Ember was disappearing into the distance, pulling a flock of Deathgrippers behind him with truly disturbing screeches and howls, attracting as much attention as he possibly could. The dark wings were who knew where, maybe descending the mountain, maybe flying away, maybe even dead. As far as Lily knew, she was the only person in the valley, and even she stood on the edge, at the top of the path down the mountains. It was dark out and the moon was only partially full, shining down fitfully.
All of which took on a much more sinister cast now that Lily knew she was on her own. The light wings were long gone, even those slowed by an egg or hatchlings, and the dark wings had dispersed. Ember had been driven away, and there was nobody else to help her.
She was one crippled dragon suffering from severe sleep deprivation, and they were hundreds of No-scaled-not-prey and dozens of Deathgrippers, all forewarned.
The only advantage she had was being hard to spot - not impossible, her back was sabotaging her in that too - and being alone. One small patch of moving blurriness on the side of a mountain might not attract attention. She wouldn't have the additional protection of Ember pretending she was his prey, but it was something.
But only if she moved now; waiting would gain her nothing and make her eventual departure even more treacherous. She had no time to spare.
The old path down was familiar, but she took it as slowly as she dared, conserving motion as much as possible. She did not leap down, she stalked, and every paw was placed in the best possible location, shifting no loose rubble.
Her recent injuries had taken much from her, and her current state of mind was dulling the rest, but moving silently was a skill that no longer required thought. Season-cycles of playing with Pyre, and then season-cycles of spying on her own people, had ingrained the habits needed to move silently so deeply that they remained even now.
Those same habits held her still and silent when she turned one of the many blind corners and almost walked into a trio of bulky No-scaled-not-prey. They were outfitted in shiny stone scales, holding sharp claws, and visibly confused, even to her less than stellar understanding of No-scaled-not-prey expressions. Their eyes stared through her.
That confusion lasted two heartbeats, two frantic, blood-rushing moments in which Lily considered her options with the speed of desperation. She could fight, she could turn around, she could try to sneak past, she could lay down and hope for mercy but that wasn't actually an option at all because she wanted to live past this moment-
One of them barked something guttural, and the other two jabbed forward with their long claws. They entirely missed her, misjudging how far away she was, but they had made her decision for her. She leaped off the carefully curated path Pyre had made long ago, landed on the steep slope to the side, and slid down.
She leaned back, her paws all out, and hoped with all her might that she wouldn't hit any bumps. The rock was slick with patches of snow and ice, and the wind rushed past her as she picked up speed.
A strange, resonant call went up from the No-scaled-not-prey she had left behind, and she knew she was exposed, at the center of a moving disturbance on the mountainside, easily spotted. She wasn't going fast enough, though already she was moving faster than she could walk.
Her unbroken slope ended at a jutting ledge, and she hit it hard, coming to a sudden halt. Her vision blacked out for a moment as the pain of the impact washed over her, then cleared. As much as it hurt, it also drove back her exhaustion, for which she was thankful.
Roars from above and behind her drove her to her paws, and she quickly took in the mountainside below her. It was mostly steep slopes, rock faces far too steep to walk up and too irregular to slide down. She couldn't fly, and the path was out of reach.
There was only one option that did not immediately lead to a fatal fall or being stabbed by Deathgripper talons, and she took it despite every muscle in her body tensing in trepidation. She leaped down, off the ledge and onto the nearest slope, her claws out and her heart hammering like never before.
The rock was slick; she got little traction, even with her claws. Her head was facing downward, her tail up, her wings partially out on instinct alone. She bounded down and forward, running despite the utter insanity of taking such a steep slope with anything other than the utmost caution. Caution was slow and would get her killed.
There was a jolt, and she was in the air. She fell oddly, her mostly downward descent meeting the rock again as it sloped forward in front of her. Her next leap was almost a disaster, but she jerked her back leg forward, scraping it against the rock, and managed to remain upright and travelling downward. Her wings and tail, worthless though they usually were, served to keep her from tumbling forward, the wind rushing over them and pushing her down. It was not flying, it was not gliding, and it hurt her atrophied muscles and tortured back, but it worked.
