CW: NSFW themes and violence will be present on this page!
NAME: |
Durian |
SPECIES: |
Dragon with Sphinxoid ancestry (capable of limited shapeshifting) |
ELEMENTS: |
Electric, fire, & light |
AGE: |
Young adult |
PRONOUNS: |
Any pronouns except for they |
GENDER: |
Bigender trans man + butch woman |
SEXUALITY: |
Bisexual |
OCCUPATION: |
Gardener, cook, artist |
LIKES: |
Bodybuilding, fresh fruit, seafood, liminal spaces, weird subcultures & countercultures |
SMELLS LIKE: |
Fresh dragonfruit, mango, citrus, & leather |
PLAYLIST: |
Durian had grown up in a speck of a town situated in a greyish rocky valley. Its name appeared on no maps, if it even had a name at all. It boasted a population of just over 250. Sheltered and blissfully unaware of the outside world, other than vague snippets overheard from the conversations of travelers stopping through, or maybe the occasional maildragon. For seventeen years, Durian stayed almost exclusively within the town's bounds, staring at a screen for most of the day, mostly spending time with various moles hir age, who lived a short fly down the road. But throughout these nineteen years, not a single individual struck his interest enough to remain friends for long. It's not like Durian could relate much to moles and your average elder dragon anyhow, as ze was part Sphinxoid and had unusual abilities that other dragons simply did not possess; that is, ze was able to change hir color and shape at will, to some extent. To what extent, ze was not quite sure, as the town's elders didn't seem incredibly interested in training this ability. But what ze was sure of was that ze had settled into a pattern of spending most of hir time alone and understimulated.
But there was nowhere else to go. "Oh, don't bother flying to Okron," the town's sole guardian would muse, referencing the largest city on the continent (and perhaps in the entire Dragon Realms, Durian wasn't quite sure), "It's a two week journey with only two rest stops on the way. Only the most experienced hunters manage to catch the skittish prey in these wilds. You'll learn when you're older."
But Durian began hearing more and more about a war. Occasionally, the sound of far-off explosions or volcanic eruptions would jolt hir awake at night. Ze swore ze heard agonied screams some nights, echoing from halfway across the continent. And for just over another year, this pattern continued. Durian, weak and frail and about to reach his twentieth hatching day, still had no significant accomplishments or achievements to hir name. In fact, ze didn't feel much will to live at all, at least not until ze learned how to survive the wilds.
It was a day like any other when the Cataclysm began. The footsteps of something unfathomably massive pacing a single circle thousands of miles away knocked out the town's little power supply with ease. A significantly more powerful volcanic eruption followed. The sky went white, or was it black? Panicked screams and roars echoed, but from just outside hir living quarters' walls this time. Durian peeked hir head out, eyes greeted with a massive and rapidly expanding wall of fire spanning the entire horizon. Consuming thousands of trees per second, it made the distance between Okron and this town look miniscule.
There wasn't much time to take shelter. The moles and a few old timey earth dragons in town were the only citizens with homes either partially or entirely underground. Dragon bodies pressed tightly into the darkness, leaving barely enough room to move. Forcing hir way through the crowd in a panicked fit of self-preservation, the last thing Durian saw before taking shelter was a lightning dragon midflight, desperately flapping their wings in a futile attempt to outmatch the fire's speed. Their body erupted in a bright flash of white hot electrical sparks as they were consumed, so insignificant against the endless tsunami of flame. Durian's vision began to haze.
Significant blood was spilled by the panicked beasts tripping over each other. Durian's hide was stained by more blood from that of the other dragons packed tightly against hir than that of hir own. A few moles were nearly trampled. The fire raging above was deafening and quickly turned the home into an oven. The sole ice dragon in this shelter quickly lost his ability to maintain a livable temperature. Dragons swayed and lost their footing; it felt like the entire chunk of earth the town sat on had begun drifting off into space, and demands for an explanation were, of course, met with no answer. The earth shook and roared for what felt like days, though ze was unable to rest. Smoke choked hir. A few other dragons lit up the room with breaths of light, and Durian's scrawny and feeble shadow, suddenly cast against the nearest wall, haunted hir.
