Lertes, Sapphire, Gild, Taiga, Florasighth, Raijin
The sounds of Hawthorn’s struggle is drowned out by the sound of the group running for their lives. The dragons don’t dare to look back, Lertes and Taiga pointing the group in the right direction as they flee danger. At first, Taiga thinks that the cold chill running down his back is from the fear of the Shade that Hawthorn was fighting, but it only gets stronger as the group slows to turn a corner. Taiga can’t stop himself from turning around, looking to the back of the group.
Taiga’s hackles raise as he observes the coatl trailing behind him. He can barely hear the surrounding dragons ask him what’s wrong as he skids to a stop, his ears roaring from adrenaline and something else–the very Behemoth itself, angry at the intruder invading it.
“Who are you?” Taiga shouts, causing everyone to turn and look at the coatl. His grey eyes flicker dimly in the light, his feathers duller compared to earlier.
"Are you sick?" Taiga asks. No response. The coatl shuffles closer. "Are you sick?!" he repeats, feeling himself getting hysterical as he scampers backwards, grabbing onto Raijin's arm.
Sapphire lowers his head and narrows his eyes. He bares his teeth. A warning. “Answer the question, Sunrise.”
Sunrise staggers, its eyes blinking slowly and its tongue flicking lazily back and forth. Sunrise changes direction, slinking towards the wall before standing on his hind legs, one hand reaching to grab the string lights above–
Raijin and Sapphire lunge into action, Raijin shooting off a bolt of lightning at Sunrise. Sunrise rolls out of the way of the bolt, slamming on the floor with an uncomfortable whump before clumsily standing back on its feet. It wavers unsteadily, and hesitates long enough for Sapphire to body Sunrise, throwing it back on the ground. Sunrise opens its mouth, hissing, and revealing a mouth full of tar-black goo, before biting Sapphire’s arm. Frost grows around the bite mark, but Sapphire seems unfazed as he holds the possessed dragon down.
Sapphire’s grip doesn’t relent, even as the unpleasant feeling of something crawling under his skin invades his veins. “I won’t be taken down that easy,” he snarls, his eyes shining as his bitten arm glows. He’s slowed down the progress of the infection, but he can’t hold it back forever.
Sunrise kicks the imperial in the stomach. Sapphire lets out a small grunt, his grip loosening ever so slightly from the impact. Sunrise struggles to get out, back legs clawing at the imperial’s stomach, but his armor prevents the kicks from doing damage. The two continue to struggle.
Sapphire calls back to the rest of the group. “I’m going to incapacitate him! Keep going!”
“And what about you?” Florasighth cries. They’ve just lost Hawthorn, can they afford to lose Sapphire now too?
“I’ll be right behind you,” he lies. His gaze softens as he regards the five dragons in front of him. “Go. I’ve got this.”
Gild doesn’t need to be told again, grabbing Florasighth by the arm and urging her to follow. Taiga doesn’t believe Sapphire, not really, but he’s a scholar, not a fighter. He knows he’ll be no good in this fight, and so he and Lertes turn their backs to the imperial, following the others.
Raijin is the last to follow. He’s frustrated, one head grinding its teeth while the other growls at the coatl. He starts to surge forward, ready to help, but is stopped in his tracks as Taiga calls after him. “Raijin! We need to keep moving!” Raijin’s feet shift back and forth, torn between following his friends, or protecting them from the possessed coatl threatening them. “Please,” Taiga says softly. Raijin’s shoulders slump in defeat, one head turning to give one last defiant growl at Sapphire and Sunrise both as he stomps over the where Taiga is, following the rest down the hall.
Sapphire watches the group leave, saying nothing. He sighs in relief, knowing his job is done. He’ll have to leave the rest to them. He looks down at Sunrise, who’s stopped flailing around finally, with a look of pity; how horrible a fate to be possessed by the Shade like this. He wonders how it could have happened, and when. Was it in the dark room? The dark maze of twisting caverns they had navigated before? Or had he been possessed from the start? Was it him that caused the cave-in, crushing Polgara’s wing and forcing her to return to the medical tent?
He decides it doesn’t matter. Once the party is completely out of sight, he pins Sunrise with his elbow and takes his ring and expands it, just as Lylas had demonstrated for him a few hours ago. He wasn’t sure what the limit was on the ring, not sure his idea will work, but he’s pleased when he’s able to expand the glowing magic ring to a large enough diameter. He struggles against the coatl as he slips Sunrise’s wrist through the ring, then his own. The ring tightens against their joined wrists. Sapphire stops fighting the coatl, who lunges for his throat as Sapphire turns the ring, as he had been instructed before.
