Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ch.1: The Games

Hvedra leapt forward, greasy hands gripping hold of the gray tree-trunk-like thigh of her opponent, an urgal ram one year her younger, yet already pushing six and a half feet tall. Her nails bit into his skin as he lumbered sideways, off balance. With a bellow he smashed her left forearm against her back in an attempt to hold her in place.

The young male was a good childhood friend of hers named Beorsvog, but right now he was just her opponent and neither of them were holding back. Their grease slicked bare hides worked against her just as much as they worked for her and she lost her grip on his leg just as she wriggled her slim brown body out from under his arm. Sand grated off a thin layer of skin on her right shoulder and hip as she hit the ground and slid.

Ignoring the burn, she rolled backwards twice pushing herself away from her opponent, then settled into a low crouch trying not to visibly favor her left leg where she'd carelessly gotten punctured during her last match by the curling corkscrew horn of her previous opponent. She snarled as saw Beorsvog take his stance opposite her looking hardly worse for wear.

They had only just started the match and she was already starting to feel battered. Her last two opponents didn't know her methods of attack as well as Beorsvog and she'd been able to win with her agility and unpredictability. And if not in bulk, at least in height, she and her previous opponents had been more evenly matched. Now Beorsvog was definitely using what he knew about her fighting style from their practice scrimmages against her. So not only were strength and mass against her, she'd have to be even more cunning than he'd expect.

Jeers and roars came from the crowd of urgals, kull, and a smattering of humans in the stands surrounding the field. The announcer's voice reverberated excitedly from the speaker system. In their momentary pause, the voice was noting something about Hvedra's techniques in the previous matches and she narrowed her eyes in concentration. She needed to take a different approach.

Remaining squatting, pressing her fingers into the dusty soil for balance, she calculated Beorsvog's next charge and her counter attack. Her dark skin felt like it was sizzling in the heat of the mid-day summer sun. Sweat dripped down her brow and stung her eyes. She forced herself to ignore all of the unpleasant sensations.

The ram lowered his horns and rushed her. Twenty yards, 10 yards, 5… Hvedra sprung upwards driving her ashen elbow upwards into the unprotected soft area between his stomach and his rib cage. He doubled over with a bellow of pain and she used the new change in height to secure a grip on his right horn and the black mane of hair running down the center of his skull. Hefting her thin form up and over his shoulder, she wrapped her muscular legs around his thick neck in a choking grip and flattened her bare chest against his back, reaching to restrain his arms behind his back.

"Hvedra goes for the viper strangle! Can she hold on?!" The voice of the announcer rumbled over the cheer of the crowd roaring in her ears.

Beorsvog is fighting her, tossing his head in an attempt to jab her with one of his horns, but they won't reach and the movement only makes her squeeze her legs tighter till she can feel the cords of his neck pressing hotly against the inside of her thighs. He's losing oxygen and she knows it by the way he stagers sideways. She needs to get him on his knees, then all she has to do is grab his foot and pull till he gives. She curses her light weight because her muscles are starting to burn with fatigue. The blood is rushing to her face, her tongue is parched and heavy in her mouth, the sweaty skin of her cheek pressed against his oiled back is barely grounding her. She feels like she's hanging on for dear life.

A grunt and pull of effort on his part and suddenly his bulging left arm is ripped from her aching grip. There's a momentary wash of relief at the release of tension before his hand grips hold of her foot and dread takes over. Then she was weightless, and stunned faces of spectators are momentarily spiraling below her. This is followed by an awful crunching sensation, and then blackness swallows her whole.

Chapter Text

Ch.2: The Herbalist

The first thing Hvedra realized when she woke was that she was no longer on the sparring arena. The second was that everything hurt. A whimper escaped her and she closed her eyes again as if she'd be able to return to the purge of sleep. An afterimage of the snarl on Beorsvog's face the moment before he had begun his last charge flickered across the inside of her lids but she remembered little else of the match.