Two leaps, then three. She was hurtling downward, each impact jarring her bones more than the last. She had not moved this fast in season-cycles, not under her own power, and to do so now was as terrifying as it was fulfilling. Her body fought to extend her wings and fly, to pull out of this near-suicidal dive she had put herself into, but every new impact jarred them back into place, pushed by the wind but not supported by it.
A patch of snow on a horizontal rock shelf came up directly in her path, and she leaped to the side at the next opportunity, understanding that to come to an abrupt stop now would probably break her body entirely if not just kill her outright. This was a dive with occasional painful redirections, and she had no idea how to get out of it safely.
The next roar was closer, and she chanced a look back. Sure enough, two Deathgrippers were diving after her, closing in with every passing moment. There was nothing she could do about that; the slightest mistake would see her dead anyway. The bottom of the mountain was approaching, and near the bottom the steep but flat slopes were replaced by a jumble of boulders, chunks of rock dislodged from higher up over the season-cycles.
It was impossible to actually think as she bounded down; whatever rational thought the constant pain didn't drive away, the sheer speed at which she was moving and being forced to react made it irrelevant. She stuck her paws out, did her best to remain upright as she hit the slope, and pushed off again despite pain from everywhere. Then she fell, pulling her legs back up for another punishing landing-
A Deathgripper swooped down in front of her and jabbed at the rocks, overshooting and striking nothing. Lily hit the rock right in front of it and jumped forward, leaping over it even as it tumbled down and crushed its rider in a smear of red. She had leaped high to avoid them, and in the moment she spent fully in the air, she stuck her wings out, but they couldn't go far enough. She was falling, actually falling, too far from the rocks to bear the next impact, dropping down toward certain death.
Then her body was seized, yanked upward as a pair of thick claws dug into her sides. Her bones creaked as her speed was forcibly taken away, and she shrieked breathlessly at the sharp points digging into her.
The Deathgripper, for that was what had caught her, shook her and headed down, toward the base of the mountain. Its rider was squawking something loudly enough that Lily heard it over her own screeching, though she didn't know what it was saying. She could see the forest below, the red and black body above, and spots in front of all of it as her head whirled.
The Deathgripper soared down, so close to the ground that she could smell it, and dropped her. She landed on her stomach, smacking her chin against the ground and biting on her tongue, thankfully without any teeth. A talon drove into the grass in front of her, and she crawled around it, trying to get away.
There was a shriek from behind her, and for whatever reason, it didn't stab her or even pin her down. She dragged herself up, though her paws were sore beyond belief and her legs little better, and stumbled into the forest fringe, putting as many trees between herself and the enemy as possible.
One thought continued to repeat itself, taking up all of her dwindling mental ability with endless variations on the same meaning. She could have died. She should have died. That should have killed her.
She looked back, her neck cramping in protest, and saw nothing but the thin veil of trees. No pursuit, not yet, no angry dragon bulling through the trees to slaughter her. No No-scaled-not-prey, nothing at all.
For now. There was no way she was getting away without being chased, and she had to run, but she couldn't make herself move faster than an alternating limp, favoring one paw with each set of steps. Her front paw felt broken or sprained somewhere, her back paws were both scuffed and bleeding, and blood ran down her back from when her wings had strained but failed to pull free of their constraints, not that it would have done any good.
One paw in front of the other. Head up, ears down, listening for the end of her escape attempt. For the beginning of the end.
It came as a rustle, a body forcing itself between some bushes she had passed a few moments ago. She growled and tried to turn, but her legs gave out, dropping her onto her chest. She looked up at the dragon who had found her…
"That was insane," Beryl panted, his chest heaving as he made his way to her. "How did you do that?"
Lily stared blankly at him. Her tail twitched, but other than that she was still.
