Scott, Wanda, and Jean | Yorkland
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ax_mainWhen two members of the Slayer's Take go off to slay a dragon, the last thing they expect is that the dragon will have a protector.
A dragon.
Wanda still wasn't sure why Tessa'd approached them about the job, let alone why they'd accepted it. A dragon's scales, sure - that would've been easy enough. A dragon's claws, though - so far as she knew, there was no way to get those without killing the dragon.
She turned to Scott and raised her eyebrows. "We agreed to this, why?" she asked.
"Because you're competitive and cannot say no to a challenge," he replied dryly. He listened to the woods around them as they walked, his vision utterly unavailable but for when he used his destructive power. Luckily, his non-sight senses were keen, and if not for the blindfold over his eyes, that he was sightless likely would have been unnoticeable. That hex in his eyes could be a pain, he mused, but it would certainly help them attempt to survive Tessa's job. "Any ideas here beyond wander the woods looking and listening for clues and pray?"
"Well, there's smoke off in the distance." Wanda shielded her eyes against the sun and tried to judge just how far, but failed. "Can't tell where it's coming from. Could be someone's chimney; could be the dragon. Either way, it's probably worth checking out." She looked towards him and smirked. "And you're just as competitive as I am. Convince me there's a chance you'd have said no once she said dragon, and we'll take a couple of hour break before heading over there."
"I'm competitive sure," because he knew he wasn't getting out from under that rock. "But I'm really attached to staying alive?"
Wanda arched one eyebrow and looked at him skeptically. "Maybe. But I still think you'd have agreed." She smirked and reached over to stroke her fingers down his arm. "Which is too bad, because I was all in favor of a break."
Gooseflesh rose on his arm, and Scott didn't have to see her to know the precise expression on her face. It was one of his favorites. "You're the one who chose not to believe," he pointed out, smirking back.
"Well, you have to put some effort into making it believable," she pointed out. She let her fingers slide down to his, then gave his hand a tug to turn him towards her. "I've known you too long to buy that as reasoning."
He let her steer him in her direction, not that he particularly needed the help but if she wanted to manhandle him he wasn't exactly complaining. "I think that was a solid, middling effort," he argued.
"Middling pretty well describes it," she countered. "You can do better." Hex energy swirled around her fingertips as she reached up and moved the cloth covering his eyes out of the way. It was a shame, she reflected as always, that her spell would only keep his curse in check short term, but it was something, at least. Still smirking, she brushed her fingers back through his hair. "Convince me?"
He waited until the ever-present pressure behind his closed eyelids dissipated before he chanced opening them, brown eyes meeting hers. "And here I thought you were already convinced." Scott leaned down to kiss her once, quickly. "But I suppose I can make one final effort." Another. "If you are so inclined."
"Mmm. Always," she assured him. She slid her hand back through his hair to the back of his head and leaned in to kiss him more slowly, lingering with her lips against his before pulling back. "Besides, you're always more convincing with actions than words."
"I suppose I should take that as an insult," he commented dryly, though his eyes crinkled in amusement. Scott leaned down, dropping his hands to her hips to kiss her as thoroughly and convincing as he knew how. She was warm and pliant beneath him, and it was so easy to forget that they were still in the midst of their game and their quest.
That was more like it. Wanda melted in against him, her hand dropping from the back of his head to kneed his shoulder. "Not an insult," she whispered against his lips. "You're just proof of the actions/words thing."
He circled her back with one arm, holding her up against him. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were suggesting I undertake one or two very specific acts," Scott teased.
"Pretty sure you can come up with that idea all on your own, without me suggesting it," Wanda teased back. She raised her eyebrows and smiled a challenge. "Of course, if you need help..." With her free hand, she reached between them and stroked her fingers down his chest towards his waistband.
"You always were the ideas person..."
___________________
"I have the best ideas," Wanda pointed out with a smug grin as she fastened her cape at her throat. Granted, it hadn't done much for their progress in tracking down the dragon, but some things shouldn't wait.
"I wouldn't go that far," Scott said dryly, lacing up his breeches. Still, he was smiling and clearly had no problem with her most recent idea.