Her tongue felt uncomfortably dry and foul tasting in her mouth. She must have made some sound of disgust because her wakefulness attracted the attention of Navra, her dam, whose familiar heavy footsteps came shuffling towards her bedroom. She peeled her eyes open again, noticing the electric lamp in the corner illuminating the room and the darkness outside her window. The older motherly urgal had a smile of relief on her face when she pushed aside the woven flap separating Hvedra's room from the living room and saw Hvedra weakly shift her head to look up.

"Just like you to wake up the moment I step out of the room. How are you feeling?" One of her large knuckled hands came to rest on Hvedra's forehead as if she were sick rather than just battered and bruised.

Hvedra smiled weakly. She opened her mouth to deliver a witty reply as she began to push herself into a more upright position when the words died on her lips as she her ankle sent shockwaves of pain through her leg. Her mind went blank but she's sure she screamed because she witnessed the look of alarm on Navra's face before her eyes screwed up tight of their own accord.

Navra's footsteps rushed to the doorway and the flap folded heavily as she pushed it aside. She spoke urgently to someone on the other side, words that Hvedra was unable to process through the momentary fog of her pain. She gasped in anguish, breathless, beads of sweat forming on her brow, and lay still waiting for the pain to recede.

The pain subsided as the flap heavily draped back into place and a lighter pair of footsteps crossed the packed clay floor accompanied by a brisk voice that made Hvedra's stomach do another summersault.

"Stop worrying over her. She's just a little sore, is all. I splinted and bound the break and applied a salve to her open wounds. She just needs food and some well-deserved rest." Angela, the petite curly haired herbalist who spoke, appeared in her peripheral vision as she cracked open her teary eyes. The urgal speech rolled around oddly on her tongue as she modified the sounds of the language to fit the bone and muscle structure of her human mouth.

"That big friend of yours broke your ankle when he threw you," she was saying now, reaching across Hvedra to help prop her against the pillows on her cotton stuffed mattress, "and knocked you out cold when you landed by the stands. Completely exhilarated the whole crowd with the exception of Navra and me. Honestly, you're seeking out trouble for yourself, Hvedra. You must accept the fact that you have stopped growing and you're no longer taller than the cubs you grew up with. You've passed the peak of your strength for your sex, and you are not an urgal."

"Please, Angela. She's had enough of an ordeal for today," Navra chided in only the way that mothers could while gently pressing a cup of water to Hvedra's lips. "You're still my cub, ukuk."

Angela had shuffled around the foot of the bed and pulled back the blanket to check that her ankle was still set properly while Navra bustled out of the room to fetch her a bowl of chowder. Hvedra sat still under Angela's diligent attentions, leaning her head back against the plaster wall and examining the underside of the thatch roof she'd woken up to every morning since she could remember. Navra returned, settling the bowl of beef and vegetable cream chowder in her lap just as Angela smoothed the sheets back over her battered body. She dipped the carved wooden spoon in eagerly, suddenly recognizing her intense hunger.

Angela settled on the edge of the bed and began sifting through her bag for her most recent knitting project. "You fought well, Etohkenta," she said in the human tongue with a tinge of amusement, using the name the urgralgra had given her for her fighting techniques.

Hvedra paused for a moment in her ravenous eating, her brain processing the human words. Then she looked over at her ushkran who was seated on a stool she'd evidently dragged in from the kitchen, weaving on a lap loom. "Did I win the match?" she croaked in the grating urgal language, clutching onto hope.

Navra shook her massive head and did not look up. "You landed out of the ring when he threw you."

"Instant disqualification," Hvedra huffed, silently cursing her inability to grow any bigger or at least significantly heavier. She took another slow sip of the creamy broth. "How bad is the break in my ankle?"

