Chapter 19 Two flames
Isaac had left the dragon to Shamesh and immediately headed to Lenna to make sure that she was still breathing. After he had made sure that she would survive, he had gone after the dragon to keep her from escaping. The dragon had proceeded to show him a reaction time in the realm of fractions of a tenth of a second. Each move that Chatohsha had made was perfect and the exact, and sometimes only, counter to what Isaac was trying to do. Her bodily control was unlike anything Isaac had ever seen. Once she had severed her shadow with a wave of flames he had lost her and by the time he was ready to go after her again she was too far away and moving too quickly for him to catch her. Shamesh had tried but his flight spell was nothing compared to the being that had inspired the spell’s creation in the first place.
When Shamesh had finally thrown out his trump card in an attempt to bring down the dragon, Isaac had lost her. Right after the first explosion hit Isaac had lost her. He had no idea why he couldn’t feel her presence despite her being a dark aligned creature. The other explanation he could think of was that something or someone had shielded her from his detection. With everything up in the air, Isaac was forced to admit defeat through a swarm of grumbling curses and a kicked rock.
Isaac had returned to Lenna and explained what had happened. “I’m sorry, I can’t believe she managed to escape both Shamesh and I.” He confessed.
“We need to let the guild know.” Lenna told him. “If someone can track her down then now is the time. Dragon’s heal very quickly and a slit throat and torn wing will be healed within a week or two. The scales won’t heal as quickly though, so she’ll be vulnerable where I cut her for the next few months, or even a year. You can’t feel anything, at all?”
Isaac shook his head. “No. Something is definitely up. You don’t think she’s-” Isaac began before Lenna cut him off.
“No.” She told him. “Stop, I don’t want to hear it. If you spout some nonsense that somehow happens to be the worst case scenario again, and we have to deal with it, I might actually be angry this time. We just started our journey and we already lost a dragon. There is no way that this is going to be as quiet of a trip as we had planned.”
Isaac raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, fair enough. For now, let’s search the area and regroup all of the mortals and hopefully rouse the horses. By some miracle the caravan is still intact.” He told her. “As infuriating as letting our quarry get away is, at least we kept the caravan safe. I would hate to go through all of this and not even get paid.”
“That dragon really got under your skin, didn’t she?” Isaac casually questioned Lenna as they moved from unconscious person to unconscious person. At each individual, Lenna would touch them and send a pulse of healing mana through them. The simple pulse was enough to get them to stir and resume consciousness.
Lenna frowned at Isaac’s question. “Yes, she did.” She replied. They were both silent for a long moment as Lenna worked. “Maybe more than she should have.”
Isaac nodded in agreement. “You seemed a bit more generally angry than usual, which is to say, you seemed angry. You are usually really good at not showing that kind of thing.” He informed her. “What happened?”
“I have no idea.” Lenna confessed. “Something about the dragon made me just want to wrap my hands around her neck, even before she spoke.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Isaac told her. “That’s sort of how I felt with Judgment.”
“But I am also a fire wielder, like her. Our alignments or elements or whatever should be more or less the same, shouldn’t they?” Lenna wondered.
“Maybe not.” Isaac commented. “You don’t have normal fire, you have hellfire, maybe that has something to do with it.”
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“I barely even have hellfire, Isaac. I am not even sure if it is hellfire.” She confessed.
“Why not? It’s two-tone fire.” He asked her.
“Hellfire comes in nine colors, one for each circle of hell.” Lenna explained.
“One for each color of mana?” Isaac wondered.
Lenna nodded slowly as she put the two things together in her mind. “Red fire is hot, orange fire turns a person to stone, yellow fire causes a person’s body to seize up, green fire is nothing at all, blue fire is cold, indigo fire slows a person down or speeds them up-, whatever the opposite is of what the person wants-, violet refuses let go of anything that it has burned. The final two colors, white and black, are exactly as one would expect. Together there were five elemental layers, two layers of esoteric change, a layer of scorching radiant fire and a layer of reality that had been swallowed by an ancient dark power.” She explained. “If anything, it looks like I am using some orange and black hellfire but then the target burns away instead of being turned to stone.”
