Unscoured - Trials Of The Great Khan

by GamprHabanero

Five dragonets find themselves thrust into the world with only an enigmatic 'scavenger' for aid and protection. A man awakens to find that everything he's worked for is completely and utterly destroyed, with only a group of dragonets for company. Can these dragonets keep him sane and help him gain back what he lost? Who will be the heroes' hero, and who will be the hero's heroes?

8. P2A1C03

Aaaaand, here we are, folks! It's the chapter where Altamir concludes his mission against Scarlet, and gets the opportunity to introduce himself to first Hailstorm, and then - and this is the big one - the Dragonets of Destiny! Probably the single most important, plot-critical sort of relationship in this entire story. For several reasons, as y'all will find out soon.

Now, I will warn that this chapter's first part will be rather bloody and gory...but then again, Wings of Fire has always been surprisingly bloody and gory for what's (at least ostensibly) middle-grade children's literature, especially the first book of the series (which this chapter is loosely adapting the events of) as well as the "Legends: Darkstalker" book.

After that, though, things will be much more settled for the rest of the chapter...well, for the most part, anyways.

---

CHAPTER 3: DRAGONS ARE NOT SLAVES, 2/2

Morning, January 21st

"Queen of the SkyWings, Scarlet, was it? Is that you there next to that SandWing?"

Altamir watched with some degree of curiosity as the jaws of most of the dragons in the stands collectively fell open. It was as if they had expected those in the sands to just die wordlessly or...whatever, and so they were caught off guard when someone refused to do so in the most spectacular way possible.

Especially Scarlet, given her squawking after a long twenty or so seconds of silence. "Wha...WHAT?! Th-Th-The scavenger...THE SCAVENGER TALKS?! HOW IS THE SCAVENGER TALKING?! WHY IS THE SCAVENGER TALKING?!"

"What, do you think we're supposed to be merely seen and not heard or something like that?" Altamir retorted. "My kind are PROPERLY called 'humans', by the way, and of COURSE we can talk! We've ALWAYS been able to talk! Perhaps you haven't been listening closely enough?"

More silence filled the arena, Altamir hearing the errant gasp or two from the stands here and there. He took the opportunity to look in the direction of the human boy that he'd saved and waved him over...and after a brief stumble, the boy was running over to him as fast as he could. After watching him approach for a few seconds, Altamir turned his attention back to the Queen, who was looking offended now.

"You...you dare mock me...?!"

"And what if I am?" Altamir retorted to the Queen yet again. "It's not like you're in any position to clutch your pearls; I've had to listen to your crowing about how things are oh so 'thrilling' all day, all night!" After yet another brief silence, Altamir continued. "So, this is your 'set-up', isn't it, Scarlet? Where dragons and humans alike are brought here to die for your amusement? Because you find it entertaining and, again, 'thrilling'? Very interesting!"

Then, Altamir heard the boy finally reach him and stop a few feet away. "H-Hey...what are you d-doing...?!"

"You'll see in a minute." Altamir quickly replied before turning back to the Queen once more, unsummoning his sword in his right while then summoning his 'bow' in his left. "You know, you're not the first individual I've met, human or dragon, who had a taste for bloodshed and death in this matter; I've met others somewhat like you. Some who are just as bloodthirsty, just as enjoying of the carnage of lives ending. But there's one thing that they all tend to forget, and that you seem to have forgotten as well." He then 'strung' an 'arrow' in a bow as he finished that sentence.

"And what exactly have I 'forgotten', scavenger?"

"Oh, it's something very simple that's a constant in bloodsports!" Altamir answered the Queen's questioning while charging up the 'arrow'. "Simply put, Queen Scarlet, when bloodshed and violence are in play, ANYONE can get involved!" The 'arrow' glowed brighter and brighter as he did so. Almost there...

"Anyone?" Scarlet asked, this time in a manner that sounded genuinely quizzical.

"Exactly, Scarlet! Anyone! And I do mean it, too! Even up to...and including..." Then, having finished charging the 'arrow', Altamir spun around in a clockwise manner once...twice...three times...and then after the third time, he quickly 'locked' the 'arrow' onto the Queen's putrid face. "...THE QUEEN!"

After roaring the last bit out, Altamir then loosed the 'arrow' at the SkyWing Queen.

Near her, the large SandWing seemed to realize that if something shining and glowing this brightly even in daytime was flying at you, it was probably exceedingly dangerous, and so had the mind to jump out of the 'box' that the Queen was standing in. Lucky SandWing...

"WHAT IN-"

*KABOOM!*

...not-so-lucky SkyWing Queen.

Due to the magical, arcane nature of the 'arrows', they may have caused fiery explosions when they hit something, but they also didn't really leave any smoke behind except for the burnt dust or whatnot of whatever they blew up whatever they hit. In this case, it was the bits of Scarlet's skull, as well as the pinkish-red mist that was the blood and the pulped remains of her head's softer organs and tissue...which now coated everything around and behind Scarlet as her now-headless body collapsed to the floor of where she'd been standing, blood pouring out of the stump where her head used to be connected to the neck like a fountain and spilling over the side of the 'box'.

That was the most satisfying sight of the day thus far, given her deeds.

While the screaming and shrieking from the stands was beginning as the audience realized that their 'beloved' Queen was dead, Altamir quickly turned to the boy standing dumbfounded near him, noticing that he was olive-skinned and brown-haired. "Alright, I'm gonna warp you up behind this dragon with glowing scales. She won't eat you, she's on your side...just don't touch her, because her scales will burn you if you do. Just get down as low as you can behind her, alright?"

"Uh, okay..." The boy nodded. "But...whaddya mean by warpi-"

Altamir hated to cut him off, but he needed the boy out of the way as soon as possible, so he warped the boy over to behind where Peril was mid-sentence (Peril clearly still standing where she had been, as was the plan).

Now for the next phase. With the Queen dead, the guards and soldiers were his next obstacles that stood in the way of rescuing the dragonets. Best way to eliminate such obstacles was to draw their attention to him and then take them out as they came.

So, that's what he did.

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!" Altamir roared out as he looked about the frightened audience in the stands. "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! IS THAT NOT WHY YOU'RE HERE?!" After a few seconds, he continued, actively mocking them and the guards and soldiers now. "What's the matter? You came here because you found bloodshed and death to be a fine and dandy thing...all I've done is merely give you just that! Oh, what's that, did I kill your 'precious', 'beloved' queen? Who totally wasn't going to literally kill dragonets in her arena for fun? What's wrong, guards and soldiers, aren't you going to try and avenge her, or are you too afraid to do so? If the latter one's so, then how disappointing for a 'mighty warrior tribe', and how pathetic!"

Altamir acknowledged that this would usually be quite unlike how he normally was, as he had a respect for life and a loathing for the (nonetheless necessary) task of killing thanks to years of war, and many years of tragedy and loss. However...for one thing, that 'loathing' DID have an exception; namely, when someone whom he was dealing with was either utterly and irrevocably evil and well beyond the point of redemption, or had 'simply' committed atrocity after atrocity after atrocity (in which case he would not lose sleep for killing such individuals)...the latter of which was certainly the case with these soldiers and guards, given what they did under Scarlet in generally using Karmin's good name as an outhouse, and while he would seldom admit it aloud, he often delighted in giving such individuals a taste of their own medicine...if these guards and soldiers had a thing for bloodlust, he'd show them 'bloodlust' alright. For another, this front of mockery was an act, an act meant to goad the guards and soldiers into foolishly attacking him...so that he could then strike them down by the dozen.

And sure enough...

"That little..."

"...he's mocking us!"

"How dare he make a fool out of..."

"GET HIM!"

"AFTER HIM!"

...they were swooping down towards the arena in an attempt to kill him. Looked to be a good twenty or so of them, as far as Altamir could tell.

How foolish...they didn't know what they were dealing with. The armor that they were wearing, while clearly of...somewhat sound metallurgy, at the least, wasn't going to save them. Neither would their fire breath, their fangs, their tails, or their spears.

Some of them (six of them, specifically) tried to either grab or spear him...but, faster than their eyes could see, he leapt above their arms, bow un-summoned and now with his long-form sword in his right hand and ablaze with flame once again, landing on the head of one of them.

"Too slow." Altamir mocked them yet again.

"You little...!" The SkyWing he landed on tried to grab at him...but only grabbed at thin air as Altamir leapt into the air once again. "GET BACK HERE!"

"How sluggish..." This time, Altamir wasn't going to content himself with merely AVOIDING them... "now die!"

No, he instead rocketed right at them from above...

"ORAAA!"

*ZNSH!* *KNSH!* *TNSH!* *SHNK!* *TNG!* *SLASH!*

And cut right through them, landing about five or so body lengths behind one of them.

One of them finally noticed where he was. "Wha...you little...get back here-!"

"Like I said, too slow." Altamir replied. "Don't you even know you're dead already?"

"Eh? What's that supposed to-" Then, a glowing line went through the SkyWing's chest, and another through his head. "Wha-Wha in-wha's goin' on? Why am I-d-d-d-DOPII-!"

*KABOOM!*

With a final, distorted cry that was then cut off, the SkyWing fell to pieces in an explosion of blood and flames, and his comrades panicked at the sight...

"WAAH!"

"WHAT HAPPENED TO-!"

"HOW DID HE-!"

And then the other five started having glowing lines appearing on them as well...

"Huh? Wait, no! No no no don't-I-I-m-m-MAKABAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"GOJIPWAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"ZHA-TOO-!" *KABOOM!*

"PEYGAAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"KIDABAA-!" *KABOOM!*

...before they, too, shared that comrade's fate as their voices distorted before they fell to flaming pieces, their blood pouring into the sands.

Altamir would usually feel QUITE bad about killing in this manner...but how much fear and terror had these same guards and soldiers and whatnot inflicted upon so many dragons and even humans under Scarlet's orders? There were people and dragons much more deserving of mercy in his mind.

The other SkyWings who were in the sands were backing up, stricken by fear after seeing how this 'tiny little thing' had managed to effortlessly kill six of their own, and in such a manner.

But a (likely high-ranking) SkyWing in fancier armor wouldn't have any of that, clearly. "DON'T COWER AWAY FROM HIM! UNTIL THE NEW QUEEN IS CROWNED, WE FOLLOW THE LATE ONE TO THE END! THE FIRST ONE TO KILL THAT SCAVENGER AND BRING HIS PUNY HEAD TO ME WILL GET A PROMOTION!"

This, along with the arrival of roughly twenty or so more armored SkyWings, turned the tides of the SkyWings' morale towards 'attack' again, and they now rushed Altamir once, now numbering at least 34 (not counting the fancy-armored one).

"Follow her? Very well then..." Altamir simply leaned back a bit... "...you can follow her TO HELL!"

...before rushing them right back himself.