"It's by far not the worst break I have seen, and it should heal fine if you don't jostle it too much. It was a bit difficult to set seeing as it was jarred by the impact of your landing. So I've splinted and wrapped it and have had you on a pain-killing tincture. But without someone who can access magic more easily than I can, you're going to have to use crutches to get around until it heals on its own." Angela paused and looked up from the orange fuzzy mass on her knitting needles with a scowl on her face. "And practice using the human language more. That's what I'm here for, not for patching you back together like a quilt."

Hvedra giggled into her spoon as Angela had said this all in their common modified urgal tongue. Her human language tutor was really awfully easy to side track.

Chapter Text

Ch.3: Forghgoth's Point

By the end of her fourth day of bedrest Hvedra felt like she was going to go insane. Navra insisted on helping her with every little thing, even eating to which she had firmly protested that it was her ankle that was broken, not her jaw. Angela had taken full advantage of the opportunity Hvedra's incapacitation presented to drill in the missed months' worth of complex letters and sounds and grammar patterns of the nonsensical human language into her brain. Her lessons were usually this intense right after Angela returned from one of her extended excursions to wherever it was she suddenly has the wanderlust to travel – "Wherever the action is happening," she always said when asked what her next destination would be – but never before had Hvedra been subjected to the lessons and been unable to escape due to physical inhibitions.

So when knuckles rapped at the front door during dinner, Hvedra didn't care if it was someone as unwelcome as crotchety old man Kartug causing the interruption so long as it would give her a social reprieve. But the figure that came through the doorway, lightly kicking at the threshold to leave any bad spirits outside, was the most welcome face Hvedra could have wished to see.

"Beorsvog! Get me out of here."

The over exaggerated desperation in Hvedra's voice made a rumble of laughter peal from her friend's lips. His eyes lit up as he caught sight of her at the table, books spread out before her. "Glad to see you up and about, Etohkenta." He gave her smile and pulled a chair out from the table, settling down on it with ease and familiarity.

She grinned at him. "You may be strong but I'm still the better fighter. I'll get you next time."

"What next time?" Angela asked with a mild disapproval in her voice.

"My sincerest apologies, Uluthrek," Beorsvog said addressing the herbalist by her honorable name Mooneater, the origin story of which Hvedra had asked after incessantly as a child but had never received a telling. "You are right. I am a bad influence." Hvedra rolled her eyes and resumed picking at her dinner.

"Would you like some roast boar?" Navra asked, coming from the kitchen with a plate already piled with meat and grilled peppers and onions for him.

"How could I possibly turn down your cooking, Herndall Navra? Of course I will have some but could I take it with me? I wanted to go up to the Forghgoth's Point with Hvedra."

Hvedra perked up at this. "Yes, I want to go! Can I please, Navra?"

A rukruk noise came from the back of Navra's throat as she chuckled. "Always the gentleman, Beorsvog. You know you don't have to address me with titles in such a private setting." She turned back to the kitchen. "Yes, you can go, ukuk, but Beorsvog, you must promise me you won't let her abandon those crutches."

"Of course. I will carry her the whole way."

Hvedra groaned at Navra's over protectiveness but didn't protest because it was the only way she'd be able to get out of the hut. Instead she shoved the last of her food in her mouth and satisfactorily gathered up her language books to put them away.

Half an hour later, she and the big hulk of her childhood friend were sitting side by side on a toppled trunk of a great pine atop the cliff that overlooked their village. Forghgoth's Point faced directly east protruding from the side of one of the gentle sloping mountains that rose from the valley floor up to the steep peaks of the Spine behind them. Forghgoth was the omniscient watching mother and goddess of protection. This outcropping of rock surrounded by a forest of deep green pines and silvery aspens was a place of peace and solstice and was an excellent outlook, especially for sun and moonrises. The peaks of the Spine rose up around them diffusing the light of the sun sinking to the west in a wash of orange.

"Sorry I threw you like that," Beorsovg growled solemnly. "I just forgot how light you are in the heat of the match."

