Chapter Text
Lance awoke to darkness. And slithering. As his brain slowly whirred to life, fitting stimuli together to try and figure out what was going on, he realised a couple of things. Firstly, he seemed to be in a dark room. And secondly, something huge was crawling towards him in the darkness. So naturally, he screamed.
He was cut off abruptly by a face-full of thick smoke that made him cough so loudly thought he was going to hack up a lung.
“Be quiet,” the source of the slithering complained, sounding harassed. “Noisy human,” it added to itself. Lance had expected more evil sounding noises, but it sounded more like Lance's tutor when he mixed the potions wrong and something exploded. Only with marginally more disdain for humans, apparently.
It thudded even closer. Lance started screaming again. It had slitted purple eyes, huge leathery wings, and miles upon miles of red scales. Its eyes shone powerfully in the darkness and when it spoke it exposed wickedly sharp teeth, each the size of a small knife. That's a dragon, his mind supplied helpfully, around the same time he started screaming again with increased volume and desperation. Those teeth were clearly made for eating humans and here was Lance, a human, and said teeth were inches from his face.
“Stop that.” The dragon puffed another cloud of smoke into his face and growled deep in its throat. “Saved its life and it won't even shut up,” it mumbled, shaking its enormous head.
Lance resented being called an it, especially by a dragon. He shook off his irritation, reminding himself that there were more pressing things at stake, such as the fact that he was about to be steak himself. Backed up frantically against the wall of what he quickly discovered was a cave, Lance allowed himself to wonder why and how he came to be in a cave with a huge dragon.
“Saved my life?” he whimpered.
The dragon crouched down on its enormous haunches and glared right at Lance with one huge eye. "Yes, so you can stop screaming like that,” it rumbled, collapsing to the floor and closing its eyes. It looked like it was sleeping - or trying to - but in the darkness Lance could make out trails of blood along the floor and the shallow rise and fall of its chest, sickly and weak.
It made no move to get up. Apparently it was saving Lance for a midnight snack. Maybe even breakfast, if he was lucky.
Lance stared ahead into the gloom. The last thing he could remember was being deployed on a patrol, complaining to Hunk about how he had to go on another stupid defense patrol that didn't even need a mage. Sure, he was only an apprentice, but couldn't he get at least slightly exciting missions? How was he supposed to improve if he never got any experience? He remembered considering stabbing someone in their sleep so he could practise his healing as the patrol was leaving the castle and then… Nothing. And now he was trapped in a cave with a bleeding, talking dragon that claimed to have saved his life. He was acutely aware that this thing was easily three times the size of a large horse and therefore that pissing it off sounded like a horrible idea.
“Where am I?” he asked timidly.
The dragon cracked open one purple eye. “Uh, my cave?”
“Right, but,” Lance forced himself to keep talking through the clicking of his teeth chattering in fear, “Why am I here?”
The dragon craned its long neck to look at him, in a movement that obviously caused it pain. Injured animals, Lance thought deliriously, needed to eat. The dragon didn't look to be in good enough shape to go hunting, and it had a defenceless human morsel right here. He squished his eyes shut and prepared himself to be burnt to pieces; maybe he'd just have his head torn clean off. A loud smacking sound startled his eyes open and he looked up to see the dragon flicking its tail unhappily.
“You're afraid?” it said quietly. Its pupils had grown from catlike slits into ordinary round circles as it peered at Lance with concern.
“Well, I'm in a cave with an enormous fire-breathing monster,” he remarked, “So yeah, pretty afraid.”
“Monster,” the dragon repeated quietly, as though it had never heard the word before. It shook its huge head with enough force to spray blood across the cave. Lance looked down in alarm to find himself speckled with ruby droplets. The dragon didn't seem to notice or care. “I won't hurt you,” it said slowly. “That would be a big waste of saving you.”
Lance shot it a questioning look.
“You don't remember, human? You managed to stumble onto a fae tournament.” It paused, settling its head on its paws like a dog. Its huge eyes never strayed from Lance's face as it spoke. “The fair folk like their entertainment… bloody. A sentry found you out in the woods nearby and brought you in and The Queen was delighted, because fae really love nothing more than seeing humans being ripped to shreds.”
