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written by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdraconicon\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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", "writing": "[b][u][center]Minerva’s Lessons\nChapter 8: Following the Trail\nFor bigchris369\nBy Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]\n\n\n\n\n\nThey were encamped outside the city for three days in total before the army was on the move. Minerva had been in the middle of meditation, clearing her mind and studying herself to keep the lessons from the brothel fresh when Jak grabbed her by the shoulder. Considering that such reflection also meant a certain amount of masturbation, the gryphon yelped at the sudden pull. \n“You almost made me scratch myself down there…”\n“We have to move.”\n“Just let me get my robe.”\n“Dress while we’re running.”\nThe blue-scaled lizard was already running down the back of the hill, and the little gryphon was forced to keep up with him while desperately trying to pull her robe on. It was hard to do, too, considering that it was flapping behind her. Getting her wings in the wing holes was hard, too, which made it take nearly a minute for her to be properly covered as she ran along behind the near-naked reptile. \n[i]Stupid loincloth and staying covered so easily,[/i] she thought as she hit the dirt at the base of the hill, stumbling forward before she found her balance again. She waved behind her, calling her staff to her hand, and she started using it to vault ahead, throwing herself forward and through the air as she had practiced over the last few days. In a few seconds, she had caught up to the speedy lizard, managing to run alongside him. \n“Hmmmph.”\nHe gave her a nod of approval, and she nodded back. \nThey managed to get a lead of two miles from the city gates before the army started to catch up with them. Jak had them stay at the edge of the forest, close enough to see the army but harder to see themselves, and that, unfortunately, meant that their forward momentum started to slow to a crawl. The undergrowth, the many roots, and more kept them from progressing as fast as they had while they were moving through the open plains nearer to the city. \nUnfortunately, they had no other option. \nMinerva hadn’t seen much from the top of the hill, but now that she saw the crawling pace of the great army, she was shocked that they had managed to get out from the city before they could be found. The armored figures moved at a quick clip, not quite as fast as they had in the open, but fast enough that she struggled to keep up with them while moving through the undergrowth. The forced march that they operated at was faster than her little legs could easily follow, even with the help of magic. \nJak looked back at her more than once, asking with a cocked eyebrow or sometimes less if she needed to stop, or for him to run ahead. Not once did she give him the signal that she did. \nShe was going to keep up, and she was not going to be dead weight. If she ever got weak enough for him to leave behind, she had no illusions about loyalty or affection keeping him close. He had his mission, and he would not deviate from it. \nShe had to stay useful, and she had to stay competent. \nSo, she pushed herself harder, using her magic to push past the vines and the roots, to leap over those that were in her way, to keep up with the more experienced warrior with everything that she had. \nAnd outside the forest, the army in its hundreds, perhaps in its thousands, marched on. \n#\nThey finally were able to stop an hour before sundown. Minerva almost crashed to the ground, panting for breath, her body shaking from head to toe as she sucked air with more desperation than a fish out of water. \n“Ah…ah…ah…”\n“You ran hard.”\n“Ah…ah…”\n“Water?”\nShe nodded, and he knelt down at her side, gently tipping a waterskin against her beak. She swallowed desperately, coughed, and then took a bit more before he took it from her. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to take the edge off of the thirst that had been building for the entire day. \nAs she rolled onto her side, Jak sat next to her. They were about twenty feet into the woods, still using it as cover as the army started putting together the camp for the night. She forced herself to roll a bit further, getting onto her stomach so that she could look at it properly. \n“Why…why are they moving so fast?” she asked. \n“Because their leader’s afraid.”\n“Of what?”\n“Of me.”\nShe looked up at her companion, cocking her head to the side. Jak looked down at her, shrugged, and looked back at the camp. \nIt was big, almost as big as a town in and of itself, and there were campfires flowering up all over the place. Tents were going up one by one, and she could hear the giggles from here of whores that followed the soldiers around. She looked up at Jak again. \n“What did you do?”\n“I tried to kill the General, once.”\n“He was one of the ones that were…”\n“Yes, the ones involved in [i]my[/i] past.”\n“…Why didn’t you kill him then?”\n“He was fresh, I wasn’t. And he had reinforcements.”\n“Oh.”\n“Yes. Sometimes, individual strength isn’t enough. Your quarry doesn’t have to be stronger than you. They just have to outlast you.”\nMinerva rubbed the back of her head as she looked down at the earth again. She knew that there were still those that were involved in the assault on her village that she’d need to get rid of, and she knew that there were evil people in the world out there besides them. The little gryphon was growing stronger by the day, and she knew that her magic was more powerful than it had ever been. \nYet, at the same time…\nShe looked at her hands. If she was confronted by more than one person…what would she do? She hadn’t thought about that. Only the ones that were bad, the ones, the individuals, had been in her fantasies of revenge. What about the others?\nWhat if they were all together?\nWhat then?\n“Hate has a way of making your head blurry and confused,” Jak said, almost as if reading her mind. \nShe shook her head, using her staff to push herself up to a sitting position. The army still hadn’t noticed them, despite a few scouts that had come to the edge of the forest to pick firewood for the rest of the camp. The sun was slowly falling, still, and she could tell that it would be fully down before much longer. \n“Do you think you’ll –”\n“Garvis is smart,” Jak said, shaking his head. “He knows I’m in the area, and he’ll be pushing to move faster tomorrow than he did today. Not much faster, but a bit.”