Chapter 12: The House at the edge of Town (12)
Gorchov’s voice rolled across the clearing like a stone dropped into water.
It rippled the air as it traveled, bending the dust and smoke in its wake, vibrating in Lena’s chest before it reached her ears.
“Well,” the voice said, layered and resonant, carrying more than one register at once, “not quite as fun when you’re the one getting grabbed like a toy, is it?”
The cocoon convulsed in the grip of the enormous hand, silk tightening and tearing in frantic waves.
Its many limbs flailed uselessly, striking against bone and scale with hollow, ineffectual impacts.
Lena’s body finally unlocked.
The pressure loosened just enough for her to suck in a full, shaking breath. Her hands fell from her ears. Her heart hammered so hard she was certain it would shake loose.
She swallowed.
And slowly, very carefully, she turned around.
The world behind her was no longer scaled for humans.
A dragon loomed there.
Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
A dragon.
It crouched in the clearing, its bulk blotting out what little sky remained visible, its presence compressing the air around it until the night itself seemed to bow.
Its body was massive, easily the length of the ruined building and then some, coiled with predatory intent, wings folded tight against its sides like restrained violence.
Its skin was tar-black, matte and light-absorbing, but that wasn’t what caught Lena’s eye.
The bones did.
Ivory-white plates jutted through the black hide at deliberate intervals, layered over muscle and sinew like grotesque armor.
A ribcage crowned its chest externally, arcing outward and locking back into the spine like the bars of a cathedral forged from skeletons.
Jagged vertebrae ran down its neck and tail, each one exaggerated, sharpened, as if evolution itself had been insulted and responded out of spite.
Its head was a nightmare of angles and teeth.
A skull-like structure framed its face, bone grown over flesh in a way that suggested the skull hadn’t been inside at some point, it had simply decided it belonged on the outside now.
Horns curved backward in asymmetrical arcs, one splintered and regrown, another branching into smaller prongs like a crown that had been broken and reforged poorly.
Its mouth hung open.
From between rows of serrated, uneven teeth dripped a thick, yellow-brown liquid that steamed faintly when it hit the ground.
It wasn’t saliva, not entirely.
It smelled metallic and sour, like old blood and something corrosive layered beneath it.
The liquid clung to the edges of its jaw, stretching in viscous strands before snapping free.
The dragon laughed.
The sound was seismic.
It boomed across the clearing, rolling over Lena in waves that rattled her bones and made the wreckage around them shiver in response.
Dust lifted off the ground in ripples.
And the laugh sounded familiar.
“Oh, don’t look so offended,” the dragon said, its massive head tilting slightly as it squeezed the cocoon tighter.
“You started it.”
The voice was his.
Gorchov’s.
Only now it was deeper, rougher, layered with echoes that didn’t come from distance but from scale.
Each word carried weight, pressure, authority, like language itself had been bullied into obedience.
Lena stared.
“…You,” she said faintly, then louder, “are never allowed to complain about being used as a blunt instrument again.”
The dragon’s eye, one of them, shifted toward her.
It was huge.
A molten amber slit set in a socket rimmed with bone, glowing faintly from within, like a furnace banked but never extinguished.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Gorchov’s voice said cheerfully.
“I was observing.”
He looked back down at the cocoon in his grip.
“Now,” he continued, tone dropping into something mock-serious, “let’s talk about manners.”
The cocoon writhed violently, silk tearing and reforming as it struggled.
Its massive arms clawed at the dragon’s hand, nails scraping against bone plates with sparks of friction that went absolutely nowhere.
Gorchov clicked his tongue.
“Tsk,” he said.
“Still trying. Admirable. Stupid, but admirable.”
He lifted the cocoon higher.
The ground beneath Lena vibrated as the dragon straightened slightly, bones shifting with thunderous cracks that sounded like tectonic plates adjusting their schedules.
The cocoon dangled helplessly now, its bulk compressed in the dragon’s grip, pressure collapsing inward as reality itself seemed to give up trying to argue.
“You know,” Gorchov said conversationally, “I was having a perfectly lovely evening before you decided to treat me like a chew toy.”
He shook the cocoon once.
Hard.
The silk rippled violently, embedded limbs snapping and tearing free, slapping wetly against the ground below.
“That was rude,” he added.
Then he slammed it.