Lance's eyes bulged. His memory was suddenly flooded with faint images: wandering away from camp a little ways to relieve himself; the man who'd stepped out of the tree, not like he was hiding behind it but like he'd been a part of it; flashes of an enormous crowd, bigger than any he'd ever seen, all snarling and jeering and whooping. He remembered huge snapping jaws and suddenly curled further away from the red dragon. Its attentive eyes noticed the movement and it seemed to wince.
Then Lance was hit by the sudden, solid memory of a boy with dark hair curling around his pointed ears. Fae then, but he seemed familiar somehow, and in the memory he was distinctly good. Lance remembered being carried in his arms, then being propped up against the wall with pale hands running over his skin with concern. He could recall sparks of reddish light trailing from his fingers and seeping into Lance's skin. The memory faded and Lance suddenly realised that he, too, was bloody. His tattered clothes were soaked in the stuff, and it was smeared across the walls and floors around him. And yet he didn't feel injured in any way. He still remembered the teeth marks running up his arm and the weeping gash across his chest, but a quick examination of his bare arms showed him to be completely fine.
“Where's the boy?” he demanded, struggling upright. “The boy… who healed me, what did you do with him?”
The dragon's tail swished unhappily and its eyes narrowed back into guarded slits. “He's gone.”
“You hurt him!” Lance screeched, recognising the dark edge in the dragon's oddly human voice.
It rolled its eyes, a distinctly uncomfortable sight to see on a dragon. “I can't lie. I'm telling you I didn't hurt him,” it insisted.
That was a well known fact about fae, but Lance could think of some very substantial differences between dragons and fair folk. The ability to lie could easily be another. Also, being so shrouded in legend as they were, Lance had always wondered if the fae had not simply cultivated that myth to make it easier for them to trick humans. Not that he had ever devoted much thought to their existence until now.
He'd always known they existed since his discovery of the little hobgoblin creature that used to creep into his room and make his clothes slightly bigger each day, until he was convinced he was shrinking. That pesky thing was the reason he first started studying charms in the first place. It was a good thing in a weird way, because without it he'd never have gotten to be the new apprentice to the mage up at the castle. He smiled subconsciously at the memory of how proud his mother had been when he'd left home to start his training at the castle.
Then he snapped back to his current circumstances, which included being watched interestedly by a dragon.
“Fae can't lie, but how do I know that's what you are?” he said stubbornly.
“Because. Dragons are owned by the Unseelie. We follow the same magic and-”
“Owned?” Lance echoed.
“Yes. I'm under the control of the Unseelie Queen. Our fealty is different from the human kind. Stronger. That's why it's not easy to be a traitor.” It sounded almost smug as it stretched its neck out to lick at a wound on its back. It wrinkled its nose up at the taste of blood on its tongue but continued anyway, ignoring Lance.
“Why would you swear fealty to this lady?” Lance knew enough to know that the Unseelie were uncontestably Bad. The limited portrayals of the Seelie that Lance had encountered ranged from still-dangerous tricksters to playful angels, but every source was definitely agreed about the motives of their darker counterparts.
“Didn't. Blood fealty.”
The dragon's voice was unreadable and blunt. What ‘blood fealty’ was Lance didn't know, but it didn't sound good. He suddenly wished he had his tutor with him. Coran was a strange man but it seemed like he probably had a lot more knowledge about fae than Lance did. Any knowledge at all would be greatly appreciated right now.
“I don't feel like I should trust you,” Lance said slowly. Waking up in a strange cave with a reptilian, unseelie creature and hazy memories didn't put him in a trusting mood. But it made no sense - if the dragon wanted eat him, it wouldn't care whether he trusted it. It would just eat him. Aside from that, he couldn't see what else he had to offer that would merit needing to earn his trust. The noises of the dragon grooming itself stopped abruptly as it craned back around to focus its intense gaze back on Lance. “But I'm helpless against you either way so, like, I might as well.”
The dragon puffed out a cloud of smoke, though not into Lance's face this time. It didn't say anything but Lance could feel its eyes burning a hole in his face, though he kept his own gaze fixed stubbornly on the ground. The only noise was the dragon's laboured breathing and the scrape of its barbed tail swaying along the floor of the cave.