\n“…Do we get up early to get ahead of him? Set up an ambush?”\n“No. I’m not chancing fighting an entire army.”\n“Even when you’re that good?” she asked, smiling slightly. \n“Nobody’s good enough to fight everyone. Resistance to magic doesn’t mean resistance to blades.”\nOn some level she’d known that, but at the same time, she could remember the fight where he had killed off her former teacher and the other bandits that had been all around her. She remembered how he had danced between the spells and the attacks that came his way, and how he had been something that was almost supernatural in how deadly he was. He might put himself down, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he could fight that army, if he had the right motivation to do it. \nIt made her wonder if this general was less of a target than Jak had implied, but then she remembered how he had growled when the fox had come into view. She remembered his rage, and knew that he had all the motivation in the world to destroy that man. \n[i]So…why not?[/i]\nShe ran her fingers along her staff as she finally reached a point where she didn’t have to pant for air anymore, sitting up and resting on the stick. \n“So…what do we do?”\n“What I said before. We follow him, and we see if we get an opening.”\n“And if we don’t?”\n“Then we follow him until we do.”\n“Even…even into the capital?” she asked. \n“Even there.”\nMinerva gulped. She had never been at all close to the center of the kingdom before, and the very idea that she might see it soon was something that might have, once, filled her with curiosity and happiness. As it stood, she wondered just what she might find, and what would be waiting there to hurt her. \nAfter all, if the general of this army was responsible for killing Jak’s past, then what else might the people in authority in the capital be responsible for? If they were willing to hire a killer like that to lead their armies, a position that should have required at least some mercy rather than more aggression, then what else would they be willing to allow? What else would happen there that wouldn’t happen in the other parts of the kingdom?\nWhat hell were they walking into?\n“You should sleep,” Jak said. “We’ll be leaving shortly before they do, to try and get a lead on them.”\n“…”\n“Sleep.”\nThe gryphon didn’t like the idea, but she did as she was told. She laid down, closed her eyes, and pulled her robe over her like a blanket. As she squirmed her naked body against the ground, Jak patted her head ever so gently, and she slipped into sleep. \n#\nTheir days were a frenzied mix of running, dashing, jumping, leaping, and desperately trying to keep ahead of the army. Even Jak struggled in the undergrowth on some days, and as they moved further and further from the city, they started to find rougher ground. The road criss-crossed over dangerous parts of the country, and there were hours where the two of them were forced to fight off dangerous beasts, costing them valuable time and making them run after the army, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t make a mistake and run right into the armed force and find a fight that they could not win. \nThree days, four, five, six passed that way, and as the seventh climbed towards noon, they finally reached their destination. \nMinerva almost vomited from exhaustion as she and Jak slumped against the high cliffs that formed the foothills of the mountains, watching the army cross the plains between the base of the cliffs and the great city in the distance. Three walls created three rings of houses in the city, with a great spire in the middle that was probably where the king lived. She sucked air, almost puked, and rolled onto her side. \n“I can’t…I need…I need a break…” she panted. \n“…Take it,” he said, sounding scarcely better than she did. “There’s no catching him before he reaches the city.”\nThe way he said it, it was clear that he was angry. He had been hoping against hope, she imagined, considering that they were between cities and there would not need to be as harried an escape to get away from pursuers. Even so…\nShe groaned as her body ached from head to toe. They had barely escaped a pack of dire wolves, each of them three times as large as her, and all of them very angry. Jak had killed most of them, but her fires had taken no less than four. \nIt had cost them time, though, time that they might have used. Time that now had to be spent in recovery. \nThe capital – which Jak had called Molith – seemed to welcome the returning army. The massive front gates of the city were thrown open, stone doors that would have dwarfed even a giant. She imagined that no less than twenty Jaks could have stood on each other’s shoulders to reach the top, and even that would have been barely enough. Even with that size, it took nearly a quarter hour for the entirety of the army to pass through. \nShe shook her head as the gates closed behind the passing soldiers, leaving them on the outside. The gryphon looked at Jak. \n“How do we get in?”\n“That’s…something I’m still figuring out.”\n“You don’t have a plan?”\n“I was hoping…”\nGroaning, she rolled onto her back and promptly regretted it. The gryphon whimpered, rolled over again, and dragged herself to the side to the cliff. A great deal of stomach emptying was required. \nWhen everything was empty, they rested. The sun traveled overhead, and was nearly to the horizon when she finally spoke again. \n“Any plans?”\n“Not yet,” he said. \n“Any chance that we can climb the wall?”\n“Too tall.”\n“Digging?”\n“Too thick.”\n“Any contacts?”\n“None that have the authority to open the gate, and none that I’d risk for something like that.”\n“…”\n“I’m still thinking,” Jak said, “but it’s not going to be a simple thing.”\n“I think it could be.”\nThe lizard-man looked up from the ground, fixing her with a cocked eye-ridge. Minerva rubbed her arm. \n“I could…talk…to the guards.”\n“…Talk?”\n“Are you going to make me say it?”\n“You want to –”\n“Whoever said anything about wanting to? But would it work?”\n“Well…maybe.”