Hello again! I come bearing tired pit dragons, excited STRQ dragons, and a few conspicuous absences.
103. Ashes, Ashes
Atlas Dragonry's courtyard was filled with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Occasional crashes and clangs. The crackling of flames. All coming from one small dragon carrier that sat in its center, shaking ominously.
"Well!" Peter clapped his hands together, prompting a hiss and another bang that almost knocked the ship onto its side. "Shall we open it?"
Scattered groans from the assembled riders.
Most of Cinder's loyal followers and their hybrids had surrendered after her death—the pit dragons had not. They'd been forced to wrestle the poor creatures away from the cities, and Council riders who might take too much interest in the devices, and follow Pietro's instructions to disable the devices.
In most cases they'd done it before carrying the dragons back to Atlas. The ones in the carrier, on the other hand... well, there had been more Council riders about than they'd expected, and they'd needed to get away quickly. Taking off the devices was not fast. So they'd flown them back, still in the carrier.
Now they just had to open it. Which felt a little bit like opening a jar of angry wasps, except that the walls were opaque and it was impossible to tell what was going on inside. Peter cleared his throat. "Glynda, if you would?"
She raised an eyebrow at the dragons that waited outside. Pepper, Steele, Glacier, and Ragnar were the only ones Peter knew. Others belonged mostly to Flight Squad members who had been injured in the past fight, and thus could be spared from the job of cleaning up the last of the Grimm. When all their eyes were on her, Glynda opened the doors.
Tar stumbled out with her teeth bared and aimed a bite at Peter. Pepper tackled her, and the courtyard descended into a tangle of flapping wings and flailing tails. It didn't last long, though—outside the chaos of battle, it was obvious that the pit dragons were hanging on by a thread.
"Would you hold her neck, my dear?"
Pepper obliged. Ragnar stepped in to assist her, and to pull on the metal plate whenever Peter tapped his foreleg. Between the three of them they soon pried off the cover that protected the inner electronics. Glynda stepped in, then, to do a lot of finicky work with a screwdriver. When torn off too quickly, the devices caused painful feedback for the dragons.
This was not true of the prototype Watts had used on Specter—a feature, not a bug.
"Shh," Peter murmured, as Glynda eased the machine off Tar's brow. "Easy, easy..."
Her tail jerked, knocking the wind out of him. Peter wound up flat on his back as Tar began to roar.
"Peter?" Glynda tugged him to his feet. "Are you alright?"
"Right as rain," he wheezed.
Tar wouldn't settle, no matter how much Pepper and Ragnar tried to reassure her. She tried to bite any rider that came close enough to touch her, and when they brought her food she slapped it away with such force that a haunch of venison broke one of the windows of the transport.
Diver, by contrast, went limp. Winter knelt by his head and tried to coax him to open his mouth. Eventually she managed to give him a little water wrung from a wet rag, but after that he was so unresponsive that Peter kept having to turn and check that he was still breathing.
"What do we do?" Oscar whispered.
"We keep trying," Peter said, clapping him on the back. "With a little patience..."
Eventually Tar exhausted herself. They tried offering her different foods until Glacier's ears suddenly perked up. He flew off, and returned half an hour later with a badger hanging from his jaws. Still struggling, which made Peter rather nauseous, but Tar took it. She couldn't finish the whole thing... but it was a start.
Ragnar lay down at Tar's side, draping a wing over her back. Glacier moved to join him, then stopped with one paw in the air when the older dragon barked at him. His head tilted quizzically, but he padded over to Diver and copied what Ragnar had done. Pepper sat between them, her ears perked tall, scanning the area for anything that might threaten them.
Steele, on the other hand, busied himself with the devices—more specifically, with the task of smashing them into so much useless scrap. Bits of metal, loose wires, and screws scattered in every direction as he tore into them, snarling and blasting whatever he could see with ice. By the time he was finished, Peter would have been hard pressed to find a single intact piece of circuitry.
It felt good to watch... but it wasn't the catharsis Peter wanted. For that, he would have to wait until Arthur Watts was found and brought in. One man couldn't possibly evade both Ironwood's forces and the Council—it was only a matter of time before he would answer for his crimes.
"Hello sweetie," Scarlet crooned, scratching Zircon under the chin.