"I mean, I know how, I saw part of it," he rambled, leaning down to paw at her side. "It was just really, really risky. Did you practice or something?"
"No," she groaned. She certainly hadn't practiced, and a single misstep would have gotten her killed. Luck had made her look experienced, nothing more.
"Well, tell me on the way," Beryl rumbled, sticking his head under her side to push upward. "Come on, they're coming and we need a good head start."
Lily wanted to say she couldn't, but something about him being here, pushing at her and assuming she could, made her feel like maybe she could stand. Maybe she could walk. She rose with his help, placing each paw under herself with as much delicacy as she could muster, and found that they would hold her, though the one that felt broken was not contributing at all.
"Okay, now forward," Beryl rumbled, sticking his tail under her stomach in place of his head. He was holding her up as much as he could, which made her think he saw exactly how tired and hurt she was, though he didn't speak like it was hopeless. "I killed the rider of the one who had you and stuck the Deathgripper's head in the remains, so it won't be able to follow very well. The one on the mountainside in front of you didn't make it back up and shredded its wings, and the No-scaled-not-prey who blew their horns were way too far away. But others will be coming, I left a mess behind."
Lily huffed, her attention almost entirely on walking without collapsing again, even with him making her feel just a little lighter. In the back of her mind, she hoped that the consistent loss of Deathgrippers Grimmel was experiencing would make him more wary about using them; there weren't many at his disposal, not when the dark wings seemed to kill one or two every time they had an outright fight. Attrition ate away his air forces just as brutally as it did hers.
They walked awkwardly, Beryl keeping his tail under her and leading the way with his side pressed to hers. It was slow, and they made noise, but the snowy forest was silent around them.
"Ember might find us, but he might not," Beryl continued. "Spark was caught making his way down the mountainside, some of the No-scaled-not-prey were climbing up and they crossed paths. Ember went up to keep the Deathgrippers from noticing the commotion, and then they all went after him. He will probably fly until they are all exhausted, then change and get away in a fresh body. But if he doesn't run into us, we won't meet up with him."
"The meeting point?" Lily asked. She highly doubted Ember could find them now. Not in time to do anything.
"It's far, we assumed you and Root would be getting rides," Beryl admitted. "It's this way, but we won't make it before sunrise at this pace, and you know what we said about that sort of thing."
Lily knew all too well; it had been her own cold reasoning that determined what any group would do in that situation. If someone didn't show up, it would be assumed that they were either dead or making their own way toward the distant rendezvous point. There just wasn't any way to effectively search for someone in this terrain when everyone had to keep moving forward in order to avoid being found in turn.
She did, on the other paw, wonder whether Beryl's family would stick to that decision in the face of him being missing.
A Deathgripper roared somewhere above the trees. It was far too close for comfort, but its next roar was further away.
"If that is all they are going to do, we will be fine," Beryl murmured as they maneuvered around a copse of trees too thick to walk through. His tail slipped away, and Lily grunted at the loss of support, however slight. Her legs quivered, but held, and when he offered his tail again, she waved it away. They would be faster not stuck together…
Even if she would much rather have his support, and not just because she felt like she would collapse and sleep for a moon-cycle the moment they were out of danger. She didn't fully understand her own motivations, likely because she wasn't in a state to do any amount of thinking.
They walked deeper into the forest, skirting the deeper snow whenever possible. It had piled up around trees and in hollows, deep and potentially treacherous. The cold wind shook more from the trees above them. Every so often, a Deathgripper roared in the distance, and more rarely from somewhere close above, separated from them by nothing more than the obscuring canopy and ignorance.
The pain was no longer enough to keep her awake; her eyelids slid down, and no amount of jolting, aching, or fear was enough to pull them back up again. She wandered along behind Beryl, drifting in a half-sleep that had her walking slower and slower, following his warmth and his tail, the only thing she could see clearly. Her mind drifted…
O-O-O-O-O
A blood-curdling shriek jolted Lily awake. She tried to stand, collapsed with a whine, and realized that she couldn't remember laying down, or actually going to sleep.
