Tiger XIII

By and ©

DragonLady of Avalon, plagaraisers will be left to Mae-Lynn to deal with

A/N:

I’ve outgrown the style that Tiger XIII was originally written in, so I’m updating it. I have a better feel for the characters now, particularly Morhi. The integrity of the story is the same, the plot is the same. Aside from hopefully better detail and more coherent, less corny ways of saying things, nothing has changed. Not much, anyway.

Darwin: (just because I know you’ll be reading this. I’m psychic like that!:P) Dracul was mentioned here, too.

Theme song to this story can be found on c d z i n c . c o m, it is Everything I Do (I Do it For You) by Bryan Adams.

And now for your regularly scheduled story.

“BOO!” I shouted, jumping at my half-sister from behind. I felt her shudder under my skin when I touched her shoulders, but she did little more than turn and glare. Jessus, on the other hand, giggled slightly.

Mae-Lynn, though, was not amused.

It probably has gotten old by now. I been tryin’ to startle them since we got here. I think it’s funny, and it takes my mind off my own fear.

Morgi had been complaining about not wanting to go the whole time, but her mother thought it best she learn about the mistakes of the past. I somewhat agreed with Morgi. I mean, I loved history and wanted to learn as much of it as possible, but going into an iron and steel building that had been abandoned for about seven thousand years was not my idea of fun.

It was exciting, though. And I could say I had done it. I was just getting a vibe from it. Okay, so my vibes are not one hundred percent reliable, they usually are. I’m pretty intuitive.

The vibe I’m gettin’ from this place is…I don’t know. Foreboding, I guess. Not really evil. Not nice, maybe. Misguided, definitely.

It is, after all, a multi-thousand-year-old, abandoned genetics building the humans built before World War Four. I have every right to be afraid. In fact, Morgi’s mother called Mae-Lynn flat-out stupid and irresponsible for taking us here.

“But they have to learn,” she said. “They have to see the mistakes of the past.”

There is a perfectly good reason for why creating laugh with blood and magic has never been attempted. We Fey are often quite content with our world the way it is. Not blindly, for the most part. But God created the heavens and the Earth, why do we need to create life in a test tube?

Aaannnyway, Morgi glared at me and shouted my name. She raised her hand to playfully smack me, but I grinned and Sorsha landed on my shoulder and climbed to the top of my head. Instead, my half-sister on my Elven father’s side growled and shook her fists, but I could see an exasperated smile on the edge of her lips.

Stop it, Morhi, before you get in trouble, my Fairy Dragon purred sternly in my head.

Little Mae-Lynn, I retorted, but blushed sheepishly and jogged to catch up with the other three, Sorsha latching onto my purple and gilt horns, her claws scraping over them.

“Dracul isn’t coming?” I asked Mae-Lynn, my regent.

Mae-Lynn shook her head, sliding on her golden gloves. “Dracul is in trouble at home.”

Vladimir Dracul had had a hard time staying out of trouble, lately. He was picking up some of his fathers more “charming” habits, fortunately those did not include woman-beating. Mae-Lynn had turned cold against him, recently, because of his habit of getting in and out of trouble, but he was my friend and I liked him. There wasn’t much going to change that.

Vampire princes always seemed to be a little tipsy, anyway. His ancestor, Vlad Tepis. I know you’ve heard of him, the Impaler, as Dracul calls him. Rumors spread that he impaled his enemies on pikes outside his window and drank their blood.

He did, but not because he was psychotic. He did it because he was half-Vampire. It is considered cannibalism to eat anything as smart as you, though, so the human aspect of his blood-drinking habits was psychotic.

“But he kept the Turkish infidels out of Romania,” Dracul would say.

When we reached the building, my heart was pounding. I had my gloves on, but my fingers still refused to leave the hem of my shirt. Iron is painful, I knew. Everyone knew it. It burns, it itches, the blisters scab over and then the skin flakes, leaving horrid scars.

Did I mention it hurts?

Not to mention what else could be in there, either. Ghosts, Howlers, monsters that could even take down an adult Dragoness…

I’m half-Dragon on my mom’s side, Nightelf on my father’s. There’s a very, very long story about that, but I won’t get into that now. Let’s just say that considering Dragons have a reputation for being vengeful, it’s nothing to Elven snobbiness.

