Coquina awoke again with a jolt, feeling as if an ice spear had stabbed into her spine. Jerking around, she searched for the source of the cold sensation, only to find the tip of Scella’s tail prodding her lightly.
“Alright, no need to get jumpy,” Scella grumbled. She waited until Coquina had climbed fully to her feet before adding, “Latriis was right. Everything is going as was told to you previously.”
“Good,” Coquina said, for lack of other words to choose. She flicked her wings out stiffly, her mind still clogged with the warmth - and the cold - of sleep. Doing her best to shake it away, she followed Scella out of the cave, both careful to stay quiet so as not to awake Dior or her Mator.
The sun was just beginning to peak above the horizon as they emerged from the cave. It moved cautiously, as if afraid to look. The stars were fading, cast away by tentative rays, but still they clung to scraps of darkness, clustering around as they waited in anticipation.
A sigh drifted from Coquina’s jaw. A whole day and night of delaying this moment, and yet it had come around in the blink of an eye. Her scales itched as Scella lifted her wings high and leaped from the mountain, stinging even more so as she followed.
Setting her jaw, Coquina patched over those itches with imaginary red scales, glowing with warmth only her mind felt. She could do this. She would do this. With her eyes narrowed, she shaped all of her thoughts into one sharp point. Her mind was a tailspike, a dagger that pushed her through the air, its swift movements with only one aim.
It wasn’t dragon scales that it would pierce, she told herself over and over. It was her future. This dagger of her thoughts would slice out a new path, one that led to approval and pride.
Or, more accurately, one that led deeper into the clan and far from the deadly whispers from beyond its borders.
The word Reicio chased her through the sky, but she was faster, stronger, able to outmanoeuvre it. She used Scella as a guide to fight her way through the clouds of dark that word sent. As she banked over the Peak Circle, she remained elusive, casting Latriis’ cave a meaningful glance to spur her onward. Even as she landed and ventured over the border, vulnerable once more, the whisper of Reicio still couldn’t catch a hold on her.
She barely had chance to nod her acknowledgement to Scella before she was a piece of the fading dark once more. Coquina’s scales crawled with that unsettling exposed feeling, but she gave it no thought and turned away from Hiedium, vanishing into the forest. She didn’t stop even for a moment to glance up at the brightening sky. She moved constantly, for she knew that if she stopped for even a moment, her thoughts would scatter and Reicio would claim her.
She tracked through the forest, wings tucked but poised and tail held off the ground. Her claws ate up the ground as they dodged between trees. She was a predator, swift in her hunt, closing in on her prey.
It wasn’t long before she found its trail. Her scales twinged with that splitting sensation, as if the world had marked a scratched line where she stood that her eyes couldn’t make out. The rift between two clans. Never stopping, she moved along it, swerving around trees as the border led her further into the dim forest.
Her target was another Conupium Teffré, though not a guard this time. A messenger, hurriedly sent after the discovery of last night’s slaughter. Latriis was confident she had correctly predicted the action, and declared that this messenger must never reach Viridium territory and deliver their request. Letting those words pass between clans would cause their plan to shatter.
And Coquina’s safety along with it.
Pressing her fangs together, she moved faster, now training her eyes on the canopy above. There was a set place dragons always crossed between borders, almost like a bridge between two otherwise separate worlds. This crossing was used regularly, but not so early in the day. Only one dragon would pass through at this time, and that dragon had to die.
Slowly, Coquina shook her head. Not a dragon. Not a Teffré, or a messenger, or a clan member. Not a real thing. A target, a task, a job. Necessary.
The crossing point was marked by one particularly tall tree, with wide boughs casting pools of darkness under the now-risen sun. She ducked into one of those shadows, letting dark settle over the white of her scales and hide her from watching eyes above.
It struck her then that she didn’t even have an idea what the message was about. Latriis hadn’t disclosed such information, though Coquina doubted the Dux knew herself. This whole mission was based on their leader’s guess, but from its eventual accuracy, a very good guess. Latriis knew what she was doing.
Coquina shifted to a position where her body was mostly obscured by the branch, but her eyes could remain on the skies to the east. She remembered the green of the guard’s scales, and trained her eyes to pick out that shade against the leaves’ spark and the blue-white of the sky.
She was so focused on searching for green that she almost missed the flash of scales. If the wind hadn’t swirled beneath wings, creating the soft sound of a wingbeat for her ears to latch onto and alert her with, she might have missed it entirely.
Teffré didn’t just come in green varieties. She felt like kicking herself. An earthen brown dragon swooped above, almost passing over the tree already.
The Teffré was going to fly away before Coquina could do a thing. The message would be delivered, Latriis’ plan would fail, and punishment would have to be administered.
A single word, a hiss of Reicio, ricocheted from those brown wings and shot straight for Coquina’s heart.
There was no time for hesitation. She had to act. Now.
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