The impact obliterated what remained of the living room’s foundation, driving the cocoon into the earth with a force that made Lena stumble despite herself. The ground cratered outward, dirt and debris erupting in a violent halo.
The dragon lifted the cocoon again.
And slammed it again.
“And this,” Gorchov said, voice ringing with theatrical indignation, “is what we call irony.”
Another slam.
The cocoon’s struggles slowed noticeably now, its movements jerky and uncoordinated, silk tearing faster than it could repair.
Lena stood there, bloodied, bruised, exhausted, and utterly dumbfounded.
She watched the dragon rag-doll the thing with the same casual brutality it had inflicted on him minutes earlier, except now the power imbalance was so extreme it bordered on slapstick.
“You,” she said weakly, gesturing at the scene, “are being petty.”
The dragon laughed again, a booming, echoing sound that rattled the trees.
“Petty?” Gorchov repeated.
“Lena, it tried to absorb me.”
He lifted the cocoon by one of its massive arms this time, holding it up like a disappointing exhibit.
“Do you have any idea who I am?”
The cocoon twitched.
“Allow me to clarify,” Gorchov said grandly.
He reared back slightly, wings unfurling just enough to blot out the moon completely, bone spurs along their edges catching the light like knives.
“I am the Great Dragon Emperor,” he intoned, voice resonating with something old and vast.
“The Bone-Clad God. The Sovereign of Marrow.”
He leaned forward, bringing his skull-framed face inches from the cocoon, amber eye blazing.
“And you,” he finished, squeezing just enough to make the silk scream, “do not get to treat me like a stress ball.”
He shook the cocoon again, then hurled it into the ground with a final, contemptuous slam that sent shockwaves rippling through the clearing.
Silence followed.
Lena stared up at him, mouth open, brain struggling to catch up.
“…You’re enjoying this,” she said flatly.
The dragon tilted his head, liquid dripping from his jaws in slow, steaming strands.
“A little,” Gorchov admitted.
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“You turned into a god-dragon and immediately started monologuing.”
“I had authorization,” he said defensively.
She looked back at the battered, twitching cocoon, then at the towering, bone-armored dragon looming over it, then back at him.
“…You’re such an idiot,” she said.
Gorchov’s laughter boomed again, echoing across the ruined clearing as he lifted one clawed foot and brought it down, carefully, deliberately, pinning the entity in place like a particularly unruly insect.
“Perhaps,” he said smugly.
And the cocoon did not move again.
***
“GORCHOV!”
Lena’s voice cut through the clearing like a snapped cable.
She was standing ankle-deep in churned dirt and debris, blood drying stiff on her clothes, ears still ringing from everything that had happened in the last few minutes.
She jabbed a finger upward at the towering bone-clad dragon, who was still looming over the battered cocoon with the air of someone savoring the last page of a book.
“We are done,” she yelled. “Wrap it up. We need to get moving now.”
The dragon turned his skull-framed head toward her slowly.
The movement alone made the ground tremble.
Bone plates slid over one another with deep, grinding sounds, like glaciers shifting their weight. His massive chest rose and fell once, deliberately.
A groan rolled out of him.
It wasn’t loud in the way a roar was loud, it was deep. A resonant, irritated sound that traveled through the earth rather than the air, rattling loose stones and making the remains of the house settle another inch.
“Fiiiiiine,” Gorchov rumbled, dragging the word out until it became a vibration more than speech. “You’re no fun anymore.”
Lena crossed her arms. “I was never fun. You just enjoy pretending I am.”
He huffed, a small cloud of yellow-brown vapor leaking from between his teeth and drifting lazily upward.
It smelled sharp and metallic, with an undertone that made the back of Lena’s throat itch.
The cocoon twitched weakly in his grip.
Gorchov looked down at it with something like disappointment.
“Honestly,” he said, lifting the mass slightly, “you put up a decent struggle. Credit where credit is due.”
The entity responded with a feeble convulsion, silk tightening reflexively as if it understood what was coming and desperately wanted to disagree with it.
Gorchov raised his hand.
The same massive, bone-sheathed hand that had plucked the cocoon from the earth now drew it upward, closer to his skull-like jaws.
The black silk dragged against ivory claws, strands snapping and recoiling. As it rose, the yellow-brown liquid dripping from Gorchov’s mouth splashed onto the cocoon’s surface.
The reaction was immediate.
The silk sizzled.
Not audibly, not quite, but visually.
