πŸ“š bonds of flame and scale Part 3 of 3
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SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY

Bonds Of Flame And Scale Ch 03

Bonds Of Flame And Scale Ch 03

by visarenvisla
19 min read
4.33 (801 views)
adultfiction

Tidbit had often been told that he had no proper appreciation for fine art. That was understandable, as he was not a very intelligent creature. A lack of schooling, a hardscrabble existence and a dull wit had ensured a life of mockery or disdain from those who occupied the middle of the intelligence bellcurve; by necessity it meant, as he understood it, that he couldn't appreciate true beauty...that his lizard-brain was too miniscule to see embedded subtleties and his knowledge too limited to comprehend cultural references that enriched the artistic experience.

He still found her beautiful, and he was pretty sure it was in a way that could be described as artistic.

Even as he fought for his life against a trio of animated corpses - one a rather hirsute Duergar, another a madly grinning Deep Gnome and lastly a slack-jawed Human who must have been a mercenary - he couldn't help but feel a sort of...profound blossoming in his chest as he watched her dance. He'd never encountered a Githyanki before Lae'Zel had nearly carved off the top of his skull with an arming sword on the Nautilus-ship, and his immediate impression of her had been that of a praying mantis.

Mean. Scary. Bug-like.

Also fast in the way a dragonfly is fast; brave like he'd often fantasized about being brave; faithful in her people, they must have admired her lance-straight back and solid-set jaw.

Lae'Zel caught the Deep Dwarf's broad blade as it stabbed for her gut, hooking the curved back-edge of her falchion in a notch and sending it spinning through the air. The smooth-pated Dwarf sputtered as if to negotiate for his life when the Githyanki thrust the tip of her blade into his throat and flensed in a downward motion; everything one smooth, perfect movement that spilled her foe across the cave floor with a coppery -SPLASH-.

"Wow," he breathed as he held off the grotesquely smiling Svirfneblin's jaw with a bronze gladiator's bracer. In battle one might expect Lae'Zel's snarling visage to be at its most fearsome, yet here she seemed almost joyful, like when he was a hatchling splashing in snowmelt puddles. She too was a very

strange

looking creature of smooth flesh and fleshy lips, but lately he'd learned to view that

otherness

as something lovely -

"TIDBIT, a little

HELP HERE!

" he heard Wyll shout with an edge of desperation.

Oh. Right. The Warlock was dancing nimbly as he could (which in Tidbit's opinion was only moderately so). Clearly he meant to keep his limbs in one piece as a greataxe in the hands of an astoundingly meaty Duergar spliced the air before him.

The Dragonborn gave a heave of brass-corded muscles, ploughing his way through the jabbering crowd of risen detritus, tail lashing and scales shining with enthusiastic rampage - perhaps more dramatic than usual since he knew Z'Sairah was watching, even as she conjured curtain of sticky webs upon the walking corpses to keep them from trailing him.

"Once I sew you back up,

HNNMGH!

" the Duergar's axe caught the head of Wyll's ensorcelled trident, wrenching it out of the way, "I'm gonna sell you to a Menzoberreanzen brothel

AARKGH

- " his final utterance made Tidbit think of if a watermelon could talk when smashed by a mattock, since that was what he'd just done to his head. Wrenching the digging tool's adze from his foe's skull with a sideways twist, he grinned at Wyll like a schoolchild proud of his work.

Wyll thrust forward with his trident at the Dragonborn, whose expression became momentarily raw with betrayal before it sank into the face of a zombie. The Blade of Frontiers shouted something he couldn't interpret amidst the inane grunting of the undead who'd swept up on him in their dozen, crawling over those encased in webbing.

He looked up at the roof of a dilapidated shack where Z'Sairah had been lobbing combustible light, hoping for some sort of arcane show off destruction to save them but the sorceress had been imprisoned in scintillating bands of pink; he traced their origins to a bald deep dwarf with half a mustache, chanting and waggling his fingers.

Tidbit dug in deep, standing at Wyll's side as they fought with trident and mining-tool, eldritch annihilation and desperate might; actual skill with weapons was an afterthought for the Dragonborn who relied on daunting strength and 'big emotions' as his broodmates had put it to go from one fight to the next. He swung desperately, likely damaging his tendons as he brought the mattock up in an arc that splashed a rotund Deep Gnome across the wall of a cave; on the downstrike he smashed the chissel tip of the weapon through a corpse's head, gagging as rotten eyes and brain tissue hooked in his mouth. Before he could pull it free, however, the deader fell backward and tore the mining tool from his hands.

