It was needless to say that Peril didn't have the best dreams that night. It all went by in a blur, one disaster after the next with no time to think or comprehend. Peril didn't even know what happened for most of it but she did know that it was one of the worst nightmares she had. She woke up in almost complete darkness. At first she was very confused and scared. Then she remembered last night's events. She got up and breathed a plume of flame to get her bearings. The place where she slept was marked with a clear spot in the layers of caked on dust. "Gross" Peril thought. She didn't have any dust on her since it burned away the moment it touched her, but she still didn't like it. Her room may be a stone box but she still had standards. Scarlet sent someone to clean her room twice a week. Usually as a punishment to guards who complained too much about chores. She had a particularly nasty trick for the ones she really didn't like where she used a weird cube hidey hole in one of the walls that was always covered up with a stone slab and threw her dinner scraps in it. She told the unfortunate guard to make sure the entire room was spotless within an hour or else. When the guard thinks he is done Scarlet pulls out the slab and then drags the poor fellow to the arena (And Peril couldn't tell them about it if she wanted to eat that week). She also used to make Peril run and dance around the room to torment the guy more but after a rather unlucky guard ran out of a window ablaze and crashed onto someone's house and burned down a good part of the nearby city the practice was stopped. Peril shook her head out of her tangent and turned towards the door. She didn't forgive Kestrel. That wasn't going to come for a good while. But she is still her mother and she wanted someone to lean on for the next few days, get a hold on the whole independence thing. And, to be honest it was mostly her drunk personality that was in control that night and she couldn't get her talons on alcohol every single day in the wilderness. Kestrel was decent enough when not inebriated so as long as she kept her away from the bottle they would both be fine. So, as much as Kestrel was being a big asshole last night, she figured she would try to give her mother another chance. But when she opened the door, Kestrel was nowhere in sight in the entryway. She ran to the window and burned off the haphazard covering. It was well past dawn, the light grey clouds bloating out the blue sky. And just as Peril feared, no grumpy red dragons in sight. Her mother was gone. And so was any sign of her presence, with the wine bottle and their dinner remnants completely absent. And no talonprints either and if there was anything to tell Peril where Kestrel went she couldn't see it. "Maybe she just went hunting!" her mind made an excuse almost immediately. "Yes, she just went hunting for our breakfast. Hunting and covering her tracks to prevent being followed and not waking you up to stand guard…" the logic didn't hold. She accepted the likely truth. Kestrel got fed up and left her. Alone. With nowhere left to turn to.
Peril sat down. This was too much for her. Her mind completely shut down. She didn't want to cry. She didn't want to get mad. She barely wanted to breathe. She just sat, something she rarely did before for very long. She sat for a good long while, wanting to do the impossible task of doing something while doing nothing. She was broken. Then a thought finally came through. "Look at you. Mopping about just because you had your heart broken. How pathetic. What are you gonna do now? Go cry on Clay's shoulder? Oh wait! Clay is gone and you won't be able to find him again for who knows how long. Not like you deserve him anyway considering what you have done. You broke the hearts of other dragons on a daily basis by killing their kids and spouses and whatnot in the arena every day and barely even flinching, not to mention the other soldiers and prisoners on other sides of the war. And did they just sit down and break? No. they just hardened themselves and pushed on or cut out their throats. And you can't even hold a knife. So since you have no right to be happy and can't afford to be sad you'll just have to harden yourself and just deal with it. Now get your sorry ass off the ground and do something." Peril didn't like that voice in her head. She especially didn't like being reminded of her deeds or about the fact she might not see Clay ever again. But it was hard to argue with its assessment. If she wanted to make it out here she had to tough up and deal with it. If Kestrel didn't want her, That was her problem. From now Peril would push on herself.
And so she did. For 5 whole days she went all on her lonesome. It was significantly harder considering she only had a small strip she could walk on while hunting without burning the whole forest down in the process. But she made do. There were enough goats and foxes running around so she wouldn't starve and she could briefly fly to the mountaintops and grab some snow for water. Shelter was a whole other problem though. She didn't have any ruins to sneak into and she only found a good cave once, so she had to sit on ledges in the mountains just barely big enough for her. Oh and it was COLD. It was weird, Icy death breath barely affected her but a little chilly weather had her shivering to the bone.. It was not fun at all.