\nJak looked away from her this time, and she realized that he actually looked uncomfortable about the idea. That was not what she had expected in the slightest. If anything, she had anticipated him encouraging it, just like he had pushed her to listen to Florence before she was carted off to the brothel. The fact that he looked uncomfortable was…new. \nShe sat up a little straighter, her robe coming down one arm. His eyes flicked back to her almost instantly as some of her flesh and fur was revealed, so it wasn’t that he didn’t think that he should be fucking her. No, he just…\nShe smiled. \n“Are you jealous?” she asked. \nAs soon as she asked, there was a deep growl that cut the air, spreading through the stones around her and vibrating everything. She had to grab her staff for stability, and to even think about saying anything else. Jak grabbed himself by the head, slapping his cheek shortly after, and the growling stopped. \nMinerva’s eyes were wide. \n“What…what was that?”\n“…What was what?”\nSMACK!\n“Ow!” Jak yelped, rubbing his head in shock. “You just hit me!”\n“And you just lied to me.”\n“…I didn’t lie.”\n“You dodged the question. You don’t get to do that. Now tell me what the hell that was or I’ll bop you with my staff again!”\nHe stared at her like she was crazy, and perhaps, in some ways, she was. She was desperate for answers, for things to make sense again, and she wanted more than anything to know what the hell was going on around it. \nAnd if Jak knew what the hell that growling was, she deserved to know. That had not been natural. \nHe looked at her with annoyance, at first, then with resignation. He sighed, looking down at the ground. \n“I suppose you deserve that.”\n“Yes, I do.”\n“Do you remember what Florence said about dragons and dragon’s blood?”\n“She said that you had them both.”\n“Well, it’s active right now. Very active.”\n“…That growling, then…”\n“That was the dragon in me.”\nThat explained a lot. She hadn’t had the chance to ever see a dragon – for that matter, she wasn’t sure who had – but the books that she had been able to find and that the badger in the past had given to her had stated that they were all quite…possessive. They did not like anything being outside their grasp, and sharing was a foreign concept to them. \nAt the same time, they were notorious for keeping track of what mattered to them, and not allowing it to pass out of their sight. More than that – \nShe blinked, looking down at his groin, and then up at him. \n“Jak…”\n“What?”\n“Does…does the ‘dragon’s mark’ mean anything to you?”\nThe lizard-man whipped his head up so fast that she swore that it cracked in the process. He lunged for her, gripping her by the shoulders. \n“What do you know about that?”\n“I know that…well, it came from a book.”\n“What do you know?!”\n“It’s a thing that dragons do,” she said, speaking faster, her beak occasionally clicking in fright. “When they want a person, when they don’t want to let go, they claim them. When they want to put someone under them, they mark them, and the mark makes the person unable to disobey the dragon. They’ll never be able to rebel, never be able to rise up, never be a threat to the dragon.”\n“Ever?”\n“Ever.”\n“Can the dragon remove it?” he asked. \n“I – I think so.”\n“How?”\n“I don’t know. It wasn’t a spellbook. It was just a history.”\nJak groaned, pulling away from her and rubbing his head. She was still barely able to catch her breath from the sudden shift in her companion, and she only belatedly realized that her robes had fallen open, leaving her completely exposed. Yet, because it was him, she barely minded. \nThings had changed more than she thought if she was that casual about it, even with him. \nReaching up and pulling her robe shut, she could hear him muttering to himself. She couldn’t understand the words, but it sounded like an argument. If he was dealing with temptations from the dragon’s blood, and he was getting more and more powerful with it, then that meant that things were going to get out of hand very, very quickly. \nShe hadn’t read much about the magic of dragons, but she knew that they were powerful creatures. More than that, she knew that Jak had some low-level magics, things that Florence had educated him in. The dragon’s blood would make that more powerful, and it came with its own strength, like the marking stuff that she had asked him about. And which he had not answered out loud, but she could guess what had been happening. \n[i]Florence wanted him to keep doing things, and that means that he probably marked at least a few people in town. And if they were marked, they’d see him as a god, as a thing above mortals. And it wouldn’t be subtle, either…[/i]\nIn the book, dragons had ruled over vast swathes of land and people, and their mark was meant as a way of differentiating those that lived on their territory, and those that were merely visitors. Dragons were, in many ways, gods, and they had taken that worship as their due. To anyone that wasn’t marked, however…\nShe imagined that it had looked like some black art, some horrible magic that had gotten the army called in, which was how this general had gotten involved. And that was why Jak was so desperate to find some way to deal with this, because with the general chasing him and people getting marked…\n“How did you mark them, Jak?” she asked. \n“…Sex.”\n“…Sex?”\n“Sex. Eight women, most of them with daughters.”\n“…”\n“Florence pushed it. She said that there was a chance that they might be more useful if they couldn’t say no in the future. I…didn’t think it through.”\n“…Is that why you pushed me away on the hill?”\n“Yes.”\nSo, he didn’t want her to be like them. He didn’t want a zombie, and he didn’t want a mere servant, either. \nWell, that was something. Not the thing that she really wanted, not the same as someone that didn’t want to do it at all, but at least there was something of a conscience in there. \nThe dragons had long-since disappeared, but the dragon’s blood came up from time to time. Usually in a warlord, sometimes in a warlock, sometimes in a sorcerer, but it kept popping back up in the world. Those people often showed their ambition, flinging their power around, trying to take over the world, or at least parts of it, in the same way that their ancestors had ruled it. Those people with the dragon’s blood often took many as slaves, as toys, as minions and worshipers. Considering their power, they were rightly feared. \nYet, Jak had done nothing of the sort. He had merely tried to take back what used to be his, and…\nAnd he did it without having to kill all the time. \nMinerva took a deep breath, sitting up again, then using her staff to drag herself to her feet. She started taking off her robe, and that got Jak’s attention again. \n“What are you doing?”\n“Getting us into the city.”\n“You – no.”\n“Yes.”\n“I said, no.”