Dragonkin Ch. 01

Author's note and warning: the following story contains subject matter for mature audiences only. I won't list all the possible "offending topics", I'll just warn you that I don't get offended by much and I tend to forget what things might offend other people.

No actual dragons were harmed in the creation of this story.

Lissa

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Chapter 1 - Leaving Home

Hearing a rush of air and the sound of flapping, such as sheets in the wind or giant wings, Catrin opened the door, a poorly fitted plank held in place by rope hinges, and stuck her head out. Biting her lip to stop herself from gasping and making noise, she ducked back inside and looked for the sword that was supposed to be by the door, but couldn't find it and ended up grabbing a crude meat knife from the slab of rock that served as a cooking counter, then looked around for something to use as a shield, and found nothing. With a mental sigh of exasperation Cat found a short leather skirt and wrapped it around her waist, then pulled a waist-length leather vest on to protect her upper body. They didn't cover much, but if she had to fight that beast she wanted at least her most sensitive bits protected. Armed and armored as best she could be, Catrin stepped quietly to the door again, her bare feet silent on the dirt that passed as a floor in her stone hut. She knew she should just be still and hope the thing went away, but not knowing if it was coming to the door or not was too scary. She looked out again.

"Dragons are supposed to be much bigger than that," Catrin mused. "Bigger than a house or even two houses." She watched as the creature examined a rough iron axe, then tossed it into the wood pile. Standing on two legs, it was balancing itself with a tail that could easily be as long as the rest of its body. About ten feet tall, double her height, covered in greenish scales, its lizard-like head swung side to side on a long thick neck, and seemed to consist of way too many teeth and spikes. Its arms were about the right length for a man of about eight feet, but ended in clawed hands that were much too large. Cat could easily imagine those hands wrapped around her head and crushing it. The legs appeared to be a bit short and overly muscled, but the feet ending in large clawed toes were very long and bony. In spite of its apparent small size it had huge wings, big enough to wrap itself in if it wanted. Bat-like, with long bony fingers separating skin-like membranes into sections that fluttered in the breeze, they were halfway folded to its body.

The small dragon (relative to the size dragons were rumored to be) appeared to be searching for something and not rampaging as she expected. Instead of throwing and smashing everything it was picking up, it was studying, sniffing, and tasting with a large thick tongue before tossing. Some of the casual tosses sent items flying considerable distances, attesting to the strength of the muscular arms. Watching what it picked up and tossed away gave no clue as to what it was searching for, as the items didn't seem to have anything in common other than being near the hut, which it seemed to be gradually approaching during its search.

It stopped and turned one eye toward the hut, then turned its head and looked with the other eye. Its nostrils twitched as if sniffing and its mouth opened, a long, narrow, forked tongue slipping out from under the large, thick one it had been tasting things with, probing the air. The creature's attention seemed to be completely on the hut now, and its tail was shifting side to side a bit more deliberately. Turning its face to look with both eyes it leaned forward, got up on its clawed toes, and started moving slowly toward the hut, more ungainly waddling than walking.

Catrin tied the door's rope handle to the peg sticking out of the wall, then backed away until her back was against the far wall, perhaps twelve feet from the doorway. The one-room circular hut, made of piled stones and badly thatched roof, could probably stand against the beast, but Cat wasn't sure if it could get through the doorway or not, and her cooking knife was looking more like a toy than a weapon at this point. While the front of the winged lizard looked like it had bands of tough hide instead of scales, it still looked as if it would be just as hard to cut through as leather, and she knew how unlikely it was for her to manage that. She sat on the floor and curled up as tight as she could, biting her lips to keep from making mouth noises. She peed on her feet and legs, trembling in fear, the warm liquid feeling soothing.

Hitting the walls with its claws, the dragon moved around the hut until one clawed hand hit the door a hard blow, making it move and creak against its ropes. The creature focused its attack on the door and bits of wood started to fly off where it punched and clawed. Strands of the makeshift rope hinges and latch popped at each blow. When the scent of the girl's urine reached the beast it seemed to double its efforts, pounding harder and faster. At one point it got its claws around one edge of the plank and yanked, but let go when the back of its hand slammed into the rocks making up the doorframe. The harder it worked the more it seemed to go from a concerted effort to get in toward a mindless attack on the door. The door caved.