This time, he went in, blade a burning inferno that was whirling as hard and fast as he could make it as he went all in on cutting down the SkyWings as quickly as possible. "ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"

*BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!*

"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"

*BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!*

"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA! ORAAAA!"

*BANGBANGBANGBANG BANGBANGBANGBANG BANG!*

Despite the number of SkyWings, it didn't take him that long to cut through them all. He'd come a long, LONG way from when he'd personally cut down thirty or so of Wērōd's bodyguards at age 17, so taking down a troop of SkyWings even this numerous wasn't particularly difficult for him.

And it showed.

"YAGAAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"TEKIYAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"PUJJII-!" *KABOOM!*

"SUWOOO-!" *KABOOM!*

"TEGOO-!" *KABOOM!*

"GEZOO-!" *KABOOM!*

"UWARABAA-!" *KABOOM!*

"DOEHEPUU-!" *KABOOM!*

"ABESHII-!" *KABOOM!*

"TAWABAA-!" *KABOOM!*

*KABOOMKABOOMKABOOMKABOOMKABOOMKABOOM!*

*KABOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!"

Before long, all 34 of the other guards and soldiers that had come after Altamir up to that point had explosively fallen to pieces, with him having either cut around their armor, or even right THROUGH their armor. Ignoring the now terrified crowds in the audience, Altamir now landed in front of the SkyWing in the fancy armor...

...who clearly couldn't believe what he was seeing. "What in...how did you...how did you-?!"

"What's wrong, mister fancy armor?" Altamir now applied the 'mockery' method to him as well. "Have your minions turned out to be not as mighty or as powerful as you want to believe of your tribe? Guess the whole 'SkyWing Might' deal isn't all it's cracked up to be."

The fancy-armored SkyWing clearly hated hearing that. "RrrRRRRGH...how dare you mock my tribe...!"

"You made a mockery of life itself by killing so many dragons and humans for your own amusement." Altamir retorted. "And you have the audacity to get upset now? You're really one to talk."

This seemed to make the SkyWing lose his patience big time. "-Gah! I won't let you make a mockery of my tribe for any longer, scavenger!" Then, he charged at Altamir. "KNOW THE NAME OF YOUR DOOM: PRINCE HAWK OF THE SKYWINGS!" This would be intimidating to anyone else, perhaps...

...but Altamir wasn't impressed. He simply dodged the SkyWing's spear and then flashed right through him with his burning blade, faster than the latter could see, before landing behind where the SkyWing was.

"Hmm...seems like with all of your 'might', you couldn't kill me." Altamir was still mocking the SkyWing, who turned around, clearly looking extremely irate. "What's wrong? Are you gonna cry about it or something?"

"GRRRR...GRAAAAAAGH! I'LL KILL YOU-!"

"Well, too slow, I killed you first. You're already dead."

"...huh?" Then, the SkyWing's armor shattered. "Wha-?! What's going on...why am I-?!" Then, the lines started appearing all over him. "H-Hey! What did you-did-you-di-di-di-HIDEBUU-!"

*KABOOM!*

And then he, too, fell to pieces in an explosion of blood and flames. Just like his minions had. Altamir just shook his head in exasperation.

"I told you that you were dead already...and you didn't listen." Altamir said to no one in particular as he kicked the now-severed head of this 'Prince Hawk' down the stairs. "Not so 'princely' anymore. Should have known...none from any tribe can even hope to face up against me." Then, he looked around at the crowds. "Show's over! Any more of this 'killing dragons and humans for your own amusement' nonsense, and I'll be back for round two!"

With that final message, he warped himself back to where Peril was, where he found her and the human boy both looking shocked at what they had just witnessed.

"I'm back." He said simply. Peril and the boy both looked startled by what they had just seen before they backed down a bit...

...though clearly still confused. "Okay...h-how did you...DO all of that?!" The boy's croaking out of that question seemed to be silently mirrored in Peril's facial expression.

"Don't ask how I did it...just know that it's done." Altamir replied. "Now...a few more things, and then we'll go. First..." When he said that, Altamir finally cast the spell that would turn 'Ruby' back into Tourmaline, as well as everything related to it...it would take effect when 'Ruby' next landed after a flight.

Of course, that was just one spell he was casting, and not the last.

"And, next thing..." Then, he warped Pyrite to where he and Peril and the boy were standing.

"Huh? Wha? Where am I? Where am-" As 'she' was panicking, Altamir cast a sleeping spell on 'her'. "Where...am...I...where...aaah..." Within a few seconds, 'she' was out like a light.

"Whoa, uh...what did you just do to her?" Peril asked, alarmed.

"Don't worry, I didn't harm her..." Altamir waved away her concern. "...I just made it so that she's asleep now. Easier to transport this way." Then, he turned towards the cage. "Oh, and one last thing...before I forget..."

Altamir then used his magic to hold the cage in place so that it wouldn't fall as he then, with his blade, cut away the portion that was holding the cage to the bar, before gently setting the cage down (so as to not harm its 'contents').

"Alright...now that's done..." He then quickly looked at everyone and everything he wanted to take with him. "Let's get outta here!"

So, with that, Altamir then warped himself, Peril, the human boy, the knocked-out 'Pyrite', and the cage (and all of its also-out-like-a-light 'contents') away from the SkyWing arena...

...

...and all the way back to Maroon and Acorn's cave, hundreds of miles to the south.

"Alright, we're back!" Altamir called out after making sure that the cage hadn't roughly clattered, which would injure its 'contents' more than they likely already were. It hadn't, so he turned his attention to Maroon, who answered as he came into Altamir's view with Acorn on his back.

"Oh, hey, you're ba-" Maroon's voice trailed off as he was clearly not expecting there to be seven more dragons in the cave. "...uh...I thought you were just gonna go take down the...?"

"I was..." Altamir replied, scratching the back of his head, "...however, there were certain...things that required my attention, to put it this way. I...yeah, I should probably explain this." Beside him, Peril shrank away from seeing the other SkyWing.

"You mean that you should explain why you suddenly came back with seven whole dragons?" Acorn asked dryly. "Yeah, I think ANYONE would want that to be explained, buddy. You trying to crowd this place with 'em or something?"

"Well, I..." Altamir sighed. "...let's just say that, while I was there, I found a group of...someones...whom I couldn't leave behind. Also, it's not just seven dragons, but another human here as well."

"Oh...I see..." Maroon then came a little closer to Altamir and his 'cargo'. "...he looks pretty scared. Though, for that matter, so does that SkyWing..."

But then Maroon stopped in his tracks and eyed the SkyWing in question, before looking at Altamir.

"Uh...Altamir?" Maroon asked pensively. "You...do realize that you brought in a Firescales, right?"

"Yes I did." Altamir nodded, eyeing Maroon in turn. "What, are you going to ask me to throw her off a cliffside or something? Because that's not happening. I thought that that whole 'tradition' had long-since died off by the time I was born. Nevermind, it hasn't."

"Wait, it died off...?"

"Well, it HAD." Altamir shrugged. "Guess it couldn't stay dead like it should have. Ugh..." After burying his forehead in the palm of his hand for a bit, he then moved on to Peril herself and who she was. "...er...anyways...this young lady right here...her name's Peril. She was...well, unfortunately, Scarlet kept her at the arena for use as...basically a living weapon. In other words, she was the sort that Scarlet would throw dragons and even dragonets to and have her kill them...just so that Scarlet and those crowds in the stands could get a kick out of it." Nearby, Peril winced...

...while Maroon sighed. "Oh...well, gonna be honest, that sounds like something Scarlet would do. Though...I don't remember ever seeing Peril before."

"That's because she's seven and a half years old." Altamir responded. "You fled her palace eight years ago, remember?"

"Huh? Ah, that's right...wow, you're pretty good at listening to and remembering stuff, Altamir."

"Had to be." Altamir rolled his head on his shoulders. "Won't say the profession I had...but it was one in which I couldn't afford to miss details like that."

Then, he looked at the seven dragons and one human that he'd brought with him. He had a little bit of...spell-work to do, to say the least.

"Hmm..." Altamir thought somewhat aloud. "Now, where do I start..."

Though, before he could make whatever was going to be his initial choice on who to start with, he felt someone tapping his shoulder, and saw that same human boy he'd rescued from the arena looking at him with wide eyes.

"...what?"

"Y-You..." The boy was stammering all over his words. "...you...you can...talk to...a..a dragon. You can...talk to a dragon. You..."

"...yes, I can talk to a dragon." Altamir replied, an eyebrow raised at the boy. "What...is it so unusual to you? Last time I remembered, it was a perfectly normal everyday thing. Is it not so wherever you live and such?"

"...well...it...I..." The boy then looked between Altamir and Maroon. "...uh, what specifically was he saying?"

"He was simply asking about why I brought seven dragons back to his cave. I thought it would be rather loud and clear."

Then, the boy put his fingers together. "M...Maybe to...to you it is...but..." He seemed to have a hard time putting whatever he was going to say into words for a bit before he finally said what he wanted to say. "...how do I say this...I'm...only hearing one side of the conversation."

"Only hearing one..." Altamir tilted his head, trying to figure out what was going on. "...what do you mean by that? I heard what he was saying perfectly..."

But then his voice took its turn to trail off as Altamir started to smell a rat.

"Wait a second...something's off." The boy had said something along the lines of being unable to understand what Maroon was saying. "But Maroon and I are speaking the same language as he is! How could he not understand a thing that Maroon was-"

...!

And then he finally picked up on something that he had been feeling from the boy.

While he'd always known that his sword and 'bow', whenever he summoned either of them, had this unique 'feel' to them, it was shortly after he'd met an animus dragon for the first time early on in his rule over all of Pyrrhia that Altamir found and realized that he had an actual sixth sense: he could sense Animus Magic. Specifically, he could sense who was a user of it and what (or, occasionally, who) it was used on, and he could do both by sensing the signature of the aura that such individuals and objects and whatnot gave off (it was how he was able to pick up that both Maroon and Acorn were Animi).

And while he hadn't been really paying attention to it like he probably should have, given that his current 'task' of rescuing these dragonets and taking down Scarlet along the way, as well as doing the spell-work that he'd have to do on those dragonet, had been occupying that attention, he was now feeling it very, very strongly from the boy... "That's...the signature...that's an Animus signature! Just like on 'Pyrite' and 'Ruby'! And they were enchanted into being entirely different dragons...if it was possible to do that with Animus Magic, and this young man can't understand what Maroon is saying when he should be able to..."

...and it was all coming together. "...then this young man...he may have been...he has to have been..."

"Hey, wait, hold on," Altamir went to figure out the exact circumstances of what was likely a spell (or, rather, a 'curse', as Altamir would call it in such a situation like this), "what specifically are you hearing from him? Are you unable to understand a thing he's saying, if you can hear him at all?"