\nShe paused, her robe in hand and her body naked. She held the robe out over the rock that had been her seat, dropped it, and then leaned against her staff. Jak continued to glare at her throughout her little display of rebellion. \n“Can you get us in there?”\n“…”\n“No? Then I have to.”\n“…You shouldn’t have to.”\n“I shouldn’t have to? Or you don’t want your property doing it?”\nHe growled again, and once more, the power rippled through the rocks beneath her. To his credit, Jak stopped it sooner than before, and without slapping himself this time, either. She still shook her head. \n“Either you fight them or bribe them, or I do my own little bribe. And if I do this, then there’s no way that they’ll talk about it.”\n“Why’s that? You think they’ll be ashamed?”\n“Yes.” She leaned against her staff, shaking her head. “Fucking a kid…no matter how much you like it, it’s still not what most people do. They’ll want it, they’ll crave it, they’ll do it, but talk about it? They’ll get thrown in jail, too.”\n“…”\n“It’s the best way, Jak. You can fuck me after to put your claim back, but it’s the best way to get into the city.”\n“…I hate it when you’re right.”\n#\nMore than ever, Minerva was grateful for the time that she had spent in the brothel. Not necessarily for the pleasure of the experience, but for the way that it had stripped her of so much of her shame. She had none of that, for example, as she walked up the road towards the gate, nor any feeling of fear as the guards at the gate looked down at her. Most of them were at ground level, though there was one in a low look-out tower near the base of the gate. \nUp close, the gate itself was far more intimidating than the people around it, and she could tell that it had been built for that purpose. There was every reason for an army to avoid it, from the murder holes on either side that had been built into the wall to the many trap panels that were build into the doors of the gate itself. Coming close without permission was asking to be massacred. \nThe various species of guards, ranging from simple breeds of feline and canine to a few oversized, enhanced kobolds, and even sporting a rare orca, looked at her as she approached. Most of them showed at least some interest, though the eight men were hardly able to say anything in public. She didn’t know if anyone at the top of the gate could see her clearly, but she imagined that the guards themselves had to pretend not to be interested for their own sakes, for their own safety. \nShe stopped five feet away, with Jak ten feet behind her. She bowed. \n“Guards, my master offers me to pay the toll to get into the city.”\nThe orca seemed to be the gate captain, and he was the first to recover from the offer of her naked body. He looked past her at the blue-scaled Jak, and then back at her. It was clear that her body was more worthy of attention than her companion. \n“You, uh…you doing this willingly, girl?” he asked. \n“I’m doing it to pay to get into the city.”\n“Yeah, but…”\nMinerva slowly, subtly spread her legs, letting her thighs and her fur stop hiding her pussy. The orca shut up, his eyes dropping and gluing themselves to that slit. \nAs she surreptitiously rubbed just above it, making herself just a little wetter for the watching guards, she looked the orca in the eye again. The captain blushed, obviously more than slightly surprised and embarrassed at the ‘offer’ that he was getting, and just as obviously trying to stick to the job. She wasn’t going to let him. \n“We don’t have gold. But we do have me. If you’ll let us in, I’ll do anything that you like. With any one of you.”\nThat was the big offer that she had to make, and it was the one that would keep the rest of the group from being excluded. They would all be on the hook, then, and any of them admitting that she and Jak passed through would be exposing all the others. \nIt was simple manipulation, but it was effective. \n“Perhaps we should go to the guardhouse, so you can…think it over?” she asked, the naked little gryphon gesturing towards the door in the wall, and in the process showing off her hips and more to them. \nThey bought it, hook, line, and sinker. \n#\nJak and Minerva stepped through one of the smaller entrances rather than the main gate after the main event. The lizard-man was still pissed at the idea of someone having put hands on the gryphon girl, but he was managing. \nMostly. \nThe dragon’s blood burned hot through his veins, and there were places where he was turning purple and nearly pink from the sheer fury that was running through him. The dragon didn’t like that its property had been used without its permission, but Jak was still in control. He made it bend, made it bow, and made it stop shouting in the back of his head. It was going to listen, and it was going to do what it was told. \nAs Minerva tightened her robe, he caught a scant glimpse of the seed oozing out from between her legs, running down from both holes. The scent was there, and he wanted to obliterate it with his own. He clenched his hands into tight fists, and he took a few deep breaths of the city air to clear his nostrils. \nConsidering how foul Molith was, it wasn’t that hard. \n“So, what now?” the gryphon asked. \n“An inn.”\n“And then?”\n“Then, we find where Garvis is staying. As soon as we know that, we can find out what he has for protection.”\n“…As long as he’s not in the spire.”\nHe looked towards the center of the city. The spire loomed so far over the rest of the capital that it was impossible to avoid it, and there was not a palace or a manor in the capital that could hide it. The monolith of a building had been there since the start of time, as far as everyone was concerned, and it was from there that the royal family ruled. \nA royal family that had given Garvis a position, and given him protection. Why? He didn’t know, nor did he care. But if the fox prevailed upon them for protection, then things were going to get a great deal more difficult.\n“Let’s find the inn, and then work from there.”\n\n\n\n\n[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "
Minerva’s Lessons
Chapter 8: Following the Trail
For bigchris369
By Draconicon






They were encamped outside the city for three days in total before the army was on the move. Minerva had been in the middle of meditation, clearing her mind and studying herself to keep the lessons from the brothel fresh when Jak grabbed her by the shoulder. Considering that such reflection also meant a certain amount of masturbation, the gryphon yelped at the sudden pull.
