I do not own Legend of Dragoon or any of the characters.
Dragon's Marsh
Cade looked around the thick forest as they walked through it. The ground was soft and mucky, the mud smelled so bad it was hard to breathe at times, and the air was laced with the dragon's poison. Cade grimaced, trying not to breathe too deeply, and followed the others through the forest. He couldn't believe he was actually going to try and help fight a dragon that released poison through its skin and that was able to hurl massive amounts of an even more deadly poison. This definitely wasn't where he saw his journey going when his mother asked him to look into the shadow she felt. Not that he had really known what to expect, but this was just over the top.
"Guys," Rose spoke up suddenly, just as they were passing a fork in the path, having decided to follow a riverbank. "Don't you feel something?"
Everyone was silent for a moment, looking around, Shana actually closing her eyes to focus better.
"This forest is contaminated by the Dragon's poison," Rose said.
Shana covered her mouth instantly as Lavitz held a hand to his chin thoughtfully.
"I see," Lavitz said. "That's why the Sandorans don't have a defense in this forest." He glanced around. "A normal person cannot be exposed to this poison for a long time. It's a natural defense."
Shana gasped suddenly, legs wobbling as she held her hands to her head.
"What's wrong!?" Dart asked worriedly.
"I just felt a little bit dizzy, that's all," Shana said, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees, quickly growing pale."
"I guess it's hard for a woman," Lavitz said.
"I'm a woman too," Rose said flatly.
"You are a special case," Cade said. "You're a Dragoon. That probably makes you immune."
Rose glared at him for a moment before speaking. "Special, huh? Fine. I don't capitalize on a woman's frailty anyway."
"I don't mean to do-oh no!" Shana fell to her knees, swaying slightly for a moment, Dart kneeling at her side worriedly. After a moment, she turned, trying to give a confident smile for Dart's sake. "I'm okay. See? Rose is fine too." She started to turn even more pale. "But, I...I'm sorry. I need to go rest a little."
She turned and quickly ran away down the side path and Dart and Lavitz chased her. Cade sighed.
"Bringing her here was a bad idea," Cade said. "Poison will affect her faster than someone like Lavitz because she's physically smaller."
"That may be," Rose said. "What about you? You and Lavitz will probably need to find a cure for the poison too by the time we leave."
"We'll figure it out," Cade said. "Come on. Let's go find the others."
Rose nodded and they followed the others. As they caught up, Shana was standing, looking better now, and claiming to be alright.
"Shana, please don't run off like that again," Dart said, his tone taking on a sort of brotherly concern. "We don't know what could have happened."
"I'm sorry," Shana said apologetically, hanging her head.
"It's alright," Dart side. "Come on."
Shana nodded and they walked back toward the river together.
"They're playing brother and sister again," Rose commented.
"Yup," Lavitz said. "They're always like that."
They all sighed, walking after Shana and Dart. They followed the river again, this time beginning to see webbing covering the ground and trees in places here and there, the river turning a dark green. Cade grimaced as he saw it, following after the others quietly. As they began to walk across a huge web like one made by a giant spider, Cade stopped as he felt it dip and tremble slightly with every step any of them too.
"Oh shit!" he hissed.
"What?" Dart asked, just as the web began to sink slowly, though it sped up quickly. "Oh no."
"There's no ground under this one," Cade said.
"Shit!" Dart shouted as the web tore free, breaking apart as they fell.
The webbing wrapped around them all as they fell, each being caught in their own cocoons, but after a moment of falling, Cade suddenly felt his catch on another as he passed through it, slowing his descent as he spin free of the webbing. Then, he crashed down hard on a stone pathway over a deep pit, several other pathways wrapping around and through the room, several stone spires reaching up through the roof of the cavern they were in, and several passages led away along some of the pathways. Cade groaned, pushing himself up and hissing in pain as his still-fragile ribs flared in pain. They didn't feel broken again, thankfully, so they were probably just bruised.
"Cade!" Dart called out from several pathways over. "You okay?"
"I think I bruised my ribs!" Cade called back. "Otherwise, I'm fine!"
Dart nodded, looking back to Shana, who was unconscious, as was Lavitz, though Rose was fine. Cade looked around but decided to avoid going wandering through a Dragon's nest in order to hopefully be able to reach the others. At least, not yet. He wanted to rest first.
