regarding my shade kids on the plus side: ekul is two dimensional and therefore takes up no space at all on the minus side: zeiya is an enormous dessicated imp corpse, hard to accommodate on the extra-minus side: regie is highly toxic and only vaguely aware of the fact
delta realises that he may have left something important behind
~
Delta was too tired to think of much. The world had dwindled to a single repetitive motion; he beat his wings and breathed. Shock had smothered everything else, even his emotional reaction to what he had seen on the mountain top. Now he just flew.
The beastclans and injured dragons on his back made for uncomfortable passengers. Somewhere beyond his horns he could hear a centaur arguing with a harpy. Near his wing joints, his clanmates were urgently discussing Fiach’s condition, but thankfully the wind made it impossible to hear more than the occasional snatch of Zeta’s plaintive voice.
As the biggest dragon still able to fly, he’d been burdened with the task of getting the clan to safety without attracting attention. To that end, Kelpie had posted harpy mages around him at all four points of the compass. They shielded him from sight, somehow. He didn’t know how it worked, and John (between coughing fits) had not been able to explain it. But, so far so good.
The beastclan caravan was an inconspicuous smudge in the distance, on the northern rim of the plains. It was disguised, but rendered visible to anyone under the same spell, as Delta was. The larger harpy flock of Kelpie’s army was rising to greet him, some with medical packs, others with spears and bows.
It was a rough landing, but everyone made it down in one piece. Delta stood trembling for a moment, his wings too tired to fold, then sank to the ground. The worst injured were unloaded first. The beastclans had come out of the battle nearly without a scratch on them; they were small and wary, guests in Fuil Darach, unlike the dragons who had tried to make a home on the mountaintop.
The survivors stuck close by Delta, suddenly outnumbered by the beastclans. Zeta crouched in the shade of Delta’s wing, inexpertly bandaging an unconscious Leo’s head. Fiach had been laid out nearby. More flammable than most dragons, he had not fared well in the fire. John was still coughing, and there was no sign of Rúth - Delta was almost sure they’d been on-board, but what if he’d accidentally left them? This jolt of fear forced feeling back into his limbs and he glanced back around at the survivors, counting.
No, that wasn’t right, that couldn’t be it - surely there were more? Where was Orress?
Clair limped away, her soot-stained face inscrutable, and returned with a full water-skin. She offered it to John, then sat a few paces away and didn’t speak. Her mate had vanished in the chaos of the battle.
Zeta nudged Delta’s side for attention. “Hey, um. I was wondering if the beastclans had some healing supplies I could borrow? Only I can’t pay them back...”
“Go and find a healer anyway,” Delta said. “Take Luke with you.”
Zeta hesitated for a long moment, glancing over his shoulder at the tiny ragged band sheltering under Delta’s wing. “Uh...”
Delta looked, too, scrutinising the group. His chest ached.
“Right,” he said faintly. “Just go on your own. Tell them I’ll pay them back for whatever they want.”
The beastclans were decent hosts, if a bit standoffish. They even provided the dragons with a supply wagon for their own use, but it came with firm instructions that it had to stay with the caravan. Which was fine. There wasn’t anywhere else to go anyway.
The next day, the distant army had moved far enough out of the pass to allow the dragons to safely return to check for more survivors. Only Delta and Zeta were able for the flight, but Zeta refused to leave his patients behind. Delta couldn’t argue with this, of course, but he didn’t really want to go alone.
“Just look after the others,” Delta said, trying to delay the painful journey as much as possible. “Do whatever Clair says, she’s in charge. Um, you might get Leo something to eat, since he can keep stuff down now.”
Zeta nodded, his expression rapt, as if he didn’t already know how to look after his own patients. His sudden promotion to senior healer couldn’t have been pleasant for him, but he seemed to be holding out okay.
“All right, I’m going,” Delta said, raising his voice to allow the others to hear. He half-hoped John or Clair would offer to accompany him, but they didn’t, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask it of them either. With a bone-deep sigh, Delta pointed himself west and limped far enough away from the caravan that the force of his take-off wouldn’t overturn any wagons.
A thin plume of smoke still rose into the air over the mountain-top, making navigation easy. Without this handy marker, it would have been almost impossible to find the camp. The terrain was too different, the mountain stripped of all trees on one side and wreathed in new piles of rubble.
No landmarks stood out to Delta, aside from a rock and earth mound that lay innocently to the west of the ruined camp. The last time Delta had been there, he’d been attacked by zombies that may or may not have been imaginary.
He traced the route back to the camp, measuring distance by counting his wing beats. There - a bare patch free of splinters and stumps. The skeletal remains of a couple of buildings crumbled as Delta landed, unable to stand up to the air displacement.
It hurt to look at, of course. There was a strange malice in the air, an echo of the attack’s brutality. When he looked around, he saw his own confused recollections overlaid on the broken camp; magical explosions and blasts of fire, dragons unable to fly with their wings shot through.
A few paces from where he landed was an unfamiliar hill, a strangely-shaped mound of ash and charcoal. He moved closer and recoiled; striated horns poked out from one end of the mound. It was the body of a guardian, burnt so that its features were unrecognisable. Lying against the inner curve of its tail was another, smaller dragon, unburnt but just as dead.
Delta averted his eyes. He hadn’t come to count the dead, he’d come to find survivors. He called for Luke, received no response, then tried Orress’ name instead.
There was a crunch nearby. He rounded on the noise, his wings half-spread in case he had to quickly escape.