"I-I-I hear him! I hear him! It's just...I...can't...I...I can't really figure out exactly what he's saying to you, okay? It...well, to me, he just sounds like he's making a bunch of roars and growls and hisses and stuff...not real, actual words. I can't know what he's saying unless you tell me."

"Just a bunch of...well that's not normal." Altamir then looked over at Maroon. "Maroon, he's saying that he can only hear 'a bunch of roars and growls and hisses' whenever you're talking. Is there, in turn, anything 'funny' going on on your end when it comes to hearing him?"

"Uh..." Maroon looked around at the cave floor before answering. "...well, if it helps you, I'm only hearing a bunch of squeaking and 'yibbling' from him."

"So it's on his end as well..." Altamir then looked back at the boy. "...though...a single spell can affect those around an enchanted individual or an object also. Either way, time to break this thing out of this poor kid."

Altamir had no idea why someone would put an 'enchantment' like this on some kid. It probably had to do with the Animus in question being an Animus Dragon driven mad by usage of his or her powers. Things like this made a statement by his late uncle about how "madmen and madwomen see what they see" ring very, very, very true.

"...alright, so..." Altamir then turned back to the boy as he put an arm around the latter under his arms and just under his shoulders, "...I want you to hold still and not panic. Just gonna do something here, alright?"

"Gonna do what?" As the boy asked this, Altamir got to work breaking the spell with a 'counter-spell/spell-breaker' that he'd developed over his years of existence just in case he DID encounter someone who had a curse placed on them...and now it came in handy. "Wait, what are you-"

*BZZAP*

Just then, Altamir finally broke the spell...but the recoil from him doing it upon the boy was pretty nasty to the latter...

...to the point where the boy fainted in Altamir's arm.

"That's a strong spell..." Altamir was alarmed, but shook his head and then got to work with healing magic to make sure that nothing serious had happened to the boy. "Okay...don't panic..."

Right...he'd heard from records dating back to Tomur's time that breaking in this manner a particularly powerful spell that had been placed on someone could result in the latter feeling dizzy or unwell for a time if it was a human who had been 'enchanted'. Dragons didn't seem to have this problem...but they were also generally bigger and more durable than humans, who were smaller and much more physically frail by comparison.

Though...Tomur wasn't necessarily talking about Animus Magic when he said that in that record Altamir read...and besides, Animus Magic generally didn't have this issue. Had there been more than just Animus Magic to cast this spell, or...?

"Uh...is he okay?" Peril asked, cutting Altamir out of his thoughts and finally speaking after having been quiet for a while. "What did you do to him?"

"Broke the spell, that's what I did." Altamir replied. "I think he'll wake up again in a little bit...ah, there he is."

Sure enough, the boy was awake again. "...wuh...wha...? Wha-Wha happened to me? What did you..." Behind him, Peril's jaw fell open again.

"Broke whatever spell it was that was put upon you." Altamir replied as he carefully sat the boy down. "Sorry about the 'fainting' spell...no pun intended."

"Whoa...he...he can talk too?!" Peril reacted with shock for the second time to a human being able to talk, for some reason. Poor girl really must not have been able to experience the outside world, hadn't she? Oh wait right she had lived in an arena-

"Of course he can talk." Maroon sighed. "It's just that now you're able to hear what he's saying, Peril."

Then, Maroon walked over towards Altamir and the boy. As he did so, Peril shrunk away while the boy clung to Altamir's leg as Maroon then looked at him.

"Hey there...what's your name?"

"Uh...Leaf?"

"In what spelling?" Altamir then asked. "L-E-I-F?"

"No, with an 'A', not an 'I'."

Leaf? After the thing that fell from the...what, were they all named after tree parts and tree-related things now? What next, was this kid gonna have parents named 'Branch' and 'Trunk', and a sister named 'Stump'?

Seriously, what in the name of the gods had happened to the naming conventions, anyways?

Ah, whatever...he'd ask about it later. "Well, Leaf," Altamir said after a bit, "glad to see that the whole 'communication' issue is resolved." Then, he looked at the seven dragonets that he had brought back. "Now then, I've got some work to do on these kids here. I suppose you can go hang out with Maroon for a bit while I do that."

And so, Altamir then began walking back over to the seven dragonets. It was then that he remembered that he was still wearing his armor...but he decided, for certain reasons, against taking it off just yet.

Though, before he could get far, Leaf (by the gods, he couldn't believe that was his name) interrupted him. "Uh...sir?"

"Hm?"

"Um...I...I'm not the only human you need to save from...that palace or whatever."

!

"You...you aren't?" Altamir felt a wave of dread over him upon hearing that, though he tried not to show it. Oh no, he'd forgotten some, hadn't he?

"...yeah, I'm not."

"Well then, who are the others?"

"Uh, they're named Cranberry, Rowan, and Thyme."

"...alright. So you want me to bring them here?"

"Y-Yeah, please do."

"Very well."

So, Altamir took a few steps back over to Leaf before looking into his mind briefly to identify who the five humans were. Once he did, he then picked out a spot about ten feet to Leaf's left, and then warped the three humans from wherever they were to that particular spot...and they appeared in a flash.

"Whoa...just like that?" Leaf asked in clear awe.

"Yep." Then, Altamir walked over to the three humans (Cranberry and Rowan being female, Thyme being male, and all looking Baktrian in complexion like Leaf was, and all three looking to be...roughly in their early twenties, if Altamir was to estimate), and as they were all mumbling in a daze as to how they got here...

"...huh? Where are..."

"What in..."

"How did we..."

...Altamir got their attention. "Cranberry, Rowan, and Thyme, was it? Is that who the three of you are?"

The three humans looked at Altamir in surprise before Thyme answered. "...uh...yeah? How did you know our...?"

"Leaf here told me." Altamir answered back in turn, motioning to Leaf standing next to him. "That's how."

"Um...okay then." Rowan seemed to accept this, though she quickly began looking rather frightened, as did Thyme and Cranberry. "But...uh..."

"'But' what?"

"...you...do realize that there's a...a dragon behind you...and another one over there...right?"

Altamir figured pretty quickly that Rowan was talking about Maroon and Peril. "Oh, those two? Yeah, there are. What of it?"

"...shouldn't you be...worried about that?" Cranberry asked, clearly questioning Altamir's sanity.

"What, do you think that they're like the ones that managed to get their talons on the four of you?" Altamir cocked his head at her. "Because they're not."

"...are you sure about that?"

Before Altamir could answer Thyme's questioning, Maroon cut in. "Uh, Altamir, they have the 'squeaking and yibbling' thing going on with them from my end too."

"...they do? Well, that's a bit of a problem." At that, Altamir walked over to the three of them and went to repeat with them what he'd previously done with Leaf. "Alright, you three come here for a bit..."

So, Altamir broke the spell on them as well, the three of them also fainting briefly at having that spell broken, and they also reacted with shock at being able to talk to dragons (again, it was a normal thing, or at the very least was supposed to be). Once they got used to the idea of being able to talk to dragons, Altamir then sent them and Leaf to the back of the cave with Acorn and Maroon ("Alright, the lot of you can go talk to him. I'm needing to work on some things here.") so that he could focus on his task.

While he heard some of the group of humans apparently arguing with Acorn about going with Maroon in the background (he heard at least one "come on, he won't bite" from Acorn), Altamir found himself standing before Peril again. At least this time, she was sitting up, though there was a great deal of uncertainty in her eyes.

"Peril?"

"A-Altamir?"

"I'm sure that you might have noticed that there is a...glaring issue that you have. You know what I'm talking about?"

"Uh...I served Scarlet?"

"We've already fixed that one. The other one. The reason as to why I'm currently glad you're on a stone cave floor."

"Oh...you mean me being a Firescales?"

"Mhm. So, obviously, it doesn't change that I find the whole practice of 'let's throw this defenseless hatchling off a high cliff for having too much fire' to be disgusting, but...well, you know some of the problems that being a Firescales can bring, right?"

"...yeah...I do. Lots of them."

"Indeed. Prevents you from living your life normally, makes you a walking hazard to anything and anyone around you." Altamir then looked at 'Pyrite', then at the five dragonets in the cage, then at Peril again as he wondered how to put this. "So, Peril...if there was an opportunity to, say, either get rid of your firescales or be able to 'turn it off', so to speak...what would you think of that?"

"I..." Peril's eyes lit up. "...I'd love that! I'd do anything for that! I'd love to just be a normal dragon!"

"So you would." Altamir then chuckled for a bit. "Well, in that case...I have just the thing for that. Thing is...you're not the first Firescales that I've ever encountered, Peril. When they found out that I could do something about their burning scales, they pretty much begged me to do that. I, however, have, each time, done something better than that." Then, he walked closer to Peril until he put his hand on Peril's front right limb, once again showcasing his inability to be burnt. "I can turn something this debilitating into a superpower."

"A...wait, a 'superpower'?"

"Exactly." Altamir nodded. "Now, obviously, it more than gets in the way of everyday life, but your condition also means that you can't get burnt, you recover from frostbreath very quickly, you can't be poisoned as easily, and SandWing stingers bounce off of you like they're nothing. So, while there's a lot of downsides, there are some pretty key upsides. What I'm thinking of...instead of getting rid of it period, why not be able to have it 'turned off' when you don't need it, and 'turned on' when you do? Because not being able to turn it off isn't the problem here."

"Uh...oh yeah, that's better than just getting rid of it!" It then seemed to sink in as to why Altamir said that to her. "...wait, does that mean you can do that for me?"

"Wouldn't be saying so if I couldn't." Altamir grinned.

This led to the sight of an at-least-30 foot-long dragon giving him the puppy eyes. "Pleeeeeeeease? Please please please pretty please?"

Altamir laughed at seeing this. "Alright, alright, alright, I'll get to it! Just get down here for me and we'll get started."

So, Altamir got to work on the first of seven dragons, with Peril being that first. Frankly, giving her the ability to turn her Firescales off and on was the easiest part, given how he'd been able to do so for so many Firescales dragons he'd met. The somewhat-more-complicated part was getting her to be able to know how to use it, as Altamir had to walk her through being able to do so. That took a few minutes.

Nonetheless, it only took that long for Peril to get the hang of it, and once she had...

"Well, Peril, you'll be able to live a normal life and still have something that's very useful and that you can turn on whenever you need it. How's that?"

He didn't get a word from Peril at first...but then he saw a drop of water hit the ground, and then more and more. He looked up and saw tears streaming down a 'scales off' Peril's face. Something that had likely never been able to stream down her muzzle before.

"Does this mean...that I...I don't have to be called a...a 'monster' or 'freak' anymore by...by other dragons?"

"You never were either of those, Peril. You merely had the misfortune of being under someone who was indeed both of those things." Altamir sighed, before stretching out his arms for her. "Come here..."

