I do not own Legend of Dragoon or any of the characters.


Catching Up

Cade inhaled slowly as he stirred, smiling as Rose's scent filtered into his brain, helping to rouse him from his slumber. However, there was another smell mixed in with it. A potent, musky scent that made his brain feel sluggish even as it shoved him toward consciousness. He tightened his arms around Rose, feeling her bare form press more tightly to his and hearing her let out a low grumble. He opened his eyes, staring down at her, taking several long moments to admire the beauty lying naked in his arms before reaching down and kissing her. After a moment, she began to kiss him back, tightening her hold on him. Finally, he pulled away, his smile instantly being matched with one of her own.

"Good morning, Beautiful," Cade smiled.

"Good morning," Rose replied, then winced slightly. "I wasn't expecting to be so sore."

He chuckled, kissing her, then looked at the potion she'd left on the bedside table. She reached back, rolling away from him and giving him a clear view of her body, before picking up the potion and holding it up for him. He drank it and grimaced as his ribs and back burned and itched, then faded. He set the bottle aside, kissing her again and settling his weight onto her, only for her to pull away after a moment.

"We need to get cleaned up and ready," Rose said. "We have to catch the others."

Cade sighed but nodded and they stood, using the room's connected wash room to quickly clean themselves before getting dressed again. Cade finished first and looked over at Rose as she put her horned headpiece on, adjusting her hair around it, then put her choker back on. She turned to him and smiled, offering her hand. He took it instantly and they walked out the door and down the castle, reaching the entrance hall just as Miranda decided to go and get them.

"Sorry we're late," Cade said.

"Yeah, sure you are," Miranda grumbled. "Let's go. I assume you're not too sore to travel."

"No," Rose said. "I'll be fine."

Miranda nodded and they left the castle quickly, making their way through the city as fast as they could, though Cade stopped to buy a handful of potions on the way. Then, Miranda turned west, only for Cade to continue south.

"Where are you going!?" Miranda demanded. "Kashua Glacier is this way!"

"I'm getting us a ride," Cade said. "Relax. It's only half an hour to the forest on foot."

Miranda growled in annoyance but followed. After a few minutes, Cade stopped just past the edge of the forest and extended his wings, holding out his hand, palm up. After a moment, three massive white wolves stepped out of the trees. Miranda tensed, but Cade stepped forward calmly, petting two of them as the third licked his face. He chuckled, stroking that one's snout, too, before climbing onto its back and pulling out the Divine Dragon's crystalized eye and his magic sword. Rose climbed onto the wolf to Cade's right, and the third walked over to Miranda and lay down. Unlike when Kamuy had been in his large savage form, these three all appeared normal, aside from being almost the size of a horse. Miranda hesitated before climbing on, and her wolf stood before all three began to run North, then turned west along the road to the Kashua Glacier, Cade having used his magic to ask them to give them a ride as close to the Tower of Flanvel as they could go. As they rode, Cade channeled magic energy into the dragon eye, awakening the latent magic still residing inside of it, then created a ward for it to generate more of its own, turning it into a power source, one from which he could sense more power than he had dared to hope. He was tempted to put it in his armor instead of his sword and have it power his armor's defensive wards. However, he removed the jewel from his magic sword's hilt and put the eye in, forming the blade experimentally and finding it completely effortless, and the drain on the eye being next to nothing compared to what it held. He let the blade fade and put the magic sword's hilt away, securing the pouch, then looked around.

They were making great time. The wolves were running faster than any horse Cade had ever been on, and the air was quickly growing cold, the stone and sparse bits of grass around them giving way to snow and ice, cliffs running along the sides of the road here and there. He pulled his half cape tight around himself and glanced at Rose, grinning, only for her to roll her eyes.

"It's still stupid," Rose said.

He chuckled just as a mass of ice off to one side shattered, leaving behind a humanoid made out of ice with two long spikes for arms below its elbows. Cade swiped a hand through the air instantly, a column of flames roaring to life around it, melting it in seconds. Another leapt off of the cliff to their right, its right arm extending down at Cade suddenly, only for him to draw his sword and deflect the ice spear backward into the ground behind his wolf before jumping and splitting the ice creature down the middle, landing lightly back on his wolf as all three continued to run.

"Guess it's time to be careful," Rose said, drawing her rapier, Miranda drawing her bow and knocking an arrow.

"Seems like it," Cade nodded.

The snow and road gave way to ice as they reached the glacier, the wolves slowing a bit to avoid slipping and quickly traveling along a path made by cracks running through the ice. The makeshift path wound and wove across the glacier as it slowly rose higher and higher. As the sun began to set, they found several massive turtles' corpses, all of them with multiple gashes through their stone shells, each shell having five cannon-like growths angled forward from the front of them. Cade dropped to the ground to inspect them, Miranda joining him a moment later.

"These kills are barely an hour old," Cade said. "I think."

"They're half a day old," Miranda corrected him. "It's so cold here that it slows decay and freezes blood." She prodded the frozen blood with her arrow. "Anything killed here takes far longer to decay, so anything that looks fresh could be as much as three days old and look about a day old. These should be about a day old. Assuming the others don't stop to rest or anything, we should catch up to them at the base of the Tower of Flanvel."

