The landing pad was mostly destroyed. He wondered how much stability of the castle had been affected. The temples were designed and built to handle their weight at the top. The king’s castle didn’t seem to be the same. When they had touched down, the earth rumbled fiercely. It couldn’t be good for the castle.

“How are we going to find his son?” said Sayori as she slid off Taldor.

“Who’s son?” They heard a voice ask. Whipping around, they saw Lord Loratyk walking up to them.

Panic rose in Kaden’s chest and he tried to quickly salvage the situation. “Your son! He had been in a fight with a serpent. I had seen him as things were kicking off, but he was lost in the crowd. I know the king was targeted and, of course, Cronley and his daughters were fighting. You were up here, too. I was worried he may have been a target as well. That would be just like them to try to take out the King and all the Lords at the same time.”

He stared at Kaden for a moment, processing what he had said, but ultimately gave a curt nod. “You’re right. I haven’t seen him since the first attack in the ballroom. We need to find him. He could be in danger.”

He sprinted off in front of them. Reese rose his eyebrow and Kaden merely shrugged. He didn’t know how else to handle the situation. If either of them were involved, then they could be working together. Maybe the son had a guilty conscience or maybe he wanted to share something about his father. They needed to find him.

Pushing his will toward Zuma, he tried to let them know they could fly off. He wanted them to stay near in case anything else was going to kick off. The dragons themselves said they couldn’t discern what human was a problem. So even if they took care of the dragons, that didn’t mean that the humans couldn’t still be a problem.

They entered the castle and it was all in a disarray. The many paintings, statues, and decorations were hanging loose off the walls or shattered and trampled on the ground. He hoped that Iratoi was able to help his family escape the chaos. They needed to find Loratyk’s son before they lost him.

They rounded the corner, and the blood drained out of his face. The ballroom had the ceiling caved in. There were people still struggling to get out of the rubble. He slipped and fell into the debris as he ran to help. His family could be under there, his entire family.

He pulled handfuls of stone and dirt away as people were crying around him. Bloodied hands were squished underneath the debris. Shouting was heard behind him and he felt Reese’s arms dragging him backward.

“Move! I’m going to lift it!” Sayori was yelling at all the people.

He had forgotten that she could control stone and earth in that moment. They started to rumble around him as he heard Evonne’s voice yelling at people to move in specific directions. They were moving the debris over to areas that were clear of citizens.

Several people were groaning underneath, still alive, but hurt. People were flooding in to help them, tending to what wounds they could. There were plenty of water mages around who were getting to work on trying to field heal what they could.

His eyes scanned the ballroom, looking for a sign of his family. They fell upon an older woman crying in pain. She was covered in dust and he saw a young man attempting to help her. They looked just like his mother and brother. He ran to their side and to his surprise, it was his brother, but the woman was someone else.

“Ozmere! Where’s the rest of the family?”

His brother had a wild, shocked look in his eye when Kaden came up to them, surprised to even see him there. “Oh, uh. Around. Helping?”

“They’re here still? Everyone?”

“Yeah,” he went back to trying to pull the woman out. “Dad said we wouldn’t be Bertoffs if we didn’t help the people.”

“Of course he did,” he looked around for his father, trying to pick them out of the crowd. They were in outfits he never would have seen them in before. They looked just like everyone else.

“Mom sent your friend away. The one that had visited the farm a few times now. Ira…something…”

“Sent her away?”

He nodded and pointed toward some doors. “There was some ruckus happening down there, but she didn’t want to leave us. Said you’d be upset if something happened. Mom told her that others needed her more than we did.”

His mother was always that way. He looked around the room again and that’s when he began to see them. Sayori had moved most of the large stone debris out of the way, so things were far more open and clear. There his family was, helping those they didn’t even know. The people who a week ago would have looked down their noses at his family were now relying on them for care.

He knew that if his family had ever been given the chance that the nobles had to present themselves to a dragon, each and every one of them would have been blessed. There were so many people in this country and others that never got the opportunity to make a difference. He wondered what kind of world it would be if they did have that chance.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He had to trust that they were okay and would do what they could to help others. Wherever his mother had instructed Iratoi to go was where he needed to look. If it was dire enough that she was sent away, something had to have been going down over there.

He signaled for his companions; the lord included. Vixenta had been searching the room for her sister and looked to him with a hope. As they arrived, he recanted what his brother had said. It was a bit of a relief for him that he knew his family was okay, but he knew that Vixenta would still be worried about Iratoi. At least Iratoi was a skilled and trained water mage. She would fare better than any of his family.

They ran through the door that Ozmere had motioned to. There were dead bodies littering the ground. Water was everywhere and the bodies were dripping wet. Iratoi had clearly been through here. The people must have been serpents.

“Did you hear any news of your son?” He heard Evonne asking the lord.

“No. Someone saw him fleeing, but no one had seen him since. I’m worried you all may have been right.”

“We’ll find him, sir,” he heard Reese say in a firm voice.

If they were in agreement about the suspicion of Lord Loratyk, they were all doing a fine job of not letting him know. He didn’t want the man to be blindsided again like they had done to him when they had first met him, but they also knew they needed to keep their thoughts silent before they had enough evidence to say otherwise.

