They were nearly at the main doors, two towering slabs of petrified wood, intricately carved with abstract, swirling patterns rather than scenes of violence, when the sound of thundering hooves and clawed feet echoed up the causeway.
"LIAR!" Nock's voice boomed, full of righteous indignation. He and Skarg, having finally forced the gate, were charging towards them at full speed.
Andras sighed. "And the children have caught up." He turned, not drawing his cutlass this time, but simply waiting. "Can I help you, gentlemen?"
"Your lie about the Captain's orders was pathetic, even for you!" Skarg roared.
"Lie?" Andras said, raising a feathered eyebrow. "My dear caribou, I never said it was our Captain that gave me orders. I imagined he said he wanted me to escort the Avatar. And he will." He tapped the side of his head. "Owl's ears. I heard you two screaming the boy's title all the way down the chasm. I simply made the logical deduction that the Captain would prefer his vital new asset to arrive in one piece, and not as the prize in a brutish tug-of-war."
Before they could argue the semantics, the heavy wooden doors were thrown open from the inside with a concussive boom. One of them caught Zac, who had been wisely trying to make himself scarce, sending him flying into a large, meticulously pruned thorn bush that sat in an ornate planter.
"Ow. Rude."
A figure stepped out of the doorway, and Zac's breath caught in his throat. It was a two-headed dragonman, and he was, against all odds, breathtakingly elegant. He wore a butler's tailcoat stretched taut over midnight-blue scales, so perfectly pressed it could have cut glass. But it was his heads that were so captivatingly strange.
The Left Head was noble and sharp, reminiscent of a heraldic dragon from a coat of arms. Its horns were straight and proud, its snout finely tapered, and its golden eyes held a cold, analytical intelligence. The Right Head was more predatory and wild. Its horns curved back like a ram's, its jaw was stronger, and a crest of darker, tougher scales ran down its neck like a hawk's hood. Both were undeniably draconic, yet they were as different as a king and a hunter.
'Well hello there,' Zac thought, momentarily forgetting his aches. 'Dragon in a butlers uniform, yes please.'
The dragon butler hadn't noticed him yet. His full, twin-headed attention was focused on the brawling lieutenants in the courtyard.
"Cease this barbarism at once!" cried the Left Head, his voice clipped and precise. "This is the Captain's personal ward! Not a common sparring pit! The sheer lack of decorum is appalling!"
"And you're scaring the Captain's prized Doom Roses!" added the Right Head, gesturing with his snout to the very bush Zac was currently embedded in. "He spent three decades cultivating that shade of arterial red!"
It was only then, as the Right Head gestured, that both pairs of golden eyes fell upon the disheveled human picking thorns out of his tunic. The dragon butler froze.
"A… human?" the Right Head whispered, his voice full of disbelief.
The Left Head's eyes widened in dawning horror. "In the prize bush?!"
Then both heads inhaled in a horrifying, synchronous gasp. "HUMAN!"
Twin jets of violet fire erupted from their mouths, not at Zac, but straight up into the air like a distress flare of pure panic. Zac, startled from his daydream, yelped and scrambled further into the foliage.
Nock, ever the dramatic hero, saw his chance. With a cry of "Have no fear, little one!", he vaulted over the brawling Skarg and Andras, landing in a perfect three-point stance between Zac and the now-panicked butler, shielding him with his own body.
Skarg, however, had had enough. With a final roar of frustration, he shoved both Nock and Andras aside. "That's it! I'm done!" He stomped over, reached into the thorn bush, and hoisted Zac out by his collar, completely ignoring the thorns that scraped his tough hide. "I left a perfectly good crypt fucking naked to drag this asset here! He is MY find and MINE to commend! All of you cunts can fuck right off!"
He turned and barged through the open doorway, carrying a dangling and slightly bleeding Zac with him.