a collection of tales [[ chronocompass writing ]]

strength

Loosestrife 262 (jungle/thunder) battles Gloom 379 (jungle/dark)

wc: 650

Senara skidded a bit on the damp ground, her boots unable to find purchase on the mossy stones. She started to shout back a warning, but before she could manage it, her feet went out from under her and she slammed hard to the ground, skidding and sliding into the darkness below. Loosestrife--who had been working her way down the access tunnel in a much more sedate fashion--threw out a net of jungle magic and pulled hard against the hanging vines and moss. There was a muffled thump from somewhere far beneath.

Are you alright? the hybrid dragon asked tentatively. She started to scramble down the tunnel again, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She saw a familiar gleam of gold as Senara popped out of a pile of greenery.

“Course I’m alright,” the woman said, brushing a bit of moss off her corded hair. She grinned. “I have a jungle dragon helping me stick the landing.”

Loosestrife sighed and continued her descent. Though she would never say it aloud, she would much rather have been back at the firehouse providing logistical support. Out here, in the mess and the mire of the city, she was acutely aware of her short legs and stout stature.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Senara said, reaching out as soon as Loosestrife was close enough. “Jaspar said these tunnels have been empty for years. We just need a bit of copper to replate those wires, and then Hellcat-”

Before she could complete the sentence, however, there was an ominous hiss in the gloom ahead. Senara hesitated between one step and the next, no doubt relying on a bit of dark magic to correct her vision. Loosestrife was not as advanced in magic, and she felt that shortcoming too. Nevertheless, she gamely placed herself between the unseen threat and her Rider. 

“This is a dangerous place for fools to tread.” Gradually, the shadows coalesced to reveal a dragon perched on an overhead pipe, her orange eyes gleaming. What Loosestrife had initially taken for more plant growth was in fact part and parcel of the dragon--she moved and the plants moved with her. “Turn back now or you’ll regret it.”

“No thank you,” Sen said, and with the cavalier nature of a woman who knew what she wanted and would not be denied, she went to duck under the pipe and continue moving down the access tunnel. “We won’t be here long-”

The stranger hissed again, and the vines around her writhed and shot out to entangle the trespassers. Loosestrife countered the bit of jungle magic with a trick of her own: the moss overhead bloomed so riotously that the stone cracked and splintered down around them all. Senara laughed at the other dragon’s mewl of dismay as her pipe gave way, the metal yielding under the onslaught.

“Gloom!” called another voice in the shadows, rapidly approaching from the depths of the tunnels.

“Quirrel!” she called back, clambering to her feet and shaking off the dust. 

Loosestrife shot out another pulse of jungle magic, vines lurching up to entangle Gloom and also bar the approach of Quirrel. For a split second everything was chaos, and then a voice from the other side of the vine wall called out: “There’s no need to be so dramatic. Perhaps we can help one another out?”

Gloom stopped in the middle of wrapping Loosestrife in a cocoon of plants. Loosestrife waited a moment and then called back her own magic, leaving the plants to retreat into the seeping stones of the tunnel. The wall of plants retreated too, and Senara got a good look at the dragon waiting on the other side: it had a skull for a crest and a mischievous, cunning air. 

Sen flipped a mental coin and took a gamble. She introduced herself and Loosestrife, then grinned. “What kind of partnership did you have in mind?”

flexibility

Loosestrife 262 (jungle/thunder) follows Quirrel 158 (storm/earth)

wc: 616

“Rumor has it,” Quirrel said, sinking down onto his haunches and folding them tight against his body. “Rumor has it these tunnels lead to a secret research laboratory.” Gloom slunk over to stand beside her companion, tendrils of plants curling in her wake. There was some brief unspoken communication between them, and then Gloom was suddenly gone, vanished into the shadows. “She’ll keep watch,” Quirrel said. “You two come with me.”

“Secret laboratory,” Sen said, wiggling her fingers and attempting a spooky voice. She tickled Loosestrife’s cactus and earned only a disgusted harrumph in reply. “What kind of secret?”

“Do you know what secret means?” Quirrel asked over his shoulder, perhaps already reconsidering his choice in accomplices. He led them to a part of the tunnel blocked by massive, moss-covered stones. He raised one clawed paw and the stones trembled and rattled. After a brief moment, they rearranged themselves to form a small gateway of ancient rock. Quirrel wiggled through and vanished.

Senara and Loosestrife stared at one another for a long moment. Eventually Sen shrugged and wormed her way after their strange guide. Loosestrife followed after. Here her jungle magic would be useless; all she could feel for miles in every direction was dirt and rock. There was not even the comfort of wires or metal. She pressed close to Senara for comfort. Her Rider had fumbled for a few moments before producing a bright flashlight, which she had attached to her metal arm and--with a whir of gears and a clever bit of tinkering--turned into a makeshift lantern, a strange murky light creating strange shapes on the walls.

“How long have you been exploring here?” Senara asked.

Quirrel flicked a tail. “Long enough to know what tools I need,” he said, ducking into another tunnel.