Sage glanced up and blinked. There was a tray full of food practically in his lap, complete with a cup of coffee.
"I know you're not going to sleep," Scarlet explained, "since I already tried that hours ago. But you can at least eat." He sat down next to Sage so that their shoulders were touching. Nimbus greeted Zircon and then lay down with his wings folded.
"Thank you." He picked up a bit of toast and chewed mechanically. It was hard to feel very hungry when he'd just spent hours watching Riptide throw up.
She was asleep, now, at least. Curled up on her side, with Zircon hovering protectively near her head. The courtyard and grounds were dotted with dragons—most of them had reacted quite badly to the barns, even though there weren't any locks on them. Only a few had managed to keep any food down since they'd got here.
They were only waiting on one group's return—the riders who'd gone to Vacuo had a longer route back, and they'd been delayed even further by the Grimm. Scarlet saw them first and pointed, and when Sage followed his hand he saw three pit dragons hanging limp from makeshift harnesses.
Sage frowned. He'd thought there were five left—not counting Glory, who Mercury had mentioned Crucible had freed. Had he missed some of them returning? He tried to do a headcount, but the effort was wasted. Too many of them had wandered off into the woods or other parts of the Dragonry's campus.
He shook his head. There would be time to worry about that in a moment. "Riptide?" Nimbus nudged her side, and her eyes snapped open. "The rest of them just arrived. Do you want to go meet them?"
She bobbed her head weakly.
"Good." Sage walked around her, to where someone had left a bale of hay. "But you have to eat a little bit first, alright?"
Sage and Scarlet took turns feeding her handfuls of hay, until her eyes drifted shut and she wouldn't take any more. "That's good," Scarlet crooned. "Really good. C'mon, lets go see your brothers and sister."
She got to her feet and limped across the courtyard and onto the front lawn. Sage watched every step, flinching whenever she stumbled, itching to ask Zircon to help... but Professor Goodwitch had said that the pit dragons would need to keep exercising to rebuild their strength. He waited until Riptide started panting and said, "That's far enough. They should be able to see us from here."
Scarlet and Nimbus helped wave down the oncoming dragons. Sage knew for a fact that Brick, Kite, and Tallow, Riptide's siblings, hadn't come back yet—he'd looked. So when the riders approached, carrying Brick, Kite, and Inkwell... his heart sank.
"Scar," he said, quietly so that Riptide wouldn't hear. "We're still missing two of them. Tallow should be here."
Scarlet muffled a curse behind his hand. "I'll tell Ironwood."
Sage hesitated for a moment—but Kite was much too exhausted to start anything, and Zircon and Nimbus were still watching over the three of them in case something went wrong. "I'll go with you."
They found the General in his office, standing in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling windows and staring out across the Dragonry. "Sir?" Scarlet said. "We have a problem. Two of the pit dragons aren't back yet."
Ironwood's fists clenched. "It's worse than that. We're missing Doctor Watts."
Sage and Scarlet exchanged a frightened look. "You mean... he escaped?"
"He deserted, according to what we've managed to learn from captured rogues. Which isn't much. While we were focusing on getting the pit dragons out of sight, the Council snatched up the riders. All we know is that he left without permission, before Cinder made her move."
"We have to find him, then," Scarlet blurted. "He's the one who built the devices."
Ironwood sighed and sat down heavily in his chair. "Yes, we will. But since we have no idea where he might be, we're going to have to deal with the Council first. For now... get some rest. It doesn't look like there's going to be much more time for it until this is all over."
Ragnar paced. Back and forth across the courtyard, and then out into the woods when the sight of the emaciated pit dragons became too much to bear. He went round and round in circles for over an hour, because the smell of damp soil was soothing.
"Where are we going?" Glacier asked, after their eleventh loop around the same clump of trees. Ragnar paused to stare at him. Then he sighed and sat down, looping his tail around his paws.
"Nowhere."
Cinder killed Ozpin. Now Cinder was dead, and he'd been cheated of the chance to get revenge. But he wasn't angry. Just... empty.
Oscar slid off his back and knelt to pet his head. His tail thumped weakly on the ground, and he lolled onto his side so that his belly could be scratched. That was one silver lining to all this—he used to avoid doing things like that, since he was supposed to be setting a dignified example.
