The ship has stopped, "docked" the girl-human calls it. She is leading us out, on the hunt for the deformed, twisted creatures with whom I am ashamed to share blood. Despite my earlier reservations, waiting has sharpened my temper, and I am ready for a kill or two. That my kill cannot yet be that horrible child is only a minor irritation.

"You must pretend to be my bonded dragon," she had told me before the ship doors opened. "Otherwise they will not let you onto the station."

::Pretend!:: had been my immediate response.>::To share my mind with-- with food?!::

"If you want to do any culling, you have to first get off this ship."

I, of course, had no choice but to agree.

::And what if it is not a pretend?:: Bristaness' voice whispers even now in my mind. ::I do not trust this human, my queen....::

::Stay here and wait for us,:: I hiss. Charliss is as ready for a fight as I am, but Bristaness is just a drone; he has no hatred for bad blood, no lust for the kill, no desire to wipe the worlds of the human scum. I can forgive him this, but I cannot let him get in my way.

::Yes, my queen....::

So the girl is, embarrassingly enough, perched again on my shoulder, shielded from a casual bite by my crest. "Try not to kill anyone until I'm ready," she tells me quietly as we start off the ship. I say nothing; she is not worth replying to. However, as she knows where we are going, I cannot ignore her entirely.

I carry the little human along as she directs, feeling ridiculous and humiliated. It only whets my temper further. We stalk down the spiral ramp from the dock and the ship, my warrior and I, and from there into a little moving room, much like those on my previous prison, only larger, and more smoothly operating. If I were not so irritated, perhaps I would be impressed. Instead, I shift my weight, paw at the ground, bare my fierce grin at the doors, waiting for them to open.

And finally, they do.

There! I see her, I sense her, I taste her in the air! The vile, horrible, disgusting abomination! For a moment, I pause before I scream a war cry, confused. Her mind-- it is so strange-- so wrong, as if there are two of her, and yet there is surely only one body there! What corruption is this?!

A human corruption.

An image flashes across my mind, clarifying the strange mix of mental, scent, and head signals: the color of purple poison and black, with eyes-- eyes!-- of vibrant red; silver clinging to the forehead; not one, but two heads! This-- this is very, very wrong-- it should not be allowed to exist!

Yes, cleanse it! Destroy it!

The insignificant weight on my shoulder clings as I surge forth with a roar of fury-- not even a roar of challenge, for this is not a battle. This is a culling! Charliss is left behind, but just for a moment, for he leaps to join me when he realizes what I do, senses what I do. The puny humans I ignore-- for now. Their time will come, but business must be seen to, first!

The abomination takes flight, away from the fleshy mouthfuls and into a wide, open space that, in its cavernousness, feels almost like home. All that is missing is the hum of the hive and the reflections of the resin. A weight disappears from my shoulder, but I hardly notice, leaping after my quarry and into the air.

::Who are you?:: I hear, strangely doubled and decidedly female.

Enraged, I snap back, ::Your executioner!::

The creature avoids me deftly, somehow also skirting away from Charliss when he tries to take advantage of her distraction. ::Why?:: she asks, calmly and coolly.

::Look at yourself! You must ask why??::

::I see nothing wrong with myself.::

I lunge and dive when she drops out of my reach. ::Then you are blind and deserve death even more! How can you not be ashamed??::

She swerves, just barely avoiding my claws. ::I am what I was born to be, nothing more and nothing less.::

::A human's slave!::

::I am no one's slave.::

It is my turn to veer aside, before one of those double tails the monstrosity bears slices my wingsail. ::You are-- deformed! By human trickery!::

::A hydra caught a xenodragon queen in a fair flight,:: the abomination sends back, as collected as ever in the face of my wrath. I scream at her-- this is a waste of time! Words, words, words-- she should be dying in my fangs by now, not throwing words at me! Again she avoids me-- where is Charliss? Why am I battling alone??

::Charliss!!::

A tight turn shows me he is not here-- he is over by the ledge where the humans are. The humans and that girl who started all this.

The girl who is smiling again; even from this distance, I can feel it. Smiling and pulling up another cracking ball of magic, one much larger and much stronger than what she showed us, in the ship. My belly drops to the pit of my stomach at the sight. I am not afraid! I cannot deny worry for my warrior-- and dread at what she might do with such a piece of power-- but that is not fear. Fear would make me fly away: instead, I fly towards her. I cannot let her harm my faithful!

::Charliss! Get away from there!::

::Rumi!::

The two-headed monster overtakes me in her haste to reach the humans, to my shock, but I still manage to drive Charliss away, while she scoops up a loudly protesting human and sweeps away with her. We clear the ledge--

--just in time for the explosion. The power nearly sends all of us out of the sky, with its bursting: Charliss, the abomination, even myself, prepared though I am. The power is searing, even through my thick skin, and the two-headed one has to shield her burden with her body to protect its feeble shell. But pain is nothing to a queen, and I will struggle on, urging my warrior to someplace safe! I am his queen, and I will not let him down! I will not....

And yet, and yet.... There is no sound to the power, nothing but pure sensation, and yet I hear a keening. Strange, sad, tugging at me, making it hard to keep my wings beating, hard to keep struggling. What is the point? Nothing matters. The human child will be the death of us-- better to go now, of my own accord, diving from the sky, than to be driven to ruin by a creature so much lesser than we....

Charliss is already falling. Perhaps I will join him, since I have failed him.... It is only fitting....

::AMPVESS!!::

I catch wind in my wings with a start. ::Bristaness! How dare you call me by my given name! I am a queen, not some--::

::My queen, my queen, many apologies, but look-- my brother!::

The oppressive despair is gone-- what was it, some strange kind of attack? I know not!-- and I look down, just in time to see Charliss catch himself almost too late: rather than crashing into the hard surface of the floor, he tumbles across it. He is fine... good.... The mutation is still winging away laboriously, human burden clutched to her chest and once again struggling.

"Go back-- Lant'ien!" the little thing is protesting-- and loudly!

But the abomination is not bringing her back, and something else catches my attention: words I cannot hear, precisely, but which are nevertheless quite apparent!

Why? Whyyyyyyyy? It's for you, I did it all for you--

The girl! Her voice is in my head? How dare she!

Go away! All you ever do is ruin everything I've ever wanted!

The air shifts under my wings; I shy away before I can help myself. The despair has a voice, the horrible emptiness has words to it--

You're my brother!! I will not leave you here!

Then I will let the nothing take you, and I won't care!

"Brullera, take me back there, now!" the human orders, and finally gets a response from the abomination. She wheels, diving back for the ledge-- and before I know it, so do I, scooping the human brat who started all this up and away, disappearing into the darkness of the open air with my warrior right behind me. I suppose that, as she is the only one who knows how to fly the thing that got us here, we need her alive to get us off. It is as good an excuse for saving her otherwise worthless life as any.

We need to get back to the ship... everything went so wrong!

Before I can crush her in my hands, she has crawled up to my shoulder again, and since I know almost nothing about what has just happen, the only choice I see is to agree and escape.

For now.

Chapter Eight

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