Bo poured water onto the cave floor carefully, his hands shaking slightly as he did so. The leather water pouch trembled in his grip, but he managed to not waste any of the oh-so-precious liquid.
After pouring out a small amount, he watched as the Borealis directly touched by the water dulled, losing its vibrant shimmer almost immediately. This dullness quickly began to leach outwards, dampening the glow of the surrounding Borealis like a spreading sickness.
"Does anyone have something sharp?" Bo called out.
"My claws?"
He glanced back at Yvet, "I don't know if you want to mine explosives with your claws... Not if you want to keep them, anyway."
"… Yes, well… you make a good point."
"Will my spear do?" Asked the young woman, handing the long shaft to Bo.
He nodded, smiling. "Yes, this is perfect."
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Yvet left Bo to mine the shiny rock and scaled the ridge once again. She liked being up high, disconnected from the cloying grasp of the sand and its sobering reality.
It was freeing.
As she sat on a small rock atop the ridge, feeling the wind bluster past, she closed her eyes for a moment and just was. She existed in isolation, the rush of air against her scales the only sign that she still lived.
Quiet.
It was ever so quiet.
She stayed like this for half an hour before the sharp tap of footfalls sliced through her serenity. They didn't sound like Bo's, too heavy, too uncoordinated.
Opening one eye, she squinted down the ridge, seeing a woman's figure as she awkwardly climbed over jagged rocks and squeezed through the narrow gaps between boulders.
It was the young woman they had been travelling with. She appeared far more muscular than Bo, with a grim, stoic face that wouldn't know a smile if it kicked it in the teeth.
Yvet wondered what she wanted, as the young woman had made her distrust of them no secret.
Eventually, the woman reached the top of the ridge and fumbled around in the dark a bit before finally finding Yvet.
The woman stared at her breathlessly.
"Your name is Yvet, right?" She asked between deep, lungfuls of air.
Yvet watched her through one narrowed eye, trying to decide whether to respond or not. In the end, she decided she liked conversation more than being mysterious.
"Yvet is my name, yes. What is it you want, human?"
The woman nodded and took a deep breath. "My name isn't human. It's Diatra."
"Very well, it is nice to meet you, Diatra."
Diatra shifted nervously before speaking again. "I – I have never heard of a dragon before, but are your race... are they mighty?"
"Of course we are! why do you ask?" Yvet scoffed as though asking her such a question was akin to asking the air whether or not it could be breathed.
"I… we… my tribe needs help dealing with the Racten. I know Bo agreed to help, but I don't know if the Borealis will be enough." Her eyes flashed angrily as she spoke, and her hands curled into tight, trembling fists.
Yvet opened both eyes and gave the woman an appraising glance. "Truthfully, I was hesitant to agree to fight the Racten. But Bo has already given you his word that we will join the battle. Why do you still feel the need to ask this question?"
Diatra nodded and bit her lip. "I just wanted to hear it from you, I guess."
"Hm, I suppose I do look the more powerful of our duo," Yvet preened. "But are the Racten truly so fearsome?"
"They are barbaric," Diatra muttered darkly. "I'd always heard stories about them, rumours, tall tales, that kind of thing. But when they…" her voice caught, cracking slightly. "When they came to our tribe, it was worse than anything I could have imagined."
Yvet watched the woman, noticing her clenched jaw and clasped hands. She had come to recognise these as signs of distress in humans.
"It was right as the sun was setting, and the light grew low." Diatra's gaze grew distant. "I was standing on the outskirts of camp… that's why I lived, in the end." She sounded almost spiteful.
"First - came a single red arrow. It whistled over every tent and landed right between the Elder's feet. She peered down at it with this look I'd never seen her give before. It was like she had just seen the end of the world. And, before anyone could react, hundreds of demonic figures burrowed out from under the sand nearby and swarmed the camp, laying waste to everything."
"Did you fight back?" Yvet asked quietly.