She definitely couldn't remember curling up around a tree with Beryl against her side, holding her close. He had moved away even as she woke, but the absence of his heat and the fact that she felt newly cold told her where he had been.
"How long?" she asked. Her head pounded fiercely, because all of her other injuries just weren't enough for her to handle on their own.
"I don't know," Beryl said quietly. He was circling her now, looking into the forest in all directions. "Can't see the moon. It's still night."
"We have lost our lead," she observed.
"Not entirely, but yes," he conceded. "You couldn't go on. It was necessary."
She was in no state to argue with him, so she didn't. "I can walk now."
"You might have to try running," Beryl huffed.
"I'll try," she hummed, attempting to get to her paws again. It was possible, but she was, if anything, sorer than she remembered. Her left front paw was definitely sprained at the very least; she could barely stand to set it down on the ground, let alone use it. "Can't make promises…"
It was easier to move once she was standing, and she began to walk. Beryl circled around to join her, and subtly angled her to the left. She assumed she had been going in the wrong direction and went with it.
A new noise rose from behind them, a short, relatively quiet bark that sounded like it came from an angry but puny fledgling. "Dogs?" she asked.
"I assume so," Beryl confirmed. "Pearl said they had some of those."
"They brought one in to get my scent," Lily recalled. She didn't know whether the animals would be able to follow all light wings better for knowing her smell, or whether it just meant they could follow her… but either was bad. The original plan had involved everyone flying at some point, and her riding on Ember, but that wasn't going to happen now.
"Yes, that could be bad," Beryl agreed absently. "Hopefully they're not very fast about following it."
Lily responded by forcing her body to break into a slow trot, though she had to lean heavily on her good side to not fall over as she ran. She found that she could hold to the pace without too much more discomfort than walking. Her breath came out in bursts of mist as she moved, panting in the cold night air.
The dogs behind them began baying, filling the otherwise silent forest with their noisy calls.
"Wish I had Ember here," Beryl grunted, falling back to run behind her. He glanced over his shoulder every few moments, watching their rear. Their slow run was no strain for him; as far as Lily could tell, he might as well be walking. "I don't know anything about dogs except that they are like wolves but not, and sometimes hunt or track for No-scaled-not-prey."
"What do you know about wolves?" Lily asked.
"Nothing," Beryl said dryly. "Just that they're like dogs."
They passed over what had been a tiny stream, barely more than a paw in width and now just a long patch of ice. Lily had never been this far out into the forest, not that she knew exactly how far they were right now anyway, and she didn't know what to expect. The same trees, that much had been obvious back when she flew over in search of Pearl, but what lay below them was a mystery.
One of the dogs barked from surprisingly close by, and Beryl swerved around a tree to come up beside Lily. He snarled in the general direction of the noise, and a louder, more distinct bark was thrown back at him.
"They're coming from an angle," he hissed, veering off to dart directly at the source of the sound. Lily stumbled to a stop, leaning up against a tree to keep her injured leg in the air, and watched him disappear into the darkness. He leaped up into the lower branches of the canopy right before he disappeared from sight, silent and deadly.
She could hear her heartbeat, her breathing, and the ever-closer baying of the dogs. One began howling, then abruptly cut off. There was a yelp, then silence-
Then a crash of snapping wood and heavy things hitting the ground, and Deathgrippers snarling. Beryl appeared again, coming back from the direction of the noises, his eyes wide. A body dangled from his maw, and he snorted vigorously as he returned to her.
"Same dog?" he asked, dropping it in front of her.
"It looks like the one from before," she said quickly. "Was that crashing-"
"Deathgrippers. Don't know how they found me. Didn't land on me, snuck away, but it was close." He sniffed the corpse. "Can't take it with us."
Lily caught his meaning, and though she didn't feel hungry, she knew better than to refuse what chance had offered them. When his claws made quick work of breaking the small creature in two, she did not hesitate to bite into one half and swallow it. The soft, ticklish covering it had instead of scales tasted terrible, and the limbs almost stuck in her throat, but she choked it down without incident.