Catrin squealed as the beast tried to push in through the open doorway, stomping on the remains of the door. Her body betrayed her and the foul stench of involuntary bowel action filled the hut. Catrin hid her face in her arms as the creature, too large for the door, bellowed, its breath, stinking of rotting meat and flammable gases, added to the unbreathable air. The combination of fear and noxious gases overwhelmed her.

Waking to the sound of fighting, roaring, and rocks falling, Catrin uncurled slowly and looked toward the doorway, which was significantly wider than it had been when she was last aware. The dragon was backed into the doorway, it's wings bent and trapped, and it was roaring outward, its tail thrashing at the walls inside the hut, just barely missing her. From outside she heard the sound of metal hitting something else and a man shouting insults and threats; she presumed at the large beast, and easily recognized the voice as her father's. From the way the dragon was thrashing around she guessed it was defending itself against her father's clumsy sword and verbal abuse. Through the sounds of battle she thought she heard her mother shrieking, which would be normal. As far as she could recall that was all her mother ever did.

Ignoring the mess she'd made of herself, Catrin eased around the edge of the small room, staying near the stone wall and out of the way of the thrashing tail. Raising her knife she prepared to hack at the creature's thick neck, but stopped in shock as she saw over its shoulder what was going on outside.

Not more than ten feet away her father, in rough leather trousers, boots, and jacket, was fighting wildly with two swords against two men in cloth and chain link. He seemed to be trying to drive the men into the reach of the dragon, constantly circling and jumping around to keep on the far side of them. Further away, a third man in chain was holding her mother, wearing her usual useless cloth dress, by the hair while she knelt to his side screaming, making no effort to escape or fight. Nearer, each time one of the men in chain got within reach of the dragon he was clawed or smacked by the beast's hands, yet the man in leather, her father, wasn't. Catrin started trying to squeeze between the creature and the doorway, intending to help her father.

The dragon's wings, stuck in the doorway, made it difficult for Catrin to get through. Even being small wasn't helping much, as the dragon had only knocked loose enough rocks to get itself wedged in tightly, leaving a space not much larger than Cat's head. Trying to climb over the dragon did nothing more than scrape her belly and chest against the warm, almost hot, rough scales, and hitting it to make it move seemed to have no effect at all, not even getting its attention. Watching through the gap she saw her father weakening faster than the men he was fighting, until he dropped to one knee. The men leaped, and one of them found the dull point of a sword can pierce chain link when the wearer dives onto it at the right angle. The other man knocked her father over and raised his sword.

The creature, with Catrin still climbing on his side, roared, and with a violent thrashing managed to break free of the hut, tearing out more stones and lunging at the man in chain. Catrin fell, got caught by the thrashing tail, and was tossed ten feet across the clearing to land in a woodpile. Shaking her head, her vision cleared just in time to see the dragon bite the arm off the man attacking her father as the remaining man, with her screaming mother in tow, ran away. Catrin leaped to her feet, swayed dizzily, then staggered toward her father as the dragon dismembered the man in chain.

Keeping her eyes on her father, Catrin tried to stumble toward him. Seeing him sit up inspired her to try to run, but he suddenly yelled, "Stop!" She looked around, trying to see what he was yelling about, and saw the dragon charging toward her. She dove to the dirt and rolled the rest of the distance as the dragon's claws swept the air where her head had been. Shaking violently, she let her father scoop her up and pull her to his lap, then watched, stunned, as the dragon stumbled close, sat on its heels, using its tail for balance, and looked at them, flapping its half folded wings slowly.

"The smelly one is yours, Bradan man?" The dragon hissed and gargled out the words. The sound of its voice brought to mind the image of steam escaping from hot stones rolling down a hill of metal plates bouncing on a pile of hollow logs.

"Yes, Aedan, the smelly one is mine. My daughter." Bradan held Catrin tightly, as if afraid she would vanish as quickly as her mother had. "Although she doesn't usually smell like this."

The dragon chuckled, a noise even more chaotic than its speaking voice, "That may be my fault. I assumed it was food and was attempting to prepare dinner. I fear I scared the shit out of it." It nodded toward Catrin, "since you belong to Bradan man I shan't try to eat you again."

