing to look at Lindír’s face. “We have been married for nine days, unless you have changed your mind. Besides, it was closer than yours.”

Lindír was beyond the point where she could be any further shocked, so instead she said the first quibble that came to her mind. “I hope I have not missed my own wedding in my convalescence.”

“No, the wedding will be later. Really, we were married as soon as Ulkred refused to spare your life. The moment that happened, I knew what my heart wanted.”

Lindír remembered, suddenly, an oddity of the draconic language of Solseyja: there was no word for “engagement.” There was courtship, and there was marriage, and there was something beyond marriage called “bonding”, but the dividing line between courtship and marriage was a matter of moments. She rose, first the front legs, then the back, shaking and unsteady the whole time.

“Don’t overtax yourself,” said Biorra. “You took quite the mauling, and I would like my wife as intact as possible.”

Lindír grunted in annoyance. “I’ll have you know, I was standing perfectly well before. This is your doing, not mine.”

“My doing?” Biorra’s eyes narrowed momentarily, and Lindír was afraid of reprisal. But slowly her face relaxed, tongue flickering out from between her teeth. “I suppose it has been proven on more than one occasion that I have quite the effect upon your legs.”

“Yes. And on that topic…” Lindír bowed low, head and tail bent to the ground, “Ulkred’s actions should not force your forgiveness. So I beg you for it now, for my trespass. I am sorry.”

“Firstly, Ulkred’s actions have not forced me to do anything,” said Biorra. “They merely brought into sharp relief that which I had already known for a long while, but was too afraid to put into practice. Secondly, what trespass?”

Lindír snapped to attention. “In the valley! I stole a bite from you!”

Biorra, rendered momentarily speechless, rocked back on her heels. “Stole? You thought you stole those bites? Lindír, I thought you had gone suddenly mad, or that I had done something to offend you. Is that what that was all about? All the moping, because you thought those bites were stolen?”

Lindír took a step closer to Biorra—her wife, she was struggling to wrap her brain around  that—but at the same time cringed back, neck to chest. “How could they not have been? My passions were inflamed, yes, but that was no excuse.”

“I wanted you to bite me,” Biorra said, quietly. “I wanted you to do more than bite me. Much more.”

“You made no indication!”

“Other than that I approached you in the dark of night, entirely alone, with my tail swaying back and forth so very smoothly while I touched your chest with my claw. I couldn’t very well have strode up to you and said ‘Lindír, quickly, while we have the chance, outside of wedlock and without the knowledge of my other suitor, please pin me down and ravish me in this canyon’, now could I?”

“Well,” said Lindír. “You could have.”

Biorra suddenly flexed, her broad shoulders bunching and her limbs clenching in a display of power. It lasted but for a moment before she forced herself to return to a neutral pose. “You are a very lucky dragoness, Lindír. You are lucky that you have such an attractive body and endearing personality; it more than makes up for the fact that I have married a complete fool.”

Lindír ruffled her wings as another burst of hazy lightheadedness came upon her. “Whatever happened to me being mad? Or, what was it, ‘endlessly frustrating’?”

Biorra swallowed audibly. “You… you said you didn’t overhear any of that!”

“I lied,” Lindír said softly. “For that, too, I am sorry.”

“No, please, no more apologies. Not today. I am sick to death of apologies, of asking for forgiveness. I will give you all the forgiveness that I have to give, and you will give me the same!”

Lindír could smell the sweet odor of Biorra’s breath as she raised her voice. She crept another step closer, nearly close enough to bite or be bitten again. “But why? You do not deny that I am mad, that I am frustrating. Why give me anything at all?”

“Because you are exactly what I have always needed!”

Lindír’s words caught in her throat, and for a moment she was sure she would choke. “I do not understand.”

Biorra stood tall, neck arched, looking down on Lindír with irritation. “Then I shall tell you in ways which you will understand. You love stories, don’t you?”

“I would not say I love them,” said Lindír, “but I am, perhaps, fond of them? I lived with a troubadour for some time.”

“In a story, there cannot be a romance without a long, melodramatic confession,” said Biorra. She waited as though expecting a response, and when given none, continued, “I am not accustomed to melodrama, not nearly as much as you have proven to be. But I shall do my best to approximate, if you’ll allow me?”

It was likely that Lindír could not have refused even if she’d had a strong objection, her brain being a maelstrom of so many emotions as it was. She was glad to still be talking to Biorra. She was glad to have Biorra as her wife, even if it still felt impossible. So she sat down on her haunches and said, “You are better at poetry than I. Spin your verse.”

Biorra did not look the part of a poet. She looked like a player who had forgotten her lines and stood, witless, upon the stage, before the needling stares of the audience, and reached desperately for the part of her own mind that remembered them.

“I have… I have held a fascination for you since not long after you arrived on this island. Maybe it was love. Before you, I did not know that dragons such as you existed; and in a way, I think, you changed what it meant, to me, to be a dragon. I crave you, because you are everything that I am not. I am a useless dilettante of a dragoness, and you, you are this wild maelstrom, this storm that comes and goes as she pleases, takes and gives and—”

Biorra gazed pleadingly up at the ceiling of her lair, making a wordless growl of frustration. “Words, why must it always be words? No one else on this island, dragoness or drakkar, could love me as you do, for none of them are strays, as you are. I am in love with the beast in you. I feel myself a beast for saying so… But when you loved me, it was with a vigor to your flames not seen since the dawn of the world, and I could not help but warm myself on that flame as though my own flames had been torn out and replaced with sea ice.” She turned her attention back to Lindír, bashfully tucking her neck close to her chest in a gesture that made Lindír’s heart flutter.