“You're injured,” Lance remembered. “Did you… Get hurt saving me?”
The dragon snorted loudly. It was too disdainful to be a laugh and accompanied by another puff of smoke, but seeing amusement on its huge, fire-breathing face was almost disconcerting. It made half of Lance relax while the other half of him was set even further on edge.
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me how you did get hurt?” Lance prompted when no response followed.
“The Tournament,” it responded lazily. “I don't remember human memories being this short.”
Lance wracked his brain for any recollection of the battle. If he could actually remember what had happened maybe he'd understand his current circumstances better and be able figure out why the dragon saved him. All that he remembered was red snapping jaws and the cruel eyes of the woman on the golden throne.
At jousting matches at the castle the King and his daughter would sit high up in the Royal box where they were safely away from the action with a good view and away from all the peasants. Unlike them, this woman instead sat at ground level, separated from the battle only by a few metres of grass and rippling air. The Unseelie Queen.
“We fought,” he guessed. “Did I injure you?”
The dragon's eyes scrunched right up and Lance cowered. He'd injured it and it was angry and he'd just reminded it and now it looked completely furious and- oh. It was laughing. Its eyes were scrunched up with mirth and its chest was going up and down rapidly and it was puffing smoky air out of its nose with its head tilted to one side. There was a deep rumbling emanating from it; although it didn't seem capable of actually making the noise, it was very clearly amused. Lance just stared at it in shock before he righted himself and bristled. The one thing that made this savage, irritable creature laugh was the prospect of Lance injuring it? Even though he was about ten times smaller than it, he felt affronted.
The dragon fell silent. It didn't seem like it was going to specify how it had been hurt, but Lance could guess it was from battling other things in the Tournament.
“I'm a healer.” Well, an apprentice. “I could help.”
It snorted and rolled over, glancing around the barren cave. “With what, exactly? Besides, I don't want humans poking around me and sticking plants in my wounds, thanks. Your herbs may very well not even work the same way on a creature like me.” Its lips curled distastefully around the end of the sentence.
“I know charms,” he argued, not quite sure why he wanted to make the huge dragon more dangerous. A healthier dragon could only mean more danger, yet he was strangely keen to offer his help. Limited as it may be. Without the help of herbs and amulets his magic wasn't very powerful, but he could at least try. His tutor, Coran, said his natural magic was impressively strong, but since no one was allowed to use magic without a permit and a year of preparatory training, he'd only just begun to actually cast anything. Without the direction of physical aids his magic was probably all but useless.
The dragon's head snapped up.
“Are you stupid? The Queen will sense unfamiliar magic being used in her territory and you'll get us both killed.”
“Oh.”
“You have magic?” it asked curiously, after its defensive anger had faded. “Why didn't you use it, in the arena?”
Lance shrugged. “I'm just a healer. I don't know attack magic.”
The dragon made an unreadable noise in the back of its throat and rolled over onto its side with a huge thud. The impact shook the cave and reminded Lance just what he was dealing with.
“I want to rest now,” it rumbled.
“Wait! I want to go home- I mean… you rescued me. Can I go back now?”
Unfortunately he couldn't see the dragon's face anymore to gauge its reaction, but he heard its inhale. “You can't. You wouldn't be able to make it out on your own, and I can't leave until the Tournament is over.”
“Which is…?”
The dragon just shrugged its giant shoulders and shifted a little to get comfortable.
“So I just have to stay here for a little while and then you'll take me home and I can forget all about all of this fae madness.” He said it mostly to himself but the dragon made a noise of complaint and threatened to incinerate Lance if he didn't stop talking.
“You're going to have to stop being so grumpy if we're going to be cavemates. I'm Lance,” he added, happily ignoring the dragon's warning. Instinctively, he reached hand out. He retracted it just as quickly when he realised his companion didn't exactly have hands.
Its tail thudded loudly against the rock and the echo rang out three times before it faded into oblivion, replaced by a furious hiss.
“Stupid!” It growled, heat sizzling in its voice and its eyes. Lance suddenly shrank away from its elongated silhouette, seeking refuge in the darkness. It had just started to seem less terrifying, and all of a sudden it was turning upon Lance with a fearsome rage that made his tremble. “Stupid little human! Don't ever tell anyone your true name.”
