After a few months of working on this on and off, it's finally done! This is the first furry story I've written, as well as the longest thing I've written, fiction or otherwise. It's about 7000 words long, so there's a link to the Google Doc so you don't have to deal with the wall of text. I haven't gotten the chance to do any editing yet, so if there's anything you'd like to critique me on, it would be greatly appreciated! I'm planning to rewrite it eventually, but I'm taking a break for now.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13JNuEMA0U2yfRdi_qP2EaEgHULFc5TIBMtUnULXkSgM/edit?usp=sharingLast thing: Ignore when I say floof. It's one of Ash's favorite words, and they takes every opportunity they can to say it.
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Temple of Duality
Ash hiked through the jungle, swatting at the insects flew towards his head. Luckily, they couldn’t bite him through his scales, but getting blindsided by a six-inch gnat wasn’t a pleasant experience.
“It can’t be that much farther,” he said, trying to see the landmark the shady river guide had been talking about. Unfortunately, his vision still hadn’t fully recovered from a blindness spell. Ash shuddered, remembering how long it had taken him to get a cure while he couldn’t see what he had written. How was he supposed to find a tree covered in red moss when still couldn’t distinguish red and green?
Ash kept trekking, knocking away trailing vines and bendy branches. He had tried to keep his tail out of the mud at first, after splashing it a few times he gave up. It was already in his paws, so cleaning one more spot didn’t bother him much. As long as it stayed off of his bag, he tried to ignore it.
Spotting a rock sticking out of the mud and brush, Ash hurried over to it. He clawed at the moss clinging to it, revealing more of what he had seen: a broken pillar of white marble. Despite the wear, Ash could see that it was strangely pure. There was almost no trace of the usual black strata. Hadn’t the guide said that it was almost entirely black? He must have been mistaken; there wasn’t any black rock to be seen.
Glancing around, Ash saw five more pillars, all leading towards a mossy structure. It was taller than him, but it couldn’t compare to the height of the trees. Ash walked over and scraped away the flora covering the walls. More white stone. Where did anyone find marble like that?
“Weird…” Ash mumbled, poking and prodding the wall. He pulled tool after tool out of his bag and tried to chip off a piece. After a few minutes with a chisel he managed to knock out a golf ball-sized chunk that he stored in his bag.
Ash stood in front of the hole that served as a door into the temple. This was what he had been searching for; after six uneventful hikes and three separate rides up and down rivers, he had located the Temple of Duality. He hadn’t been this excited since he found a massive pile of stretchy, clingy rubber in a hidden room in his cupboard. Temples meant weird magic stuff, and duality meant there was twice as much weird magic stuff as usual. He hoped there would be at least one explosion.
“Alright, temple, I’m going in!” Ash dove through the passage, the hanging vines reminding him of teeth. He felt like he was being eaten by the temple.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Ash had a dangerous job.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a ‘job’ - at least, he didn’t get paid for it. It was technically a hobby, but as the only actual work Ash did was try to write spells, he liked to call this his job. He explored all kinds of things, from ruins to temples to caves to lakes, all in search of magical objects. There was nothing more exciting than finding a bag full of glowing gems or a statue that warped the air around it. Some of the things he found were dangerous, but Ash could handle it; it’s not like they had died.
Well, not for a few months.
Ash shivered. Better not think about that one.
He opened his bag and dug around for a few seconds, eventually finding is flashlight. He flicked it on, but the only things he could see in the dim lighting were the walls. His claws clicked on the stone floors, and he almost tripped on jungle detritus every few steps. Occasionally, he spotted a sconce on the wall, but every single one was unlit. Any efforts to light them resulted in burned out matches and extra frustration.
“Argh! I’ll never make it through this stupid hallway!” Ash growled, thrashing his tail back and forth.
Crunch. Ash jumped and nearly rammed their head into the ceiling. Twisting around, he made out a splotch of darkness that stood out against the blank walls. He had smacked his tail right into a black pedestal. Resting on it was what looked like a curving white rod. Ash poked at it. When no alarms went off, he picked it up and turned it over in his paws, inspecting it closer.