Catrin tried to curl into a ball in her father's lap, whimpering a little. "Good. I'm not ready to die." She looked up to her father's face, "there is something wrong here. Our house is smashed by a dragon that wanted to eat me and stopped to help you fight the soldiers that stole mother, and we're sitting here talking to it as if it was an old family friend."

Snorting in derision, Bradan squeezed his daughter tightly again. "They're welcome to her. She was only useful as a hostage, and since they stopped caring if she lived she wasn't any use at all." He kissed Catrin's forehead, "the only thing she ever did right was make you. Not that she wanted to, but her wants really didn't matter much." He waved toward the dragon, "and he's a he, not an it. I call him Aedan because he's a fire dragon, or will be when he grows up a bit more. His chosen name sounds like choking on lightning while trying to drink acid and sing at the same time. It sounds so painful I never even made the slightest effort to say it." Kissing her on the forehead, he added, "sorry he tried to eat you, Cat. I expected to get here first and introduce you. Damn soldiers."

Wiggling uncomfortably, Catrin rolled off her father's lap and stood up, digging at the ground with her toes, "I have to go clean up, I'm a bit of a mess. You can finish explaining in a minute." Walking gingerly around the dragon, she went to the hut and picked up some of the harsh soap she used for cleaning everything and went out and around to the pond behind the remains of her home, taking off her skirt and vest as she went, planning to wash them at the same time.

The banks of the pond were hidden by vines and thick underbrush leading to forest too thick for anything larger than a rabbit, except a small arc Bradan had cleared many years ago. That arc fanned out into a rough oval clearing a little over a hundred feet in the short direction and just under two hundred the long way. A pathetic example of a vegetable garden took up most of the cleared space, surrounding the primitive stone hut. An even more primitive stone wall surrounded the whole area, intended to keep out garden pests. It didn't work very well. Outside the wall was forest. Thick, untamed, where the only traveling was done on animal trails or the one cut trail that led east to the city of Derry and west to the small village of Derry. The path from the hut to the trail looked like one of the aforementioned animal tracks, intentionally.

Wading into the muck of the pond's bottom, Catrin wiggled her feet until she had sunk in past her ankles, then squatted and started washing the mess off her body, enjoying the way the muck oozed between her toes. Every few minutes she would move deeper and to the side; the water in the pond didn't circulate much and it was the easiest way to have clean water to continue washing with. Eventually she had herself feeling clean, then tackled the job of cleaning up her vest and skirt. Normally she wouldn't bother trying to fix leather that had been mistreated so badly, but these two items were her only decently made clothes, everything else she owned was so poorly made she often preferred to be naked. It took nearly an hour, but she managed to get all the visible signs of their abuse removed. Taking them up to a drying rack beside the ruins of the hut she stretched out the two pieces to dry and then returned to where her father was lying in the dust where the battle had ended.

Looking around, Catrin didn't see the bodies of the dead soldiers, but noticed chain link armor folded and tucked into a pile. She looked at the chain, then at the dragon, then at her father. "He even ate the bones?"

Bradan looked up at his naked daughter, and nodded, grinning. "He's a baby. Takes a lot of food to build a fire-breathing dragon. Of course he can't fly again for a couple of hours after eating like that, but it's not likely he'll need to." He sat up and opened his arms, welcoming Catrin to sit on his lap again. He smiled as she did, caressing her chest lightly and watching the nipples on her small breasts stiffen and stand up. "You know you're a lot prettier than your mother."

Catrin snorted, "I hope so. She was a bitch and it showed in her face. Cross between a wolfhound and a rat, with most of her personality from the rat." Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself. Her hatred of her mother's uselessness always got her hot and ready to fight when the woman was mentioned. "Damn woman. At least she's out of our lives now."

Hugging the girl and kissing her on the cheek, Bradan shook his head. "Not completely, darling. Now that she's been rescued, assuming the soldier doesn't just rape and kill her and then claim we did it, she could probably get the duke to send some soldiers out here to be sure we're dead. He may dislike her as much as we do, but he hates me even more." He grinned, "the poor man. Would probably want to thank me for keeping that bitch of a wife if I hadn't used it to blackmail him."

Wiggling her toes and stretching out so her father could caress her body easier she looked at him, puzzled, "How? You never said what you wanted her for, or even why he went along with it. I know she had magic, since you don't and I had to get it from somewhere, but since she refused to use it even that part was worthless."

