A Broken Dragon
Fenris walked down the wide corridors of the Imperial Palace of Concurrent Skies. The dragon did not show any kind of emotion on his muzzle, but internally he couldn't help but feel as if a weight had suddenly been taken from his back.
No, it was more than that. It was the feeling of revenge, cold, rightful revenge.
When he saw his master the day before being mocked and humiliated by those two apes, Fenris felt like he was himself that was being derided and he felt this sensation that he did not often feel. He felt pain and misery and anger and hate. Those emotions were so overwhelming that for a moment he had to look away from the purple dragon as he gathered all his strength to do as he was ordered.
But it was at the end when the throne room emptied and the two of them remained alone, that he became guilty of an emotion that he should never have felt towards his own master: pity.
There he took it personally, no matter that it wasn't directed to him, no matter that he did not care about the hatchling. It was a matter of honor, a matter of loyalty, and Fenris intended on demonstrating his one more time avenging his master's honor.
So his mind gears had begun to work and he had soon prepared the perfect punishment for the two traitorous apes who had dared to betray his master. Less than a day those miserable living scraps had enjoyed before he caught them and took them to the torture room downstairs.
And now they were paying, paying in the evilest and most painful of the ways the Empire's torture rooms had to offer and they still had before them a long path of suffering that the dragon had personally assured would be the worst possible for them getting help from the healer of the palace and the main torturer of the Empress to maximize their suffering.
The Empress...
"Did those idiots really think that having executed her orders would have come with some form of protection from the obvious repercussions that there would be for their betrayal? Pff, what disgusting creatures apes are," he had thought.
Fenris never felt sympathy for the black dragoness, but he knew very well who was in command here, just as he knew how his Lord cared so much about the dragoness that he would not tolerate that his most faithful servant disobeyed the dragoness' orders.
Even when her orders weren't right...
But it didn't matter right now. All that mattered was that those two idiots would be settled for their betrayal, and that fear in their substitutes would easily foil any other kind of such action. The only thing the furry dragon was sorry for was not being able to be there to hear the screams and prayers of the two traitors as they died slowly. But he could imagine it and it is said that imagination works just fine most of the time, even better for others.
With this in mind, the dragon turned to the right, finally arriving at his destination. In front of him, immediately after a few meters corridor, there was a balcony overlooking the outside and, on it, the figure of the purple dragon.
Fenris took a few steps stopping at the end of the hallway before entering the balcony. He knew his master and so he knew that the purple dragon was aware of his presence but, out of the great respect he felt for him, he would first announce his presence.
"My master," he bowed, his voice full of reverence.
The other dragon said nothing but a slight contraction of his tail meant that he heard and Fenris took this as a permit to enter.
He took a few slow, cautious steps, not because he was afraid of the purple dragon but because he did not wish to disturb him while he dwelt in his thoughts. So he limited himself to sit at a respectful distance to the left of the larger dragon, a few steps behind him, and there he waited, silently, merely observing the dragon before him.
He could say something was upsetting his master, it was a little clue to catch, but he came to understand the older dragon and his small signs. Even though outside the dragon was the representation of calm, the way he snapped at the least noise, the way he stretched his claws, and the way his tail wriggled like a snake ready to snap, was all the proof he needed to understand that the other dragon was upset.
And rightly so, considering what had just happened.
Still, he said nothing and left the purple dragon to his thoughts as his look was fixed in the dark-purple void that lay all around and under the imperial palace.
It was a void that no one knew anything about, not even the black dragoness herself who had made that place her home and stronghold. The only sure thing was that if regrettably, some wingless creature ended up down there, the remains wouldn't be found even in millennials. It was a well, a purple well, and endless. A void where the body was lost and the soul was trapped, unable to free itself from the prison of the physical body.
And it was exactly where the bodies of the two traitorous apes would end up once they paid the price for their betrayal.
Fenris almost lost himself for a moment there, thinking about the punishment he rightly inflicted on the two disgusting creatures, when he saw it.
It was difficult to distinguish in the sea of so many small and large ones the purple dragon carried on his back, but with a more attentive look, the hairy dragon could easily distinguish a new set of marks on the back of the purple dragon, three on one side and three mirrored on the other in number, of a vivid, hot red, quite recent if the color of it was to take into account.
Of course, he also knew who was responsible for this. It was known that the black dragoness was possessive towards the purple male and never missed an opportunity to prove it to the world. Right from the start, it was said, the black female had decided that one of the ways to do it was to leave her mark on the male, not only through smell but also through clawed marks on his scales that would show the world whom the purple male belonged to. Not to mention the collar the purple dragon wore for her wishes, a symbol of his eternal servitude and undying love.
Fenris never thought much about that as the Empress was crazy and he knew it, but this, this was something else, much worse, much deeper than all the other marks, so much so that the smaller dragon could only imagine the pinch that those wounds still had to do against the poorly ripped scales of the purple dragon. And, from what he could see, they'd been bleeding until not so long ago.
For the quickest of the moments, Fenris wished he could talk to his master, tell him what he thought about that, and tell him what was obvious to him and everyone. The Empress was a mad dragoness and he should have disposed of her a long time ago. When it came to him she was terrible and did nothing but hurt the dragon who did nothing but serve and love her, body and soul. He should have done something to stop her, or at least to diminish all her perversions…
But he refrained himself as always, grinding his teeth silently. He had no power to give orders or advice to the Dark Master himself, and if he dared to do so, knowing the purple dragon and his complete loyalty and devotion and dedication to the black dragoness, probably even being his favorite would not save him from being thrown in the void without his wings for an endless and eternal dead curse.
At last, his master returned to the real world and decided to address him.
"Why are you here, Fenris?" he asked, his voice the usual emotionless tone to which he was accustomed. Still, he could say the purple dragon was still wandering into his own mind.
He spoke calmly, not wanting to further trouble his master. He knew that his actions could do nothing to solve what had happened, but he wanted his master to know as it was maybe the first time that he did something without informing his master first.
"The jailer and his traitorous accomplice have been punished, my Lord," he said, trying to hide his satisfaction for this but with scarce results. "I have seen to it, personally," he added, before bowing guilty. "I know it would not bring him back, but I wanted-"
He stopped when he noticed the purple dragon sighing. He'd never seen him so…so defeated? It seemed odd, it seemed like something that no one would ever have the nerve to relate to his master's name, something that would be impossible for the dark lord to ever feel.