"It was a legal move. You won fairly, Beorsvog. Don't be so hard on yourself," Hvedra tried to console casually but was unable to hide the bitter undertone that came out along with it.

Beorsvog huffed, disturbing a nearby swarm of gnats stirring in the warm evening. "Maybe… maybe you should consider retiring from the games, Etohkenta." His voice was little more than a rumble in his chest.

"I beat my first two opponents in the quarterfinal matches these games," Hvedra shot back tersely. The silence that settled between them was stiff with the implications to her honor and pride.

Beorsvog's next words were cautious, stepping timidly on the social edges of their friendship. "You've only won five local matches this whole year. And you haven't gotten past the semifinals of the championships in the past two years and this time you didn't make it past the quarterfinals."

"And whose fault is that? At least I got into the quarterfinals. Might I remind you I won our first championship games and have placed in two more," she said cruelly flashing the gold and silver bands of honor snuggly encircling her left wrist. "It's not my fault I stopped growing and you all got freakishly big and tall."

"Of course, Etohkenta. It is true you have developed a fighting style that suits your smaller stature. But our first games were ten years ago now and I'm afraid of you getting hurt beyond the healer's ability to fix you with their spells and potions." He paused and licked his lips with his dark tongue in quiet hesitation. "I'm afraid of being the one to make you irreparable."

Hvedra let his concerns hang in the heavy night air, processing the significance of the situation a little at a time. She knew her body ached more and more after each fight. She was flung further, crushed harder, bent in directions the human body was not intended to bend. But what kept her going was the need to restore her aching pride with her agility and tact, no matter how strong or hulking her opponent.

Out of desire to push away the uncomfortable silence Beorsvog foraged onward after a few minutes. "It's pretty clear by this point I'm not going to stop growing any time soon. I have the kull blood of my ancestors from the Beor Mountains. What are you going to do when I'm nine feet tall? You won't even be able to reach my sternum with your bony elbows, what then?"

"Your balls will be at perfect punching height," Hvedra growled, but her words lacked the bite of argument, her tone soft with reluctant resignation. She pulled her uninjured leg up onto the wide trunk and rested her chin on her knee. Beorsvog chuckled deeply beside her but unconsciously shifted his thighs closer together as he rubbed at the phantom memory of her elbow jab into his chest during their match.

Hvedra glanced up at her friends undecorated horns confirming at least part of what Nagra had told her about the outcome of the games; Beorsvog had not gotten a podium again this year. "So I don't see a new metal band around your horn. Who ended up taking you out? I hope you put up a good fight."

"You know I've never been as much of a natural fighter as you, Etohkenta. I may be kull but my family are merchants by trade. Nothing to do with combat or even strength there. I just don't have that instinct in me to think like you do in a fight. The worst damage I can deal is in self-defense, and I'm terrible at offense, though your tutelage has helped somewhat.

"I got taken out in my last quarterfinal round. You know the last round of the day is always the hardest, and the kull I was up against was only a year older than me but he looked like he could be older by three. Don't get me wrong, this all means I'm excited to see how much I will grow by next year when I'm top of my age group, but needless to say, I didn't last long. I was expecting him to be the type to attack right away but he just circled and circled. I tried doing that trick of getting the sun in his eyes like you've showed me but he wasn't falling for it. Finally I tried charging, thinking maybe I'd catch him off guard but he dodged and managed to pin me in an instant. He was so much larger that there was no way I was shaking him off and it wasn't long before the referee called the match." His whole body seemed to curl in on itself as he sighed, reflecting on his defeat. "You would have figured a way out."

Hvedra regarded him with sober eyes, her cheek resting on her propped bony knee. He was right; she could think of a half-dozen ways she might have gotten out of being pinned by a larger opponent, but that wasn't the point. "You nearly made it to the semifinals this year. That's something to be proud of. And next year you'll be bigger and stronger and top of your age group, so take what you've learned and improve upon it so you can get farther next year. That's what I do."

