Happy Friday folks! Has anyone seen my shoe? I seem to have dropped it.
54. Hunted
Pit tried to be subtle about it. At first.
He and Fang fell back a bit, slowly, letting Storm and Specter pass them until they were almost walking side-by-side. Then Specter panicked and tripped over a root.
Pit met Fang's eyes, and together they just sort of... walked around the other two until they were bracketing them. Storm and Specter, suddenly squished between them, had no choice except to finally start talking to each other.
Specter gave Pit a dirty look. He ignored it—he was pretty sure that would be a thank-you in a few minutes.
Storm was the first to make a move. She bumped Specter's shoulder with her own while they walked and said, "Hi."
He ducked his head and mumbled, "Hello."
She glanced around nervously. Fang gave her an encouraging nudge. "I know you feel bad," she told Specter. "I kind of do too, even though it doesn't make any sense."
"...You do?" Specter's ears went back. "But—"
"I mean, it's as much my fault as yours," she pointed out. "Since it isn't."
He let out a high pitched, confused whine.
"How about... I forgive you, even though you didn't do anything wrong. And neither did I, but I think it might feel nice if you forgave me anyway."
Specter stared at her. "I, um... I forgive you? But you really didn't—"
"I know." Storm butted her head playfully against his, and that was that. Pit could finally relax. At least for now—he was getting the feeling Specter would need reminding every now and then for a while.
He stayed on Specter's other side, walking close to him so that their riders could talk. They'd been doing that a lot lately, most of it under the ice dragon's wings. Pit tried not to mind, since he knew his brother needed the reassurance.
A flash of orange.
Pit squinted at the horizon, but there was nothing there. Only the tops of trees.
"Pit?" Blake put a hand on his back. He'd stopped dead, and was craning his neck to try to catch another glimpse of—there!
He couldn't see more than an outline and a flash of color before it disappeared into the leaves again, but this time he knew that it was a dragon. One he recognized. "Guh-lorry." He pointed with his tail.
"What?" Blake blurted, craning her neck to see—but she was out of sight again.
Ahead of them, Professor Goodwitch turned back towards them. "Is something wrong?"
The orange silhouette returned. She'd been flying in a straight line, but as she passed overhead she dipped one wing and made a wide circle.
Yang spotted her too. "She sees us."
"Hey! Glory!" Ruby waved a hand over her head. "Come down!"
She kept circling, dipping briefly in front of the afternoon sun. Pit squinted up at her. He let out a long, trumpeting bellow. "Glory!"
There was no answer. Maybe she hadn't heard him, but...
"Should we fly up to where she is?" Jaune wondered. "Maybe we could tell her about Watts, and she could spread the message to the others?"
"Um..." Ruby hesitated. "Maybe? It might be kind of hard to explain about the chemistry stuff."
"If we—" Blake started to say, then cut herself off mid-sentence. "There's more of them."
She was right—two more specks swept towards them, each coming from a different direction. Pit couldn't tell who they were at this distance, though he did have a guess about the dusty brown one.
"Ruby?" Penny's light went yellow. "Are these pit dragons trained in aerial maneuvers?"
"Um, no? Why?"
"Glory appears to be flying in a perfect lemniscate."
"A lemon-what-now?"
"Figure eight," Weiss said absently, her eyes still on the dragons overhead.
Pit cocked his head to one side. Now that he was looking closely, Glory was flying in an oddly symmetrical shape.
"Okay...?" Yang made a face. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Blake's hands tightened on Pit's reins. He rumbled in concern and craned his neck to look at her. "It's too neat to be natural."
Ruby stiffened in her saddle. "You mean—"
Above them, the other two dragons reached Glory. Pit had been right about the tan-colored one being Tumbleweed, and he could guess that the other, much smaller grey one was Riptide. All three of them flew overhead in similar patterns. Too neat, too organized—nothing like the pit dragons ought to be.
"Shit," Yang hissed.
"Go!" snapped Goodwitch.
"We can help!" Fang insisted.
At almost the same time, his rider shouted, "Wait! We're gonna need to distract them if everyone's gonna get away!"
Pepper was already running, her wings fully extended, charging up a small incline that ended in a steep drop. Goodwitch slid out of the saddle as she ran, then hopped on behind Ren on Ao Guang. "Two more dragons," Nymph decided.
Huo perked up. "I'll do it!"
Fang was already following Pepper.
"Um..." Zircon's ears went back. "Guys?"
There was a fourth shadow against the clouds. Pit couldn't even tell the color at this distance, but it could easily get close enough to spot their group if no one intercepted it. "I'll go too," he decided.
No time for arguments. Pit jerked his head towards the hovering dragons, hoping Blake would understand the question he was trying to ask. "Go," she urged, reaching down to tighten the straps around her legs. He followed after Fang and Huo, all three of them using the same slope Pepper had to get into the air. It wasn't very steep, and there was an instant where he wasn't sure he could get off the ground—but the moment he used his powers, he soared easily over the treeline.