But the curved position of the dragon, eyes closed, head down, drooping tail were all symptoms of a defeated attitude, or if not quite such, at least tired. Very tired.
"They were carrying out their Empress's orders, Fenris."
He grimaced. "I know, my Lord" he replied respectfully. "But with all due respect, my master, theirs was still an act of betrayal towards you, for they tried to gain the Empress's favor by denigrating your magnificence." He had to control the tone of his voice while he spoke for he would otherwise let slip his disgust and the anger that still brooded inside as an exploding volcano. "I thought it appropriate for them to be punished accordingly," he concluded simply as if it were obvious.
A fact.
The purple dragon remained silent. Then he took a deep breath, assuming a still and magnificent position, more like the master he has always known.
"If this has queered your thirst for justice, I have nothing against it, Fenris," he said. "But be that as it may, this does not change the reality of things. The Empress gave an order and we all have to carry out her bidding."
Fenris was just about to return to thinking about orders that could be wrong, but the purple dragon seemed to intercept that thought and he added.
"Even when we think her orders are wrong," he said, turning as much as it took to him to look at him with his purple dead eye, knowingly.
"Have I made myself clear enough, Fenris?"
The warning was clear, as were his master's intentions. He did know his apprentice's opinions on the black dragoness' orders. And clearly, that's why he was warning him. But Fenris himself would never disobey an order given to him by the dark lord, and if this order was to obey the orders of the insane black dragoness, then he comply. But only because his master asked for it first.
Fenris bowed again. "Of course, my Lord."
The purple male turned his gaze back to the void again, thoughtfully. Fenris remained for he had not yet been dismissed and that meant the dark master was not over with him.
"When Cynder and I were still in Warfang, everyone treated her like garbage," the purple male said and even if he could not see very well his master's muzzle, he bet a grimace at the thought adorned his otherwise neutral face. "None of them were able to see the dragoness behind the feared Terror of the Skies. No one cared to try."
Fenris remained silent, hearing his master speak. He knew some of these things because he spent hours in Warfang and saw some scenes from the past firsthand, but his master was not a dragon for stories, especially of the past and a lot of the dragon's past events were a mystery to him. If the older dragon was going to share some more information about him, he was not going to stop him from doing so.
"I despised them all for this," the purple dragon continued, his voice almost trembling for the fury in it, but he managed to keep control. "But despite everything, I never gave up hope that one day, more or less far away in time, people could let go of their hatred and finally understand reality, understand Cynder, understand that she and the Terror of the Skies are two different entities: one a monster controlled by Malefor and the other just an unfortunate dragoness, robbed from her nest when she wasn't even born and transformed into the Dark Master's kill machine, doing his bidding. Until..."
Fenris believed that his master stared at the void beneath him as if he could see inside the images of his anger, of his past, his memories so vivid in his mind at that moment that they had to feel like they occurred only a few days before.
"Until they charged her, accusing her of murder," he growled, his anger besting him and slipping out through his tone. "Murder of..." he paused as if his look in the void had fixed itself on something specific within it." Sparx…" he whispered the name.
Fenris knew the owner of that name as he saw the little dragonfly following his master's younger version throughout the corridors of the old temple as if it was the dragon's shadow. He always thought of him as an annoying little creature, something that he would surely crush beneath his paw before it even got the time to open its mouth, but he knew it was the closer figure his master had as a brother.
The purple dragon paused for a long time, concentrating his gaze on that image in his head projected into the void.
"But even though the two were often at odds, I know for a fact that Cynder would never have done such a thing. She could not kill Sparx for she knew what impact it would have on me if she did it. It wasn't her. She wouldn't have done this to me..."
Fenris did not miss the hint of uncertainty in his master's voice, but he did not focus on it. He did not point it out as he was too loyal and he wouldn't prove his master wrong, show him the truth, and put him in front of a choice that his heart was not ready to make, and that probably it will never be ready to make. He didn't want to make him suffer any more than he already had to.
The purple dragon turned livid, darkness tightening and swirling around him as a response to his dark, stormy mood. "They didn't want to believe me," his voice turned bitter as he spoke. "They didn't want to listen to me, to my words because they thought I was too involved, too connected with Cynder to see what they were instead seeing and pretending was true." His voice lowered again, becoming gloomy and frosty. "So they banished her," he huffed angrily, dark smoke leaving his nostrils, a symbol of his internal fire burning with indignation. "And I followed her because I promised that I would follow her to the end of the world, never to leave her alone."
He faded, his anger dissipated, and his head dropped. He looked tired again as he continued in this rewinding of the past that Fenris was listening to, though unsure of the meaning of all this, sure there had to be a reason. His master did and said always with a reason behind it, always. Never had he once spoken without a reason since he met him.
"We escaped and holed up in Malefor's damned Mountain where the apes and grublings were. We've taken control of them, gained their servitude, and… everything else is history."
He turned, looking directly at him for the first time since he arrived. "Why you may wonder, am I telling you this?"
He nodded his confirmation.
"There is something that hunts me since that night, 20 years ago. Something only Cynder knows but that she is kind enough not to make it weigh on my back," he said, his eyes empty as he spoke.
Fenris frowned, not understanding where his master was heading to with this but the answer was soon to come.
"The resistance exists because of me," he confessed, abruptly.
He opened his eyes wide, surprised. The resistance, that resistance, those terrorists that attacked convoys in the moonless night, that resistance is his master creation? How could he, the smartest dragon he knew on this real, the one who would do everything for the Empress, have created resistance against his people and his beloved regime?
For the first time since he knew his master, the purple dragon looked away, guilty.
"A mistake," he said. "A mistake that, had I not committed, would not have brought us into the condition in which we find ourselves now. Hadn't I done what I did, we won't be fighting a fully organized cell but just a few, scattered rebels on the map."
Fenris tilted his head. "Master?" he said, insecure and confused about what his master was trying to tell him. It was clear that it wasn't something the other dragon was proud of, something he wished to keep for himself, so why tell him now?
The purple dragon returned to looking into the void, on that mirror of purple nothingness that seemed able to reflect the dragon's memories.
"The night Warfang fell, Cynder ordered me to kill everyone in the city. She didn't want any survivor who could escape, talk about what had happened, or spread the news about the attack. I had to eliminate everyone, and that's what I ordered my soldiers to do. No survivors."
