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Character: Suluksati
Stage: Feral Drakein
words: #12DE55
Lvl 40 with 20/40 exp
Luck:4
Current Luck exp: 2/3

Total= 22 LUK

Dragon:Kiandri

Success Rate: 6-100

Suluksati was on patrol and she could have sworn that Drakein hadn't been there the last time she had flown over this gathering of Kiandri (Keeping high up so as to be just another patch of cloud, maybe slightly green, in the sky)
She flew in for another pass, a bit lower this time. Yep, definitely a Drakein. She could even smell them on the warmed air currents. Kiandri. Female. Drakein. And full of adrenaline.
And... another pass on feather-quieted wings- tensing to strike!
Oh no! A dragon hunter!
Suluksati swooped in, hoping to startle the hunter away from the dragons.
"Stop! What are you doing!" she called, forgetting, for a moment, the trouble this had gotten her into before now. Dragons didn't take well to people shouting in their territory, especially annoying dragon-hunting carnivores like Drakein. But she liked announcing herself. It felt right that way.

It was just as obvious to Sulu why the other drakein should stop.
"Dragons are our kin!"she said quickly, circling into a more gentle glide to land next to Grrel. She hoped to change her mind. "They are beautiful creatures that deserve our respect" she landed, somewhat nervous by bolstered by her own sense of righteousness. That was her drug. "We shouldn't hunt them like..." she paused, unsure whether to be flattered or worried that someone had heard about her. "Ah..." she decided to be a little bit of both.
"Maybe it seems so to you now, fellow drakein, but" she puffed herself up in a way that she thought was heroic looking, "One day, maybe, it will not be so futile!" She was also deciding to be hopeful that, maybe, it was someone who thought like her but thought it was 'lame' and 'futile' to try to protect dragons. She always held out hope that she wasn't the only one who loved them, that maybe others lay hidden in despair, thinking they could not do anything. It hadn't actually happened yet, but Sulu could still hope!

Hope crushed, but that was nothing new. "It is not just like them!" she protested, trying to get between Grrel and the dragons, though she did look warily at the dragons.
"Stop!" she cried out, trying to charge at Grrel. "We're just leaving!" she said to the dragons, "Er, Don't mind us?" Maybe she could stop this before it got worse. Maybe she could resolve this peacefully.
But dragons were involved- notoriously unforgiving-, and other people were involved - notoriously un-understanding-. Her hopes were making one last, dying flutter. There would be death today, sadly, and she hoped it wouldn't come down to it not being her.
"Lets just..." And then a Kiandri dragon fired a lightning bolt at her and she knew everything had crumbled again.
She summoned a shield to block another strike from the dragons on Grrel and resigned herself to the fight.

Blocking the Kiandri Drakein's dive had not been her intent, but Suluksati found that she wasn't sorry at all. It always surprised her when dragons attacked her- her who loved them so- but several surprises and injuries later, she had had to learn to accept them for what they were. Fierce, beautiful, and intelligent creatures, that were very dangerous and did not like her.
She didn't have enough time to throw up a proper shield against the lighting bolt, instead trying to block it with her wings and deflect it, even a little. She could feel the sear of electricity flow through her body, and took it as a penance of some sort for her failure. Or her soon to be failure.
A dragon had taken the oppurtunity of her blocking to come in with a bite, and she batted it's face out of the way with her wings before diving in to fight. A lightning bolt, from the third dragon she realized, sizzled the ground beside her into glass as she fought it's fellow. She slashed it across the head and horns. She wasn't entirely attacking it, but was hoping it would think better of what it was doing and run. Far and fast.
But as it roared in fury and slashed her foreleg with a flailing claw, she knew that that hope, too, was gone.
"I'm sorry" she murmured, her voice thick with adrenaline as she bit down, hard, on it's vital neck, feeling its blood spill to the ground as it flailed, weaker and weaker, in her grip.

Suluksati fluffed up in anger, her feathers blotched red, though whether it was the hot blood of the dragon or her own that stained it, she wasn't sure.
Sulu gave an almost tired snarl in return. She faced a choice. Help the drakein, or help the dragon.
The dragon would turn on her. The drakein would probably turn on her as well, but...
Well... that fight didn't exactly go against her morals and feel like a she had eaten a thousand cacti. She called out something that rang with magic and healing light shimmered briefly around Grrel as she fought. Suluksati moved to help further, though she moved slowly and reluctantly. It was sad how dragons needed to die, even on her watch. She hated this, she hated how this Kiandri was, in her mind, betraying its own. She summoned a shield to deflect the dragon's claw attack. Her claws felt stained, her magic- at least- was not. It could just be used defensively. That was all she felt like doing now, as she watched the dragon be dispatched, feeling, as she did all too often, like her heart was breaking.

((928 words as of this post))

"Yes, they do... attack. Often." said Sulu reluctantly, shaking off her feathers- she would need to preen her feathers of blood and guilt afterwards, thoroughly. She wasn't sure why this drakein was so generous now. Why should they be? Her stance had not changed. In fact, she was angry at this drakein and angry at herself for this whole horrible mess. She took the orbs offered and placed them in her bag, saddened by the waste of life. At least... at least she could put them to use.
"That is their primal nature, their price for being so close to our world, for being the original beings created upon this world... They can't change what they are..." She knew they could be cruel and dangerous. Some were just mean and arrogant, and some were merely purposeful. They could not help it any more than she could help her need to protect them.
"But we are distant from that. We can choose to not attack. We can choose to be other than what we originally were"
Perhaps not for her, though. No matter what she saw around her, no matter how many corpses she saw in the wake of a dragon's raid, she could not stop loving them. She didn't know why.
"They don't want to be friends..." she admitted, "But... wanton hunting and killing... It's... Its just wrong." she said. She knew she might regret continuing her speech, but talking helped to return light to her dimmed and sad soul. Talking reminded her why she did what she did, why some dragons had to be fought for the sake of others, why she so often opposed her own kin.
"The twolegged peoples hunt us like animals, too. They steal our young for their own purposes, stunting them into... into pets! We are not like them, nor should we be, and that includes this... merciless... Bloodsport!" She felt her crest rise.
"Since you offer, I will not refuse these souls. I cannot allow their lives to be wasted. But I am not happy with how any of this turned out, and I will continue to spoil ambushes. Because I choose to do it. Because I have a choice."



(1300 words as of this post if I still need to count)