Chp.12: Prisoners

Mirta slowly opened her eyes.

Just moving her lids seemed harder than lifting a boulder. She felt completely devoid of all energy. She had never felt so worn out in her life. She was sure that if she tried to lift an arm she would have passed out again from the effort.

As her body seemed to awaken from its numbness, she felt some discomfort emanating from her wrists. It didn't take long for her to realize that something was binding her. She wanted to try to break the rope (or whatever else was blocking her hands), but right now she was so weak that she couldn't break a single string.

"Mh, one of them woke up. Go to call Haku, I'll stay here to control them"

Mirta heard a deep voice reach her ears. She was confused, but not confused enough not to realize that it must be her captor. With an effort that seemed inhuman to her, she looked up and managed to focus on a huge silver creature with four legs, a long tail and a body covered in scales. "A lizard...?" she whispered, almost without realizing it.

The creature looked offended. "How dare you call me a lizard? I'm a dragon, you stupid fairy!"

A dragon? Mirta's heart quickened slightly as her still half-asleep mind began to put the pieces together. Slowly, one of the images she had seen in the books made its way into her brain, showing a dragon through the different stages of their development. "Are you a baby dragon?" she asked.

"We are no longer babies. We are no longer under the protection of our mother" the dragon replied in an annoyed voice.

"We...?" Mirta thought, but before she could ask any questions a cough caught her attention. Summoning all her energy, she turned her head and saw that another fairy was tied up a foot away from her. A blonde fairy with light-blue eyes. It was Ella.

"Ella!" Mirta exclaimed, and seeing her companion caught her breath for a moment: Ella's complexion had gone from rosy to pale white, as if she had been frozen for several hours. "Are you ok?"

She looked in her direction. "I feel drained..." she whispered, clearly referring to her lack of energy. Then she too noticed the dragon. "What... What is that?"

Mirta swallowed. "It's a bab...". The dragon's warning gaze was enough to make her change the sentence she was formulating. "It's a dragon. He... I think he captured us"

"I'm a 'she'. You don't even know how to distinguish the genders?" the dragon said.

Mirta didn't know what to answer. In fact, she didn't know. How did she could tell the gender of a dragon? Even if they didn't wear clothes, since they were like reptiles they didn't have external genitals...

Suddenly the sound of footsteps was heard. Mirta was still confused and powerless, but being an elite soldier she was trained to recover quickly even in extreme situations like this. She tried to stay focused and listened for footsteps to figure out how many people were there. But she quickly noticed that something was wrong. The noise of each footstep was far too loud...

When the owners of those steps came before her, Mirta was able to understand why. Those weren't the footsteps of fairies or ogres or any other creature she knew: they were the footsteps of two other dragons!

"How... How is this possible? Aren't dragons extremely solitary, even when they are babies?" she thought as she watched her captors. The two new dragons that had arrived had much longer horns than the other and looked slightly sturdier. Both stared at the two fairies in a not very reassuring way, but Mitra's gaze was immediately captured by the eyes of the dragon in the center: they were cold, empty and ruthless, devoid of any compassion or empathy. She couldn't help but feel a shiver up her spine as she stared at them.

After a few seconds of silence it was that dragon who spoke. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Haku, this is my sister Keita and this is my brother Darbi" he said. "What's your names?"

"Haku... that's the name the other dragon said earlier. It was him they were sending for. It must be someone important... is he their boss? Or maybe he is the older brother? It doesn't seem like that, they are very similar in size..." Mirta thought as she looked at the dragon in front of her, trying to understand something more about her strange jailer.

Suddenly the dragon named Darbi slammed a paw on the floor. "My brother asked you a question! Could you deign to answer him, insects?" he growled, gaping slightly his mouth and showing his razor-sharp teeth.

Mirta was an elite soldier, and as such she was used to seeing weapons and hearing threats, but the mere sight of those teeth was still enough to make her shiver slightly. Looking at them, she could almost feel them on her skin. She was sure that if those jaws closed on her those teeth would have shattered her bones like they were appetizers.

The dragon named Haku put a paw on his brother's shoulder. "Calm down, Darbi, there's no reason to be so nervous. I'm sure they were just about to answer me. Right?"

Haku hadn't screamed or growled, but that final 'right' made Mirta tremble much more than Darbi's threat. The dragon's calm, cool tone of voice and his killer eyes were enough to terrify even an elite soldier's heart. "Of course. I... am Mirta" she hastened to answer.

"And I'm Ella" her companion said, who were probably terrified too.

Haku looked satisfied. "See? There was no reason to use violence" he said, then he leaned towards them. "I'll make it easy to you to understand. You have something I want, and unfortunately I don't have much time available. Would you be kind enough to give me what I want?"

Which translated meant: 'do as I tell you or I'll tear you apart'. Mirta swallowed: the dragon was obviously playing with her and Ella. "If you want something, just take it. We no longer have our weapons or our items, so you've already stripped us of everything we had. If it's our permission that you want, then here it is: you can keep everything"

"Very kind indeed, but unfortunately that's not what I aspire to" Haku answered. "What I want is your invisibility"

Mirta gritted her teeth. "Our invisibility?"

