FSE

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It's a cycle that has seen more reiterations than any man can fathom: life and death. From the moment of our birth, death looms over our lives, casting a darkness that no man can escape. All life must eventually bow before death; but death must similarly bow to the demands of life, for life feeds upon death to give rise to new creation even as the dead fill their graves, ensuring the continued survival of civilization, for better or worse.

• Damien Malcus

Kath picked through the remains of the dead, fingers digging through the crumbled and rotted forms that littered the field. Smoke still rose from the dragon's defences, now only a battered ruin that strained to support the scarred ramparts. She lifted one dragon, struggling to move the limp mass. She snagged the soldier's satchel from where it had been pinned beneath him, bloodied scales staining the rich leather of the case. She wiped the gore away on the dragon's tunic before opening it, digging through several crumpled letters before landing on the cold jingle of metal.

Kath cast a glance over the field, gauging the distance between herself and the other scavengers to be great enough to hide her find. She drew it out, admiring the mild glow of the necklace's silver in the smoky sunlight. She turned the chain over in her hand, judging the weight and texture of the silver. She smiled to herself and hid the necklace within her jacket, moving on to the next body.

The field was quiet save for the footsteps of the scavengers and the wings of the carrion above, filling the air with an oppressive near-silence that served only to give further weight to the morbid atmosphere that hung over the battleground. The rancid stench of decay filled the air, testing Kath's resilience as it assaulted her sensitive nostrils, managing to just barely eclipse the odour of hellfire and smoke.

A rattling boom suddenly erupted over the field, echoing heavily as Kath a searched doggedly for danger, giving a sigh of relief as she watched the precariously standing walls of the dragon fortress finally fall. She made her way through the field, quickly searching each corpse before moving on, finding their baubles and luck charms and adding them to her sizable collection.

She rose from her crouching position over the corpse of a dragon officer to stretch, flexing her lithe muscles, rubbing her fingers through her dark fur and scratching at her long muzzle, taking a brief respite to gaze over the extent of the slaughter. The field went on as far as she could see, with the scaled bodies of the dragon army covering the whole of the plain's extent, the conspicuous absence of enemy bodies gave foul testament to the horrid nature of their enemy. In the far north she could see the hazy peaks of the Karkus Mountains, their unimaginable height hidden beyond the clouds that hung eternally over the region.

She sighed and took a deep breath before once more crouching to pick amongst the dead. After several hours of searching, the hidden folds within her jacket were bulging with stolen treasures. She looked over the circle of bare ground that surrounded a single dragon, nearly twenty feet clear of blood or corpses that stood in stark contrast to the endless piles of corpses that made up the rest of the field. She looked over the scene with anxious curiosity, wondering at its formation. There were scattered shards of metal, probably from a shattered sword or some such weapon; the grass was torn and upturned the dirt underneath trampled as if by shifting footsteps, but devoid of dead save for that single dragon.

The dragon itself was a credit to its species; over six and a half feet of solid muscle that failed to conceal an underlying grace of form and figure, crimson red scales casting a ruddy glow in the twilight sun. Kath had never found dragons all that attractive, but this one was undeniably handsome, even if it was marred by the myriad of cuts and wounds that covered the whole of the man's body, blending crusted blood and torn flesh with the vibrant life of its pristine scales. Its wings were spread out behind it, the bones somehow intact with the membranous skin torn to shreds by the enemy, long and powerful tail tipped with ebony spikes.

She knelt next to the dragon, gingerly prodding its chiselled abs and sculpted biceps. Judging from the shredded metal that clung loosely to the man's torso, he had been wearing a finely crafted set of scale-patterned mail, though his attackers had left very little of it intact. There was the occasional scrap of white cloth that Kath judged once might've been part of a tunic; as well as the battered and dented blade of a long-sword so large Kath could hardly heft it, let alone use. His face was composed of sharp angles: clear-cut jaw laden with short spikes of ebony-coloured bone to match the two curling horns that protruded from behind his temples; prominent cheeks laying gaunt under the double-lidded eyes that, even closed, seemed to bore through everything in their path.

She stopped her inspection of the man as she caught a glimpse of narrow sliver of gold clenched within the dragon's clawed fingers, the jewels almost escaping her notice as she stared at the well-muscled dragon. She reached for them, finding them secured by a tight grip. She struggled against the prone form's fingers, trying desperately to free the glimmering treasure from the dead man's grasp. With a lurching tug, she pulled the golden chain from the dragon's grasp.

She held the chain and jewel up to the light, inspecting her newest find. The chain was of outstanding quality, far above anything she had found today, and likely nicer than anything her fence had ever dealt with. The gem that hung on the chain was a thick ruby, cut with ultimate precision to sparkle at the merest beam of light; even as she held it in the shadow of her outstretched hand, the jewel seemed to glow with an odd but beautiful inner light.

She smiled to herself and moved to pocket the fine pendant, delighted in the knowledge that she need never work again, but as she turned to leave, a sudden force took her legs out from beneath her, sending her sprawling to the ground and driving the breath from her lungs. She struggled to catch her breath, her diaphragm sputtering sporadically as it tried desperately to fill her chest with air. Her instincts came to life with a burst of adrenaline, giving her limbs newfound strength. She rolled away from her attacker, shifting her weight to come up on one knee, left arm pulling her bow from its place on her back while her right arm simultaneously drew an arrow, knocking it to the string and drawing in a smooth continuous motion, holding the barbed head pointed at the red dragon's heart, fiery golden eyes split by a vertical black iris that locked onto Kath with murderous intent.