“You almost made me scratch myself down there…”
“We have to move.”
“Just let me get my robe.”
“Dress while we’re running.”
The blue-scaled lizard was already running down the back of the hill, and the little gryphon was forced to keep up with him while desperately trying to pull her robe on. It was hard to do, too, considering that it was flapping behind her. Getting her wings in the wing holes was hard, too, which made it take nearly a minute for her to be properly covered as she ran along behind the near-naked reptile.
Stupid loincloth and staying covered so easily, she thought as she hit the dirt at the base of the hill, stumbling forward before she found her balance again. She waved behind her, calling her staff to her hand, and she started using it to vault ahead, throwing herself forward and through the air as she had practiced over the last few days. In a few seconds, she had caught up to the speedy lizard, managing to run alongside him.
“Hmmmph.”
He gave her a nod of approval, and she nodded back.
They managed to get a lead of two miles from the city gates before the army started to catch up with them. Jak had them stay at the edge of the forest, close enough to see the army but harder to see themselves, and that, unfortunately, meant that their forward momentum started to slow to a crawl. The undergrowth, the many roots, and more kept them from progressing as fast as they had while they were moving through the open plains nearer to the city.
Unfortunately, they had no other option.
Minerva hadn’t seen much from the top of the hill, but now that she saw the crawling pace of the great army, she was shocked that they had managed to get out from the city before they could be found. The armored figures moved at a quick clip, not quite as fast as they had in the open, but fast enough that she struggled to keep up with them while moving through the undergrowth. The forced march that they operated at was faster than her little legs could easily follow, even with the help of magic.
Jak looked back at her more than once, asking with a cocked eyebrow or sometimes less if she needed to stop, or for him to run ahead. Not once did she give him the signal that she did.
She was going to keep up, and she was not going to be dead weight. If she ever got weak enough for him to leave behind, she had no illusions about loyalty or affection keeping him close. He had his mission, and he would not deviate from it.
She had to stay useful, and she had to stay competent.
So, she pushed herself harder, using her magic to push past the vines and the roots, to leap over those that were in her way, to keep up with the more experienced warrior with everything that she had.
And outside the forest, the army in its hundreds, perhaps in its thousands, marched on.
#
They finally were able to stop an hour before sundown. Minerva almost crashed to the ground, panting for breath, her body shaking from head to toe as she sucked air with more desperation than a fish out of water.
“Ah…ah…ah…”
“You ran hard.”
“Ah…ah…”
“Water?”
She nodded, and he knelt down at her side, gently tipping a waterskin against her beak. She swallowed desperately, coughed, and then took a bit more before he took it from her. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to take the edge off of the thirst that had been building for the entire day.
As she rolled onto her side, Jak sat next to her. They were about twenty feet into the woods, still using it as cover as the army started putting together the camp for the night. She forced herself to roll a bit further, getting onto her stomach so that she could look at it properly.
“Why…why are they moving so fast?” she asked.
“Because their leader’s afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of me.”
She looked up at her companion, cocking her head to the side. Jak looked down at her, shrugged, and looked back at the camp.
It was big, almost as big as a town in and of itself, and there were campfires flowering up all over the place. Tents were going up one by one, and she could hear the giggles from here of whores that followed the soldiers around. She looked up at Jak again.
“What did you do?”
“I tried to kill the General, once.”
“He was one of the ones that were…”
“Yes, the ones involved in my past.”
“…Why didn’t you kill him then?”
“He was fresh, I wasn’t. And he had reinforcements.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Sometimes, individual strength isn’t enough. Your quarry doesn’t have to be stronger than you. They just have to outlast you.”
Minerva rubbed the back of her head as she looked down at the earth again. She knew that there were still those that were involved in the assault on her village that she’d need to get rid of, and she knew that there were evil people in the world out there besides them. The little gryphon was growing stronger by the day, and she knew that her magic was more powerful than it had ever been.
Yet, at the same time…
She looked at her hands. If she was confronted by more than one person…what would she do? She hadn’t thought about that. Only the ones that were bad, the ones, the individuals, had been in her fantasies of revenge. What about the others?
What if they were all together?
What then?
“Hate has a way of making your head blurry and confused,” Jak said, almost as if reading her mind.
