AN:
This one's a bit of a long chapter, but not long enough to split up. Hopefully there isn't too much time spent on exposition here, and that it's not too clunky. I had a brief period of writer's block while working on this while I reworked some later parts of the story. I think the hardest part for me is trying to find the right way to phrase my story. I know what needs to happen, but conveying it in a way that is engaging, flows well, and doesn't have any out of character moments can be tough. I'm really excited to continue this story though, because I have some pretty cool ideas for later chapters. Now back to your irregularly scheduled fan-fiction.
Chapter 7: Village of Silk Spinners
The Earth Kingdom
Pyrrhia…?
The Earth kingdom was absolutely stunning up close, with its lush forests and serene peaks. At first, Ricky had been completely transfixed by the wondrous scenery, but after two hours of trudging through dense foliage, it had grown quite old.
It had been Lin's idea to head through the forest instead of flying, something about avoiding the Empress's soldiers. Before they had left, Hidden had stashed most of their belongings somewhere in the Salvation, and all they had brought with them were their PDAs. They weren't of much use though, as they could get no signal nor internet connection. Even the clocks still read the time back at JSI.
Ricky pushed a large fern out of his way. He had started to fall behind the rest of the group, having to constantly check to make sure that Reggie hadn't fallen off his back. The human, still dressed in his janitor's uniform, lay sleeping on the SkyWing's red scales. Ricky looked back at him with envy, and gritting his teeth, picked up the pace.
Come on Ricky, you can do this.
By the time he caught up, he found Hidden and Lin in the middle of a discussion. Xavier stood decidedly on the other side of Hidden as Lin, casting her wary glances. "Sooo… SandWings are called DustWings, RainWings are called JungleWings, and SkyWings are called SunWings, correct?" Hidden asked.
Lin sighed, she didn't seem too happy to be explaining such things. "Yes, that is correct." she said bluntly. "Are you done now?"
"Oh, wait! What about the ones from Pantala?"
Lin stared blankly at Hidden, confused. "What are you talking about? What is 'Pantala'?"
"You know, the other continent. Across the ocean." Hidden replied.
Lin squinted at him. "You're not talking about the lost continent, are you? Is that where you're from? I thought it was just a legend."
"Aw forget it." Hidden said, tired of that thread.
Ricky rushed up between the two. "We are from Pyrrhia!" he clarified, "Just a...different one. Honestly we're not too sure about it ourselves."
Lin eyed the human sleeping on Ricky's back, still somewhat put off by him. "Tell me SunWing, how did you teach your pet scavenger to talk like that?"
"My name's Ricky." he said, trying not to sound too irritated, "And Reggie isn't my pet. That's just...wrong. And could you please stop calling him a scavenger too. They're called humans. I mean, we stopped calling you a MudWing, didn't we?" Ricky immediately slapped his forehead, realizing he had just done so. "Sorry, but you get my point, right?"
"I've just never heard of...humans...having such intelligence. Most of the time they just make unintelligible squeaking noises."
Hidden and Xavier suddenly got mischievous looks on their faces. "Could it possibly be that you are simply incapable of speaking their language?" Hidden asked, switching to using Syllabic instead of Draconic.
Lin took a surprised step back, eyes wide. "Wha...how...you sound just like them!"
Hidden and Xavier started laughing, causing Lin to grow irritated. "Oh...this is gonna be so much fun." Xavier said, also using Syllabic.
Lin huffed in annoyance, fed up with Hidden and Xavier's games. Xavier instinctively stepped behind Hidden when he noticed her frustration. "You should quit that squeaking." she said, "In fact, just quit being...you." She waved a talon dismissively at the four of them. "My village is just up ahead and we don't need to draw any unwanted attention."
A short while later, the group emerged from the thicket into a wide clearing. Stalks of bamboo lined the perimeter, curving slightly inwards as they rose to give the impression of a partial dome. Scattered about the clearing were a dozen or so wooden dwellings, decorated with vibrant red paper lanterns.
All throughout the village EarthWings went about their daily lives. A brawny one walked by the group pulling a wooden cart full of ripe vegetables, casting them a curious glance. Ricky looked over and saw a group of dragonets playing in a creek that wound through the clearing, splashing each other and rolling on the riverbed in laughter.
At the far side of the village was a sheer cliff, towering above the quaint buildings below. A waterfall gushed out of the cliff face, pouring into the creek bellow. Atop the cliff was a building unlike the rest in the village. It was tall, and built out of striking red wood, with multiple roofs that pointed at their corners. Ricky thought he had seen architecture like that before in a history book, a pagoda, if he recalled.
"That is the River Temple." Lin explained, noticing Ricky staring at the structure. "It's where the villagers go to pray for bountiful harvests, good weather, that sort of stuff. My house is the one right next to the cliff."