He paused as if waiting for the thoughts reflected in the void to get to the point he wanted to see. Still, what he saw did not seem to please him as he grimaced, bitter. "But I hesitated, and I ruined everything," a growl began to form in the dragon's throat and his master's features began to distort as Fenris had never seen on him before. His master had always been in control of his emotions, never showed anger or sadness, but only competent neutrality of self-control.
Always but now. There. In front of him.
"It took me too much to kill him," he said with a small sign of hurt audible in his voice. "My best friend…" he paused, his growl disappearing and his feature relaxing again. "But… when I saw so many dragons, families, younglings running away inside the caves, I-" he faded, pausing again for a longer time before resuming. "I didn't know where they were going as I didn't even know those tunnels existed, but- Warfang's guards had managed to open the tunnels while I was distracted fighting the former guardian of the earth, Terrador, and people were swirling inside, panicked. I could hear their screams, I could feel their fear. Fear of me."
A hint of confusion, even hurt, was clearly audible in his master's voice. He still didn't understand why he was telling him all of this, but considering his long pauses as he lost himself inside the purple void, Fenris was not going to stop him asking useless questions. He would come to that.
"I knew I had to destroy the entrance of the tunnels, I had to bury them under a pile of rocks, I had to stop them from escaping. I was going to fire, doing both and I knew that without the Guardians those inside would have lasted very little so I wouldn't have to bother chasing them down the depths where they had organized to hide," he continued, until he suddenly froze, probably seeing in his vision of the past something that struck him, making him hesitate.
"I hesitated," he confessed again, his voice remorseful. "I did not shoot because in front of the entrance to the tunnels was my best friend's mate," he whispered and Fenris had to make an effort to hear him in this last part." She was looking at the corpse of her mate above whom I stood, their pink and red egg wrapped in her paws. She wasn't well, but she was still alive. We crossed eyes for a moment... and there I saw it, I saw it all: our friendship, the time we spent together, our fights, and our laughs. I- I saw their egg and I saw me and Cynder like they were, with an egg of our own."
He looked away from the void and therefore from the vision, looking hurt as if he just escaped from a nightmare. The purple dragon turned directly with his head and body to face him, all his mixed emotion from guilt to anger displayed perfectly on his muzzle, into his very eyes. Fenris felt a strange warmth in his chest, a boost of respect for his master no matter what he did in the past, as he was sharing with him in all the Realm something he probably only shared with the Empress herself: his emotions, his weakness. He was indirectly trusting him with his most guarded secret, which wasn't the confession of creating the resistance, but his inner self. And Fenris could not fill more honored by this.
"I hesitated because I felt pity for her, along with a bunch of other useless emotions. I saw a mother with an egg who just witnessed her partner's death. I felt sorry, I felt something that Cynder warned me not to feel otherwise I would have ruined the mission, something I couldn't afford to feel because it was worth it for our future, for the better world we were trying to build," he sighed slightly disgusted. "But I delayed the shot, firing against the ceiling of the entrance that collapsed on them closing them in, paradoxically, safe from us. Then I said that they were all dead and not to look any further for their bodies. I failed."
Fenris remained silent. He didn't know to say a thing, his master was not asking for his opinion. That was a fact, something that happened and that no one could change. And he was already trusting him with his secret, he would not go on and ask anything more.
But it was evident that the larger dragon wasn't finished, for he now stared at him with a hard, stern, and determined look, the emotions previously there washed away.
"I did not follow Cynder's orders as I should have," he said with a thread of anger. "And I failed. I failed her, my Empress, my mate, my love," even a thread of disgust towards himself was clear. "And in this way, I condemned our new world, the world that should have experienced peace under our rule, the Empire's rule, to fall into a civil war with a resistance that lives through my fault, for my mistake, for my hesitation, for my weakness," at every word he said, he marked each word more than the previous, making it more evident what he was trying to say and Fenris finally got it:
That the fault for all this was his and his not executing an order, and he would no longer allow it to happen ever again.
In the eyes of his master shone a light, a determination, an inner fire that seemed completely at odds with the defeated dragon he had seen seconds earlier. "I will not repeat a mistake like that as I vowed her I would," he said in a loud voice, firm, convinced. The voice of the General of the Dark Army of the Empire, the voice of a leader, the voice of his master. "I will not disobey or hold anything more from my Empress, from my love, from my whole world," he went on raising his voice to show his passion, his conviction, his commitment. "From now on I will always do as I am told even if it hurts, even if I disagree with it, even if I believe it is wrong. For there is no right or wrong here. There are choices made for the greater good, which is that of the Empire and those that go against it. And no one more than the Empress herself has an interest in the well-being of the Empire."
Fenris merely listened, noting that the purple dragon's already immortal devotion to the black dragoness seemed to become even stronger than possible. Perhaps, he had gotten a little lost along the way, but he had renewed and fortified that trust and that bond, and in his words his firm conviction could also be reflected. No matter what, even Fenris knew by now, that his master would always do what she told him to.
"I tell you this, my faithful friend for it is important that you understand how good what happened was for me and that no punishment was necessary towards those apes if they were doing the will of the Empress, what all of us should be doing," he allowed a small, cunning smile though. "Though I don't mind what you did and I bet it was satisfactory to see,"
His master did not even know.
"But," he continued soon after, turning serious again. "It's important that you understand what I mean with all this and why. You understand that, don't you, Fenris?"
The dragon nodded. He understood what his master was trying to say and why he told him all the story. He disagreed, he thought the Empress was mad and she did not know what was best for the Empire for his master would be far more suited as ruler. But he understood: never disobey the Empress, even when it seems wrong. Got it.
"All right then," nodded satisfied the purple dragon, fully himself as he returned to his typical neutral and cold mood and exited the balcony. "Follow me," he ordered.
Fenris obeyed but still, he dared to ask. "Where to, if I may, my Lord?"
"We will have guests soon, Fenris, so we must prepare ourselves for their arrival," he said.
Fenris nodded, guessing so as he planned with the Empress at the Mountain. It was time, then. "The friends of that rebel in the dungeons."
The purple dragon nodded.
"I did not understand one thing about the Empress' plan, my lord," reasoned the hairy dragon. "Those dragons saw her kill one of them and the white one on the ground at her mercy. From that distance, they couldn't even see her breathing. Why would they think she survived the Empress of the Great Empire herself?"
