Meanwhile, Twilight sagged, her mane frizzy and eyes bloodshot. "I found him…"
Starlight peeked out from behind a stack of books. "Oh, good. Bring him home? Or are we jumping to him? Either way, I'm ready for this to be over. We have plenty enough other--"
"We won't be doing either of those things," she sighed out, wings rustling on her back in a nervous fidget. "On the plus-side, it appears Smolder is with him. I'll send word to Ember. That I've located all three of them, but they are beyond my ability to reach, or yours."
Starlight hiked a brow. "What about us together? you know, friendship, magic, synonyms. You know that drill.".
"They aren't on this world." She thrust a hoof down towards the portal that was in her basement. "And I don't have a portal that links this world to that one. To even determine how to reach that one could take years, centuries even!" her voice raised to a squeak toward the end of her statement, shuffling in place.
"Can you tell if he's alright?" Starlight sat beside Twilight.
"He's fine, I think… They're… fine. I mean, they're breathing, and their magic feels strong. That's really all I could tell you." She crashed down beside Starlight, flopping against her. "I'm the worst big sister ever…"
Starlight gently held her friend. "It could be worse." When Twilight glared at her, she grinned sheepishly. "Look, he's alive, and so are they. They're probably together, and fine. We'll figure this out, together."
There would be no answers right then and there.
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"S-stop!" Sandra pawed at Smolder's hands, futilely swatting at those tickling fingers. "I can't talk while you do that!"
"So you'll talk then?" Smolder grinned down at her helpless victim, her claws poised to strike, but pausing their attack. "Good, I'm tired of being in the dark. Out with it."
"It's none of your business." Sandra crossed her arms, guarding herself feebly along the way.
"Yeah, no, kinda is." Smolder poked her on the nose. "Unless we toss you aside like dirty laundry, you need to get up to speed or we can't start on that tower, so it's my business. Congratulations."
Sandra wrinkled her nose. It was a bad idea to say. Well, probably a bad idea. Maybe it wasn’t. But Smolder was right, she probably should. “Fine.” Sandra looked around, trying to see if anyone was watching them. Nobody was.
"I know we only met, what, a week or so ago?" Smolder shrugged softly. "But we've spent that week being in constant low-level danger, so, you know, I feel like we have something." She held up two fingers in the air close together. "Ain't a lot, but we can build on that. So start from the… scratch that. I don't want to hear 'So I was born', unless that ties into this somehow?"
Sandra looked Smolder directly in the eyes and said, “So, I was born--”
“Oh come on!” She threw her hands in the air, exasperation burning in her eyes.
“--To a family of adventurers.”
“Oh.”
Sandra pushed a bit of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. My family did a lot with adventuring.”
“Wait, but if your family were all adventurers, then why are you so… bad at it?”
Sandra smiled somewhat sadly. “Well, I didn’t really want to be an adventurer, and I was never very good at it, so while I got some basic instruction, I also…” She shrugged. “I decided I would do something else with my life. Something not as exciting.”
“But that didn’t work out and... “ Smolder put two and two together. “And now you’re looking to get to the top of the tower…”
“Right, so, I had finished school for the day…"
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The pathway home was always a pleasant walk. I lived out to the west, and it was easy to get wards and guards to stop the easiest monsters from attacking--well, easy for us, at least.
My parents weren’t just adventurers. They were good adventurers. They rode out and changed the face of the world--
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Smolder rolled a hand softly. "They found some new crazy artifact that people hadn't seen before or something?"
“No,” Sandra protested. “They secured a major victory…" She looked away and back. "It's in the books…" She could see Smolder's lost expression. "Right, new, never heard of it… There was a huge war." She spread her hands wide. "Basically the entire world going for blood. Big mess, everyone was involved… My parents were in it."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"How do you grind for loot in the middle of a war?" she asked as if that were the most pressing fact among many.
"You… don't. They weren't trying for the tower." She hiked a thumb at the huge construct behind them. "They were busy working with what they had, the world, you know? They were… heroes, real heroes, not chasing their own dream. Not… selfish like me…" She scuffed a foot on the ground. "Anyway, so…"
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It had made us very wealthy, and I was, at the time, going to a very nice school in the capital. I stayed there and came home for holidays and breaks, and I was on my way home, with my guards, and in the distance, we saw the smoke.
As Gustav sped us to the house, I could only think about what kind of horrible things must have happened. Was it an accident? Lightning? Or… Were we attacked? Something came back from the old war?
…
Anyway, we arrived at the estate, billowing smoke and flames alight. I had already swapped into my class, even though I was… not very good. But I had Gustav and Wendy and we entered the gate, which had its monster shield broken.
It was my childhood home… the buildings were wrecked, the windows smashed, doors broken in… there were… bodies. The staff’s bodies.
And it was infested with monsters. The little red gremlins were easy for the guards to dispatch, but that just meant that something worse had to have led them in there, because monsters like that couldn’t beat my family.
