Cleaning the lake

Lamor adjusted the familiar weight of the energy rifle on his back and the enchanted dagger on his belt. The lake had been cleansed by local kelpies — and thank goodness he wouldn’t have to deal with chaos-pollution mutations anymore — but the waters of Nyr had become unnaturally still and quiet. No fish splashed, no birds dove for prey or even sang. Tension tightened the air, as if the pressure of the depths had risen to the surface. “Why hang around here,” Lamor muttered indistinctly into the mouthpiece of the breathing tube attached to his diving mask. Taking one last look at the deserted shore, where even the young no longer strolled in the fresh air, he folded his wings tightly and plunged into the depths, his dark-furred body slicing the surface into spray. His fur fluffed up in the sudden coolness of the water, bubbles thundered from his entry, and then silence returned — but now it was filled with the hum of water pressing against his ears. With powerful strokes, Lamor descended into the darkness, which quickly clarified as his pupils behind the mask’s glass widened from slits to full circles. Fish were there — entire silver schools, scattering in all directions — and seaweed swayed like long grass in the currents instead of wind. But the deeper he went, the darker it became and the less movement there was. The silhouettes of an ancient city’s ruins emerged, where even draconic vision couldn’t distinguish between wild bas-reliefs, grotesque statues of insectoids, and strange broken-off parts of structures. “Where are you hiding?” Lamor thought of the nav, impatiently gripping the hilt of the dagger Yarina had charged—supposedly with Order energy, to better strike a creature of opposite vibrations. It was hard to keep his wings folded; they kept twitching, nervous from the tense silence—the kind that clearly promised an imminent storm. Lamor sank deeper into the oppressive thickness of the lake, deliberately heading in the direction where all his senses screamed of an ancient, hungry horror watching from the darkness… Could such alien creatures even be harmed by energy from a rifle? His muscular paws, aided by flippers, propelled him swiftly and gracefully along the bottom. Water resisted differently than air did during fast flight — softer, denser, strangely more intimate. Skirting moss-covered columns, Lamor felt the flowing currents and subtle pressure shifts across his entire hide. For a fleeting moment, he almost forgot his mission, lost in the sensation of his own predatory flexibility. As if he were made not only to soar in the skies… He imagined himself circling in deep-sea trenches, surrounded by glowing fish like stars… “Blub,” the dragon exhaled air through the tube clenched in his teeth. The sound and the rubbery taste in his mouth jerked him back to reality: his lung capacity was limited, and he had urgent business here. Memories flashed of dragoness he saw writhing from electrical discharges. Exhaling an involuntary stream of angry bubbles that surged upward, Lamor bit down on the mouthpiece: “Focus. You can fantasize later.” He pushed himself deeper with his flippers, where sunlight from the surface brought only a gloomy greenish glow, and apart from his own occasional bubbles and the hum of currents against his ears, there were no sounds. Hanging beneath the skeletal arches of a gallery overgrown with lake grass, Lamor surveyed the motionless depths. No tentacles or other cosmic horrors — just the cool lake and abandoned ruins. His tail flicked irritably, stirring up silt from the bottom, and the dragon thought, “So what am I doing here? The nav must have holed up in the cellars or caves! And was it worth risking myself for this? I’m just as scared as the nav…” But then something moved in the depths — not alive, but even opposed to life. Lamor craned his neck downward, claws digging into the soft mossy coating on a column. His eyes narrowed, peering through wide pupils into the murk. Under an overhang, half-buried in sediment, lay bleached bones — countless in number and far larger than fish bones, of animal anatomy. A shattered ribcage the size of a wagon, scattered knuckle and wing bones like pebbles, the elongated, predatory skull of a giant dragon, and covering it all, remnants of green, scaly hide that hadn’t rotted away. Lamor blinked behind the mask, which fogged for a second from his restrained exhale: “We don’t have sharks here.” The water seemed to turn sharply colder, and the silence grew denser; even the water’s hum faded. “A worthy opponent?” His claws had only just touched the cold, porous-mottled surface of the massive skull when the world exploded into motion. A thick, flexible tentacle, green and studded with suckers, erupted from the concealing silt, wrapping around Lamor's wrist with incredible force and speed. — GRBLABL! — A vicious, shocked roar was swallowed by the water and his mask, emerging only as a choked explosion of bubbles. The dagger flashed, cutting through the water where the nav's limb had just been. But the tentacle had already vanished back into the murky clouds of silt and seaweed faster than the eye could follow, leaving only a throbbing ache in the wrenched paw and clouds of disturbed muck. Adrenaline hit his bloodstream, hot and sharp. With his left, trembling hand, Lamor furiously snatched his energy gun, sweeping its muzzle in a semi-circle around him, peering into the swaying kelp and the shadows of the pillars. "And where are you, coward? Show yourself!" Silence