She shook her head, using her staff to push herself up to a sitting position. The army still hadn’t noticed them, despite a few scouts that had come to the edge of the forest to pick firewood for the rest of the camp. The sun was slowly falling, still, and she could tell that it would be fully down before much longer.
“Do you think you’ll –”
“Garvis is smart,” Jak said, shaking his head. “He knows I’m in the area, and he’ll be pushing to move faster tomorrow than he did today. Not much faster, but a bit.”
“…Do we get up early to get ahead of him? Set up an ambush?”
“No. I’m not chancing fighting an entire army.”
“Even when you’re that good?” she asked, smiling slightly.
“Nobody’s good enough to fight everyone. Resistance to magic doesn’t mean resistance to blades.”
On some level she’d known that, but at the same time, she could remember the fight where he had killed off her former teacher and the other bandits that had been all around her. She remembered how he had danced between the spells and the attacks that came his way, and how he had been something that was almost supernatural in how deadly he was. He might put himself down, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he could fight that army, if he had the right motivation to do it.
It made her wonder if this general was less of a target than Jak had implied, but then she remembered how he had growled when the fox had come into view. She remembered his rage, and knew that he had all the motivation in the world to destroy that man.
So…why not?
She ran her fingers along her staff as she finally reached a point where she didn’t have to pant for air anymore, sitting up and resting on the stick.
“So…what do we do?”
“What I said before. We follow him, and we see if we get an opening.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we follow him until we do.”
“Even…even into the capital?” she asked.
“Even there.”
Minerva gulped. She had never been at all close to the center of the kingdom before, and the very idea that she might see it soon was something that might have, once, filled her with curiosity and happiness. As it stood, she wondered just what she might find, and what would be waiting there to hurt her.
After all, if the general of this army was responsible for killing Jak’s past, then what else might the people in authority in the capital be responsible for? If they were willing to hire a killer like that to lead their armies, a position that should have required at least some mercy rather than more aggression, then what else would they be willing to allow? What else would happen there that wouldn’t happen in the other parts of the kingdom?
What hell were they walking into?
“You should sleep,” Jak said. “We’ll be leaving shortly before they do, to try and get a lead on them.”
“…”
“Sleep.”
The gryphon didn’t like the idea, but she did as she was told. She laid down, closed her eyes, and pulled her robe over her like a blanket. As she squirmed her naked body against the ground, Jak patted her head ever so gently, and she slipped into sleep.
#
Their days were a frenzied mix of running, dashing, jumping, leaping, and desperately trying to keep ahead of the army. Even Jak struggled in the undergrowth on some days, and as they moved further and further from the city, they started to find rougher ground. The road criss-crossed over dangerous parts of the country, and there were hours where the two of them were forced to fight off dangerous beasts, costing them valuable time and making them run after the army, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t make a mistake and run right into the armed force and find a fight that they could not win.
Three days, four, five, six passed that way, and as the seventh climbed towards noon, they finally reached their destination.
Minerva almost vomited from exhaustion as she and Jak slumped against the high cliffs that formed the foothills of the mountains, watching the army cross the plains between the base of the cliffs and the great city in the distance. Three walls created three rings of houses in the city, with a great spire in the middle that was probably where the king lived. She sucked air, almost puked, and rolled onto her side.
“I can’t…I need…I need a break…” she panted.
“…Take it,” he said, sounding scarcely better than she did. “There’s no catching him before he reaches the city.”
The way he said it, it was clear that he was angry. He had been hoping against hope, she imagined, considering that they were between cities and there would not need to be as harried an escape to get away from pursuers. Even so…
She groaned as her body ached from head to toe. They had barely escaped a pack of dire wolves, each of them three times as large as her, and all of them very angry. Jak had killed most of them, but her fires had taken no less than four.
It had cost them time, though, time that they might have used. Time that now had to be spent in recovery.
The capital – which Jak had called Molith – seemed to welcome the returning army. The massive front gates of the city were thrown open, stone doors that would have dwarfed even a giant. She imagined that no less than twenty Jaks could have stood on each other’s shoulders to reach the top, and even that would have been barely enough. Even with that size, it took nearly a quarter hour for the entirety of the army to pass through.
She shook her head as the gates closed behind the passing soldiers, leaving them on the outside. The gryphon looked at Jak.
“How do we get in?”
“That’s…something I’m still figuring out.”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“I was hoping…”
Groaning, she rolled onto her back and promptly regretted it. The gryphon whimpered, rolled over again, and dragged herself to the side to the cliff. A great deal of stomach emptying was required.
When everything was empty, they rested. The sun traveled overhead, and was nearly to the horizon when she finally spoke again.
“Any plans?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“Any chance that we can climb the wall?”
“Too tall.”
“Digging?”
“Too thick.”
“Any contacts?”
“None that have the authority to open the gate, and none that I’d risk for something like that.”
“…”
“I’m still thinking,” Jak said, “but it’s not going to be a simple thing.”
“I think it could be.”
The lizard-man looked up from the ground, fixing her with a cocked eye-ridge. Minerva rubbed her arm.
“I could…talk…to the guards.”
“…Talk?”
“Are you going to make me say it?”
“You want to –”
“Whoever said anything about wanting to? But would it work?”
“Well…maybe.”
