Lead dark along…

Nero placed Jiod in the very corner of his cave, covered with prickly branches and broad leaves from one of the few trees on the island. He had set the crystal in another corner. Nero hadn't yet had any success in pairing with the crystal, but the few facts he knew about such artefacts had blended with myth and legend. He was sure that crystals were supposed to glow when in a pairing, however, and it was quite lifeless. If he hadn't physically felt the thing repel him, he might even have thought it just an ordinary jewel, and eaten it for a little magic to accelerate his healing. After some experimenting, he decided it was too risky to tinker with, and resolved to wait until Jiod revived, for Jiod may have gleaned some insight into its use.

A heavy tread interrupted Nero's contemplation, and he looked with veiled resentment as Drago thumped into the cave. He'd filled out since the first time Nero had seen him. While Drago had at first had trouble merely wearing his heavy, macabre dragonskin cloak, he now wore it as if it were weightless. "I have instructed the other dragons to collect and fetch any gold from the army. We will need you to break catapult and arrow fire on our next… mission," he said, and then after a short delay gave an obligatory laugh.

"Is this really necessary?" Nero asked helplessly. If he killed Drago near any silarion, the whole pack would most likely attack at once, and he did not think the benefit in killing Drago would outweigh the loss of a dragon's life, which could last so long and do so much good.

A short pause. Drago appeared to be actually considering his answer; perhaps there was yet hope. His next statement dashed it. "I don't care. Dragons of your kind are monsters for what they do to other dragons, humans are monsters for what they do to each other, and the rest of the dragons are like a plague of locusts. All deserve to die, and will most likely kill themselves, eventually. I'm just... speeding up the process."

"That's not—"

"Enough. You will live, for helping right the wrong that is our existence," Drago said, and stomped out of the cave.

§

Nero returned from scouting to find Jiod awake and confusedly brushing itchy twigs out of his hair. "N-Nero? I thought you left?" Jiod said, eyes clouded with conflicting emotions.

"No, I was attacked," Nero said, walking over to Jiod and checking him over for injuries, only finding some bruising and shallow cuts, "but that's not important now. We need to get rid of a madman, he is somehow directing a large swarm of silarions that obey commands, and his eventual goal is to kill off all humans, dragons, and silarions."

"It said I was to fix everything..." Jiod muttered.

"What?" Nero asked, startled. "Who told you that?" Jiod mutely pointed to the crystal, empty of light in its corner of the cave. Nero would have thought Jiod wouldn't be able to see it with human eyesight, then on reflection realized that he had paired with the thing. Maybe he was still paired with it, in some small way that prevented others from doing so as well.

"You mean… it's a knowledge stone?" Nero asked, wonderingly. Such things had passed into legend even while the artefacts used as weapons were widespread.

"Uh… I don't know, they just gave it to me as a trial… wait, where are they? And how did you find me?" Jiod asked, falling down again after another attempt at standing up. He settled for raising himself up on his hands and knees, and looked around at the cave. It was dark, cool, and still, but not damp. Nero would never let any cave he inhabited become damp, no matter how much some dragons liked it.

Nero sighed, and spoke, "The human army was found by Drago—the one controlling the silarions—and… well, it's better you don't know the details. Suffice to say that—" Nero abruptly stopped speaking, and flicked his head sideways toward the entrance. "Silarions coming. Hide," he said, then, "quickly, quickly," causing Jiod to burrow wildly into the pile of vegetation.

Jiod hid himself not a moment too soon, as the flutter of wings entered his hearing just as he settled himself. A silarion dropped down on the cave floor, a weak stream of sunlight entering from behind it and turning the monstrous nightmare into a black silhouette. Jiod felt a moment of panic as it advanced, seeming to turn its head in his direction—how could he have forgotten their sense of smell?—then calmed as he realized the vegetation had a thick, cloying odour to it, filling his nose and blocking everything else. Trust Nero to solve the problem by bringing in stuff that smelled nauseating. Now that Jiod was aware of it, his stomach began to rebel, and he felt he might throw up if forced to hide for too much longer. He tried to distract himself by studying the silarion, but it was still nought but a shadow in the gloom. It crawled along the floor towards Nero in the odd semblance of walking that the species had—dragging itself along by the claws on its wings and stalking forward using its back, and only, legs—and something rolled off its tongue and clattered against the floor, nearly causing Jiod to start. Nero took the object in a claw and nodded to the silarion, which backed away and flung itself out of the cave and into the air, beating steadily until it was a speck in the distance.

After watching for some time, Nero took a long breath, a rumbling sound which Jiod felt even where he lay on the floor. "It's safe to come out now, the only silarions left on the island are a few sentries," Nero said, rolling the object between his talons. "At least the raid wasn't a complete waste. I'm extremely low on magic, soon I wouldn't even be able to fly," he added. Nero tilted his head back, opened his jaws wide, and tossed the object into his gullet. It glinted briefly as it passed a thin ray of light, then Nero snapped his jaws shut and it was gone. Then he gave what passed for a frown on dragons, and twitched back into stillness, moving his head in small jerks. He caught a flow of speech, and with some attention finally brought it into focus—

"I toldja, it brang someone with it! C'mon, you saw it leave too," said a male voice, wheedling and laced with a curious grimness.

