The Theif

Leonidas wakes to the watery light of dusk filtering into the cave, silhouetting the massive form of Ausren.

For just a moment, he smiles, feeling the warmth of the dragon at his back. It's nice, to wake up next to the dragon; to feel his mind so close. It's nice to wake up warm.

However, the moment of bliss does not last long. Instead, it is quickly overcome by the pain of yesterday's events.

Reaching up, Leonidas touches his throat, a scab already formed over the scratch. It's uncomfortable, sure, but not painful. More… itchy.

Right. Cecil tried to kill me.

The boy sighs softly, leaning his head back against Ausren's scales. Everything's messed up. Everything imploded yesterday.

The delicate balance between Ausren and his brothers is gone, and now he has to choose between the two. He has to choose between the safety and freedom Ausren offers, and the panic and grief that will come with trying to stay with Ruhan.

He loves Ruhban, more than words can describe, and Leo wants to protect him. But at the same time, the boy doesn't want to face the pain that will come with staying with him. Cecil already tried to kill him, and if Leo returns he has no doubt he'll try again.

Does he risk certain death for the possibility that Ruhban might come into danger? Or does he cut his little brother loose and allow him to choose his own path?

Sliding his hand down from his neck to the tunic over his heart, he fists his fingers there. He doesn't know what to do, and it hurts.

Leo desperately doesn't want to do to Ruhban what Cecil did to him. He doesn't want to hurt Ruhban the same way Cecil hurt him. And the eldest twin instinctively knows that Ruhban would willingly follow Cecil anywhere. Ruhban would pick Cecil over Leo.

As much as it hurts, Cecil's the youngest brother's hero.

It's understandable.

Don't fool yourself, Leonidas, a soft voice whispers from deep within the boy's consciousness. It's not just Ruhban that you're clinging to.

That's true enough.

In all reality, a large part of the boy is cowering away from the idea of going out on his own. Committing treason, as it was, against the entirety of his kind.

If I leave with Ausren now, I will forever be outcast from my people. I will be alone, forever.

With his head resting against Ausren's side, Leo lets his gaze fall to the dragon's peaceful face. Contrasted against the sand, Ausren's scales appear incredibly dark. His brilliant pink eyes are shut, his breaths deep and slow.

He's asleep.

He's such a magnificent creature, Leo thinks, watching the dragon slumber. I would not be alone, should I go with him. Not completely. I'd have him beside me.

Turning his gaze back to the cave's interior, Leonidas smiles softly.

"I want to stay with you Ausren," he murmurs, watching the top of the cave. "But I won't abandon Ruhban. I won't just disappear on him." Reaching out, Leo strokes the prince's thick neck and finishes, "I'll write him a note, and then I'll leave with you. I've obviously overstayed my welcome."

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Ausren's mind jumpstarts into the much faster movement of consciousness. With a soft snick, the prince opens his eyes and fixes a stare on his human.

"Hello, Riorra," he purrs, not bothering to lift his head from the ground.

Leo smiles sadly, running his hand down the smooth scales again. "Why do you call me that? What does 'Riorra' mean?" the boy asks in response.

Ausren lifts his head, yawning, and replies sleepily, "I think it fits you well."

Raising an eyebrow, Leonidas regards the dragon with an unimpressed gaze. "Okay, but what does it mean?"

Ausren purrs contentedly to himself and blatantly ignores the question. Instead, he turns his attention to the ground near his chest: A spot covered by his neck not very long ago. There, laying in the sand, are two identical, plain-looking necklaces. They are each crafted from one of Ausren's egg-sized scales, hung by a hastily carved strip of leather.

Bending his neck around, Ausren gingerly picks the necklaces up in his front teeth, then deposits them in Leo's lap.

Reaching out, Leo picks one up and inspects it much closer. They were obviously hastily crafted, and not very skillfully. The strips of leather are uneven in thickness, their ends sloppily tied together. The only neat part of the necklace is the scale itself, a very neat hole punched through it near the base. The whole suspiciously resembles a tooth-mark.

Looking up at his partner, the boy asks softly, "Did you make these, Ausren?"

Suddenly looking quite proud of himself, Ausren says, "I did indeed. You are very adamant about not abandoning your twin, so I made these." Bending down, the prince touches his nose to one of the necklaces. "I am by no stretch of the imagination a mage, but I have done my best to enchant these necklaces with a spell called a 'tie'. If you give one to your brother, all he needs to do is break the necklace, and it will send a signal to you to come to find him. If he ever needs you, he can call you, in short," Ausren explains. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he finishes, "Hopefully anyway. I'm not very good at channeling magic. I perhaps acted a little selfishly. I want you to come with me, but I don't want you to feel as if you're abandoning your twin. So when I awoke this morning and you were still asleep, I decided to create these to help ease your anxiety."