"Not how you want to eat stuff with bones, but good enough for now," Beryl said, ripping his apart and consuming it in several pieces. "Now keep running, we're not that far from the Deathgrippers!"
Lily couldn't hear anything coming their way aside from the more distant dogs, but she broke into a slow run anyway. Her stomach was heavy with meat and whatever else the decidedly bony predator turned prey had on it, but she found that it didn't slow her much, if at all. She was already so hindered by her many, many injuries that she wasn't running fast enough to upset her stomach. If anything, having eaten was only easing her headache.
As she ran, she found that she was still tired. That was no surprise; she couldn't have slept for more than half a night, and that was a generous guess when it was probably more like a tenth of the night, all told.
But the mind-fogging depth of her exhaustion was gone, driven away by that brief, deep slumber, and she could think more clearly. She couldn't speak easily, even if she were in perfect health she wouldn't be fit enough to talk while running like this, but she could think.
Her first, most pressing concern was the hunt going on behind them, the one pursuing them through the forest. The dogs were baying constantly, driving them forward, and Beryl had almost been caught when he went to silence the closest one. He had wondered how they knew where to go…
"The dog," Lily panted, thinking of something too urgent to keep to herself. "Did it howl or bark differently when it saw you?"
"Yes, it was scared and…" Beryl paused, and unlike her, he did not do so because he had to catch his breath. "I see. The dogs locate us, and the Deathgrippers drop down to fight when they are called."
"Yes," Lily huffed, glad he was smart enough to follow her reasoning without her laying it out for him. She had heard the dogs referred to as trackers and expendable forces, not fighters or hunters, so it had been a short leap to guess who would be doing the killing once the quarry had been located in a place like this. They were being hunted by land and air. The No-scaled-not-prey would be following behind, the dogs searching them out, and the Deathgrippers above landing whenever a dog barked in the way that meant it had spotted them.
She wondered if they could use that knowledge. They would have to take it into account, at least; being spotted could be relied upon to draw Deathgrippers down, though not to that exact spot, so killing the dogs was far too risky a strategy to use. Beryl was a great fighter, but she wouldn't pit him against multiple Deathgrippers and expect him to walk away uninjured, and she needed him to be okay. Not just for her sake.
"I guess I will not be killing any more of them, then," Beryl said ruefully. "Too bad, they made a passable meal, and it is not like I can fly up to do some fishing anytime soon."
Food was going to be another problem, though it didn't feel like all that big an issue at the moment, thanks to the one dog they had shared. Water would not, there was snow and they had fire, but food was not so easily obtained.
The dogs baying from behind them, and to their left now, more joining the chorus, put all of that in perspective. This flight would be over long before they could starve if they did not somehow get away.
"Scent," she gasped, reminding him of the way they were being followed. Both of theirs, or maybe just hers, it made little difference. She did not for an instant believe he would abandon her to this.
"Another problem," Beryl agreed with a growl. "Are you able to go into the trees?" He leaped up into the lower branches, bulling the smaller ones aside and jabbing his claws into the bark of the main trunk. As she ran, he leaped from one to the next, following along. After a half-dozen such jumps, he returned to the ground.
"Too hurt," she said shortly. She might have gotten a reprieve from the worst of her body's agonies, but that was out of the question.
"Figures, all awesome escapes have a downside," Beryl muttered. "Okay… Think. If we can't get rid of our scents, and we can't outrun them, and we can't get rid of them… What can we do?"
Lily thought about it for a while, or what felt like a while. It was still the middle of the night, though she felt as if she had been running forever, so her sense of time was very likely skewed.
"Can't let the dogs… call. Kill them… before they know... you're there." She stopped to walk for a moment, feeling like a prisoner inside her own flawed body. She wanted to run like the wind, to leap and fly, to do everything like Beryl could, perfectly and with an attractive sort of grace. Instead, she hobbled along, slowed whenever one of her legs twinged more painfully than the rest, and ignored the scratchy throbbing of her back's massive scar and four painful points.