Finally, the crackling of flames died down, but the earth continued to drift for an amount of time. Durian had stopped counting. When everything finally lay still, an elder was the first to volunteer to open the hatch to the outside world.
"By our ancestors..." she gasped. Sunlight filtered down through the treetops, somehow untouched by the devastation. The grass, too, had been restored to life. The landscape, however, was visibly and significantly changed. The horizon was now dotted with floating isles, and many rocks and mountains had been shifted around. Cries of astonishment broke out among the crowd, but only one thing came to Durian's mind. Why weren't we warned? Did anyone know this was going to happen? Ze decided to leave this place behind and fly to the city of Okron, even if it took hir life.
Weak and untrained in hunting, Durian's stomach cramped with starvation throughout hir journey, sustained mostly on rare rocks and minerals from the earth, which had been upturned during the shifting of the land. Clumsily, ze flew across gaping wounds in the earth, but noted that despite being wounds, they didn't look particularly unhealthy; most of them were lined with moss and lichen, and some birds and small mountain beasts had begun to build nests in the crevices. Small floating islands had begun to develop their own unique ecosystems, and Durian became accustomed to resting upon the ones closer to the ground, usually on a warm rock beneath the sun or moonlight.
While it had been so easy to lose track of the days in front of a computer screen, the wild forced Durian to be obscenely, grotesquely aware of each passing hour. With nothing else to keep hir hands busy while in flight, Durian began chewing on sticks and plucking the spines off of pinecones one by one. Zella and Adrano limped across the sky, and the world only gave way to more endless rolling hills, jagged mountains, and coniferous woodlands, though these slowly faded into deciduous as the climate grew warmer. I must be flying south. He finally managed to catch and eat an unfamiliar breed of squirrel. For once, ze didn't bother separating out the fat and organs; ze was hungry enough that the texture wouldn't bother hir.
By the fifteenth night, Durian finally spotted a massive red archway off in the distance. The valley of great red rock arches, surrounded by clusters of brightly striated clay mesa plateaus. This was it: the biome that marked the region due north of Okron.
A hollowed outcropping in the side of one of these pleateaus, just across from a massive red rock arch, is where Durian decided to make hir new home. Situated at the very top of this plateau was a small oasis, a divot in the clay where groundwater would surface, spotted with a few fruit trees. A pathetic trickle of a waterfall careened off the cliff to the side opposite of the outcropping. Flowering plants sprawled around the wettest parts of the clay. Though it seemed as though someone had once maintained this garden, it now lay in disuse, and the plant growth around the sandy clay pools spiraled out of control. This is where Durian collapsed with exhaustion, doing nothing but mumbling to hirself incoherently and swallowing fresh fruits until hir stomach felt like bursting.
Ze fell into a feverish state and rested for multiple more days as the violent, aching soreness of untrained travel and starvation quickly caught up to hir. As ze lay limp in the warm sand, tongue lapping at the cool water as it washed the blood from hir scales, ze passed into many long and deep sleeps.
As the days passed, Durian began to maintain the garden, eating ripe fruits and allowing more to grow, trimming plants, and digging out a couple more canals in the soft clay, allowing the groundwater to flow more smoothly. And as ze worked, ze felt alive, hir body growing in both mass and muscle; it finally felt like it belonged to hir.
For the first time since arriving here, Durian actually thought about Okron. The city was very much visible from hir outcropping, situated between dozens of colorful tropically-styled walls, countless massive buildings of marble, granite, and various other stones whose names ze couldn't recall dotted the land, and even the noise of hundreds of thousands of busy dragons was ever so slightly audible from the open air of the garden. The ocean, too, loomed in the distance beyond Okron, a gently undulating line of dark blue water on the left side of the horizon.
