Breakfast
Who's for going around by sea?
You're already flying over the water:
You avoid the mainland, staying instead over the water while examining the changed landscape
Unfortunately, hunting over the ocean is both tedious and difficult. Dolphins are barely more filling than humans, quite nimble in the water, and generally difficult to catch. Leviathans are the more practical prey. Hunting them is a simple matter of tracking them by their song, then waiting for them to surface. It is a slow process, however, and could potentially take until dawn to catch one, even provided that you were successful. Given the difficulty you had launching into the air from the water earlier, you think it would be wise to avoid any ocean hunts until you've fully recovered from your long rest.
We're probably better off ditching our cargo, heading to food as planned, eating food as planned, and then returning
stash the pilot somewhere
drop the two off somewhere
then go eat
You turn inland and drop your passengers on a sandy beach. Sophie huddles into herself for warmth. The pilot lays unmoving. Curious as to his condition, you lift him to your ear. His chest and breath are both silent.
:
"REMAIN HERE."
:
"W-w-where would I g-go?" she chatters.
With a cellphone? A box that gives directions and allows communication with anyone anywhere in the world, including humans with flying machines? Potentially anywhere.
Taking off again you find and uproot a pair of small trees a short distance to the north and return with them to find Sophie curled up in a ball, shivering. Torching the branches of one tree with your breath, you then drop them both into a bonfire twice her standing height. Sophie turns to the fire and sits, not too close, with hands extended towards it. You note that while she was dunked completely into the ocean earlier, the wind seems to have dried her off nicely, though she still smells of salt.
You wait until she stops shivering.
ask her what she wants to eat when we get back. Or before we leave so we can get it on the way
:
"I WILL GET FOOD. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?":
"Steak and ale pudding would be nice," she laughs, rubbing her hands together.
"Maybe a nice bitter to go with it?"You don't recognize all of those words, but from what you gather she's asking for meat and alcohol. Alcohol may prove difficult, but meat should be simple enough.
get some stuff to eat
+1
+1s for days
You take the air and climb high enough to give you a view of the surrounding area.
The entire area is divided into distinct fields with roads between them. And yet there seems to be a relative paucity of buildings to go with them. The most eye-catching structures are the large cluster of strangely identical rectangular white buildings to the north, along with a sizable road with many lights of the type you've seen before along its length. Given the location and drab similarity of the white buildings, you suspect they might be granaries. You also spy what appears to be a central manor house along with the expected servant's house accompanying it. And a small cluster of several irregularly shaped buildings to the east.
Altogether, the arrangement is unfamiliar to you. How do the peasants cover such vast fields? Where do they live? The irregular buildings to the east seem the most likely, but they seem impractically distant from the granaries and you see no horses anywhere. Nor cattle of any kind, for that matter. And why the lack of defensive structures? From the vastness of the fields this is clearly a fief of some significance. And yet there are no castles, no keeps and no watchtowers. A few wooden fences, but few even of those. And the manor house itself appears to be completely unfenced and unprotected by battlements of any kind. It's a peculiar arrangement. It's almost as if, somehow, the lord of these lands was completely convinced that he would never be attacked.
Have humans become...peaceful? Have the wonders of flying machines and talking boxes and stones that create light been the result of humans working together rather than making war upon one another? Have times changed that much?
No, it seems unlikely. One of the humans you ate earlier was carrying a noise-making weapon. More likely, the tools of war have changed. It's possible that stone walls and guard towers simply no longer serve any useful purpose. Of course they don't post watchmen in towers with crude signal fires anymore. Airborne surveillance coupled with handheld instant communication devices would be far superior. Of course they don't have parapets. They obviously no longer fight with arrows. Arrows would have been ineffectual against the metal flying machine you saw earlier. Stone parapets would provide no cover to archers being fired upon from the air. Even just these few things you've seen would completely change the dynamics of human warfare. They probably don't even wear metal armor or ride horses anymore.
It occurs to you that there may be more that is new that you haven't yet seen.
get some stuff to eat
Setting aside your concerns for now, you turn east and head to the irregular-looking group of buildings, where the sound of mooing clarifies the lack of visible cattle anywhere. Apparently they're being kept indoors.
Landing before the building from which the mooing is loudest, you see that it is composed largely of an unfamiliar whitish-gray stone that has been smoothed down with surprising precision. Behind several stone pillars lies a metal fence keeping inside an entire herd of cows, all female, and all frantically panicking at your presence.
Like this, except it's nighttime and there are cows inside. Moo.You cleave a stone pillar aside and pull out two of the juicier-looking cows, leaving the metal fence untouched. Securing one cow in each of your hind legs, you take to the air where you see Sophie a short distance from the bonfire, apparently attempting to flee.
Pet ownership is a lot of responsibility.
Pleased that she's taken her captivity well enough to still have the courage to try to escape, you decide to eat one cow now to give her time to enjoy her sense of freedom. You've found that humans tend to find joy in feeling like they're accomplishing something, and you like the idea of her having that.
You lower yourself back to the ground, landing forelegs first to keep the cows relatively uninjured. Then you bite the head off one, savoring the sweet, delicious flavor and crunch of bones while the other cow moos loudly and struggles helplessly in your left hind claws. As you take another bite of cow, top half of back and ribs this time, you idly contemplate how much time you should give Sophie to escape. If you wait long enough she'll probably find a tree or something to hide in. For some reason humans tend to assume that if you can't see them you can't smell them. You've never really investigated, but you suspect that their sense of smell might be the most terrible of any non-aquatic creature you know. Either that, or they've become so accustomed to their own scents that they tend to ignore it. Perhaps you'll test that sometime.
It takes a few more bites to finish off the cow, and for variety you char its hind quarter slightly to give it a slightly less runny texture.
Also, curious, you bite a chunk from one of the remaining stone pillars. Grinding it in your teeth experimentally, you find that while it tastes largely of something similar to beach sand, it also has a strangely high limestone content, as well as a few other flavors you don't recognize. You spit it out. You never liked limestone.
As you're about to take flight to recover your pet human, your ears catch a loud, sudden booming noise from the south, followed by a sound that resembles the low, rumbling rush of flightwind. Curious, you angle your ears to best tune out the rest of the cacophony. It is relatively loud, and the pitch is low enough to be well within even human hearing range. Then, after only a few moments, it changes in both volume and pitch. Where it was a loud, low rumbling, it is now a hiss, higher in pitch and more subtle. In addition to the hiss there is not one, but two sets of regular chirping noises, similar to those you've heard before, and ever so slightly staggered from one another.
You scan the horizon, and see nothing but clouds. The sounds, whatever they are, seem to not be directly approaching you, but are coming from the south and moving at a somewhat westward angle.
What do you do?
Author
Topic: You are a dragon awakening from slumber, the suggestion game, Update #18 Huzzah! (Read 21892 times)