All three pit dragons dropped out of formation. Pit roared a challenge and flew to meet them.
Huo burned.
Not literally, he tried to tamp that down as much as he could—Sun was on his back, and he wasn't angry at the dragons. But he'd been sick of the council treating them like tools for a long time, and now here Cinder was doing exactly the same thing.
"Try and get close!" Sun shouted over the wind. "They won't be able to follow if we grapple them!"
Huo went for Glory. He was still steaming, and knew she wouldn't mind the heat so much. Pepper crashed shoulder-first into Tumbleweed and sent the pair of them into a spiral. That left Pit and Riptide. Fang chose to gang up on Glory instead of poor Riptide.
It was easy to get close. Harder to get so close that their wings were overlapping, but he managed—and as soon as he did, he latched onto her with his forepaws. They fell from the sky together. Glory's tail thrashed, coming dangerously close to hitting Sun. Huo tried to warn her off by digging his claws in a little. She ignored it.
Right. Not Glory—a machine wearing Glory.
Yelping and swearing at the top of his lungs, Sun pressed himself tight against the saddle. Huo had to let go of her to block her next swipe, and she took the opportunity to slash at his wings. Fang intercepted the attack by dropping down on her from above. While she flailed at the air to stabilize herself, Huo had a chance to spiral higher. They'd gotten dangerously close to the treetops.
"Hey!" he called out. "You still in there?" He wasn't expecting a response, which was good—she didn't give him one.
"Uh, Huo?" Fang's voice. Huo risked a peek in his direction and saw that the fourth dot was smuch closer—and, at the same time, he realized it had been much farther away than he'd first assumed.
He didn't need to see that it was blood read to know which dragon was coming. Because of course it was Crucible.
Huo guessed by the steady stream of swearing that Sun had noticed the same thing he had. Not much they could do about it, though, and Glory wasn't keen on letting him ignore her—no. The machine wasn't keen on letting him ignore Glory. Glory probably wanted to go back to playing fetch and sleeping under Inkwell's wings.
Frustrated, he lunged at her while Fang clung to her back, ripping at the plate with his claws. It was fixed on, not growing armor the same way that Penny did—probably a bit of a rush job, considering it had only been a few days since they ran away from Cinder—but still impossible to remove without the right command.
"Um... detach?" he tried. Nothing happened. He stopped trying to tear it off when he accidentally scratched Glory's forehead instead. She didn't even wince.
"This isn't working!" Pit roared. He flew circles around Riptide as she took vicious swipes at him.
Pepper dove out of the way of Tumbleweed's tail in time to shout, "Agreed! Keep them occupied as long as you can. When Crucible gets close, fly!"
"But—"
"We'll all fly," Pepper said, exasperated. "See if we can't lead them off."
Huo risked a glance back at the ground, and found that the others were at least out of sight. For now. It wouldn't be hard to find them by following the path they'd taken, since they couldn't be moving very fast.
Glory tried to take a bite out of him again, so he darted out of the way. He wasn't prepared for her to lash out with one of her hind legs—which were usually tucked under their bodies during flight—and winced when she scored a long, shallow scratch across his shoulder. As he rolled in the air to dodge her follow up, he glimpsed a fifth dot heading towards them.
"Oh, come on!" he snarled. He was starting to suspect that all the pit dragons might be on the way. Huo really didn't like their odds if that happened.
Fang squawked in alarm and dropped almost twenty feet before flaring his wings to steady himself. Huo soon saw why—Crucible had dropped out of a cloud only a few hundred feet away.
"Go!" Pepper took the lead. Her parting swipe across Tumbleweed's nose left him squinting and flailing in the air. They followed her, though Huo had no idea how to pull off the same trick. Glory and Riptide kept pace with them, Tumbleweed was only a few dragonlengths behind, and Crucible bore down on them like a storm cloud.
At first, Huo was terrified that Pepper was moving in the same direction the others had run—but she wasn't. Not quite. She kept close enough to their route that the pit dragons would be tricked into following, thinking they were trying to return to the safety of the pack, but instead she took them on an angle. He thought he caught a glimpse, just once, of someone's tail poking out from under a fern—though that might have been a snake.
Riptide dropped away from them and started to fly in a wide spiral, scanning the ground below in search of their friends. Not much they could do about that—not without getting within grabbing range of Crucible. Instead, Huo lowered his head into the wind and focused all his attention on speed. And then, belatedly, he remembered Pit. Right now he was almost neck-and-neck with Pepper, flying easily with the aid of his powers. When they ran out...
Right. Now would be a great time for someone to come up with a plan.
So. Much. Fire.
