12/14:
Well,
that certainly could have gone better. What a disaster today was.
Everything seemed to be going fairly normally. We were picking the meat from the stores for breakfast, Itiku, Kwolek, and Tsuga were all asking me about Takisha and the egg.
“Did her bite hurt?”
“Was she fierce?”
“She set the egg on
fire?! Why?”
“Since you saved the egg do you think they’ll leave us alone?
“Yes it hurt. She’s not fierce at all. Takisha didn’t set fire to the egg the mother did, I think because they lived under a rock and didn’t know how eggs worked. If all goes well today I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I growled. “Geez, guys, let me eat my elk in peace.”
“Sorry but it’s fascinating!” Exclaimed Kwolek, a mottled monochrome female gaoler with electric blue eyes. “Our old enemies come back to life and they don’t know anything!”
“Just because they were our ancestor's enemies doesn’t mean they’re ours,” I said absently after chewing and swallowing half of my elk. From what I gathered from Takisha they’re all terrified of us too.”
“As they should be!” Tsuga my idiot of an older brother proclaimed puffing out his chest and mane. “Gaolers are the fiercest and the strongest! Everybody knows that!”
“Sure, of course. I’m sure they’ll all flee in terror from the goofball with dandelion crumbles and mouse bones in his beard.” Tsuga looked down in alarm as Kwolek and Itiku sniggered. Itiku, a brown Gaoler with an orange, pink and purple mane then added: “I think I’d like to meet this banescale for myself, you mind if I come along when you see her?”
“Sure Itu”, I agreed, Itiku wasn’t the most decisive gaoler but he was steady and gentle. Honestly, if anyone could make the Banescales agree to give Gaolers a chance it would be Itu. Or at least I thought so.
Suddenly whoever was on sentry duty activated the alarm,. The lights, charmed by our resident light mage Petros began to flash a boiling red color. Our inquisitor Veritas enchanted his voice to ring through the halls.
“BANESCALE ATTACK! THERE ARE BANESCALES ATTACKING THE TOWN!”
“Oh Centaur dung.” I groaned while my brother roared “TO VICTORY!” and raced out of the room in a flash. We raced out with him and came to the outside. I swallowed hard at the scene of chaos outside. Up high in the sky were two banescales.
One was bright yellow with brown stripes and a green gradient similar to Itiku’s pattern but throughout her wings as well. A wispy blue smoke emanated from her wings and face. The other was a dark green and blue banescale with hypnotic looking blue striped wings.
They were much larger than Takisha, approximately the same size as a mirror. As they flew the yellow one opened her mouth and breathed a stream of fire that engulfed Sprite’s restaurant. The green one landed on the roof of the inn and screamed. “WHERE IS MY EGG?! I WANT MY EGG YOU... YOU... YOU STUPID, FURRY, EVIL, DEMONS!” The green dragon then set the inn on fire
“Of all the Shade-touched-” I swore, “TAKISHA I’M COMING!” I raced toward town with the other gaolers. In the sky the banescales found themselves fighting two guardians. Veritas, our inquisitor and Guardaespaldas, Polis’ self-proclaimed bodyguard.
Around the inn and restaurant Polis, Spinel, and his brothers Dimas and Dagny attempted to snuff the flames with ice and clouds of dirt. “Where’s a water dragon when you need one?” I moaned, Our resident water dragons Labridae and Corallium, were both currently sailing the seas with the last batch of seekers sent out into Sornith. I gritted my teeth and drew upon the magic of my land. The discomforting sensation of ice built up in my throat and I expelled it desperately trying to quash the flames. I then saw a small brown and blue bolt fly out of the inn. “Oh (huff huff) thank Icewarden.” I rasped between breaths of ice.
Takisha saw the guardian and Banescale fight above her, squeaked, and flew up to try to stop the fight. But at that point, the guardians gained the upper hand. Roaring in victory they pinned the Banescales to the ground, Guardaespaldas with her weight and Veritas with pure, arcane gravitational power. Tsuga and my father Torsten quickly Iced their wings, feet, and tail to the ground, trapping them. The green one began to scream until someone (probably Itiku) wrapped her face in vines. Veritas landed and turned to the two banescales.
“Now listen you two he growled, I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer honestly. Don’t think you can lie to me! My charge is the truth and I can tell when someone is attacking it. And I will stop them. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!” The yellow one nodded sullenly while the green one continued to struggle. “Oh for Arcanist’s sake, Spaldes can you bring us some peace?” Guardespaldes promptly knocked the green dragon unconscious with a single swipe of her tail.
“Good, now the first question for you. What are your names? For both of you mind.”
“I am Naima and beside me is Amani, we are early hatches of the last banescale clutch. We know you stole Amani’s egg you monsters! Give it to us and maybe we’ll spare your life!”
“Dramatic ain’t we?” drawled Veritas. “Now how exactly are you going to threaten us in your current predicament? He gestured to the ice pinning the two to the ground. “Are there perhaps more of you?” Naima gritted her teeth, “No there is only us!” I could see from Veritas’s increasingly stormy expression that Naima had made an unfortunate error. She had lied to Veritas’s face. His runes and eyes began to glow and Naima started to whimper in pain.