The dark lord stopped on his paws, turning to face him. He stared at him in that way, the way he looked at him when he was trying to teach him something: demanding but also reasonable and with a touch of sympathy someone would not expect from the infamous purple dragon.
"Would you come for me if I was captured by the enemy but without any evidence that I was dead, Fenris?" he asked.
The answer was immediate. "Of course, my lord."
The purple dragon smiled slightly at the answer. "Then there is no reason why they can't do it too, my friend," explained the purple dragon. "If there is no evidence, there is no death." He resumed walking, the smaller dragon by his side, as loyal as ever.
"And the Empress think they'll think so too, my lord? Will they think their friend had a chance of surviving despite her presence on the scene?"
"Maybe it will take a while, but the Empress predicted that they will, Fenris, yes. That's why she told you to capture her."
"I thought we were capturing her to extrapolate information from her, my lord,"
Now the purple dragon let himself slip into a mischievous smile in a full rule as he rarely saw from him. "Why extort information about a problem to solve when you can bring the problem directly to you to be solved…"
Fenris almost stumbled on his paws as he walked, surprised, at what seemed like a more than ambitious plan of the Empress, despite her already high standards. "You mean..."
"Yes, Fenris," said the Dark Master, leading him somewhere in the dark fortress "So it is better to start preparing for our guests. The Empress never fails."
They were surely going to see the furry dragon thought but, of course, he didn't let it slip from his lips, limiting himself to nodding his agreement.
"Yes, my master."
The two dragons vanished inside one of the bleeds and dark corridors of Concurrent Skies, a plan in place that perfectly matched the atmosphere in which it was given birth.
MDT - MDT - MDT
The darkness was overwhelming within the dungeons of Concurrent Skies.
There was no window, no single light.
Even the lanterns were dead, darkness preferred them that way.
Not a single sound too. Only the sound of silence, that the darkness appreciated.
Not even those classical drops of water tinkling in the void as in the most squalid prisons of stories, for the humidity down there, stagnant and penetrating, did not come from cold, nor wet, but from darkness itself.
Not a scream of pain from someone in another cell. They seemed empty. Or maybe, they were not. Maybe someone was suffering nearby, but the walls and the door seemed to be created specifically to leave the prisoners in the dark and in complete silence.
Isolation.
A clever way to make prisoners feel even more helpless and slide slowly into madness.
Remove any contact with the real world, remove any physical sensation that the prisoner was still alive, was still in this world, and let them sink into the void of darkness. Sooner or later the prisoner will wonder whether he or she is still able to see, or if he has simply closed his eyes. It wouldn't make a difference though, darkness would make sure of it.
Soon, remaining alone with himself, the prisoner would break piece by piece, letting in the seed of madness, causing him to develop it like a disease, penetrating the cracks of his spirit and his mind until the outer darkness was completely equaled by the inner one.
It was a slow, painful end, not only death from lacking food and water but the death of the self lost in the darkness. After all, if one loses his self, if someone becomes a shadow of what he used to be. If someone loses the path he had chosen for himself, what remains of this one?
Nothing but a shell void with nothing left to live for.
And that would be death. A type of death far worse than any other.
Although built for this purpose, the prison seldom let this process have any real effect on the prisoner. Anyone who was locked up in the dungeons of Concurrent Skies ended up dying before some violent death from the jailers or the Empress herself, long before darkness could have had a chance to do its magic. It was a matter of information, nothing more. And those down there generally had information that the Empire wanted, sooner than later. The Empire took them, one way or another, with the fastest method they could find. Then, they freed the room when the prisoner's usefulness reached its end.
A brutal, but efficient system.
But not this time. This time a cell was taken from a prisoner and no one came to interrogate her, not once, not in what felt like days. The prisoner was closed and left at the mercy of darkness and silence, seemingly forgotten in that empty dungeon.
Inside a dragon-shaped figure was located against one side of the wall. A low but rubbing noise made its way into the darkness, threatening its dominance. Darkness fought back, more determined to end that sound that was questioning its domination as it couldn't afford the prisoner to call to himself thoughts about life in the real world through that noise. The noise would be too good for his mind because even a small noise would make the prisoner feel something different from himself and his hunting thoughts.
But darkness could not do anything about that, and the noise went on.
Soon, however, the scratching noise was added to the sound of flickering, hard breathing, inhales, and exhales. A few moments later, desperate moans follow the two previous noises.
Suddenly a yellowish light ripped through the darkness in a flash of light and a scream of pain, clearly feminine, followed it.
The dragon, which was briefly lit up, turned out to be a dragoness, a white dragoness. She sank to the floor, moaning in pain. The darkness in the cell returned sovereign, just as the noise vanished, replaced only by the fast and painful breathing of the white dragoness.
But soon the breathing sound changed. Air was thrown out of the nose repeatedly, very quickly, then a low choked groan, a more defined one, a long lament, and then silence again.
She was crying, but she was trying to self-contain herself.
"I'm stronger than fear," she whispered the words like a mantra. "It cannot control me."
With a new charge of energy coming directly from the depths of her soul, the dragoness stood up as far as her string allowed her, sore. She was tied by the left hind leg to the wall with a very small rope. But the rope was not a simple rope, otherwise, she would have already cut it with her teeth or claws.
The string was a diabolic one as not only it seemed completely indestructible by their powers, but it also consumed her whenever she tried to use her power to free herself, sending a discharge across her body as strong as the charge she tried to use also tightening the grip against her leg as punishment for trying.
Sonohra tried multiple times, with multiple different tactics to elude the string, but every single time it ended the same way, maybe even more painful and she was starting to lose her patience and act guided by her despair and anger, getting only more pain as a response.
Sonohra looked at where the rope was supposed to be in the darkness with a mixture of rage and hopelessness. She didn't know what to do, and she was so tired.
She had woken up there who knows how much time earlier and memories of the fight at the Mountain had immediately broken into her still tired and sleepy mind. She got up seeing nothing but darkness. She thought she was dreaming or keeping her eyes closed, but a claw on her paw told her she wasn't sleeping, and the first time she tried to free herself from the strange object that tied her paw to the wall it happened just what had happened now, making her realize that she didn't have her eyes closed at all.
She was in a cell somewhere, and she could easily imagine it without seeing the cell itself.
Initially, her thoughts turned to the bastard whom she knew had dragged her down here.
Fenris.