Senara and Loosestrife exchanged another look before shrugging and following. They found themselves at the foot of a massive steel door carved with strange, archaic writing. Senara gave an appreciative hum and ran her fingers over the markings while Loosestrife considered the mechanism.

“Can’t go around it or under or over it,” Quirrel said, sitting down to watch them. “Get me in there and I’ll split the loot with you.”

Senara said “Deal” before Loosestrife had even considered the offer. It took the better part of an hour, but with a bit of thunder magic and dextrous Rider hands, the door swung open and the smell of wet stone rose and washed over the small group. Quirrel leapt through into the darkness without so much as a backwards glance.  Senara was almost as quick, leaving poor Loosestrife to (yet again) bring up the rear.

 

They entered a huge room filled with towering stone statues. Even when Senara swung the lantern wide, she could not see the top of them. “Huh,” she said, kicking at a bit of rock on the cave floor. “Bit weird, huh Loosestrife?”

Quirrel was already zipping around the hive like structure, investigating dark rooms as quickly as he could. Eventually he made a noise of disgust and sneezed, scattering cave dust everywhere. “Looks like they cleaned this place out before abandoning it, just like the others.”

Before Senara could question him, Quirrel made for the exit. “All yours,” he said in lieu of a farewell. Then there was nothing but the sound of rocks rumbling and tumbling to accommodate his retreat, eventually fading into silence. 

Loosestrife made a few rumblings of her own. “He better not entomb us here.”

Senara patted the small hybrid dragon on the head before beginning an investigation of her own. “One problem at a time,” she said, ducking into a room. “I bet there’s still some good stuff in here-”

providence

Loosestrife 262 explores a mysterious cave

wc: 677

Loosestrife hopped among the piles of mossy stones, her gaze calculating. She understood the logic for this misadventure: they needed copper, as the recent weather had corroded some of Hellcat’s critical wiring and left the thunder hybrid sore and irritable. Loosestrife could even appreciate that she was particularly well suited to this task: with a bit of careful inspection, she understood the layout of the old tunnel and could make a reasonable guess where the old copper wiring might be most easily located.

What she could not understand was why Senara didn’t use make her more useful.

If she were a bit taller, she could tear down some of the insulated paneling and expose whatever loot lay beneath. If she were given stronger wings, she could soar up to the ceiling and complete an even quicker analysis of the environs. If she had a fancy artificial crest, perhaps she could see through the walls entirely, and then they could be home instead of being stuck in the subterranean vaults of the city, the air dank and unpleasant.

“I am just as much a thunder dragon,” Loosestrife blurted out, her own frustration with the day suddenly boiling over. The massive cactus on her back quivered and sighed and seemed to grow even pricklier under a flare of jungle magic. The moss around her feet turned a vibrant shade of green and grew small white flowers.

Senara looked up from where she was hip deep in a pit of electronic detritus. She was holding a batch of wiring in one hand and a large metal panel in the other. “What?”

Loosestrife’s cactus darkened, a sign of her embarrassment. The fungi beneath her was spreading rapidly, reaching tendrils towards Senara as though aching to be closer even as Loosestrife flared out her chest and stood her ground. “I am just as much a thunder dragon as Hellcat,” she said. “You could build anything. You could turn that metal sheet into a drone, or that wiring into a sensor system. Why won’t you?” The unspoken sentiment, of course, was why won’t you do it for me?

 Senara glanced at the wiring. “You know we came down here to get wires for Hellcat-”

“That’s not copper. Its nickel-plated,” Loosestrife muttered. The tines on her cactus were now long enough to be daggers. There was a dejected air the muttering, a sense that even though she meant what she said, she regretted it in equal measure. “I don’t begrudge Hellcat the wire. I do not want her to be in pain-”

Senara picked a bit at the wire in her hand. “Should’ve asked you first,” she said, tossing it back down. “That’s the reason you’re here, you know.”

Loosestrife hopped a few steps closer. She let a bit of vine grow from between two stones; the tendril curled around a large piece of metal and moved it to reveal a snarl of copper wire beneath.

“You’re here,” Senara said, moving through the silence and beginning to pluck up bits of what they needed, “Because you can do things that Hellcat can’t. Because I rely on you in ways I don’t rely on her.” When she had grabbed up several strands and secured them, she clambered out of the scrap pile to crouch next to Loosestrife. “Different doesn’t mean better or worse.”

“But I could be better,” Loosestrife croaked. “That’s the thing-”

“For all the things you’ve done today,” Senara said, standing and stretching so that her fingers almost brushed the ceiling of the man-made cave. “For all the bravery you’ve shown, for all the pluck...you want to be better?”

Loosestrife hesitated, blinking one eye after the other as she thought that over. “Next you’ll tell me I’m perfect just the way I am,” she muttered. “You sound like a radio special.”

“Why say it?” Senara said with a grin. “So long as we both know it's true.”

Loosestrife did not nod, but she did not argue either. She simply followed Senara--as always--and they ascended out of the tunnels and back towards home.