Jak looked away from her this time, and she realized that he actually looked uncomfortable about the idea. That was not what she had expected in the slightest. If anything, she had anticipated him encouraging it, just like he had pushed her to listen to Florence before she was carted off to the brothel. The fact that he looked uncomfortable was…new.
She sat up a little straighter, her robe coming down one arm. His eyes flicked back to her almost instantly as some of her flesh and fur was revealed, so it wasn’t that he didn’t think that he should be fucking her. No, he just…
She smiled.
“Are you jealous?” she asked.
As soon as she asked, there was a deep growl that cut the air, spreading through the stones around her and vibrating everything. She had to grab her staff for stability, and to even think about saying anything else. Jak grabbed himself by the head, slapping his cheek shortly after, and the growling stopped.
Minerva’s eyes were wide.
“What…what was that?”
“…What was what?”
SMACK!
“Ow!” Jak yelped, rubbing his head in shock. “You just hit me!”
“And you just lied to me.”
“…I didn’t lie.”
“You dodged the question. You don’t get to do that. Now tell me what the hell that was or I’ll bop you with my staff again!”
He stared at her like she was crazy, and perhaps, in some ways, she was. She was desperate for answers, for things to make sense again, and she wanted more than anything to know what the hell was going on around it.
And if Jak knew what the hell that growling was, she deserved to know. That had not been natural.
He looked at her with annoyance, at first, then with resignation. He sighed, looking down at the ground.
“I suppose you deserve that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you remember what Florence said about dragons and dragon’s blood?”
“She said that you had them both.”
“Well, it’s active right now. Very active.”
“…That growling, then…”
“That was the dragon in me.”
That explained a lot. She hadn’t had the chance to ever see a dragon – for that matter, she wasn’t sure who had – but the books that she had been able to find and that the badger in the past had given to her had stated that they were all quite…possessive. They did not like anything being outside their grasp, and sharing was a foreign concept to them.
At the same time, they were notorious for keeping track of what mattered to them, and not allowing it to pass out of their sight. More than that –
She blinked, looking down at his groin, and then up at him.
“Jak…”
“What?”
“Does…does the ‘dragon’s mark’ mean anything to you?”
The lizard-man whipped his head up so fast that she swore that it cracked in the process. He lunged for her, gripping her by the shoulders.
“What do you know about that?”
“I know that…well, it came from a book.”
“What do you know?!”
“It’s a thing that dragons do,” she said, speaking faster, her beak occasionally clicking in fright. “When they want a person, when they don’t want to let go, they claim them. When they want to put someone under them, they mark them, and the mark makes the person unable to disobey the dragon. They’ll never be able to rebel, never be able to rise up, never be a threat to the dragon.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Can the dragon remove it?” he asked.
“I – I think so.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t a spellbook. It was just a history.”
Jak groaned, pulling away from her and rubbing his head. She was still barely able to catch her breath from the sudden shift in her companion, and she only belatedly realized that her robes had fallen open, leaving her completely exposed. Yet, because it was him, she barely minded.
Things had changed more than she thought if she was that casual about it, even with him.
Reaching up and pulling her robe shut, she could hear him muttering to himself. She couldn’t understand the words, but it sounded like an argument. If he was dealing with temptations from the dragon’s blood, and he was getting more and more powerful with it, then that meant that things were going to get out of hand very, very quickly.
She hadn’t read much about the magic of dragons, but she knew that they were powerful creatures. More than that, she knew that Jak had some low-level magics, things that Florence had educated him in. The dragon’s blood would make that more powerful, and it came with its own strength, like the marking stuff that she had asked him about. And which he had not answered out loud, but she could guess what had been happening.
Florence wanted him to keep doing things, and that means that he probably marked at least a few people in town. And if they were marked, they’d see him as a god, as a thing above mortals. And it wouldn’t be subtle, either…
In the book, dragons had ruled over vast swathes of land and people, and their mark was meant as a way of differentiating those that lived on their territory, and those that were merely visitors. Dragons were, in many ways, gods, and they had taken that worship as their due. To anyone that wasn’t marked, however…
She imagined that it had looked like some black art, some horrible magic that had gotten the army called in, which was how this general had gotten involved. And that was why Jak was so desperate to find some way to deal with this, because with the general chasing him and people getting marked…
“How did you mark them, Jak?” she asked.
“…Sex.”
“…Sex?”
“Sex. Eight women, most of them with daughters.”
“…”
“Florence pushed it. She said that there was a chance that they might be more useful if they couldn’t say no in the future. I…didn’t think it through.”
“…Is that why you pushed me away on the hill?”
“Yes.”
So, he didn’t want her to be like them. He didn’t want a zombie, and he didn’t want a mere servant, either.
Well, that was something. Not the thing that she really wanted, not the same as someone that didn’t want to do it at all, but at least there was something of a conscience in there.
The dragons had long-since disappeared, but the dragon’s blood came up from time to time. Usually in a warlord, sometimes in a warlock, sometimes in a sorcerer, but it kept popping back up in the world. Those people often showed their ambition, flinging their power around, trying to take over the world, or at least parts of it, in the same way that their ancestors had ruled it. Those people with the dragon’s blood often took many as slaves, as toys, as minions and worshipers. Considering their power, they were rightly feared.