It was a rod made of white wood, covered in symbols he couldn’t make out. It curved in circles, as if it had been wrapped around something straight. It was about two and a half feet long. Ash slid it into his bag, feeling the weight disappear as it entered, planning to figure out what it was when he was out of the Temple of Duality.
Ash turned back down the tunnel. That could wait until later. As he walked, he noticed that the walls seemed to be getting darker. He looked closer, squinting through the gloom.
Twisting black strands had appeared in the wall, one end pointing back towards the pedestal and the other into the gloom. It was black marble, but the two colors didn’t merge. The black lines looked almost like calligraphy on a giant piece of paper. They were much too smooth to be natural. Who had built this temple? How had they gotten marble in the middle of a jungle? Ash shrugged. People went far for religion, even if that meant dragging giant marble blocks through jungles.
The black streaks took over more and more of the wall until it was about equal, with the white on one side and the black on the other.. There, the passage opened up into a huge domed chamber.
The two kind of marble swirled up the walls, which curved away into misty gloom on both sides. Ash couldn’t see the ceiling, but he assumed that there were twisting patterns. Temples always hed them. The floor in the room was surprisingly clean, considering the location. More sconces lined the walls, but these were lit and burning brightly. It was bright enough that Ash didn’t need his flashlight, so he stowed it and kept looking around the room. There was another raised portion centered on the dais, and something seemed to be floating above it. Ash rushed forward to see what it was, but he lurched to a stop as he reached the dais.
Another person was here.
On the opposite side of the dais, partially hidden by the pedestal in the middle, stood another dragon. She was obviously female, but that was all he couldn’t make out much else. She didn’t have any clothes, but that was normal; Ash didn’t have any either. Why would a cartoonish, anthropomorphic dragon need clothes? They’d just get in the way of his wings. A bag was slung over one of her broad shoulders.
“H-hey! What are you doing here?” they both shouted. Ash snapped his mouth closed, surprised. They had spoken at exactly the same time.
Ash growled quietly, and the other dragon followed suit. Whatever that floating thing was, Ash had seen it first, and he was going to get it, even if it was cursed. The river guide who had brought Ash to the trail head had probably told her where to find this temple in exchange for some money. He knew he couldn’t trust him.
Ash ran for the floating object. The female was fast, but Ash was confident he could reach it first. As he got closer, he realized that it was a stylized sword made from the same stone as the decrepit temple. He leaped forward and made a grab for it, catching hold of the blade and somehow managing to not cut himself. The female grabbed the hilt, and in that instant, Ash noticed something: her scales were exactly the same shade as his, but he could see straight through them to the floor below. It was an odd thing to notice, as right when he grabbed the sword a tearing noise hit his ears and he was launched backwards. His head cracked against the wall and everything went black.
_______
Ash was having a pleasant dream about eating an entire feast by themselves when they were awoken by a snout being shoved into their face.
They yelped and scrambled backwards, falling against the wall. The owner of the snout straightened up, staring at them in confusion.
“Great, you’re up. Now we can figure out what the heck just happened,” the dragon looked both concerned and wary. Hopefully they wouldn’t attack.
Ash inspected the dragon. Red and white scales, gray fur on their tail and around their neck, and… a flat chest. No, that wasn’t right. The other dragon’s chest had been anything but flat.
But if he was male, then where was the female dragon from earlier?
Ash looked down at themselves and gasped. This had gotten a lot more complicated.
_______
Ash paced back and forth, trying to figure things out.
“We can’t both be Ash!” he shouted, trying to convince himself as much as the female dragon mumbling quietly on the ground beside him. He caught a snippet of what she was saying as he passed.
“What am I even supposed to do with them? I’ve never had a bust before…” everything Ash had heard from her so far had been along those lines, except for when she had told him her name.
Ash. She had said Ash.
How could she be him? He was standing right next to her, and people don’t just split in two. It wasn’t a coincidence; he was sure that he was the only dragon named Ash who liked crumbling ruins and old temples. So it must have been something in here that had made another person who thought that they were him.