The fibers recoiled from the contact, rippling violently as if burned by something far more conceptual than chemical.
The cocoon squirmed harder now, embedded limbs jerking and flailing in renewed panic.
“Ah,” Gorchov said mildly. “There it is.”
Lena took an involuntary step back.
“Just, do it,” she snapped. “Before it decides to pull something else out of reality.”
He inclined his massive head in acknowledgment.
Then his mouth opened wider.
Far wider than it had any right to.
The jaw unhinged in stages, bone plates sliding apart with smooth, practiced precision. Rows of teeth parted to reveal a cavern of darkness within, depth obscured by a faint internal glow that pulsed in time with his breath.
Something slid over his eyes.
A translucent, bone-thin membrane swept down from beneath the ridges of his skull, sealing his glowing amber pupils behind a protective layer that dulled their light to a muted gold. The motion was smooth, automatic, reflexive.
Gorchov inhaled.
The air moved.
Lena felt it instantly, a sudden, violent pull toward him, like gravity had leaned sharply in one direction.
Dust, ash, and loose debris skidded across the ground toward the dragon, swirling up in tight spirals. The pressure built against her chest, yanking at her jacket, her hair, the very air in her lungs.
“Oh, nope,” she grunted, planting her boots hard into the dirt.
She leaned forward, muscles screaming as she fought the pull. The ground beneath her feet cracked, pebbles and clods of earth lifting and sliding toward the dragon’s maw. She reached down and grabbed onto a jagged chunk of broken foundation, fingers digging in as she held her ground by sheer stubbornness.
“Warn me next time!” she shouted.
Gorchov did not respond.
He was still inhaling.
The cocoon strained violently now, silk stretched taut as the suction pulled at its mass, dragging it closer to his mouth inch by inch.
Embedded limbs flailed uselessly, some tearing free and vanishing into the darkness between his teeth.
The yellow-brown liquid dripping from his jaws thickened, running in slow, viscous streams that pooled briefly at the corners of his mouth before being drawn inward by the same inexorable pull.
Then he exhaled.
The breath came out in a heavy, rolling plume.
At first, it was thick and unmistakably colored, a dense yellow-brown gas that poured from his mouth in a continuous stream, clinging to itself as it flowed. It moved with weight and intention, not dispersing like smoke but pressing forward like a living thing.
It washed over the cocoon.
The entity screamed.
The sound tore out of it in a distorted, multilayered howl that bent the air and made Lena’s teeth ache.
The silk writhed violently, surface bubbling and collapsing as the gas enveloped it. Embedded limbs spasmed, clawing at nothing, fingers curling and uncurling in frantic, disorganized patterns.
The gas kept coming.
Gorchov’s chest contracted steadily as he exhaled, the plume unbroken, relentless.
The yellow-brown cloud churned and roiled around the cocoon, seeping into every fold of silk, every impossible seam.
Where it touched, the silk failed.
Not burned.
Unmade.
It softened, slackened, lost cohesion, fibers unraveling into nothingness, vanishing without residue.
The cocoon’s struggles grew weaker, movements slowing as its form began to sag in his grip.
Lena watched, breath held, skin prickling with the pressure of it all. Even as the gas spread outward, thinning at the edges, she could still feel it, a crushing presence pressing against her senses, heavy and absolute.
Gradually, the color began to fade.
The yellow-brown hue thinned first, washing out into a pale, sickly yellow.
Then that too drained away, leaving behind a plume that was almost clear, barely visible except for the way it distorted the air around it, bending light and compressing space.
The pressure did not lessen.
If anything, it intensified.
The now-colorless breath continued to pour from Gorchov’s mouth, invisible but palpable, like a solid force slamming into the cocoon again and again.
The entity’s screams dwindled into broken, ragged vibrations, then into nothing at all.
The last convulsion passed through it, a weak twitch of silk, a final, futile grasp of one embedded limb.
Then it went still.
Gorchov’s exhale tapered off slowly, the invisible pressure receding like a tide pulling back from shore.
The membrane slid away from his eyes with a soft, almost polite sound, revealing the full, molten glow of his gaze once more.
He closed his mouth.
The clearing was silent.
Dust drifted lazily back to the ground. Lena released her grip on the foundation chunk and straightened, chest heaving as she sucked in a full breath.
Gorchov looked down at his hand.
The cocoon hung there, limp.
No movement.
No resistance.
Just dead weight in his grasp.
