AVARICIOUS WYRM

gryphongirl has soundly defeated the crocodile-boargirl of the lower valley, and saved your village, but now she wants to talk about payment. "i want icons here and here and here" she says, dragging talons like bronze daggers down the ancient timbers of your village's longhouse, which apparently as of right now also serves as her shrine. "burnt offerings and prayer four times a year, warmest night of each season, got it? or i will come back and trash this place worse than that other bitch ever did." you make some small involuntary noise of terror in the back of your throat that she evidently interprets as assent, for she relaxes, slumping back onto the splintered gouges she has just torn in the wall. "i don't want to sit around for the icon painters, though" she confides. "you guys probably dont have a kinko's or some shit? i couldn't just... print some selfies off the 'gram?" you are halfway through mumbling apologetically that the village's only printer was in fact in the library that she threw crocodile-boargirl through last night, and as such almost certainly only exists now as shards of plastic and metal and glass, when she suddenly lunges forward and pins you against the opposite wall, claws pressed firmly against the soft and fragile joints of your shoulder. The smell of her rolls over you like a summer storm, sweat and smoke and blood and ozone melting into an indescribable melange that stings your nostrils and the back of your throat. "what is that?" she asks with naked hunger in her voice, the string of amethysts around your neck transmuted to citrine in her golden gaze. you pull the Violet Starfall necklace over your head with one free hand - it was the greatest treasure of your priesthood, a symbol of the covenant between the village and its catgirl-goddess Tenth Life Layabout, but Tenth Life Layabout met her end between crocodile-boargirl's jaws, and you have little time for sentimentality now. she drapes it over her head with one hand and removes the other from your shoulder to gesture obscurely: thin air turns to glossy black beside her, an obsidian mirror in which she admires how her newest treasure compliments her reflection. "ohhhh," she sighs, greasy smoke and wisps of magenta flame escaping the corners of her mouth. a noise like a revving motorcycle engine fills the room and rattles your bones; with a start you realise that gryphongirl is purring.