Its tail continued to thrash for some time before slowing down and eventually stopping, the noise still ringing in Lance's ears.
“I didn't tell you my full name,” he whispered timidly.
It regarded him through slitted eyes, eerie intensity making Lance cower further in on himself. It huffed a breath of hot but smokeless air that made Lance's hair flutter in the gust.
“You didn't know, I suppose,” it said slowly. It sounded gentle, suddenly. “Don't be afraid. I was only thinking of your safety. Anything that I know is not safe from The Queen. If she learns your true name, you'll wish you'd died fighting me.”
Lance tried not to think about the fact that the dragon knew Lance was here, hiding in the cave, but he couldn't stop the thought from spilling out regardless. “But you know I'm here.”
It rumbled in assent. “Then let's hope she doesn't ask me if I'm entertaining guests."
“How did you get me here, if you can't lie or disobey her?” Lance wondered.
“I can't lie, but you learn to make good use of ambiguous language. I asked her if I could taste your blood in my cave. You were already half dead, and she'd had her fun.”
“You told her you were going to eat me?!” he shrieked.
“Yes,” said the dragon coolly. It wrinkled its nose in distaste like an enormous cat. “I had to taste your blood, too. If she asks just how you tasted, I will have to say unsatisfactory.
“Gross, you ate my blood!” Lance complained, feeling strangely violated. The dragon seemed just as unhappy about it as he did, though. He wasn't sure if ‘your blood tastes unsatisfactory’ was an insult worth responding to. “Now that you've got my blood and half my true name, what can I call you?”
“The name I give to the Folk is Red.”
“Wow, unoriginal and unimpressive. Don't you have something fearsome and dragon-y to strike fear into heart of your enemies?”
Red’s eyes narrowed back into slits but Lance could see the fire that lit in them. “I don't rely on words to make them afraid.”
Lance slept fitfully. Red breathed loudly and it provided almost soothing background noise except from the occasional pained noise that each time jerked Lance out of whatever mild relaxation he'd managed to achieve. The cave was cold, too, and Lance had only his torn up clothing for warmth. Well, and a huge sleeping fire breather, but he didn't want to disturb Red or put himself that close to a giant unconscious body that was covered in spikes.
Enticing moonlight crept in through cracks in the cave wall and Lance eventually abandoned sleep to follow the light to a small opening. This wasn't the direction Red came from before, and it was way too small - there must be another entrance somewhere. But there was a deliberate seeming hole and it was the perfect size for a human head to poke out. So Lance did. And was immediately glad he'd found this viewpoint and not the dragon sized one that didn't have anything stopping him from toppling out.
They were high up, set in the side of an enormous hill that Lance had never even glimpsed in the distance before, not on patrols through these very woods or from the elevated turrets of the castle. The sides of the hill were steep and rocky, with several other large holes in that could all easily allow other dragon sized creatures to enter. Lance gulped. Below them was an expansive grassy plain that he'd never seen either, despite hunting in these woods since he was a child. A huge colosseum seemed to grow out of the ground, not made of rock as far as Lance could tell, but living wood and earth rising dizzyingly high above the grass.
The colosseum itself seemed deserted, but around it the plains were lit by a mishmash of different coloured lights, set in the walls of the arena, hovering in the air, and spinning with the dancers who covered the entire area. It was too high up to make out any definite features, but he could see a blurry mess of revellers and hear the faint strains of music. The air that rose from the dance was heavy and intoxicating, like the lighthearted fun of human dances concentrated into something addictive and unmistakably dark.
“You can watch but don't listen to the music for too long.”
Lance whipped around to find Red watching him. The dragon looked sleepy and groggy, a strange sight across its sharp features.
“Wha- oh. Right, thanks.” He stepped back from his viewing hole and immediately every sound and glow from the festival disappeared, returning to the simple glow of moonlight and nothing else. “Red?”
“Lance?” it mimicked, sounding amused in its dryly reluctant way.
“You're a him, right?”
Lance didn't miss the surprised, curious glint in Red’s eyes.
“Generally seems that way,” he agreed.