The slime, hybrid dragon had taken advantage of her task of protecting her friend and puppy's escape-
She gasped at the thought.
"Licht," she whispered.
"Licht!" she yelled again in the darkness, hoping that a little voice would answer her calling.
But the only answer came from the darkness, teasing her pathetic attempts.
Blind rage and misery began to take a toll on the dragoness at the hopelessness of her situation.
Abruptly she tried to leap forward and into the cell, but the rope did its job and kept her on the spot. Without even thinking about it she called to her element but received only an illuminating shock of light and suffering. But her fury wasn't over yet and its effects began to echo through the cell as mad screams, even though no one outside could hear.
But she didn't care and she kept screaming and roaring and growling blasphemies to the Ancestors, to the furry dragon, to this world that only gave her shit from her very birth and the longer she screamed her heart to the skies, the more her chest hurt, her head pulsated, her throat shaved. But at least she felt something. She felt her stormy emotions breaking free, flowing through her and against the darkness and the silence watching.
But as fast as they came, they went, making her feel empty. Her screams turned into desperate sobs and sniffles and tears of a dragon left alone in the suffocating darkness with herself and not knowing anything about what happened to Licht or her friends.
They could be all dead and she wouldn't know.
She remained there on the floor for a long time, crying and pleading, cursing and imploring again for someone to save her, for someone to save her friends and Licht, even for someone to kill her and end her suffering. This until even tears dried and tiredness claimed her inside a dreamless, agitated, dark sleep.
But Sonohra was not known for her self-pity attitude. She woke who knows how much time later fully determined to get out of there one way or another, save Licht whenever he was, and then reunite with her friends as she was sure that if someone could survive that, it would be them. She just had to break free and join them. She just had to keep trying.
This was the reason why, since the moment she woke up she spent her time trying to scratch the rope, consuming it with friction and determination, first with her claws, then with her teeth. That at least, until she realized it was taking her nowhere as the string did not even feel scratched by claws or teeth. It was just indestructible.
She needed a better plan, and fast. After all, if they had let her inside that cell with her other paws unrestrained and even without a muzzle to prevent her from using her teeth, they didn't need her not to use them, so they knew the rope was impossible to break.
"Everything can be destroyed," she thought, then spoke her thoughts aloud just to hear something other than the silence in the cell while she stared at that black spot in the dark where she knew the string was. "Nothing is indestructible, there must be a way."
Alas, she couldn't think of anything and the frustration was growing fast, and along her throat in a furious growl. With a shot of her element, she would have-
She stopped at once and looked away from that spot, trying to calm down.
"No Sonohra, no," she scolded herself in a low voice. "We don't need another shock to hurt us to understand the message, do we now?"
Returning to look in the direction of the string, the white dragoness tried to think of something else. She crouched, a little crooked, as much as the rope allowed her to, and began to test with her front paws the ground, searching.
Cold stone, cold stone, cold stone, string.
"Gotcha."
With her paws, as gently as possible, she began to test the string in all its places, passing her paws around its circular structure, trying to understand what it was made of and, above all, if there was a way she could open it. The rope was thick and of a material that she could not distinguish with her paw but was porous enough to the touch as if it had small bumps throughout its surface making it regular but porous at the same time. In the middle, however, there seemed to be a pit, a kind of canyon all around the structure, of a different and smooth material that she could not see but imagined it was that thing that had illuminated the room with those flashes when she used her power.
As she continued with the exploration, she realized that the same material the string was made of was even in the noose that held her paw tight and on the part attached to the wall.
On the wall part, she searched for anything that might seem like the rope starting point, the point where the rope was attached to the wall. If she couldn't work on the rope itself, then she'd try to pull it off the wall and get out of there with it still attached to her paw. Then, she could think about how to take it off completely.
But, to her amazement, every time she measured the wall she encountered only smooth, icy, and strictly black rock, with nothing that matched the description of an attacking spot she was imagining, any kind of square platform with screws embedded in the wall. This is because, by tapping the rope even further to its base, the dragoness realized that it was not hooked to anything. Rather, it seemed like the string came out right from the wall itself to which it was completely united, fused.
"No…" she began to panic again "It can't be."
It was an incredible thing she had never seen or heard of. How could anyone fuse a string into the wall!
"No, no, no, please not this, not like this!" she squealed desperately, pulling at the string and, when it didn't move, hitting violently the wall with her paws. That way she would have never left that cell!
"No!" she cried, tears forming in her eyes again.
Sonohra was so tired and the more reality slammed into her face with the truth of her condition, the more tired she felt. She did not know where she was, other than in a cell and that she was stuck to a wall with no possibility of escaping. No one had shown up since she arrived here, with food or water, and her throat began asking for water, having suffered from her screams and her stomach began grumbling for food. But what weighed the more on her was fear. Fear of being left there alone, in the darkness and in the silence, to die slowly of hunger and thirst not able to escape this place forever, not even in death.
Her tears, however, seemed like all the water she would see again for quite a while unless someone had deigned to open that door. And dragon tears were salt water.
"I can't die in here," she whispered. "I can't die here!" she yelled soon after, halfway between frightened and indignant. "Not after everything I've done, not after everything I've been through!" Anger slowly took the place of despair. "Ancestors! Are you going to make me finish like this?!" she cried to the ceiling of the cell, or at least where she thought the ceiling was, and behind it, the sky. "Have you planned this for me?!" she accused angrily, tears coming down full of anger, more than sadness. "I didn't suffer enough, huh? Or do you want to test me and see how far you can get me? How far I can go on before I go completely crazy?" she slowly wiped her snout with her paw, standing up as far as she could, jerking the rope but receiving only pain in return. "I'll show you crazy!"
At that moment the only thing she wanted to do was to vent. After everything that had happened since her birth, after everything she had been through in the last few weeks since Warfang, Sonohra accumulated so much suppressed anger and hatred under a veil of moderation and security that she was ready to explode and spit all her hate towards the sole creatures that were able to hear her in the darkness of her life, the Ancestors, who seemed to enjoy putting her in a miserable situation after the other.
"You're enjoying the show, aren't you?" she shouted again furiously. "Then you better keep watching because you'll never see me collapse! You'll have to wait a long time for it! You will either leave first or be bored and disappointed! Do you hear me?! I will never break! Never!" she roared, releasing all the anger she felt boiling inside, her emotions flowing free again, far from finished.