Crucible was still almost a hundred feet behind them... but apparently he could, if sufficiently motivated, spit a fireball further than that. Pit dropped like a stone to avoid yet another attack. To Blake, the air smelled of regret—and singed hair.
"Faster!" Sun shouted over the wind.
"We're trying," Yang snapped. Pit groaned. His powers were starting to tire out, which meant he was slowing down.
Blake twisted to look over her shoulder. Tumbleweed had started to fall behind, but the gigantic fire dragon had not. Fire glowed between his teeth, his snout contorted into a vicious snarl. He was close enough now for her to make out the scars that criss-crossed his muzzle. If he caught up to them...
"Left!" Sun screamed.
Pit dipped one wing and spun in the air. Another jet of fire missed him by mere feet, coming so close Blake could feel the wash of heat across her face. She wasn't sure if she was imagining it or not... but when she glanced back, she swore he'd closed the distance between them even further.
Port twisted in the saddle. "Ho!" he bellowed. "Pepper and I shall engage—"
The next fireball clipped Pit's tail. He roared, clawing at the air with his wings, desperate to get just a little farther away. Blake scanned the ground for anything that could buy them more time. She saw... trees. A lot of trees.
Actually... "Pit? Do you think you could fly between the trees?"
His head twitched, as if he wanted to stare at her but couldn't because he was busy flying. His ears went flat.
"Not for long!" she promised. "Crucible won't be able to follow, he's too big."
At that, Pit's ears stood up in reluctant interest. Apparently smashing nose-first into a tree was still more appealing than Crucible catching up with them. Blake briefly weighed her chances of conveying the idea to the other riders, then asked her dragon to relay the message. She wasn't sure how well Pepper could fly between the trees, either, but seconds later she dove headfirst into the canopy.
The next several seconds were spent frantically shielding her face with her hands as twigs whipped against her face. Then they dodged and weaved between sturdy trunks as the sounds of cracking branches surrounded them. Crucible tried to follow and plowed through three sturdy oaks in quick succession—toppling all of them. He rose back above the treeline, and did not spit fire.
Blake sighed in relief. She'd been banking on whoever was controlling them not wanting to start a forest fire, since they were still fairly close to the valley. The council might investigate the smoke—and even if they didn't, most of the buildings there were made of wood.
Riptide and Glory both tried to follow. Within seconds Riptide clipped a tree and went pinwheeling to the ground. Blake's heart lurched—but she was already getting up. Glory kept after them doggedly. Huo had his own incident with a maple and dropped fifteen feet before he could catch himself. When he finally did, he was behind Pit, almost within Glory's reach.
A shadow passed over them. Blake craned her neck upward and felt her heart leap into her throat at the sight of Crucible's silhouette, his red scales almost black against the bright blue sky. He was flying much faster than them now, and she doubted the protection of the trees would last much longer. Pit was straining his powers even more to be able to duck and weave like this.
Pepper barked a command. She veered sharply to the left, while the three younger dragons struggled to follow. Despite being bigger than them, she dodged between tree-trunks with grace, heading towards the side of a steep hill. Glory, who hadn't been warned ahead of time of the sharp turn—how? didn't she hear Pepper?—had to make a much wider turn and try to catch up with them again. She passed behind a tumble of rocks...
And Pepper vanished. Blake had less than a second to panic before Fang, too, dropped headfirst into an opening in the hillside. Pit and Huo followed, and Blake found herself in a mid-sized cave—a little bigger than the one Brand had lived in.
Outside was the leathery flapping of dragon wings. Blake scanned the cave desperately, but there were no other openings—only the one they'd just come through. They had seconds, minutes if they were lucky, before one of the roving dragons found it. She tensed. Maybe they could force their way past whichever dragon spotted it... but what if that was Crucible?
Pit approached the opening.
"Don't!" Blake hissed, giving the reins a little tug. "They'll see—"
His paw slammed into the cave wall. Dirt tumbled into the opening—much more than he should have disturbed. So much that the light was blotted out entirely.
Outside, she heard snuffling. Branches popped and snapped, as if under an enormous weight. Silence. Then more footsteps, this time moving away. Blake sagged against Pit's neck. She'd almost forgotten he had earth in him, too.
After it had been quiet for a very long time, Sun risked a whisper. "Holy shit. Holy shit."
"Sun!" Yang's voice. "They might not be gone yet."
More snapping twigs. Except... these weren't footsteps. The sounds were almost random, a constant snapping and popping and oh, that was why it sounded familiar. It was the same sound a campfire made. Apparently Watts was willing to risk his lab in order to kill them. Great.
Port cleared his throat. "Well. It looks as though we'll have to wait out a forest fire."
There was a quiet thump, like something hitting the stone at the back of the cave. "Damn it," Yang muttered. "Ruby's gonna freak."