After about five minutes, Lavitz stirred, then ten minutes later, Shana woke up. They all agreed to get moving, so Dart and the others climbed a the stone spire attached to their path and Cade began to climb the other. He passed into the narrow tunnel up into the ceiling and then traveled up. And up. And up. He frowned when he stopped and looked down at the opening of the tunnel some hundred feet below him. He hadn't realized he fell that far. He was glad he hit the second web.
He sighed, continuing to climb, finally reaching the top and clambering out of the opening, pushing himself up just as a massive living flower squirmed across the ground toward him with a serpentine tail for a body, a pair of stem arms reaching off the sides to a pair of normal-sized flowers for hands, then four curved blades on the tip of the flower's tail. He drew his sword as the flower lunged, the center of the big flower opening into a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth, and it released an angry shriek. He ducked out of the way, slashing it along the body, only for its tail to crash into him, the blades ripping shallow gashes into his chest before he sailed backward into the wall of the tunnel he was in. The flower unleashed a victorious cry and lunged again, only for Cade to grab a massive stone off of the ground and shove it into the flower's mouth, making it begin to shriek and shake its head to dislodge the tone from its throat. Cade slashed its body just below its head, the head crashing tot he ground before the body followed with a heavy thud.
Cade sighed and leaned back against the wall, flexing and straightening his arms from having to pull himself up the stone pillar for so long. After a minute, he sighed, pushing off the wall and following the tunnel as it wound and snaked back and forth, Cade losing all sense of direction. After a few long minutes, he reached a wall of webbing and carefully cut it out of the way, finding himself at the edge of a hole in the wall. And before him, the others were struggling to fight not only just the Dragon, Feybrand, but also a green-armored Dragoon wielding a spear with a forked head and a wooden shaft.
Feybrand shrieked and lunged down at Lavitz, Lavitz only barely avoiding getting eaten. Shana sent an arrow into Feybrand's face, and it shrieked and recoiled, its body swinging under it and hurling a massive spray of thick green substance that reeked of venom at her. Before it could hit her, Dart flew past, he and Rose already being transformed into their Dragoon forms, and pulled her out of the way, allowing the poison to splatter across the floor and dry in seconds. Rose, currently fighting the green Dragoon sword-on-spear, suddenly shouted in pain as he hurled a glowing purple energy spike like a spear the length of an arrow, the spike driving itself through her shoulder just as his real spear, which he'd hurled at her before and she'd dodged, stabbed into the ground, a massive stone spear-shaped pillar erupting from the ground just in time for her to get pinned to it by the shoulder, though a second later, three more energy spikes drove themselves through her other shoulder and both thighs. Rose screamed in pain and Cade took several steps back as the green Dragoon drifted toward the tunnel he was in, a much longer energy spike beginning to form, this one taking the shape of an actual spear. However, as he began to pull it back, Cade leapt from the tunnel at him.
"Hey!" Cade shouted as he neared him. "Dragoon!"
The Dragoon began to turn too late, and as Cade passed, his sword tore through the front of his torso. He shouted in agony, his energy spears all fading as Cade landed in a roll, reaching the base of the giant stone spear in time to catch Rose, who had turned back into her human form from the pain of being impaled four times. Cade set her down gently and looked back at the green Dragoon as he settled onto the ground, gasping and panting for breath, holding a hand to his wound.
"Feybrand," he panted. "I leave...the rest...to you."
Feybrand shrieked angrily and turned to Cade and Rose, only for Dart to hurl a fireball into its face, the explosion sending it staggering away. Then, he flew forward, his sword tearing along Feybrand's side just as Feybrand's tail flipped under it, hurling a massive deluge of poison at Cade and Rose. Cade lifted her and dove out of the way, barely escaping the poison, then rolled to a stop, setting Rose down and grabbing her sword in his right hand as he charged the dragon. Feybrand lunged instantly, avoiding Dart's sword in the process. Cade spun out of the way of the lunge, barely, then slashed the dragon across the side of the face with Rose's sword before it could recoil. It shrieked rearing back, and Cade shot forward, slashing down across its abdomen with his own sword, then spun, slashing back up with Rose's. Feybrand shrieked, one foot stepping backward and the opposite one in front was suddenly in the perfect position to be removed, so Cade turned and brought his sword down on the leg, lopping it up about two feet above where the dragon's foot was supposed to be. It unleashed a near-deafening shriek and Dart grabbed Cade and shot into the air just before Feybrand flung a blast of poison at him, missing and not hitting any of the others either.