“Alright. Feels weird thinking of you as an it when you have a name,” Lance yawned. He nearly tripped over Red’s tail on his way back to the corner of the cave that he'd been curled up in. The dragon had laid back down and shut his eyes, but appeared to be awake.
“Stop it,” Red groaned sleepily.
Lance startled. “Stop what?” He wrapped his arms around himself protectively, still trying to find a comfortable position on the floor without moving too much from the spot where he'd been laying that was warmed with escaping body heat. Each time he moved, newly cold rock bit into his back and sent him wiggling back into the pre-heated section. Even with his own body heat reflected back at him from one side, it was miserably cold.
“You're… rattling. It's really very annoying.”
Lance hissed out a surprised laugh. “I can't help it, I'm cold,” he explained. “What, you don't shiver?” His arms snaked around his sides in an attempt to preserve some heat and he raised his eyebrows at the dragon's clueless, inquisitive noise. Now that he was fully awake, not curled in a half asleep ball against the wall of the cave that he'd warmed a little, he was desperately aware of how low his temperature was. The cold air burrowed into his back and legs through the gaps in his clothing.
“It's hard to be cold when your insides are filled with fire.” Red cracked open one eye and snorted a cloud of black smoke as if to illustrate his point. He closed his eyes again and shuffled around like a dog trying to make a bed. Lance muffled a laugh at the startling comparison.
“You're still rattling,” the dragon hummed into the darkness after a while. “... Shivering. Stop it.”
“I told you,” Lance insisted, “I can't help it. I'm cold.”
There was a scraping sound as Red’s various horned and spiky appendages were dragged across the ragged cave floor and Lance opened his eyes to see the dragon had got to his feet. He braced himself for something: Red had said he wasn't going to eat the young apprentice, but maybe Lance's various annoying noises had changed his mind. Possibly, Red was going to light a fire, though there was no fuel that he could see. He didn't think Red was any more eager than Lance was for them to sleep close enough together to share warmth, either, which ruled our that solution.
“There's an underground hot spring running through the rock just below here,” he explained, shuffling to the side to leave space where he had been, then settling down again in his doglike way.
Lance stood up and sleepily stumbled over to the vacant section of the cave. He started to settle down again in the new area, and was just opening his mouth to say it didn't make him feel any warmer when a startled squeal was jolted out of him instead: Red had curled his tail carefully around Lance and tugged him slightly to the left. Suddenly he could feel the deliciously heated rock beneath him. Nodding a small thanks to the dragon, he curled up around the heat on the hard floor. Without the clicking of his teeth and bitter cold sinking into his bones, he fell asleep quickly.
Dawn was seeping in through the small view hole in the cave hole by the time Lance woke again. As expected, he was cramping in muscles he didn't even know he had from sleeping in a cave. At least he was alive. The dragon who was currently sharing his lodgings was awake too, standing in the corner and moving around but with his back to Lance so he couldn't see what was going on.
His stomach’s sudden grumble drew both his and Red’s attention.
“Good morning,” Red rumbled.
“Good morning, huge dragon that I live with now. What's for breakfast?” Lance chirped, trying to keep his own morale up.
Red blinked owlishly at him. “I eat in the evenings. You were still passed out when I ate yesterday.”
“Um, usually I eat three meals a day. I'm hungry now,” he whined. He'd been fairly annoying so far and Red hadn't ripped his head off, so he was surprisingly unconcerned about irritating the huge dragon. Scratch that, he was still a little nervous. The combination of hunger and detachment from the absurdist world that had become his reality just outweighed the fear.
He felt Red’s violet eyes searching his face intently. It made him want to hide his face in three feet of rock.
“Wait here.”
Lance didn't really have a choice, since he didn't even know the way out of the cave and wasn't meant to reveal his existence to the other fae who were probably nearby for the tournament. He watched Red disappear down a well lit tunnel, all his injuries obvious from behind when illuminated. Having seen all the blood he'd left on the floor, Lance shouldn't be surprised, but he had to bite his lip to hold back a gasp. There were bite marks littered along his side, along with the wounds Lance had noticed before, varying in size and shape. Most of them seemed to have only dented the scales slightly but one patch was completely bare of scales to reveal the weeping flesh beneath and another wound on the back of his leg was yellow tinted and shining with pus.