"No?" Wanda raised her eyebrows and smirked at him, and the laces he was holding twisted around his fingers. Granted, he was teasing - but still. He definitely hadn't been complaining.
He smirked right back at her. "You occasionally have good ideas. But I still haven't forgotten you signed us up to find a dragon."
"Hey, finding a dragon shouldn't be that hard. Getting its claws?" She shrugged, holding her hands out, and grinned as the hex energy played around them. "We've got it covered. Besides, if I didn't grab it for us, you know Cal or Pete would've grabbed it up, and we'd never hear the end of it."
"We won't hear the end of it anyway, with those two," Scott pointed out. Once all his clothes, and blindfold, were securely back in place he asked, "So do you have a plan for taking down a dragon? Beyond find, kill, take its claws?"
"You're the strategist," Wanda pointed out, waving his question aside despite the fact he'd no longer be able to see her do it. "I leave those kinds of details up to you."
Scott snorted. "Excellent plan. 'I'll let the blind idiot figure it out."
"You're not an idiot," Wanda snapped back. "And I'm working on a long term solution for your eyes. I just don't have it perfected yet, and I don't want to chance making things worse." Which, okay, she wasn't happy about either. But given the alternative? Short term was better than never.
He waved off her caustic tone. "Don't worry about it. I'll figure something out." Two people, one dragon, once he had the terrain and a better sense of the beast's temperament, it was actually a fairly low number of variables to account for.
"Which is what I said in the first place." Wanda shot him a look, only partially mollified.
"Time does funny things to memory," Scott said dryly.
"Yeah, that thirty seconds really had an impact." She rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get moving."
He snickered but followed the direction of her voice towards, he assumed, where Wanda intended to lead them. "Any idea what Tessa wants this shit for?" Scott asked.
"She's got an order for it, probably." Wanda shrugged. She didn't really understand magic that required components - chaos energy was so much easier, even if it was less predictable, overall. "Does it matter?"
"Not particularly." It was just nice to know what they might be dealing with. "Does she have a preference for the claws' condition?"
"She didn't say, so I'm guessing not. Though she'll probably get a better price for them if they're in good shape. Watch out for the rock," she added as she side stepped it.
Scott managed not to shoot back the obvious joke that he couldn't actually 'watch' out for anything, instead just keeping light on his toes. "Got it. So get the claws, but if I blow them into fine dust no harm no foul."
"I'm pretty sure they'll need to be recognizable as claws, at least," Wanda amended, shooting him an apologetic look. "Aim higher if it's on the ground, hey?"
"Picky, picky, picky," Scott said, shaking his head with feigned disappointment.
"And yet you put up with me anyway," Wanda pointed out, and smirked up at him as she latched onto his arm.
"I'm a glutton for punishment," he said dryly. Or a glutton of some other kind, but he let that joke lie for the moment.
"Definite masochist," she agreed.
...
Tracking a dragon wasn't actually that difficult if you had a good sense of smell. And a strong constitution. Beasts that ate ash and stone, and left red-hot fewments weren't exactly subtle.
Thing was, that was usually a sign for anyone with a lick of good sense to stay as far away as they could manage. Not creep ever closer to the cave surrounded by shards of blackened bone and smears of powdered rock.
Nonetheless, creeping was exactly what Wanda was doing. The first thing, she figured, was to see whether or not the dragon was actually inside the cave. Going in after only to find themselves trapped inside by a dragon returning from elsewhere seemed like a good way to get themselves killed, as if just fighting a dragon wasn't means enough.
Normally, she had no qualms whatsoever about Scott making his own way, but given the detritus underfoot and the low ceiling, she had her fingers tangled with his. "Duck lower," she whispered as she led the way.
Though he did not need the guidance, Scott didn't fight Wanda's help. It couldn't hurt, at any rate. He bent lower, as per her instruction. "I know we're close, but have you got eyes on it yet?" he asked softly.
"No, I - hold on," she replied. Letting go of his hand, she took a few more steps forward, moving stealthily until she could peer around the next corner. "Fuck," she breathed, then turned back to Scott. "Red dragon. Young side of middle aged - we're definitely not looking at a baby, but it's probably looking to set up its first nest."