Which, of course, was the perfect time for the larger ones to come attack. Huge, lumbering beasts, bigger than the biggest man.
Fortunately, Bennet chose that time to show up, cleaving a path through the gremlins and slicing through the big ones. Bennet is… well he’s my brother. The one that would carry on the family business. The one good at it.
Bennet, Gustav, and Wendy were fantastic together. I tried to shoot a few enemies, and scored a few hits, but they were the real workhorse as we made our way into our estate. And finally, in the courtyard inside our house… there was one more monster. A huge monstrous cloak of darkness with a blazing red figure deep inside it was fighting two figures.
They were shining gold and white, as the gold light gathered as shields and weapons, and the white light lanced through the darkness. But almost as soon as we entered, the attention of all the combatants were turned to us, and the darkness immediately came for us.
It shot out directly at us, and I squeezed my eyes shut, rooted to the place with terror as Bennet called out… and then the blinding light enveloped us. In front of us stood our parents, the figures cloaked in gold and white, some kind of fancy magical armor on both, magically suspended, with a shield of gold produced by our mother, and an aura of white from our father.
We had never… seen anything like that. We hadn’t even heard anything like that. If they were hiding this kind of power, why wouldn’t they use them on the battlefield? But they looked down at us, their eyes glowing with power. “You have to leave,” my father said, hoisting his staff up.
“Dad--” Bennet pushed forward. “--What is this? What are these… are those classes?”
“We were hoping that we could talk about this later, Benny,” my mother said, turning to look back from the magical projected shield, as the darkness came back and slammed against it again. “It’s a bad time.”
“Y-yeah,” Bennet was abashed. “Sorry…” His ability to ignore the danger of things was the whole reason why he was able to fight like he was.
“M-me too,” I said, trembling as I stared at the resplendent forms my parents were currently in.
“Hurry,” my father said. “We need to move. We can’t hold back these attacks forever.”
The four of us turned tail out of the courtyard, only for an uprooted tree to slam into me, thrown by the monster. I was slammed into the ground, ears ringing and seeing double. I remember Bennet was by my side, with Gustav holding up a shield, ready to defend, when the darkness lanced at us again.
And once more the bright forms intervened, setting up a shield that split the blast of darkness in half, but not quite enough, as just enough penetrated to slam into the two forms of our parents. Our father’s staff glowed and we were rushed in an orb of energy outside the house, which was a familiar escape spell I knew he knew.
The two of them fell to their knees, dark splotches on their forms where the darkness struck them.
My mother and father looked at the dark spots and each other, and… they reached for us… me and Bennet, I mean. Father reached for me. He produced a magical crystal from the… whatever it was that his armor and weapons were made of, and placed it onto my guildchain. “This is a very special class, Sandra. You need the will to unlock it, but it’s stronger than any I’ve seen.”
“B-but, but I don’t,” I stammered out. “I’m not good at…”
He smiled and closed his eyes, them returning to his natural eyes, instead of the alien glow. “If you never need to use it, Sandra, that’s just as well, but I wouldn’t be much of a father if I didn’t pass down what I could to you.”
“F-father…” I said, staring down at my guildchain.
He struggled to his feet, and my mother finished with Bennet, I guess, because she struggled too, and said, “He’ll be back for us soon, and the four of you need to be gone when he comes back.”
Bennet and I nodded dumbly.
The two of them turned away, and they walked away and-and…
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Sandra choked back a sob. “And they knew… somehow… that they weren’t walking away from that.”
Smolder swallowed roughly, reaching out and setting a hand on her shoulder. "Thanks for sharing at least. Look, not gonna lie… that actually does sound pretty awesome."
Sandra glared witheringly, tears threatening to resume but stopped by her moment of anger.
"I mean it! I mean, yeah, kinda uncool that your parents caught it, but they did it being awesome, and they left something amazing for you before then. As last acts go, I can think of worse." She withdrew her hand as her shoulders lifted in an expansive shrug. "You were actually ahead of us the entire time."
"What?" Sandra asks breathlessly, her anger turning to confusion on her face.
Smolder pointed to Sandra's guild chain. "You had an advanced class thing way before us. Now, look, it sucks that they bought it, it does, really. I know Garble said we don't talk about parents, us dragons, but eh, I miss mine enough. We just don't talk about them, not our thing, doesn't mean we never think about them. I get it."
"Yours passed?" Sandra leaned forward with curiosity surfacing. "I'm sorry."
"Hey, they went exactly the way they wanted to." She lifted her shoulders. "I think that's part of why Garble is the way he is. He didn't take it as well. Now, kindly, never mention that to him, like, ever. Ever ever. Either way, they wanted you to have that." She suddenly grabbed for Sandra, snatching the guildchain and yanking Sandra by it closer. "Time to stop hiding from it and make them proud."