"Exactly. I want to know how you disappear from sight" Haku replied. "Could you tell me, please?"

A few beads of sweat formed on Mirta's face, and looking at the expression on Ella's face it was clear that she shared her same thoughts. That dragon wanted to know how to vanish, just like ninjas did. That's why he had caught them. "We can't tell you" Mirta said in the end. "It is a secret of our people. We cannot reveal it to an enemy"

"Enemy?". The dragon pretended to be offended and wounded. "Why do you call me that? Have I ever made an attempt on the safety of your people?" he asked. "I'm not an enemy, I'm just... your neighbor. Isn't it good for neighbors to share their secrets? It's a good way to start a lasting friendship"

The other two dragons chuckled. They were clearly enjoying the show. That scene infuriated Mirta: even though she was a prisoner, she still had her pride. "We won't tell you. You can't force us"

"Force you?" Haku let out a snort. "But I'm not forcing you. I'm kindly asking you... while I'm opening this beautiful little bag"

The dragon grabbed a small bag that he wore around his neck. Mirta recognized it immediately: it was a dimensional bag. How did the dragon get one? He had probably stolen it from someone. Haku opened the bag and took out something from inside, which he then threw at the feet of the two fairies.

Ella couldn't suppress a cry of horror and Mirta felt the urge to vomit. In front of them there was the corpse of a fairy, but not a normal corpse: it had literally been torn to pieces. The wings, the legs and the arms were separated from the rest of the body, while the torso and the head were still attached only by a small flap of the neck, all that was left after something had ripped the throat clean. The dead fairy's expression showed pure pain, but a certain relief could still be seen in her now empty eyes, as if she was happy to finally be dead.

"She's the last one who dared to say 'no' to me" Haku said, not losing his calm, condescending tone of voice. "I can assure you that within a short time that 'no' has become a 'yes, yes, absolutely yes!'. What can I say... we dragons are good at convincing people"

"Very good" Darbi added with a grin, then he licked his lips with his monstrous tongue as if he were staring at a delicious meal.

Haku took a few steps forward, looking the two fairies straight in the eyes. "Now you have two options. You can choose the easy one or the very painful one. If you choose the easy one, then you just have to tell me what I want to know and there will be no repercussions. If you choose the very painful one… well, we will teach you a new set of pain and suffering, until you will completely break and in the end you will tell me what I want to know anyway". He pointed to the fairy's battered body at their feet. "She lasted a week. I wonder how long you two will last. It's right to say though that I've improved from the last time, so..."

Mirta seriously trembled at that threat. That dragon was capable of seriously terrorizing her. However, she wasn't willing to give up that easily. "We won't talk" she said through clenched teeth, trying to sound as resolute as possible.

Haku stared at her still for a few moments, then he backed away a few steps. "What a pity" he sighed. "Well, I tried to be nice. All right, initial plan then. Keita?"

The dragon with the smaller horns stepped forward. "Yes, brother?" she asked while drops of saliva already dripped from her jaws.

Haku pointed to Ella. "Her right leg. Eat it"

Ella let out a shriek, and Mirta panicked too. "N-No, wait!" she tried to say.

But Haku didn't listen to her. "Too late, little fairy! You missed your chance" he replied, remaining completely indifferent while Keita lunged at Ella and grabbed her right foot with her jaws.

Mirta wanted to look the other way, but she couldn't stop to see what was happening. Ella's screams were so loud that she could almost feel the sound wave on her skin. Mirta had no idea what horrendous pain her companion was undergoing, but she could hear the disgusting sound of bones that were crunched and flesh that were ripped away from the dragon's monstrous teeth, and she almost felt like her own leg was being chewed. Instinctively, she pulled back as far as possible and she tried to put her hands over her ears to avoid hearing Ella's horrific screams of pain, which was impossible since her hands were still tied.

Keita was terribly meticulous and slow in her work. She literally tore off one finger at a time, never swallowing more than a few centimeters of meat with each bite. She didn't care of the fairy's screams of pain and indeed it almost seemed that they were amusing her. Furthermore, every time she bit she also licked the wound, as if she wanted to heal it to prevent her victim from passing out from the loss of blood.

It took Keita at least forty minutes before she finished devouring Ella's leg completely. The fairy fainted from the pain a couple of times, but the dragon always roused her with a flick of her tail, refusing to allow her to escape her misery. When she was finally finished she withdrew and returned to her two brothers, leaving behind a weeping, mutilated fairy who trembled like a leaf.

"Ew! I hate fairy meat" Keita grumbled as she wiped the blood from her muzzle. "It's awful! They have no fat on them, they're just a bunch of nerves and bones! Disgusting"

"Don't worry, sister. I'll eat the next leg" Darbi said with a smile. Mirta felt her heart stop beating for a few seconds: that wasn't a joke, or a way to scare them. Darbi was just consoling her sister because she didn't like that meal. That was just a normal conversation between siblings. And it was terrifying.

But even more terrifying was the monstrous look Haku got as he approached her and Ella again. Mirta felt like she was an ant facing a praying mantis. "So, did either of you loose your tongue?"