It could've been worse, but not by much. Scott stood still, taking in the smells - burn out, but also something underlying that smelled of still-living greenery - and feeling the air currents shift. Fire sucked the air out of a place, made it feel thinner. And this was some thin-feeling air. "Promising," he finally commented dryly, sotto voce. "What's the area look like?"
"It's a cave. It looks like a cave," Wanda pointed out, then sighed. "Gimme a second, it's too dark to see much." She summoned up a hex in her hand and threw it into the chamber. A moment later, a small crack in one wall widened an infinitesimal fraction, letting in a beam of light - at precisely the right angle to hit a the reflective surface of something on the cave's floor. The beam then traveled at an angle until it hit one of the walls, one which was fortuitously made of crystal that refracted the light in all directions.
Chaos magic. You had to love it.
"The chamber's an oval," she told him with the air of someone who'd done this before, often. "Sort of shaped like a lop-sided egg, but with a flat floor. The center's about four times as high as you are tall, tapers to about twice as high at the edges, usual number of stalactites and shit hanging down, but it looks like the dragon's knocked out anything we'd be likely to bump into. Width's about the same, twice that long, tapers towards the rear but I can't see one of the corners from here. There's a ledge about halfway up the far wall, but I'm not seeing any way to get up to it."
Scott nodded slowly, constructing the area as she's described in his head. This was why it took so much trust to do together what they did; he needed to trust her recitations and observations and she had to trust his ability to work with them and create a plan. "What do the rocks look like?" He asked, bending carefully so he could touch the rock nearest where he stood.
"Like rocks?" Wanda smirked, then got serious. For the most part, she knew the types of things he was looking for, and if she missed something, he'd ask. "Lots of quartz, to judge by how things are sparkling now that I got some light in here. Walls have a decent proportion of crystal with high refraction.
"Hmm." It increased his destructive capabilities over a wide area, but it also increased the risk of accidental ricochet.
"If I hit it and refract enough of the beam out, it will confuse it as to where we're attacking from," he mused to her under his breath. "It will buy us the element of surprise."
"Makes sense. What do you need me to do?" Wanda asked.
"Shield us," Scott said. It would protect them from any bounce back of his beams, flames, and any unaccounted for shrapnel.
"I love when I get the easy jobs," Wanda joked.
"I'd hate to strain you," he replied dryly. Carefully, Scott reached behind his head and untied the heavy cloth that helped him keep his cursed eyes closed. "Ready?"
He opened his eyes a fraction - releasing less of the energy was harder than all or none, but also less deadly if he'd miscalculated something. The beam ricocheted and then went through a quartz crystal, fracturing and dividing. It hit the dragon in four places, and the roar shook the ground.
"SHERIS HAZHIN!" There was as much fury to the words as force. The brilliant bolt of scarlet light that slammed into Scott's side might well have been a reflection of his own energy, save for the furious girl who came striding out of the cave, surrounded by a fiery halo.
"How dare you trespass in this fashion?"
While Wanda's shield protected Scott from the worst of the unexpected blast, it did nothing to ward off her temper. Wanda stepped forward, a hex already forming in her hand. "Unless you're the dragon? I'm thinking it's not your cave," Wanda pointed out as she hurled her hex at the redheaded witch.
"Fucking shit," Scott grunted as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He didn't want to risk hitting Wanda, or even their interloper, by accident. He shifted his weighted blindfold back into place. "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm a friend of the dragon you came to murder." The witch didn't so much sidestep the hex bolt as step over it. "I think you'll find two against two head-on more a fair fight."
As if to back up her words, the dragon approached, a slight limp to its reptilian gait, but with no impairment at all to its sight. Flames were already licking between its fangs, and it looked no more friendly than the witch.
"We will give you one chance to leave," she warned, even as a shield of her own shimmered into existence around her.