It must have been the sword. The first time they had seen the other dragon, the sword was right there, and when they both grabbed it they had been flung away. He’d have to get the other Ash to stop whining about her bust (which, really, she had nothing to complain about there) and help him.
He walked over to where she was laying. Hopefully she wouldn’t make his headache any worse. He had smacked his skull against the wall when he'd been blasted backwards, and it felt soft and tender. The only upside was that he
“Oi, get up,” Ash said, pulling the female dragon to her feet. “It’s time to figure this out.” He hesitated, not sure where to start. “What do you remember?”
She focused in on him, her stare pinning him down. It felt like she was glaring into his soul. Then she faltered and dropped her gaze back down to her chest, breaking the illusion.
“The l-last thing I remember before waking up is grabbing the sword and g-getting flung into a wall,” she stuttered. “And c-could you at least call me by my name?”
Ash blinked. She was angrier than he’d realized. It was boiling below the surface, ready to spill over at any time. Why was she so angry at him?
“No, not really. It’s my name too,” he responded. “What else do you remember? Try to focus on what happened here, at the temple ruins.”
She took a deep breath. “Well, I was walking through a long hallway made of black marble. I couldn’t see very well because of a blindness curse from a few weeks ago, but I eventually made it through the hallway. All I found in it was this,” she said, pulling a curving black stick out of her bag. It looked like the one Ash had found, other than a few differences. The color and direction of the turn were opposites, but other than that they seemed to be identical. Ash’s head was still swimming around, but he was pretty sure that the stick he had found hadn’t been black. In fact, her whole story felt slightly off, but his headache stopped him from figuring out why.
“After that, I made it here, where I saw you. I tried to get the sword, and, you know the rest, I guess. I just don’t know how this got here,” she said, gesturing at her buxom upper body. “Racks are nice, but I prefer the kind you hang coats on.” she went back to staring at her chest and mumbling.
Ash chuckled at her joke. He figured he needed to call her something, so he settled on Asinda. It was a name he had always liked, and if she wanted to change it then that was fine by him. If his theory was correct, though, he was pretty confident she would like it.
“Okay, here’s what I think happened,” Ash explained, pacing again. “The temple must have some sort of failsafe for when someone comes in. I’m pretty sure that it tried to create a second version of me in order to guard the sword, but it botched the process and created you instead.”
Asinda thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “No, that’s not it. If that were the case I would have tried to kill you. And I’m not a creation. I’m real,” she crossed her arms and glared at Ash again, her eyes just as penetrating as before. Ash stumbled and stopped pacing. It was all he could do to think clearly while someone was pulling at his soul like it was a piece of taffy.
“Um, w-well, how can you be s-sure?” Ash stuttered.
Asinda squinted at him. “How can I be sure? How do you think?! I just got smashed into a wall, then woken up with your dirty muzzle in my face!” she moved forward, and Ash took an involuntary step back, not able to handle the combined yelling and glaring at once. “Do you think I like having the entire structure of my body changed? Think about it for a second. We’re the same person, after all, so you should feel the same.”
Ash’s legs felt weak, and he slid down onto the floor. Now that Asinda had pointed it out, he felt like the guilt was eating at his insides. He couldn’t remember a time when someone had talked to him like that, and the fact that this someone was themselves made it feel even worse.
_______
Asinda had her head pressed against a wall. She was bent over at the waist, her legs and upper body at right angles. For whatever odd reason it was the only position she could think in.
She knew Ash would call her Asinda. It was the obvious choice. She wasn’t going to call him by another name; up until now they had both been Ash, so it made sense to have him keep the name.
Being female was strange. Her body was too curvy. Her top and bottom both felt weighted, as if someone had stuck lumps of sand under her scales. She felt petite and curvaceous at the same time. Even some of her scale patterns had changed; they were slightly different on her arms and legs, and she didn’t even want to think about the heart-shaped pattern she’d seen on her butt. She shuddered, imagining what else she couldn’t see. Most of her chest was covered by her neck floof, which had become considerably more floofy. It reached down her chest further than before, but that was all she could tell. For all she knew, there were hearts all over her chest! Asinda groaned. Ash wouldn’t let her live it down.