“Red!” Lance called out just as a whoosh of air indicated that Red had exited the cave.
The dragon returned with something small and furry in his jaws and a whole stem of blackberry laden brambles in his claws. He dropped both in front of Lance before sitting back on his haunches with an expectant look. It reminded Lance a lot of a cat dropping a mouse at its master’s feet, and the prize was similarly gruesome. Lance took the blackberries, mindful of the prickly thorns, and eyed the dead rabbit warily.
“I know it's not much meat but it's all I could catch. I didn't have much time,” Red said defensively, the hurt evident on his face as he nudged the dead creature towards Lance with one bloody claw. Its eyes were wide open. It twitched, still clinging on to life and Lance turned away, gagging. Nothing but bile splattered onto the cave floor, his stomach empty. He'd always been stupidly squeamish.
“Are you ill?” Red asked curiously, stepping closer.
Lance turned around at the sound only to gag again and skitter further away when he noticed that there was blood on the dragon's mouth too, barely visible against his red scales.
“Don't!” he whimpered. His back hit the cave wall and prevented him from stepping back any more, so he was forced to meet the eyes of the dragon whose hot breath was ruffling his hair. He kept his focus trained on Red’s eyes so he didn't have to look at his bloody mouth or the dead rabbit on the floor. He thought he saw a flicker of hurt, but then the dragon’s glowing eyes shuttered abruptly and he stepped back. “You have blood on your claws,” Lance said shakily.
The blackberry juice looked a little too much like blood to be entirely comfortable given the circumstances, but Lance's stomach protested until he hesitantly put one in his mouth. He picked a couple more and ate them as Red preened himself, licking and biting at his own claws more aggressively than Lance personally thought the tiny bit of blood and dirt called for. They sat in heavy silence as Lance filled his stomach with the berries and Red groomed himself. The blood was gone and he'd moved on to picking out dead scales and dried blood from his own wounds. Neither of them so much as looked at the rabbit.
“Why did you kill it!” Lance burst out, more angry than he'd expected.
Red looked up with childlike confusion in his face as he tilted his head to the side. “You… It's food.”
“It was alive and happy a-and it could've had babies… It looked so scared. How could you just have killed it?” He shuddered, unsure why he was so shaken. Most of what he ate at the castle was ambiguous broth with chunks of vegetables and probably meat in, but seeing the food actually look like something that had been alive was different. What really upset him, he realised, was how callously Red had dropped it. He'd probably snapped the poor rabbit's neck in his jaws, felt its lifeblood in his mouth, and it hadn't affected him at all. That thought was what chilled him to the bone - Red’s casual attitude towards killing things.
Red had the big, sad eyes of a dog that had gotten its nose rapped for stealing scraps, set in the face of a murderous reptile. It wasn't enough to undo the knot of fear in Lance's gut, but it made him pause in surprise as the dragon curled away from him. He caught a glimpse of red sparks - magic, he realised. Not like his weak, human magic, but real magic that crackled and hissed like fire and set the whole room thrumming with energy. Lance's eyes were already bulging when a small form jumped over Red’s paw and bounded into the cave. A rabbit.
“Wh- how did you- what-” Lance babbled, jaw hanging open in shock.
Red was watching the rabbit with an expression Lance was familiar with from the face of the castle mouser watching a rat in the hayloft. He seemed to be straining with the effort of not pouncing on it. It was… bemusing. Lance tried not to think cute. He had to try even harder when Red looked up at him with what seemed to be the dragon version of a shy smile. He couldn't smile with his mouth for obvious, toothy reasons; his eyes glittered proudly with a shy questioning undertone fluttering in them. He tilted his head hopefully.
Lance darted forward and scooped up the trembling creature. Using his own magic felt embarrassing after what Red had done but he channeled his best calming intentions down his fingers as they stroked at the rabbit's long ears, muttering gently to it about how it was safe now. A little empathy magic couldn't hurt, one rung in the ladder above singing a lullaby, barely supernatural and hardly enough to alert this mysterious queen to any individual presence. Even Red didn't seem to notice, though when the rabbit stopped quaking Lance lifted his head to find Red’s eyes drilling holes in him.
