The Dragoness Backstory: Fanfiction

I woke up, disoriented. I couldn’t quite feel the tips of my fingers, toes, and tail. My vision was dim, blurry. I lay spread-eagled on some cold, hard surface, with my tired, floppy wings draped over my torso.

As silently as I could--why was I so stiff and sore?--I stood and looked around. Where was I? What happened?

The floor was gray concrete, gritty and cold. The walls were not walls at all, but bars. I’m in a cage. Past the bars was a large hall, bigger than a garage but smaller than a warehouse, with enormous skylights letting in dirty sunlight and more cages lining the walls. And in those cages were dragons.

Familiar dragons. These were the missing members of my wylde! This was where they had gone. But the light in their eyes, so intrinsic to any dragon, had dimmed. Their heads drooped, their wings lay listless, and no sound rumbled from their chests. Even a small cage with a few Terrible Terrors remained silent and still.

I couldn’t keep the gasp-sob from escaping my chest. No. What was this? What happened? Why can’t I spread my wings??

I strained my neck to look over my shoulder. Thin metal wires and clamps attached to the edges of my wings, binding the folds together. The wires folded together in a tangled mess in the middle of my back, with a tiny padlock holding it all together.

I growled low in my throat. I remembered now.

Hunters!

The cloth, the arms, the horrid, tangy drug.

So this is where they take my dragons. And now they had me.

Anger roiled in my gut. Anger, and hatred. I couldn't flex my wings, and my head and throat hurt too much to roar, so all I could do to vent was pace, snarling, from corner to claustrophobic corner.

After a few rounds of pacing, a door far down to the left opened, and a couple of people walked out and headed straight for my cage. They were dressed in long white lab coats, and one of them held a clipboard. They stopped in front of the bars of my cage, looking on with excitement and interest.

“It’s awake,” one whispered.

“Yes, I can see that, Avery,” the other replied in a normal voice.

“Do you think it’s mad?”

The one who was not named Avery studied me with a critical, analyzing eye. “I don’t think it has emotions quite like we do. Rather, it probably operates on the basic hormonal and instinctive processes that most animals do. It certainly looks hostile, though.”

I leaped forward and slammed my hands into the bars. They jumped back in shock and alarm. I grinned a feral, savage grin. Good. You’d better be scared.

“I think it heard us,” Avery said shakily.

The other scientist (of course they were scientists, what else would they be?) got up from where she had fallen, dusted herself off, and picked up her clipboard. She scribbled something down as she replied, “Of course it heard us, Avery, we’re literally right in front of it, and it’s not as if we can afford soundproof exhibits.” She sighed a little, as if she really would like a soundproof cage to stuff me in. “However, I sincerely doubt it can really understand us. Perhaps a word here and there, like a dog or cat.”

I continued to glare at them, cold green gaze flickering from one to the other. They could think what they liked; it would only make escape that much easier.

If I can escape…

I firmly told the little voice to kindly shut it.

“Maria?” Avery said warily, eyeing me as I eyed them right back. “I think it can understand.”

“I’m a she,” I growled angrily. “Not an it.”

Avery yelped at the feral squawks and shrieks. Poor, jumpy man. I bared my teeth and enjoyed his obvious discomfort.

Maria’s eyes lit up with excitement and she wrote furiously on her clipboard. “Fascinating…” she murmured. “Despite having more sapien vocal chords, it can imitate the sounds of a true dragon. Then again, it already exhibits imitating behavior; just look at its clothes...”

I ignored the idiot genius. “Why are you just sitting there?” I called out to the other caged, trapped dragons. “Why don’t you try and fight? Don’t you want to be free?” I desperately poured all my anger into my voice. If I was angry, then I had no room for fear.

“There is no point, little Draconian,” rumbled a familiar voice.

I snapped around to look to my right and up; there he was, across the warehouse, in a cage far larger than mine. “Oak?”

“We all fought too,” Oak growled. He looked tired. His fur was matted and stuck up in strange places. His ears drooped, and when he lifted his head his eyes were dull, listless. “Every new one still has their spark. But you will lose it, just like they have.” He gestured minutely with a wing to the other lifeless dragons, who watched our conversation with detached interest. “You have seen what it is to be free at the hands of humans. Now you will see what it means to be caged.”

The words hit hard into my chest with the force of a ten-ton semi. Fear bolted down my spine; I slammed my hands into the bars again with a desperate “No!” I couldn’t be caged, this couldn’t be how it ended. I refused to believe that I would wither here, like a flower without sun, wither and never feel the sky.