Nodding toward the half-asleep dragon, her father pulled her up into a more comfortable position for him. "Him. He was born shortly before I grabbed your mother. I found him kicking around his egg shell and thought it might be nice to have a pet dragon, except there are laws against that." He grinned, "so I kidnapped the duke's blushing bride and threatened to kill her if anyone came out this way. I think he would have sent some soldiers just to see that happen, were it not for the reason he married her in the first place. Her father wanted to either own Derry, or have control over it, and he was pretty much willing to go either way. Marrying his daughter to the duke gave him control, but to keep himself from being dead the duke had to keep his new wife from being dead." Smirking, he nodded toward the dragon again, "then he grew up enough to find his way to other dragons about the same time you learned to call your mother 'bitch'." Caressing her bare back, he looked down at her face, "now, I hadn't intended to rape her and make you, that was just a lucky result of her being so evil and foul mouthed she goaded me into it."

"She goaded you into raping her?" Catrin smirked, as it sounded like the kind of thing her mother would do. The woman never did know when to shut up.

Nodding, he continued, "Yup. When I got her here I didn't have to do anything to keep her; she was too prissy to leave on her own. So I just left her to do whatever she wanted, which was mostly cry and whine. Then one day she stripped and climbed into my bed, then started insulting my manhood. After about an hour I gave her what she wanted, but a lot rougher than she expected," he smirked, "and she loved it. Seems she liked being abused, so the meaner I was to her the happier she was. Still useless, but happy." He shrugged, "keeping her happy was easy and it satisfied an urge. Not that I'm sorry to see her go." He looked around at the torn up ground, "and now I think we have new troubles that she would just make worse."

Catrin leaned her head against her father's chest, "so what are we going to do, fight the duke to save the dragon?" She liked the feel of her father's skin and the smell of his sweat and blood. Her body reacted to him in a predictable fashion and she squirmed in his lap. She'd felt the stirrings before, but the excitement of the battle seemed to have made them worse. It wouldn't bother her any if her father decided he still needed those urges satisfied. The idea made her squirm a bit more, causing her father to look down at her curiously.

Bradan looked at his daughter as she moved in his lap, causing some uncomfortable responses, then looked to the dragon. "No, there's no need for that now. Aedan can get away on his own now, or fight when the numbers are small and he hasn't wedged himself into a tight space chasing food."

"Growing dragons require a lot of food," Aedan interrupted to defend himself.

Bradan resumed, "now we have to fight for ourselves. Or run away." He looked over at the hut, then around at the torn up ground, "I'm thinking we might just want to move on. The land isn't worth anything and Aedan has made game scarce." He lifted Catrin from his lap and set her on her feet, then stood. "Let's see what we can salvage out of all this, and think about the next step. And," he reached over and slapped her ass hard enough to leave a hand-print, "get you a sword. A cooking knife is not a weapon."

From the dead soldiers they recovered two sets of clothes and armor (one set with torn up shirt, sleeves ripped off the armor, and the legs of the pants ripped off mid thigh), two decent short swords, a good belt knife, one pair of leather boots (Catrin looked at the dragon, suspecting she knew where the other pair went), two leather belts complete with pouches containing whetstones, flint and steel, and a small pile of coins. Giving her father the slightly damaged armor and clothes, Catrin took the more damaged stuff aside, along with the knife and one of the swords. She was certain she could turn the armor and clothes into something she could wear if they had time, and the sword was a lot better than the one she'd lost in the hut.

After a bit of thinking about it and weighing options Bradan decided they had the time. Staying at the ruined hut and preparing for living in the wilds would be better than running off without preparation, so Catrin cleaned an area in front of the hut to set out tools and started working on the armor. Repairing the hole made by the soldier diving onto her father's sword was easy, as was repairing the hole in the shirt that had been under it. Cutting and relinking the chain tunic with the missing sleeves was a bit more difficult and took almost two full days, but made a serviceable chain dress, protecting from neck to halfway down her thighs when done. Putting the torn shirt under it protected her skin from the metal, although she preferred the way her father looked at her in just the chain. The boots fit her father passably well so she gave them to him. She was pleased that she had been able to fix and recover so much.