They made their way down one of the dirt pathways, eliciting a few stares from the villagers. Ricky noticed Xavier looking around nervously, eyeing the villagers with suspicion.
"Should we be worried about all of them...staring at us?" he asked.
"We don't usually get many visitors who are not EarthWings, in fact, we don't usually get many visitors here at all." Lin explained. The group stepped onto a small cobblestone bridge that crossed over the river.
"Come on Xavier," Hidden said, wrapping a foreleg around Xavier's neck. "You've gone up onstage every other week for Kaizo matches. Why so paranoid?"
Xavier pushed Hidden's leg off of him, frowning. "That's different! Back then we were in Pyrrhia, our Pyrrhia. Here, we could be on an entirely different planet for all we know!"
A few more EarthWings were starring now, and Lin had to shoot Xavier and Hidden a glare to shut them up. Ricky winced, he didn't want what happened on the Salvation to happen to him anytime soon.
They passed by a building with a large ramada attached to it. Beneath it sat a group of EarthWings, busy spinning silk into various beautiful garments. One of them waved to Lin, calling her attention.
"Hey, Lin! Who've you dragged in this time?" they shouted.
Lin groaned. "Just some lost travelers," she said, not even bothering to look at the EarthWing. "Nothing out of the ordinary."
"This doesn't have anything to do with that explosion we heard earlier, does it?" they asked.
This time Lin turned to the EarthWing, an expression of tedium written across her face. "What do you think." she said bluntly before stomping off toward her house.
The EarthWing shrugged and waved as Hidden and Xavier started off after Lin. Ricky was about to follow, when the EarthWing called out to him.
"Hey, SunWing! Nice pet you got there!" they said with a friendly smile on their face, gesturing to the sleeping Reggie on Ricky's back.
"Th-thanks." Ricky said. He sighed, and ran forward to catch up with the rest of the group.
"So what is this place anyway?" Xavier asked.
"This is Fallside village, a small farming village that specializes in cultivating silk and producing garments and other commodities for trade." Lin explained, gesturing to a series of stacked trays beneath one of the buildings. Ricky could see a writhing white mass filling each one, and shuddered.
"Once the war started Empress Moorhen began switching many villages to wartime production. Ours happened to slip through the cracks and fall into obscurity. I doubt the Empress even knows this place exists!" Lin continued, a hint of pride in her eyes.
"War? What war?" Hidden asked.
"The War of DustWing succession of course, between sultanas Burn, Blister and Blaze? The one which ravaged Pyrrhia for twenty years? Don't tell me you haven't heard of it?"
Hidden scratched his chin. "We learned about a Sand...er...DustWing civil war that took place sometime in the 60s, but I don't remember it lasting more than 4 years. And what's this about sultanas?"
Lin shook her head, tired of having to explain everything to the three of them. "Whatever, we're here anyway."
They had in fact arrived at Lin's dwelling, a small one story cottage that was dwarfed by the rocky cliff face right next to it. Stepping inside, the group was greeted by an EarthWing who stood by a brick hearth at the back of the building, busy cooking some kind of noodle soup in a crude iron cooking pot.
"Oh, hey Lin!" he said, "Who are these fine fellows?" He seemed to be a few years older than Lin, possibly seventeen or eighteen, with deep brown scales and a pale brown underbelly.
"Everyone, meet my brother, Tai." Lin said, gesturing a talon towards the EarthWing. Tai grinned, waving at the newcomers.
"So, are these friends of yours Lin?" Tai asked.
"Not even close." Lin replied, watching as Hidden, Ricky and Xavier began settling themselves down.
The house was barely able to fit the five of them. Hidden and Xavier sat around a low square table at the center of the room, and Ricky walked over to a pair of mats on a lowered section of the floor, laying Reggie upon one of them.
"Hey! Is that your pe-" Tai began, but he was abruptly cut off by Ricky.
"He is not a pet. He is a human, named Reggie, and he is his own person."
Tai took a step back. "Oh, sorry. I was just…"
"No, it's fine." Ricky said. "This place is so different from home, it's a little jarring sometimes."
"True words brother." Hidden said, resting his head in one of his talons.
Reggie suddenly began to shift, and let out a faint moan. "Ugh...what time is it? I didn't oversleep again, did I?" He looked up at the group of dragons surrounding him and the thatch roof high above his head. "Oh, right." he said, seemingly remembering the situation they were in.
"Lin! Lin! It just spoke! Can you believe that!" Tai exclaimed excitedly, practically hopping up and down.
"Yes, I know." Lin replied, her steely expression unbroken.
Hidden turned to Reggie, smirking. "You slept so long, you missed seeing the village Reggie!" he said, gesturing to one of the glassless windows at the front of the house.
Reggie quickly pulled himself up onto his two legs and scrambled up onto some crates by the window, peering out at the serene village beyond. "WOAH! This is totally awesome guys! It's like we've been sent back to the medieval ages or something!"