Yet, Jak had done nothing of the sort. He had merely tried to take back what used to be his, and…
And he did it without having to kill all the time.
Minerva took a deep breath, sitting up again, then using her staff to drag herself to her feet. She started taking off her robe, and that got Jak’s attention again.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us into the city.”
“You – no.”
“Yes.”
“I said, no.”
She paused, her robe in hand and her body naked. She held the robe out over the rock that had been her seat, dropped it, and then leaned against her staff. Jak continued to glare at her throughout her little display of rebellion.
“Can you get us in there?”
“…”
“No? Then I have to.”
“…You shouldn’t have to.”
“I shouldn’t have to? Or you don’t want your property doing it?”
He growled again, and once more, the power rippled through the rocks beneath her. To his credit, Jak stopped it sooner than before, and without slapping himself this time, either. She still shook her head.
“Either you fight them or bribe them, or I do my own little bribe. And if I do this, then there’s no way that they’ll talk about it.”
“Why’s that? You think they’ll be ashamed?”
“Yes.” She leaned against her staff, shaking her head. “Fucking a kid…no matter how much you like it, it’s still not what most people do. They’ll want it, they’ll crave it, they’ll do it, but talk about it? They’ll get thrown in jail, too.”
“…”
“It’s the best way, Jak. You can fuck me after to put your claim back, but it’s the best way to get into the city.”
“…I hate it when you’re right.”
#
More than ever, Minerva was grateful for the time that she had spent in the brothel. Not necessarily for the pleasure of the experience, but for the way that it had stripped her of so much of her shame. She had none of that, for example, as she walked up the road towards the gate, nor any feeling of fear as the guards at the gate looked down at her. Most of them were at ground level, though there was one in a low look-out tower near the base of the gate.
Up close, the gate itself was far more intimidating than the people around it, and she could tell that it had been built for that purpose. There was every reason for an army to avoid it, from the murder holes on either side that had been built into the wall to the many trap panels that were build into the doors of the gate itself. Coming close without permission was asking to be massacred.
The various species of guards, ranging from simple breeds of feline and canine to a few oversized, enhanced kobolds, and even sporting a rare orca, looked at her as she approached. Most of them showed at least some interest, though the eight men were hardly able to say anything in public. She didn’t know if anyone at the top of the gate could see her clearly, but she imagined that the guards themselves had to pretend not to be interested for their own sakes, for their own safety.
She stopped five feet away, with Jak ten feet behind her. She bowed.
“Guards, my master offers me to pay the toll to get into the city.”
The orca seemed to be the gate captain, and he was the first to recover from the offer of her naked body. He looked past her at the blue-scaled Jak, and then back at her. It was clear that her body was more worthy of attention than her companion.
“You, uh…you doing this willingly, girl?” he asked.
“I’m doing it to pay to get into the city.”
“Yeah, but…”
Minerva slowly, subtly spread her legs, letting her thighs and her fur stop hiding her pussy. The orca shut up, his eyes dropping and gluing themselves to that slit.
As she surreptitiously rubbed just above it, making herself just a little wetter for the watching guards, she looked the orca in the eye again. The captain blushed, obviously more than slightly surprised and embarrassed at the ‘offer’ that he was getting, and just as obviously trying to stick to the job. She wasn’t going to let him.
“We don’t have gold. But we do have me. If you’ll let us in, I’ll do anything that you like. With any one of you.”
That was the big offer that she had to make, and it was the one that would keep the rest of the group from being excluded. They would all be on the hook, then, and any of them admitting that she and Jak passed through would be exposing all the others.
It was simple manipulation, but it was effective.
“Perhaps we should go to the guardhouse, so you can…think it over?” she asked, the naked little gryphon gesturing towards the door in the wall, and in the process showing off her hips and more to them.
They bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
#
Jak and Minerva stepped through one of the smaller entrances rather than the main gate after the main event. The lizard-man was still pissed at the idea of someone having put hands on the gryphon girl, but he was managing.
Mostly.
The dragon’s blood burned hot through his veins, and there were places where he was turning purple and nearly pink from the sheer fury that was running through him. The dragon didn’t like that its property had been used without its permission, but Jak was still in control. He made it bend, made it bow, and made it stop shouting in the back of his head. It was going to listen, and it was going to do what it was told.
As Minerva tightened her robe, he caught a scant glimpse of the seed oozing out from between her legs, running down from both holes. The scent was there, and he wanted to obliterate it with his own. He clenched his hands into tight fists, and he took a few deep breaths of the city air to clear his nostrils.
Considering how foul Molith was, it wasn’t that hard.
“So, what now?” the gryphon asked.
“An inn.”
“And then?”
“Then, we find where Garvis is staying. As soon as we know that, we can find out what he has for protection.”
“…As long as he’s not in the spire.”
He looked towards the center of the city. The spire loomed so far over the rest of the capital that it was impossible to avoid it, and there was not a palace or a manor in the capital that could hide it. The monolith of a building had been there since the start of time, as far as everyone was concerned, and it was from there that the royal family ruled.
A royal family that had given Garvis a position, and given him protection. Why? He didn’t know, nor did he care. But if the fox prevailed upon them for protection, then things were going to get a great deal more difficult.
“Let’s find the inn, and then work from there.”




The End


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