Once upon a time, he and Ozpin had rolled in the heather until they were covered with dirt, and no one had cared.
"At least she's gone," Oscar murmured. "Right?"
He let out a sigh that ruffled the boy's hair. "Rrrike."
Oscar's face fell, and he leaned over to wrap his arms around Ragnar's neck. He hummed and let his eyes drift halfway shut. In all the time he'd spent by Ozpin's side as he fought the Council, he'd seen his share of awful things. Cullings. The purge. Riders like Cardin. But this... Cinder had felt something for Strike. Or at least, she'd felt something for her dragon once, and it had twisted into whatever had made her sentence hatchlings to death for a chance to strike back at the Council. And yet she'd planned an attack that called for her death.
He opened one eye to look at Glacier. The ice dragon had apparently decided that here was as good a place as any to take a nap, and was curled up on his stomach with his tail tangled in a clump of bushes. What happens to riders, Ragnar wondered, that makes them throw their partner away?
At that, he had to shake himself. Whatever it was, he still had a job to do. He had to change things so that less humans and faunus like that got their hands on eggs, and so that hatchlings would be protected from them. He let out a little snort and relaxed into Oscar's belly scritches.
"Hey, um... are you okay?"
It took a moment for Whitley to respond to Oscar's question—and when he did he jumped, looking startled. "Oh. You're talking to me."
"Ragnar's asleep. I think?" His eyes were closed, anyway, and he seemed much more relaxed than before.
"Well. I'm... fine."
Oscar blinked. That might have been the least convincing lie Whitley had ever told.
"Are you sure?"
"Ugh." Whitley made a face at him. "Relatively fine. Happy? You should be, because I think it's better than could reasonably be expected considering we just went haring off into the most chaotic, violent—" He broke off into a splutter.
"Yeah," Oscar sighed. "That was... intense."
"Right. Let's go with that." Whitley huffed, blowing a lock of hair out of his face. "And hopefully never do anything like that ever again."
An awkward silence descended.
"Um... Whitley?"
"I know. Just let me pretend for a few minutes."
Salty didn't pay the call much mind at first. His ears flicked towards his rider, but he kept most of his attention on the grounds, and the sleeping pit dragons. Quake and Tempest paced around, checking on them and occasionally coaxing them into eating or drinking a little.
"You again," Qrow sighed.
He twisted his head around to look. The last person who'd called Qrow...
"Yeah, yeah." His rider rolled his eyes. If he was looking that exasperated, then it was definitely Raven. "We hit your stupid deadline. What do you want?"
Salty tried to bring his head close enough to the scroll to hear what was going on. He caught a snatch of Raven's voice, tinny and distant. "—going to make our move. Are you in?"
"We are," Qrow said. "But we can't exactly talk shop right now. You're going to have to get your asses over here."
He let out an excited bark before he could stop himself—right into the scroll. Raven sighed. Then there was another voice on the other end, even farther away than hers.
"Salty?"
"Phoenix!"
"Okay, okay!" Qrow pushed his head away, but he was laughing. "Look, if we're gonna coordinate we need to talk to you in person. They're still holed up in Vale, so it shouldn't be that hard to get here."
"Fine."
A frenzy of barking from his sister was cut off when Raven hung up the scroll. Salty couldn't keep his tail still—it kept wagging back and forth out of control. He charged off across the lawn towards Tempest and Quake.
"The Branwens are coming here!" He skidded to a stop. His tail still wouldn't keep still. He was going to see Phoenix! Without getting attacked!
Quake let out a triumphant roar and reared up on his hind legs. Even Tempest perked up and tracked down Qrow, sniffing at the scroll as if to demand that he call his sister back.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "She's not gonna pick up."
"I know," Tempest groaned, bumping her nose against his chest one last time.
Salty barked at her, and soon the three of them were chasing each other around the grounds like younglings. Quake almost bowled Tai over, prompting a yelp and a startled laugh. "What the hell's going on?" he shouted.
Qrow made a face. "Bandits incoming."
Quake panted happily into Tai's ear.
"Oh." Tai put on a queasy smile. "That's... just..." He put a palm over his face and muttered, "Fuck."