At least there were a few benefits. Her tail was longer and thicker, and her wingspan was wider. Her neck and tail fur was longer and fuller, and based on what she could feel, it accentuated her form nicely. Her hind paws were larger, which felt surprisingly good on the stone floors. Her bag had even been adjusted for her new physique. In dragon terms, it was certainly a charisma boost. If she actually knew how to be a woman, she might have been able to seduce another dragon into doing her bidding. The thought cheered her up considerably.
Even though it wasn’t all bad, it still wasn’t good. This wasn’t their body. It was just a poor facsimile, modelled after Ash, but made by a blind sculptor who couldn’t tell the gender of their model. It was confusing and uncomfortable.
She looked around the room. The dais sat empty; she hadn’t bothered to find where the sword had fallen, not after what it had done. Nothing else had changed, except for one or two of the sconces being extinguished. She glanced at Ash; he looked like he was finally recovering from his verbal beating. He had definitely deserved it.
Walking over, Asinda waited while he slowly stood up. She’d argued enough, and they needed to figure out why she existed.
“Oi, Ash, get up. I know I yelled at you, but we need to focus and figure out why I exist.” She put her hands on her hips and waited for him to start talking.
Ash took a deep breath. “O-okay. All I’ve figured out so far is that it has something to do with the sword, maybe?” He winced, clearly expecting her to start yelling again. Asinda felt a bit bad for him, so she decided to try and be a bit nicer. She poked his belly with her tail a few times.
“Alright, that’s a good start. What else can you think of?” Asinda searched her memory for anything that might have caused the split. She knew that they had somehow been separated into two beings by the sword, but why? Was it specifically the sword, or something to do with…
The temple.
“Aha!” The two dragons shouted simultaneously. They looked at each other, surprised and amused. Ash smiled and bowed to Asinda.
“You go first, my lady,” he said, sweeping an imaginary hat off his head. He smirked up at her. Asinda cuffed him on the head with her wing, knocking him onto his stomach. Seeing Ash joke filled her with relief. It meant he was starting to feel better. When he tried to say something, she smirked at him and started talking before he could.
“Thanks, peasant,” she said, sweeping her tail across his to show she was kidding. Ash looked disgruntled, but he sat still and listened. “I - er, we - figured out why the sword split us. This is the Temple of Duality. From what we’ve seen, one side of this temple is black and the other is white. We entered from the black side, so it-”
Ash interjected, sitting up. “Wait, we entered from the white side. I, uh, think I missed the sign for the first entrance, but I managed to find the other side. Either way, it was definitely the white side.” He was blushing slightly, embarrassed about missing something as obvious as huge stone pillars.
Asinda considered it. If Ash, whom she thought of as the ‘original’ of the pair, was sure that they came in from the white side, and she remembered coming in through the black, she must have been that transparent shadow that was copying Ash. She poked her arms, making sure they were still solid, as if thinking about it might somehow change her back into a ghostly reflection. After making absolutely sure that she wasn’t going to fade away, she turned back toward Ash.
“Why would-” She started, but before she could finish her thought a giant crack! rang through the domed room, drowning out the rest of her sentence.
_______
The ceiling cracked. Then it crunched. Then it popped.
Wait, popped? Since when did stone ceilings pop?
“What’s happening?” Ash yelled, trying to be heard over the din.
“I don’t know, but we should get out of here!” Asinda shouted back, covering her head with her wings. Dust and small chunks of marble. were raining down, clinking off the dais and breaking into sharp pieces on the floor.
They rushed towards the white hallway, taking the shortest path to get out of the falling debris. However, before they could reach the opening, a slab of stone dropped in front of it, locking them in with the collapsing ceiling. Ash looked around frantically, trying to find anything that was big enough to hide the two dragons.
The rumbling grew louder. Ash started panicking. How were they going to get out? Was the entire ceiling going to come down on them? He tried hiding his head like Asinda, but her wings were larger than his, and he the occasional chunk of marble made it through his defenses. He squinted around the room, nearly blind in the dust.