“Whoa,” Avery breathed, forgetting his caution. “Maria, are you getting this? They’re communicating! Maybe they have their own language, like dolphins or chimpanzees!”

“SHUT UP!” I roared.

The air seemed to suck away, leaving a hollow vacuum of silence.

“It seems to be getting agitated,” Maria said at last. “Perhaps we should sedate it again.”

“That would probably be wise,” Avery agreed, lowering his hands from where they had clamped over his ears.

“No,” I hissed.

That got their attention. “Ah…” Maria looked satisfied. “As I thought. It imitates both dragon and human noises.”

They thought I was imitating? All right. My lips peeled into a mirthless smile, the kind that always made Conner and Miss Ellen flinch.

“If you go out in the woods today,” I sang softly, “Get ready for a surprise.”

“What’s it doing?” whispered Avery.

I stared directly into Maria’s cold, dark eyes. “If you go out in the woods today, you’d better go in disguise! For every bear that ever there was, is surely there to be. For today’s the day the teddy bears have their piiiiiicniiic.” I drew out the last word until it echoed off the high, high ceiling. A promise, hidden in song, to those that dared to hunt humanity’s doom.

“Fascinating,” Maria said, smiling.

That smile sent chills down my spine. Not because it was eerie or cruel; far from it. Were it not for the clinical way I had heard her ‘observe’ me, she would appear to be a perfectly normal, ordinary woman. No, that smile chilled me to the core, not because it was cruel, but because I knew what it would mean for me.

To them, I am nothing more than an interesting specimen.

“We don’t need to sedate it anymore,” Avery said, relieved. “I think it calmed down.”

“Yes,” Maria murmured absently. “Come on, I would like to show the boss what we’ve found so far.”

I kept my gaze as coldly furious as it was possible for me to do, and watched their backs retreat. I imagined my gaze scorched into their necks and scrambled their insides. At least Avery seemed unsettled.

My limbs still ached, and my brain was still fuzzy. I shook out my hands--all that slamming did a number on my wrists--and settled back into the shadowy corner of my cage. I was not giving up; I still had my spark. I just needed to rest.

What little daylight we were given slowly faded into dusk, then darkness. A few unfamiliar faces came in at sunset to close the skylights, leaving us in the pitch-dark. A low buzz from my left--the main part of the building, I guessed--picked up in volume. Electric appliances. Maybe computers? Definitely lights.

And in that lonely, suffocating darkness, I hummed softly; a warning. “Today’s the day the teddy bears have their piiiiiicniiiic.”

Trying with all my cognitive might, I forced the flow of venom to taper gradually, so they wouldn’t be suspicious, but quickly enough that by the time Maria pulled my tail out of the cloth surface, satisfied, my glands were still half full.

I breathed a silent and unobtrusive sigh of relief. Good. A pity to have my only weapon depleted, with no real way to get the nutrients I needed to refill (I wasn’t totally sure what I needed, but I was pretty sure a bowl of oatmeal and a few hunks of meat a day was not it), but I still had some left in me.

“Alright, she should be waking up in the next twenty minutes,” said Avery.

The slight quaver in his voice brought me a vindictive sort of pleasure.

“Yes, yes.” Maria sighed. “Pity we can’t spend all our time just focusing on her. She’s so much more fascinating than the other specimens.”

“Same,” Avery agreed. “Her imitating is almost cute.”

Cute??

Both scientists paused. For a half-second, I froze. Then I realized--they thought I was going to wake up soon, anyway. I made a small show of furrowing my eyebrows with a small whine before relaxing limply again.

“Yup, time to go.” Avery pressed a clicky button. “Handlers, room 4. She’s waking up, I suggest you hurry.”

“So we have measurements, samples for DNA tests and a base for possible antivenom manufacture,” Maria said, pleased. “Next time we should probably take some skin and scale samples, just to be safe.”

“Alright, I think we can work that in with the dissection prep.”

“....”

“The dissections we’re going to do? With the rest of the team? The one Boss specifically asked for?”

“Ah, yes, I forgot about that. I’m sorry to lose specimens, though I can’t deny it’s going to be quite exciting, particularly comparing the inner workings of different species.”

I was going to hurl. I was going to hurl all over the sickeningly white floor with its antiseptic smell, and all over the two people who were talking about cutting open my dragons.

It was easy pretending to be unresponsive when the handlers took me back to my cage. Much harder was ‘waking up’ and pretending that what had just so very clearly happened had never really been.

Anyone want to name the Mountainous Stormtail? :(