Sparrow quietly sneaked up the hill, getting ready to rip those scavengers apart that had dared to hurt her little brother, when she suddenly tripped over something halfway.

Looking down her eyes went wide when she saw what it was. Hidden by the tall grass in this area was a skeleton of an adult dragon probably two heads higher than her. A strange spear slightly longer than her arm was stuck in its chest, having smashed its way straight through a rib.

The spear was made out of two parts, a long thin speartip that almost resembled a long needle with a slightly thicker tip than was around 1/3 of the length of the spear and composed fully out of metal. It was attached to a wooden shaft that was thicker than the tip and took up the other 2/3 of the spear. To her surprise, the spear was still in top condition and didn't show any rust on the metal nor rotten places on the wood.

She carefully took the spear handle and gave it a tuck, trying to dislodge it from the skeleton, but it didn't move, sticking firmly in the rip. She tried again, pulling harder this time, it finally started moving a bit.

"Come on…" she mumbled putting more force in her pull as she felt the spear slowly, but surely loosen.

Suddenly it shot out and for a second she didn't know her orientation anymore. "Ow…" she managed to groan, before slowly getting back to the feed, looking at the spear which had fallen to the ground a few feet from her. While she didn't feel very comfortable with taking a spear out of a skeleton curiosity had gotten the better of her.

Taking the spear she continued going after the scavengers. Her curiosity could still be satisfied later. Plus she got a good opportunity to test this strange weapon. She wondered where it came from.

Taking to the air, she quickly flew over the hill the two scavengers had disappeared over… and stopped.

Behind the hill was a scavenger-den. This however wasn't a small one you found hidden away in the woods here and there. No, it was huge, stretching itself across the landscape. The walls were almost as high as she was and in the middle of it stood a tower that was bigger than most trees in the forest behind her. She could see scavengers walking around inside the den, swarming all over the place like ants.

"What is this place?" she wondered.

Suddenly she was blinded by a bright light for a moment. Trying to find out where it came from she spotted two scavengers on the wall which surrounded the den handling some kind of contraption. It was made out of wood and metal, which had reflected the sunlight and was the origin of her getting temporarily blinded.

She watched them curiously and despite her vision being partly obstructed by something she assumed was a metal shield that was attached to the front of the weird machine, she could see that they were pulling some robe back and turning some kind of wheel.

Then to her surprise, one of the scavengers picked up a familiar spear from the ground. It was the same spear she had found earlier.

"Why do they have that?" she wondered. "It's way too big for them."

The scavengers of course didn't answer and instead placed the spear into the machine, the spearhead poking out on the front. Then they pointed it at her.

"Wait…" she realized in horror. "That's a weapon?"

Sparrow didn't get a chance to ponder any longer on it as a second later the spear shot out of the device flying straight at her chest.

With a surprised shriek, she threw herself sideways trying to avoid the impact. The realization that she hadn't been fast enough hit her when a stinging feeling shot through her arm as the spear penetrated her upper arm like butter before continuing on its original trajectory as nothing happened. Then the pain set in her entire arm feeling like it had caught on fire. She tried to regain focus, but she didn't get the chance as even more pain suddenly shot through her entire body.

Sparrow groaned, tasting blood, which she spat out. She could feel a sharp rock stinging her side, so she rolled to the side onto less uncomfortable ground. "Didn't I just fly a second ago?" she wondered, opening her eyes and seeing a scavenger city in front of her. Then she remembered what happened.

"I must have crashed…" she realized before trying to get to her feet again, a task easier said than done… before it was made a lot easier when suddenly a second spear penetrated the ground in front of her causing her to jump to her feet followed by a second leap behind the nearest tree where she stayed panting, her heart beating so hard she had the feeling that it was about to make a run for it… not that she could blame it.

Peaking from behind the tree she was surprised to find the metal scavenger watching her. It had put his helmet back on and was simply standing there doing nothing.

Then he finally moved, turning towards his comrade saying something to him in their gibberish language. His comrade responded by handing him something. After that the strange scavenger started approaching Sparrow, walking in a casual stride without any real hurry. It was slightly unnerving.

She was conducting what she would do when it stopped, pointing the device at him. Upon closer inspection of it, she saw that it looked like a smaller version of the weapon she had been shot with earlier. A lot smaller.

"Is that supposed to hurt me?" she wondered before the scavenger fired. She ducked her head behind the tree nevertheless, having lived through too many unpleasant surprises today to take any further risks. She never regretted the decision.

BOUM!

She flinched at the sound, followed by a heatwave washing over her. "W-what happened?" she asked in shock, unable to hear her own voice through the ringing in her ears. A shift in her vision caught her attention. The tree had been hit, and there was no sign left of the projectile that had been fired at her. Instead, there was a smoldering, ugly black scar in it.

She took a quick sidestep to avoid being hit by the tree as it fell over. "Did that thing he shot at me just explode?" she unsurely looked at the spear she was still holding despite having fallen out of the sky, almost expecting it to blow up too. It didn't, probably only something the smaller ones did to compensate for their small size.

Talking about smaller ones, she looked at the scavenger again, who was currently putting a new one of these small spears into his weapon. She stumbled back in a hurry when he started to point it at her a second time.

"Nononono!" she managed to say stumbling over her own words as much as she did over her feet before managing to take to the sky bumping her wings as fast as she could manage.

She dared to look back fully expecting to be hit by the shot at any moment now and her internals getting blown out. Instead, the scavenger was simply starring at her. Then after what felt like an eternity it lowered its weapon and proceeded to head back to the scavenger den that was still looming in the distance.

Nevertheless, she didn't slow down and continued to fly as fast as she could, her plans to avenge the attack on her brother all but forgotten by now. This place had turned out to be ten times more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. The two weapons had been able to seriously injure her, maybe even kill her if they had properly hit her. Then there was that weapon it had used to attack her little brother and who knew what else they had in stock.

A day ago she would have seen scavenger as nothing more than slightly more dangerous pray, but nothing really serious you needed to worry about. Now, however, that had changed. Not with that scavenger den around which had weapons that could easily take a dragon out of the sky, and judging by the skeleton earlier also had done it before. Not with that scavenger who had seriously injured her brother in hand-to-hand combat and almost killed her without even breaking a sweat. Hell, she started to wonder if it even was a scavenger at all.

Yesterday all her worries had been to be a good sister to her brother. Today however she had the feeling that she had stumbled across some that might turn into a huge threat to dragons in its proximity if it wasn't already one at this very moment. What if other scavenger dens started evolving to the same level? It would be a second scorching, only the other way around. A shiver went down her spine at the mere thought alone.

"I… I might have to warn the queen about this…" she looked at the spear she was still clutching onto as if her life depended on it. "At last I got something to prove my story."

After 15 chapters I finally wrote the first one from dragon perspective. Not sure how it went trought, so feedback is welcome. (Same for question.)