He closed his eyes, trying to breathe slowly. The swirling dust was just a distraction. It clogged up his nose and mouth, so he focused on the one sense he could: hearing. Ash sorted through all the noise and clatter. There was the strange grinding and popping from the roof, echoing off the walls; stones were crashing and cracking; somewhere far off, something snapped, sharp enough to be heard over the din; and to his right, the unmistakable sound of scales sliding across rock.
Ash turned and stumbled through the rubble, trying to find the source of the sound. Asinda had to be close. He’d only been panicking for a few seconds. Where was she? He hadn’t known her for long, but if she was like his reflection, there was no way he could leave her behind.
Using everything he could - paws, tail, wings - Ash walked slowly through the detritus. He was about to give up when his tail brushed against a quivering mass of gritty scales and dusty fluff. He wrapped his tail around what felt like a leg to make sure he wouldn’t lose track of Asinda.
Ash crouched down, using his body to shield her from the brunt of the damage. He yelped as white marble landed on his tail, making an ominous crunch. She looked up blearily, taking a while to process what was happening.
“Ash…?” She mumbled, her eyes focusing slowly. From what he could make out, she had been hit by a large piece of marble to the head, which explained why she had fallen. Suddenly, her eyes widened in alarm, and she yanked herself from beneath a mound of powdery marble and tackled Ash, knocking him to the ground as the dome fully collapsed, the sound oddly like a hiss. The room was plunged into gritty darkness.
The air cleared slowly. Ash tried to sit up, but there was something spikey blocking the way. After a few heaves, he realized it was Asinda, not rock. He let up on the pushing. Asinda was already injured, and he didn’t want to make it any worse.
Groaning, Ash shifted around, trying to take some pressure off his right wing. It had been caught underneath him and was twisted at an odd angle. Almost everything was covered in a layer of dust, and everything else was buried in the black and white marble. It all blended into a dismal gray. It was hard to tell where the air ended and his fur began. He probably wouldn’t be able to tell by touch, either; the dust had gotten in everything. Between his scales, in his eyes, up his nose… He was sure that it had gotten into his bag, too. Nearly every time he used it, the piles of dust and debris inside grew larger. His dust bunnies had built a kingdom that towered over everything else in his bag.
Ash’s bag was the opening to a giant storage space. He hadn’t ever found the edge of it; the farthest he made it was a couple hours of walking in one direction, until he got lost and ended up back at the entrance. Inside the bag, there was rows upon rows of things, most of it junk, all stacked up into piles. Almost all of it was already there when he first made the bag, and he still hadn’t figured out why. As an object entered the bag, it was automatically sorted into a pile of similar things. All those piles had gotten bigger and bigger over time, but by far the biggest one was the pile made up of all the debris that fell in. Leaves, dirt, dust, small rocks - all of it made one giant pile nearly thirty five feet tall.
A grating sound froze Ash’s thoughts. He struggled, trying to see around Asinda, who was finally waking up. He poked her with his tail, speeding up the process.
“Wake up!” He hissed quietly.
“W… what? Ash? Where are you?” Asinda mumbled, tilting her head back and forth.
“I’m underneath you, you big lump!”
Asinda lurched sideways, freeing Ash. “S-sorry! I-”
Ash clamped her mouth shut and sat up. “Shh! Listen!” He glanced wildly around the room, looking for the source of the noise in the light filtering through the dust. Something must have crawled in through the roof. Most of the dust had settled, but the only things in sight were huge piles of marble. The white and black section from the ceiling had fallen straight down, landing in big lines. It was still settling, shifting side to side.
That wasn’t right, was it? The colors should have been mixed around, not separated into distinct sections. Ash furrowed his brow, confused - until he realized that the piles weren’t settling. They were moving.
Of course there was a guardian. There always was, and they almost always only showed up for a climactic finale. Ancient temple-builders were too dramatic. They were willing to destroy the entire freaking temple just to protect their religious artifacts. It seemed wasteful to Ash. Why not just rig the floor or something?
