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Lithian blinked, watching Vyren’s reactions with open surprise. Never before had the vibrant, forward young man seemed so — well — shy somehow. Or embarrassed. Lithian was used to tripping over his words, but in his limited experience with Vyren, the firani seemed more than capable of holding his ground in a conversation, his presence and presentation confident and animated. Forceful, even, to some extent.

When he moved back towards the river’s edge, though, Lithian followed and smiled. Strange as the other’s sudden abashment was, it did put him a little more at ease to know the other wasn’t always as put together as he put on and that, perhaps, Lithian wasn’t completely alone in moments of awkwardness. As Vyren steam-dried himself, Lithian chuckled lightly, remembering watching both of his firani siblings perform the same trick when they’d been younger and still gone swimming together. He followed suit drying himself, lifting his palms out before him, facing down and plucking at the air with his fingertips to draw at the water in his hair, siphoning it off and funneling it out into a small, growing sphere of liquid. When his hair was back to its loose, dry state down his back, he guided the water around and back, dropping it with a soft plunk into the river before starting in on drying his pants.

“I’m fine with anything,” Lithian said, in belated answer to Vyren’s inquiry. “Were there any other plant varieties you wanted samples of, or…?” He crouched down, fetching his shirt and vest, and moving to shrug them on. He froze, though, mid-motion, at an unexpected rustling from the downstream. When a great, glinting blue, armor-scaled head emerged from the distant tree line, heading for the river’s edge, Lithian felt his muscles bunch with wary tension. “Vyren…I think we best move, slowly, back downstream. Now. Or we’ll soon have more company than we bargained for…”

Standing as quietly as he could manage, Lithian’s fingers moved instinctively to unstopper the flasks at his waist. Nominally, with an ample supply of his element directly at his side, he wouldn’t need the flasks, but the motion came without even a pinch of thought. Before he could so much as start to move as he’d suggested though, another glinting blue blot, showed up over the treeline, flying down from above on a direct course for the river.

Lithian murmured a curse beneath his breath, and hoped Vyren was ready for a crash course in battling peisio magic.

“I have…” Lithian said, his voice eerily calm in his distraction — attention near entirely focused on the approaching peisios, not the nerves of his companion — and privately, he agreed with the other statement as well. Nowhere to run. Fortunately, he no longer had any intention of running.

As Vyren’s first fireball careened into the nearest dragon, the beast’s roar echoed over the rivertop, sending a ripple in its wake, drawing the full attention of all those in the immediate vicinity and pinpointing them as primary targets for attack. Lithian breathed out, stepped forward, and sank his stance low to root it. Not a moment later, the singed peisio opened its maw wide, and plunged, a tubular barrel of liquid erupting from its throat like a waterspout, alive with magical energy.

Lithian rocked his stance. He lifted his palms, then curved them under, and around, catching the peisio’s attack like a weighted ball on a string and redirecting it, pulling it back around in a half-loop behind him, careful not to send it crashing into Vyren in its path. On the switchback, he yanked, and released, sending the full force of it bashing into the peisio’s body like a battering ram to knock its next attack off course. The peisio screeched, tumbling sidelong under the water’s force, but quickly regained its balance over the river, snarling as it rose up and spread its wings wide.

Lithian pinched his fingers, focussing his magic’s energy on the river itself, and drew one hand in and back, the other palm stretched out flat like holding a sheath in place as he a long blade. The river responded in turn, a narrow funnel of liquid twisting upwards like a bewitched snaked. When the peisio dove for him, Lithian darted back, stumbling across the wet riverbank as its claws sank into the mud, but hastily yanking his stream around, guiding, and pushing it into the creature’s open maw.

Push, pull, push.

Lithian forced himself to hold ground, guiding ever more water down the dragon’s throat like a funnel despite its flailing. When its wings began to quiver, talons scrabbling at the riverbank and eyes going wide in momentary panic, Lithian winced and balled his hands into two fists directly in front of him. When he had a strong grip on the water buried inside the beast’s lungs, he yanked, snapping his fists wide to either side of him, and drawing the water out in two separate directions accordingly, hard enough to burst the dragon’s internal organs, which resulted in little more than a garbled cry before the peisio burst into dust.

Lithian cringed, shoulders bunched up in the aftermath as a shudder through him. He never felt completely comfortable going through that process, despite knowing it was for his own — and in this case Vyren’s — safety. So much pain. It made him grateful, though, that dragons burst to dust instead of splattering blood red into broken organs and snapped rib cages.

For the moment, though, there was no time to dwell on it since, by the looks of things, they now had four more peisio to grapple with. Releasing his breath in a quick, resigned huff, Lithian stepped up beside his companion, his eyes pinned on their attackers with rigid focus.

“Next one’s all yours?”

Lithian grit his teeth and breathed out.

‘Focus.’