With adrenaline practically pulsing from his eyes, time had a way of becoming a slow-moving thing, like the mutton-treacle his cousin made on Rhyestertide. His normally dull little lizard-brain surmised that if he threw himself backward and scrambled away, he could probably put enough distance between himself and the Undead to recover and perhaps survive. Then again...the same could not be said for Wyll.

He watched the Blade of Frontiers dig his Trident from a headless body, pale hands grasping for his clothes and limbs, pulling him down to his knees; jaws closed and broke around the metal strips reinforcing his pauldrons, but his throat and face were exposed.

Tidbit was thankful that he didn't necessarily think hard about what he did, that he didn't

feel

what would otherwise be profound terror in the face of death. He grabbed the Warlock's collar, hauling backward and throwing the lighter man with an indignant cry to land in a heap. "GO HELP Z'SAIRAH!" he shouted through a choked voice as he shoved away a gaping maw - his voice crescendoed in a scream as teeth came down and bit off his thumb with a crack.

It didn't end.

Steel-hard fingers dug past the scales of his belly and took hold of his guts.

They pried his mouth open, they bit down on his tongue and ripped it out.

They pulled his tail. Really hard.

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Blood gushing from his mouth, Tidbit howled incoherently to Chauntea - admittedly it sounded far more masculine and powerful than it really was, staring upward at the shadows dancing along the cave ceiling. Helpless before a terrible end -

But then she was there.

Lae'Zel, leaping like a grasshopper above the horde of dead, her boots pulping a skull.

Lae'zel, her blade flashing left and right and forward and even behind her, rotten gore spraying and gawping heads rolling, severing the hands gripping his tail.

Lae'zel, an avenging, laughing seraph who relieved him of his pre-death agony with her battle acumen.

It was beautiful, and he wished, so deeply, that it would be the last thing he remembered...but it wasn't to be. Instead there was the intense awareness that came with having one foot through Myrkul's bone-lined portal, of the singular lightness from missing body parts; blood venting in his mouth. A dislocated tail.

He tried his best not to make pathetic sounds, gurgling through the gore and trying his damndest not to collapse piteously. Yes, he was still standing, holding his intestines inside of his belly, hunched forward with pupils reduced to feral slits.

"Tidbit?" he heard Z'Sairah's voice, tight with fear as he turned to the Tiefling he'd fallen for; her inferno-bright eyes were wide with horror at his state.

He smiled deliriously, red drool pooling down his chin and chest. He tried to tell her he was fine and give a thumbs up, but absent a tongue only succeeded in gargling brusquely in her direction. The stump of his thumb squirted gore.

"Tidbit, by the

Hells

we need the Sharress, Lae'Zel carry him back he's

dying!

" Z'Sairah shrieked, hesitating in her approach, as if fearful that her touch might cause him further harm...Tidbit felt proud of how self-aware she'd become, since that was likely true. He hugged his guts into his body, wishing he could interrupt and advocate for himself.

Lae'Zel bristled. "You are among the last creatures in Fyr'run - "

"Faerun," Wyll interrupted helpfully as he gently wrapped Tidbit's hand with some of the nice cotton bandages he'd kept alongside that delicious sweet-onion cheese they'd discovered at Waukeen's Rest.

"SILENCE PEST, I'll call it what I want!" Lae'Zel countered dangerously, lashing her blade through the air and spattering unspeakable foulness across the ground. "You are among the last creatures in this world who may

dare

command me, and I most certainly shall

not

be hauling the Brass-Scale over my shoulders like a bag of oats." At the least she didn't look at him like he was a worm, and even favored him...a gaze that was softer than he expected. Despite the nearly intolerable pain, he rather enjoyed that. "Besides. He's fine, aren't you."

Well he wouldn't exactly say fine, but intensely self-conscious by nature and in a state of shock from blood loss, he carefully disentangled his hand from Wyll's fussing when the bandage was tight and began walking.

"Tidbit

stop

, your guts are going to slip out, how then will you make love to me?" Z'Sairah called as she caught up to him, kindly placing her hands under his elbow, as if that would help him; it was actually really nice having all this attention, the agony was a simple price to pay.

"Do not coddle a warrior like him," the Githyanki with her butchering blades rasped as she pulled Tidbit's mattock from the skull he'd buried it in. "You dilute his valor."