"One woman, about my age," Wanda described, too quietly for the woman in question to hear, especially given the shield she reinstated over them both. "Sorceress, non-chaos magic, but I'm not sure what kind it is. She stepped over my hex." Which was noteworthy, as she'd never seen anyone capable of doing that before. "The dragon's got an injured leg but otherwise seems fine. Both seem pissed." Granted, that last probably went without saying, but Scott counted on her for the bits he couldn't see.
"Shocking," he murmured dryly. Louder, he asked, "Who says we are here to murder anyone?"
The witch's eyes narrowed. "Your actions speak very clearly to your intentions."
"You do realize it's not a person, right?" Wanda pointed out, her eyes narrowing in turn. "At worst we're doing pest patrol. We should be sending you a fucking bill."
The witch folded her arms. "I suspect there are no few that would say the same of you two. And to the same motive."
"I didn't come here to kill it, I came here to get something," Scott said calmly, crossing his arms over his chest in an unconscious response to the girl. "If it wants to just give me want I want, I don't necessarily care if it lives."
"Sure." Wanda smirked. "Turn over a few claws, and we'll be right out of here." Meanwhile, her fingers twitched, releasing a hex. Various of the crystals attached to the walls broke themselves loose and slowly spun on their axis so that their pointed ends were aimed at the witch and her oversized familiar. "Chain reaction crystals set if you want to get in a preemptive hit," she said under her breath, and rattled off compass alignment of the first.
He frowned slightly as he did some rapidfire calculations and and weighed their options, given the unknown magical potential of the girl who'd interrupted their quest. "Let's see if she's reasonable first," he replied, sotto voce.
The witch narrowed her eyes. "You can search the for sheddings. That should satisfy your need, if you're telling the truth."
Wanda turned to Scott. "Do dragons shed whole claws? Or just claw sheaths, like cats?" The former would probably work. She wasn't so sure about the latter.
"No idea." Scott admitted. "Maybe dragon lady knows."
It turned out that they did, and that the dragon's nest contained dozens, if not hundreds. And if long-lasting friendship wasn't declared, at least a temporary truce was reached by the time they'd gathered up enough to make Tessa a very happy woman, the profit from which gave Wanda a very full purse she'd fully intended to tease Scott about for months.
As it was, the universe turned itself rightside out once again a few days later, after which gloating took a distant second place to all around awkwardness.
A dragon.
Wanda still wasn't sure why Tessa'd approached them about the job, let alone why they'd accepted it. A dragon's scales, sure - that would've been easy enough. A dragon's claws, though - so far as she knew, there was no way to get those without killing the dragon.
She turned to Scott and raised her eyebrows. "We agreed to this, why?" she asked.
"Because you're competitive and cannot say no to a challenge," he replied dryly. He listened to the woods around them as they walked, his vision utterly unavailable but for when he used his destructive power. Luckily, his non-sight senses were keen, and if not for the blindfold over his eyes, that he was sightless likely would have been unnoticeable. That hex in his eyes could be a pain, he mused, but it would certainly help them attempt to survive Tessa's job. "Any ideas here beyond wander the woods looking and listening for clues and pray?"
"Well, there's smoke off in the distance." Wanda shielded her eyes against the sun and tried to judge just how far, but failed. "Can't tell where it's coming from. Could be someone's chimney; could be the dragon. Either way, it's probably worth checking out." She looked towards him and smirked. "And you're just as competitive as I am. Convince me there's a chance you'd have said no once she said dragon, and we'll take a couple of hour break before heading over there."
"I'm competitive sure," because he knew he wasn't getting out from under that rock. "But I'm really attached to staying alive?"
Wanda arched one eyebrow and looked at him skeptically. "Maybe. But I still think you'd have agreed." She smirked and reached over to stroke her fingers down his arm. "Which is too bad, because I was all in favor of a break."
Gooseflesh rose on his arm, and Scott didn't have to see her to know the precise expression on her face. It was one of his favorites. "You're the one who chose not to believe," he pointed out, smirking back.
"Well, you have to put some effort into making it believable," she pointed out. She let her fingers slide down to his, then gave his hand a tug to turn him towards her. "I've known you too long to buy that as reasoning."
He let her steer him in her direction, not that he particularly needed the help but if she wanted to manhandle him he wasn't exactly complaining. "I think that was a solid, middling effort," he argued.