Beorsvog grinned. "Yeah, except you don't do the getting bigger and stronger part anymore," he teased. She tried to glare at him but a smile quirked on her lips none the less.

They sat in a companionable silence watching the shadows of the mountains behind them creep across the hills and plains below, out to the sparkling waves on Leona Lake off to the far southeast. Warm golden hues on the fields of grain were gradually eaten up by the deep purples of evening. Images of the past year's competitions and the increasing gap between Hvedra amounting defeats and her dwindling victories in conjunction with the size and strength of her sparing partners trickled away till her mind found a settling calm. She gazed down on the maze of cobblestone roads crisscrossed by a web of electric wires and clotheslines strung between rounded whitewash walled houses with thatched roofs. The small, bumbling forms of urgal cubs hurried through the streets, undoubtedly laughing as they waved goodbye to their friends for the evening.

When pinpricks of light began to shine in the valley below as electric lights flickered on in the huts, Beorsvog stirred from his boulder-like state beside her. Wordlessly she unfurled herself from her cramped position, sliding onto Beorsvog's back as he squatted in front of her. His thick, gray skin warmed Hvedra's linen tunic and leggings, pressing against her chest, stomach, and inner thighs as he carried her down he carried her down the mountain. The soft shuffle of pine needles under Beorsvog's callused bare feet was as soothing as his deep even breaths. She nodded off before they reached home.

Chapter Text

Ch. 4: Nar Yarzhak – Part I

Engaged hand for hand, hornless foreheads butting with grimaces straining their sweat-streaked faces, Hvedra scrutinized the twin cubs scuffling in the makeshift sparing ring sketched in the dirt of the forest floor with the foot of her crutch. The upper-hand seemed to waver between the two for a full minute, matched equally for size, weight, and strength as they were. But as Tazgah, the more cunning of the two, appeared to falter, taking a step back as if under the pressure of Turk's shove, Hvedra recognized Tazgah's feint a moment before she used the new leverage to deliver a kick to her brother's left side, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sprawling onto the blanket of pine needles.

"Match!" Hvedra called from her perch on a boulder on the outside edge of the circle. "Turk! Tazgah has faked you out three times now. You know you're not going to overpower here and she's outsmarting you. Anticipate it." The young urgal nodded, his defeated expression the mirror image of Beorsvog's from their own days as wrestling cubs.

She turned her attention to the other twin who was already stalking the perimeter of the ring, challenging for another round. "Back off, Tazgah. Turk needs a break for a moment. Go get the water bag from Beorsvog and when you come back, we'll start again."

"You got it, Etohkenta," Tazgah grinned, clearly already calculating the next match in her mind as she took off up the mountain in search of their older brother.

Turk flopped back into the dead leaves with a frustrated grunt, a layer of fine, dry dirt settling over his nakedness and sticking to the oils coating his skin. "Tazgah is too sneaky," he whined about his sister once she was out of earshot. "Just like you. Maybe girls are just better at fighting than boys. I mean, look at you and Beorsvog compared with me and Tazgah. She always tricks me just like you always end up tricking him. As soon as I'm sure she's going to do one thing and I've got her cornered, she does something entirely different and all I end up with is bruises."

"Tazgah is just playing upon your weaknesses. On top of that, she's got you so worried about predicting her next attack on you that you never get the chance to figure out her weak spots while you're sparring. But she's your big sister. You know her. Question yourself: how does she think? What does she care about? How does she act? How can you get on her nerves or catch her off guard? That's what I do when I spar with Beorsvog."

"You get on his nerves?" Turk asked disbelievingly.