again. A complete, suffocating silence, broken only by the desperate thumping of his own heart echoing deep in his ears and the quiet gurgle of bubbles escaping his mask. Lamor cut his exhale short, stifling himself to not lose the remaining oxygen too quickly. The air was limited, and that knowledge chilled him more than the deep's coolness. Pride wrestled with common sense: Lamor had been trained to hold his breath for a long time back on his home island, but a long time is not forever… and certainly not while fighting. Lamor turned himself with a wingbeat, lowering the dagger and readying to strike, his tail instinctively coiling into a spiral. His dark fur camouflaged his outline in the shadows of the ruins, but did the nav rely on sight? His lungs began their familiar, demanding countdown. Five minutes Lamor could confidently manage, even six, and if needed—ten. And the nauvian would pay for every second. Lamor's purple eyes even seemed to glow faintly, scanning the darkness — danger could lurk behind any swaying frond of seaweed and in any rising puff of sand. The dragon bared his teeth at the corners of his mouth in silent aggression: "Come on then, come out, I'm ready!" Cornered, Lamor fought better, or so he believed. But the nav's next strike was against the bulky gun, knocking it from his paw and sending it spinning into the thicket. Immediately, a tentacle shot for his throat. Lamor managed to intercept it, gripping it with his now-free hand. The appendage, slippery even with the ridged suckers, writhed like an eel; its cold tip, tickling a sensitive spot between his fingers, sent an involuntary shudder up his arm. Another tentacle appeared from behind, sliding over the veins beneath the fur on his neck, and coiled around the breathing tube, mockingly toying with the escaping bubbles. "Let go!" Lamor screamed in his mind, thrashing furiously, trying to break free from the grip that had now entangled his tail. In response came a more alien thought: "You served us, and now you come here to kill me?" A treacher was not let go. Now there was a vacuum in his lungs, and the itch of the emptying organs sharpened into an acute, burning demand. The rubber of the mask felt like a suffocating gag. Lamor instinctively bit down on it, trying to roar or breathe better, but the filter on the tube wouldn't let water through — a blessing, though the taste and smell of plastic in his mouth brought no relief. "Can't… take it off…" Lamor thought desperately and inappropriately, clenching his jaw in the natural fear of swallowing water, "I'll surface yet…" Arching back, raising the dagger to strike the knot of tentacles, Lamor opened up and almost presented his slightly lighter belly. A bad move… Before the blade, gleaming in the gloom, could strike, a fourth tentacle slithered out, wrapping around his right arm. With cruel efficiency, it found a spot at the base of his palm and slid across it. A sharp, electrifying sensation — not painful, but unbearably ticklish — shot through the dragon's limb. His fingers spasmed open, and the dagger dropped into the darkness of the lakebed. — Gkk! — a choked sigh escaped, forced out of the shocked Lamor by unbearable, tickling pressure. His sunken stomach trembled noticeably, his chest was utterly empty, his nostrils flared wide, desperately trying to draw in the absent oxygen from the mask. Spots danced at the edges of his vision. And then another tentacle gently and tauntingly trailed along his ribs, tracing the border between his chest and abdomen — not even bothering to constrict, just studying his reactions and mocking him. It moved with graceful slowness along the sensitive midline towards his navel and the base of his tail, where the fur was softer and the skin more responsive. Every nerve in his body screamed at the alien touch. His pride was assaulted by suffocating panic and that strange, unnatural sensuality. Inside Lamor's head, thoughts pressed in that could have been from the Nava's influence, or could have been his own: "Trapped. Disarmed. Out of air. And... violated." A burning heat of carbon dioxide beat in his lungs, more shimmering spots appeared in his vision, resembling the rainbow distortions of the nav. Holding his breath any longer wasn't an option; continuing like this only delayed the countdown to drowning. Lamor's violet eyes, wide with fury and burgeoning horror, looked through the fogged-up mask at the silver bracelet: "I didn't want to, but I'll have to use the last resort, you freak!" The bracer fastened to his left arm was not only an unpredictable artifact in itself; practically everyone and their mother was hunting for it. But in a hopeless situation, it remained his only salvation. Clenching his teeth nearly hard enough to bite through the mouthpiece from the burning in his chest and the persistent caresses of the tentacle at the base of his tail, Lamor made a desperate but conscious lunge, slapping his right palm against the bracer, almost scratching it with his trembling claws. "If I die," the thought burned in the suffocating darkness, "I'm taking you with me, you slug!" The water grew so cold so abruptly that Lamor lost his vision for a second. Around the dragon, with a grinding sound, bloomed a spiny hedgehog of icy branches, resembling three-dimensional frost patterns. The tentacles were torn into uneven shreds, which first oozed a greasy, iridescent fluid like gasoline, then crystallized into dark, sharp pebbles reminiscent of shards of black ice, scattering in