Disclaimer: I do not own Yona of the Dawn! I'm simply obsessed with it right now.
A/N: I just finished the manga up to its current chapter, so I had to start a new story. I'm still continuing my others! This idea just wouldn't leave me alone. It's set after the current arc in the manga, from Chapter 138 (as if that chapter was already concluded). So, there will be spoilers for the manga! Also, I know the Suzaku in Japanese mythology is usually portrayed as male, but yeah, I'm going with female because there's need to be more girl representation in AkaNoYona.
Sword of the Red Dragon
Prologue
"You are too late, Suzaku..."
The firebird lowered her head at the dragon's words, the untamed flames of her wings dimming. Surely not. Had it been so long since the Red Dragon had left the heavens for a life in the dirt and muck of the mortal world?
The four dragons stood like statues around the reflecting pool that let them see what was happening in the mortal realm without having to travel there. Each of them had their heads bowed. Sorrow was etched in their brightly colored scaled features, and pearly tears dripped into the pool, creating ripples across the reflected scene.
In the image on the water's surface, four men were gathered around a bed, grief that mirrored the dragons ravaging each of their faces. The human body of the dragon king lay like an abandoned husk on the bed. Hiryuu…
"That is not possible," Suzaku said, landing on Ryokuryuu's broad head, her talons latching onto one of his antlers. "Mere days have passed. Humans are not so frail—"
"Silence, firebird," snarled the white dragon, lifting his head to glower at her. "Days have passed here, but in the realm of men, it has been many years. He aged. He died."
Oh. What an odd, impossible concept. Dragons did not die.
Suzaku brushed a wing against Ryokuryuu's head as he shuddered, trying to comfort him although such things were foreign to her. A human's life was like the flash of a butterfly's wing to her, pretty and attractive for a moment but so brief that they hardly mattered. But surely Hiryuu would have lasted longer than a normal human. He was a former dragon, after all.
"He is gone, little one," rumbled Ryokuryuu, as if he could hear her thoughts.
"No," she said simply as a deep sorrow welled in her delicate chest, "He can not be gone. He mustn't…"
Ryokuryuu shook his head. "Suzaku...dear..."
"Don't make it worse, bird," grumbled a voice from the ground. Down by the edge of the reflecting pool, the irreverent Black Tortoise, Genbu, had appeared. He was leaning against Ouryuu, as if holding up the dragon while he sorrowed. "He's gone. Let them grieve."
Oh…oh… Her wings fluttered, and she found herself leaning against Ryokuryuu's antlers. Hiryuu. She remembered long days in the fields and palaces of the heavens, playing and laughing and flying free. They had hidden in the fires of the earth and sprang into the sky, lively and wild.
How could such a soul be gone without the world breaking?
The hollowness grew within her, tearing her as the loss of her friend took hold. The feeling spread throughout her, foreign and unwanted, until it grew through her chest, up her throat, and out of her as a fiery song of anguish. Her fire did not allow for tears, but her voice carried the wail of one who has lost something irreplaceable. The cry of one who has not known such despair before.
She took to the air, her flames blazing around her as the wind carried her song, letting every inhabitant of the heavens know what had happened and what they had lost that day.
Her gift. Her gift was too late. She had been planning to give Hiryuu something to help him during his life as a human, but the days of mortals had passed too quickly. The dragons had given their blood to mortals to protect him while she had idled her time away.
She would not fail him again. When the dragon king's blood reawakened in someone worthy, she would send her gift.
Her blazing sword would help the red dragon of the dawn once more.