Rayne questions Magnus further about Xipil and Magnus orders Rayne to stay put and she does the opposite...

Miiiiiine.

~Angel~

<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>

________________________________________________
Three days passed since Dracen's appearance and warning, and Rayne hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Magnus about it. She was going to tell him about the dragon slayer still hanging around, but Gaerwn's focus wasn't on the dragon anymore and Magnus didn't need anything else hanging over his head at the moment. Rayne saw the worry there, even though his focus on her lessons and his over all demeanor seemed normal, his once half day disappearances had become quick trips. He was unwilling to leave his cave for long periods of time, and he moved Rayne into a far back cavern where it was dry and concealed behind his own sleeping room.

Every time she tried to ask him about the she-dragon Dracen mentioned, she either got a grunt or growl, or was completely ignored. She was now determined to get it out of him. After her third lesson of the week, she answered all his test questions and had earned herself one of her own.

“Who is Xipil?” She demanded from her perch, staring up at Magnus with a determined expression. From the lack of change in his stance she knew he had been expecting it, especially since it had been every other question from her during normal conversation.

“Rayne,” Magnus said in a stern tone. “Do you really want to waste your question on her?”

“Yes,” Rayne replied quickly, far quicker than she had first intended. “-My lord.”

“She is a red fire breather,” Magnus replied. “Who held my attentions for a while when I was young. She wanted to build a life together, and I wanted to become a Keeper of the Word. Needless to say we went our separate ways, but Xipil does not let things go that she believes she deserves. Every so often she would find me, trying to convince me I would be better off with her than anyone or anything else. And every time she would piss the living hell out of me. I would get through her thick skull to leave me alone but it only made her more determined, trying to find more treasure, books, castles, heads, horns, what ever would make her more impressive and desirable to any male. It seemed to work for some, but it also scared the hells out of many others. After she determined trophies wouldn't win me over, she began her conquests of killing entire cities and burning them to the ground, earning her the title Xipil the Charring.”

Magnus' eyes closed as he took in a deep breath through his nostrils, silver guard scales shining in the torchlight as Rayne stayed still and silent.

“Xipil came half a century ago, where I informer her strongly I would never take a mate, and never one as crazed and heartless as her. That seemed to sink in rather quickly and she left without a word I thought for good,” Magnus mumbled. “Obviously she has some sort of new plan to try to drag me into a mating.”

Rayne felt the little sting in her stomach then, the familiar feeling of jealousy invading her chest. She knew her face was flushing and her heart quickened but she couldn't help but feel angry, could she? Magnus...Master Magnus wasn't hers...But she still didn't want the red-scaled harpie trying to ruin what he worked so hard to do. Magnus looked down at her with his brow frowning forward she hoped at her silence.

“Are you alright, Rayne?” he asked as she looked away from him.

“Mhm, of course my lord,” Rayne answered before sitting up off of her perch. “Thank you, Master. I'm going to my room to take notes if that's alright with you.”

“Of course,” Magnus answered, motioning with his paw for her to be dismissed. Rayne kept her feet from stomping as much as she could, making her trek look at least brisk and not angered.

Had she even noticed her jaw clenching? No, he didn't think so. Magnus watched his little mortal stomp off quickly, tail swishing a little along the cavern floor and wondered what had gotten her so very heated all of a sudden. Did Rayne think he was lying about Xipil? Was that what was wrong with his little mortal? He hadn't, and if she seemed to still hold her grudge he would explain that to her forcefully.

He was glad to see her leave though, going to the back of the cavern would ensure her safety when, and he meant when Xipil returned here. He growled slightly, hoping she would come soon. He felt his nerves beginning to grow raw with waiting for her appearance, thinking every little shift under his belly was her landing at his lair-step.

Rayne would never find out what Xipil was really like, he was bound and determined now to keep her safe.

He contemplated asking her to leave and stay where she had been during his week off, if he remembered right the little village of Sagewynd would be more than adequate and too small for Xipil to really care about destroying. She would be safest there but then a little nagging feeling in his stomach told him to keep her nearby. What if Xipil somehow thought it would be fun to destroy the place? And how would he keep his eye on her if he was waiting here in his lair? He had even contemplated telling Dracen to take her to his lair and keep her safe but even though Dracen could be trusted with keeping her alive, he couldn't be trusted in keeping her a secret. The great Magnus, the Keeper of the Word having a mortal pupil? Dracen would get them both in far more trouble because of his inadequately large mouth. For now Dracen would just talk about Magnus having a mortal servant, at least he'd hope Rayne hadn't said anything about being her teacher.

