The Brimstone Maiden

by K9Lupus

In most stories, the knight is a valiant figure – a paragon of justice and goodwill of the people. However, in the far reaches of an even further off kingdom, one knight carrying a shield emblazoned with scarred, craggy mountain peaks only abided by such principles skin deep and no further.

*******

The path up the tower had been treacherous. Hidden pits with consuming crevices, jolting spikes emerging from stone walls, and a disorienting, ghastly darkness all challenged the knight to his limits. And despite everything which had befallen him, he had yet to encounter the chief terror of this accursed place. Its existence was only whispered through the fear-filled eyes of the villagers nearby – a terrifying wyvern with fire capable of crisping a man down to their very soul that guarded the princess locked away.

Upon first hearing the story of the beast, the knight had laughed, bold and unfazed, vowing to return with the princess by sunset. Now as he continued to ascend, eventually navigating his way back into the light near the top of the tower, he wondered if he should have given more thoughtful consideration toward his quarry.

The knight emerged into a rounded antechamber, decorated in every direction with elaborate figures laced with silver finery. At the far end of the room, a huge silken drapery woven of seemingly every hue imaginable blocked view of what was beyond. He ignored the alluring decadence on either side of himself, his focus resolved as he pressed onward. The knight readied his sword at his side. His hand pushed through the drapery. Its soft texture flowed against his calloused hands, yielded, and revealed a most curious sight.

The knight now stood within the entrance of an absolutely tremendous chamber. Its walls stretched out and up into a domed, carefully assembled pinnacle. At its surface, a broad, hinged skylight filled the space with dusty moats of morning sunshine. Beneath the light at the chamber’s center, and laying amid an assortment of pillows, blankets, and altogether luxurious comforts, was a refined, elegant woman sprawled without a care in the world at the visitor.

Then the knight caught the faintest of scents–undetectable to human senses– permeating the chamber: one of creeping ash amid simmering brimstone at the end of a lightning strike in the woods—The Guise!

“What manner of sorcery is this?” the knight proclaimed, raising his sword and bracing his shield. “I am here to rescue you. Where is the beast said to dwell within this tower?”

The woman raised herself up from her comfortable nest, and flashed the knight a most satisfied expression.

“Oh dear. Such a bold, false pretense from one who utilizes the same trick as I. Or am I mistaken…fellow firebreather?”

The knight gritted his teeth, his eyes scanning either side of the chamber for any hidden dangers beyond the one standing before him. His weapons lowered.

“Those days are far behind me,” the knight replied, his fist clenched tight around the hilt of his sword. Within his gloves, his hands trembled as he shoved back the surge of fiery strength wishing to fight its way to the surface once more.

“The sigil on your shield says otherwise. Those mountains…they are the Kutrach Peaks, our nesting grounds, are they not? If you’ve truly cast aside your hatched nature, it’s in rather poor spirit to hold our sacred image up to brunt the blows of dreary men and beasts.”

“I seek union for our kind. That is why I choose to not forget my roots. For too long we have been fragmented and fractured by the encroaching will of man who is never satisfied. It causes us to bicker and lash at one another when we should hold one vast wingbeat.” The knight’s shoulders quivered beneath his armor. The firm tug of bone and muscle yearning to emphasize his meaning was nearly overwhelming. He steadied his breath, holding his gaze firm with hers.

“Your passion is clear. To go to such lengths as disguising yourself among men is evidence enough. And you do now enjoy the luxury of having been the first to identify my true nature before my fangs have settled into their flesh. So, now I must ask. Are your intentions to bring me into your fold as well?”

The knight took a few steps closer, and dropped his sword and shield at his feet. The pair were merely a breath away from the other now. Up this close, the knight could smell the wild fragrances of the land clinging to her hair and the nape of her neck.

“My intentions are to know my neighbors, so I can hold a clear idea on where we each stand on this matter. And today…I wish to know you. Won’t you grant me a single day with you out of these walls so that you may know my true nature and make the decision yourself?”

The wyvern-woman laughed a bellowing cackle from deep in her gut.

“You are full of surprises, lost knight. A day for us to see one another’s true selves would at the very least sate my curiosity before attending to the matter of bludgeoning you away from my tower.”

“Fair enough,” the knight replied. “Now, I do need to ask,” his arms gestured behind him, “surely you don’t traverse that horrid assortment of traps each time you wish to leave and enjoy your own company?”

The wyvern-woman walked to the far edge of the chamber, her bare footsteps virtually silent and predatory over the stone floor. Her hand traced the edge of one of the stones, a pair of fingers sinking into a hidden depression. The heavy churn of hidden machinery revealed a passageway wrapping down into the dark depths below. She grabbed a torch hanging nearby and breathed a gentle plume of flame like mist over its surface, bringing it to life. A forked tongue flicked past the woman’s lips, and her eyes now glinted with a distinct, silvery glow.

“That path is only for the dullards.”