Hidden abruptly slammed both of his foretalons onto the table, getting the attention of everyone in the room and nearly causing Reggie to fall off of his perch.
"Speaking of which…" he said, "I've boiled down the three most likely theories as to what's happened to us, so listen up.."
Ricky and Reggie both gathered around the table with Hidden and Xavier, while Lin and Tai stood to the side.
"The first possibility is time travel." Hidden began. Xavier cast Ricky and Reggie a confident glance. Hidden continued. "While I doubt that we've traveled back in time, as the histories and geographies of our Pyrrhia and this don't match up in the slightest, as Xavier mentioned back at the Salvation, there's the chance that we've been flung far into the future after some kind of apocalypse has destroyed all modern civilization and drastically altered the landscape."
Xavier piped up, interrupting Hidden's explanation. "Maybe the Salvation was meant to save the world from whatever destroyed society as we know it, and our stealing it doomed everyone!"
Hidden shook his head, "As I was about to say, I think this theory is a bit of a stretch, and the second is the most likely to be true."
Tai turned to Lin, whispering in her ear. "Do you know what they're talking about, because I'm completely lost."
"Not a clue."
"The second possibility," Hidden explained, "Is that we've traveled to an alternate timeline, similar to ours, but different."
"So...the multiverse?" Xavier asked, skeptical, but interested.
"Yes, exactly, and if we want to get home we have to figure out how to pilot the ship back to our own timeline." Hidden said excitedly. Ricky had a feeling that Hidden didn't plan on returning home immediately if that was the case.
"But wait, what about the third theory?" he asked.
Hidden turned to Ricky, frowning. "That we've died and gone to the afterlife, but I highly doubt that's the case."
I hope that's not the case… Ricky thought.
Suddenly, the group heard a loud crash outside. Ricky rushed over to the window, seeing an EarthWing soldier harassing the EarthWing with the vegetable cart from before. He'd thrown the cart over, scattering its vegetables on the ground, and was menacingly backing the hapless EarthWing into a corner. Another armor clad soldier stalked down the dirt paths, his hardened glare scanning the area.
"Oh no. It's the Empress, isn't it." Tai nervously asked, backing up into the corner of the room. "She's sent her troops after you guys, hasn't she?"
"Well, we did kind of tear up her lawn, with our spaceship, in a way." Hidden commented.
Lin pushed Ricky aside and looked out the window, cursing under her breath. "Alright, you four follow me out the back door. We can lose them in the fore-"
She turned to see Ricky calmly striding towards the door at the back of the house. He had an idea. A stupid idea, but something inside of him told him it was the right one.
"Hidden, Xavier, come on." he said, "Let's go turn ourselves in."
"WHAT!" Xavier shouted, nearly flipping the table over as he shot to his feet. "Are you nuts?! Why would we turn ourselves in!"
Hidden thought for a second, and nodded. "Yeah, good idea Ricky."
"You too?! What's with you guys?!"
Hidden walked over next to Ricky and turned to face the RainWing. "If her soldiers are already here, then they've probably already captured the Salvation. If we turn ourselves in now, we might be able to peacefully negotiate with her to allow us to leave."
"But how do you know she won't just throw us in her dungeons forever?!" Xavier replied, one of his fore-talons clutching the side of his skull.
"She'll be far more likely to comply if we peacefully turn ourselves in instead of running away and causing even more trouble for her soldiers. We're going to have to confront them either way, soooo…"
Ricky had to admit that he hadn't thought of it that way. He'd just wanted the soldiers to stop tearing up Lin's village.
"Ffffffine." Xavier hissed, "But don't blame me if she locks us in her dungeons."
The three began walking out the door, when Reggie ran over to follow them. "You should probably stay here Reggie." Ricky said, "I don't know what they'd do to someone like you here."
Reggie stood there, silently watching as the three dragons slipped out the back door of Lin's house. They quietly made their way behind some bushes, and popped out onto the road from behind another building.
"Hey, mud face!" Hidden shouted. The soldier turned to him with a glare. "We're the ones you're looking for! Now get off your lazy tail and arrest us already!"
Xavier groaned and put a talon to his face, and the three held out their fore-talons to be cuffed. The guard skeptically looked at their outstretched legs, confused by the gesture, and quickly tied a thick rope around each of their necks. The other guard abandoned the EarthWing he was tormenting and tied their snouts shut.
The ropes around his neck and snout were incredibly rough and itchy, and Ricky couldn't help but feel like his plan might not have been the best idea after all. The dejected look on Xavier's face certainly didn't help. As the three were tugged into the air after the two soldiers, Ricky took a final look at Lin's house.
In the window, he could barely make out the faces of the two EarthWings and Human, watching as they were dragged off towards the Imperial City, home of Empress Moorhen.
