"You sound a bit cranky, Andras," Zac teased, his eyes twinkling. "Do you want a belly rub, too? I have two hands."
"Like you would even know how to rub me," Andras scoffed, his feathers puffing out in an indignant display of wounded pride. "Pure hands like that wouldn't know the first thing about tugging my-"
"Andras," Bune growled, both heads turning to glare at the owl simultaneously. The air in the stables grew heavy with the smell of scorched ozone. "You will keep your mutt on a leash while you are in the Captain's house. I will not have his halls smelling of wet warg and... whatever it is you do in your spare time."
Andras shifted his focus to the butler, his golden eyes flashing with a sharp, predatory anger before cooling into something far more jagged and cruel. A slow, mocking smirk touched his beak. "I'll take a mutt over a purebred any day, Buney-boy. You know what they say... and who would want a fucking nut-case dog." He let out a sharp, owl-like hiss, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "You just wish you were a mutt, you tri-polar snake."
Bune's frame seemed to bulge at the seams for a moment. His midnight-blue scales bristled, and his necks thickened as if the third, brutish head was fighting to tear its way into existence. But with a visible effort, he smoothed his tattered tailcoat and let out an exasperated, weary sigh.
"Get Goremaw off of the Avatar," Bune commanded, his voice tight but controlled. "We are here on business, not for your petty verbal sparring."
Andras took a deep breath, his feathers settling back into place as he reclaimed his nonchalant posture. "Fine. Goremaw, get over here." He whistled, a sharp, commanding note. "You can eat that when March realizes all this spying is just a waste of time and lets us have some real fun."
"The Captain has a plan," Bune said, crossing all four of his arms over his chest. "Or he is forming a plan. He does not waste time."
"He's wasting all of our time by trapping us here," Andras countered, lighting a fresh cigarillo with a snap of his talons. "The old wolf has finally lost his mind. He didn't even question the outfit. The man is leading a warband and he's let a human walk around dressed like a plush toy."
"The onesie?" Zac managed to grunt from the floor. He was currently pinned under Goremaw's massive, furry paw, trying to defend his face from a very enthusiastic, very wet tongue. "It's... it's growing on me. It's breathable."
Bune nodded in agreement, his Left Head looking thoughtful. "It is an easy-to-spot pattern in the library. He did not make it very far when he tried to escape earlier. I saw a flash of leopard print behind the 'Genealogy of Ghouls' section and intercepted him instantly."
"Fucking idiots," Andras said, shaking his head and blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. "Goremaw, that's enough. Let the little snack go."
Zac and Goremaw both froze, looking up at the two high demons with identical expressions of guilt. Goremaw's ears flattened, and he gave Zac one last, mournful lick before his instincts shifted. Instead of letting Zac go, the warg decided that if he couldn't have scratches here, he would take the human to his den.
Goremaw leaned down, gently but firmly grabbing Zac by the scruff of his leopard-print hood. He began to trot toward the back of the stables, dragging Zac along as if he were a prized chew toy he intended to bury for later.
Zac, surprisingly, didn't fight it. He just went limp, his arms tucked into the fleece, enjoying the sensation of being accepted into the warg pack. 'This is fine,' he thought.
"THE AVATAR IS NOT A CHEW TOY!" Bune nearly shouted. The butler rushed over, his four hands reaching out to grab Zac by the ankles.
A bizarre and undignified tug-of-war ensued. Goremaw growled, a playful but stubborn rumble, pulling Zac toward his pen. Bune planted his heels, his scales scraping against the stone, and tugged Zac back toward the stable aisle.
Zac felt like a piece of taffy being stretched to its breaking point. His leopard onesie groaned under the strain, the fleece ears on his hood twitching with every yank. He looked up, his head lolling between the dragon and the wolf-beast, and made eye contact with Andras.
The owl demon just leaned against a pillar, took a long drag of his cigarillo, and slowly shook his head, his expression one of utter, weary disbelief.
"You guys know I have a spine, right?" Zac wheezed, his voice muffled by the hood. "It feels kinda good but it has limited tensile strength."
"With the way you keep bending over for everyone, it's surprising to learn that spine has any strength at all," Andras said, finally stepping forward to wrestle Zac from Goremaw's grip.
The warg did not want to let the human go, leading to a frantic, toothy struggle. By the time Andras had successfully extracted Zac, the owl demon was scowling, holding his hand away from his body and vigorously wiping thick, viscous warg-slobber onto a handkerchief. "What's gotten into you, boy?" Andras muttered to the beast. "You didn't even maim him in the slightest. You're losing your edge."
"Goremaw is a good boy," Zac said, unfazed. Even though he had just been freed from the literal jaws of a demonic wolf-hyena-hybrid, he was already reaching back out, his hand subconsciously burying itself in the coarse black fur of the warg's neck. "And I think I've solved my mount problem. Just get me a saddle and I can ride him. It's good training for... riding Marchosias."
Zac's voice trailed off into a hazy murmur. He hugged himself, swaying gently on the spot, his eyes glazed over as he vividly imagined the 'rhythmic' training sessions he'd have with the Captain. What sort of gates did a wolf-man have? As long as they got galloping Zac didn't care.
"No. Absolutely not," Andras hooted, snapping his fingers to break Zac's trance. "Goreboy, Gore-Gore, Gore-eo's and Cream… come here. Let's get out of here. Don't pay attention to that leopard-print whore."
"There is no way you are riding that mutt," Bune agreed, his Left Head looking scandalized. "It doesn't follow orders. We have no warg saddles," the Right Head added, "and it will shed black fur all over your uniform. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get warg-hair out of soul-fleece?"
Zac, however, wasn't listening to the logistics. He had found a large, jagged object on the floor, what he thought was a sturdy stick. "Fetch!" he cried, tossing it with all the grace of a man who had never played a sport in his life.
The 'stick' was actually a massive, calcified femur. Zac's aim was terrible; instead of sailing down the stable aisle, the bone went high and wide, sailing over the iron bars of one of the many closed pens where Marchosias kept his most temperamental war mounts.
Goremaw didn't care about aim. He barked happily, like a gravel crusher, and launched his motorcycle-sized body over the pen's gate in a single, powerful bound.
CRASH.