The grinding grew louder, and Ash could feel the floor starting to tremble. He swallowed uncomfortably, wishing he hadn’t thought about rigged floors. He had his right wing folded against his back to avoid damaging it further. It was busted up enough that he doubted he could fly straight, if at all.
He turned his attention back to Asinda. She was staring at the temple guardian, growling. The danger had snapped her out of her dizziness, at least for now. Whenever someone he cared about was in danger, he could focus in on the situation and ignore everything else, including injuries. It looked like Asinda was the same way. He grinned; he still felt horrible about assuming she wasn’t real, but seeing ready to fight anything for him, he realized just how real she was.
After all, it was exactly what he would have done.
_______
Asinda crouched, growling, trying to figure out what the guardian was. The fallen lines of marble were definitely part of it, but they kept shifting around. The black pile was in front of her, and it was too tall to see over, but she caught glimpses of the white side. It looked like it was moving separately from the black.
She thrashed her tail back and forth, agitated. When it knocked into something that wasn’t rock, she glanced over and saw Ash grinning at her stupidly. She waved a paw self-consciously. What was he doing?
“Ash, can you, uh… can you help me find out what this guardian is?” she asked, worried. What was he thinking about? It better not be about my scales. He nodded, sobering up, and looked back at the shifting mess.
“I think it’s a tail, or maybe two,” he said. Asinda shook her head. If that was the just the tail, how big was the body?
Suddenly, the ends of the tails rose into the air, swinging back and forth. Asinda realized they weren’t tails. Not exactly.
It was two giant snakes.
They sniffed at the air, searching for the intruders. The snake’s bodies were made entirely out of marble, but they weren’t smooth. It was like someone had blown a block of marble into chunks, then covered them in glue and haphazardly threw them into the shape of a snake. Pieces were sticking out everywhere, and when they moved it grated against itself, filling the room with the noise. One was jet black and the other was pure white. It was disorienting to look at, like a constantly shifting yin-yang. The heads were single pieces of stone, jagged, square boulders with indents for eyes and nostrils that flared outward. It moved it’s face like it was using a tongue to taste the air, but nothing came out of it’s mouth. It looked like it was sealed shut, a craggy line in a craggy face.
Asinda grabbed Ash with her tail and started to back away. When he tried to protest, she clapped a paw over his muzzle. He scowled at her, but Asinda just shook her head and kept walking with him dragging behind.
The snakes swiveled towards the two dragons. Bits of crushed stone flew everywhere, and a plume of dust obscured their heads as marble ground against marble. Asinda froze, accidentally throttling Ash, who made strangled noises of protest.
Please don’t see us, Asinda thought, standing perfectly still. Maybe they wouldn’t notice them, and they could escape out the broken wall, then –
A whistling noise pierced the air, and Asinda snapped her head up. A large blur whipped towards them. She dove to the side, throwing Ash in the opposite direction.
A head, slammed through the rubble next to her, throwing stone everywhere. Asinda felt a tiny chunk slice through her wing, leaving a hole the size of a blueberry. She yelped, flipping head over tail as more debris smacked her off course.
Suddenly, she was yanked in a different direction by means of her tail. Sliding across the floor, Asinda realized that it had gotten caught in between two stones on the white snake. It was trying to bite her, but the stones could only bend so far, so the snake was stuck slithering violently in circles. The sound was unbearable.
She caught a glimpse of Ash on her second time around the now open-aired room. He had gotten away from the snake and was hopping back and forth, avoiding the black snake’s gaping maw.
“Go, Ash!” She screamed, trying to encourage him. He turned to wave, barely noticing the snake in time to jump straight up and away. It slammed into his legs, catching on his scales and ending up frantically looking around the room while Ash swung back and forth from it’s head like a ragdoll.
There had to be some way to defeat these things, injured as they were. Something in her bag could probably help. She rifled through it, objects appearing in her hand then vanishing back inside. As she gripped a smooth glass ball, the shoulder strap caught on an outcrop of stone and ripped away, leaving her with the ball and one less bag.