“That is quite a bit different than how I thought hellfire was like.” Isaac commented with a shrug. “Well, as long as people are extra afraid of it, that is good enough. So why do you think that you and the dragon hated each other from the beginning?”
Lenna shook her head. “It was almost like our subconscious minds were at war the entire time.” She offered him.
“Like two flames warring for dominance before they even clashed?” Isaac surmised.
“Yes, like that.” Lenna agreed. “I wonder why she brought that feeling out of me so much.”
Isaac shook his head. “I don’t know. That sounds like something we would need to talk to a dragon about, either that or a dragon expert.” Isaac replied.
Lenna sighed and straightened for the last time, for a little while. “That was the last mortal. Should we track down the ones that ran?” She asked him.
“Not yet, if the waggoneers are all awake then let’s start at the beginning and wake up the horses one at a time. By the time the entire train is up and moving, some of those that ran away may have returned.” He offered.
“What about the bandits?” Lenna wondered.
“I think the bandits just got away this time. They aren’t worth our time to go after without a tracker.” Isaac told her. “At the very least, they should be keeping their heads down for a while.”
Lenna nodded in agreement. “Alright.” She acknowledged and started back towards the front of the caravan. An hour later, all of the horses were awake and taken care of. Many of them spooked as soon as they woke up and the only thing that kept them from bolting was the fact that they were tied together and to a wagon with its wheels locked. Some of the people that had run away had returned with minor injuries. One had been slightly severe as the man had been bitten by a venomous snake in his flight but luckily everything needed to take care of it was on hand in the lead wagon. An hour after that, all of the people were either accounted for or presumed ‘lost’.
The caravan was preparing to get moving again so they would at least be at the next rest area before making camp for the night when Ellie walked over to them. “Were you planning on using us as bait for the dragon too?” She questioned. It was clear that she was trying her hardest to make it come off as a question and not as an interrogation.
“No, we had no idea that there was a dragon in the area.” Isaac replied with a frown. “Honestly, I should have felt it coming but it seemed to almost come out of nowhere to my senses.”
“You sure talked a lot with it before letting it get away.” Ellie continued.
Isaac’s face went from neutral to a scowl in an instant. “We didn’t let it get away. Something or someone is protecting it from my senses.” He stated.
“Then why didn’t you both fight it together? I saw your challenge or whatever. That didn’t seem like you were trying to kill it to me.” Ellie argued.
“Because, Ellie Zakson, I was trying to end the fight in one hit. It should have worked even without Isaac’s help but the damned sun is too damn bright for me to see anything.” Lenna swore. “Next time, you fight the dragon.”
“If you have nothing else to say, then stay quiet.” Isaac told Ellie with a scowl still marking his face. “A dragon of that level was way harder to put down than she had any right to be, and that’s coming from me.” He said more to himself. “I need to know why I couldn’t feel her unless I was looking at her. It has to be some kind of divination shroud.”
“Like from a spell?” Lenna wondered, Ellie already forgotten.
“Maybe, or like a blessing from their god? I don’t know enough about blessings, especially ones from dragon gods.” Isaac confessed. “This bears some looking into when we finally get to Sapphirestone.” He turned back to Ellie as if suddenly remembering her presence. “Were there any casualties?”
“Three; Flin, Leaf, and Mitchel. They think that Flin and Leaf were in the path of the dragonfire.” Ellie replied with a defeated look on her face. “Mitchel is nowhere to be found.”
Isaac nodded but it was Lenna who spoke: “I am sorry about those boys, especially if they were caught in the dragonfire. But,” She continued with a raised hand before Ellie could speak. “you should be grateful that only three are missing after a dragon attack. Usually there would only be a few survivors instead of a few missing.”
Ellie just stared at Lenna. What Lenna had told her was true and she knew it but that didn’t make the loss hurt any less. She hadn’t known the three in question very well or for very long but she had still shared bread with them. Eventually the wagon driver just nodded once to Lenna and marched off to find her oldest friend in the caravan, at least he was still alive, somehow.