“Jason! Jason wake up!” Quil picked Jason up where he had fallen and tried to shake him awake but could only get a brief moan to assure Quil that he was still alive. The end of the tunnel was not far from where everyone stood and Shea was about to burn Quil into a pile of ash for leaving Jason behind, but the anxious chittering of dragbeasts behind them pressed her to save her anger at Quil for later. Jason was still alive and mostly unharmed, that was all that mattered to her at this moment.
“We have to keep moving. The beasts are not far behind us and there is a way to collapse the tunnel on them at the end,” Marion announced.
“What about the girl? She looks like she is still alive,” Manus asked, noticing the frail form, not knowing she had just been the creature Jason fought.
“She wasn’t here before,” Quil strongly cautioned as he lifted up Jason’s limp form in his arms, “Joyce, can you pick up anything about her?”
“The fire for my ability is still regenerating. There’s not much I can pick up other than she’s not dangerous. At least at this moment,” Joyce said, wary as well.
“But I can tell she’s definitely a fire hatchling, not very powerful or old and as to why she’s in her human form, I can only think that she must have been in that form when she was attacked,” Marion added.
“I’ll take her then. If she turns out to be part of a trap it will be easiest for me to fly her away or turn her to stone,” Manus decided to lift her up into his feathered arms.
“Then let’s get going. Marion led the way,” Shea commanded.
It only took a couple minutes for the group to reach the hatch at the end which had been sliced open, which Quil and Joyce knew was the creature that had now disappeared, but instinctively knew the human girl had something to do with. Marion directed everyone else to a small refuge she had prepared in the woods and sent Joyce along with them while she swiftly dug up a small vein of dragon’s amber that ran throughout the tunnel and had originally been placed there by Sarre almost fifty years ago. Sarre was the one who had helped her build the tunnel, given he had the ability to manipulate materials that came from the earth. That and his fire was extremely volatile, even when after it had hardened into amber it could explode just from being handled too roughly. She had tempered it by mixing and hardening it with her own fire so that the amber laced tunnels would only explode if it was exposed to either Sarre’s or her fire.
With a small spark of flame the amber fuse ignited, burning into the ground as Marion ran away in haste from the tunnel through the dense forest of trees. A few moments later boom after boom followed after her. Mixed in with each boom was a symphony of loud snaps, cracks and thuds of trees that tragically had decided to grow up around the tunnel. Along with the trees were the high shrieks and wails of dragbeasts before falling silent, the monstrosities now burnt up and buried within the rubble. It took only a few moments to turn the once peaceful forest into a fiery inferno that stemmed from the newly formed craterous ravine, but at the least, the last of the dragbeast horde was gone with only the sweet-smelling smoke of burning dragon’s amber and the rich hardwoods that had fallen left.
Normally this level of destruction would have Marion in fear about their existence being found out by the humans of Dawnbraught since the larger majority still did not know. But when she had finally been able to escape from the fight within the Golden Claw, she immediately ran out to the town to them. Instead, she found the entire town reduced to rubble by the horde and the survivors, even the ones she had made immune, turned or turning into dragbeasts. Her heart had and still was heavy with grief. The only thing she had been able to do was end the lives of those who hadn’t fully turned and take the thistle-like bloom of a stray gorn root that had just begun to fade, turn it into gold with a soft wisp of her fire’s power and place it near the town’s entrance, which now marked its grave.
Otherwise, it was the offseason and travelers and patrols would be few and far in between. So none of them would need to worry about anyone discovering the collapsed tunnel and being able to follow them into the woods. They would be long gone before then and the gray skies that rolled in above smelled heavily of the cold seasonal rains.
After her initial run from the tunnel, she slowed her pace down to a steady jog as she entered the increasingly thick forest and became more choosey of where she walked as the sun-loving grass gave way to soft, thick ground moss and layers of thick leafy decay that had begun to change into thick, almost muddy soil. Before Dawnbraught had existed the entire area was like this, dense wet forests of deciduous trees with a few conifers mixed in, giving it the pleasant smell of crisp pine with fragrant earthy undertones. It was almost morning but the dark clouds above and the thick forest canopy above still made it seem as if the night had more time to play. Darkness was not an issue, all dragons’ sight was well adapted for the dark as were all their other senses, even in their human form, so the path she had marked out on the trees to their temporary hideaway was easy to spot. Especially with fresh tracks from the others she casually noted, allowing the forest to relax her.
It wasn’t long before she caught up with everyone, but what little relief she had just experienced was riled up into anxiety when she saw the girl from the tunnel still in Manus’s arms. Marion knew there was no way that her presence would have gone unnoticed and she was only physically weak. Otherwise, the smell of power poured off of her in a nearly identical manner that it did Jason. Upon thinking of him she looked over at Shea who had him resting in her lap, tending to the thankfully few cuts and bruises he had acquired while glowering at Quil like she did whenever she had just finished fighting. Sarre and Joyce came up to her, Joyce now in her counselor form. She had the same deer shaped face and build like Marion and Shea but had three, simple short horns on either side of her head and just above her brow and matching spikes down her spine and tail. Her scales where green that faded to a deep blue on her snout, limbs, and tail. She had no wings in this form, but like Quil her arms became them in her natural form. She also had much more modest taste in clothing and wore a simple but still elegant mahogany gown-like robe with bright red accents to match her eyes.
Joyce wore no jewelry aside from a few pieces Marion had given her to decorate her horns in a similar fashion that dragon Advisors did after she had expressed her desire to become one instead of serving in the Monarchy. Marion had not yet told her, but she had been accepted to train as an Advisor, which was why Joyce was still with Marion instead of beginning her schooling with the other dragon youth in Torvis. For Advisors, they focused the early parts of their training outside of Torvis and around other species rather than dragons first, so the Golden Claw had been a perfect place for her to start without even knowing it. It had also tested whether or not her demeanor was suitable, given her mother wouldn’t pass even if she was given three lifetimes to do so, as she quickly demonstrated after she checked over Joyce to ensure she had no injuries before Manus became the target of her anger.
“So you really brought that thing here? All the way here?” she expelled at Manus.
Manus had expected either Shea or Marion to burst out at him at some point, secretly hoping it would be Shea given Marion’s temper, but Shea had already racked Quil over the coals of her anger, so he had mentally prepared himself for whatever Marion had in store, “Yes, she is a fire hatchling and not a very healthy one at that. I doubt she will be able to pose a risk to us anytime soon, which you confirmed, and seeing as where she was found, there are answers we need from her, alive.”
Marion snorted, “Yes she is weak right now, but I doubt that will last long. The power of her fire is nearly the same as Jason’s and we still don’t even have answers to that!”
“Then maybe she might have answers. Shea already informed us you think we should go to the Old Country, but with her, we might not need to take that risk,” Manus countered.
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