*******

Outside the tower, the pair ventured off toward more secluded grounds. They traveled a short ways together along the main road leading away from the tower. All the while they remained vigilant for any potential merchants or journeymen unfortunate enough to have been passing by on their way to the village proper at the same time the duo continued to slowly manifest their true forms into being. Silence dominated the space between them despite the knight’s frequent attempts to engage the wyvern woman in idle conversation or commentary on their surroundings.

She suddenly stopped without warning near the edge of the road. The end of her muscled, stumpy tail lashed beneath her silken garb as a conspicuous, living mound rebelliously juxtaposed against the grace and finery of her dismantling human guise. The knight’s hand went for the hilt of his sword; the other curled forward ready to instinctively utilize the thick, curled ends of disaster-striking claws having since sprouted from his fingers.

“This is the spot,” she mouthed, then descended down the hillside to vanish deeper into the woods. The knight followed quickly at her heels. Trees enveloped them on either side, and now safely enclosed within the confines of the sprawling wilderness before them, the knight’s heated vestiges of change were ravenous for further freedom.

“What is your name? You could at least give me that for a start,” the knight said between a deep series of cracks lurching his neck longer. It had been so long since the knight had last visited this shape properly that his transformation was progressing in a much more jagged and rough-edged manner compared to his counterpart before him.

The wyvern-woman stopped and regarded the man disapprovingly.

“Your manners are atrocious. Asking a woman for her name as if the pleasure of my company is not enough for you,” she said, the protruding ridge of her scaly brow furrowed in offense. “Verina,” she answered, turning back to continue on her way. Her strides were growing longer by the second as her legs distorted themselves with lithe, powerful flesh rising to the surface.

“And what of you, mysterious knight?” Verina asked, her gaze focused ahead as they neared their goal.

“I…am Gadron,” the knight said, his tone deep and stern.

“Gadron?!” The impact of the name hitting Verina’s senses was enough to shake her steady hold of the change. A line of tall, bony spines quickly blossomed along the midline of her back, her shoulders flexing beneath her strained clothing filled to the brim by her increasingly draconic being. Verina cackled. “The Exiled has returned from the grave. Many said you had been lost to the Churning Echoes. Even more were simply content that you vanished. ”

“One and the same. I did escape that dreadful place, and I will tell that story to you another time.”

“So your rebellious quest for unity is a misplaced tantrum against those who wronged you?” Verina asked, her grin even longer and more menacing across her fledgling muzzle coming to be.

“No. Things are not that simple anymore. What I know right now is we should not doubt the intentions of the humans we have cast our gaze down upon. While they are quite feeble of mind, and even more frail in body, they more than make up for it in their unwavering tenacity.

Once a human has identified what it wants, it will not stop until it has it, even going as far as to destroy itself in the process. That is their true power. No other creature can match its self-consuming pursuit of its desires. And now that lens has been cast towards us, and we must be ready.”

Verina took in Gadron’s claims. In all her time secluded in the tower, she had heard and witnessed the rumblings of the humans’ grand, dreaming eyes. Maybe there was something to the fool’s ravings the others had missed.

The density of the trees lessened, and the path opened up before the shifting wyverns into a hidden glen split in the middle by a glittering stream.

“We will be safe here. Now we may rid ourselves of these woefully constraining bindings.”

Verina removed her clothing stretched taut over her still-morphing body, peeling them away with all the satisfaction of a fresh skin shed. Her chest was modest and lacking any cumbersome mammalian unnecessities. In the afternoon light, the sweeping curtain of darkened azure scales trailing the edges of her arms, sides, and legs cast her as a fierce, unconquerable gem replete with wild beauty. A heated jolt from Gadron’s hips caused him to scowl beneath his breath, and so he quickly followed suit to join Verina unencumbered and whole once more.

Only the woodland creatures would bear witness to their unfolding secret, and all kept their distance with a wary, watchful eye.

*******

“I know if I can reason with the Tallwings, I can get them to see sense before this comes to fang and claw with the humans,” Gadron said, testing his wings with a huge stretch. His body was now covered in richly colored scales like molten gold poured into a worn, iron vessel, and to all outside observers, the two beasts were no different than any other resident of the forest.

“If you were to go in alone, then you’d truly be at the mercy of whatever death the Tallwings had lined up for you. None have ever escaped their judgment. To do so a second time would fly in the face of everything we know,” Verina said, folding her head down atop her mighty forepaws which flattened the long grass around her.


“You speak truth, and that is why I know I must not be alone when I next face them,” Gadron affirmed before standing. The newly-turned wyvern crawled forward and made his way to the edge of the glen. His snout lowered at the edges of the trees for a time, drawing Verina’s curious stare. He returned to her side a short while later with a bouquet of gathered wildflowers in his maw, a bounty of color and fragrant scents presented to the she-beast.

A quick, heavy slap of the side of her wing against Gadron’s snout sent the bouquet tumbling to the ground in a disheveled heap.

“What am I to do with this trifle?” You’ve picked up the curious habits of the humans in your stay with them and you’ve forgotten that I am not like those other wenches frothing at the mouth for the spilled coin of a drunkard. I have more refined tastes.”

“Then what would you have me do to prove I am worthy and seen in your eyes?” Gadron asked, swatting away the flowers to the wind.

