Hector and Karalti: A Scene

I fumed all the way from the Officer's Mess to our quarters. Rin meekly farewelled us on the way to her own quarters in the Weaponeer's Hall, while Suri split to go and make sure Cutthroat hadn't killed anyone. That left Karalti and I alone together, with me wound as tight as a watchspring and her radiating concern.

"This fucking quest!" I snarled at no one in particular once we were alone. "Motherfucking piece of shit, broken ass fucking game!"

Karalti wasn't fazed by my anger, but she was worried. She hung back out of temper-tantrum range, Soma's box tucked under her arm. "Do you want to go fly? That always helps me."

"No! Fuck, not... not right now. Just… I didn’t mean to yell at you." I stopped to lean against a wall and just breathe. I unequipped my gloves to let my palms rest against the cold stone. The Mark of Matir floated just under the surface of my skin, almost seeming to burn with a subtle light. "Next time I see Matir, remind me to punch him in the dick."

I heard a soft clunk, and then Karalti came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my chest. She pressed her face between my shoulders and hung on tight until I began to relax.

“Hey,” she said, shyly. "I liked what you did back there. So did Suri."

"Suri?" I chuckled darkly at that. She’d seemed pissed off to me. Before she'd split, there'd been no touchy-feely, no goodbye smooch. "I don't know where you're getting that idea from."

"Her smell." Karalti’s laughter was still not very human: more like a higher-pitched version of her normal draconic rumble. "She smelled like she was ready to mate."

Maybe it was just the choice of words, but I flushed. Then, I put my face against the back of my arm and groaned.

"You know, now that I think about it, people smell like that a lot. Do humans always want to mate?” Karalti asked me. “Like… all humans? Not just the boss humans, like you and Soma.”

Now? She wanted the birds and the bees talk right now? “Pretty much. Some humans don’t, but most of us want to do it all day, every day.”

“Wait a minute: does that mean you have one of these all the time?!” Before I could stop her, she reached around and grabbed my crotch. I yelped and jumped at least half a foot off the ground.

“Karalti!” I turned on her and pushed her hand away, red-faced. “Yes! It’s there! What, do you think it falls off like a deer’s horns or something?”

She pouted. “… It doesn’t?”

“Wait.” I paused for a moment, then held up a hand. “Are you telling me that male dragons… No. No, I don’t need to know.”

“But if you know, then the wiki entry opens up!” Karalti pressed in against me, molding the front of her body against mine. She barely came up to my sternum: lithe, her skin soft with the scent of lotus flower. 

“I think humans are very impressive.” She looked up from under the edge of her hair. “That it’s there all the time and not just when a Queen is ready to fly.”

“The queen has to be ready to fly before that’s any good, though.” My mouth went dry, and my heart began to pound in my chest as I looped an arm around her and gazed down into her eyes.

“And if she is…?” She put her hands on my chest, flexing her fingers against the breastplate of my armor.

Pretty much every digitized nerve in my body wanted to scream ‘okay!’, rip our clothes off, and do her right here in the hallway. But there was something in Karalti’s adoring gaze that stopped me cold. It was her total and complete innocence. Physically, she was mature. But mentally? She was almost there, but she wasn’t. Not quite. And because I loved her, more purely and more passionately than I’d ever loved anything or anyone, that wasn’t something I could stomach taking advantage of.

“One more level.” I cupped her face and slid my fingers through her hair. “One more level, Tidbit, and I will happily, gladly do this.”

Karalti’s eyes darkened like a thunderstorm. She began to pull away, but I held onto her just hard enough to surprise her into stopping.

“Please. Hear me out.” She stopped trying to flounce off, and I let my grip ease. “I was twenty-seven when I died, Karalti. Just before I came to Archemi, I was a twenty-seven year old virgin who’d killed a dozen Pacific Alliance mooks before he ever had a chance to meet women like you and Suri. I… don’t even know how to describe to you the difference that five years of war made to me. It changed the way I think. It changed the way I feel. It changed the way I look at a room, at a road, at a stranger. You’re grown up now, but you’re not twenty-seven. You’re not even twenty-one. And some things you do in your life can change who you are, forever.”

“What makes you think I don’t know that!?” Her feelings were a tempest of emotion: need and anxiety and the terror of not being able to please me, that I might reject her, that the love we shared wasn’t real. Adolescent terrors. “You can’t tell me what I want, or how to want it!”