"No. Remember Lillian?" someone else said, darkly and with no little venom.

"But it's a person, and it was just carried here!" the first one said urgently. "He could be wounded right now, missing a leg or something, and only us who can save him."

"Well—"

"Come on, hurry!"

The sound of someone clambering up the mountain was heard even by Jiod, who jolted upright out of his pile, brushing pieces of leaves out of his hair with his fingers, and took several deep breaths, before turning to Nero with an expression that clearly said, What do we do?

Nero pointed a talon at the vegetation again. Jiod shook his head in wordless protest, and took his axe off of its position across his back. Nero momentarily wondered how it had stayed there with all the jolts he'd received while being flown, then took a position beside the entrance, invisible to any who might look in. If they were bait laid by Drago… Nero angled his neck in an S shape and crouched into a stalking position, claws ready to tear and the liquid that would ignite into a furious funnel of fire collecting in a pouch in the roof of his mouth.

The scrabbling of hands and feet digging into stone stopped, and then an arm appeared over the lip of the cavern. A head poked over next, crowned with a horned helmet, and then with a mighty heave the entire body spilled onto the floor. The man's face, like everything else in the cavern, was a mystery to Jiod from his position back in the pile of plants. The man looked around, missed Nero completely, but seemed to see Jiod… Jiod squirmed a bit, then with horror realized his leg was exposed. Maybe he didn't see it… Jiod thought, sure that he did.

Another scrabbling of limbs on rock could be heard outside, and the man turned and pulled up another viking. "There's somethin' in that corner," he told her, pointing at Jiod's hiding place. Jiod, meanwhile, was unsure whether to reveal himself or continue to hide. They were vikings, after all.

They started towards him. Nero burst out of his hiding place with a low growl, and they froze in place. Then one of them whispered, or at least, tried too; it was loud enough that even Jiod could hear it.

"Aim for the—" she said.

"I see it."

The two readied themselves, pointing makeshift spears at Nero. They appeared to be tree limbs topped with dragon fangs, and although they looked sharp enough, Jiod didn't think they stood a chance against Nero, who at that moment let out a brief snort. A small flame licked out of his jaws like a second tongue, for a moment painting the cavern with an unnaturally bright light. The cool floor of the cavern seemed to heat up just by its appearance, and the air grew hot and dry. Then it was gone, but it was enough—Jiod saw their faces.

"Ikhelt? Freva?" Jiod said incredulously. Nero had said everyone except himself and Jiod had been eaten by the Red Death, former queen of Drago's silarion swarm.

"Jiod?" Ikhelt said, burgeoning fight forgotten as he looked around, and finally spotted Jiod rising, coughing repeatedly and feeling wretched from the nauseating fumes.

"You know these people?" Nero asked.

All was silent, for a time, everyone being too confused to speak. Then Jiod cleared his throat and stood between vikings and dragon. "Nero, meet Ikhelt and Freva. Ikhelt, Freva, meet Nero."

Everything after that was a confused mess of words and noises, everyone cutting each other off, and demands for clarity on one point or another. The conversation, leaving that out, went something like this:

"Yeah, we escaped from the dragons," Ikhelt said offhandedly, neglecting to mention how.

"Silarions!" Nero rumbled.

"Then we were caught again," said Freva.

"Then we jabbed the dragon—" Ikhelt began.

"Silarion," Nero muttered.

"And it dropped us off here," Freva finished.

"We found some dragons being… tortured, and rescued them, but… they died of their wounds after," Ikhelt said solemnly.

"And that's pretty much it," Freva said.

That left Jiod trying to explain his journey, and experience with the crystal, whereupon even Nero joined in on interrupting. Then Nero had to explain his capture and 'rescue' by Drago.

§

Night had fallen, and the silarions were due to return at any minute. The plan was to kill Drago as soon as he entered Nero's cave, to check on his wound, as was his habit. Jiod's confused statement that the crystal said they needed to use a silarion king to reverse time was chalked up to a normal dream after the crystal had released him, and dismissed.

Soon, the massive storm of wings that signalled the silarion's return from a mission entered Nero's hearing. But instead of dispersing into tangled fragments of sound that meant they were dispersing and heading for their nests, the sound just came closer… and closer…

Nero's eyes widened with realization, and hurriedly scooped the assembled humans up in his claws, ignoring their indignant cries to let them go, or else, and shot out of the cave with a speed he shouldn't have been able to travel with his wound. All around him a dome of silarions drew closer and closer, carefully closing the noose. How Drago had found out, Nero didn't care to guess, as dark magic had multitudes of unintended consequences for not just practitioners, but anyone who knew the details of how it worked.

Drago himself was sitting on a monstrous nightmare, looking straight at them with a twisted grin on his face. Nero flew towards the nearest advancing wall of silarions, and bowled through them, sending them spinning this way and that, screeching. He then gathered himself and accelerated at a speed impossible for any dragon he'd seen in Drago's swarm to keep up with. Nero took a quick look back, and saw Drago, still with that insane grin on his face, eyes cold and expressionless. With a shudder, he jerked his head back forward and viciously beat his wings against the cold, heavily fogged air.

Forgot to mention, I'm using a new paragraphing style, like in books. Also, recently reached the 1,000 view count! Yay! Edit: removes tabs. :(