#herebedragons

Summary:

Tony Stark, a dragon, has a pest problem in his cave. Stephen Strange, a sorcerer newly settled into a mountain lair, has a dragon problem in his. Naturally, their first reaction is to fend off the intruder. Instead, they end up bridging a considerable cultural divide – with telepathic mistranslation, magical collaboration, and experimental transformation. And honey cakes. A fantasy AU with fairy-tale logic and an unexpectedly earnest developing relationship.

Chapter 1

Ugh. Tony had vermin in the cave.

Admittedly, there was only one—but by all accounts, it was the nastiest kind of all. A sorcerer.

***

Stephen’s newly acquired sorcerer’s lair had a dragon in it. An unreasonably large one. He wouldn’t have minded it much, normally. A rare beast like that added a certain mystique to a magical home built into a maze of caves deep in the mountains, and it was certainly good for security as well. But the dragon was showing all kinds of unwelcome behavior.

***

Tony knew just enough about household pests—not an inherently interesting topic, for sure—to feel certain about not wanting them around. And sorcerers? They were said to be especially difficult to get rid of. Worse, they had a painful if nonlethal bite, carried diseases, and carried off the gold. Annoying and inconvenient all around.

Tony had to act before it reproduced and he had a full-blown infestation to deal with.

***

The irksome dragon clogged up the ventilation funnels with nasty substances, disrupting the air flow in Stephen’s chambers. It left rotting deer carcasses everywhere, stuffed with entire belladonna plants, dirt clumps on the roots and all. It blasted fire down the pathways randomly—well, not quite randomly. For some reason, it always seemed to happen whenever Stephen got up from reading to fit in his two dozen steps a day for his circulatory health. (An important habit, even for a Master Sorcerer on sabbatical.) After getting the hem of his robe scorched, Stephen decided enough was enough. It was time to investigate the dragon’s haunt.

Venturing further into the bigger caverns, Stephen found deadly-looking warped metal contraptions strewn about. They had lots of pointy bits and some squished parts—almost like springs. New evidence that dragons hoarded all kinds of metals, not just gold. Speaking of which: little heaps of gold glittered among the dull grey chunks. This could mean only one thing: the dragon was settling in and spreading out its hoard. With that realization, Stephen turned on his heel and marched back to the smaller rooms he had chosen as his living quarters. He needed a plan before the situation got out of hand.

***

Tony had spotted the sorcerer scurrying around today. Its movements were quick and erratic. It had a colorful, mostly blue hide and, luckily, didn’t seem to be the flying kind. But that was the only good news about it. It avoided Tony’s ingenious traps. It ignored the thoughtfully laid out poisoned food. And somehow it kept finding its way into Tony’s living space, no matter how many small gaps he sealed. Using fire to disinfect everything it could have touched whenever it was moving around was Tony’s only consolation.

The little pest seemed to have excellent instincts. Tony wouldn’t go so far as to call it smart—he knew it only appeared that way. No, the creature was intent on survival. It still didn’t have a chance against Tony, who was, even by draconic standards, a genius and a fierce fighter. Which might seem overkill—and also a tad unfair, if Tony thought about it—but then again, the sorcerer really shouldn’t have invaded Tony’s space. There was plenty of room for it outside the caves, where Tony was not.

Still, hunting something so small felt unsporting. The mere thought caused an uncomfortable churning in Tony’s otherwise excellent fire stomach. He could ignore this sensation while designing and building new and better traps, but distraction wasn’t enough. In the end, he decided to change into his smaller form, nearer to the pest’s size, hoping his hunting instincts would fire up. Pun intended.

***

There might have been two dragons in Stephen’s not-so-newly acquired sorcerer’s lair.

Stephen had only seen the giant one once—or, more precisely, he’d seen its enormous, unblinking eye glinting from an opening in the ceiling of the cavern he was carefully navigating. And now there was another, smaller but still substantial beast, its red hide scraping against the tunnel walls as it huffed and puffed around Stephen’s favorite grotto, where he stored his non-perishable food. Like the honey cakes that were supposed to last a season but were so insubstantial Stephen could never remember whether he’d already eaten the one allotted for the day, and would go check and dig out another one, and… Anyway, now he had to be mindful of this other dragon as well.

The plan Stephen devised was brilliant in its simplicity: fireproof all his robes, avoid the dragons, and read up on wards against nuisance wildlife. He really was no naturalist. Fortunately, he discovered something interesting in one of his less frequently opened tomes: wards that emitted noise to repel unwanted visitors, like children and animals. Although the constant drone could prove to be a bigger nuisance than the dragons themselves, it was worth a try. Stephen was always eager to learn a new technique or application.

Keeping an ear out for the clacking of claws, Stephen placed the experimental wards with deliberation and flawless precision. He selected the locations as far from his study and his sleeping alcove as possible, but the hum still carried, unfortunately. The sages of old would say that your mind is no better than a lowly fly, flitting about and easily distracted, if noise can disturb your thoughts. Stephen would say the sages of old didn’t have ten beast-repelling wards and two dragons to contend with.

***

Tony had a pretty good idea about the pest’s whereabouts. He also had the mounting concern about it having already bred, because now there was a constant buzzing in the cave’s infested part. He hadn’t seen the mother sorcerer again, or its offspring yet, so his hunting instincts still hadn’t kicked in. He decided to channel all his restless energy into a new kind of trap.