"Middling pretty well describes it," she countered. "You can do better." Hex energy swirled around her fingertips as she reached up and moved the cloth covering his eyes out of the way. It was a shame, she reflected as always, that her spell would only keep his curse in check short term, but it was something, at least. Still smirking, she brushed her fingers back through his hair. "Convince me?"
He waited until the ever-present pressure behind his closed eyelids dissipated before he chanced opening them, brown eyes meeting hers. "And here I thought you were already convinced." Scott leaned down to kiss her once, quickly. "But I suppose I can make one final effort." Another. "If you are so inclined."
"Mmm. Always," she assured him. She slid her hand back through his hair to the back of his head and leaned in to kiss him more slowly, lingering with her lips against his before pulling back. "Besides, you're always more convincing with actions than words."
"I suppose I should take that as an insult," he commented dryly, though his eyes crinkled in amusement. Scott leaned down, dropping his hands to her hips to kiss her as thoroughly and convincing as he knew how. She was warm and pliant beneath him, and it was so easy to forget that they were still in the midst of their game and their quest.
That was more like it. Wanda melted in against him, her hand dropping from the back of his head to kneed his shoulder. "Not an insult," she whispered against his lips. "You're just proof of the actions/words thing."
He circled her back with one arm, holding her up against him. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were suggesting I undertake one or two very specific acts," Scott teased.
"Pretty sure you can come up with that idea all on your own, without me suggesting it," Wanda teased back. She raised her eyebrows and smiled a challenge. "Of course, if you need help..." With her free hand, she reached between them and stroked her fingers down his chest towards his waistband.
"You always were the ideas person..."
___________________
"I have the best ideas," Wanda pointed out with a smug grin as she fastened her cape at her throat. Granted, it hadn't done much for their progress in tracking down the dragon, but some things shouldn't wait.
"I wouldn't go that far," Scott said dryly, lacing up his breeches. Still, he was smiling and clearly had no problem with her most recent idea.
"No?" Wanda raised her eyebrows and smirked at him, and the laces he was holding twisted around his fingers. Granted, he was teasing - but still. He definitely hadn't been complaining.
He smirked right back at her. "You occasionally have good ideas. But I still haven't forgotten you signed us up to find a dragon."
"Hey, finding a dragon shouldn't be that hard. Getting its claws?" She shrugged, holding her hands out, and grinned as the hex energy played around them. "We've got it covered. Besides, if I didn't grab it for us, you know Cal or Pete would've grabbed it up, and we'd never hear the end of it."
"We won't hear the end of it anyway, with those two," Scott pointed out. Once all his clothes, and blindfold, were securely back in place he asked, "So do you have a plan for taking down a dragon? Beyond find, kill, take its claws?"
"You're the strategist," Wanda pointed out, waving his question aside despite the fact he'd no longer be able to see her do it. "I leave those kinds of details up to you."
Scott snorted. "Excellent plan. 'I'll let the blind idiot figure it out."
"You're not an idiot," Wanda snapped back. "And I'm working on a long term solution for your eyes. I just don't have it perfected yet, and I don't want to chance making things worse." Which, okay, she wasn't happy about either. But given the alternative? Short term was better than never.
He waved off her caustic tone. "Don't worry about it. I'll figure something out." Two people, one dragon, once he had the terrain and a better sense of the beast's temperament, it was actually a fairly low number of variables to account for.
"Which is what I said in the first place." Wanda shot him a look, only partially mollified.
"Time does funny things to memory," Scott said dryly.
"Yeah, that thirty seconds really had an impact." She rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get moving."
He snickered but followed the direction of her voice towards, he assumed, where Wanda intended to lead them. "Any idea what Tessa wants this shit for?" Scott asked.
"She's got an order for it, probably." Wanda shrugged. She didn't really understand magic that required components - chaos energy was so much easier, even if it was less predictable, overall. "Does it matter?"
"Not particularly." It was just nice to know what they might be dealing with. "Does she have a preference for the claws' condition?"
"She didn't say, so I'm guessing not. Though she'll probably get a better price for them if they're in good shape. Watch out for the rock," she added as she side stepped it.
