"Lessons?" Zac asked, his brain still having difficulty pulling away from the thought of Marchosias's lips tasting of spiked eggnog.
"Yes," the Left Head stated. "The Captain's orders. If you are to infiltrate the Holy City, you must be educated. Etiquette. History. Theology."
"Your indoctrination begins now," the Right Head added grimly. "Come along."
"NOOOO!" Zac yelled, his dreamy fantasy shattering into a thousand pieces of cruel reality. "I haven't even had caffeine yet! This is madness! This is a violation of my human rights!"
He launched himself at Bune, his hands like claws as he ferociously tried to scratch the dragon. Sadly, his fingernails just skidded uselessly off the butler's nigh-impenetrable scales with a series of pathetic skritch-skritch sounds.
Realizing that direct assault was ineffective, Zac changed tactics instantly. He collapsed in Bune's grip and began to wail, turning his head toward the head of the table.
"MARCH!" he cried, his voice thick with fake tears. "The dragon is being mean to me! He won't give me coffee and he's talking about school! Save me!"
Marchosias looked up, once again pulled from his endless disappointment. He made direct eye contact with Bune, a silent, weary communication passing between them. Then, the wolf shook his head slowly.
Marchosias marched over to where Bune was holding the squirming, leopard-print human. He looked down at Zac with no sympathy whatsoever.
"Bune," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "You have my full permission to use the strappado, if necessary."
With that, Marchosias turned and left the dining room, his footsteps echoing with grim finality.
Zac watched the wolfman go. "Did… did you just say Bune could use a strap-on?"
The wolfman stumbled, his stride faltering for a split second. His tail, which had been swishing with authority, tucked in sharply. But he didn't turn around. He just quickened his pace and disappeared down the hall.
Zac's eyes went wide. He looked up at Bune.
"So," he purred. "About those… lessons?"
"No." Bune hoisted Zac up by the scruff of his leopard onesie, lifting him until his feet dangled a foot off the floor. "Library time."
Bune carried Zac down the hallway, holding him at arm's length like a particularly noisy, thrashing sack of cats. Zac wailed, his legs kicking, his arms clawing uselessly at the air, but he was ultimately unable to reach his draconic handler.
"School? Are you kidding me?!" Zac shouted, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "I'm not here for studying! I'm here for extracurriculars! WAAAH! I hate books! And all the stories were wrong! Not a single professor ever wanted a quick handy during office hours! Education blows!"
Bune reached a pair of massive, iron-bound doors. Desperately trying to keep Zac from clinging onto the doorframe, he kicked one of them open, swung the wailing human back, and, with a grunt of effort, underhand-bowled him into the room.
Zac slid.
The polished black floors, smooth as glass, offered absolutely no resistance to the high-thread-count fleece of his onesie. He shot across the room like a leopard-print curling stone, coming to a slow, graceful stop as he bumped gently against the base of a towering bookshelf.
He lay there on his back, staring up at the impossibly high ceiling, his momentum and his will to fight completely spent.
"Fuck you so much, Ose," he whispered to the gloom. "Fuck you to Hell. Or, uh… somewhere you wouldn't like to be. Like a library. Or a church. Yeah. Fuck you to church."
He sat up slowly, rubbing his head. Bune was just turning away from the doors, which for some reason were now bound shut with heavy, newly-manifested iron chains. The dragon butler pulled a pair of delicate, silver-rimmed reading glasses from his coat and perched them on the snout of his Left Head. The Right Head, meanwhile, was looking around the gothic library with an expression of pure, unadulterated bliss.
"Ahh," the Right Head sighed, a puff of contented smoke curling from its nostrils. "The smell of ancient parchment, bound souls, and quiet contemplation. What a wonderful place to be."
Zac looked around, and his jaw dropped.
This was Marchosias's personal library. It wasn't a room; it was a cathedral dedicated to knowledge. Bookshelves, carved from a dark, petrified wood, soared stories high, disappearing into the shadows of a vaulted ceiling held up by pillars shaped like weeping angels. Rolling ladders, tall enough to give a god vertigo, were propped against the shelves. Stained-glass windows, depicting not saints but scenes of famous infernal military victories, cast pools of blood-red and sapphire-blue light onto the floor.
There were reading nooks with high-backed leather chairs, each with its own floating globe-lamp that shed a soft, warm glow. In the center of the room, a massive, circular table was covered in star charts and astrolabes that moved on their own, tracking the movements of alien constellations. The air smelled of old paper, leather, and something else… a faint, electric tang of ozone, as if the very knowledge contained in the books was a living, breathing entity. This wasn't just a library; it was a fortress of the mind, and it was the most beautiful, terrifying room Zac had ever seen.
Zac stood up, drawn by the sheer, overwhelming presence of knowledge. He reached for a book on a nearby shelf, its spine bound in what looked suspiciously like human skin, the title embossed in writhing, silver script.
"Not that one."
Bune was suddenly beside him, quickly and firmly ushering Zac away from the shelf and toward a large, empty desk. "There are some things a human mind is not meant to know," the Left Head said, his voice unusually grave.
"We do not need you ripping your own eyes out on your first day of lessons," his Right Head added with a shudder.
Zac looked back at the forbidden book. "You know, when you say things like that, it just makes me want to read it more. Is that reverse psychology? Because it's working."
Bune simply hoisted Zac up and deposited him into the massive, high-backed desk chair. "Being a spy will be significantly harder if you are blind. Now, stay."
Zac was not enjoying this very much now. 'Total boner-kill,' he thought, kicking his slippered feet back and forth in the demon-sized chair, his legs dangling a foot off the floor. 'Did Ose lie to me? Was there really no contract at all, and I'm just in regular Hell right now? Am I already serving my time, and he just gave me some evil, sexy sliver of hope to be cruel?' His hands balled into fists. 'That leopard is so getting kicked in the nuts.'