"Oh, we fought!" Diatra shouted passionately. "We fought... but they had more than double our number, and their methods are too inhumane. I saw-" She choked up. "I saw one man pick up a father's child and use the boy to block his spear. They aren't human. They are something else entirely," she spat, her tone growing increasingly venomous as she went on.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“…”
It was quiet after Diatra finished. She seemed spent just from recalling the harrowing events and folded weakly to the ground, sitting exhausted with her back to the rock Yvet was perched on.
For her part, Yvet seemed particularly infuriated, yet she couldn't understand why. Something in what the woman had said made her blood boil like magma and set her heart racing. Suddenly, she too, wanted nothing but the Racten's demise. With her own claws if necessary.
She couldn't quite place why she was suddenly so fervently against the Racten's continued existence, but without hesitation, Yvet growled like the distant rumble of thunder and said, "We'll kill them. All of them."
Smoke streamed from both her nostrils, drifting up in two long streaks that climbed towards the fading stars above.
In the distance, the sun had begun to crest the horizon, and a tinge of reddish-orange bled across the sky. A new day was dawning, one that would surely be dyed red.
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Bo and Yvet's chaperones were far more chipper on the return to camp.
Or, as chipper as a person can be after their tribe was genocided, anyway.
They had a violent eagerness about them, a tangible bloodlust that seemed to ooze from their every pore. Diatra had noticeably warmed up to Yvet and spent the journey back quizzing the little dragon about what it was like to fly and breathe fire.
Bo noticed that – for a dragon who had barely done either of those things – Yvet had a lot to say on the matter. But he was more than happy to see her show off. He had found that she was most content when bragging.
As for Bo, he passed the time talking to Bruw and his partner Heftor. The two men had lived more life than most and seemed to possess a never-ending stream of stories and anecdotes.
Seeing as they were part of the Elder's guard, they had attended many meetings with her - meetings that Ethron had also been part of.
"So, what's he like?" Bo asked eagerly. He was always happy to get some dirt on the old bastard, and if that failed, usually stories involving him were funny, anyway.
Bruw scratched his chin thoughtfully. "At the meetings? He's…" He met Heftor's gaze, and the other man nodded in silent agreement.
"Loud."
Bo chuckled. "I'll bet. I don't think there's ever been a time he didn't have something to say."
"I don't know. I heard that until fairly recently, Ethron was rather withdrawn." Bruw said conversationally. "Apparently, he never liked to start fights or argue. The Elder even said that Ethron was once considered overly quiet."
"What!?" Bo's brows shot up. "We are talking about the same Ethron, right?"
"Unless you know another leader of the Karak, then yes."
"Then what changed?" Bo asked in wonderment, his imagination groaning under the weight of picturing Ethron as a reasonable person.
No. He just couldn't bring himself to do it.
Bruw sighed and gazed out at the rising sun. "Death, I would imagine. Before he was a tribe leader, he was a person, you know."
"Yeah… I know," Bo begrudgingly admitted. "But it's just hard to imagine someone so cold and ruthless as an actual person, with feelings and stuff."
"If he were here, Reed would say this…" Bruw began.
"Who's Reed?" Bo cut in.
"The blacksmith Gale mentored under," Bruw said. "And if he were here, Reed would say that people are like metal."
"He does say that a lot," Hefton interjected.
Bruw pinched his brow after being interrupted the second time and nodded. "Yes, he does. Now, will you let me finish!?"
Bo and Hefton nodded.
"Right…" Bruw struggled to find his rhythm. "Reed always says that people are like metal. At the start, raw metal has all these little impurities, these tiny, imperceptible imperfections. But by heating the metal, these impurities are burned, and by hammering the metal, they are expunged. Eventually, after experiencing many beatings, the metal is tempered and shaped into the thing that best fits it."
"What has that got to do with people?" Bo asked dumbly, feeling slightly embarrassed that he didn't see the connection.