Magnus growled to himself, so many more complications since the arrival of his little mortal. He wasn't used to being the guarding type of others, but by the gods of old he wasn't going to let Rayne too far out of his sight now.

A few hours passed, and Magnus grew hungry. Rayne still hadn't come out of her cavern since their lesson and he knew she must have been hungry as well, so he wandered down the slightly dark hallway and lingered outside her room a moment. She wasn't scribbling away as she usually did but...sitting, her journal open and staring into something Magnus assumed was the wall. Her heartbeat was fast, but her face and stance seemed relaxed, lost in thought most likely.

"Rayne," he said loudly. Rayne shook her head slightly before looking at him, closing her journal and quickly averting her eyes to him. "I am going to get something to eat. It would be a good time for you to do so as well."

"Thank you, but I'm not hungry at the moment," she replied meekly, looking up at him for a fleeting moment and her eyes fell again. His brow scrunched, before he turned abruptly and left her sight. What was that all about?

"Do not leave this cavern until I return," Magnus ordered loudly over his shoulder to make sure Rayne understood clearly.

"Yes, M'lord," came her echoed answer. Magnus grumbled to himself, did she still think he was lying to her? Or was there something she wasn't telling him? Damn it all, he knew there was something she was hiding but it wasn't like he could order it out of her...

***********************************************************************

Rayne waited until his footsteps stopped shaking the ground before she let out the breath kept in her chest. How long had he been watching her? Why hadn't she noticed?

She looked at the closed journal in her paws, running her fingers over the hide cover before opening it once more to try to continue her lesson's notes. She stared at the half written sentence, and was reminded that Magnus would never want a mate. The words stung as much as knowing Magnus' old—what ever she was could show up to drag him off at any second. Sure, Magnus said he despised the she-dragon, well not that word...But he didn't want to be mated. He didn't want any attachments. He...wanted to be alone.

Rayne set her head in her paws and pleaded at her heart to stop aching. He was a dragon, as tall as a castle, vastly more intelligent, fire-breathing, mortal eating dragon. There could be no relationship between them besides teacher and pupil. She would die of old age and he would just blink his eye and go back to living alone and being happier.

Rayne, you foolish girl, she thought. She was attracted beyond belief to a dragon SLAYER and wanted a relationship with a DRAGON. What was going on? How had she gotten herself into this mess? She straightened her back and closed the journal, slipping it into her pack knowing she wouldn't be able to write down her notes when her mind wouldn't focus. Wallowing in self-pity wouldn't do any good either, so Rayne decided to take a little breather outside the lair. She clambered off her cart bed and was about to step out of the smaller room before she remembered her order from her Master. Follow orders...get some fresh air. She weighed the options and their consequences, before grabbing her pack and deciding if she didn't get out of the dragon's lair soon she was bound to admit something to herself she wasn't prepared for. The forest would be a good place to stabilize her thoughts and maybe concentrate on the facts she needed to record versus Magnus and his protective hold on her.

A few feet from the ground she jumped the rest of the way off the ladder, heading beyond the newly growing prairie grasses, the stream and into the woods in silence.

***********************************************************************

The answer came to him like a smack in the face. Half way through eating his second cow he grinned bloody teeth at his cleverness. Leaving the cow behind for scavengers, or the farmer, which ever came upon it first, he headed back for his lair, his hunger satisfied for the moment.

The band! It would serve a greater purpose than he first intended. He could send Rayne on her way to Sagewynd, and check on her when he thought he needed to until this whole Xipil mess was over with. The hardest part of that plan? Convincing Rayne to stay there, but if he could keep her distracted with his smaller disguise that might not have been a real bump in the road. If Xipil showed up and he wasn't there, she would wait for him in his lair trying to find ways to make it her own even without his permission, she always did. He marveled at his own cleverness and grew slightly sad no one else knew of it. Someday, he would have to write a scroll or two about the whole mortal pupil ordeal so everyone would remember his solutions to it.