But a very small part in the back of her head, while she was screaming, could only whether or not she was able to maintain this promise, or whether or not she already broke. Maybe she had been for a long time, even before ending up in that cell.
But she didn't have to worry about fighting with this little part in the back of her mind because her fury was followed by a tired, confused sound. It was a groan, a painful groan, like someone waking up after getting a good bang on the head. Like her when she first woke up... only it hadn't been her this time, she was sure of it.
A different voice from her own broke the silence that took place after her screaming session and immediately made her turn toward the well-known voice, coming from deep darkness but still sounding real.
"S-So-Soonohra?"
She froze, acknowledging in the new voice Licht's voice.
"Licht?" she asked, halfway between diffident as she feared she was starting to imagine things and incredulity that the hatchling was really in there with her even after all the time she had spent struggling alone.
But as soon as they came, those emotions faded, quickly replaced by fear again. No, not simple fear but raw and pure terror.
In the solitude of her mind in the darkness, she had imagined and hoped that the little one had managed to escape with the others. She had been more worried about how to get out of there, automatically labeling Licht as safe with the others. Her mind built all that illusion to keep her sane and fighting.
But, if that was not the case, not only wasn't Licht safe with the others, but he was there, in the same cell as her, held captive who knows where. And if he was alive, with her, it had to mean that Fenris had some dark plan for them and that wasn't a good sign for them, not at all. Had she had to go alone against the hairy dragon, she knew that she could endure any type of suffering long enough to see the smile go out of the scornless dragon's snout; but if Licht was the one being tortured, in front of her, she knew that her resilience would drop drastically.
He shouldn't be here and the fact that he was could only send pure dread into the heart of the white dragoness.
"Sonohra?" repeated the voice, now slightly more awake, but full of emotion that she would not want to hear from him: fear. "Sonohra, what happened? Where are we?" he asked, fear enveloping his voice like poison in no time.
Sonohra felt her sunk into her stomach at the young one's tone, and she tried to get closer to him as much as she could to comfort him in some way. But she was blocked by the string that held her to the wall and she couldn't reach the other dragon. She looked back for a moment, and then something clicked into her mind.
"Licht, calm down, I'm here, I'm right here, with you," she tried to reassure. "Can you hear me, yes?"
"Y-yes b-but-" she cut him off before he could continue.
"Licht, listen to me," she instructed. "Do you feel something tied around one of your paws?"
"Y-yes!" replied the puppy's frightened voice. "W-what is it? Why doesn't it stick on like that?"
Sonohra could feel in her own body that the little dragon was trying to tap into his elemental power, the same of her. But she could not say a word to stop him before a bright light ignited the cell for that millisecond to drive away the darkness, annoyed, but who seemed to smile at the scream of pain that followed.
The next moment they were back in total darkness, that was enjoying the view.
Sonohra tried to come forward, calling Licht's name, stretching her front paws in the darkness to the place where she saw him through the light.
"Licht!"
Licht's moans got louder and soon turned into sobbing. She could only imagine the tears that now adorned the hatchling's face, while the sound of crying only increased the already bad image of the little one her treacherous mind had begun building for her.
"Hey Licht, hey," tried to reassure the female, her voice as calm as possible but also containing a note of fear and haste that she couldn't control. "You're fine, Licht. It's okay, I'm here. Listen to my voice."
But the electric little dragon didn't seem to hear her. He kept crying, asking where they were, and why he was down there and tied up. He said everything hurts, his leg particularly, and he was hungry and thirsty and he saw nothing. And the more he despaired, the more Sonohra broke internally, piece by piece, crushed by the complete helplessness she felt at that moment, and cursing the Ancestors for having taken her on her word.
They were clearly trying to break her.
Sonohra did not give up. It wasn't in her character. And this is not only for her but also for Licht. She had to protect him, she has taken that responsibility in Blackashes that night when Governor Sky died at the paws of the furry dragon. It was a silent accordance between the blue dragon and her, but accordance, nonetheless.
She was afraid, as he was, but she could in no way afford to let herself be swallowed by fear and despair when in the cell with her was an innocent young dragon who had no other fault than to follow the wrong people on their rather crazy journey. And before that thought came, Sonohra completely shove it away, the thought that all of this was her fault for she had the idea.
It wasn't the right moment, though. She couldn't think about it now as she couldn't afford the luxury of sinking into self-pity. She had to be strong, for both of them.
"Licht," she called in a loud and determined voice this time. "Licht, listen to me!"
The groans reduced their intensity, and she knew that she had his attention. Or at least she hoped, for she could not see him with all that suffocating darkness mocking her.
"Licht we'll find a way out of here, I promise you that," she said, trying to find enough determination to make her sound as truthful as possible to his ears, even to her own. "We're going to get out of here, we're going to run away from the bad guys, and I'm going to take you to the greenest lawn that exists in the whole of Avalar where I'm going to teach you to use everything I know about our element."
"Really?" whispered the little voice, more interested and less desperate.
The dragoness nodded her head automatically but soon replied orally. "Yes, really," she promised. "I promise you that you will become the strongest electric dragon in the world, even more than the electric guardian Volteer." She intended to keep that promise, not like last time, but she needed him to be strong and calm. "But," she went on. "I need you to be strong and brave now and listen to what I tell you to allow us to get out of here and fulfill that promise. Can you do that?"
Licht sniffled but sounded like he accepted it. "Y-yes, I-I c-can do it," he replied, his voice trembling but at least he stopped crying.
Despite herself and the situation, the white female smiled in the darkness at the braveness of the little one. "Now Licht, I want you to do something for me," she said.
"What?" he asked his startled tone that slowly drifted away as the white female tried her tactic to distract him from their situation while she thought of something to escape.
"I want you to get as close to me as possible," but she was quick to add. "But I don't want your rope to pull any more than it already does, so approach me with your front paws, following the sound of my voice, as much as possible before the rope stops you, all right? Do you think you can do that for me?"
"Yes."
She heard the noise of him crawling on the floor in the dark, his little claws sinking into the cold stone helping him to drag himself as far forward as possible. At one point he pricked with pain and Sonohra got alarmed.
"What is it?!"
"I'm here," said Licht, his tone a little downed. "I can't get any closer than that," then continued hopefully. "Are you close?"