Cade nodded and they both climbed back onto their wolves. The wolves surged forward again at Cade's telepathic urging and they all fell silent, all keeping their weapons ready for any surprise encounters with monsters. After about half an hour, a penguin with a white stomach, a black and orange back, a pair of massive yellow feather sticking off the sides of its head diagonally up and back like horns, or angry eyebrows, and a jagged-nosed fish skull for a sword suddenly shot off of the top of a chunk of ice to cade's right on its stomach, then flipped, slashing at him. He deflected the slash and toppled backward off of his wolf. He landed on his feet and spun, knocking its sword aside before slashing it back up the other way just as a metallic crash echoed behind him and an ice spike extended past him, then retracted.

"I'll handle the Freeze Knight," Rose said calmly from behind him.

"Then I'll handle these," Cade said, eyes sweeping over the three more penguins, called Land Skaters, and a Rocky Turtle like the ones Dart and the others' group had killed, all of which were approaching from a slope that led under another chunk of ice.

Cade shot forward, two of the Penguins moving to attack him, only for Cade to slash both as he passed. Miranda shot an arrow into one of the turtle's legs just in time for it to fall to the side, the fireball it launched out of its central cannon missing Cade and exploding into a pillar of flames off to the side. The last Penguin leapt at Cade, slashing downward, and he spun around it, then slashed upward across its back before turning to the turtle. It lunged at him, its stone jaws open to take a bite out of him, only for Cade to hold out his hand, a red barrier forming in front of him. When the turtle hit it, it flashed and the turtle was hurled away, hissing and spitting like an angry snake as it skidded across the ice. Is stopped just shy of falling into a deep crag in the ice, but Cade sent it over the edge a moment later by firing a sphere of explosive magic energy into its face. He turned as it crashed off the sides of the ice walls to either side of it again and again, seeing Rose slash the Freeze Knight, the same type of ice creature as Cade had killed earlier, several times before stepping away from it as it crumbled. She and Cade climbed back onto their wolves and they took off again instantly.

"So, I've been wondering something," Miranda said, Cade looking over at her. "Which is more powerful magic, the exploding ball thing you can do, like you did to the turtle, or the spells Humans have crystals for, like the flaming pillar you used on the first Freeze Knight?"

"The explosive sphere is a low-level spell, but one that can be charged for more power," Cade explained. "It's also a non-elemental spell, so it doesn't matter if its target is resistant to a certain type of magic. However, if I know something's elemental affinity, like the Light affinity you naturally have, which is strengthened by your Dragoon Spirit, I can use the opposing element, in your case Darkness, to cause more damage without needing to charge the spell. Granted, all spells can be more powerful is you use more power to cast them, but the exploding sphere has the most room to grow from charging."

"I think I understand," Miranda said.

"Think of it this way," Rose supplied. "If you're fighting a Freeze Knight, you want to use fire rather than ice. But his explosive sphere is non-elemental, so it does an equal amount of damage to everything."

Miranda nodded. "Okay. Got it."

Rose nodded and looked around. "Are we getting close?"

"It shouldn't be much longer," Miranda nodded. "We're catching up quickly."

Cade nodded and they fell silent again. Finally, they entered a tunnel under the ice where a pair of men, one tall and lanky and the other short and stout, were sanding huddled around a small fire, a pack to either side of them. Cade had the wolves slow to a stop beside them, the men staring at them in awe.

"Did a guy in red armor come through here?" Cade asked. "Probably with a girl with platinum hair like mine wearing a dancer's bikini and a Giganto, as well as a couple others?"

"Uh, yeah," the tall one nodded. "They went that way about an hour ago." He pointed ahead, toward the other end of the tunnel. "They just stopped long enough for the guy in red to use some crystal to start a fire for us and to buy potions from me."

"Can he do that with his Dragoon Spirit?" Cade asked.

Rose shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know if anyone's ever tried it."

Cade nodded. "Thanks for your help. What are you doing all the way out here?"

"We came out here looking for customers," the shorter one said. "Never thought we'd actually meet any, but then your friends showed up."

"Do you want a ride back toward Deningrad?" Cade asked. "I can have my friends here give you a ride close to it, though they'll have to drop you off a ways away to avoid being hunted."

"No thank you," the shorter one said. "We're going to wait here a bit longer before leaving."

"Suit yourselves," Cade shrugged. "Come on."

He patted his wolf on the side and it continued to run along the tunnel with Rose and Miranda's. Cade had to duck out of the way of several icicles hanging from the ceiling, before they left the tunnel and stopped at the top of a massive wall of ice. Ice had formed several platforms leading down it, with icicles having grown from one to the next, but if the wolves went down it, they wouldn't be able to return. Cade and the others dropped off of them and Cade petted each of them for a moment before they turned and ran away.

"How did you tame those, exactly?" Miranda asked.