“Are you kidding me?!” She screeched, her voice piercing the air. Her bag just had to break now, of all times! What was she going to do with a stupid ball? It could grow and shrink, but that was it. There was no use hiding inside of it when the snakes could just bash it open. The only thing in the room strong enough to break them was themselves.
Asinda blinked. An idea was forming. She lifted herself up onto the snake, using her tail as a rope. She straddled it, keeping one hind paw tucked away. Something had happened while she was being dragged around.
“Ash! Grab the ball!” Asinda waved it around in the air as she rode the snake. Once she caught his attention, she pointed at the snakes, the walls, the ball, then herself. It was the only explanation she could get out, but it was all he needed. Before she turned around on her next circuit, she caught a glimpse of Ash hanging his tail in front of the black snake’s face, leading it on like a giant anglerfish.
Asinda unhooked her tail, steadied herself, then leaped towards the opposite side of the room, flapping her wings frantically to give her a boost. The white snake gave chase. Reaching the wall, she landed, then jumped and kicked off the wall straight into the air. The wall sheared away, falling on the head of the snake that had whammed straight into the bottom.
`Asinda dropped and ran across the back of the snake. It was like a footbridge over the rubble strewn everywhere. As it rumbled and started to slide, she leaped off and unfolded her wings, gliding towards the dais in the center of the room. Ash was still riding his snake, which was now barreling towards Asinda. The ground rumbled as the white snake extracted itself from the rubble and flipped around.
Ash was getting closer and closer, and Asinda could see that he now had his own glass orb, glinting off the dusty sunlight.
The snakes were getting closer and closer. Asinda gave one final heave with her wings, then curled into a ball and shot towards the dais. Her globe expanded furiously, the surface melting around her.
Ash leaped from the black snake and did the same. The two huge spheres hurtled towards each other. The snakes were only a few feet behind.
They collided directly above the dais. A crack like two marbles hitting magnified a hundred times blasted around the room. Their trajectory cause them to bounce off in opposite directions. A moment later the snakes slammed into each other, obliterating their heads and throwing marble throughout the room and into the jungle beyond. The orbs tumbled wildly, smacking into walls, flying through the air, and tossing the dragons around in circles.
Slowly, things started to calm down. The balls weren’t bouncing and snakes weren’t slithering. It was strangely quiet without the constant grinding. Even the birds outside had stopped chirping during the fight. The only sound now was that of scales rubbing against glass as the dragons escaped from their pinball game of death.
Ash and Asinda stumbled into the open, looked at each other, then threw up.
_______
Once the hacking and coughing had stopped, Ash and Asinda stood together on top of the huge stone corpses of the temple guardians. Asinda was heavily leaning on Ash, her
Asinda poked Ash’s shoulder. “Looks like we wrecked another one, huh?”
“How does this keep happening?” Ash shook his head, exasperated. “Half the places I explore get torn to shreds!”
“Hey, it’s ‘we’ now, not just ‘I.’”
Ash nodded. “True. Thanks for saving me. Twice.”
Smiling, Asinda leaped on top of him, knocking Ash into a pile of crushed marble. Dust poofed into the air. “I’m claiming that it was unintentional,” she said, trying to smother a yelping Ash.
“Hey, watch out for my wing!” Ash struggled, then gave up. He could tell Asinda was being careful, and to be honest, he deserved it. After tackling his friends countless times, there was finally someone bigger than him to take revenge. Plus, Asinda did have a pretty severe head injury, so he’d excuse it - for now.
“Alright, that’s enough. You’re going to hurt yourself even worse.” Ash used his left wing as leverage and managed to stand up, lifting Asinda in his arms. There was no way he’d let her walk back with what was probably a huge concussion. If she got too heavy he could probably find some way to shrink her.
Asinda jerked suddenly. “Wait! What about the sword?! We have to get something out of this.”
“Yeah! I’ll find it. You rest and start fixing up your wing.” Asinda cringed at the last comment, feeling her wing carefully. Ash set her down, threatened her with a time-out if she moved, then started digging through the monochrome marble.