"That valor saved my skin for sure," Wyll praised him, kneeling amidst the dead and plucking trinkets from their pockets and fingers, less the brave hero and more the scavenger as all adventures ended up. "He's at least earned himself a gentler touch and a flagon on me, otherwise I'd be the one limping back to camp...if at all."

"I don't see him limping," Lae'Zel mused, turning his mining implement of choice in her hand with dismissal.

Later in Shadowheart's tent

"Offer yourself in supplication to Lady Shar, and she may see fit to take your suffering unto herself," Shadowheart intoned with the utter surety of a priest in the presence of her deity...and where there was a place where the light didn't touch, so there could be found Shar. Tidbit, eager to be whole again, knelt before the Half-Elf with deference and touched his remaining fingers to the darksteel circlet that served as that dark goddess' sigil. His victuals were firmly back behind his scales where they belonged, praise Chauntea.

"Mother-goddess of the beneficent night, guardian of secrets and seat of sacred peace, I beg you to quiet this brave warrior's pain, in spite of his callow and earnest heart. His hands may yet be put to work in service of your soothing darkness."

The candles flickered low, dancing in Shadowheart's slate eyes as she knelt with him and wrapped her delicate, though calloused fingers around his scaly hand. She touched a delicate stalk of Fimbleweed against the stump, whispering prayers too soft for his hearing. With little fanfare the errant digit seemed to manifest from the shadows, bound to the stump by dark threads as if spun by invisible silkworms.

"Thank you Lady Shar," Tidbit offered with honest gratitude, "and you, Shadowheart." Remaining on his knees before her, he fished around in one of the leather satchels at his side. "I knew you'd end up helping me again, so...I wanted to maybe offer you this." Tidbit carefully slipped forth a folded square of dark blue paper he'd bought with Gale from a passing trader. Shadowheart unfolded it and, able to see far more clearly in the dark than he, she glanced up dryly at him.

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"Tidbit, is this a picture of me and my goddess?" The priestess asked with a tone that he'd once mistaken for dismissal, and had instead come to understand as caution.

"Yes! I thought she'd look like you but with blacker hair, and really tall." Tidbit smiled at her with pride, his newly regrown tongue working just as well as the one he'd lost.

The Half-Elf appeared to be wrestling with the gesture, as he'd come to understand that these people would.

Z'Sairah had explained it to him thoroughly one night, that the people in their little cabal were likely to conceal their true emotions and look stoic, or acerbic, or in Shadowheart's case, unaffected. With that understanding he'd started to try and express himself to them more confidently, and it turned out the sorceress had been quite correct in her earlier assertion at the river - they actually seemed to

like him

. "I thought maybe, cuz you spend a lot of time and effort putting us back together that - "

"Tidbit," she interrupted him, her pert lips slightly pursed...an expression he'd yet to truly comprehend. "This is exceedingly sweet. Childlike."

Catching his concern, she reached forward and squeezed his forearm. "I love it. I'm not accustomed to this sort of sentiment, it's the sort of thing that would earn us a lash at the temple." She rose with a creak of her tight leather breeches, turning to deposit it safely in a black lockbox...Tidbit tried really hard not to admire her posterior, or the way the calfskin accentuated her thighs.

His imagination, enlivened by his recent discovery of sex and fervent exploration thereof with Z'Sairah, guiltily conjured the taste of her pale thighs, free of scales and tight with muscle...he felt so deviant, shamefully imagining mating and rutting every female in his camp at some point. "So. You and Lae'Zel have been getting along swimmingly," she noted dryly.

Her name made his heart throb, which brought on a whole other kind of guilt as he was involved with Z'Sairah already. "We have?" He put a clawed finger to his chin, squinting in the dark tent as he tried to recall their recent interactions. "She hasn't tried to kill me again..."

"Stay a bit and help me grind this into a paste," she returned to place a mortar and pestle before him, as well as a handful of ugly mushrooms; he was more than happy to be useful and dutifully began to crush them. "I suppose she doesn't show it all that openly, but I'd say she favors you." Shadowheart deftly filled a kettle with water from a bucket, stirring in something flaky and pungent. "Think about it...she caught that rothe calf and offered you the finest cut."

"She tried to feed me its testicles."

"You've never heard of Earthspur Mountain Oysters? They're a delicacy, you orc," She chided him gently. "Then there was that time at the canyon when we were stopping to wait out the storm, and she got sloshed on Imbriq - remember? She got awfully close with you." Shadowheart's smirk reminded him of a cat toying with a mouse.

"She challenged me to wrestle her and put me in a chokehold."