The not-quite-dead dragon crouched on one knee, slumped weakly with one hand clutching a gash along his ribs and the other holding that massive sword with its point stuck into the dirt. Drawing upon confounding reserves of strength, the dragon rose to its feet, fierce raptor-like claws digging into the soil as the brutalized warrior fought to stay on its wounded legs, favouring the slightly-less damaged limb.

"Give it back," the dragon murmured in a pained rasp.

Kath motioned to the arrow draw back on the bowstring, held taut with her lean musculature even as the recurve arms of the bow strained to loose the arrow, "I've got one reason that says no."

The dragon raised itself to its full height, well above seven feet tall, releasing the wound at its side to raise the blade with both hands, managing to do injured what most two men wouldn't be able to with perfect health, holding the monstrous blade above his head with unflinching sureness, "I've got one that says yes," he shifted his grip on the blade, fierce golden eyes never straying from her throat, "my reason's bigger."

Kath took a nervous, shuffling step back from the massive dragon, only to have the man match her step, closing the distance between them by a few vital inches, ensuring she was comfortably within striking distance.

Kath drew the string back further, feeling her bow strain with the weight of the bow's arms, "My reason will go through your heart before you have a chance to use yours."

The dragon took another step forward, smiling in the face of the arrow's deadly point, "Look around you," he said, sweeping an arm around the clearing of bodies, managing to keep that massive sword steady with only one arm, "legions of the undead could not kill me, and you think you have a better chance?"

She looked at the circle around them in a new light, recognizing it for what it was: this dragon had single-handedly cleared a twenty foot circle of the undead, managing to hold his ground even as the dragon army was annihilated by the walking dead. The space had likely been filled with the bodies of the undead until the necromancer at the head of the horde had reclaimed their soldiers.

Kath looked around nervously for some avenue of escape, "Um... gotta admit, not feeling as confident as I was a few minutes ago."

"Good," the dragon growled, barring his ivory-coloured fangs toward the relatively tiny jackal, "that means you have some degree of common sense. Now hand it over."

Kath eyed the pendant that hung from her bow-hand, weighing her options. Should she try and fight, she could most certainly kill him, but he would defiantly return the favour in short order; but if she gave him the pendant...

"What do I get if I give it back?" She asked, long ears twisting to focus on the wounded dragon.

"Your life, for starters," the dragon hissed, spiked jaw tightening and deadly gaze narrowing.

"Not what I meant," She said, barring her own canine fangs in an effort to match the dragon's intimidating visage, to little success, "If I were to sell this, I could live like a queen for the rest of my life, so what's my incentive for not taking a chance on the arrow?"

The dragon looked the slim jackal over, piercing eyes attempting to gauge her resolve, "You couldn't sell it if you tried."

Kath couldn't stop the look of surprise that crossed her face as she looked between the pendant and the dragon, "What?" she blurted, losing her grip on the cool, vicious demeanour she had been holding.

The dragon smirked at her faltering attitude, blade still held high even as her arm began to shake with the strain of holding the arrow drawn, "Anyone that knows its true value would recognize it and have you arrested immediately, if not outright killed."

Kath looked at the jewel in her hand, wondering just what she had gotten herself into.

"Anyone that would buy it would only give you a pittance of what it's worth, and you'd still likely be killed," he finished, savage grin burying any doubts as to the truthfulness of his story.

Kath's gaze passed between the arrow, the dragon, and the gem, weighing the options in her head. She had little doubt that the dragon was telling the truth, but she couldn't bear to let her best find slip from her fingers without making so much as a penny.

"Would you be willing to come to a compromise?" The dragon asked, lowering his blade slightly in a silent gesture of cooperation.

Kath's ears twitched at the words as her brows raised in surprise, "What kind of compromise?"

"While I certainly have the strength to kill you," the dragon said, "I don't have enough to get back to Tal'Krovak on foot, nor am I in any condition to fly," he said, giving his tattered wings a slight shake in demonstration.

"Your point?" Kath asked, loosening her grip on the arrow slightly to give some measure of release to her aching arms.

"Help me get the pendant to Tal'Krovak, and I will see to it that you are generously rewarded."

Kath furrowed her brow in thought, relaxing her body and allowing the arrow to slide forward to a half draw, "Just how 'generous' are we talking here?"

"You wouldn't live as a queen," he said, watching as her arm tightened on the arrow again, "you'd live as an empress."

Kath smiled as she pictured herself draped in the finest silks, fingers and breast adorned in priceless jewels. She released her hold on the arrow, slipping it back into the quiver before extending a hand toward the dragon as he slid the sword into an equally massive sheath on his back.

"You've got yourself a deal, Mr...?"

The dragon took her furred hand in his scaled one, dwarfing it as his clawed fingers threatened to engulf her entire hand, "Varg."

She allowed the massive dragon to shake her hand, nearly dislocating her shoulder with that minor motion, "Well then, Varg, you may call me Kath," she said, bearing her sharp canines in a smile, "Let's get this started then, why don't we?"