"I used my magic to communicate with them calmly and ask for help," Cade said. "As I've said several times, especially to Meru, magic can be used to do just about anything, so long as you know how."

"We should hurry," Rose said. "I hear a battle."

Cade listened, hearing a faint roar and what sounded like an explosion. "Well that's definitely not Lloyd they're fighting. Unless he's got a pet. He glanced down at the frozen waterfall before shaking his head and extending his wings. "Come here."

Both women stepped up beside him and he wrapped his arms around them, flying forward and down to the ground before releasing them, all three of them quickly running toward the sound of battle. As they passed through a crack in the frozen cliff ahead of them, they found themselves in a wide, open area with a cliff in the distance, then a broken stone pathway leading up over the ground, the pathway branching off and winding as it worked its way to the left and away from where Cade and the other two stood. However, Cade's attention focused on the others below the path on the ground before them. They were all spread out and breathing heavily, clearly having been fighting for a bit, and they had surrounded a creature that looked like it had come straight from a nightmare. It had blue skin that had long-since frozen into ice, its left arm missing below the elbow, its chest missing all of its flesh and its sternum with its ribs ending in spikes and jutting forward from its chest, a single, massive heart the size of Cade's torso beating inside its ribs, four long tentacle-like tails jutting backward from its thick neck, which reached forward from its torso above the hole, a long bone tail like a spinal column without any flesh covering it, the skin missing from its face except around its right eye, revealing the rest of its skull, claws as long as Cade was tall, a fin-like blade made of ice on the outside of its right forearm, reverse-bent legs with bone spikes jutting out from its primary knees, and two long, clawed toes each the length of an arm on the front of its feet, a clawed heel, and a thumb-like extra toe half the length of the other two on the inside of its feet. The thing towered over them all at nearly twenty feet, and it snarled angrily as it spotted Cade and the others joining their circle of friends.

"Sorry we're late," Cade said. "I see you all found a friend."

"Be careful," Dart warned. "It likes to catch its victims and hold them in its ribs as a shield for its heart. We had a hell of a time getting Meru back out of there."

"It can also use Ice-type magic," Meru warned.

Just then, the thing's magical energy began to condense, forming a spectral replica of its left arm, like a smoky silhouette, blue on the outside, then black, then red deep inside of it.

"What's it doing?" Cade asked.

"No idea," Dart said as everyone readied themselves. "It hasn't done this before."

The thing roared, driving its spectral arm into the ground, and a moment later, it exploded out of the ground below Rose, its palm slamming into her entire body and hurling her away.

"Oh yeah," Cade growled. "This thing's going to burn."

Miranda loosed an arrow instantly, only for the creature's ribs to snap closed, deflecting the arrow. She swore and Cade resisted the urge to charge. "I wasn't expecting it to be able to move its ribs, though I suppose that explains why you haven't targeted the heart, yet."

"Yeah," Dart nodded. "Don't worry. We have a plan to finish this."

"Let's see it," Cade said.

Dart nodded and charged, as did Albert and Meru. The creature roared, swiping at Dart, who rolled under its hand. However, the hand caught Albert, who the creature instantly hurled into Dart, sending both bouncing away, just as Kongol charged from behind the creature. Meru leapt at it, shouting and pulling her hammer back, only for its tail to catch her. Before anyone could stop it, it shoved Meru into its ribcage, then ribs snapping closed and trapping her. However, a moment later, Kongol's axe descended, smashing through both its arm and its tail, removing both. The creature roared and a pair of small ice spikes burst out of its back, several chunks of ice spinning around their back, and both flew directly at Kongol, only for Haschel to leap over him and smash both as he dropped. Then, Dart and Albert slashed its legs off below their reverse bends and it crashed heavily to the ground, roaring in rage and pain as Haschel's fist crashed into its skull, knocking it backward. Its ribs opened, freeing Meru, who extended her wings instantly and flipped sideways, her hammer crashing into the ribs on one side. The force of the impact shattered them, then the others followed suit when the hammer reached them. The creature roared in rage, thrashing about, only for Dart to step up onto it and drive his sword down into its heart. He twisted sharply, his blade ripping the heart wide open and the creature jerked and flailed, roaring for a moment before falling still. Dart ripped his sword free and dropped off of the body, backing away carefully, everyone watching the thing in silence for a moment before sighing as they decided it was dead, its dark blood pooling below it slowly, the cold slowing it and already beginning to freeze it.

"Well done," Cade nodded. "But I think you probably could have beaten it faster with your Dragoon Form."

"Its body was resistant to magic," Dart said.

"What is this thing, anyway?" Meru asked, nudging it with the head of her hammer.

"It's the Windigo," Miranda said. "It's a monster that numerous adventurers and knights have tried to slay, ever since it claimed this area several decades ago. It attacked the former Queen and her escort, as I recall, and they managed to take its arm off, but only the Queen and one knight managed to escape with their lives."

"I can see why," Dart nodded, then turned to look at the pathway. "I think this pathway leads to the Tower of Flanvel."

"It does," Miranda nodded. "Come on. I can lead from here."

Everyone nodded and turned, following her along the path toward the tower.


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