Hir trips to Okron began incredibly slowly, stopping at a much smaller settlement outside the main city and never actually going downtown. A circle of rickety wooden shops here allowed hir to pick up additional produce, minerals, and fish. "What do you have to trade?" the merchants would ask. Durian admitted that ze had nothing, but was always given a share of food anyhow. Ze learned that most dragons were friendly, at least a little bit generous, and inquisitive. Ze also got many questions about the fact that ze would sometimes change colors and shapes, coming into town looking a bit different each week (and often times more muscular and well-fed than the week before). Ze became accustomed to explaining hir unusual ability to awed onlookers, and felt sparks of genuine confidence flicker to life in hir chest.
After a couple of months, hir eighteenth hatching day passes, and ze becomes brave enough to ask one of the usual shopkeepers about the war and the day of the fire. Hir questions come out confused and jumbled, and the poor dragon on the receiving end drops her butcher knife, unable to keep slicing the hunk of meat sitting in front of her. She doesn't know where to begin. "You don't know about Malefor?!" she sounds shocked, even a bit offended.
Durian shakes hir head, unsure whether ze should feel ashamed or not.
"You weren't kidding when you said you were from out of town," she mouths. "I- you- we- all of us," she stutters a bit and moves her claws around in the air before continuing, "We fought Malefor's armies for three grueling years, though historians first knew about him over a thousand years ago when he was just a hatchling. So yeah, he's old. He almost succeeded in destroying the realms last year... cast the world in a veil of fire. Everything started falling apart. There's another aether dragon, much younger, he- he put the world back together, or something. Haven't heard from him since, but I hear he survived. Barely. No idea what happened to Malefor, but they say he's dead. Can aether dragons really die, though?"
Durian had only heard of aether in technical terms, and hadn't even been taught there were two alive aether dragons at the time of the war. Tears of frustration welled in hir eyes.
"I suppose you didn't know, then... about the belt of fire when it happened?" Her voice dropped to a hushed whisper.
"No one told us fucking anything."
--
A few years of growth and self-love go by. Durian, now twenty one, had finally completed building hir home by hand into the cliffside. Though basic building tools and supplies were usually handed to hir free of charge, ze discovered that ze could trade a certain number of fruits from hir garden for decorative accessories, lanterns, candles, and even new seeds and live pond fish for the garden. And accessories as well; a small collection of punk gear quickly spiraled out of control into a hoard of collars and harnesses and artistically designed costume pieces, some of which made by hir own claws. Ze made a habit of working out in addition to the labor of home-building. Each night, ze thanked hir ancestors for the opportunity ze'd been given to start over.
"Hey Durian," the butcher who he'd asked all his questions to greets him, as she often did. "I know you have a thing about not going into town, but hear me out." She points one turquoise claw at the massive gate which interrupted the outer wall of downtown Okron. "They're hosting Tropicon this month. First one since before the war."
Durian tilts hir head. "Tropicon?"
"Only the largest convention in the world!" The butcher slams her knife into her table in a show of excitement. "Tens of thousands of dragons gather from across the realms. Arts, shows, food, entertainment! Met two of my mates there a few years back!" There's an air of pity in her voice, and Durian hopes she hasn't noticed that ze always comes to grocery shop alone.
Ze still feels as though an impenetrable glass wall separates hir from larger society, from even being a dragon. But hir pulse is quickening, and hir heart beats loudly in hir chest. Perhaps a gathering of dragons of every variant and culture would finally tear down hir walls. After all, confidence only does so much for you when you don't have many friends. "I'll think about it," ze says.
The following weeks pass uncomfortably quickly, and the morning of the first day of Tropicon soon slaps Durian across the face. Ze races to put on as much punk gear as would physically fit on hir body, weighing hir down quite a bit. Ze ignores a few prickles of pain from hir spiked wristbands poking at hir underbelly as ze soars down towards the gate. Ze picks up a map from a tour guide at the outer gate, barely noticing that ze no longer feels afraid to walk beneath the great white, orange, and turquoise clay wall. The gate of Okron passes overhead, and for the first time in hir life, it feels like hir eyes truly open.