Sonohra did not know, but from the hatchling's distant voice they did not seem to be, and with the last bolt of pain and light from the puppy, she was able to have a minimal vision of the cell and acknowledge that it was not excessively large. Of course, it was impossible to see that better a shot in the darkness after getting used to the latter, but she was confident that they would be able at least to touch their paws.
The dragoness stretched her paw into the dark, beginning to tap the cold stone floor in search of the little one's paw. But she soon realized that there was nothing but stones on which her claws made a noisy ticking.
"Licht, try to stretch one of your front paws towards me," she ordered. "Maybe we can touch like that."
Licht lamented he was doing just that and she tried the same until, in front of her, slightly to her left, she felt something. It wasn't anything physical, it was more of a sensation from her paw that something was near just like when you walk with your eyes closed but you manage to sense an obstacle nearby. This proved to the white dragoness that Licht's paw had to be close.
Only they were unable to touch each other. The strings seemed to be created for the purpose, and surely they were, that two or more prisoners sharing the cell could feel each other, hear each other, but not touch each other. A twisted way of deepening the torture, for sure. But at least, they knew the other was there and this was already a better situation than they could have hoped given the conditions.
The dragonesses knew, however, that the calm situation would not last long and that soon the hatchling would be caught in fear. It was what the darkness and silence were here for. That was their task, their job. They affected minds, exploiting any emotion to drag them down into the abyss of madness. She felt the results on herself and so she knew she had to do something about it, she had to find a way out and quickly, or the cub risked being eternally stuck in that dark cell with his mind. She needed to find a way of distracting the child as she thought about something to get out.
She sighed inwardly, knowing what she could do but that she did not want to do. She had never talked much about herself, to her friends, not to mention to others. And yet, she knew it could be useful to him, maybe giving him enough strength to resist what they were going through, while she thought of something. At least, it worked with her, so there was a probability it could work with Licht too.
On the bright side, they would talk and keep each other company. Darkness and its ally, silence, would have bread for their teeth as their voices could defeat one of them and weaken the other.
"Licht," she called him in a serious voice to make it clear how important the topic was, how much she cared about it, and that she wanted his full attention. "I wish to tell you a…story, one that may help with your fear, but you have to promise me that you will make treasure of it, keeping it only to yourself and not telling anyone else what I'm about to say to you."
She didn't have to see in the pitch darkness to know that the hatchling was curious.
"I promise I won't say it to anyone," Licht vowed.
Sonohra sighed. "Ok," she said, as her thoughts run through her mind. "I can do it," she thought, trying to give herself strength. "It's for both our good. I have to do it, I can do it."
"You know, Licht," she began, trying to make it seem like a simple full-function story and making sure, as far as she could, not to let any emotion pass through. "I and the others were born in a very... troubled time of our history."
"Do you mean that of the Empress's conquest?" he asked, sounding interested. Good.
Sonohra smiled. "Yes, Licht, that time," she confirmed pointing out in her voice her pride for his knowledge.
But now the hardest part was already coming.
"I-I…" she broke down for a second, clearing her throat before resuming. "M-My parents died during the destruction of Warfang but my egg was brought to safety before I could hatch and put together with the others rescued and those just laid by the dragonesses in our new home."
"Oh," said Licht, sad. "I'm sorry," he went on in a sorry tone of voice. "It must have been hard for you growing up without a family."
"You don't know the half of it, little one," she thought the dragoness before resuming speaking, a controlled voice in a slightly more cheerful and professional tone. She couldn't let the puppy get depressed, that wasn't the goal. "Yes, it was hard," she confirmed in a sincere tone. "But it did not have all its flaws, for I grew up with other orphans who, like me, had lost their parents during the war and who then became my friends, those with whom we traveled."
If it wasn't for that reason, that they were all orphans, probably things could have gone differently and they probably wouldn't have been such close friends. Certainly not a gang so close to each other as they were. They all had one thing in common: they had no family left. All but one.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yes," she confirmed again, more cheerful than before. "Apart from Fire having her mom, and Phantom who didn't grow up with us, we are all orphans and I have known them since our egg hatched and, I'll tell you, I wouldn't change them with anything at all in the world." That was true. Maybe the truest of truths. "We are like siblings, as we were born all together even if by a different mother," she said, a proudness in her tone that she couldn't hide, as she couldn't hide how it slightly turned sad.
Her friends were her family and she did not know what happened to them, and probably they did not know what happened to her. Maybe they thought she was dead, and that must be destroying for them, she would know it. But, she also knew, that they were tough types and would not fall so easily to desperation, as she had not to do now inside this cell.
She will find a way. They will find a way. They always do.
"But," she continued after a small pause. "I was not exactly alone, and my family was not completely lost... or at least, not right away."
Here her tone dropped and sank like her heart did from her chest to her stomach as old, sad memories came back to her from the dark and distant pit she hid them with every word she put in front of the other. "I-I h-had my brother, H-Harmony," she confessed, seeing the image of this bigger white dragon with some yellow lines from his head to his tail. He was larger than her and older, but the elegant structure was the same, as was the yellow lightning tail itself. In her memories, her brother's muzzle showed a downcast and angry look, while his eyes expressed exhaustion and anger, and…vengeance.
A tear fell from her eye invisible into the darkness, staining the floor, and she noticed this only because of the sudden humidity on her muzzle. Luckily, she could not be seen in those conditions, and for once she thanked the darkness all around for this covering. Still, she wiped away her tears, sniffling softly, trying to prevent the suffering she was feeling and have always felt in her heart to show in her voice.
"Not many people know it," she went on in a small voice. Then she cleared her throat again and resumed in a louder and less trembling voice, taking a strong grip on her emotions. "But it was my brother Harmony who brought my egg to safety in the caves during the attack."
The question there arose spontaneously and Sonohra was waiting for it, but Licht was probably too shy to ask, or maybe too respectful to her. Either way, he didn't say anything, so it was she who had to ask the question and give an answer.
"You may be wondering, then, why I grew up as an orphan with others," she said and without waiting, she went on with the answer. "Well, we can say it was because my brother didn't have the mental skills to be there with me, taking care of me."
Licht was confused, she could tell even without looking at his expression, so she explained herself. "Harmony saw our parents die in front of him in our house as our mother pleaded him to bring my egg to safety before she died," she lowered her head, feeling the tears take their course upon her muzzle and letting them for she had never really spent too much time mourning his brother, too busy hiding it from others and hiding herself from it.