So then, Altamir spent the next few minutes holding Peril's snout in an embrace. He would never turn down a dragonet in distress…even if it meant getting himself soaked in her tears...though he very much also knew that he had six more dragonets to work on, so, after those few minutes, and after Peril had calmed down enough, he gently broke off the embrace and had her go hang out with Maroon and the others in the back of the cave. It was for good reason as to why he did this.

Hailstorm was next.

"This is likely to be the trickiest one." Altamir noted mentally as he walked up to the sleeping Pyrite. "I must be careful about this. Not only will I have to undue this forced 'Pyrite' guise and erase all of his memory of his time under it to make sure that it won't damage him mentally, and make sure that he doesn't wake up too early during that time, but I'll have to anticipate a flight-or-fight response from him once he wakes up. With his time as Pyrite out of the picture, the last thing he'll have remembered is having been captured by Scarlet and being held prisoner by her, so if he sees Maroon or Peril before it can be gotten through to him that the two of them are not enemies, he'll either try to attack them or bolt. Both are bad - the latter since, given that the MudWings and SkyWings are both allied to each other and also at war with his tribe, and that we're roughly on the border of both SkyWing and MudWing lands, he's be deep in enemy territory and very, very far from home. I need to be the first thing he sees so that he can see someone who is significantly less threatening and perhaps be reasonable enough to have it explained to him that Maroon and Peril are not his enemies...and then I'll have to find a way to get him somewhere safe."

If he messed this up, not only would all of his hard work be for nothing, but a prince of a tribe, a dragonet, a boy, would be dead, and the blood would be on his hands.

Altamir grit his teeth as he first dried himself off and then set to work on the young dragonet. "Here I go, Hailstorm."

First, and critically, he made sure that the sleeping spell currently on 'Pyrite' would carry over to Hailstorm himself as well once 'Pyrite' was a 'had-been'. Once he did that, then he set to work at getting rid of the 'Pyrite' guise.

Now, getting rid of the guise wasn't that difficult in and of itself; it was clearly the case that the enchantment was 'contained' in the necklace that 'Pyrite' was wearing, so, at least on paper, taking it off would turn Hailstorm back to normal (well, sort of, anyways). If anything, the thing that Altamir was worried about was whether or not something bad would happen because of Hailstorm being asleep when turning back into normal...as well as because 'Pyrite' was apparently smaller than Hailstorm actually was. Altamir had to be careful that such wouldn't happen.

So, he decided to magically suspend 'Pyrite' in the air...and once he did, and with a quick prayer to the gods that nothing would go badly, THEN he took it off. And...well, what happened next would have given him a heart attack if he hadn't read in those same records that the whole 'changing back' bit tended to look this way...

...because it wasn't exactly what one would call 'easy on the eyes'. The dragonet's scales slid off as though 'Pyrite' was melting, and the body changed shape, form, and build as if, at once, both growing and snapping into place, with the snout narrowing and lengthening, the orange color bleeding swiftly out of each scale, and sharp spikes ramming up through the skin along the tip of the tail. This transformation had to have been exceedingly painful, and by the gods was Altamir glad that Hailstorm wasn't conscious, because there was no way that this wouldn't have been a horrifying thing to be awake through.

Regardless, when it was done, Altamir was relieved to see an at-least-apparently unharmed IceWing that he was now magically holding in the air, and so, with a sigh of relief, he carefully set the snoozing dragonet down in a position that was a much more natural one to sleep in...though he checked to make sure that nothing was 'messed-up', so to speak, and then hit Hailstorm up with a round of healing magic anyways just to be sure on that part.

Altamir had to admit that every tribe of dragon could look beautiful, majestic even, in their own way, but when it came to at the very least appearance, at least in his opinion, IceWings were...probably number two when it came to 'most beautiful', just ahead of SeaWings (which were number three), and only behind RainWings (who were an admittedly obvious choice for first place). And Hailstorm here proved it; he certainly was a very pretty dragonet...Altamir was betting that he probably had the best chance of getting his portrait painted back in the IceWing Kingdom.

Though, while he COULD admire Hailstorm's good looks and all...he had a task to do. So, he continued upon it by moving to the next step.

Erasing Hailstorm's memories of his time as 'Pyrite'.

After 'pocketing' the necklace used to enchant Hailstorm into Pyrite (it was yet another of the myriad of abilities that he'd developed and/or discovered after being on this world for so long: he could magically store objects away until they were either needed for use or he needed to present them to someone), Altamir got to work once more.

Altamir didn't like messing with someone's head like this, given that it would entail erasing an entire YEAR of memory in this case, but, again, the effects of having been under the forced guise of Pyrite for so long would be...damaging, to say the least, if he just, say, made Hailstorm wake up without doing this. This was a necessity.

Altamir did not like having to find the exact time that was right before the necklace was first put on Hailstorm, but he needed to do so to find the 'cut-off' point as for how far back he was going to do what he was going to do. Sure enough, he found it, and so prepared the spell that would do this.

It would be a one-off spell that would only take effect once, and probably wouldn't be entirely permanent, with the possible chance of his memories as Pyrite coming back piece by piece in his nightmares, but he did not want to magically compel Hailstorm's brain to artificially force it to never remember anything about Pyrite ever again, as he felt that such would be doing too similar of a thing that Chameleon did when forcibly turning into 'Pyrite': robbing him of his free will. Besides, if it came back only in bits and pieces, and Hailstorm had the basic knowledge of what had happened during that missing year, he'd understand why he was suddenly remembering such things, and it likely wouldn't cause him too much distress...

...well, aside from how an entire year of his life was wasted thanks to that damn maniac Scarlet. Good riddance to her, once again.

Regardless, once the spell was ready, Altamir cast it upon Hailstorm. He didn't know if Hailstorm would notice anything different while he was asleep...if he was even actively dreaming at all. The IceWing dragonet didn't notably fidget or shift around in his sleep when Altamir did this, though...so perhaps not.

But now, now that all that had been done...it was time to go through the difficult task of waking Hailstorm up. So, Altamir carefully positioned Hailstorm's head so that the boy would be looking at the wall when he opened his eyes, and so that Altamir would be the first thing he saw.

As he did so, though, he then noticed something that hadn't really registered earlier. When he 'saw' for himself Hailstorm's original disastrous run-in with Scarlet, he noticed that Hailstorm was...rather on the large side for a dragonet his age at the time. Dragonets who had just turned 5 years old were generally, on average, 22-27 feet long from nose to base-of-tail, and 10-12 feet tall at the shoulder, with a mean length of 24-25 feet long, and a mean height of 11 feet tall. So, logically, Hailstorm, who had quite recently turned 5 at the time of his original capture at Scarlet's talons, and was (at least apparently) at the upper end of the average ranges in both length and height figures back then, should have been roughly 31 feet long and roughly 14 feet tall by now, given that those figures were the upper end of 'average' for 6-year-old dragonets, and it had been a year from the time he'd been captured to the time that Altamir had rescued him.

Instead, however...Hailstorm was the same size now as he had been back then. That was...alright, that was odd. That was not normal. Wait, so...did that mean that...that Hailstorm's body, and possibly also (perhaps, at least, maturity-wise) his mind, had basically been frozen in time while he was 'Pyrite', and so, in effect, he was still 5 years old, for all intents and purposes?

If such was the case...then if (and hopefully when) Winter reunited with his big brother, the effective age difference between them would effectively be only one year, rather than two, and it would also show in the size difference being less.

But alas, enough piddling. It was time to wake Hailstorm up.

So, Altamir deactivated the spell keeping Hailstorm asleep, and then gently began tapping the IceWing on the snout. As was typical of his tribe, his scales were cold to the touch - he would not exactly be an opportune pick for someone looking for a companion to warm up with in the cold weather that was floating about right now, but he'd be an excellent companion for someone needing to cool off on a hot summer day.

Regardless, after a few seconds, the dragonet began stirring a bit, and then opened his beautiful blue eyes common amongst his tribe, blinking them a few times.

"Where...ugh, where am I?" The IceWing groggily asked himself as he was waking up, before focusing his eyes on Altamir. "I...oh...huh, there's one in front of me...wait, how is it so close and not running away...?"

"...hm?" Altamir tilted his head at the dragonet. "What do you mean 'not running away'?"

Altamir had only meant to innocently ask about his mumbling question, and was about to ask about the usage of 'it' to refer to him.

But before he could ask that...he saw Hailstorm's eyes widen, and then the IceWing's head shot up a few feet before he went still as a statue.

"D-Did you...did you just t-talk to me?" The words came stumbling out of Hailstorm's mouth, as Altamir saw not just shock in those eyes...

...but horror as well.

But why? All Altamir did, period, in front of an awake Hailstorm was talk! "I...was just wanting to ask you a few things, you know...I was wondering if-"

"I'M SORRY!"

Altamir took a step back in surprise and confusion as Hailstorm himself scrambled and stumbled back until he was up against the wall of the cave.

"I-I'm so sorry, I didn't know you guys could-could talk! I...I...uh, I..."

"Wait, what?!" This statement was...baffling to Altamir, to say the least. "What do you mean you had no idea? It's a perfectly normal thing! How could..." But then his voice trailed off as he made a connection.

"...this is the third time that a dragon has reacted with shock to me being able to talk. This poor kid's got the worst reaction so far; he looks horrified." A small part of him had thought (and was hoping) that this was limited to one tribe, and that Scarlet's shenanigans were the reason behind why...but Hailstorm was an IceWing, and while he had spent a full year as Pyrite, Altamir had erased his memories of such, and...

"...it is? R-Really?"

"Well, it's supposed to be." Altamir answered Hailstorm. "Hold on...do you even know that we're properly called 'humans'?"

"...oh, so that's your proper name? Uh...n-no, I never knew that. A-As far as I know, we usually call your kind 'scavengers'."

"So it's indeed not just the SkyWings. The IceWings have this issue as well. I don't know how many other tribes this affects, but even then, that still tells me: something has happened to Pyrrhia while I was gone." What specifically was it, though? Was it a steady decline, or something sudden and catastrophic? And if it was someone, not something that did it...who did it? As he thought about this, he couldn't ignore that Hailstorm was a stuttering mess just like Peril was. "Hailstorm being this nervous and horrified, though... odd coming from a dragonet who had previously been so brave, despite his circumstances." And this shock and horror and...fear seemed to have been specifically set off by him being able to talk to Hailstorm...was it related to whatever had happened? "...does he know something that I don't? Something that would give me a heart attack if I heard what specifically it was from him?"