Scott managed not to shoot back the obvious joke that he couldn't actually 'watch' out for anything, instead just keeping light on his toes. "Got it. So get the claws, but if I blow them into fine dust no harm no foul."
"I'm pretty sure they'll need to be recognizable as claws, at least," Wanda amended, shooting him an apologetic look. "Aim higher if it's on the ground, hey?"
"Picky, picky, picky," Scott said, shaking his head with feigned disappointment.
"And yet you put up with me anyway," Wanda pointed out, and smirked up at him as she latched onto his arm.
"I'm a glutton for punishment," he said dryly. Or a glutton of some other kind, but he let that joke lie for the moment.
"Definite masochist," she agreed.
Tracking a dragon wasn't actually that difficult if you had a good sense of smell. And a strong constitution. Beasts that ate ash and stone, and left red-hot fewments weren't exactly subtle.
Thing was, that was usually a sign for anyone with a lick of good sense to stay as far away as they could manage. Not creep ever closer to the cave surrounded by shards of blackened bone and smears of powdered rock.
Nonetheless, creeping was exactly what Wanda was doing. The first thing, she figured, was to see whether or not the dragon was actually inside the cave. Going in after only to find themselves trapped inside by a dragon returning from elsewhere seemed like a good way to get themselves killed, as if just fighting a dragon wasn't means enough.
Normally, she had no qualms whatsoever about Scott making his own way, but given the detritus underfoot and the low ceiling, she had her fingers tangled with his. "Duck lower," she whispered as she led the way.
Though he did not need the guidance, Scott didn't fight Wanda's help. It couldn't hurt, at any rate. He bent lower, as per her instruction. "I know we're close, but have you got eyes on it yet?" he asked softly.
"No, I - hold on," she replied. Letting go of his hand, she took a few more steps forward, moving stealthily until she could peer around the next corner. "Fuck," she breathed, then turned back to Scott. "Red dragon. Young side of middle aged - we're definitely not looking at a baby, but it's probably looking to set up its first nest."
It could've been worse, but not by much. Scott stood still, taking in the smells - burn out, but also something underlying that smelled of still-living greenery - and feeling the air currents shift. Fire sucked the air out of a place, made it feel thinner. And this was some thin-feeling air. "Promising," he finally commented dryly, sotto voce. "What's the area look like?"
"It's a cave. It looks like a cave," Wanda pointed out, then sighed. "Gimme a second, it's too dark to see much." She summoned up a hex in her hand and threw it into the chamber. A moment later, a small crack in one wall widened an infinitesimal fraction, letting in a beam of light - at precisely the right angle to hit a the reflective surface of something on the cave's floor. The beam then traveled at an angle until it hit one of the walls, one which was fortuitously made of crystal that refracted the light in all directions.
Chaos magic. You had to love it.
"The chamber's an oval," she told him with the air of someone who'd done this before, often. "Sort of shaped like a lop-sided egg, but with a flat floor. The center's about four times as high as you are tall, tapers to about twice as high at the edges, usual number of stalactites and shit hanging down, but it looks like the dragon's knocked out anything we'd be likely to bump into. Width's about the same, twice that long, tapers towards the rear but I can't see one of the corners from here. There's a ledge about halfway up the far wall, but I'm not seeing any way to get up to it."
Scott nodded slowly, constructing the area as she's described in his head. This was why it took so much trust to do together what they did; he needed to trust her recitations and observations and she had to trust his ability to work with them and create a plan. "What do the rocks look like?" He asked, bending carefully so he could touch the rock nearest where he stood.
"Like rocks?" Wanda smirked, then got serious. For the most part, she knew the types of things he was looking for, and if she missed something, he'd ask. "Lots of quartz, to judge by how things are sparkling now that I got some light in here. Walls have a decent proportion of crystal with high refraction.
"Hmm." It increased his destructive capabilities over a wide area, but it also increased the risk of accidental ricochet.
"If I hit it and refract enough of the beam out, it will confuse it as to where we're attacking from," he mused to her under his breath. "It will buy us the element of surprise."