"Need help getting somewhere?" the tour guide inquires, clearly noticing the look of awe as Durian's maw hangs silently open.
But ze doesn't hear him. Hir eyes are locked on the life of the city. Buildings of all different tropical colors and white sprawl on for countless miles ahead, many roofed with friendly round shingles, while many others are flat-roofed to allow for cooking fires, musical performances, and social gatherings beneath the sunlight. A massive wooden TROPICON sign hangs from the very nearest building, it and the walls of the buildings around it hand-painted with spiraling ocean waves, a beautiful sunset, and tropical flowers. Some of the tallest buildings feature pillars laced with flowering ivy and beautifully carved statues circling domed rooves.
Dozens of dragons circle ahead, and dozens more walk and talk on the streets, taking up every single inch of free space available. Moles, cheetahs, gemcutters, and dozens of other creatures Durian had never seen before also spot the crowd, mostly visible between the generally-larger bodies of the surrounding dragons. Temporary wooden signs have been erected with arrows pointed in various directions. The text on each sign is incredibly small, rewritten in dozens of different scripts, most of which Durian has never seen before in hir life. Hir own two native languages, north-subarctic aquatic and coniferous aerial, were not present at all as far as ze could see. However, two slightly different variants of northern aquatic and aerial scripts were present, which were similar enough for hir to mostly decipher. "Great hall," reads the largest sign at the very top, with an arrow pointed down the middlemost street, leading straight to the heart of the city.
The tour guide gives an understanding laugh as Durian completely ignores him and begins padding down the towards the great hall on all six limbs, trying not to stare too obviously at the most interesting passersby.
A hydra with three heads, whose body is split down the middle, each head's section of the body featuring a totally different color scheme. A dragon whose element(s) Durian cannot determine from their appearance; their horns resemble tornado sirens, and their beaked mouth opens uncannily wide as they speak to a furred blue and green drake. The drake's front arm is outstretched, and a trained falcon perches upon the back of their wrist, awaiting command. A handsome shirtless orc woman with a boar-like snout and a tusky grin, whose chest and bicep musculature rival that of hir own; she looks lovingly into the eyes of a lanky whiskered fire wyvern next to her, and they share a few kisses between whispered words. An ampithere whose scales flash rainbow in the sunlight picks up a cup with the prehensile tip of her tail and chugs a shot of some vile-looking liquid. She almost gags as her friends point and laugh. Some sort of feathered humanoid-avian individual with long, pointed ears offers a ham stick to a needle-thin dark teal nature dragon, who opens its maw to reveal multiple rows of sharp teeth and swallows the ham in one smooth movement. A group of dwarf and dragon children playfully shoot fire and ice magics back and forth before a nearby elder snaps his teeth at them, and they run off screaming in faux mortal terror.
Durian carefully paws hir way through a busy intersection as a parade of dragons dragging carts full of haybales, mounds of rock, and large hexagonal crystals wheels by, making their way too towards the great hall. As ze steps aside to let the carriages pass, the axe-like blade at the tip of hir wing prods a burly brown earth dragon in the haunch. It turns around, revealing a "beard" of rocky spikes protruding from its chin and trailing all the way down onto its underbelly, glaring with angular onyx eyes.
Durian bows hir head and gulps, "Oh, sorry," and the other dragon nods in understanding, turning back to its companions.
The road begins to widen into a circle surrounded by brightly decorated wooden stands, each one offering a different type of food. In the center of the circle is an impressively tall marble dragon statue depicting an individual ze didn't recognize, but could assume was a water dragon based on the impressive amount of frills and fins. Upon approaching a fruit stand, a fresh honeycrisp apple is forced into hir hand before ze even finishes pointing at it. Ze finishes it, core and all, in just two bites. Just ahead, the dragons leading the carriages have screeched to a halt and begin carrying artifacts into the hall.
