chapter four
@
saltedsnails
this was originally two chapters...hence the extra length
prev
If there’s anything that having a Featherback Boar as a familiar will teach you, it’s that persistence is key.
By the time Thrasher started prowling the Grand Cosmic Library on a daily basis, it’d been a long time since he’d seen his old Boar. A shame, considering what a great fighting partner he’d been.
Thrasher had no time to think too hard about it; he had thrown himself wholeheartedly and feverishly into the hunt for Varanasi and Xerxes. A week passed, then a month, with no success. A few times, he’d seen dragons with their colors, or Fae with almost their exact proportions, but they were never right. Somewhere around the second or third month - he wasn’t counting - he thought,
I’d be willing to settle for Euros or Silvas too. In fact, I bet they could help me find Varanasi and Xerxes. They basically raised those two anyway. He half-grimaced, half-chuckled, remembering the days of watching two Fae trying to raise two Imperial hatchlings. What a time.
Not important. He mentally kicked himself and went back to stalking the shelves.
Boring, boring, boring.
Too many books about stupid topics. He frowned at a luxury cookbook, written by some hoity-toity Pearlcatcher in the Sunbeam Ruins.
Who needs to know that? Just bite the damn meat, he thought, rolling his eyes.
Occasionally, he’d run across something interesting. The books about battle tactics caught his eyes the most, but they all proved to be disappointments, full of information that was either outdated, pointless, stupid, or something he already knew. One book he tried not to think about was the one that mentioned the Badstars. Seeing his leaders’ names and portraits in print was surreal enough without the nausea that came from remembering those days.
Time passed without Thrasher’s awareness of it. Every day was the same: wake up in some obscure location, go to the library, steal somebody’s food while looking for Varanasi and Xerxes, give up shortly after sundown, go find an obscure place to fall asleep in, repeat.
The routine carried on for weeks, until a very rude Imperial hatchling nudged its mother and said, “Mama, wasn’t that dragon in that book?” And the mother recognized Thrasher from his own portrait in the same book that had namedropped the Badstars, and she kicked up a fuss about a
heartless murderer-criminal in the Library, and someone tried to throw Thrasher out but he was too tough for that. He ended up getting thrown out anyway, on account of starting a huge fight on the second floor, and was told never to come back or else he’d be killed, and he was lucky to escape with his life, yadda yadda yadda.
Heard it before.
He dusted himself off, checking all around even when he found somewhere safe to ensure no one was following him.
So, what now?
Where else would they be?
They have to be in the Starfall Isles. I can’t imagine them anywhere else, aside from the Sea...but they’ve made so many enemies there, I doubt they’d return. That leaves the question: where in the Isles?
Thrasher racked his brain, recalling conversations that felt like they took place eons ago, ones where he learned where his leaders had come from and where they’d been. Materialized in the Isles all of a sudden, traveled west until they couldn’t anymore, met on the cliff, love at first sight, moved around with their family and clanmates...the Focal Point, maybe?
They could be hiding out on one of those floating meteors like they did way back. Trying not to get spotted, trying to regain their power, if they lost it.
Thrasher gave his surroundings another quick look before tossing his head back and staring straight into the cloudy sky. He tilted his head just slightly and thought,
What the hell, it’s worth a shot.
He spread his wings and took off into the meteors.
To nobody’s surprise - assuming anybody had seen it - Thrasher landed almost immediately, on the first piece of floating rock he saw. Mirrors have never been known for their flight endurance.
So the great hunt for Varanasi and Xerxes became a game of leaping. Thrasher’s decades of jumping and running and generally throwing himself around came in handy; even the longest gaps could be quickly closed, and if he couldn’t make it on legpower alone, a single flap of his wings would cover the rest.
He went higher and higher, moving through each roughly designated layer of chunks. Some dragons had decided to try to split the meteor pieces into layers based on...size? Composition? Something like that. Thrasher saw it as a completely pointless pursuit and thus didn’t waste time thinking about it.
Size would have certainly made sense, though: the higher he went, the larger the chunks became, until he started coming across entire clans (of respectable sizes) living on the rocks. Some of the islands were flourishing, with their own little ecosystems and dragons tending to them; others were barren, seemingly abandoned a long time ago. Thrasher strongly preferred the barren ones; less chance of another encounter like the one in the Library.
Time fell away as the air thinned. Before he knew it, Thrasher was in the highest layer; the sun was beginning to set far away, and the stars came out above him. The sky was cloudless, as it often was in this part of the world, and when Thrasher’s primitive instincts reminded him of how thirsty he was, he stopped to drink from a puddle on one of the islands. He meant to keep moving as soon as he finished, but when he turned and gazed back up, he stopped still.
He could feel his heart pumping and the blood running through his body, the entire world quiet around him as he took in the sight of a deep navy sky blackening and beginning to sparkle. This was what it must mean to be an Arcane dragon, he thought: to see the stars and understand instantly and innately how vast and unknowable the universe was, and then to try to learn its secrets anyway. All of this was the reason for the Observatory and the Library and the things that had always puzzled him about his own Flight; for a moment, it all made sense. Thrasher felt as though he didn’t even need to reach out to touch the stars; they were right there, and sooner or later one of them might fall on him and clothe him in the light everyone far below lost their minds over.
Wait, what am I thinking?
He shook his head and looked towards the next highest meteor, rocketing out to it. And the next, and the next, and the next…
Can’t breathe. He almost wheezed in his mind.
I gotta...stop.
He stopped, breathing heavily, on one of the highest meteors in the Focal Point. It was all rock, and warm to the touch; it must have (for lack of a better word) landed recently.
Another moment passed before Thrasher spotted something a few Fae-lengths away. It was half inside one of the holes on the meteor, a cold, steely blue, and seemed to be made of paper. He took cautious steps towards it, and once he reached it, carefully tugged it out of the hole.
Where have I seen this before?
Thrasher thought back to the Library. The book he’d read, a few months ago, had a picture of something that looked similar to this.
‘...wearing one of these masques completely changes the body and appearance of the wearer, to a different species entirely.’
Thrasher’s heart skipped a beat.
It’s a little crude, like in the book, and it’s got the same tape as those other masques. It looks like a Tundra. I wonder…?
No, no, what am I thinking? There’s no way it could actually do that.
It almost felt like the masque was beckoning to him, calling out, “Hey, Thrasher! Put me on! Give me a try!”
As he grabbed the masque, Varanasi and Xerxes reentered his mind.
Well...it’s not gonna work, obviously, he reasoned.
I’ll try it on, nothing will happen, I’ll put it back, and then I’ll go find them. Good plan.
He lowered his head, tugging the masque over it, keeping his crests low.
Yeah, figures. Of course nothing’s happe-
A flash of light swallowed him entirely.
xx
i wrote a bunch of chapters in advance so the wait won't be super long ahaha