Both dragons disappear in a flash of pink light. Moments after they disappear, the hall begins to darken, and a chair comes flying down the hall, taking several lights out as it smashes against the lightbulbs illuminating the hallway. A table is quick to follow, smashing against the corner of the root hall on impact, the corner growing dark. Rolling along the floor, peeking around the corner, is a puddle of black, seeping ominously into the hallway the party had run down not too long ago…
Lertes and Taiga have no time to slow down, yelling directions to the whole group as they follow various flower symbols and landmarks, going off memory from what they had deciphered from the map. They turn down a narrow passage, the symbols and arrows on the walls becoming denser and more populated as they enter what was once a more well-populated section of the root network. Among them, a 12-pointed lotus, the engraving inked with a deep red color, points down the passage.
Taiga has been doing his best to block out the overwhelming presence of the Behemoth thrumming in his veins, but he can no longer keep going. He skids to a stop. He cradles his head in one hand, eyes narrowed as he tries to figure out why the Behemoth is pressing down on his consciousness. It must be trying to tell him something.
Raijin stops, placing a firm hand on Taiga’s shoulder. One head looks at the tundra intently while the other looks nervously down the passage, back the way they came. “Are you ok? Can you keep going?” he asks, worry laced in his tone.
Gild slides to a halt, sick of the constant interruptions to their journey. “We need to go,” Gild hisses.
Florasighth gives Gild a dirty look before rushing to Taiga’s side, while Lertes stands awkwardly in the middle.
Taiga begins to respond, “I just…” but quiets when he pulls his hand away from his face, noticing for the first time that his claws have begun glowing a bright green. “What?” Stunned, he gives up fighting the Behemoth’s call, allowing his claws to dig into the smooth wood floor below them.
Florasighth and Lertes gasp as the root twists around Taiga’s claws, slowly closing the entrance to the passage behind them. Raijin lets out a stunned exclamation, clapping at the sudden show of magical talent. Florasighth stares for a moment, before an idea pops into her head.
“Wait!” She climbs into the rapidly-closing hole, Taiga lifting his hands in shock, stopping hte magic as Florasighth squeezes through to the other side.
Raijin reaches his hand through the gap too late, trying to grab the little one and prevent her from getting to the other side. “Just trust me! I won’t be long–I have an idea!”
She reaches into her pouch of seeds, taking out the samples she knows were from the bioluminescent plants she saw in the lily room. She tosses the seeds and spores at the wall, using her magic to encourage them to take root where they land. Her hands glow as she hovers them over the plants, encouraging them to grow at an impossibly fast rate. Soon, the passage is lit up by a myriad of glowing plant life.
Satisfied with her work, she reaches up and grabs Raijin’s outstretched hand, which had still been pawing around to find her. Raijin pulls her through the hole, and Taiga quickly finishes his work sealing the passage behind them.
“Alright, let’s go,” Gild calls, not waiting for the others as they take off again. The others hurry to follow, continuing to follow the 12-pointed lotus symbols until they finally cross another door frame embedded with an image of wolfsbane.
The group crosses the threshold of the wolfsbane, and Taiga stops to find the switch to close the door. Gild and Raijin both bounce in place as Taiga fumbles around where the switch should be, but can’t find it. Florasighth pants, trying to catch her breath. Lertes approaches, asking, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to close the door behind us,” he explains. He switches from the left side of the door frame to the right, hoping that perhaps the switch was simply mirrored on this particular door.
Lertes crosses back over the threshold, back the way he came, peeling back dead vines and roots to look in the same place Taiga had been searching. Sure enough, there was a hidden square carving on the frame, and when he pressed it into the wall, the wolfsbane door slid up, locking Lertes on one side, and Gild, Florasighth, Taiga, and Raijin on the other.
“I’ll keep watch on this side,” Lertes yells through the barrier. “I can unlock it from here when you come back.”
“But–”
“Just go! I’m counting on you all to finish this. I have your backs.”
With no other choice, the remaining dragons continue down the passage, following the path led by the red-painted 12-pointed lotus.
Only 4 left–who knows what will happen from here! Our story is getting close to its end. I hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of Last Dragon Standing so far.
Aid and sabotage cutoff is 16:00 for round 9. As a reminder, if you send an aid before the last round ends, you get the following badge:
And if you send a sabotage before the event ends, you get the following badge:
If you participated in aiding dragons on every day of the event, you get the following badge:
If you participated in sabotaging dragons on every day of the event, you get the following badge:
If you missed a daily badge, you may earn it by sending me 10kt/10g per badge missed. To qualify for the "all days" badges, if you sent in aids/sabotages for all days (Monday-Saturday), you qualify for the badge for free. If you missed 1 or more days, you must send 10kt/10g per "all days" badge in addition to any badges you missed.
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