Morgi’s not that bad. We grew up together, as the custom is. She’s the next in line Elven titania, I’m the reigning Dragon queen. Morgi has moments of wa…well, she insists on wearing makeup constantly, and is quite often afraid of what people think of her, but she’s cool. She has a good heart, anyway.

Jessus has problems of her own. She’s a nice girl, the teller of tall tales, but she thinks she’s not pretty enough. For what, I can’t imagine, but that’s what she thinks.

Oh, well.

Sorsha I picked up about two years ago. I found an egg lying in the field when Mae-Lynn was taking me out to hunt, and it hatched in my hands into a miniature black Dragon. A Fairy Dragon, the sort of thing my people tell myths about. She and I have a telepathic bond, a soul-siblingship, as Mae-Lynn called it.

Mae-Lynn raised me from when I was pretty young. Two, I think. Both my parents died, but that goes back to that very long and in-depth story I mentioned earlier and right now I’d really like to get into that building so I can be scared half to death, okay?

Mae’s a petite woman just reaching her thirties. A serious woman, she’s my history teacher and one of the head healers. She’s very smart and short-tempered. She’s a little bit taller than me, red scales with golden eyes. Her spinal ridge is gold triangles, leading to metallic threading at the fan of her tail like most Orietnal Dragons (River Imperial, to be exact, Chinese five-clawed freshwater Dragon.) Yeah, she has webbed fingers and toes, too.

Currently, though, she looked like a small Elf with butterscotch skin and a smattering of freckles on her cheeks. Her ears were pointed, her eyes were gold, her hair was gold, all metallic. She wore a red dress something like a kimono which was long-sleeved and buttoned to her waist before becoming solid. A gold sash was around her slim waist and there was a pattern in her dress, like little dragons and flowers traced out of gold threads.

You know the story of Quetzocoatl and how he ruled the Aztecs in human form? Yeah. That’s also how it’s physically possible for me to exist.

It is a big building, ominous-looking. Made of solid metal with once-glass windows, there is very little glass—if any—left in that building. The remnants of what might have been an indoor garden’s dome can be seen, rising just a few feet off the ground, as if they wanted to only catch light and not advertise it was there. The building is dark and decaying, looking like a rotting corpse rising in front of the moon.

It gives me the creeps. Humans did a lot of things that they shouldn’t have done in there. Things they had no business or right doing.

I shudder and put a hand to my necklace. Mae’s found the door. It’s caved in, but any paint it might have had on it long ago has worn off, leaving it exposed and dangerous. She is trying to figure out how to move it.

Delicately, she raises her gold-gloved hand and slings it forward, a blast of water seemingly slinging out of it and knocking the door aside.

“Let’s go, children,” she smiles.

I have a bad feeling about this place. I should turn around right now and leave. Yup. Right now. I should ignore the others sliding into the now-clear doorway…right now.

You say that about everything you're scared of, Sorsha comments. It’s just a reaction to the fear. Just go on in so we can leave.

You scared to?

Why does that matter?

I roll my eyes and tuck my wings in. Trying to step over assorted debris is hardly easy for me. I’m clumsy anyway without trying to squeeze my wings through tiny openings flanked by metal. The last thing I want to do is…

Drat.

I lose my balance slightly and slip to one side, catching myself on the doorway with my gloved hand and managing to break my fall, but my right wing hit the door and singed some feathers. I can smell the burning.

I bring the wing in front of me and inspect it. Three cover feathers, not the primaries. I should be okay for flying, they don’t look too damaged, just a little…blackened.

They were black to begin with. Now they just look kinda…charred, I guess.

“You okay, Morhi?” Mae-Lynn asks. I nod and tuck my wings back in behind me and start stepping over things.

The place is completely cluttered over. Overturned chairs, fossilized papers, skeletons of animals that made this place their home once or twice. There are broken desks and remnants of pottery from potted plants, the floor is strewn with dirt.

This is going to be fun, stepping over all of this. So much for Elven grace and Dragon flexibility.