Chapter 7 Dawn

The dragon found himself at the Mourner's hill in front of her. A cold stare embellished the teacher's face.

'Are you paying attention, Fenrir Kromhart?"

Abashed, he nods.

"When we are young, we think the future lies at the jump of a tall cliff, one easy to glide through, yet in the wind absent, what was once effortless becomes labor."

Fen, still unfocused, lowered his forehead, almost touching the grass.

"Saget, where am I?" her brow twisted "have I perished."

Urgas Saget turns her head towards the clouds covering the white castle beneath them.

"I am just a memory that comforts you. I have neither knowledge nor acceptance about your situation."

Fenrir faced her, disturbed by the uncertainty regarding his chosen memory. After his selection into the highlands, this had been his first time at Mourners Hill. Saget had been talking about the wonders of the Pale guardian trials. At the time, he had been too euphoric to consider the hardships ahead, and his teacher had noticed.

"Under every dragon-born skin lies a passing power with its own plan. A force that digs into our own insides, looking for total autonomy."

The dragon had been confused about these words. Holding her adorned chest embroidered in leaves of her land, making her palm into a fist.

"A pale guardian knows that the unseen must remain just as it is; that makes us different from the Southlands kind; we never allow it out. You cannot let youth cloud your judgment of the unfolding consequences. "

Fenrir saw the glistening of her pale skin, smelling the aroma similar to the dew in the early mornings at Ashval. She reached a Pale guardian's most vital state, amity. Yet when he put his hand on his chest to mimic her, the pain was all he felt.

Darkness came.

He looked back at his palm, blood covering it, panicking. He peered back at his teacher, yet she was not there; instead, a shadow stood. A memory had merged into something unrecognizable; nature around him died as if infested with poison, accompanied by an orange sky and its wild wind.

The thing towering over him didn't bear any precise detail. It seems infinite. Fenrir's mouth dried, hearing a growl that did not reach his ears but came from inside his body. That thing wanted to eat, to vanish him with one bite. Surprisingly, it started to talk. The words spoken made no sense to the young dragon.

'Nothing left once again," it cried as an echo in a cave, distant and bizarre as it continued." you will never fly, never nowhere where fire dies. Where I die. " as such words reached his heart, tremors traveled from his feet to the last strand of his red hair.

The orange heavens became a spiral of clouds. Rain fell, and in a matter of seconds, water surrounded him as if he was sinking in the beyond where clawed arms reached, caressing his talons and tail as if tenting him to fall faster. His ears twisted as if a murmuring choir sang.

"We caution, little bend one. Such as, the sunsets and the moons shall rise, again and again, wickedness will come."

As Kromhart opened his mouth, nothing came out. They sang in whispers, as in fear of him listening to them.

"Thus, your light is devoured by those who stab the firmament; carnage would be seed in, little bend one. Listen to us before the last song is sung before your wings burn, before them thieves take it all. "

The hum vanishes as the hands caressing did, too, a ghost of their touch still he felt in his skin. The only light that descended from the top of these strange places was left. In the brine, water currents moved, carrying another set of voices to his senses, this time familiar ones.

As the dragon slowly opened his eyes, a wood ceiling became focused, and the once phantom pain returned.

"Kira. I swear Iw did dow anythingw. Please," relief left the dragon's mouth when he saw two silhouettes, both bandaged from head to toe and fighting each other, not too far away from his resting place. Kira was holding poor Arkin's cheeks again.

"Why couldn't you wait? Do you realize what will happen if they find out you kill a knight? She took her hands from the boy after regarding his bloated face.

"He stabw Fenrir, Kira, and "Arkin took his eyes off her, "that was an accident, we dint…."

"to burn him, of course, you didn't it; I know you good enough to know that, but what about this?

"Kira, now lowering her tone to calm down, pointed at Arkin's left arm. Arkin pursed his lips together as if not to say too much. Thus he couldn't comprehend either.

"Answer me, Arkin. What deal you made with him?."

When she found them, Kira thought they had both perished. Ashamed of listening to her junior, she had known things would only have worsened. Even though she ran as fast as possible through the darned forest, she had lost her footing and tripped more than she had liked to admit. Finally, She had found the shed where the witch lived.

At the door, she shouted her name.

One, two, three times more, she screamed again, accompanied by thumping her fist.

No answer had been given.

The kid felt defeated; her only hope to save her friend had left. Exhaustion dawned on her thighs, shaking; she bent her knees, sinking to the floor. Her teeth biting her lower lip so hard it drew blood; it was the moment the idea of going back terrorized her; how long had she been running, was Arkin fine, or had the knight...? Had she not done the right thing?

She saw her blood in the grass. In her stupor, she smeared it with the palm of her hand, bringing a plan to face her.

"Kira, if you keep punishing him like that, there is no way the molars grow straight again." In front of them, not too far from where the dragon lay resting, a woman with white-blond hair and eyelashes moved carefully in a rocking chair. She wore a black dress that covered every inch of her skin, even her hands. Bored red eyes with a hue that transforms to a pink tone at the mercy of the light stared at them.