Part of him wanted to press the issue with Hailstorm...but much as that curious, investigative side of him wanted to do so, he just couldn't do it. Hailstorm was a confused dragonet waking up from a year's time of being imprisoned inside another dragon, for one thing, and Altamir just wasn't the person to interrogate a child, a boy, out of curiosity over something. For another, if the usually-brave Hailstorm was this horrified about whatever it was...then it was probably something that it would be better that he not find out. And for yet another, he STILL had a task to do with regards to Hailstorm and the other five dragonets.

"...um...so uh, wh-where am I, e-exactly?"

So, with the opportunity given to him by Hailstorm asking him this, Altamir (reluctantly) dropped the issue of this mysterious event, and simply answered that question. "...where are you? Well...it'll take a bit to get it to roll off the tongue, but let's just start by saying that, along with a few other dragonets I saved, I've managed to rescue your snowy hide from Scarlet and her minions...had to kill her and a lot of those minions just to do it, though."

Altamir watched Hailstorm's jaw fall open when he told the young IceWing this. "...wait, you really-?! You...you actually...?"

"You heard me correctly: yes, I did." Altamir nodded, allowing himself a small grin. "Turned Scarlet's putrid, gaudy face in particular into a stain on the wall and floor around her."

Hailstorm chuckled in seeming disbelief. "Uh...eheheh...um...good job getting me out of there, I guess...? Though...uh...h-how in three moons did you even do that?! You're so small..."

"Oh, come on, I've always been small!" Altamir laughed a bit himself before he properly replied. "A little life lesson for you here: you should never underestimate someone or something based on size. While I can't quite show you specifically how I did it because of the cramped quarters here and all...let's just say that I have my ways. If I could show you, you'd probably believe it pretty easily."

"Um...alright then...heh...never thought I'd find myself being saved by a sca...human, of all things..." Then, though, Hailstorm lowered his head to Altamir again. "...uh...what's your name?"

"Eh? Ah shit, we've never introduced ourselves to each other, haven't we? Er...my name's 'Altamir'."

"Altamir...oh, I guess you humans have different naming customs than we dragons do...and you can call me 'Hailstorm'. Prince Hailstorm."

"We do have different naming customs...and Prince Hailstorm? Well, how about that, I ended up saving a prince of an entire tribe."

"You did...and in all seriousness, thank you for saving me." Hailstorm then brought his snout low enough for Altamir to hold it with his own arms...which he did. "I know I do put on a brave face most of the time...but I really did think that that was going to be it for me...that I was going to die in her arena for that monster's amusement. Call it stupid or cowardly, but I don't wanna die. Especially not like that..."

"There's nothing 'stupid' or 'cowardly' about not wanting to die." Altamir sighed as he embraced Hailstorm's snout like he did with Peril's before. "Especially not from someone as young as you are. I have no idea who put it in your head that it somehow was...but whoever it was, they're wrong. Far from it, it's perfectly normal...particularly when one is dealing with someone like Scarlet."

"...so...I'm not..."

"No, Hailstorm, you're not." Altamir gently patted Hailstorm's snout as he held the IceWing dragonet. "It's alright, buddy. You're still a kid. Kids shouldn't be having to worry about dying in ways like that, or in general. I'm not the sort to shame someone for their 'brave face' slipping in a situation like that. It's alright."

So, Altamir held Hailstorm in that embrace around the young IceWing's snout. It was a carry over from his days with his companions of old and raising so many orphaned dragonets...but being able to hold dragons and dragonets like this always put him at ease, allowed him to clear his mind, to banish the stresses and miseries of the world around him, at least for a little while. Given how Hailstorm was even leaning into it (much like Peril had when they'd first met last night), it seemed that he was enjoying this embrace as well, as had so many of the other dragons and dragonets he'd either adopted or had been close friends with (though, to be fair, Altamir was always gentle whenever he did this, and would respect any dragon or dragonet not wanting him to do this with them, so it probably had something to do with that).

Alas, he couldn't hold Hailstorm in this embrace forever (which, of course, was a great shame), and he'd need to fill in the IceWing as to what circumstances he was found in, and where they currently were, so he released the IceWing dragonet from it after a few minutes. Even Hailstorm himself seemed a little disappointed that it ended as well.

It was then that Altamir pulled himself to getting around to properly filling in Hailstorm on those aforementioned things (albeit not mentioning that the 'SkyWing' who turned him into 'Pyrite' was actually a RainWing). He hated having to wipe that nice smile off of the dragonet's face, but it had to be done. So he did it.

Once he was done, poor Hailstorm was simultaneously horrified to find, and seemingly having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact, that he'd been turned into an entirely different dragon as a particularly twisted form of 'imprisonment', and that he'd been 'imprisoned' in such a manner for an entire year, and that Altamir had to resort to wiping his memories of that time in such 'imprisonment' for the sake of his sanity. And he was quite dismayed to find that he was still deep in enemy territory and also even further from home than he already was.

Though, he took a while to catch on to something that should have been somewhat obvious when Altamir explained in detail about the forced guise of 'Pyrite'.

"Wait...so...you're a...you're an Animus?!"

"I...yes." Altamir sighed in response. He noticed that he was sighing an awful lot. "Yes, I am."

"But...that's a...a dragon's ability! Or...wait, so humans can be Animi too?"

"Yes, yes, yes, they can." Altamir nodded. "It's even rarer than it already is in dragons, but they can. And when they are, they compensate for their rarity by being perhaps even more powerful than dragon ones are."

"...really? Even though you're smaller?"

"...didn't I already tell you not to underestimate anyone or anything based on size? When it comes to Animus Magic, the physical size of the user simply doesn't matter. That's how I was able to take down Scarlet and...roughly 40 or so of her guards and soldiers, as well as Prince Hawk, one of Scarlet's sons, and save your frosty hide."

"...oh, so that's how you took her down and saved me."

"Indeed. Now then..." Altamir then began to think aloud as to how to get Hailstorm somewhere safe. "...what am I going to do about you being deep in enemy territory? As we know, you're at the very least half a continent away from even the most southeastern portions of your tribe's territory, and trying to fly there from here would mean flying through hundreds of miles of enemy territory, and hundreds more miles of potential enemy territory, which would bring with it the chance of you being attacked and either getting captured again, or even killed this time. So, I'm afraid that that's out of the question." Then, Altamir put his hand to his chin. "However...I do have a bit of an idea as to where else I might be able to send you."

"You do? What is it?"

"...well, alright, I should clarify that I might possibly have a bit of an idea...depends on how you answer this question for me."

"...and that question is?"

"Hailstorm...what do you know about the RainWings?"

"Huh? Uh...not a lot, admittedly. Um...they're pretty lazy? They don't really do anything but eat and sleep all day? They're not participating or getting involved in the war at all? None of them have fought in any battles against the other tribes ever since the war began? Is that...that's what you're asking of me, right? Sorry, Altamir, I really don't know a lot; my tribe never considered them to be very...important to know about, as there was no real point to it."

"Perhaps not." Altamir acknowledged, then remembering a tidbit from his questioning of Maroon about the state of Pyrrhia. "But...what you HAVE told me...it is consistent with what I've heard from another dragon, who said something very similar to what you've told me. And that dragon was from an opposing tribe to yours in this war. If two different dragons from two different tribes on two different sides of a war...hmm..." It was then that the pieces fell into place. "...ah, I see. Ah, yes."

"...eh?"

"So, Hailstorm...you said that the RainWings haven't gotten involved in the war, nor have they ever fought or fought in any battle with the other tribes, right?"

"...yeah, I did. My tutors used to say that it was because they were simply too lazy to put together a proper army to do so."

Altamir rolled his eyes. "...alright, so, I will say that that's probably a stereotype...reality could be different. That being said...if they haven't gotten involved, nor fought in any battles ever since the war started..." Then, Altamir began to chuckle.

"...uh, Altamir?"

Altamir then crossed his arms with a grin. "Oh, come on, Hailstorm, don't you love it when a plan comes together? I love it when a plan comes together."

"...I mean, yeah, I do too...wait, you got a plan?" Hailstorm lighting up at hearing what Altamir said was still adorable.

"Oh, I've got one alright." Altamir clenched his right hand. "Now then, Hailstorm...when in a war like this one...it would make sense for you to have your troops stationed either along the border or close to it so that you can either repel attacks from, or launch attacks on, your foes, right?"

"It does, yeah."

"Ah, good. So, in the case of the MudWing-SkyWing alliance under Queen-Claimant Burn...that would mean the western side of this mountain range, and their western coasts, against your tribe, as well as against which portions of the SandWings are under Blister and Blaze, and then their eastern coasts against the SeaWings, wouldn't it?"

"It...uh, yeah, it would. Uh...the western side of the mountains was where Winter and I got..."

"Yes, it was." Altamir nodded, and then he said something that he hoped would make the connection. "But we're not in any of those places. We're on the EASTERN side of the mountain range, on the border between the two tribes in that alliance...and they're on the same side as each other. That, and we're specifically in the southern part of that eastern side, far away from the action. And the nearest other tribe from here is one that, as far as we know, hasn't ever gotten in the war ever. In nineteen whole years of it."

"Right..." Hailstorm then indeed made that connection. "...wait, so there's probably way less soldiers down here, right?"

"Indeed." Altamir was pleased to see Hailstorm catching on. "Now, there may still be some, but given how far away it is from the action and whatnot, it wouldn't make any sense to station any more than the bare minimum anywhere between here and the RainWings' territory. Speaking of the RainWings...have they ever been attacked by any of the tribes involved in the war?"

"Uh...no...I...don't think so? At least with my tribe, anyways. My tutors said that it wouldn't be worth the effort."

"Which, again, is also what I've heard from that other dragon...and his tribe's queen was Scarlet. Scarlet. If even she apparently considered it not worth the effort as well, then the same may be true of the other tribes in this war."

"...oh, so that 'other dragon' was a SkyWing-"

"Yes, I know, but that's besides the point, Hailstorm." Then, Altamir took a few steps forward until he had his hand on Hailstorm's right forelimb...which, up to the shoulder, was a little over twice as tall as he himself was. "That point is...if they're not getting involved, and they've never attacked, nor have they been attacked by, any tribe...then, perhaps...perhaps...the RainWings' territory could be somewhere you can go to get away from the MudWings and the SkyWings. If you can get there, and you avoid angering, offending, or provoking the 'locals' into ceasing to be 'lazy', you should be able to do just fine. Food's plentiful down there, and if no other tribe is attacking, it should do just fine as a safe bolt-hole."

Hailstorm looked at him in silence for a few seconds before responding. "...so, you want me to actually go and...live among the RainWings...?"

Altamir sighed. "Hailstorm, I can tell you want to get back to your tribe, but like we've discussed earlier, that just isn't feasible or possible right now. The next best thing you can do right now is to go somewhere safe." He emphasized the last three words with one hand-tap on that forelimb for each word. "Alright?"

Hailstorm nodded unenthusiastically. "...alright. I...okay. I understand."

