Torrent trudged through the MudWing swamps, one step at a time. If the map was correct, it wouldn't take very long to reach the animus by flight, but Torrent wanted to make sure he wasn't seen by any of the MudWings in the city. He would walk a little further before taking off.

The young SeaWing despised the swampy ground. While he was no stranger to water, the squishing mud seemed to get between his webbed claws, and it wouldn't shake off easily. He kept stubbing his claws or tripping on the tree roots beneath him and it was wearing him out easily. Hopefully, he wouldn't have much further to go.

It took another hour or two of pushing through the dense swamp before Torrent finally felt like he was far enough away from the city to take flight. He spread his vivid blue wings, clearly contrasting with the greens and browns of the swamp, and took flight within a small clearing. There might've been a river here for him to swim in, but this would be faster, and Torrent didn't want to get even more mud and grime on him than he already had.

He glanced back towards where the city would be, thinking about Mallard. Hopefully she would be alright. He was still worried about whether Queen Moorhen would find out of her helping Torrent out of the passage. What Mallard did struck him as a little strange; she had risked her life for a dragon she had barely known and was willing to betray her queen. Did all dragons show such little loyalty to the royal families? It certainly didn't seem so, at least in the Sea Kingdom. All the dragons obeyed the royal family's direct orders, even to an obnoxious degree. They clearly feared Queen Coral, and what she would do. Was Queen Moorhen just not like that? Did her subjects not fear her? Or was it something different, maybe MudWings just didn't have that kind of obedience to their queen. At least from what Torrent had read, MudWing loyalty was usually directed towards their siblings; that could be the difference. Yet, Torrent hadn't seen any of Mallard's siblings around, what had happened to them? Did they die somehow?

The thought of dead siblings turned Torrent to his own three, Orca in particular. He recalled something he had learnt from his schooling with Whirlpool about SkyWings and their funerals, at least before Queen Scarlet had banned the practice. After a dragon had died, the local community would create a pyre at the top of a mountain peak, and place the body there. The SkyWing's closest friends would then light the body aflame, and leave the pyre until it completely burnt. Apparently it was said that the burning of the body would let the SkyWing's spirit free, and the spirit would follow the smoke from the pyre to wherever spirits go.

It was clearly different from what they did with their animus dragonets: after binding their mouths shut, they enclosed the dragonets, still living, within stone boxes and dropped them into the sea to drown. Supposedly animus dragons were evil spirits or something that had come back to seek revenge the living, and killing them that way would prevent their spirits from returning again. The tyrannical Scarlet hadn't banned that practice, apparently even she didn't want any animuses around.

As Torrent continued flying, he suddenly heard something. Were those . . . wingbeats? They didn't seem loud enough for a dragon.

"Wait!" a familiar voice called out.

Torrent turned around, surprised at who he saw, flying not too far behind him. "Griffin?" he asked, slightly frowning. "What are you doing here?"

The small gryphon flapped his feathery wings, quickly catching up to the SeaWing and slowing down for him. "Looking for you, of course," he snorted indignantly, slightly out of breath

Torrent smiled a little. Maybe he wasn't going to have to do this all alone. If he wasn't busy flying, he would've hugged Griffin.

"Well?" Griffin asked, frowning. "This is your second chance. Are you going to apologize?" He was clearly still a bit ticked off about how they had last parted.

Torrent nodded, and tears almost started to form in the wells of his eyes. "I'm really, really sorry about being so rude and telling you to go away and all that. I took you for granted, but you're my best friend, and I'm really sorry."

Griffin frown turned into a smile. "Good!" he said. "You should be! That was uncalled for, and I'm glad you're sorry."

Torrent didn't particularly like Griffin's righteousness and rudeness in his response, but he would tolerate it for his friend. He had been rude.

"Now that I've found you," Griffin continued, "let's get home and say hello our new queen!" He started to fly to the east, back towards the Sea Kingdom.

He doesn't know? Torrent wondered. "Griffin, Orca lost her challenge," he bluntly stumbled. "She's dead."

"Oh," Griffin said. His smile suddenly faded. "Like, forever dead?"

"Yes," Torrent hissed exasperatedly. "The only kind of dead."

Griffin looked around uncomfortably. "I'm . . . sorry, I guess."

"You guess?" Torrent asked. He didn't really like the sound of that.

Griffin twitched his feathers uncomfortably. "You did say it would be pretty bad if she was queen, right? Do you still believe that?"

Do I? Torrent wondered. "I mean, it would've been really bad if she was queen, but I still didn't want her dead!"

"You didn't?" Griffin asked, confused. "But wouldn't it have been better for her to be dead and not queen than alive and queen?"

Torrent grimaced. Did Griffin just not get it? "No, I don't want her dead at all!" he yelled. "She should be alive and here with us!"

Griffin just stared at Torrent with a puzzled expression across his beak.

Torrent sighed. "Look, I didn't mean to sound angry. I'm not. I just wish she hadn't had animus powers in the first place, and we could all be happy." He suddenly recalled how Griffin had originally come into being. "No, no I didn't mean that. Not in that way. Ugh, I'm only making things worse, aren't I."

A hurt expression appeared on the young gryphon for a second, but it quickly turned into a grin and an eye-roll. "Yeah, I can tell. Is your awkwardness a new thing, or had I just not noticed it before?"

"Probably the latter," Torrent quietly replied, with a hint of a smile across his snout.

"Alright. Now, since I don't particularly want to be locked in Orca's underwater dungeon corridor for the rest of my life, and you don't seem to be heading in that direction, what's your plan?"

"Well, Mallard told me about some dragons mysteriously disappearing to the north, and Orca's old magical map thing said there was an animus there, so I decided I might as well go investigate."

Griffin eyed Torrent suspiciously. "More magical drama already? And who's this Mallard?"

"She's the librarian Orca and I met her at the Summer Palace."

"Oh, that Mallard," Griffin replied, "the one that Orca complained about how boring she was."

"Yeah, that one," Torrent replied uncomfortably. "By the way, how did you find me?" Griffin seemed a bit different. He had this weird air of self-confidence radiating off his feathers.

"Oh, some cool IceWing I met said he'd seen you here," Griffin replied. "Get it? Cool? Cause he was an IceWing?"

Torrent nodded. What would an IceWing be doing all the way down here? he wondered. "Yeah, haha," he replied.

"Finally, a laugh. A sarcastic one, but at least you're showing a little bit of humor."

A glimpse of a smile crossed Torrent's snout before he hid it again. It felt so wrong to be smiling, should he be sad? That's what dragons did when their sisters died, be sad and sulk all the time until things got better? I should be sadder than this, shouldn't I? "Wasn't he surprised at seeing you're, you know — "

"A gryphon?" Griffin asked. "Nah, he was pretty chill about it." He chuckled at his own pun again. "Seriously, he was just like 'Yo, you're gryphon, right?' I was like, 'Yeah, I am,' and he was like 'That's cool, I haven't seen many gryphons before,' and we totally bonded. It was nice."

Torrent nodded. He somewhat doubted the exchange was exactly like that, but he supposed it was possible. Or at least not impossible, though strange.

"So, we're going to find this animus now, right?" Griffin asked. "Full ahead!"

Griffin sped up, boosting ahead of Torrent faster than any dragon could fly. He turned around and called back to Torrent, "Come on! You're swimming slower than a sea cucumber!"

Torrent smiled. He was glad to see Griffin again, and happy as ever. The two flew further again, far into the great expanse of the MudWing swamps.