Dragonsbane

Drake Bites Some Wyvern Butt

       “Your wing!?”

      “Yes, my wing. I have very nice wings actually. My mommy said I had the nicest wings in all the clan. But anyway, you should of seen the blows I did the creature. Made it run like a dog with its tail between its legs. Boy, would my clan be proud of me. And then I…”

       “Oh, that’s great. Really it is. But the question is how do I get out of here? I need to help Ralem and Jaydon… who knows what that woman is doing to them,” Arianna said, getting quite cross at this mysterious babbling person or thing.

        “Oh yes. You’re his friend right? Jaydon, who apparently is the dragon? I thought he was just a particularly strange vampire. There’s a lot of strange vampires. Like Bertha Doomsly. Boy, she had the crazies smell on her…”

        “Okay, okay I get it,” Arianna said, “And yes, I am Jaydon’s friend. And Jaydon is in trouble. So let’s get out of here. Now.” She said exaggeratedly slowly.

        “I don’t know how you are going to get out. But I can look around the prison for help. I remember the time when a werewolf wanted my help. She was in love with a…” 

         “Can you look now?” she asked, evidently tired of his endless talking.

        “Oh, okay,” the voice said, sounding a little hurt. She heard a snap like a whip and something fluttered by her ear and lift her hair a little, before fading into the steady dripping of water meeting the stone floor. 

        For a few minutes she waited with baited breath for the visitor’s return. Suddenly in the distance she heard a snap and a scream. Many legs were pounding the rock floor, apparently in the pursuit of something. It was coming terrifyingly close. She could hear the soft undertone of frantically flapping wings. Then something hit her full force on her chest and fell into her arms. She screamed and jumped back and was about to throw the small furry thing back out of her cell when it gave a small cry and said, “Oh my, oh my, it got me, it got me, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!” She recognized it as the thing that had been talking to her and refrained herself from chucking it. It was twitching feebly in her hand, squeaking as it repeated those words. As she tentatively reached out and touched the creature with the hand she wasn’t holding it with, she realized it was a bat.

      It was a very small bat. No bigger than a mouse, really. It had fur as soft as silk and tiny little wings that trembled softly in her hands while it panicked. She quickly felt the little bat for any sign of bleeding but came up with nothing. “You haven’t been hurt, baby bat. Don’t worry,” she crooned, forgetting her previous annoyance at the bat’s talkativeness.

       “Oh. Really?” The bat stopped its death throes and got to its feet, the little claws tickling Arianna’s hands. “And I’m not a baby bat. I’m almost fourteen hundred years old. I’m a vampire from the Blut clan. Or used to be…”

      At the last statement Arianna gasped and dropped the bat in her surprise. She heard another whip crack and she crawled away from it as fast as she could. “Don’t worry,” the bat called, “I won’t hurt you. Ralem and Jaydon made me promise not to have human blood, so now I’m drinking chicken. And chicken blood tastes delicious! Especially if you mix it with this spice called-”

       Arianna tried to calm herself at the prospect of having a vampire in the same room, or prison for that matter. But this vampire didn’t seem particularly dangerous, and he had promised not to hurt her. If he had really wanted to suck her blood, he could have done so already. “Did…. did you find anything?” she interrupted, a little trembling in her voice.