Sinking his stance, he drew his hands out, palms open before him, finding the pulse of the peisio’s magic, and then he rocked, pulling the blast focused on Vyren sharply off course and around in a great arc. Then, gripping and yanking, he barrelled the water directly into the peisio itself like a battering ram, sending it crashing sidelong and into the earth. At the its outcry, Lithian to a spare second to examine Vyren. Battered down. Tired. Out of his element. Pursing his lips, Lithian moved closer to the river’s edge.

Unwittingly, he switched to draconic. The language of the dragons, and a root form of the language passed down by the dovaa god to everyone born into their bloodline. «Do you want to play a game?» he taunted. «Let’s play: How many of you does it take to kill one of me?»

That got their attention.

In the span of seconds, Lithian had the focus of all four remaining dragons on him. Ignoring the quick stutter to his pulse, he centered his focus, lifted one hand out before him in defensive readiness, and drew a breath. When the first dove for him, he stepped sidelong, sweeping his hands with him to pull up a thick train of water in a loop behind and then around him, eventually smashing it into the dragon as it came full circle and knocking it off course. The second roared, sending a pillar of water directly for him, but Lithian raised his palms and locked his magic, deflecting the attack into a watery sphere around him, as though instead of air, it had hit an invisible shield.

«Insect!» one of the dragon’s snarled. «You are prey!»

With the accusation came another pillar of water and this time, letting his shield drop, Lith caught the pulse, and shoved, driving it back hard as his body and magic could manage to force the liquid down the peisio’s throat. As it gargled and flailed, Lithian plucked at the river, drawing up what looked almost like a mist at first before sending it coiling over the full surface of the dragon’s skin like a watery glove and building on its weight. The dragon toppled out of the air, fighting the combined forces of betrayal from the element it knew best, but soon, its struggles stilled, body dissipating into nothing but its soul.

Lithian battered two of the others, holding them off and grinding them down slowly, bashing them into the trees and earth until they joined their brethren, dissipating to dust and leaving only one. Heavily drained by that point, both in terms of his magic and his physical state, Lithian stepped over closer to Vyren, his stance protective — still facing the other dragon with his back to the firani — but also concerned. He wanted to check over the other’s injuries, see if the peisios had damaged anything vital, broken bones, or simply left heavy bruises. He had not fought so many dragons at once for quite some time, though, and even then, the last time he’d fought a full swarm, he had had Casseth at his back. He was thankful they were only peisios.

«How are you feeling, insect?» the last dragon asked, hovering over the river and eyeing the pair of them with a curious tilt of its head, as though trying to decide which of them to devour first. «Are you impressed with yourself for having taken out all of my weakest siblings? Because you are looking so very tired…and delicious.»

«Am I?» Lithian responded, breathless. «Well, it seems I’ve done a good job of fooling you, then, because I am sure I taste very bitter and stringy, I assure you. All long, brittle bones, very little real meat to work with, and all of it strung together by just a bit of sinewy muscle. Almost no nutritional value overall. And my hair! Can you imagine trying to digest my hair? I’m sure at least some of it would get all knotted up and stuck in your teeth, and then you don’t even want to think about it coming out the other end in long—»

«Quiet!»

«I can’t imagine it would be comfortable,» Lithian continued, ignoring the interruption entirely. «Not to mention—»

«I said, quiet!» the dragon roared, beating its wings irritably and looking as though it were prepping to dive.

«—I’m just getting started,» Lithian finished, and darted forward in a flat run, directly towards the peisio.

After another startled beat of its wings, the dragon snarled, and spat, sending a pulsing stream of water straight at him. Lithian raised his fists and then in single, swift jerk, snapped his arms out to his sides, fingers splayed and magic yanking at his physical form. As the water careened into him, Lithian dissipated, melding into the stream, becoming part of the water itself, and driving back towards the dragon. The peisio gave a startled squawk as he rippled around it, spreading himself in a thin, rippling layer all about it and disrupting its flight pattern. Together, they fell into the river, and Lithian spread his influence further, making himself the current and manipulating it continue to yank the dragon down and under and bash it against every rock in the river. The peisio was stronger than its siblings, as promised, and Lithian felt it fighting the pull of his magic, attempting to negate or reverse it, but Lithian exerted his will, determined, and fought every yank that the dragon gave.

They tumbled down the river for what felt like hours, but couldn’t have been over a minute, before finally, a last great bash against a particularly large boulder snapped the beast’s neck, and Lithian felt its power peter out and die like a dying current. With it, he too relinquished his hold, and returned, water-logged, and exhausted to the shore in front of where Vyren waited as he took back on his physical form. After crawling several paces in, he allowed himself to collapse on the muddy bank, not caring a whit about his clothes at this point — he could always wash them later — and rolling onto his back to shut his eyes and savor the warmth of the sun.

“Well,” he said at length, “that was a refreshing warm up exercise, wouldn’t you say?”