“That was amazing!” Lance breathed in awe. His face fell and he added with a frown, “Except that you killed it in the first place.” He couldn't shake the feeling of wonderment, though.
Red was still eyeing the rabbit cagily as he mumbled, “It wasn't totally dead. I can't do that," He seemed closed off all of a sudden, eyes flickering between Lance and the floor.
Lance made a delighted noise when the rabbit delicately took the berry out of his hand and ate it. His own magical contribution seemed to have tamed it. If only that would work on Red. He snorted at the thought as the rabbit hopped into the circle of his crossed legs, stroking its ears absent-mindedly as he gazed up at the dragon.
“Can't you heal yourself?” He eyed the infected looking bite mark on Red’s leg.
“A rabbit takes a lot less energy than a dragon to heal. I'd rather have my strength to fight than to patch up a couple of scrapes.”
Lance flinched at the realisation that Red had wasted energy on saving the rabbit, though he claimed it didn't use much, when he didn't have the strength to waste on the angry gashes that covered his whole body.
“I have energy,” he piped up.
“And you can't use your magic here. I'll heal when the Tournament ends.”
“If you make it that far,” Lance said darkly, unable to tear his eyes away from Red’s injuries. The further the sun rose in the sky, the more battered the dragon looked. “I need you to survive so I can get out of here.” If Lance cared whether bunny lived or died, he may also be slightly invested in the lives of human-level sentient dragons - but since Red didn't seem to understand why he'd been upset over the rabbit, he didn't want to voice his very slight concern for Red either.
“The boy,” he remembered with a jolt. “Is he in the fights too?”
Red flashed his teeth at the mention of the faery boy. “Yes, sort of.”
“Don't hurt him!” the protest spilled out of Lance's lips before he could consider what ‘sort of’ meant. Red was smiling with his eyes again but this time the expression was underlaid with the flash of sharp teeth. He looked devious in a concertedly faery way, the strange threads of humanity that Lance had grown familiar with vanishing as his expression slammed shut.
“I don't think you need to worry about that.”
Just as Lance opened his mouth to ask what on Earth that was supposed to mean, the entire cave was rattled by a piercing horn. It sounded like the call of the hunt back at the castle, only a thousand times louder and distinctly more bloodthirsty. Lance didn't even like the human hunt going out and ripping innocent foxes to shreds, so he doubted he'd enjoy this faery version. Red grinned wickedly at him over the sound.
“That's my cue.”
Lance followed him to the main entrance of the cave, large enough for a dragon to take flight from. Vertigo clutched at him when he caught sight of the huge drop. His fingers clung desperately to the cave walls even though he stayed a good few feet inside the entrance. The fear of falling was combined with both shock at the enormous gathering of fae filling the arena below them, and the realisation that he couldn't escape from this cave without Red even if he wanted to.
“Good luck.”
The viewing hole was enchanted. Lance should've noticed last night, what with how it blocked out all the deafening sounds from the revelry as soon as he stepped away from it.
When he initially poked his head through with the hopes of at least being able to glimpse Red’s enormous form and have a brief idea how the battles were progressing, it became obvious: he could hear and see everything. All he had to do was focus on a particular person or group and they suddenly became clear to him, despite being some hundred feet away. Some conversations were still muffled, like they had a bubble around them; Lance assumed these people had enchantments of their own against eavesdropping.
He could only hope that the hole was also glamoured from the outside. It wouldn't be ideal for a sharp eyed fae to glance upwards and notice a tiny human face peering out of the mountain.
His focus naturally gravitated to the queen. Various creatures writhed at her feet - Lance hoped they were simply attendants and not being punished, but he doubted it. Something flashed in the corner of his vision and Lance fell back from the hole in shock, his jaw hanging open.
Leaning against the throne with his eyes cast down was the boy who’d healed him the day before. There were others in The Queen’s company, decked in similar finery, but Lance directed his focus exclusively onto her familiar companion. He found them halfway through a hushed conversation. It took Lance a great deal of concentration to be able to hear their low voices, but he easily registered the coldness in the boy's tone.
In return, the Queen seemed fascinated with him, like he was a new racehorse or an interesting gadget.