The great hall itself finally looms ahead, certainly the largest building Durian had ever seen. Tall enough to be at least four stories, but it is not; rather, it is just one massive open floor supported by marble pillars all the way around. At least four times as long as it was wide, Durian cannot even begin to fathom where the back end is. A delicate archway welcomes visitors with a much larger version of the TROPICON sign, though this time the name was written in at least sixty different languages, each in a different style of writing, as if it had been added by a different individual. Finally, ze recognizes "tropicon" in both of hir own native languages, however small, scrawled onto one of the far corners of the sign.
The building's sheer size is tested by an absolutely massive wind dragon, whose pastel orange and green splotched scales move between the pillars with ease. They take care not to trample on the four rows of tables beneath their feet, which seem to continue on forever into the depths of the building.
As Durian ascends the ramp and pokes hir head in, hir mouth falls open once more. Each table has one to four individuals of all shapes and sizes seated behind it. A many-languaged sign tells Durian this is the art gallery, but further into the building will apparently reveal an indoor "safe" sparring arena, and behind the building a second outdoor "bloody" one. Below this lies a schedule of planned events for the week-long convention. Today at the sun's peak, a musical battle between six bands of differing genre will take place on the main stage at the center of the hall. This evening, a cook off. After that, a special guest speaker whose name was unfamiliar to Durian. Tomorrow's main event is an elemental dance, where one master of each element will fly and perform impressive magics. After that, a bizzare show featuring dragons and other magic-users with unusual abilities. The night market opens at dusk each night in the outdoor arena, adults only, followed by a nightly rave in one of the other buildings that continues long into the night. The Okron obstacle course, always open, has been updated with a new Tropicon themed track. There are more events listed per day for the rest of the week, ending in a closing ceremony and a final dance on the seventh evening.
Below this sits a schedule that details events taking place in the smaller buildings outside the great hall. Meetups for dragons who speak the same language families, plus introductory classes on those languages. Meetups to celebrate a specific element, or a specific dragon physiology (the meeting for wyrms includes a speaker who discusses the challenges of living without limbs or wings, and is offering to teach younger wyrms introductory wind magic if they wish to learn how to levitate items or fly). Meetups for orcs, dwarves, and... "elves"? Meetups for those with disabilities, for those with certain professions or nerdy interests, and those who follow a specific spiritual belief. Lots and lots of meetups happening all day, every day. Various sporting tournaments at nearby parks. A building whose walls have been designated public space for anyone to paint or draw on. A designated park for those with pets to unleash them. A playground for kids, and a much larger one for adults. The address of a few public libraries and computer centers. A list of nearby restaurants, bars, and food vendors, plus the location of public food gardens and crystal farms. A guide to reducing harm while taking recreational drugs follows, as does a guide on what to do if you're being harassed by another congoer.
There's plenty more information, but Durian's attention span switches back to the real world as ze begins making hir way through the art gallery.
At first, the wares start out small as ze passes tables hosted by jewelry makers, weaponsmiths, painters, seamsters, and miniature sculptures. Some of the vendors nod a greeting as ze walks by, while others are painting or sculpting or sewing in front of a small crowd, explaining their work process. Though some crystal sellers had been situated outside with the food vendors, the ones inside the art gallery displayed much larger and more decorative specimens. Though most were intended as sculptures, altars for prayer or meditation, or simply decor, others were still labeled for eating. These specimens were usually advertised to provide specific emotional or physical effects.
Larger painting, sculpting, and armorsmithing tables lay a bit further inside the hall, these tables at least double the size of the first ones to provide enough room to display custom-made steel helmets, gold-encrusted bracers, marble dragon heads, and beautiful landscape paintings depicting lands Durian couldn't tell if were based on real places or not.
Someone's claw pokes at the tip of hir wing, and a voice in an unfamiliar language barks a sly-sounding comment.
"What was that?" Durian turns to lock eyes with a dog-faced teal dragon with short legs and a noodle-like body.