Hvedra opened her mouth to reply but was cut off the deep bugle of a summoning horn resounding from the valley below. Stunned and confused, the horn bellowed three times before the rushed sound of breaking branches coming from up the mountain attracted their attention. Beorsvog's bulk came up behind Hvedra and scooped her up unceremoniously, taking off at a run for Forghgoth's Point, the twins stumbling to keep on his heels. She didn't even protest the manhandling as curiosity took over her. The bugle only ever sounded for very special occasions, and given that nothing was planned until the end of the Games, she hoped it wasn't some sudden crisis.

Beorsvog skidded to a stop in the clearing, rubble and dirt flying up in a small plume around his seven toed feet. Both of them gasped. A dragon streaked across the sky from the north like a silver bullet.

Hvedra's breath caught in her throat at the sight. Beorsvog stood in rapture cradling Hvedra in his massive arms. Cries of delight drifted up from the village below as the streets willed with urgals looking up for a glimpse of the dragon. Hvedra glanced down and saw urgals flocking toward the sporting arena, cubs eagerly pulling their parents along by the hand.

The bugle sounded again. "Beorsvog, we have to get down there!" Hvedra exclaimed, pounding her fist against his muscular chest to pull him out of his stunned reverie. "Nar Yarzhak probably an egg with him this time," she implored.

He looked down at her, a grin breaking across his broad face. "You better get on my back so I can run faster then. I'll come back for your crutches later," he said.

He crouched and Hvedra scrambled on to his back as quickly as her injured ankle would allow. She gazed in wonder over his shoulder as he ran down the path skirting the cliff as the silver dragon, Gurrtick, pulled into the arena with his large translucent wings swooping dust into the air.

Navra was at the foot of the mountain path glancing over her shoulder towards the arena in the distance when they tromped onto the wide, flat road.

"Dragons, Navra!" Hvedra beamed, wiggling herself down from Beorsvog's back and taking hold of Navra's open hands for support as she favored her casted foot.

Navra smiled with relief at seeing Hvedra and her obvious enthusiasm. "Yes, my dear. I do believe Nar Yarzhak and Gurrtick promised last time they visited that they would bring a dragon egg with them when they returned. Everyone is heading toward the arena now. Where are your crutches?" she asked with a note of concern coloring her voice upon noticing the children's empty hands.

Beorsvog rubbed the curve of his right horn bashfully. "Sorry, Navra. I just kind of scooped Hvedra up and came running when we heard the bugle. I can go back up and get them if she needs them now."

Navra opened her mouth to answer but Hvedra's words barged over her. "Get them later. We're late as it is already. Come on!" She grabbed hold of one of Navra's thick fingers, her hand being unable to grip around her dam's thick wrist, and hopped twice in the direction of the arena before wobbling and being caught by Navra's strong arm around her stomach.

"Let me carry you, Hvedra," Navra grumbled gently with concern.

Hvedra quickly pushed herself out of her dam's cradle and stood straight. "I can carry myself," she protested.

Two sets of yellow eyes looked at her unblinkingly. Hvedra growled at their stubbornness. "Fine. But you put me down when we get there and let me use your arm as a support." That pacified them and Navra bent so Hvedra could get on her back.

Turk and Tazgah's bare feet slapped against the flat paving stones as they came to a stop beside their small group, having been unable to keep up with Beorsvog's longer stride coming down the mountain path.

"Wha…what are we…" Turk began between gulps of air as he tried to catch his breath.

"…stopped here…for? We hafta go!" Tazgah finished for him.

Navra took one look at their huffing, naked bodies and drew herself up. Even without being able to see the stern look on her dam's face from her position on her back, Hvedra knew just what was coming. "You two have to go put on proper clothing before you even think of stepping inside that arena. I will not have Nooni's children going unclad before Nar Yarzhak."

Tazgah's whining protest was on her lips practically before Navra finished but it died after a squawk at Navra's withering glare that barked no rebuke, one of the things about her that was very unmotherly but had served her well in politics over the years.

"Yes, Herndall Navra," the twins chorused demurely. Beorsvog ushered the two younger ones home as Navra headed towards the arena.