all directions along with the white shards. The water changed: it became denser, thicker, and within it, something emerged from the bracer — not a creature, but merely a presence, invisible and intangible, yet existing, observing, and waiting. A warm stream slid down Lamor's spine and ran lower, to the base of his tail, to the slit and the flesh protruding from it. But in this touch, unlike the nav's molestations, there was no violence. Only... curiosity? Playfulness? An unseen force grasped the base of his tail, squeezed gently and tenderly — then immediately let go. A tingling shot through his groin, struck his thighs, his stomach, and Lamor jerked, releasing a stream of bubbles from his breathing pipe. His lungs tightened, his diaphragm spasmed, and his body, treacherously aroused, yielded to the touch. "It's playing with me too..." The presence did not show itself, did not materialize, only touched — here and there, gliding over his hide, his feathers, his stomach, the inside of his thighs. Each touch left behind heat, tingling, and numbness. Oxygen was draining, the world was blurring, and the line between fear and arousal melted away with every second. And suddenly, the touches ceased, replaced by a heavy, oppressive silence. The touches vanished, but their trace remained — beneath his hide, in his groin, in every screaming nerve ending. Lamor hung suspended in the water's depths, helpless and trembling, frozen without stimulation and without oxygen in the underwater ruins, from which he had to escape despite his condition. His lungs were burning. The mask was still suctioned to his face, and every exhale meant losing precious volume. His head spun, purple spots swam before his eyes — traces of the magic of the Bracer or signs of hypoxia, he could no longer tell. — Hrr... ngh... — air whistled out of his lungs, bubbles rising toward the shattered ceiling of the flooded temple, taking his chances of survival with them. Panic began to rise in his throat but immediately transformed into something dark and hot. His penis, stirred by the touches and the erotic asphyxiation, pulsed, and every heartbeat echoed in his groin with a wave of sweet agony. He needed to get out, needed to swim upward, through the building debris and algae thickets toward the surface. But his body wanted something else. Lamor pushed off from a column, trying to orient himself. The exit was somewhere above, through that hole he had swum into. He made one sweeping kick with his flippers and almost moaned: the movement of water between his legs felt like a caress, like a continuation of those phantom touches. — Mm-mrbl... ff... hh... — he bit down on the mouthpiece, trying to stifle a groan. He was only about fifteen meters from the surface. If he didn't lose consciousness. If his body didn't betray him completely. His lungs began to burn, every exhale without an inhale brought the darkness closer, his hands shook, his coordination was impaired, and in his head, the desire to survive and the simple, raw desire pulsed in one rhythm. The end of stimulation hadn't lessened the intensity; his body was still on the edge, any movement provoking a wave of arousal. He rose above the algae thickets, fixing his hungry gaze on the blue-green rays from the surface. The light from above was weak, murky, piercing the water's depths as if through dirty glass. But it was salvation from the entire underwater nightmare. Lamor strained toward it, kicking with his flippers, each stroke echoing with a dull ache in his sides and heat between his legs. The dome's beams rushed past — rusty, bent, and encrusted with growths of freshwater sponges. One was broken in half, a sharp edge jutting directly into his path. He dodged, noticing the obstacle too late, and his shoulder scraped against the metal. The pain was distant, muffled by water and adrenaline. A thin, dark stream of blood trailed behind him. His lungs were constricting. Oxygen was still there — residual, trapped in his alveoli — but carbon dioxide was accumulating, poisoning his blood. His body grew heavy. His arms felt like lead. The mask was fogging from the inside, and the dragon could see almost nothing but a blurred blue-green patch ahead. And still, his penis pulsed in time with his heart, refusing to let him forget. The water pressed on his ears with a muffled, pulsating, ringing silence, but now it wasn't the silence of nothingness — it was the anticipation of a scream. Every upward stroke was a struggle, as if Lamor were rising from the bottom of Tartarus itself, not just a lake. His claws scratched at the water, his flippers kicked, his wings cut through the murk, turning the dark green into swirling vortices. Finally, the wavering veil above his head broke. He burst to the surface with a loud, deafening splash, akin to an explosion. His first breath was a sharp, rasping sound—a mixed growl and a convulsive gasp. Lamor flew out of the water almost a quarter of his wingspan upward, slapping back down heavily onto the surface, and immediately began swimming toward the shore, driving with powerful legs like an animal fighting for its life. Having crawled out onto the wet sand, Lamor collapsed into the mud and reeds. The dragon lay on his side, breathing heavily, his broad chest heaving raggedly as he struggled for breath, his wings splayed and his mouth slightly agape, gulping air: — Stars... hellfire... and seaweed! — he rolled onto his back, spreading his arms and legs, and laughed weakly. — That was... better than any flight.