“Ulkred would give me sonnets where he compared my scales to glittering jewels. This would take him a fortnight to compose. You, on the other hand, made it plain to see that you truly believed in that comparison every single time you looked at me from the moment we met. That sort of passion cannot be manufactured. I had never seen it before on Solseyja, not from anyone. I could say more, I think. I could, if I wished to be truly long-winded, tell you what I think about your stories, or how I feel when I gaze upon your scarred form, or how even the thought of you dying at Ulkred’s claws threatened to unmake me; but just from your posture I can see I’ve already made my point.”

Lindír hadn’t the faintest idea what aspect of posture she was referring to. Perhaps it was the way she stood lightly, on the tips of her toes, as though wishing to escape the ground. Or maybe it was the way her wings opened wide. She had never known this feeling before, except very fleetingly. But now, now, that foreign joy saturated every limb and organ until it felt liable to ignite.

Biorra closed the distance, finally, and placed her very frontmost teeth around Lindír’s snout in the gentlest possible play-bite. No sooner had she released it than Lindír offered her riposte to the back of Biorra’s jaw, just tight enough to feel scales against teeth. When Lindír let go, Biorra took hold, and back and forth for half a dozen rounds, until…

“I need to lie down,” said Lindír, suddenly.

She retreated to her sickbed with all haste, throwing herself onto her side. In truth, she felt only somewhat exhausted; the greater problem was that her scales felt warm and taut, her legs twitchy and oversaturated with energy, and her brain afire with vague possibilities. She wanted Biorra very deeply.

Her wife responded by falling into a fit of giggles. “By my ancestors, you really do have no idea what you are doing, do you?” She attempted to stifle the chittering, chirping laughter, and only partially succeeded. “I cannot blame you for this, either. Poor thing.”

Lindír was distantly offended, but said nothing.

“I am starting to see the issue, though. Back in the echoing pass, I went about it all wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Lindír asked.

“Well, clearly, if I wanted your attentions, what I really should have done was rub pine needles all over my scales until the smell stuck to me. Then, I should have taken a tree branch between my teeth…”

“Don’t you dare!”

“And stood up on my hind legs, like so—” Biorra said, rearing up to demonstrate, wings and tail outspread for balance, “and stood myself very very still…”

“Biorra!”

“And let you push me over!”

Both moved at once. Biorra “fell” exaggeratedly, dropping to her side before rolling onto her feet once again. Lindír staggered upright, wing-claws to the ground and said, with a fair bit of irritation behind it, “I will tear your head from your shoulders!”

“Really?” moaned Biorra. “Well, you’ll have to catch me first.”

Lindír loved Biorra too deeply to ever harm her, at least physically, but the anger was real. She liked the idea of a chase. So she lunged, and Biorra rapidly ducked out of the way. For a minute they played cat-and-mouse around the lair, Biorra’s longer legs keeping her just barely out of reach of her mate, dodging, scrambling over the dusty floor, playful taunts flying back and forth with wild abandon.

And then Biorra stopped. She stopped mid-run, her front limbs slipping as they splayed out across the ground, leaving her hips high in the air. She curled her tail to the side just in time for Lindír, her momentum getting the better of her, to crash into her backside. Except, of course, with Biorra low to the ground, Lindír’s speed did not bring her immediately to a stop, but instead caused her to ride up and over Biorra, until her chest was pressed to her wife’s spine halfway between the hips and the wings.

Lindír became suddenly very aware of every single movement. Her heart beat so very quickly, and Biorra’s heart was beating too—she could feel it on the patch of scaleless skin, with  how close they were—and there was a purr escaping from Biorra’s lips which Lindír could feel reverberating across the entire front of her torso. Her hind legs quivered with anticipation.

“A little bit to the left, I think? We’ll have to figure it out as we go along.”

Some time later, Camreth returned, bearing a fresh jug of water for Lindír, who would assuredly be very thirsty by that point. He made two steps past the entrance of Biorra’s lair before suddenly changing his mind. He decided it would be much better to leave the water jug on the floor, unobtrusively, and for him to turn around and leave as quickly and quietly as possible.

...

They were married the next week. Ziorrin and Camreth stood opposite Yrsel and her mother, who had volunteered for the place normally be reserved for Lindír’s parents. For once in her life, she was not thinking about the fact that her proper mother despised her. She was too busy trying to remember the archaic syllables of her wedding prayers, too busy stealing glances at Biorra, so bedecked in borrowed jewelry that she jingled as she walked.

They spent their days lazily sunbathing, claw entangled in claw. They turned the stories of Lindír’s youth into long poems of rousing combat-verse. They chased one another across the sky, then dashed down into their lair—or any old cave, sometimes—for physically taxing celebration. Lindír wailed and shrieked into the comfort of Biorra’s chest when her nightmares grew too deep, or when the sight of a hatchling being doted on by its mother reminded her of what she had lost. Lindír was happy. And they lived happily…

For eighteen months. All good things must come to an end. And in the case of Lindír’s happiness, that end came after eighteen months, in the form of ships’ sails cresting over the eastern horizon.

End of Act Four

SaffronDragon

Yeah. That Tragedy tag is and continues to be there for a very good reason. But hey, at least Lindír finally got laid, right? That balances it out, right? Right? Well, if you want to see Act Five, and the slow spiral downward that that entails, you can always click the link below and subscribe to my Patreon. I currently have four advance chapters posted there, with another one soon to come, all available for only $3 a month. If you can't, that's fine; I'll see you in two weeks, when it all goes wrong in Chapter Twenty-eight: An Oath, Broken.