"Oh come now, she's a Githyanki, specifically a pirate...accounting for how she had her hands all over your rear I rather think she fancies you - "

"She was trying to grab my tail, and..." Tidbit stopped as the engine of his brain encountered some difficult information to process. "...you think she fancies me?"

"You don't? Silly thing..." She reached forward and took the mushrooms he'd crushed together, scooping them into the kettle and stirring further, those long Sylvan legs crossed around it. "I recall her saying, and I quote," Shadowheart cleared her throat and adopted Lae'Zel's sibilant hiss almost perfectly, "'Sharress, rouse your worthless carcass and keep Tidbit from bleeding out, or I'll wear your ears on a cord.'"

He was under the impression that was how she spoke with everyone in general. "I'm not very experienced with women," he admitted by way of explanation.

"Oh really? I thought somebody was, to quote another woman that fancies you, 'a fuck-God of draconic proportion, a virile male with a heroically thick penis, a - '"

"Okay okay," Tidbit's cheek-scales itched - softskins apparently turned pink or red in this area when they were embarrassed. "I mean...Z'Sairah is my first, I think she's just being really nice to me."

"Your first? Oh-ho well well, aren't

you

the Champion of Sune." She smirked as she rose to her booted feet. "Help me make a fire and I'll spare you, but really Tidbit...you're far more popular with the ladies than you may imagine."

Really?

For the rest of that night - or day, it was really hard to tell in the Underdark - Tidbit found his eyes drifting toward Lae'Zel, even while he was helping Z'Sairah redo her (or lately their) tent; hammering that peg into the rocky ground had required something of a firmer hand than she could provide, and besides. He liked the way she watched him while he worked. Even so...he found his brain chaotically rent between the two of them.

Z'Sairah was expressive with her love and never left Tidbit a moment where he thought she didn't adore him; on the other hand Lae'Zel was all vitriol and challenge, although she'd been kind enough to return his mattock...by slamming the chisel-end between his knees when he was busy knotting some rope.

Z'Sairah's body was so different as well. Slender and light, he was often worried about hurting her in his embrace but she always encouraged him to show his strength to her (despite one time 'pounding her so deep he bruised her cervix'). Her pink hair was always styled and braided - he'd watched her trim it with a pair of tiny scissors in front of a mirror - and she smelled like brimstone and daisies. Once the softness of her skin had repulsed him, but he found it

delightful

now, especially when taken with the contrast of the scales along her inner thighs. Contrary to Lae'Zel she had a tail as well, a sinuous and flexible one in contrast to the relatively stiff appendage he dragged behind him (cousin Baqpaq told him it was for signaling to mates and keeping balance, many aeons ago). There was also, of course, the way she felt when she was naked with him...

Lae'Zel on the other hand, while thinner than most Humans and every Dwarf he'd ever met, was corded with the kind of muscles that grew from swinging bladed weapons and wearing armor. Her hair was a sort of copper color that reminded him of Baqpaq's mate's scales; he never saw her comb it, or put lilac oil in it like Z'Sairah, but it always seemed to shine like burnished coins. During the times they'd been physically close (such as when she was drunk and wrestling him into submission) she'd smelled of...sweat, weapon-grease, leather. Also that feminine something that was hard to place, but it was a something that never failed to arouse him. While she may have lacked a tail, that certainly didn't decrease the appeal of her backside, and he guiltily thought back to the last time he and Z'Sairah had lain together; his hands were clasping the round, firm globes of her buttocks and thrusting into her, wondering how Lae'Zel's might feel.

His eyes were glazed over as he went through the work of spreading everyone's bedrolls, making sure they were fluffed and properly appointed by the fire - Gale needed a firm cushion for his back (too much sitting and reading books had put pressure on his lower spine for years), so Tidbit had repurposed a leather breastplate. Karlach was always hot, so he worked to position her bedroll wherever he felt a breeze and made sure a jug of water was nearby, kept in a hole he'd dug to remain cool and unaffected by the fire. Lae'Zel, well...she was quite the opposite, and he'd supplemented her blanket with a cloak he'd carried since leaving the North. She'd never thanked him or even made as if to notice -

"Think fast

Nith'Kra

." Suddenly there was an arm snaking up and around his shoulder, and the cold steel of a carving knife was pressed up and under the scale-plate covering his jugular vein. With a powerful backward yank, Lae'Zel had pulled him off his feet and onto his heels as he scrambled and became very still. A few seconds passed - he could see her face out of the corner of his eyes but couldn't make out her expression.

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