"Good. Now, then...as for how you're going to get there..." Altamir then looked in the direction that Maroon and Peril and Acorn and Leaf were in before looking back to Hailstorm. "...we need to remember that, while there are going to be less soldiers along the way, it will likely be certain that there will still be some...so, I'll have to send you there with someone if we're to increase the chances of you getting there safe and sound."

"...uh...uh-huh. Though...who are you gonna send me there with? Yourself?"

Altamir laughed at this. "Me? Look, Hailstorm, I'd love to, but I'm still gonna be kinda busy with these five dragonets here." He then nodded towards the five dragonets still in that cage.

"...um...alright, then. But then...who else?"

"Well, Hailstorm..."

So, Altamir got to explaining, albeit carefully, about the two SkyWings who were at the back of the cave. Initially, Hailstorm was, predictably, very alarmed at hearing that there were two dragons of the very tribe that had captured him in the same cave as he currently was, but Altamir did get him to settle down after he drove it home that Maroon and Peril had, in fact, defected from Scarlet, and so were not at all the young IceWing's enemies.

Then, Altamir, carefully (again), introduced Hailstorm to Maroon and Peril in-person. Things were, predictably (also again), tense at first, but after a minute or so, Altamir was able to get it so that Hailstorm at least didn't regard Maroon and Peril with hostility.

Once that was out of the way, Altamir then went over the idea that he had for where Hailstorm could go, and asked Maroon and Peril, and by extension Acorn, if they wanted to volunteer for taking Hailstorm to the RainWing territory. He'd expected them to either hesitate or say 'no' outright to the idea...but to his surprise, they instead were pretty quick to get on board with it. Though, when they explained as to why, their reasoning for it made a great deal of sense. Due to their respective situations, none of them had any particular desire to stay in SkyWing territory; Maroon and Acorn had been living like fugitives and moving often due to Maroon being a runaway prince from the palace AND an Animus, and him not wanting to be discovered to be such, and Peril didn't feel like she could stay in the SkyWing realm for any longer after having been Scarlet's bloody pawn for so long. If anything, the three of them admitted that they very much liked the idea of being in the RainWing Kingdom and away from all the nonsense of the continent-wide war.

With their eagerness to be in on the plan confirmed, the next few minutes or so were spent discussing the finer details of the plan, including what to do along the way, and what specific route to take. Then, after a quick, last meal, Acorn, Hailstorm, Maroon, and Peril were at the entrance, readying themselves to leave as Altamir and Leaf saw them off.

"Alright, Peril, remember what we said about when and how to use your firescales?"

"Have them on when we're flying or when other dragons are nearby, and have them off when landing and no other dragons are around?"

"Exactly! Now then, the rest of us are going to stay here with these five dragonets still in that cage. I'm planning on rejoining the four of you later...as for these four here, they've got some time to figure out where they're gonna go."

"Well then, Aldy, we'll see you later!"

"Good luck!"

And so, Hailstorm, Peril, and Maroon (who had Acorn tightly clinging to his back) all took off into the frigid breeze as Altamir and the other four humans watched them leave. Once they were gone, Altamir then saw Leaf looking at him with nervous eyes, and the other three giving him similar looks.

"So...uh...what do we do now?" Leaf asked as the five of them all walked back into the cave, the others following Altamir.

"What do we do now?" Altamir repeated Leaf's question back at the boy before answering. "Well, we're going to go work on these five dragonets in that big cage there. I'm going to get them out of that cage, and then I want you four to help me with a few things here and there with regards to them."

"...you expect us to help you-"

"Yes, I do." Altamir was a bit sharp in his reply to Rowan, making her flinch. "These dragonets, these kids...they need our help. We will do the needful. Simple as that."

"Whatever you say..." Thyme shrugged as Altamir kept walking towards the cage, intent on making sure that the dragonets would not have to spend any longer in the damnable piece of metal.

Seeing those poor dragonets still in that cage made Altamir's skin just about crawl off his body and start climbing the cave walls. To keep a dragon, especially a dragonet, in a cage like this, particularly when they'd done nothing wrong aside from merely existing in the wrong place at the wrong time...it just wasn't right. It just wasn't right whatsoever. It was like keeping a beautiful bird with a beautiful voice and a friendly, loving personality in what was effectively a tiny, chain-link box. Soon, that beautiful bird would wither away from the stresses of being kept in such a horrific confinement.

The only reason why he hadn't gotten them out of the thing already at this point was because things kept getting in the way. But now that everything else was done...it was time to set the caged birds free, so to speak.

Altamir was soon standing in front of the cage, mentally laying curse upon curse on Scarlet's name as he looked at the 'contents'. The five dragonets inside were all still asleep, Altamir watching their chests move and expand and contract with each breath. He still had that 'sleeping spell' on them, one which he could not afford to break just yet, but that he wished that he could. Alas, these dragonets clearly had wounds that needed tending to, and it would be much easier to do so with them asleep.

"Okay, so, how do you intend to get them out of that thing?" Cranberry asked Altamir, clearly a bit skeptical of whether or not he could do such.

"Well, I did manage to warp all of you and those other dragons from Scarlet's arena to here." Altamir answered her. "Perhaps it would be an impossible feat for someone else...but for me, this is actually the easiest part here when it comes to these five. Watch."

And so he displayed this to them. Picking up five spots in relatively close proximity to each other roughly a hundred feet or so further in the cave, he warped each of the five dragonets to one of those spots, right out of the cage, and right out of the chains, cuffs, collars, and whatnot that they'd been bound in...

*CLING CLANG KA-CLANG!*

...leaving those to clatter uselessly to the floor of the cage. "Damn, that's a satisfying sound."

"...shouldn't have underestimated you, magic man." Thyme remarked dryly.

"Some still manage to do so, even after all this time." Then, Altamir looked at the now-empty cage with contempt. "Now to dispose of this thing."

So, using his magic once more, Altamir picked up the cage and all of the chains, cuffs, collars, and other metal binds that were in it...

"...what are you doing?"

"If I were you, I'd duck."

...lifted it all up roughly twenty feet or so...

"Duck? Wait, what are you gonna do with that?"

...turned it all ninety degrees to the side, with the top now facing the cave entrance, and lifted it up another ten feet...

"I said 'duck'."

"Uh...oh snap, you're gonna throw it out the...!"

...and then, as hard as he could...

"ORA!"

*FWOOSH!*

...hurled it right out of the cave at a tremendous speed. He then dusted his hands a bit before walking towards where the dragonets were now...

*BANG!*

...chuckling as he heard the distant-but-also-satisfying sound of the cage and its contents smashing into the earth in the distance behind him.

"...okay, if I'd known you were gonna do THAT...yeah, I probably would have ducked." Leaf admitted. "Also, wow, you can be loud."

"I guess I always have been able to." Altamir nodded. "Funny how things can change - when I was a kid myself, I was known to be fairly quiet." He then refocused on the task at hand. "Now then...let's go deal with whatever injuries and whatnot. The most difficult part, gaining their trust, will be what's going to come after this, but they'll probably be in a better mood if they see that they're all both out of that stupid cage and also healthy and in good shape."

Well, at least he hoped so, anyways. Truth be told, Altamir didn't know exactly how these five dragonets ended up in Scarlet's clutches, let alone why. Did she kidnap them just for the sake of it? Or were they sold out to her by someone? Without them awake and trusting enough in him to tell them, he didn't know what it was. But whatever the case, he had to be prepared for the possibilities that would be likely once they were awake.

Altamir knew full well that they could react in any number of ways to seeing him. Either they'd be surprised to have been rescued by him but nonetheless grateful and so relatively easy to gain the trust of...or they could be jittery, terrified, and weary of any strangers, and could possibly be full-on fight-or-flight; in the latter case, they'd either try to attack him or bolt for the entrance, and if they did the latter, there was no real stopping them...which would be a very bad thing, because given their situation, there was the distinct possibility that they'd fall back into the clutches of their prior captors.

Something that Altamir couldn't let happen. If he had been needing to be careful with Hailstorm, then that was the case even more so now. That, and he needed to make sure that the four humans who approached the still-sleeping dragonets with him wouldn't mess things up.

He would have to lead them carefully. Very, very, very carefully.

"Alright..." Altamir began to lay out how he wanted the others to help him, "...so, what I want you to do here is to assist me with looking these kids over for injuries, wounds, scars, infections, and things like that. I'm going to do that myself with the big orange-brown one first, so I want each of you to pick one of the other four and look them over for those things until I can get to them. If it looks like one of those, let me know. Be thorough. Don't miss a spot. I'll set up some light sources above so that you can see better in this cave, alright?"

"Yes sir." Rowan nodded, with the others doing so quietly. "Just...please also make sure that they don't...uh, actually, forget it, let's just get to it."

So, 'get to it' they did, and Altamir set up the 'light sources' in question (nine of them, all in a square-pattern that went from one side of the cave to the other so that there would be no shadows that escaped his and the others' notice on the dragonets). Once he did...

...oh, by the gods, these poor dragonets.

Well...right away, he could tell they all had a fair few wounds and injuries that needed attending, to say the least, including various claw marks and scratches, which could have been from Scarlet's minions grabbing and manhandling/restraining them while chaining them up and/or carrying/dragging them into captivity, as well as burns from where the chains and cuffs and collars and whatnot had rubbed against them, and a fair few bruises here and there.

The only real comfort that he had was that at least they didn't look like they were malnourished or underweight given their frames and apparent ages (which meant that Scarlet mercifully may not have 'had' them for that particularly long by the time Altamir had first encountered them), and the things that he was seeing on them weren't anything that he couldn't fix up. And even then, it didn't prevent him from having a perpetual grimace plastered upon his face from what he was finding when he started taking a closer look at the dragonets and investigate further in that regard (including magically lifting them into the air so that he could look for any injuries or wounds they had on their undersides).

For one thing, he found that they also all each had a few broken bones and dislocated joints here and there (including a dislocated wing on the SeaWing that he would have to reset himself because no one else in the cave could). For another, and worryingly, he also found that some of the wounds were starting to become infected, something that could become lethal if it wasn't properly dealt with, and that, if he went about utilizing his abilities improperly (i.e. not cleaning the wounds out properly), he would only worsen, not improve. And for yet another (also worrying) thing, upon closer inspection, Altamir realized that the dragonets having been captured (or, more accurately, kidnapped) by Scarlet and her minions couldn't explain ALL of the wounds and scars that he found on them. A lot of the ones that he found on them were clearly older than that particular event, including a fair few scars that looked quite old, clearly from wounds that were either quite severe or which had either not been properly treated at all or only partially properly treated, and so healed imperfectly as a result. This caused a creeping worry in Altamir that these dragonets' misfortune and maltreatment went back further than just Scarlet.