"Yes, we might have to," Beryl said. "Now?"
"Can't go forever," Lily said. She was going to need an actual rest soon, and that meant being able to hide or getting so far ahead they could waste a day going nowhere. Neither was possible so long as they could be followed so accurately. Her whole plan for escaping Grimmel's people had hinged on not fleeing on paw like this. "Now is best."
"Okay… Okay, I can do this." He shook himself out, his muscular wing shoulders flapping against the driving wind. "You continue ahead, don't stop. I will circle around and ambush them from the side before they catch up to you. I'll use my fire… No, that doesn't work, the Deathgrippers will hear. I'll drop from above before they can react."
"Yes," she huffed. That could work. "How will you find me after?"
"Just go straight and don't turn," he said. "I can catch up easily if I know what direction you are going."
Lily nodded, bracing herself for the inevitable pain of picking up her pace again, and reached out to Beryl-
Beryl pressed his forehead against hers, though he seemed surprised by her offering the gesture. She was surprised by herself too, but just too tired and worried to care. "Be careful," she said.
"I will," he hummed reassuringly. He turned around, and she took the cue to break into her awkward trot again, still favoring her bad leg. The baying of the dogs in the distance had not stopped, but it took on a more foreboding tone now that she knew it would be dying out soon.. if all went well.
Running alone was surprisingly difficult compared to running with Beryl at her side; she lacked the effortless gait to copy, or the partner to pit herself against, a standard to measure up to. Every limping step was more difficult, her confidence sabotaged by the need to stay in a straight line, and further undermined by her desire to know what was happening. She would not find out anything if she stopped and waited for Beryl to return, it wouldn't help at all to do so, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was running away from someone irreplaceable, leaving him to do the hard work protecting her life without a word of thanks.
Aside from resolving to properly thank him when she next saw him, there was nothing she could do but continue to run and worry. She could imagine him approaching the dogs. They would maybe be moving together, maybe running around alone, their narrow muzzles to the ground to smell her… And maybe him. But not him at the moment, perched in the trees above, waiting for a perfect strike. He would have to follow them, but he was lithe and skilled at such things.
Was it her imagination, or had one of the many voices dropped from the distant chorus? She couldn't tell, and that meant that if Beryl had ambushed one, he had been successful in silencing it before it could call for Deathgrippers. Or he hadn't done anything yet, and she was just hearing what she wanted to hear.
A note in the discordant harmony disappeared, and this time it was clear one of the dogs had stopped its peculiar braying. Another trailed off and did not start up again, and as Lily listened, the ones off to the side all went silent.
Then she heard the distant crash of a large body smashing down through the canopy, though she hadn't heard any dogs barking the alarm. Its rider had probably noticed the disappearing dogs through the absence of any noise… But that wouldn't let them pinpoint where Beryl was like following a single dog's barking would have.
She was growing tired of running, her new energy fading far too quickly for her liking, but she pressed on, motivated by the success she could hear behind her. It was not long before the ones directly behind her began dying away, cut off abruptly or dropped and just never resumed. It might have been her imagination, but the remaining dogs sounded more desperate in their howling, less confident now that it was obvious to all involved that they were being silenced.
The chorus did not end with a whimper, though, not like she expected. Instead, a piercing whistle rose above the noises, not a noise Beryl or the dogs could make, and all of the remaining hounds abruptly fell silent.
Lily didn't like the sound of that. If she had to guess, the No-scaled-not-prey component of the hunt was deciding to cut its losses and protect the rest of its dogs, so that they could continue the chase without going back to their ships for more. If Beryl couldn't find the rest, if even one lived, they might not have gained anything by killing the rest.
Her ears were up, cold and growing numb in the intermittent icy wind. She was straining to hear distant noises as she ran, ignoring the crunching of her paws on snow. The freezing wind also stung her eyes, and as a result she had them more than half-closed, only open at all because running into a tree or tripping on a branch would be counterproductive.