This stranger's snout, claws, and antlers are plated in bronze scales, which pose a stark contrask to xyr forked red tongue and white furred underbelly. Xe flicks xyr ears towards a dwarf woman to xyr side, who speaks up this time, "You from Bronfell?" She speaks in an unknown heavy accent, but is mostly understandable.
Durian shakes hir head, not even knowing where that is.
"Well, Senk here said xe likes your gear," she grins, gesturing to the dog-faced dragon, who nods in approval. Senk speaks again in that same honey-like tone, and the dwarf once again translates for xem, "Where'd you get it?"
"Oh, thank you!" Durian flexes hir bicep to show off the additional spiked cuffs around hir wrists. "Made it all myself!"
Senk and the dwarf exchange an impressed glance, eyebrows raising in unison. "You part of the leatherworkers' union?"
Once again shaking hir head, "Uh... union?" Should ze know what any of this stuff is?
The dwarf suddenly puts both her shovel-like hands on the table and leans forward, her voice dropping. "Where are you from?"
"Some little nameless village," Durian retorts with embarrassment. "We uh, didn't really have unions, or teachers, so I'm self-taught... we had one guardian, and he was pretty old fashioned. He was uh, fire, so I taught myself lightning and light shit too. You know how it is." Ze adds that last bit despite knowing very well that these two do not know how it is.
She seems genuinely impressed. "I see. Welcome to the city, then! Well... stop by a computer and sign up for the union, alright?" Despite the commandeering wording, it's a genuine suggestion rather than an order.
"...Sure?"
She sits back down all the way and strokes her beard. "Lots of benefits. A whole community to share tips and tricks with. How-tos, best supply sources, guides to making fair trades. Find others with the same interest near you. Lots of folks who'd kill for gear like yours."
That does sound incredibly appealing. Ze takes a moment to examine the gear that these two are selling, laid out neatly on the table. It's a very different style, mostly brown and rustic rather than Durian's own sleek black and gold. Collars, adjustable harnesses of different shapes and sizes, fingerless gloves with knuckle spikes (including one black pair that are roughly hir size), a few hoods with and without eye holes, plus a sign advertising inquiries about custom-fitted pieces. A second sign advertising what trades the pair are seeking: wind and electricity themed arts, crystals (specifically ametrine, lapis lazuli, and rhodochrosite), and local produce.
Recalling that ze did, in fact, pack a bunch of fruit in hir tail pack, ze turns around, opens the flap, and places a few different kinds on the table. "How much fruit would you trade the black gloves for?"
Both of their eyes light up, and they exchange a few sentences in their own language, the dwarf taking an extra moment to translate their prior conversation to Senk. They appear to bicker for a moment as Senk seems briefly dissatisfied, but quickly shrugs it off, xyr voice returning to a satisfied rumble. Finally, the dwarf offers, "Four dragonfruit, four mangos, and four peaches?"
That's half of what Durian brought. Ze hesitates for a moment before imagining how long it must take to make leather gloves by hand. It's more than fair. In fact, they probably could've asked for everything ze has, and it'd still be a harsh discount. "Sounds good to me," ze says, placing the requested food on the table, plus a bonus fifth peach as a tip.
The dwarf slides the gloves across the table. "Trade em back if they dont fit, but... I guarantee you they will." She winks with a cartoonish smirk.
"Oh, don't even worry about that," Durian grins even wider before shapeshifting hir horns into a twisting antler-like shape, mirroring Senk's own horns. It takes quite a bit of energy, but Durian has grown exemplary at hiding this fact.
The two gasp in surprise. "Holy fuck."
The leather of the gloves has a softer texture than that of the rest of hir gear, and its shade of black is ever so slightly lighter, but this wouldn't matter at all to anyone who wasn't looking closely. Ze plays with her hands a bit, examining how the gloves feel and shapeshifting the edges of hir hands a bit to better fit the necessary width.
The dwarf speaks up once more, "I don't think I caught your name."
"Durian. You?"