“The only thing a girl really wants.” A voracious glimmer simmered in her silver-eyed gaze. “A hunt.”

*******

Gadron lay carefully suspended above the ground, the immensity of his body straddled across the bulk of two neighboring trees. His breathing slowed to near perfect stillness. Only the brief glimmer of a fleshy nictitating membrane flicking over the vermillion enormity of his focused eye would have betrayed anything living loomed hidden in the branches. The wind’s breath blew against his muzzle, a favorable sign as he sank back on coiled, tensed muscles.

Further up the path, a quiet snort snapped the near hour of silence. A wild boar, fat and unaware, lumbered its way into the strangely uniform patch of tree shade seeking shelter from the now blazing heat of the late afternoon sun. In a terrible flash, Gadron’s wings withdrew themselves, and he dropped down from his perch upon the animal, his mighty talons raking deep furrows across the creature’s back, but missing the securing bite across its skull by inches as it writhed away.

The boar sprang forward, instinct-fueled adrenaline driving it away from Gadron. However, its freedom was to be found only in its swiftly-approaching, final rest. From behind a dense, overgrown thicket, Verina sprang forward, fangs flashing as her skull tumbled the several hundred-pound beast onto its side. Momentum carried her and the beast together in a dusty tumble as she quickly pinned it to the ground with a clamped hindfoot, its flailing hooves immobilized by the unyielding pressure.

With a practiced sweep of her long neck, Verina caught the soft flesh of the boar’s throat in her jaws. Biting hard, rivulets of heated blood stained the length of her maw and throat in the hunter’s brand. Joined with her prey, she whispered hazy thoughts of gratitude until the boar beneath her had gone as still as stone.

*******

The flesh of their prey was warm in their mouths and heavy in their guts after the success of their strange picnic. Meanwhile, the sun drew ever closer to its nightly resting place, and with it, the last of their guised humanity eroded away until only scale, muscle, and claw remained. With their physical needs sated, a question lingered in Gadron’s thoughts as he studied the she-wyvern resting beside him.

“Back in the tower, there was something I was curious to know,” Gadron said, lowering his neck beside Verina’s. She flicked a half-intrigued eye in his direction.

“Did you make all those figures there? The ones in the antechamber,” he continued.

“When you have much time, as I do, there is much you do to fill it.” Verina replied, a somber croon unexpectedly spilling from her maw.

“Then won’t you join me? So you can fill that time with sights and stories instead of dreams at hand’s length?”

Verina’s eyes narrowed, an agitated flick of her tongue and tail a precursor to a corrective bite in most causes. But not in this one. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She had been holed up in that tower with her little games with the humans for so long she hadn’t thought about a bigger purpose in quite some time.

The she-wyvern reluctantly stood from her basking spot and extended her wings out to full splendor on either side. She braced her legs beneath her, and with a mighty leap into the sky with a flap of her wings, she was off.

“I will be seeing the next part of this story of yours, and that is all. I can promise no more than that. Besides, it would be a crime far worse than what necessitated your exile to leave you bumbling about on this grand journey of yours like some needy whelp,” Verina said as she angled herself into a strong updraft.

Gadron smiled. That would be good enough for now. He was not far behind Verina as he, too, took the air, his mighty wingbeats buffeting the ground below. Higher and higher they ascended, their bold, earth-defying forms illuminated in golden relief against the backdrop of the setting sun. Verina led the way back in the direction of the tower, twisting her neck from time to time to gaze back at her new tentative frie…companion.

They soon landed at the top of the tower and crawled their way in through the hinged skylight. For the people of the village nearby, their terror-stricken hearts could only weep at the sight of their dragon troubles doubling.

By the heat of the roaring fire and of each other’s bodies curled within the mounds of decadent comforts, the wyvern pair rested, for they would need their strength for a long day’s flight when the sun rose once more. Gadron brushed the end of his wing against hers. She didn’t recoil–at least not immediately.

It was as good a start as any for the daunting task of what Gadron had set out to do. Changing the very nature of the world was not some overnight affair. As sleep overcame him, he hoped with all his might his efforts today would be enough to keep him, and now Verina, safe on the winds of momentum continuing to blow in their favor on his grand journey toward reclaiming what had been stripped away by the forceful judgment of the Tallwings, the council still woefully oblivious of the impending storm aimed at the very heart of the Kutrach Peaks.

END

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Story commission for Marberguson featuring an awesome concept for an inverted "knight coming to save the princess from a deadly dragon trope" setting. It was a ton of fun getting to work on this piece, and as it stands, the setting is currently open to be sponsored and continued if anyone is interested in doing so.

I know it's been a hot minute again since last posting. A lot of new developments have been happening in my life I'm hoping to write a journal about soon. In the meantime, sharing some of what I've been working on over this recent stretch of time is a top priority for me. Thank you for all of your kind comments of support in the interim. More summer stories are definitely on the way!

~Lupus

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Interested in getting a story commissioned by me? I am currently open! I'd love to get the chance to bring your ideas to life. My commission info can be found here:

K9 Lupus Commission Info

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