On the edge of the camp was what he had taken to be the charred remains of a thick tree trunk. Something moved around the base, a tiny, bristling shape, almost as dark as the charcoal around it.
“Dad!” it yelled, with surprising strength. It had spotted Delta.
It was a tiny wildclaw wandering the ruins, all its feathers fluffed up in anxiety. And the shape beside it wasn’t a tree at all, but some kind of metal pillar. A pillar with claws. A wavering darkness detached itself from the charred prosthetic limb, tracking the wildclaw’s progress as if to ensure it wouldn’t get lost.
Delta trudged over, stirring up huge clouds of ash.
“Dad!” the wildclaw roared again, seemingly furious. But as Delta drew nearer, its voice faded away into a squeak of fear.
“Flick, is it?” Delta said, crouching.
The angry hatchling skipped back several steps, opening their wings in what would have been a fearsome threat display on an adult. “Where’s Dad?” they demanded. “You’re not - where’s Dad?”
“That’s a good question,” Delta said gently. He glanced over at the trembling shadow at Flick’s side. Ekul didn’t rise from this two-dimensional state, suggesting some degree of fear, but at least it hadn’t abandoned Flick. That was something, at least. Delta extended a paw towards them both. “Hop on, we’ll go and find everyone together.”
Ekul immediately flashed across onto Delta’s palm. Flick was not so quick to comply, though.
“Dad is gone,” they said, hopping back again. “And Da told me to stay here. So I’m staying!”
“Well, did he say when he’d be back?” Delta said, feeling vaguely sick at Flick’s choice of words.
“No.”
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday night.” Flick hesitated, backing away to the remains of Amiri’s prosthetic leg. “He went with the Cap’n.”
Yesterday night. Well after Delta and his little band of survivors had fled the mountain. So he had left somebody behind, after all.
"Cap’n? You mean Captain?” That was what Amiri and Pastore called Orress. Delta’s elation soured within seconds. So something had happened after the attack. One of Flick’s fathers had gone missing, necessitating a search party. They’d clearly been anticipating a short trip, seeing as they’d left Flick behind, but had been gone too long.
“She wouldn’t let me come!” Flick said. “And I can fly just as fast as them.”
“Okay. And was there another guardian with them?” Delta said. “A blue one, maybe?”
Flick shook their head.
Delta sighed again and almost choked on ash. He was vaguely aware of a press of static sliding along his back; Ekul was making itself comfortable between his shoulders.
“You have to come with me,” Delta said firmly. “There’s no way of knowing when Orress and your fathers will be back, and it’s too dangerous out here on your own. They’ll know where to find us, but even so I’ll leave them a note so they know exactly where to go. Okay?”
Flick thought this over for several seconds. Then they gave a sharp nod and finally ventured closer to Delta again.
Now that he wasn’t alone, he felt a bit more confident. But still the searching took most of the morning; he flew low circles around the mountainside, calling out as loudly as he dared.
He didn’t find any more dragons, but later in the afternoon as he and Flick and Ekul landed to drink at a stream, they were accosted by another survivor. A tiny red bird darted out of the trees, calling shrilly, and landed on Delta’s head. There was no sign at all of Saoirse, but the bird was his charge. So now it was Delta’s responsibility, too. He had Ekul capture it in a shadowy net, gentle enough that not a single feather on its head was harmed.
So in the end he found only one dragon survivor. And as he flew slowly back towards the caravan, he was forced to confront one plain fact: the day before, in his panic, he had left his sibling behind.
luke still thinks ekul is weird and borderline offensive in how it claims to be delta’s sibling (the audacity). but luke can only dream of a possible argument with ekul to get it to change its name/pseudosibling status; if luke were to actually interact with ekul, the lightweaver would intervene and punish them for not doing their duty and killing it on the spot
so for delta’s sake luke just pretends not to notice ekul and will quickly leave the area if ekul shows up
they’ve been keeping their head down lately since the beastclans are almost more superstitious about the shade than the dragons are (although by now the cfd dragons are pretty resigned to ekul’s presence, by in large they respect the fact that ekul has never even attempted to hurt anyone)
ekul is however an old friend of regie’s - the two of them used to communicate when regie was still a normal shade parasite inside leo. regie’s actions while possessing leo directly contributed to ekul’s creation, but shade creatures have no notion of family ties so this act of creation on regie’s part means nothing to them (if it can even be called creation - shade can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred from one form of matter or consciousness to another)
so ekul too might try to slip away from the camp to visit regie, but ekul still considers delta to be their brother and would never stick around in the army - even among others of its kind - willingly. unfortunately, noncorporeal shade monsters are at a premium (to rezann anyway) and as secretive as ekul is, their passage has not gone unnoticed
when vaska gets here she’ll be like “ok take me to your resident paladin” and delta will point her towards the infirmary, where luke is basically half dead and still pretending to be a-ok. vaska will write angrily back to lux contri - “this entire clan was misrepresented and their one light emissary is turning into a tree i can not believe this”. but she can’t turn down an assignment and she can grudgingly admit that the clan needs help. it’s just going to be a much bigger job than she expected.
vaska gets to work cleansing the clan territory, setting up wards around the borders, trying to teach luke how to do the same. she discovers a massive shade signature that takes her all the way to where aiteal’s undead were buried and is just like... ok so wtf happened here. no one really wants to tell her
and then she forgets all about that because she meets ekul. ekul of course is a shade monster, a creature that formed and grew in a dead guardian’s skull. a creature beloved by the clan leader. in banishing ekul, vaska would pretty much destroy delta. and luke would never allow that to happen