It had been a while since Tony bothered with glassblowing, glass being a fragile material ill-suited for decoration or tools in a full-sized dragon’s cave. And there was hardly any reason for him to take on one of his smaller forms meant for social calls, not while he was exploring a new continent on his own, without nay-sayers and wannabe-competitors and various hangers-on. He barely even missed his few friends. Anyway, glass. Specifically, glass containers, completely see-through, big enough to live trap several of the small sorcerers and maybe study them for a while. And put them out somewhere far away later. Or something like that.

After creating a prototype in his middle-sized form and thoroughly testing it in his smallest form, Tony adapted and redesigned the original, quickly crafting Marks Two, Three, and Four. He stopped at seven, it being a nice round number. Then he carried the finished glass vessel to a promising hole and began setting the trap. The round, open-topped vessel was designed with a wide mouth and a secure lid, though he left the latter off for now. He buried a tipping mechanism beneath the vessel’s final location and, with great precision, carefully toppled it, positioning its mouth perfectly level with the ground. Now, the bait.

Tony had an outstanding sense of smell, on top of his other senses being first-rate, so he already knew that some of the pest’s hideouts smelled like honey. Now, honey was not easy to come by, but many flowers carried a similar scent. Distilling fragrant oils from blooms was child’s play for a multi-talented individual like Tony. It also would have taken far longer than he preferred.

He went for a quicker solution instead.

He gathered the prettiest wildflowers with the strongest smell from the open field just a skip away from his cave’s entrance. After shaking out the smelliest bits, he padded the trap with them. For the sake of being thorough, he threw in a few pieces of gold too. He even placed a little trail of petals leading to it.

He pushed the glass vessel to the opening, hid behind a boulder with the lid, and deliberately stilled his tail. Until now, it had been free to show his excitement, rhythmically tapping against the packed sand of the cavern floor. It wouldn’t do to give the ruse away, now, would it?

***

The experimental wards needed regular maintenance and adjustment. Stephen also had some ideas for improving them. After a bracing cup of tea, he made his rounds, checking each ward methodically while keeping an eye out for both dragons. He was onto something with his wards, because he hadn’t glimpsed either of them in days now, and even the evidence of their presence was fading—the slightly sandy floors were no more or less scratched, the previously scorched walls smelled less and less strongly of soot, and... what was that?

Stephen paused in his examinations. The tunnel ended in a smooth, transparent surface. It had a cylindrical shape and probably protruded well into the cavern beyond. Its walls were so perfectly uniform, the rim so smoothly finished, that it was hard to tell. Dry flower petals were scattered leading up to and inside it in what looked like artistic arrangement rather than random dispersal.

Fascinating.

This was no natural phenomenon—it had to be man-made. Or perhaps… could it be dragon-made? The glass, in theory, could result from their fire melting sand, though its clearness was baffling. But the flowers? That was harder to explain. Was this some bizarre mating ritual of dragons? The smaller one might have made it, Stephen supposed, in a bid for the other’s attention: a nest, perhaps, or proof of some peculiar prowess that only dragons would value in a mate. The larger one’s claws would have crushed such delicate work, surely.

Inching forward carefully, on the lookout for any suspicious sound or movement, Stephen crouched down to examine it more closely. The wilted flowers and dry plant-bits still carried a faintly sweet smell, more like hay than anything else. He reached for them slowly, one trembling finger outstretched. Then paused, hand frozen mid-reach. Tampering with a mating offering might have unintended consequences for the rare beasts. Not wanting to disturb the dragons’ natural breeding processes, Stephen memorized the flowers’ placement so he could reconstruct it afterward. Then he nudged a few aside to examine something glinting beneath them. The glass was thick and strong, its surface cooler than the air. And was that gold again? Unsurprising, perhaps, to include it in such a ritual.

Whomp.

A large red blur rushed toward him from the cavern, and the glass jerked abruptly upward, its rim nearly clipping him under the chin. He flinched back, falling hard onto his behind, and scrambled backward like a crab, legs skidding over loose sand. His heart hammered painfully hard. He didn’t stop until his back slammed into the rough stone wall, where he pressed himself flat, panting in short gasps.

The air was full of fine sand and dry petals. Slowly, they drifted down, only the smallest particles staying adrift, stirred repeatedly by a soft, rhythmic current.

Stephen blinked hard until his eyes focused again.

A big, red dragon was staring at him with its gleaming, amber eyes. It had squeezed itself half into the tunnel, the opening too narrow for its massive form, the glass wedged awkwardly against the walls. Apart from the slow rise and fall of its breathing, the creature was motionless now, but with its maw slightly open, revealing rows of pointy teeth, it remained no less menacing.

Fortunately, it also looked stuck.

Well, this was a bit of a scare—Stephen’s thought cut off abruptly as another voice overlapped it in his mind:

Well, this was a bit of a bust—

Stephen froze. The thought hadn’t been his own. The dragon’s stare grew even more intense somehow. An effect of the further bulging of those luminous eyes, probably.

A foreign presence brushed Stephen’s mind, disorienting and impossible to ignore: It speaks?