Altamir's healing magic, after centuries of him developing and perfecting it, could do a great deal of things that so many would consider miraculous, including erasing scars and making lacerations close without leaving more scars, stitching broken bones together rapidly in real time, resetting dislocated joints and limbs, and repairing what would otherwise be irreversible nerve or organ damage...anything short of raising the dead, basically. However...he'd never quite gotten rid of the issue of such healing frequently being excruciatingly painful if the patient was awake during his dealing with some of such issues this way, and so when, after what felt like a long time (but, in reality, was probably only about ten minutes or so), he and the others FINALLY got a proper inventory of the dragonets' various injuries and scars and did the necessary preparations (like properly cleaning out the infections and grime first), he was glad that the dragonets were still asleep thanks to that spell while he began utilizing such magic upon them to finally get rid of such injuries and scars and whatnot, because if they weren't, the whole cave would, by now, be filled with pained shrieking...a sound that, if he ever did hear for real from them at any point in time, would haunt his nightmares to the point where he would likely never sleep again.

He worked hard with such magic to get rid of not only every single injury and wound that they had, but also every single scar that they had as well, as he felt that such things had no business belonging on dragonets this young. That, and if they awakened to find themselves in great shape and in no pain, and their lovely scales bereft of even a single scar thanks to him, it would probably make them be more willing to trust him...

...if only because he could heal their wounds like no one else could. Though he did hope that he could gain their trust in other ways, like showing them that he wasn't going to bring any of this stupid harm upon them, and that he'd value their lives and their wants and wishes, as he always had with the dragonets that he'd raised.

Eventually, it was done, and he carefully set the dragonets down, sighing in relief as he saw them now spic-and-span. "Finally, that's done."

"Well...looks like you fixed them up pretty good, magic man." Thyme remarked. "I guess you're about to go wake them up now or something?"

"Oh, I'm almost there." Altamir replied. "It's just that I'd rather get them a little bit more comfortable first." Then, he dismissed the light sources above them before magically picking the dragonets up again. "Let's go to the back of the cave. Maybe if things are a little more cozy for them back there, things won't go pear-shaped when it comes to them trusting me."

Altamir noticed that, while the other humans nodded, they still seemed...weary. He supposed it was because he'd had to rescue them from some maniacal SkyWing Queen who was basically Wērōd and Honorius put together in the form of a female dragon, but he was hoping that such a thing would abate itself if he could show them that they wouldn't have anything to fear from dragons...or, at least, these five dragonets...if he managed to, in turn, gain their trust as well, and...

...yeah, it was best to just focus on what he was doing instead.

So, once he got to the back of the cave, Altamir then gently set the dragonets down again relatively close to each other and got to work making them comfortable. First, he got them into more natural sleeping positions that would be less likely to leave them 'waking up wrong'. Then, in front of them, he made a sort of 'magical campfire' - one that otherwise looked, acted, and behaved like a 'real' one, but that didn't require any physical fuel and so didn't emit smoke, and which he could control the heat and size of. This way, he could keep the dragonets nice and warm in the cold weather, and it would give them a reason not to bolt from him.

And after that was done, he had Leaf, Rowan, Thyme, and Cranberry stay on the other side of the fire from the dragonets, with the advice to them being that they stay in view of the dragonets and yet also stay silent and let Altamir do the talking until it was safe to do otherwise. He didn't want the dragonets mishearing anyone talking as 'guards discussing their fates' and so being led to believe that they were merely being held prisoner differently than before.

When everything else was ready, Altamir decided to do one more thing before he broke the spells on the dragonets. While he did think it rude to look into the minds of others without their permission, Altamir felt quite strongly that it was prudent to know who they were and which was which by more than just tribe, as not doing so and only knowing them by their respective tribes would be degrading.

So, he quickly did so (without looking at any of their actual memories, of course), also taking the time to get a good look at what they looked like in general now that he wasn't having to focus on looking them over for injuries. It turned out that they were all five years old, going on six years old in ten days...

...and by the gods did they respectively look like dead ringers for Togay, Sorkhagtani, Gulay, Chagatai, and Gunesha. It was not a joke that they all looked damn-near identical, with only a few differences here and there, to how those old companions of his had looked at that age.

The male MudWing dragonet who looked so much like Togay was named 'Clay', and much like Togay had been, he was both huge for his age and quite the 'muscle man'. The boy wasn't even 6 years old, and yet he was at least (and probably a little over) 35 feet long from the tip of his nose to the base of his tail (and likely at least 16 feet tall at the shoulder), which heavily suggested to Altamir that he was a 'Bigwings', much like Togay himself had been (and a rather large one, at that), and in that case, he also had similarly huge folded wings likely more than putting the 'big' in 'Bigwings' when fully spread out. Clay also had scale coloring that was basically the same as Togay's had been; dark brown on his back, his upper shoulders, his wing frames, the back of his neck, the top of his head and nose, and the top of his tail, orange on the rest of his face, the sides of his neck, the fronts of his forelimbs and back legs, and the tops of his front talons and back feet, and sandy tan on his underside from under below his chin all the way to the top of his tail, as well as his wing membranes, the backs of his forelimbs and back legs, and the undersides of his front talons and back feet. He, also also, and again, shared Togay's stocky, burly, muscular build, along with also similarly, a massive, thick neck, huge front talons that were nearly as long as a man was tall, and that he could probably pick up an entire house with, huge back feet, and a huge, blocky head that, even by now, was probably ALSO as long as a man was tall at the least (and even without the horns, at that). He knew very well that his mind was going to the word 'huge' a lot when it came to Clay, but he would bid any man good luck trying not to use it to describe the boy. Oh, and it turned out that, just like Togay had been, Clay was also immune to fire.

Regardless, though, he hoped that Clay would share Togay's kind, gentle nature...because if he didn't, then Altamir's plan, and a good portion of all of his hard work, would be completely and utterly fucked. And even IF Clay did indeed (at least normally) have that nature, Togay, being a Bigwings, was also quite protective of the others among Altamir's companions, so Altamir was worried that Clay might see him as a threat that the MudWing dragonet needed to protect the others from. Especially after what he and those other dragonets had gone through before Altamir finally rescued them.

The female SeaWing dragonet who bore such a great resemblance to Sorkhagtani was named 'Tsunami', and much like had been the case with Sorkhagtani to Togay, Tsunami was fairly large for her age, though obviously not to Clay's level (regardless, she was the second largest of these dragonets). Being at least (and likely just over) 30 feet long from the tip of her nose to the base of her tail (and likely at least 14 feet tall at the shoulder), she was definitely a big girl alright, and she was roughly the same size as that which Hailstorm should have been by now (and would have been if it weren't for the whole 'getting turned into Pyrite' nonsense that was courtesy of Scarlet and Chameleon). Tsunami also similarly had scales that were varying shades of blue, from the deeper, more vibrant blue on her legs and the upper/over-side of her body that shone like cobalt glass in the fire-light, to the lighter sky-blue that was present on her underside and on the various bioluminescent spots on her body, as well as on her wing membranes...which, interestingly, had the same swirl-and-star-burst patterns on their undersides as the ones that Sorkhagtani's wings had on those same areas. And also like Sorkhagtani, Tsunami had what was clearly a strong a powerful tail...not to mention that, while again not quite to Clay's level (just like with overall size), she was...pretty muscled and powerfully-built in general for a SeaWing her age. Though, he had to say that, yet again like Sorkhagtani, she was quite beautiful for a SeaWing...not that Clay wasn't 'good-looking' himself (quite the opposite, really) - he was just a different sort of 'good-looking'.

However...Altamir was worried. Yes, Sorkhagtani was ultimately a friendly, fun-loving soul who could show a level of kindness and compassion that one wouldn't normally expect from someone as brash as she could be. But, and especially when she was Tsunami's age, she nonetheless had a temper, and she was often also quite suspicious of someone new if she was in the mood for it (or, at least, wasn't in the mood for being 'friendly'). That made Altamir quite worried - if Tsunami also had those particular traits, and he made a misstep, there was the not-absent possibility that she would take a 'bite first, ask questions later' approach with him, and that would be more than a handful to deal with. He certainly hoped that it wouldn't happen...but if he didn't want it to happen, he'd have to do his best to make sure he didn't step on whatever nerves she might have had. Though, given what she and the others had gone through, he'd have to prepare for that likely being easier said than done.

The female RainWing dragonet who so closely resembled Gulay was named 'Glory' (and yes, it was basically two letters and an anagram away from being the same name as well). Unlike with Clay and Tsunami, there was nothing really unusual about her size, and she was roughly in the middle of what was 'average' for her age when it came to height and length, as had been the case with Gulay; she was somewhere in-between 25 and 30 feet long from the tip of her nose to the base of her tail (which corresponded her being, likely and also-roughly, 12-13 feet tall at the shoulder). RainWings were jokingly reputed as not being able to make up their minds on what the hell they wanted their scale colors to be, but Glory's colors were the same as the way Gulay used to 'wear' them: emerald green on a majority of her body's 'overside' and a lighter green on her underside, with the top of her head and her nose being dark blue and bordered by rings of lighter blues around her eyes, the membranes of her wings and frills being orange-red, and varying spots, stripes, and patches of yellow, blue, and orange in varying places around her body's 'overside'. While she was a slightly different sort of 'beautiful' from Tsunami, beautiful was something that she nonetheless was with those vibrant colors and that sleek, elegant frame, just like Gulay had been.

Though, speaking of vibrant, Altamir noticed that, before he got to healing her, her scales were rather dull and mousy-looking, as if she hadn't been out in the sun like she should have been. After he'd finished healing her, however, he now realized that her scales were looking far brighter and more, well, vibrant than they had before...now it looked like she'd been regularly getting a healthy amount of her 'sun-time'. It did make him wonder how that was the case, though; it was relatively easy to get some sun-time if one was simply out in the sun long enough. Unless she had somehow been kept from...

...uh, yeah, nevermind, he'd worry about that later. Er, one thing that he really needed to worry about right now was what would happen if he approached things wrong with her. Yes, Gulay had been a very smart and intelligent level-headed sort who was good at using that brain of hers to, well, actually think things through. However, she was also quick to resort to a lethal strategy if she felt strongly enough that she was being faced with an enemy, and she was quite good at utilizing them, too. Altamir was weary of whether or not Glory would feel the need to do so with him - given the situation she and the other dragonets were in before Altamir rescued them, she would probably be more on-edge than usual. And if she was, and he made a misstep in dealing with her...she'd probably spit something extremely deadly at him.

