The two blue dragons circled overhead, at first they were so high overhead that they'd almost looked black but as they steadily descended more and more detail could be made out. One was a male, made obvious by its overall girth and there was an extra talon on the back of the front feet. The other was a female, her build, while no less sturdy, was more streamlined and delicate. The female was also just a shade lighter than the male. At first glance, Tate would classify them both as water types due to this coloration.
He couldn't help but compare them to Aquana as they landed, the female looked a lot like her, so much so that he felt a slight pang in his chest. In reality, they were very distinctly different but he supposed he couldn't help it, any water-type female would inherently remind him of her.
Next to him Lou was cursing on a loop and had backed himself up to the veil until he was pressed against it. Without realizing it Tate had done the same. He and Lou were both backed into the veil. The dragon pair spread their wings one last time catching a pocket of air and landing with barely a sound.
Both dragons towered over them. Tate had always been aware of the vast difference in size between a dragon and a human but having two wild dragons in front of him made him feel like an insect.
Something about these wild dragons felt different too, not just the fact that they had no ties to any humans. It was something else, something almost oppressive about their presence. Tate had never felt this before, he'd never felt the need to look away from a dragon's eyes.
He was able to fight that feeling but it took effort. The female in particular was looking directly at him out of large green eyes. Her stare pierced him and made him feel like she would strike at any moment. He knew better than anyone the destructive power of a single dragon, but he had only ever been around bonded dragons who had an interest in working with humans. Wild dragons were something he'd never thought about meeting, much less the repercussions of that meeting.
What happened next could be best described as the most shocking turn of events in his life, at that was saying something. The outline of both dragons shimmered and their forms changed. Suddenly he was not facing two dragons, but two humans?
"Tate, what-" Lou mumbled next to him, completely dropping his usual manner of addressing Tate at this unpredictable turn of events.
Tate barely heard him, he could only stare in wonder. His heart hammered in his ears and he looked the beings before him up and down. His mind raced, lost in wonder and fear. They were stunning.
His mind was so confused that this was all he could think about, they were just so pretty. He was not someone who usually noted another man's, or maybe male's in this case, appearance however he couldn't stop himself. The man in front of him was somehow very much the dragon who'd just stood there. His mind could not find any obvious features that looked similar since a human and a dragon inherently looked nothing alike. Nevertheless, his brain saw a synergy in the features that he couldn't rationalize or analyze, it just was. The male standing on two feet in front of him was dressed in a blue tunic that reached the middle of his thighs, his face was sharp angles, his skin was golden, and his eyes the same bright blue as the sky. His hair was long, straight, and brown and was tied back from his face. The same muscles that had dominated his dragon form were translated into a hulking man who should have looked awkward and clumsy but instead wore the large muscles well. He looked as graceful as a dancer but as stout as the most renowned hand-to-hand fighter.
The female though, she took beautiful and elevated it to something else entirely. He'd had a hard enough time looking away from the male but now that his eyes had slid to her he could not stop looking to save his life. Now, it should be noted that he'd always had a strange relationship with attraction. It wasn't that he'd never seen a woman and thought that she was beautiful, but only once or twice in his memory had such attractions motivated him to do anything about it.
The times his superiors had thrown women at him after battles as another one of their "remedies" he'd either not finished the deed or the one time he'd made himself see it through he'd felt nothing. He'd been told all his life that it should have been the best thing in the world, but it had left him feeling utterly bored. Since those times any passing attraction to a woman had pretty much come to nothing and he was quickly over such feelings and onto the next dull thing in his life. Over the last five or six years it had taken even more of a backseat in his life because he'd been off training Aliya, and no one at the castle by the cliffs had stirred his interest in any way, shape, or form.
Looking at this woman, who moments before had been a dragon, was perhaps one of the most confusing moments in his life. He couldn't breathe she was so beautiful. Her green eyes, the same green eyes that had been looking at him out of a dragon's head were now pinning him in place from a face that could only be described as perfection itself. Whatever had been his type before, if he'd even really had one, it was all forgotten. This face was his type down to his bones. Her hair was the same brown as the males, but it curled lightly across her shoulders and down almost to her waist. She had a heart-shaped face, a dainty nose, dark pink lips, and eyes that were just a little too big to be on a human. As for her body, she was dressed in a similar tunic to the males but her's was belted around the waist with a silver cord. She was curved and muscular. She was tall compared to women he knew, she was probably around his own height. She looked like a warrior, the glint in her eyes was so familiar to him in that regard. She was a person used to fighting her way through life. Was he attributing too much to a stranger, a dragon, that he'd never met? Yes. However, his gut told him he was right.
She was a dragon though, why was he more attracted to a dragon than he'd ever been to a human, they weren't even the same species. This thought niggled in the back of his mind uncomfortably, he felt displaced and a bit wrong. Something about his current situation and attraction felt so right and comfortable, while also feeling instinctually abhorrent at the same time. As beautiful as he found her, he couldn't help seeing her in the dragon form she'd just held, the form that reminded him of Aquana and this made him feel deep disgust with himself. Just the thought of imagining Aquana in a human form made his skin crawl.
Snapping out of his daze he echoed Lou's earlier sentiment. "What is happening?" He asked no one in particular.
The next unexpected thing was that the female took a step forward.
And spoke.
"That's the question I should be asking, human." Her voice was on the lower end of the normal female's range but it was raspy and pleasant to the ear. However, the contempt she used when uttering "human" was not. "How did you get through the mist?" She demanded.
It was a tone he was used to hearing, a tone from a superior who expects to be answered.
He shrugged, compelled to answer. "I don't know."
She looked at Lou, and Tate followed her gaze.
Lou shrank back from her in terror. "What about you, what is your answer?"
"I don't know." He squeaked out in terror.
She stood upright and made a discontented sound.
The male suddenly reached forward and grabbed Tate underneath the chin and using a grip that felt like it would shatter his jaws, he roughly turned Tate's Head up and to the side. He hissed at what he saw, turned his head, and spat at the ground near Tate's legs.
"Cultist marks." The male growled. His voice was so deep and gravelly that Tate felt the vibrations of it through the male's hands where they were in contact with his face.
The female came closer again. From the awkward angle his head was being held he could only watch her out of his peripheral. Her face scrunched up in disgust once she got a better look.
"How disgusting, I've never seen what they look like on a human. This one's marks are even starting to putrify." She leaned closer still and he heard her breathe deeply. "Uh, it's starting to smell."
The male dragon threw his head away causing Tate's neck to protest with a spazam of pain. He watched as the male wiped his hand on his tunic over and over again as if trying to wipe off contamination, his face was twisted in disgust.
They looked at Lou, no one grabbed his face, but they could see his exposed forearm. Nose still wrinkled the female noted. "This one has them too, but it's not decaying."
Both stepped back and considered the two humans before them.
Tate had no idea what would happen. He had no frame of reference for anything happening here. There were several interesting things that had just been said that he knew he needed to ask about but the most important question was taking up all of his mind.
He plucked up the courage to glare at the pair and in the most confident voice he could muster he asked. "So who are you, and what are you going to do with us?"