"After we hid in the base, my brother was too destroyed to do anything useful, let alone take care of my egg," she said. "And the situation continued even when I hatched along with many other eggs," she could see the image of the white and yellow dragon in her mind, not far from her, but still too far away, who stared at her with tears in his eyes.
A broken dragon.
"He was unable to take care of me. In addition, in the first moments of life, a puppy needs its mother to feed it. So, as well as with every other orphan there, one of the many volunteer females took me as my nanny and he couldn't do much for me. And that…that must have taken its toll on him."
She could see her brother looking at her, always from afar, in a corner, the most remote one in the room. With each passing day, every day that she pointed her eyes toward that corner, joining their eyes, those spheres of the same color as hers but without the sparkling lightning anymore, replaced by an emptiness that grew from day to day. The more time passed, the more his despair and sadness went away, replaced by cold and dark hatred, consuming him, tainting his eyes, and turning him into a different dragon.
Again, she made an effort to keep her voice but not the tears. "With time it was evident that my big brother would not come around and pick me up from the nanny, taking care of me," she said, with a thread of bitterness that passed her voice shields.
Even after so many years, the thought that the possibility of having a family was within reach could do nothing but anger her as she could not take it, and not because she didn't try. Always because of others.
"He was always on the front line for excursions outside, to find survivors, burying corpses at Warfang at night and everything that kept him out of his thoughts, and away from me. Until one day…"
She paused for a moment, the memory imprinted on her mind as if it happened just yesterday. She could see the white and yellow dragon, which she had always seen from distance, right in front of her. She was just a litter, she could barely understand and see little, but she remembered it all, probably she would remember this until her last day.
"One day my brother volunteered to go outside for sabotage. It was one of the first missions of that kind, very dangerous because they did not have all the precautions developed over time and didn't know what they were going to face outside. But he wanted to go, he wanted to make his part and contribute to the base and the resistance and surely he hoped to find vengeance out there… and so went. But, before he left, he came to me for the first time since I hatched. He surrounded me with his large white and yellow wings and I felt warmth."
"For the first time in my life, I felt love. I felt I was loved" she added in her thoughts.
She took a deep breath soon after to ease her burning heart. "But it didn't last long as he went on and told me words I do not fully remember, then he gave me a kiss on the forehead and left to never return."
Immediately Licht, as empathic as he was, tried to say something and comfort her. "I'm sorry, Sonohra. I-"
But she interrupted him. "I'm not telling you this simply to talk to you about my sad life in a place that already does a good job as it is to make you sad," she said sternly, not wanting to hear anyone's sorries, pity, or other similar emotions in their voices. It was only one of the reasons why she had never said it aloud, but it was also very valid for her. "I'm telling you all this to pass on those only words that I remember my brother saying to me and that helped me throughout my life even in the worst of times." She explained, determined, without tears, wanting to pass on to the little one the seriousness of the matter.
He remained silent letting her continue, his silence symbolizing his whole attention on her.
"I'm stronger than fear," she said. "It cannot control me."
"Before he left," she explained soon after. "My brother told me not to be afraid and that, if I ever was, I would simply have to repeat it in my head, fighting as hard as I could my fear, to defeat it, proving stronger than it, brave enough to survive it."
Sonohra looked right where Licht was supposed to be, burning in the darkness with her luminescent electric yellow eyes a hole that would allow the two of them to see each other and understand the meaning of the message to the fullest.
"And that's what I wish you to understand, Licht. I would like you to fight your fear, win it, right here, right now," she demanded to him with determination. "I know you are brave and so what I ask you, here, is to be brave for the sake of both of us," she explained. "To know your fear, to overcome it, to fight it, using my brother's mantra all night if necessary. Say it, say it until you are truly convinced of what you are saying, and win the fight against the fear. Only then, we may have a chance to escape alive that place," she paused, waiting for an answer that didn't come, so she pressed.
"Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Licht?"
"Y-yes," arrived the small voice of the little one, uncertain.
"And do you think you can do that for me?" she asked. "Do you think you can overcome your fear, beat it, be convinced of its defeat?"
"I-I…" he babbled.
"Say it," she ordered.
"W-Wha-"
"Say my brother's mantra," she ordered, dead serious. "Out loud," and when he hesitated, she growled. "Come on!"
"I'm stronger than fear," he said. "It cannot control me."
"Good," she nodded in the dark. "Now, repeat it in your mind, even all the time if necessary, until you are convinced, dead convinced," she ordered. "So convinced that if the dark master himself were to enter through that door, you'd still believe in those words."
"It's important, Licht," she highlighted the concept again. "We have to escape and to do that we have to survive that cell and its dangers first. And fear will break us if we let it, will break you if you let it, so you must fight it so that we can live another day, and escape that pit. You understand what I'm trying to say, Licht?"
"Y-yes," he babbled.
"And do you think you can do that for me? Do you think you can defeat your fear?"
"I-I t-th-think I-I c-can."
"No," she said sternly, letting steal in her voice. "You don't sound convincing to me, so why do you think you can sound convincing to yourself and you fear? You will never win if you are not convinced, so be convincing!"
She knew it was no easy task for she too spent many blank nights alone fighting with her fears to succeed, and she was in a base where she was safe. Here, they were in enemy territory, locked in a cell, without water or food and with little possibility of surviving.
It would be harder for him to fight his fears, but she needed him to so that she could focus completely on the escaping part.
She just hoped the little dragon would succeed... otherwise, she didn't know what else to do next.
But here the puppy astonished her:
He stood up, or at least this she could assume from the noise of claws on the floor in the deafening silence of the cell. Just as she could say he was looking at her, not because she saw him to it, but because somehow, because of her sixth sense maybe, she still had a feeling telling her that the puppy had pointed his eyes right where hers were, making eye contact in the darkness.
Then he spoke, the most serious and convincing voice she had ever heard from a little one, especially from that little one.
"I can do that," he said, sounding convincing this time. "I can defeat it and I will."
Sonohra smiled in the dark, proud of him. She knew that, in this way, she just raised their chances of survival.
Now she had time to plan in peace.
Or so she hoped, as she had to do it while she fought her own fear that the damned suffocating darkness was trying to enhance to make her fail.
To destroy her.
To make her go mad.
But she won't let it for she had her brother's mantra with her, and it never disappointer her before.
"I'm stronger than fear, it cannot control me."