So she nearly didn't see the red and black shape ahead of her in time. It was just a flicker between the many trees at first, stalking along in the distance. The movement was what alerted her more than the color; it was not so obvious against the dark trunks and darker leaves and needles.
But when her tired mind processed that there was something big and silent moving ahead of her, she stumbled to a halt and pressed herself against the nearest tree, her attention abruptly returning to the present.
How it had gotten ahead of her and in the right general area was not a mystery; they knew where the dogs had been going, and she had been travelling in a straight line. Anyone with half a mind for logic would see a general area to search. They - for she assumed there was a rider present too - had landed much too far ahead, but that was only because she was slower than they anticipated.
She could see the Deathgripper, maybe fifty long leaps away, its body disguised by the many trees breaking up and blocking her view. She could only hope they would do the same for her in return, and that she had stopped soon enough to not give herself away.
She was not camouflaged, and that lack did not bother her as much as it would have elsewhere. The forest had many snowdrifts, large patches of white on the ground, and she could blend in better if her movement did not catch and befuddle the eye in an otherwise featureless forest.
The Deathgripper snarled and leaned against a tree, shaking the canopy above it. Its rider barked something, and it stopped, but its agitation was clear. When it stalked away, she saw a flash of its sharp tail lashing against the same tree, slashing bark right off of it.
It was stalking the area ahead of her, walking directly across the path she would have taken. It hadn't seen her yet, and might not at all, but standing still to avoid detection had its own dangers. If the hunt was still going with less vocal dogs, she would never know until they were right on top of her.
Her headache was back, pounding without remorse as she stood still and waited. Her legs were weak, trembling with the effort of holding her up. She eased herself down onto her stomach, both because it would make her slightly harder to see, and because she didn't see any merit in pushing herself to stand when she could be resting her legs.
The Deathgripper growled so loudly she heard it from where she lay, but it still hadn't seen her. It paced through the forest, heading off to the right. She caught a glimpse of its rider, a spindly figure on its back, but only once. Then it moved out of sight, behind too many trees to show even a glimpse.
Beryl chose that moment to return. He dropped out of the trees with a muted crunch, landing with one paw in a snow drift. "Lily?" he hissed.
Lily nodded in the direction she had last seen the Deathgripper. "Dragon and rider over there," she whispered, standing with some difficulty. "Searching. Trying to predict our path."
"Good thing we should be turning to the left soon," he hummed, circling around to stand between her and the direction she had indicated. "Go ahead. I will cover our rear."
"Thank you," she said, remembering her resolution. "For everything. Really."
"Are you about to do something risky?" Beryl asked, giving her a worried look.
"What? No." She began to walk, her entire body crying out in protest.
"Good." He followed behind her, his warm breath ghosting across her tailfins every so often. "That sounded like something someone who did not expect to live through the night would say."
"I hope to survive this," she said quietly. "And if I do, it will be solely your accomplishment. So, thank you."
"We all have our strengths," he hummed. They had walked far enough away that Lily wasn't bothered by him speaking a little more loudly. The Deathgripper had disappeared, checking the wrong swathe of forest. "You got everyone else out. I saved one life, you saved more than a hundred."
"Did the light wings leave without issue?" Lily asked. She had hoped so, assumed so, but it wasn't like she had been in a place to actually know what happened, aside from the absence of obvious catastrophe right above the valley.
"As far as I could tell, yes," Beryl said. She had to slow for a small hill, and he walked right into her tail. "Sorry," he huffed.
"That's good," Lily sighed, entirely unbothered by the physical contact. "And your family? Spark got away?"
"Hard to say, but I saw some of them leaving. Spark was one of the last… I was supposed to be the very last one. I think they all got away."
They moved in silence for a short while, Lily unable to spare any concentration as they crossed a patch of frozen puddles and icy, wet grass. It wasn't cold enough to freeze everything yet, and water coexisted with ice in some places, freezing her paws whenever she took a wrong step.