He landed and lumbered into his lair, shaking off the blood and gore from his face at the entrance and licking away the taste of iron blood as much as he could. He didn't need to face Rayne bloody, she seemed shaken up enough for the moment.

He wandered down the corridor and held his head high and intimidating, making sure to make his steps stomp a little harder than normal to alert her. He had gone through all her logical, and illogical reasoning for her not to leave the lair, and when it came down to it he would simply say that she belonged to him now and she had to do as she was told.

...Except she hadn't done as she was told and left her room, pack missing...RAYNE missing. He stuck his torso in and looked around to make sure she wasn't cowering from all his stomping, not that she'd ever done that before even when he was angry.

A sudden burst of panic hit his stomach hard, eyes widening as he slipped out of the room with careful grace and trotted back through his cave. Xipil's scent was no where, but what if Rayne left to urinate and Xipil scooped her up for a mid-afternoon snack? No, he knew there were no other dragons in the territory, he would have heard the wings since he hadn't gone too far to feed.

He jumped and landed hard, the ash that hadn't cleared rising up around his toes as he searched through the clearing and into the foliage with a predator's gaze. Birds...More birds...Small rodents...No Rayne.

“RAYNE?!” He roared out loudly into the foliage, unable to really go into the thick woods without knocking over every tree and possibly crushing the mortal he was seeking.

Rayne heard the roar even through the thousand birds now in flight, getting to her feet in the root chair she had nestled in and started making her way carefully, but quickly through the underbrush. Her pack completely forgotten as the panic in the dragon's call made her panic. He was never panicked, why was he panicking?

She saw the deep incline coming and slipped down onto her backside, sliding down it before stumbling to her feet.

“Magnus?!” she called out as she reached the creek. His shadow took over the sunlight first before his head lowered over her. She panted a bit, looking up at him with a worried expression.

“Where did you go?” Magnus asked in a growling far louder than he first intended. Rayne frowned a bit at him, before pointing towards the woods.

“I needed fresh air—”

“I told you to stay in the cave,” he interrupted with words and volume, baring teeth at her.

“I didn't go far—”

“I told you to STAY IN THE CAVE!”

Rayne fell backwards onto her tail end, paws in the creek bed and ears turned in anger. She saw the still pure panic in his eyes, like she had told him she was crawling into Dracen's mouth for a closer inspection of his back teeth. But she hadn't been in danger and she certainly didn't need to be screamed at like she was a child. She waited, knowing if she said anything it out be interrupted again with possibly ear-shattering volumes. She watched his breathing calm, his head rearing back as he rubbed his temples and his tail rub against her thigh to make sure she was still there even as he looked away.

“I'm fine,” she stated loudly, beginning to stand up. “I'm not a child, I'm not a servant, I'm your student. You can't lock me up like I'm your property, Master.”

“You took an oath to me, you ARE mine,” Magnus growled down at her, before lifting his claw and letting a gentle wave of heat course through her veins, not painful, but alarmingly gentle. “You are my responsibility. And you will listen to my orders from NOW ON.”

He turned away from her, holding the heat inside her and not giving her a chance to argue. He didn't let go of the heat until he felt her heartbeat calm down and her anger soften.

“I need to get my pack,” she practically shouted at him, before turning and finding her way up the steep incline before he could turn and tell her to do so. His? HIS? She fumed a bit, she had only assumed he was being protective over her because he was teaching her, not that he held her as HIS. She grumbled and growled as she found her pack, making sure the journal was inside it before heading back towards the late afternoon sunlight. She really had gotten the bad deal she thought she was getting the moment she saw the scale dangling from the chain. Now she wasn't a student, but property. All those prior feelings towards him were becoming easier to quell with the new anger surging through her.

Magnus was in the cavern, lying on his side with his tail tip carving into a wall with painful noises. She walked around him to go to her cavern as per her order when his tail blade slammed down in front of her.

“Yes, master?” she asked calmly, not looking at him, nor the tail blade a foot from her nose.

“You are to return to Sagewynd in the morning, stay there until I call for you and you will know when I call for you,” he ordered in a brutal tone, hoping to scare her. Her heartbeat stayed steady, harder than normal, but steady.

“If that's all,” Rayne said in a half sigh, still not looking at him and waiting for her path to be unblocked. Magnus held his glare down at her, before lifting his tail for her to pass. She stayed in her room for the remainder of the night, his ears picking up her heart beat.