Jan 28, 2017
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i’m so burned out from that scatter adventure that i can’t even tell if this is a good look or not, either way here’s my edgelord child, freshly scattered and more presentable than ever
as much as i love flick’s character their dragon isn’t doing much for me right now so i might go on a little scatter adventure with them
this might be. a big mistake
words cannot describe the visceral hatred i feel for these colours now
the chase
orress has some difficult choices to make
~
There it was, a flash of plain white eyes, Faolín lying completely still, and the eyes, the eyes didn’t release her, she couldn’t - she couldn’t - couldn’t feel her legs, her wings, her voice, he simply stared and she could only - the ground hard and smeared with blood and soot, wingbeats, white eyes.
Orress jolted awake. Before she’d retrieved her senses she was scrambling to her feet, but when she got upright her head ached. She sat down again in the churned earth, pain growing behind her eyes, and concentrated on breathing. Whatever foul magic the wildclaw had hit her with had left its mark in the form of a splitting headache. She knew she had to wait and recover. She also knew she didn’t have the luxury of waiting.
Through dizzy flashes of thought she saw it again; the line of prisoners, Faolin tossed to the ground as if she were no more than livestock.
Her nails cut into her palms. Her shoulders shook. But she didn’t cry. She didn’t deserve the indulgence of tears.
Slowly, Orress pushed herself upright again and took stock of her surroundings. Morning had come to the mountain, pale sunlight washing out the colour of the earth. The flames had gone down to embers and smoke, and tentative birdsong echoed across the ruins of the camp, but this was no reassurance. The wildclaw had been gone for too long. The trail - if there even was a trail - was growing cold.
She stood in the centre of a ridgeback’s front paw-print. One of her own, most likely. The memories were still fuzzy, but she did recall falling, losing her grip on her shape. It was a wonder she hadn’t crushed anyone.
A few tattered scraps of black cloth stuck out of the ground nearby. She stumbled over, hoping to find her own clothing, but it was a half-buried body. One of Rezann’s soldiers. Dispassionate, she stripped the man and dressed herself. A few paces away, she found a cheap and dented sword. She stuck it into her borrowed artillery belt and moved on.
There wasn’t much else to find. The wildclaw’s gang had ransacked the place. With a stiff, mechanical stride she crossed the camp. The wind scoured her skin, burning her mud-clotted wounds. She hardly cared. The world narrowed to a pinpoint, repetitive motion - walk, search, stoop, walk...
Amiri had to catch her arm to get her attention, shocking her out of her reverie.
“Captain?” he said, loudly, as if he’d been calling for her already for several minutes.
She blinked down at him, her eyes widening fractionally. He’d wrapped a piece of canvas over his face in place of a mask, and trailing from his hand was Flick.
“Is he with you?” Amiri said bluntly. “Did you see him?”
He couldn’t be talking about anyone but Pastore and yes, Orress had seen him. Lying with the others, unmoving and covered in bloody earth. Suddenly she was there again, and Faolín was crumpled on the ground in a spreading pool of blood.
Her breaths hitched and she took a step back. What was she doing? Faolín still needed help, and Orress was uselessly pacing the camp. With a hiss of pain she pressed her palm to her forehead, as if to force the headache back down.
“Cap - I mean - Orress,” Amiri said, his voice trembling. “Did you see him? Please tell me.”
It took her a moment to find her voice again. It was raw after all the shouting earlier. “They took him,” she said.
He didn’t look surprised. With a faint gasp he turned away and seemed to crumple in on himself, his spare hand rising to his chest. Flick stared at him, their eyes huge.
“I’m sorry,” Orress said, resting a tentative hand on his shoulder. “They - they took Faolín, too, I don’t - I don’t know what they wanted with them.” Her voice broke, embarrassingly. “They’ve flown off, we can’t find them alone.”
“He’s still alive,” Amiri said quietly.
She frowned, then her eyebrows rose. The beginnings of a plan stirred into life in her aching head.
“Can you track him?” she said. “He’s your charge - you should know where he is, you can tell if he’s in danger...”
“No, no,” Amiri said, “I was never that kind of guardian, he was always better at that touchy-feely charge shit.”
There was a long silence. Flick stared from Orress to Amiri, trembling.
Suddenly, Amiri clapped his hands together. “Well,” he said, “I’ll have to try. No choice. And I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty good about north right now...”
Orress glanced round to face north, narrowing her eyes against the morning glare. Fuil Darach’s mountain was the northern-most tip of the range that began with Fortress Dorchadas. There was nothing north of Fuil Darach but a massive stretch of wasteland, and then the sea. Once the wildclaw reached the sea, following him would be nearly impossible. Flight over open water was too much of a risk.
Once they had their bearing, there was nothing to do but pack as quickly as possible, scouring the clan for food and waterskins. Orress gathered weapons, patching together a modest arsenal from blades ripped off (and sometimes out of) dead bodies. Amiri was more particular, establishing a base around the remains of his dragon-sized prosthetic arm, organising his screws and oil canisters into piles. Flick ran through the camp, grabbing whatever they could find.
“It’ll be difficult,” Amiri said, making a very brave stab at a cheerful tone, “I’ll have trouble landing without my leg but I’ll make do - no, sweetie, don’t touch that, it’s enchanted -” He waved Flick away from the bundle of supplies; they’d been pawing curiously at his surgestream coat.
“As long as you can point us in the right direction,” Orress said, wrapping up a pile of whetstones.
“And, er,” Amiri said, lowering his voice, “Flick... poses a bit of an issue...”
Orress watched the wildclaw thoughtfully. They were clambering over the giant prosthesis again, using it as a lookout post. Every so often they called for Pastore. The sound of it made Amiri flinch.
“We can’t bring them,” Orress said firmly. “It’s not safe.”
Amiri dropped his sack of screwdrivers. “What?” he demanded. “Well we certainly can’t leave them, either!”
“They’re too young to keep up,” Orress said, “and a liability in battle - Amiri, you can’t seriously suggest that bringing your child towards hostiles is safe?”
“Of course not!” His voice, so tightly controlled earlier, was starting to break again. “I just - gods, I can’t strand Flick either. You can’t make me do that. Pastore-” His voice cracked and he reached up to hastily dash away tears; this was the first time he’d mentioned Pastore’s name all morning. “Pastore would hate me for it,” he said, after a tearful pause.
“Da!” Flick yelled, fluttering to the ground near their pile of supplies. “There’s a guardian out on the plains! He looks like Dad!”
Amiri leapt to his feet and clambered onto the prosthesis, craning his neck. Orress tried to see, too, but staring too hard at the pale sand of the plains made her eyes sting.
“It’s Delta,” Amiri said, after a pause. “He made it out.”
“Great,” Orress said impatiently. “He can look after Flick. We have to leave, right now.”
Btw how are ya boys Pastore and Amiri doing? We haven't heard about the Happy Guardians in awhile
haha... happy... yeah....
pastore was taken by some unknown force following the destruction of clan fuil darach, and it seems that amiri and orress are in pursuit. flick is staying with delta rn but he misses his dads
these are not happy guardians any more
the survivors
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.
Five. Zeta, Fiach, Leo, John, Clair. Well, six, including Delta himself.
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.