"Drop me on its face!" Cade shouted over the dragon's continued shrieks of pain and anger.
Dart flew over the dragon without complaint and dropped Cade, then shot downward, slashing Feybrand across the front as it moved to swallow Cade. Feybrand reared back, shrieking, and Cade drove both swords into its body just below its head, his momentum and weight dragging him down the front of the dragon's body, splitting it wide open in a pair of trails before he slashed the two swords out through the bottom of its front where its body curled back for its tail. He turned and leapt aside instantly, using Rose's sword to slash off its other front leg as he passed it, and Feybrand shrieked one final time as it pitched forward before crashing to the ground, cracking it, and falling still, its blood flooding out of it in a rapidly-expanding pool below the dragon.
Cade sighed, letting his upper body go limp for a moment before turning and walking back to Rose, kneeling and setting the swords aside before lifting her and holding a healing potion to her lips. She drank it carefully and her wounds hissed and steamed, shrinking out of existence before she sat up on her own, picking up her sword.
"Well done," Rose said. "You just defeated both a dragon and the Dragoon controlling it."
"Only because you all weakened the dragon and the Dragoon was distracted," Cade said. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be fine," Rose said, pushing herself up. "I'm not so fragile as to be killed by something like that."
Cade nodded and stood, both turning to walk over to where Lavitz was talking to the dying Dragoon.
"I had...admiration for him, as a brother...and as a friend," the man was saying. "But time goes by, and it turned into this feeling. This fear, from realizing the limits of your ability...This fear...that goes nowhere. The only thing you can do is curse yourself for weakness."
"But you couldn't overcome your fear by defecting to Doel," Lavitz said. "You needed to overcome my father."
"There was...an alternative," the man said. "If I could obtain a new power, I could be equal to...or surpass him. That was...the Dragoon Spirit I got from His Majesty Doel." The Dragoon Spirit began to shine green. "Lavitz...live strong. Now...I can go...to be with Servi."
He let out a long, slow breath, and his head tilted to the side, his eyes glassing over. Suddenly, the Dragoon Spirit shone a bright, blinding green for a moment before the light faded, taking its man's body with it.
"He's lucky to be dead now," Rose said flatly. "Greed for power eventually conquers you. Unleashed power generates only sorrow. He should've known that. He was lucky to die now and avoid even more sorrow."
Just then, the Dragoon Spirit began to glow again, floating into the air in front of Lavitz.
"Wha...What is this?" Lavitz asked.
"It's chosen you," Cade said, just as the Dragoon Spirit shone, as if confirming his words.
Cade glanced at Rose, whose eyes were wide with surprise, but he could see the gears turning in her head.
"The Dragoon Spirit of the Jade Dragon has recognized you as its next master," Rose said.
"I am...a Dragoon?" Lavitz asked. "I deserve to rule Dragons?"
"It's not about deserving," Cade said. "For whatever reason, you were chosen."
"But you defeated Greham," Lavitz said.
"Yeah, with a sneak attack," Cade said. "If it had been a fight on level ground, I probably would have lost."
"That's not how it chooses a master, anyway," Rose said. "But that's not important. You have an obligation to accept your fate as a Dragoon, don't you?"
The Dragoon Spirit's light faded as it sank to the ground and Lavitz stepped forward, picking it up , the stone glowing faintly once again before settling.
"It's what Greham left for me," Lavitz said. "I understand. I accept it! The fate of a Dragoon! I will use this power for justice! Like Dart and Rose."
Dart nodded, but Cade caught the amusement and a hint of a mental scoff in the way Rose's eyes narrowed.
"Good for you, Lavitz," Shana said.
She smiled, but Cade's eyes widened as she began to go pale again. Her legs wobbled and she caught herself by putting her hands on her knees. Cade swallowed hard. That was all she could take. The poison was starting to claim her.
"It's the poison!" Cade said.
"We can't make it over Villude carrying her," Lavitz said.
"Lohan's closer," Cade said. "But we need to go now."
Everyone nodded and Cade quickly grabbed some webbing from the wall beside them, which they were about to climb, quickly braiding and lashing it together into a makeshift rope, then used it to tie Shana to Dart's back for the climb, Dart taking the lead. Then, they all followed, scrambling up the wall as quickly as they could.
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