"Makes sense. What do you need me to do?" Wanda asked.
"Shield us," Scott said. It would protect them from any bounce back of his beams, flames, and any unaccounted for shrapnel.
"I love when I get the easy jobs," Wanda joked.
"I'd hate to strain you," he replied dryly. Carefully, Scott reached behind his head and untied the heavy cloth that helped him keep his cursed eyes closed. "Ready?"
He opened his eyes a fraction - releasing less of the energy was harder than all or none, but also less deadly if he'd miscalculated something. The beam ricocheted and then went through a quartz crystal, fracturing and dividing. It hit the dragon in four places, and the roar shook the ground.
"SHERIS HAZHIN!" There was as much fury to the words as force. The brilliant bolt of scarlet light that slammed into Scott's side might well have been a reflection of his own energy, save for the furious girl who came striding out of the cave, surrounded by a fiery halo.
"How dare you trespass in this fashion?"
While Wanda's shield protected Scott from the worst of the unexpected blast, it did nothing to ward off her temper. Wanda stepped forward, a hex already forming in her hand. "Unless you're the dragon? I'm thinking it's not your cave," Wanda pointed out as she hurled her hex at the redheaded witch.
"Fucking shit," Scott grunted as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He didn't want to risk hitting Wanda, or even their interloper, by accident. He shifted his weighted blindfold back into place. "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm a friend of the dragon you came to murder." The witch didn't so much sidestep the hex bolt as step over it. "I think you'll find two against two head-on more a fair fight."
As if to back up her words, the dragon approached, a slight limp to its reptilian gait, but with no impairment at all to its sight. Flames were already licking between its fangs, and it looked no more friendly than the witch.
"We will give you one chance to leave," she warned, even as a shield of her own shimmered into existence around her.
"One woman, about my age," Wanda described, too quietly for the woman in question to hear, especially given the shield she reinstated over them both. "Sorceress, non-chaos magic, but I'm not sure what kind it is. She stepped over my hex." Which was noteworthy, as she'd never seen anyone capable of doing that before. "The dragon's got an injured leg but otherwise seems fine. Both seem pissed." Granted, that last probably went without saying, but Scott counted on her for the bits he couldn't see.
"Shocking," he murmured dryly. Louder, he asked, "Who says we are here to murder anyone?"
The witch's eyes narrowed. "Your actions speak very clearly to your intentions."
"You do realize it's not a person, right?" Wanda pointed out, her eyes narrowing in turn. "At worst we're doing pest patrol. We should be sending you a fucking bill."
The witch folded her arms. "I suspect there are no few that would say the same of you two. And to the same motive."
"I didn't come here to kill it, I came here to get something," Scott said calmly, crossing his arms over his chest in an unconscious response to the girl. "If it wants to just give me want I want, I don't necessarily care if it lives."
"Sure." Wanda smirked. "Turn over a few claws, and we'll be right out of here." Meanwhile, her fingers twitched, releasing a hex. Various of the crystals attached to the walls broke themselves loose and slowly spun on their axis so that their pointed ends were aimed at the witch and her oversized familiar. "Chain reaction crystals set if you want to get in a preemptive hit," she said under her breath, and rattled off compass alignment of the first.
He frowned slightly as he did some rapidfire calculations and and weighed their options, given the unknown magical potential of the girl who'd interrupted their quest. "Let's see if she's reasonable first," he replied, sotto voce.
The witch narrowed her eyes. "You can search the for sheddings. That should satisfy your need, if you're telling the truth."
Wanda turned to Scott. "Do dragons shed whole claws? Or just claw sheaths, like cats?" The former would probably work. She wasn't so sure about the latter.
"No idea." Scott admitted. "Maybe dragon lady knows."
It turned out that they did, and that the dragon's nest contained dozens, if not hundreds. And if long-lasting friendship wasn't declared, at least a temporary truce was reached by the time they'd gathered up enough to make Tessa a very happy woman, the profit from which gave Wanda a very full purse she'd fully intended to tease Scott about for months.
As it was, the universe turned itself rightside out once again a few days later, after which gloating took a distant second place to all around awkwardness.