She mostly flew south for those days, because if her mother was heading in that direction it should have been safer than wherever she was now, and hopefully fewer things to burn. She rarely encountered any dragons. Well, not any living ones anyway. There were a whole lot of corpses. Some from small skirmishes from the war, others where highwayman raids on supply caravans gone wrong. She even saw a full fledged result of a battle on her 5th day, Skywings against Seawings by the looks of things, with at least a hundred dead for each side. It was also there she had her only encounter with live dragons: 2 Skywing looters who didn't much like her presence considering the way they charged at her with spears. They soon found out their rather lethal mistake. It was self defence so she had little guilt killing them, but the agony on their faces disturbed her much more than it used to. Peril then booked it south as fast as she could. A. Because of the large number of Seawing soldiers from the battle ment the coast couldn't be too far away and B. If there were so few looters around then either the Skywing or Seawing military would likely be there soon to clean up the mess and she did not want a confrontation with either of them. After all, even if Scarlet was dead (which she dearly hoped was the case) Peril would be under arrest because Osprey said "Something something royal obligation something something must be tried before pardoning something,something." Well not those words exactly, Peril wasn't exactly paying attention that day since she had to stay up all night looking for black rocks since Scarlet forgot to give her any. But the point still stood and while Kestrel might be found innocent, Peril was almost definitely going to be convicted of jailbreak and get thrown in prison for a few years. And as for the Seawings, they likely won't be happy seeing her around considering her history. Best case scenario she gets kidnaped and is forced to be a weapon of war, worst case they just kill her, maybe torture her before that if they can figure it out. Yeah, best to go alone for now. "Or perhaps forever." she thought. There was a good chance she would never see her mother again and Clay was heading for the Sea Kingdom if she recalled correctly. "If he made it past the guards." Peril thought in a sudden realization. How could he make it past the guards? His groop sticked out like a sore talon and the Sky Kingdom must have been swarming with patrols after the incident. The thought of Clay being dragged back to the Sky Kingdom and potentially Scarlet almost made her want to rush straight back to the palace to protect him. But she remembered her thoughts back in the tomb about hardening herself and pushed on, regardless of her worry and guilt for not going to check. "He probably made it out fine." She dismissed. "And besides, Scarlet probably isn't alive anyway. It's not like he's being tortured or fighting for his life or perhaps being forced to watch as his friends get tortured, And he most definitely is not going to die a slow and painful death in the dungeooOOK CLAY I'M COMING BACK TO YOU NOW I'LL SAVE YOU!"
Yeah that hardening and pushing on thing lasted about 5 seconds. Big surprise. Sure it was unlikely. But she just couldn't let Clay suffer a terrible fate because of a probability, jail time be damned! "And it's what a good friend does right?" Peril thought as she rushed along the mountaintops, throwing any concept of stealth out the window. "Going to make sure they are safe even if it's dangerous and potentially pointless? Oh and also not selling them out this time. That will help too." She still felt a bit terrible for that. She didn't even have a good reason, just to get Clay to stay with her a day longer. Of course she could have just left with him and his friends if she wanted to stay since they all didn't hate her guts completely then. "But NOOO! You had to get your precious black rocks from Scarlet beause you somehow were dumb enough to fail to see through an obvious lie you thick skulled, backstabing, IGNORENT, DUNG PILE OF A DRA-" her downward spiral of self loathing was interrupted by a random tree. She was actually thick skulled apparently because the contact somehow didn't knock her unconscious. It did give her a terrible headache though. She looked up. A tree growing this high up was odd, but not impossible "Note to self: Keep your eyes on the path at all times." she thought up a note which she would likely forget almost immediately. The tree showed a normal reaction to being head bashed by a firescale dragon: Large dent, bark from impact scattered about, on fire etc, so she planned to leave it at that and continue her rush back north. But then he noticed a non normal reaction: the tree was screaming. Ok not screaming, more of just a surprised "AHH!" but still, trees didn't say "AHH!" last she checked so someone must be in there. And it didn't take long for the occupant to fall out of their blazing abode and drop to the ground head 1st. The signature frowny face gave her away almost immediately.
It was Kestrel.