"I think I got all of the dogs," Beryl said, breaking the silence once they were back on more solid ground. "How many would you say the No-scaled-not-prey had?"
"I never got to see any but the one, so I don't know." She shook her head, wishing she had a better answer. "Assume that they did not send out all of them for two dragons."
"One of which was a dark wing, they just might have if Grimmel is determined enough," Beryl countered.
"It would be foolish to send them all on any one hunt, there will be more kept safe as backup," Lily retorted. "If you killed all that were here, we only gained time, not a permanent end to the hunt."
"Still worth something," Beryl murmured. "You need more rest yet?"
"Not until we make it to that meeting spot," she decided. She felt horrible, tired and aching all over, but she would feel worse if they did not reach that place as quickly as possible. It was their only real chance of reconnecting with the dark wings and returning to the original plan.
O-O-O-O-O
The silence of the forest lasted through the rest of the night. No baying dogs were heard, and the Deathgrippers roaring overhead grew less and less frequent. Lily was not stupid enough to think that meant the enemy had decided to give up the pursuit, but she did hope it meant they had exhausted their ability to continue for the moment, and were waiting for reinforcements, more tracking dogs or less tired Deathgrippers.
The lack of obvious danger did not make the endless walk any easier, or any harder. The rush of being pursued and in mortal danger had long since stopped helping Lily push herself, and its absence was a blessing.
Distraction came in counting her pawsteps, then in counting the trees, then in listening to Beryl's breathing, steady and measured in a way that hers was not. Her paws grew numb, but the rest of her legs throbbed ceaselessly, growing worse whenever she focused on the pain. Distraction was necessary.
They reached the shore some time before sunrise, when the moon was still sinking down toward the horizon. From there, they retreated back into the forest, avoiding the easily-accessible shore like their lives depended on it - which they did.
Dawn came, and they still had not traveled far enough. Beryl took the lead, murmuring that they were close now, and Lily trailed behind him, feeling as if her head was full of rocks.
Her eyes locked on his swaying tail, then, when she grew tired of looking at that, his hips and backside behind it. He was certainly pleasant to stare at. More than pleasant… but that was the exhaustion taking hold, nothing more.
"Well…" Beryl stopped next to two scraggly trees. "We were going to meet somewhere around here, I think. There was a gap in the trees next to two dead ones, and…" He nodded up at the dragon-sized ray of sunlight cutting in at an angle, and the ugly pair of trees. "I think this is probably it. Impossible to check from above, but we're in the right area and there aren't many places like this."
"Were they here?" she asked, looking around. The entire area was filled with slush and melting snow, all of it disturbed, but that might not have been Beryl's family.
"Smells like it," Beryl huffed. "They're not here now, though, so they must have kept going like we planned."
"Would they really leave you?" Lily asked.
"Ember needs to carry Root if they're going to go anywhere fast, and they have Thaw with them too, for safety," Beryl reasoned. "They trust me to take care of myself. I would guess…"
He trailed off, walking out of the sunlit space and around a tree. "Yes, they went this way on paw. It looks like a Deathgripper landed, that would be these talon marks, but those disappear."
Lily followed him to look at the tracks, but she was too tired to puzzle them all out on her own. "So what happened?"
"They gathered here, and left without me, you, or Ember, trusting us to catch up on our own," Beryl said, following the trail further out. "Ember came around later, in Deathgripper form, and changed once he found their trail. They would have kept going on paw until he caught up, then flown to put as much distance between them and the valley before dawn as possible."
"So they did leave us?" Lily asked.
"Ember will take Root a few days out, then come back and find out from Grimmel's people himself, if I know him," Beryl said with a huff. "Either by using his Deathgripper form, or by just catching and interrogating somebody. However he does it, he'll find out that they didn't catch us, and that we were together, and from there I think he'll trust me to get you to the meeting spot. We're on our own."