The search took over an hour. After patching herself up as best as she could, Asinda leaned back and slept against a chunk of black marble shaped vaguely like a pillow. Somehow the sounds of digging didn’t wake her as Ash continued the search. He eventually uncovered a short piece of wood, which turned out to be half of the blade. The hilt turned up under the end of a marble tail a couple paces away.
He walked over to Asinda, contemplating the best way to wake her up. He decided on short and explosive. Ash reached out a claw and dragged it slowly across her tail tip. Asinda stiffened and let out a strangled groan. Once he pulled away his claw, Asinda relaxed her muscles and sat back, blushing and panting. Their tail tip was extra sensitive, so contact tended to make them freeze up and get flustered.
“D-d-don’t do t-that…” Asinda breathed.
“Good morning to you too, sleepy head. I got the sword, but it’s pretty broken up. We can leave now. You’re going to have to be awake so I don’t drop you on your head on accident.” Asinda gave a quick nod then tried to stand up, groaning. Ash pushed her back down. “Wait a sec, we still need a way to carry it. There’s probably some sort of sheath in the temple somewhere.”
“I’ll help look this time. I can stand as long as I can lean on something,” Asinda said, pulling a big, curvy stick out of her bag and using it to keep from falling over. Ash glanced at it, then did a double take and leaned closer.
“That’s the thing you got from the pedestal, right?” Ash pulled out his own. It was shaped like a helix, twisting around and around, and it was the same white color as the marble. The outside shape was a circle, but inside the space was shaped like a rhombus. He compared it to the stick Asinda was using to hold herself upright. They were almost mirror images of each other, just like the dragons holding them. Asinda’s new walking stick was black instead of white, and it curved counter-clockwise. In fact, each of the long sticks looked as if they had been cut from the same source. The holes in one correlated to the shape of the other.
“Asinda, give me yours. I think I know what to do.” Ash held out a paw. Asinda’s grip tightened on her stick as he tried to grab it.
“No! I n-need this!” she exclaimed, backing up slightly. She stopped when her calves ran into piles of crushed marble. Ash sighed. He wanted to get out of the Temple of Duality, but he had to figure this out first.
“Just lay down or something! I need the stick!”
Asinda squinted at him, then nodded slightly. Before Ash could react, her wings snapped out and she jumped into the air, landing on his shoulders. Ash staggered, and Asinda leaned back and forth, helping him adjust to the new weight. She swung the stick down in front of Ash’s face, nearly smacking him on the nose.
“I’m staying up here,” Asinda declared, “until I get it back. I earned that stick.”
“Ow, okay! Just don’t pull any fur while you’re up there!” Ash yelped. He grabbed the black spring-shaped piece of wood dangling in front of his face and started fiddling with it. He matched up the two sticks, then picked one end to be the ‘bottom.’ He placed the bottom of the white rod into the top of the black. It slowly slid down until it hit the bottom and stopped. Ash inspected it closely, squinting in the almost clear air. The two halves had slid together seamlessly. He now held what felt like one large, striped branch with a hole down the center.
Ash grinned. “I think we found the sheath!” he said, carefully bending down and sliding the broken blade, followed by the jagged edge sticking out of the hilt, into the sheath. “Looks like this was a success. We ended up with one mostly complete sword and two mostly complete bunches of scales,” He laughed, wrapping his tail around Asinda’s waist, using it to steady her as he started walking.
“Hey, where are y-you going?” Asinda asked, slurring her words so they came out in one big strung out line of syllables.
“Well, you’re not getting the stick back, so it looks like I’m carrying you back. And don’t try to argue,” He added as Asinda opened her mouth. “I’m not letting you down until I find a hospital. If you tried to walk you’d fall over so many times you’d get another concussion.” Ash continued hiking through the rubble. He’d have to hurry if he was going to get out of the jungle by nightfall. He hated walking around in unfamiliar places at night. It felt weird.
“Ugh, f-fine,” Asinda said, stifling a yawn. “I’ll just… rest my eyes for a sec….”
Within a few minutes, she was flopped on top of Ash’s head, snoring away. Ash sighed. It was going to be a long walk back.
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Thanks for managing to make it this far! Hope you enjoyed it!