“I know what you want, but I also know you need one more level up. And you know why?”

Karalti pushed my hand away, glaring up at me with eyes like chips of violet obsidian. “Why?”

“Because you’re still coming to me about it like I’m your dad, and you’re the little girl trying to please him!” I gestured angrily at myself. “And you might know what you want… but what if I’m creeped out by that? What if I want to know that my partner is a mature, consenting adult? What if I want to make sure that you’re a grown up separate person before we go through this huge life-changing thing together? There’s a reason I didn’t fuck my way through the Army, okay?”

Karalti’s eyes reddened, the muscles of her face trembling in a way that was all too human.

“I love you.” I spoke softly, urgently. “Never, ever doubt it. Please.”

“Is it… is it because I’m not human?” The first tears welled up: pearly and glowing with a pale blue light, a light that could kill men who weren’t immune to the magic woven into her flesh and blood. “I-I can change this shape, you know. I can be bigger than this, I-”

“Tidbit, no. That’s got nothing to do with this.” I reached to her, trying to pull her into my arms, but she backed away. "It's a mental thing. It's-"

“What do I have to do?” Just like that, the grief turned to rage. She slashed her hand at me, teeth bared. “All you want me for is… is… flying! And fighting! Because I’m just your ‘mount, right?”

I sighed with exasperation. “Did you listen to anything I just said? Because you're just proving my point with every word right now.”

Her teeth flashed. “Why? Because I’m not more like Suri? Should I hit you like she did on the wall? Or should I be like Rutha and get myself-” 

“Do. Not.” Rage flashed through me like a bolt of lightning, and I took a step forward. 

“Or what?” The skin of Karalti’s face drew taut, as if she was trying to flatten the horns that were no longer there. She squared her shoulders and planted her feet.

“Or nothing.” I let the rage course up and down my limbs and drain through my feet, just like I’d had to do a hundred times in the parade ground when some screaming drill instructor got up in my face. “I won’t do anything to you. But you know what? Now you mention it, you could benefit from being a bit more like Suri.”

As I’d intended, those words hit her right in the pride. Her pupils contracted to points, then flared to the edge of her iris. I stared the dragon down as dancing dark light boiled between us. In human form, the supernatural gravity of Karalti’s charisma, her presence, was not lessened. At a glance, maybe – but my lizard brain still knew that I was staring down the barrel at a predator who could burst out of her human suit and turn into a monster the size of a train carriage. 

“Ever since Suri became a part of our life, she has handled our relationship – me and you – with grace, and patience, and care.” I spoke slowly, biting each word off at the end. “Not once has she ever resented you. She has never attacked you. She wishes you cared about her the way she cares for you.”

A rumbling, inhuman snarl rumbled up from deep in Karalti’s small chest.

“Just before we left for Myszno, we spoke about Rutha. And you know what she said?” I returned her predatory stare without blinking. “She asked me to tell Rutha that she had her back. That she’d fight for her. That she’d avenge her if she had the chance. That there was no way she could be jealous of what I’d shared with Rutha.”

“But she-!”

“Suri cares about you, while you attack her, put her down, and lash out at her like a selfish brat!” I mimicked her stance, straightening my shoulders and lowering my chin. “So yeah, you could be more like Suri, because she cares about how other people feel. And if anyone hurt you - if I hurt you - Suri would have their guts for breakfast.”

“She… she wouldn’t… I…” The tears welled up a second time: but this time, they had nothing to do with me. The guilt that washed over her was so intense that I reeled back as Karalti turned with a sob and fled down the hall away from me, scooping up the box containing the necklace on the way past. She was headed for our quarters to throw herself face down on the bed and cry her twin hearts out... just like a teenage girl.

The sound of her feet slapping the stone faded, and the fight drained out of me. I leaned back against the wall and rubbed my face. For the first time since I’d been digitized, I wished to hell that I had my motorcycle. A machine: a fast, sexy, uncomplicated thrill ride. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. So I’d have to do something else.

[Warning! You are Fatigued! 5% to skill -]

“SHUT THE FUCK UP! PIECE OF SHIT GAME!” I roared, storming in the opposite direction to my dragon: toward the courtyard and the Fort Hospital.