“You feel that Banescale? That is what I feel every time someone attacks my charge. You attacked my charge with that filthy little lie.
Don’t. Do. It. Again.”
“Fine!” Naima spat “We have another early hatch, Gloam, with two little ones from the main hatch. We had another little one but she disappeared about the same time as the egg. We assumed you had taken her with the egg.”
“No Naima!” Takisha suddenly interjected, she flew down to Naima. “Takisha is fine and Amani’s egg is also fine. I took Amani’s egg to them because it was sick. They fixed it Naima!” Naima gaped at Takashi in disbelief. “You... you took it? Takisha we could have figured it out ourselves! Taken it back to the Ashfall Wastes where sympathetic dragons could have helped us.” Carmine interrupted, “I’m afraid that would have certainly killed the egg outright. Eggs need to be surrounded in their flights' magical energy in order to grow up healthy. Amani laid the egg here in the Southern Icefield which makes it an ice egg and an ice egg needs to stay here.”
“
RHEET?!” Everyone turned to the green banescale Amani who had apparently woken up without anyone noticing, the vines holding her mouth shut suddenly receded, (that was probably Carmine, he's soft like that). and she screamed. “My child is an ICE DRAGON?!”
Carmine regarded her cooly, “Yes and while I’m sure you had the best of intentions, setting your egg on fire certainly did nothing good for its health.” He softened a bit and added, “You’ll be glad to know that it’s back on track. Almost good as new in fact.” Amani bit her lip she looked both relieved, panicked, and like she was trying to hide both of those feelings from others. Naima growled. “For Flamebringer’s sake, you are SO. DUMB. Amani. I told you you should have waited to have that egg until we were back at the Ashfall Wastes.”
“Our species needs to get back on its feet NOW Naima! I told you this! It doesn’t matter if… if they’ll be an ice dragon or not. They are our future.” Amani turned to Veritas and Torsten. “Let me have Takisha and my egg back. I-,…” she twitched in discomfort and continued “I won’t attack you again. Just let me know how to care for my egg and let us go.” She grimaced and almost whispered, “Ugh, please.”
“I don’t really know about that.” Everyone turned around to see Polis. He swaggered, top hat and waistcoat barely singed, he rolled his pearl with his claws and grinned. “I’m afraid you two owe me a
lot of money. You see those buildings you burned… they belong to me. Also, you’ve inconvenienced my employees who depend on the business those buildings help bring them. Oh, and I also helped save that little egg of yours.” He chuckled, “You see my dears you owe me A LOT. Of treasure. I estimate about 3,750,000 bits of treasure in fact.” The two banescales stared at him in consternation. “Well, I suppose you could give me 3750 gems instead. I’m nothing if not reasonable.”
Naima stuttered, “We… we don’t have treasure.”
“Of course you don’t have any treasure!” Polis beamed, “ You two were practically born yesterday after all! That’s why you’ll pay off your debts to me by rebuilding my establishments.” Naima sputtered, “You… you can’t be serious. You can’t keep us here! We can leave if we want!”
“Ah… I suppose you could leave but Then I would press charges.” Polis walked closer to the Banescales grabbed Naima's muzzle and forced her to look directly into his cold humorless eyes. “I would set a bounty and make sure every mercenary, every gaoler, every law-abiding dragon around would hunt you down. And when they did find you I’d make sure to lock the both of you in the darkest, deepest corner of the Fortress of Ends I could afford, which is my dear, quite a lot.” He dropped Naima's muzzle and sauntered away. “It’s your choice of course.” Naima bowed her head in defeat. “W-we will stay.” She mumbled Amina nodded in agreement. “Good! I’m glad we could come to an agreement then come on you giddy gaolers let my new employees go won’t you?”
“We don’t answer to you, Polis!” Torsten growled as the Pearlcatcher strutted away. “Do let them go you two.” He acceded to Tsuga and me. We helped the ice to soften as the banescales gathered heat and breathed fire to accelerate the process. Soon the Banescales were free and led into Polis’ office to finalize their paperwork. “Let the exalted have mercy on their souls”. I muttered, “I can’t believe he has banescales indebted to him in
less than a week.”
“It would almost be admirable if it weren't so terrifying.” Tsuga agreed, “What are you going to do now?”
“Well, I’m going to confirm that Takisha’s ok and then I’m going to have me take her to the other banescales. I’m sure that Gloam they mentioned is probably the father of the egg and I think they’d probably appreciate being together if they are going to stay here for a while.”
“I guess,” my brother assented, “But I hope they aren't as grumpy or violent as those two. Man look at the mess they caused.” He looked over the ruins of the inn and the restaurant which were heavily charred.
“Well if they are we’re just going to have to deal with it.” I sighed. “Remember last time we tried to curb Polis’ “Business Practices?” Tsuga shuddered and nodded.
After that I found Takisha and we went to go get Gloam and the other two banescales. Luckily they are actually much more reasonable than Naima or Amina and agreed to come into town with little fuss. I really like Gloam, I don’t really know what he sees in Amina. (And he seemed to agree with me when I told him that?). But he’s very relieved that we saved the egg. At the end of the day, I had a distinct feeling that I was starting a new journey with these banescales.
And I can’t wait to see where it will take me.