"Well, look at it like this. A person is the metal. They experience the pressure and tribulations of life and come out the other side hardened and reformed."
"I see!" Bo nodded. "Do you have any idea what tribulations Ethron faced? You know, to turn him into an old grouch."
"Being old turns everyone into a grouch," Hefton said. "You try waking up in pain every morning and be in a good mood."
"Yeah, but he's grouchier than most."
Hefton glanced at Bruw. "Well, I heard that he lost a whole hunting squad a decade or so back. If anything will harden a man's resolve, that will."
Bo's stomach dropped when he heard this. He had a good idea of who was in that squad.
"Are you alright, Bo?" Yvet asked suddenly. "Your emotions feel sickly."
"I-I'm…" Bo took a deep breath. "I'm fine."
They soon arrived back at the Yellow Folk's tribe and found that all the remaining members had rushed to pack up everything they owned while Bo's group were away.
There were only around two dozen remaining people, and all of them looked haggard. They were huddled together with sunken eyes and desolate dispositions. Each person seemed to stoop under some invisible weight - haunted by the events of the previous night.
All eyes were on Bo and Yvet as they walked into the camp, tracking them with dogged suspicion. One man motioned to block their way as they approached the Elder, but Bruw waved him down.
Soon, they were standing before the Elder. The older woman looking worse for wear. It was clear she hadn't slept - with bags under her eyes that said what words needn't.
On their way back through the campsite, Bo had noticed that the bodies had all been removed and piled some distance away. The pile had yet to be lit on fire - on account of the tribe's people not wanting to smell burning corpses - so the mound of bodies hung just at the edges of his peripheral, a stark reminder of why ending the Racten was so important.
"Did you find what you needed?" The Elder croaked, her weary voice too spent to muster any sort of eagerness.
Bo nodded and gestured to Bruw and Hefton who both carried sacks slung over their shoulders. These sacks were packed with old bits of cloth and leather so that the rocks inside didn't smack into each other and explode.
"Well?" The Elder asked with one eyebrow cocked.
For a second, Bo thought she was addressing him. But it quickly became apparent she intended the question for Bruw.
The older man's face scrunched up, and he closed his eyes, preparing himself for what he was about to say. "It's doable," he muttered.
"It is?" The Elder sounded more surprised than pleased. As though out of the many outcomes she had predicted, this wasn't one of them.
Bruw nodded slowly. "Very doable."
An awkward, strained smile stretched across the Elder's face as relief seemed to wash over her. She got up slowly, her knees creaking until she stood ramrod straight.
"Then we have no time to waste."
She turned to the remaining Yellow Folk, addressing them as one.
"What the Racten took from us yesterday – We will take today!" Her voice rose as she spoke, gaining momentum.
"They owe us a debt in blood! And now, we collect!"
The yellow Folk rustled as whispers spread throughout the crowd.
"But how will we defeat them this time? Their number is over a hundred, and ours…" Someone asked.
The Elder motioned to Bruw, who opened his sack and reached inside, bringing out a fist-sized rock wrapped in leather. "Don't open the leather," he whispered. "It explodes in sunlight."
She nodded and gingerly accepted the rock, resting it on the palm of her hand so all could see.
When she was sure she had everyone's attention, the Elder hurled the rock towards the distant pile of bodies. It sailed lazily through the air, dropping like the stone it was onto the pile.
The second it landed, a ball of fire burst from the rock, consuming everything within a few metres.
As she lowered her arm, the Elder gazed at the pile of bodies and watched solemnly as the flames started to spread.
The distant crackle of fire was the only sound for miles around.
Every living Yellow Folk, be they child, man, or woman, observed the pyre burn. In other circumstances, this would have been a sombre, depressing affair.
But as they watched the flames burn brighter, they felt that hope lay within them.
"Soon," The Elder whispered, the orange glow reflecting in her pupils.
"Soon, the Racten will burn."