Right...RainWing Venom. Given the oh-so-cuddly nickname of 'Magical Death Spit' by at least one soul who saw it in action, RainWing Venom was feared for eating through flesh and bone, and even plant life, at a terrifying rate. And given that, and that it was a liquid...a liquid that would probably splash around in the cave even if he did manage to block it, and that it might land on one or more of the dragons or humans in here if it did...well, it went without saying that Altamir really hoped that Glory didn't feel the need to spit that at him. He very much didn't want anyone in this cave suffering from the 'death' part of the 'death spit'.

Regardless, and that aside, there was then the male NightWing dragonet who was such a close look-alike to Chagatai, and his name was 'Starflight'. Much like Chagatai, Starflight, while having a grey underside, little silver-white spots running along his sides, and beautiful silver-white spots of varying sizes that looked like the stars in the night sky on the underside of his wings, nonetheless had mostly midnight-black scales which had glints of purple and deep blue. He wasn't particularly burly or heavily-built, and while still in the average range, he was still smaller than Glory when it came to length and height, being just over 25 feet long from the tip of his nose to the base of his tail (and just under 12 feet tall at the shoulder). These were traits that Chagatai also had, though Chagatai still had a bit more muscle on him at this point in his life than Starflight did now. He was still a very good-looking dragonet either way...Chagatai himself had been well regarded for his looks, so it was another similarity he shared.

In his life, Chagatai had been well known for being an incredibly smart, brilliantly intelligent dragon who was by far the most liturgically-inclined (and advanced) of Altamir's companions, and was fairly good at being a voice of reason and a strategist. That being said, this did mean that the other companions of his had tended to regard his words with a lot of weight, especially when it came to those they didn't know; if Chagatai regarded that someone as an enemy, the others would only not do so if Altamir himself intervened and said otherwise. Altamir hoped that, if Starflight was also a very smart dragonet and prone to being a voice of reason, the dragonets would be more inclined to trust Altamir if Starflight did...or at least they wouldn't jump to regarding him as an enemy if Starflight didn't. Otherwise...well, he'd really be in for it.

And finally, the very last and smallest of the dragonets, and the one who (mostly) resembled Gunesha...was the female SandWing/NightWing hybrid dragonet whose name was 'Sunny'. Much like Gunesha, Sunny was quite the small dragonet; at only over 20 feet tall from the tip of her nose to the base of the tail (and at only 10 feet tall at the shoulder), she was smaller than even the lower-bound part of the 'average' size for her age, and looked positively tiny next to Clay. Her scales, much like with Gunesha's, had these beautiful shades of gold and orange that came together in what could best be described as being like 'rippled sunshine', with her orange wing membranes in particular bringing to mind the skies around a rising or setting sun. Though, one difference that Sunny had from Gunesha was that Gunesha had had NightWing-like 'starry sky' spots on the undersides of her wings...while Sunny did not. Even then, she nonetheless still had the same small silvery-white spots running down the sides of her body as the ones that Starflight had (and, in turn, that Gunesha had), so one with the knowledge and a trained eye could still tell that she was half-NightWing. Regardless, just like Gunesha...Sunny looked both beautiful and very precious and endearing...even though, despite her small size for a dragon her age, she was still way bigger than Altamir himself was.

Gunesha was a deceptively smart dragon underneath her sweet, outgoing exterior, but she had nonetheless been the kindest, friendliest, and most trusting of his companions, usually willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt as long as the other party didn't go out of their way to do things they shouldn't have been doing. Altamir, as such, was hoping that the same would be the case with Sunny, and that she'd give him the least to fear. No, this wasn't meant to be an insult to her capabilities or what she could do...rather, it was his hopes that her friendliness and willingness to trust, if it was true she was like Gunesha, would allow him to get his foot in the door with the other dragonets, so to speak. They were probably protective of her given her small size...if they saw that he meant no harm to her and wasn't taking her trust for granted, then perhaps they'd realize that he didn't mean any harm to the rest of them either.

Though...whether they resembled his old companions or not...Altamir had to acknowledge that the dragons all looked adorable while they were sleeping (ESPECIALLY Sunny). He could have sworn that he even saw a few of them smiling in their sleep, and as he gently walked up to them and gently ran his hand over each one's scales, it came across as though he was looking at a quintet of giant scaly winged puppies or kittens. They were so precious...

...gods, one would have to have a heart of stone not to love them. It also made his blood absolutely BOIL that someone had been willing to chain them up in some cage or inflict such wounds on them. He'd already made the ones who did the former pay for it dearly...

...all that was left was to deal with those who inflicted those older wounds.

But, regardless...it was time to wake the Dragonets up.

Altamir was hoping that things would go well.

Altamir was basically praying to the gods that things would go well.

"Please trust me. Please trust me. Please don't regard me as an enemy."

So, after walking back some fifty feet from the dragonets and leaning back against a rock, positioning himself where he could look at the dragonets without them quite noticing YET that he was looking at them, and after giving a final warning to Leaf, Rowan, Thyme, and Cranberry to do as he asked them to do, he magically dismissed his armor, lowered his hood off his head...

...and cast the die.

It only took a minute or so after the spell that was keeping them asleep was broken for the dragonets to start waking up, and they started waking up basically all at the same time, most of them then revealing themselves to be green-eyed (except for Clay, who was brown-eyed), and Sunny revealing herself to have a NightWing's eyes. So they even had the same eye colors as their counterparts among his old companions had.

Anyways, after they were all awake, they were all looking around, seemingly trying to get their bearings.

"...huh? Where are we?" Clay muttered aloud, revealing his voice to be jarringly higher-pitched than his huge size and bulky build would suggest. "We're not at the arena anymore..." Then, his face fell. "...oh, we're in another cave."

"ANOTHER cave?! Ugh, three moons..." Tsunami sounded quite frustrated, at the same revealing her voice to be rather brash and boyish. "All that effort to escape that thing, and all we got was getting caught by Scarlet and ending up right back where we started! At least we're not chained up in some stupid tiny cage anymore..."

"Yeah, but given our 'experiences' with being kept in caves, is it really an improvement?" Glory remarked, revealing her voice to be smoother than Tsunami's, but of similarly low pitch for a female dragonet her age. "Wouldn't be surprised if they never let us out again now."

And so Altamir's blood froze yet again. "Wait...'escape'? 'Kept in'? 'Never let out'? Oh no, don't tell me..."

At hearing this, Altamir stood up from the rock he'd been leaning against, alarmed by what was reaching his ears...

...and began walking towards the dragonets, albeit not looking at them and instead looking at the ground off to his side so as to not make eye contact with them.

Meanwhile, Starflight was the one talking now, his voice a little deeper than Clay's (despite his slight build suggesting that the opposite should be the case), but still definitely a 'tenor' dragonet. "Well, that's if it's still the..." His voice trailed off from whatever he was saying when he noticed Altamir come to a stop in front of him and the others. "...oh! Uh...guys? There's...there's scavengers in this cave. Four or five of them, actually!" At Starflight saying this, now all five of the dragonets had their eyes on Altamir. "And this one's getting really close...it's like he's not even afraid of us."

Right...there was this thing where dragons were calling humans 'scavengers' for some reason. Whatever stupid spell that was that he broke on Leaf and the others...apparently it was a rather widespread thing. Altamir had no idea who cast it, but whatever it was, it was really damn annoying.

"Wow, this little guy's so brave!" Sunny, meanwhile, seemed to be very curious about the human who was in front of her and the others, revealing her voice to be a squeaky high pitch that befitted her small size and (thankfully) apparent bright and cheery personality. "Maybe he's friendly? Maybe he and his friends here managed to get us out of there?"

Altamir wasn't sure if he'd call himself 'brave'. 'Brave' would be managing to actually do what he did while having a normal human's strength. Altamir did not have a normal human's strength. Though, he did appreciate the sweet dragonet's compliment...

...while the others didn't. Particularly Tsunami. "Oh, come on, Sunny, don't be ridiculous! Don't you see how small he is? He is SO tiny! What makes you think that someone like him could have somehow taken on Scarlet, let alone bundle us under those tiny little limbs of his and carry us off?"

"Well, anything is possible, right?" Sunny defended her statement. "There's no other dragons in here, and if he's brave enough..."

"...I mean, yeah, anything is possible, Sunny." Glory rolled her eyes. "Even then, though, there is no way that a little scavenger as tiny as this guy could have managed to face Scarlet and all of her guards and soldiers and somehow get us out of there while he was at it..."

"And what if there was?"

Alright, Altamir probably should have kept his mouth shut rather than letting that slip out right as he was right in front of them.

Well, once it happened...the dragonets suddenly had their eyes glued to him, those eyes widening, their pupils shrinking, and their jaws slowly falling open.

"Shit." For some reason, even though their reaction was less extreme than Hailstorm's or Peril's had been to hearing him talk...this was the most awkward of all, especially seeing them look at him with wide eyes and mouths hanging open in shock.

Altamir screwed up. There was no way he hadn't.

Ah, fuck.

Well, now, he had to break the awkward tension that he'd created. "So, uh...what was that about 'escaping' or being 'kept in caves' or being 'never let out'?" Taking a gamble, he focused on Glory. "Does...that have something to do with why you in particular had those really dull-looking scales when I first found all of you? It's like you weren't getting any sun-time at all! Don't tell me that Scarlet wasn't the first to keep you all somewhere against your will..."

He hoped that the dragonets weren't about to have a heart attack at hearing him talk. Or try to bolt.

---

Well, that's the shortest amount of time within which I've completed a chapter for this story in a while.

Okay, so, right off the bat, yeah, I'll admit to the "Fist of the North Star/JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" influences present in Altamir's battle against Scarlet and her troops (and that they'll probably be present throughout the story at this point, particularly with Kenshiro and the various Joestars/JoJos influencing Altamir's character). Cue the jokes about "Aldy's Bizarre Adventure" or "Fist of the Red Iron". That being said, those are two of my favorite Anime/Manga, and I really did enjoy writing that scene. Probably the most 'fun' I've had writing a scene in this story yet, honestly.

Though...man, these poor dragonets. Poor Peril, poor Hailstorm, and poor Dragonets of Destiny. It's no wonder Aldy has a weakness for dragonets in distress.

That, and as you can se here...Aldy worries a lot. A lot. As in, a lot, a lot and a lot.

To be fair, however, he may have made an 'oopsie' with introducing himself to the Dragonets of Destiny. Congrats, Aldy, you've made them bluescreen. Now, how are you going to get yourself out of that, shorty?

Also, to add on to what I said about the 'aging' system last chapter, the average size of an adult dragon in this story's universe will be 40-50 feet long from nose to base of the tail, and 18-23 feet tall at the shoulder. Still huge compared to a human, but now it's tangible and specific. And by the way, I'm saying 'base of the tail' rather than 'tip of the tail' because some dragons may or may not have missing tails.

Though, some of the information that I used to describe Altamir's companions back in the first chapter of the story may need some updating...oh well, I'll do it later. I'm busy writing new chapters for this story.