"Folgrith Bonebuckle at your service!" She reaches out a hand and Durian shakes it, the extreme strength, width, and density of her hand wracking hir forearm with the most robust handshake ze'd ever received. "I'll be watching for your future work on the union website in the coming months."
"You as well," Durian nods.
Senk shoots hir a finger guns, and the three exchange goodbyes.
--
To be completely honest, Durian was far more interested in whatever the "bloody" arena contained than the "safe" one. On hir way out the back of the great hall, ze had passed the safe arena, but had only managed to see a single jet of fire bursting from somewhere within before moving on to the outside zone.
Ze worms hir way through a crowd surrounding an absolutely enormous valley in the ground, surrounded by a chainlink fence which many smaller dragons and other creatures were perched precariously atop. Rows of rocks in rows surround the crowd, giving those further away a fair view at the action.
Within the arena are four zones. The closest to Durian is mostly water, with small islets to hop between and sporadic massive aquatic plants and trees sprouting from the depths. To the right and left lay a temperate forest zone and a rocky mountainous zone respectively, and furthest away sits a sandy desert zone. The entire thing was easily large enough to fit at least four of that massive wind dragon Durian had seen earlier inside, with a diameter at least twice the width of the great hall.
Suddenly, a bolt of roaring lightning jolts through the air and electrocutes the water in the aquatic section of the valley. With a scream of pain and panic, a hulking bipedal cream and white piebald dragon jets out of the water, twitching as the lightning magic courses through her body. She drags herself to the mountainous section as Durian notices several open wounds on her back, shallow but still deep enough to have drawn a bit of blood. The crowd roars with excitement as the lightning-breather emerges from the forest and reveals himself, a fierce looking wyrm covered in spines with a long, V-shaped snout.
"Oh shit, she's really hurt," Durian mutters under hir breath.
A gemcutter atop the fence next to hir turns their head towards hir in confusion. "If you expected anything else, you're in the wrong place," they laugh, springing up and down with excitement on jerboa-like legs.
"I didn't think this kind of thing was, um, allowed," Durian says.
"It's consensual! Rigorous questioning and training first! Find your boundaries and shit! Match you with similar fighters! Strict regulations!" They practically have to scream to be heard stop the noise.
"Right..." Durian watches in shock as the piebald dragon sprints at the wyrm, hopping back and forth to dodge the wyrm's shots of ball lightning so powerful that his head is forced back from recoil. Finally, just a leap's distance away from him, she fakes a dodge right before zipping left and latching onto the wyrm's throat with both teeth and claws. She rolls and finally jerks downwards, and the wyrm is forced along, screaming and writhing as he slams into to the ground.
Durian sighs in relief, knowing his screams indicate his throat isn't being crushed. Latent electricity in his body jolts through both him and the woman pinning him down, but it's no use. She tolerates it, and he gives up. A black wyvern perched atop a tree in the very center of the arena shoots a fireball from their mouth, and for a moment Durian thinks they're about to take out both other contenders. But ze quickly notices they're wearing protective gear, so dark it nearly blends in with their scales and feathers. The fireball does not fall down onto the fighters but rather explodes in midair, the wyvern a referee signaling that the fight is over.
Both dragons get up, dust themselves off, and nod to each other. The piebald dragon shakes hands with the wyrm's prehensile tail as he congratulates her, the violence suddenly replaced with a sense of respect and good sportsmanship.
"You missed all the good stuff!" the gemcutter yells to Durian. "Stick around for a minute, will you?! Usually there's more than two competitors!"
Sure enough, five creatures emerge from tunnels around the bottom of the arena this time. One: a fat quadrupedal fire-water dragon whose body was split perfectly down the middle, half red and half sea green, with asymmetrical horns and spines. Two: A neon yellow wyvern with syringe-like spines and a nose that stuck out far past its face. Three: A surprisingly small dragontaur with three sets of wings, splotched with various cool colors all over. Five: a chocolate brown sphinxoid with leopard spots, layered body armor, and an electrically charged pike.
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