Arkin thought that he had recognized Agatha if he ever saw her. Thus, he knew almost everyone in the White Kingdom yet, found anything ... familiar with her. The peculiarities surrounding a person like her were impossible to miss and less with the jewelry she wore, rocks that could only be compared to those he once saw on the queens at ceremonies.

"But Agatha, his shoulder."

Arkin gazed at the witch, who noticed his inquiring eyes. A smirk showed on her face.

"mm, emblem would go away." A sight escaped the wild curled girl," yet the power left in him will forever remain."

"Power? " Arkin unconsciously caressed the markings; at the time, he had been too busy thinking about surviving to inspect the intricate details. Curves surrounded his shoulder blade as he looked, connecting parallel like depicting an abstraction of sun and chaotic arrows cluster together in turbulent waves. An ocean immersing a sun. Fen had said something about "feed it" or "let it die. ".

He could not guess what the dragon would have meant.

Agatha nodded and slowly took out an old, engraved pipe with silver edges, and with the flick of her long black nails, a spark ignited. Smoke curled its way to the ceiling.

" Could this "power" hurt him? Kira concerning tone surface.

"stop !!" Arkin shouted, taking the girl by surprise.

"Fenrir told me it would not hurt me; he even begged me not to use it ." Kira mirrored Arkin's frown.

" you defend him as if all of this wasn't because of him; you are a kid; you know nothing of the consequence of magic emblems and what could happen if they are incompatible."

" I don't care, you wench, I am stronger than a stupid incomp...., whatever it is I-"

" Arkin!! You could have fucking exploded."

the kid is at a loss for words and stands there with his mouth agape; only a screech of an old rocking chair brings him back.

"Precisely," the old witch said, using her foot to spot her movement." average magic like runes, summoners circles, and my favorite minerals enchantment is not transferable." before she could continue, a strong cough followed, forcing her to take off the pipe from her lips.

" Should you get her water or-" Arkin whispered, Kira without looking at him respond.

" she would be fine; just wait."

Agatha gave a last wet cough that ended in a spit on the small bucket beside her chair.

" as I was saying, regular magic is learned, studied, and practiced; only a source so ancient as creation itself could make possible what lies at your shoulder," she concluded with her pipe back on her lips.

" as ancient as dragons' Kira added, crossing her arms.

" precisely affirmative, " the witch nodded excitedly. This time it was Arkin who asked the question.

"what is it? what does it do?" Images of the blue fire and the sounds of the agonized scream conquer the young kid's mind. Hearing Kira and Agatha talk about what lay on his shoulder like a wild dog with unpredictable rage made him nervous. Arkin didn't want what had happened that night to be repeated.

"When it comes about a matter of dragons, chimeras, harpies, and those bygone creatures, I own only shells of expertise " with the pipe held by her teeth, she lifted her shoulders. "But I know an actual welding when I see one."

Fenrir's ears moved ever so slightly at the words.

' In my years, I had seen what creatures, as dragons can do, a fire that leaves a body like that takes a deadly price on the sources it ignites on. Yet you, skytear, had to pay none" Agatha turned towards the figure still lying at her bed " you had made sure he would not suffer any aftermath" A grim show on the witch's face as smoke escaped through her lips." didn't you, Crooked heart?"

Arkin followed the woman's gaze and found her resting at his friend. The dragon's crimson eyes found his.

" Fen!!" as the blue air boy found his way to the dragon side.

"How are you feeling?' Arkin couldn't be happier that Fenrir was conscious again, following what Kira told him. The witch had saved him by an inch of his life. She wrapped the wounded one in powders with unknown names and laid him in a yellow sheet bed. If the dragon had been in his wild form, as Arkin thought of calling it, he would not have been able to fit at all.

As the kid examined the bandages so tightly enveloping the dragon's side, he could still picture the things that came out of him at the time; lost in his head, he almost missed the words Fen had said.

"I am fine... you?" Arkin, surprised at the question, showed his broken teeth. When Kira woke, he had ice on his face, and the puffiness had decreased since the witch had applied a paste that smelled like grass when it rains.

" I barely scrap myself. The wench says that I am stronger than I look."

"and dumber too" Kira turned around to face both kids, her hands back to her hips. " whatever you did, it helped him enough to escape unharmed, something I cannot say about you, Fenrir Kromhart." Kira's annoyance seemed to have dissipated once she spoke towards Fenrir Kromhart; the wounds that Agatha had treated were no joke. Yet even though she wanted to scream at him for tiding his magic to Arkin, she assumed that desperation was an unreasonable foe. Thus, Kira had done a similar summoning to call on Agatha. Internally she shook, remembering the blinding feeling of her blood cooling in her veins as she carved the circle and contorted her tongue. In other words, she could not blame Fenrir for his decision; what mattered was that he had saved her friend.

" Thank you, and I am sorry," she said before she thought on it any longer. Fenrir's smiled as his ears shot up. Arkin grim and patted the girl's sidearm.

"Good, Kira," Arkin said. Fen instinctively once again lowers his ears.

" shut up, Arkin!" shouted the annoyed girl towards her puffy junior.

Fenrir was about to stop both Kids from starting their argument, yet a weight on the edge of the bed interrupted his action.

"so, Fenrir Kromhart, what brings you to my humble shed?"