“Sit, little one,” she ordered, addressing him in the same tone Lance had seen the kennelman addressing his favourite hound.
He was clearly unhappy and Lance even thought he caught him staring daggers at her. She whispered something in his ear, claws raking through his hair with mocking tenderness, and his face twisted.
“Good, child,” she purred, audible again.
Lance flinched, full of the desire to burst out of the cave and rescue this boy, to whom he owed his life, from the Queen's cruelty. Still, Lance thought, head suddenly filled with images of yellow infection against red scales, he'd got away with much fewer scars from her sadism than Red had. The dragon's cryptic ‘sort of’ came to mind as he realised that the boy by the Queen's side was also injured. Most of his skin was hidden away by finery but scratches stood out red against the pale of his exposed neck and hands.
Lance watched curiously as he settled on a cushion beside her. The first fight was obviously about to begin. He braced himself for the sight of Red, but two unfamiliar creatures appeared and immediately launched into battle. The Queen was watching with a twisted smile while all her attendants and the members of the audience that Lance's gaze took in were all watching intently. Some were watching in quiet awe, others clapping and cheering. A few had more human expressions of horror, eyes focused like they couldn't look away. Unlike them, the black-haired faery at the Queen’s side was glaring resolutely at the floor. Lance watched as her limbs snaked at an impossible angle to squeeze his jaw tight in her taloned hands. Her gaze never strayed from the battlefield, but she held his face up so he couldn't look away until the first fight was over with the thudding of something falling to the ground.
Lance couldn't bring himself to look at the blood soaked battlefield so he kept his eyes trained on the Queen instead. When she finally released her grip, her nails had left red half moons in the boy's face.
Lance watched battle after battle, both hoping Red would appear on the field and praying he wouldn't. He watched utterly inhuman balls of darkness fight dragons much bigger than Red; giants and dwarves and animated trees clashed with one another in endless cycles. Eventually he learned that he could stray from the hole but if he kept his focus there he could still hear the sounds outside. It provided welcome relief - standing wedged against the wall watching timeless hours of fighting was beginning to exhaust him physically and mentally.
The end of battle was marked by the thud of a body falling to the ground, or the clatter of a weapon and the beginning of a new one was marked by a sudden cheer from the crowd. He couldn't discern any sort of rules - many times the battle didn't end until lifeblood was spilled, but sometimes two battered opponents would simply nod at each other and vacate the field alive. Sometimes both would fall, or one creature would remain in the ring for opponent after opponent until it eventually succumbed.
He retreated to the heated corner of the cave with the rabbit in his lap for both of their comfort, one ear on the games raging outside. At every cheer he would race to the little window, look unsuccessfully for Red, and leave again. At some point he noticed the faery with the queen had disappeared, replaced by a pretty girl with solid blue eyes and transparent wings who Lance had to struggle to draw his eyes away from. She seemed more content with the Queen's company and Lance hoped the faery boy had been excused from watching the battle any longer after failing to spot him nearby.
With no small amount of satisfaction, he noticed his hands were glowing blue where he stroked the rabbit. Coran said light and colour were indications of a solid connection to the magic. Lance's usual charms were mostly intention based, heavily grounded in physical props. The blue light meant he was closer to the kind of magic Red used, the purer, stronger, more versatile kind that ran through the life force of every living thing. He'd only gotten this close a couple of times before, once with serious help from Coran and once healing his sister when they were children and she'd fallen into the frozen village pond and come out blue-faced. The latter time it had burst out from him instinctively before he even really knew of magic.
He drew his hands back with a yelp when he remembered Red’s warning about using magic. The tiny emotional magic he'd been casting hardly seemed a problem; Red hadn't even noticed him aiming it at the rabbit when they were in the cave together. That magic was fuzzy and blurry and untraceable, nothing more than washing his bolstered emotions into the other animal. Pure enchantment, like what had just been trailing from his fingers, was far more obvious and far more recognisable as coming from a human. He rushed to the window, but the Queen was thankfully immersed in the battle and hadn't noticed the faint traces of human magic. Spellcasters everywhere adding to the adrenaline of the battle with light shows probably helped mask it too.
He removed his face from the peephole just as he heard a familiar growl and immediately shoved it back in. Red.