Running down the hall, they continued to follow the trail of bodies and water. If she had fought the serpents, most of them were dead. He wondered if Anders was with her. He hoped they would find both, saving them time. Rounding another corner, they heard shouts of anger and beatings on the door.

Their speed was unmatched at that noise. Tapping into their blessings, they fueled themselves to move faster through the halls. Rounding one more corner, they saw a group of armed men chipping away at a frozen door. Iratoi must have barricaded herself in a room. Fighting the serpents was hard enough for normal mages, but fighting so many as she had, that took skill. It was likely she was running out of energy.

The men weren’t ready for the onslaught as they took them down. They were hit with a combination of the elements before falling to the ground in a heap. They hadn’t even bothered trying to take any as prisoners. It was long past that point of trying to interrogate any of them. They already were able to capture the ones who went after the King himself. They didn’t need the ones knocking down a door for Iratoi.

With a flick of Lord Loratyk’s wrist, the ice melted and moved away. “Open this door at once!”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” they heard Iratoi’s voice behind the wood.

“Iri, it’s us!” Vixenta yelled through the barrier.

The door flew open and the two sisters embraced without hesitation. Iratoi looked exhausted and had several scrapes and bruises. She must have been fighting them off herself. Behind her, a shaggy-haired head popped out. It was Anders Loratyk.

“My boy!” Lord Loratyk pushed through the girls and embraced his son with a hug. “I thought I had lost you.”

“Father…”

“Were they coming after you? How did you escape?”

“Father… I…”

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

He grabbed his father by his arms and said, “Stop. I’m okay. They weren’t able to get to me, thanks to Iratoi.”

The lord turned back to their group with tears in his eyes. “Thank you. You were right, they were going after him as well.”

Their made up reason for finding his son turned out to be true. It made him question what was even happening. He had thought that the serpents may have a connection with the two of them, but here they were, trying to kill him just as they had the other nobles. He still couldn’t ascertain why the serpents were using their house’s runes. Lord Loratyk is suspicious and has been, but other than the runes themself, there hasn’t been anything to connect them to the Serpents directly.

“We need to get to the king now,” said Vixenta. “Now that we know you two are safe.”

Lord Loratyk nodded and agreed. They didn’t say too much more before they were headed to where Loratyk advised the king would have been taken to. He explained it was like a safe room. Only the Lords knew of it outside of the highest guards. They never thought they’d have to use such a thing, but after today’s insanity, he was glad there was somewhere he would be.

Kaden wasn’t sure how glad he was or not, but he had to trust the man that he knew where to go. They weren’t moving as fast as they had before. No one was in immediate danger that they knew of. He was just relieved that everyone he knew was still alive.

“Did you take them on all by yourself?” Reese asked Iratoi.

“Mostly,” she motioned to Anders, “he had a few guards that helped. We eventually lost all of them, though. I don’t know how much longer we had if you all hadn’t shown up.”

“You look like trash,” Vixenta added.

She hung her head and said, “I feel like death, that’s for sure. I’ve never had to use that much magic before.”

“We’ll get you some rest soon,” Vixenta said as she patted her shoulder.

She looked to Kaden and said, “What happened out there? Why was the castle rumbling?”

“Matriarchs.” He couldn’t help but have a smug grin on his face.

“Matriarchs? As in plural? No way. Why’d they show up?”

“Well,” he let out a huff, “we found out what they were doing with those rune traps. They were corrupting dragons. The matriarchs had enough of it and came by to stop it.”

“How’d they stop them?”

Reese laughed awkwardly. “They ate them.”

Both Anders and Iratoi looked at them with surprise. “They ate them? Just chomp, no more corrupted dragon?”

“Yup,” he made a motion with his hands of large teeth biting down on something. “Swallowed them whole. Was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Vixenta shook her head. “The corrupted dragons were all very small. None of them could have been that old. Knowing what you had said about the size of the rune traps. It made sense. They weren’t able to catch anything of any notable size. I’m just amazed at how many were even caught in the first place. There have to be a lot more wild dragons than we even realize.”

Kaden shrugged. “More than you know. That’s probably why Zuma’s matriarch involved me in the first place. It was her dragons that were getting taken.”

Anders coughed and said, “Maybe they thought those dragons wouldn’t be missed, since no one knew about them.”

They all looked at him with his interjection. Kaden knew he that Anders knew something he wasn’t telling. He didn’t know when was the next time he’d have a chance to talk with him. The lord was leading the way of the group and the halls were not too wide. So he grabbed Ander’s arm and pulled him to the back of the crowd as they walked.

“Anders, did what you want to talk to me involve what happened tonight?”

He looked nervously ahead at the rest of the mages. “Yes.”

“Does it have to do with your father and the serpents?”

He could see the young man swallow hard. “Yes.”

“What, what is it?”

He shook his head. “No. Not now.”

Shaking Kaden’s arm off, he pushed himself forward between the others and put some distance between the two of them. Kaden knew there had to be some connection between them. Anders knew the truth, and Kaden was going to find out what that was.