Moments after saying it, though, Lithian’s brow pinched as he remembered that he never had gotten to check over his companion’s potential wounds, and Vyren might well have been hurt far worse than he thought. That in mind, Lith forced himself up to a stand and moved over.

“How hard did it get you? Is anything cut? And where does it hurt worst…?” He reached out as he spoke, completely disregarding personal boundaries as his mind shifted over into ‘healer mode’ and demanded he inspect in person. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it off of you sooner. I should have been watching more carefully…fortunately, though, it doesn’t look as though you have any fractured ribs or broken bones, and hopefully there’s no internal bleeding, though you’ll certainly be dealing with an impressive bruise here shortly…” Ushering aside the tattered parts of clothing as he spoke, Lithian brushed his fingers over Vyren’s stomach, ribs, and then upper torso and neck, his touch faintly aglow with magic as he searched for any underlying damage. “I can reduce some of the swelling and pain, and make it a bit less sensitive, though you’ll probably still get—”

Lithian froze, his fingers coming to a dead stop on Vyren’s skin and breath stuttering to a standstill in his throat.

Vyren was kissing him.

His lashes flit to half-mast, a quarter inch above his cheeks, but hovered there, like a small bird uncertain how to land, and his pulse hammered against his ribcage. Vyren was kissing him, and Lithian forgot, briefly, how to breathe. He parted his lips with the intention of posing a question, but instead of words, only a soft whine of a sound made it out, and heat crawled up his neck, into his face and out to the tips of his ears in a blush that felt as though it wanted to dominate every inch of skin from his collarbone up.

“Vyren…” ‘I’ve never been kissed before.’ ‘Is this…allowed?’ ‘Does this mean you’ll want to see me again?’ A small library of thoughts and questions battered Lithian. When he tried to speak, though, everything else seemed to drown under the fact that Vyren’s lips were gentle and hot against his own in a way that made Lith embarrassingly tempted rock his hips forward. Arch. Press himself closer somehow and lose himself in that heat.

He bunched his fingers instead, clinging to Vyren’s clothes and shivering wordlessly into the kiss. When it broke, his lashes flit upwards, attention darting everywhere on Vyren’s face at once but continuing to gravitate back to his mouth.

“Ah…that…that…” Swallowing, Lithian nodded, blush burning all the brighter. “Alright. We can do that…again…anytime you want. That was…” Eyes rooted on Vyren’s lips, Lithian breathed out. “I can kiss you?”

“Mm…mhm.” Lithian nodded, and then shook his head. “I—yes, that is, no, it was fine. I just…I’d never…” He drew a breath, glancing back to Vyren’s face and flushing before averting his eyes. “I quite liked it,” he admitted quietly. “I should, ah…I should finish, though…healing you, that is.”

In a brief spurt of boldness, Lithian leaned back in for a quick, testing kiss — as though afraid, despite all, that it was a fluke, or a trick to tease him and that Vyren would pull away and laugh when he tried. When he didn’t, though, Lithian felt a larger rush of relief than he expected, and he smiled. Then, he got to work.

Pushing his magic into Vyren’s remaining bruises, he worked until a majority of the damage was repaired. Many questions danced through his head as he went. Did this mean Vyren was ‘courting’ him, after so little time? Or simply interested in quick entertainment? Was it something he ought to speak to anyone of, or keep beneath the radar, and enjoy his time with Vyren in private?

Given how he had heard nothing of such interests before experiencing them himself, something told Lithian that even if what they were doing was not strictly ‘wrong’ some would still disapprove, and it ought not be immediately made public. Besides, he wasn’t sure at all whether Vyren was keen on pursuing a romance, or simply a more physical and experimental friendship.

Lithian’s eartips burned at the thought, a mixture of guilt, curiosity, and uncertainty plaguing him, but he didn’t dare voice all his questions for fear of driving Vyren away. Whatever it was the firani was willing to try with him, he wanted to be a part of it, and though he had quite literally zero experience in any variety of what ‘it’ might be, he wanted to learn.

“Perhaps we ought to head back…?”

Lithian blinked and flushed. “Forever,” he said, “is a long time. I was only doing what I needed to — I hardly see how you’re in debt to me, but…” After a moment, he nodded. “Yes, I think this has been more than enough of an adventure so far. Though we didn’t precisely set out to battle dragons, so, if things happened along the path they have been going, I don’t suppose it’s up to me, is it?”

He watched Vyren as they walked, eyes flicking over him curiously and taking in details. His mind, meanwhile, was tripping over itself — questions, curiosities, confusion, musings — and he didn’t know where to begin. Eventually, though, unable to resist, he opened his mouth again.

“I’d…never kissed anyone—or, well, been kissed by anyone…either…really, before that point. It…wasn’t that long ago that I was very afraid…” He eyed Vyren, debating his words before continuing. “I was afraid that there wasn’t anyone who…anyone like me in that…” His face heated, and he cleared his throat as he shook his head. “That is, it was probably fairly silly, anyway. Did you get all the herbs you needed gathered?”