Smiling, Leo closes his fist around the necklaces. "Thank you, Ren. I had already planned to come with you but… this helps."

The prince tilts his head ever so slightly, looking curious, and asks, "You had already planned to come?"

"Yes," Leo murmurs, dropping his gaze back to the sandy floor. "I have also decided to be selfish. It's not exactly like I can go back to the fort. Cecil knows about our bond now, and the fort probably thinks I'm dead. If I show up suddenly, they're going to be suspicious and Cecil would cart me off to the capital as a traitor. Either way, I end up leaving Ruhban alone. Besides, we both knew we'd be separated when we joined the army. I'll just think of this as a prolonged post at some other fort. Some day, hopefully, I'll be able to return to him." The boy falls off into a silence, letting the notion that he may not ever be able to approach his family again if he goes with the dragon. Then, biting his lip, he steels himself for it.

I won't let that be a possibility.

"Besides, I'm not going to just up and vanish as Cecil did. I want to write him a note, warn him about Cecil, let him know I'm alive and well, and to tell him about these," as he speaks, Leo lets his hand fall open again, scrutinizing the deep purple scales in his palm. "And I need to give this to him. Besides, I have to grab some basic survival tools from the fort."

For a good moment, Ausren is quiet. Then, he asks softly, "Are you going to sneak back in through the wall?"

"No," the human replies. "I have too much to grab too quickly. I can't be noticed this time, so I'll need a quick escape route as well, should things go sideways." Slowly, a smirk graces the human's lips, and he finishes, "I plan to go in through one of the watchtowers."

Head tilted to the side like a curious bird, Ausren asks, "How?"

"With your help," Leo says, getting to his feet. "You see, the reason - I think anyway - that you dragons have so much hardship attacking our forts is just one thing: You act like dragons."

Ausren tips his head the other way, lowering one eyelid into a confused expression. "I don't get it."

"What I mean is that you always attack like dragons would attack. You dive from the sky in an ambush or your ground legions march up in a show of force. It's a full-frontal assault, a show of power."

"Well of course. We're powerful," Ausren responds, lifting his head haughtily.

"But it never works. Because we're used to that as humans, and we're ready for it. That's why we developed those crossbows. Dragons are incredibly powerful and humans use wit and ingenuity to counter that. We have no other way to win," Leo says, pacing the length of the cave and back. When he is in front of Ausren's muzzle, he stops, reaching up to pull the dragon's head down to eye level. "But what if dragons thought like humans? What if you stopped the frontal assault and used dirty tactics? What if you used your strength in an ingenuitive way?"

"Are you calling me predictable?" Ausren asks dryly, his teeth flashing inches from Leo's hands as he speaks.

For a moment, Leo is struck by the absurdity of the situation. I am holding the head of a dragon prince. His teeth are inches from my limbs.

And he's not hurting me. Who else can do this?

"Yes," the human replies blandly. He drops his hands, letting his eyes travel over the silver patterning of scales on Ausren's snout and forehead. "If you dragons fought like we humans do, you would have wiped us off the map a long time ago. We're used to being overpowered and finding a way around it. Now imagine if dragons fought like that."

"Hmmm," Ausren purrs. "Are you asking me to fight dirty?"

"Yes."

"Perfect. What's your plan?"

Glancing over the dragon's head toward the entrance to the cave, Leo asks, "How late is it?"

Turning his head to follow the boy's gaze, his mind brushing against the human's, Ausren opens his mouth and laughs lowly.

"Indeed, you are a wicked thing."

Nearly two hours later, the pair are waiting in the tree line, safely out of sight of the fort. They are waiting for the last specks of light to vanish from the land. For Leonidas's plan to work, they need it to be a nearly complete darkness. Thankfully, the massive storm clouds that Dismal Fort is known for have returned, blocking out the light of the moon.

Ausren, for his part, is rather impatient. For perhaps the fifth time in as many minutes, the prince shifts, his head snaking close to the ground and his tail whisking the top of the dead pine-needle blanket. Softly, the dragon growls, his lips twitching. He is crouched low to the ground, chest nearly resting on the dry pine needles as if he was a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse. Leo, situated easily in the saddle between the dragon's wings, smirks at his companion.

"I didn't know you were so impatient," the human murmurs into the dragon's mind.

"I'm excited," comes the reply.

"Why? To try something new?"

"No. To be entering the fray with you."

Leo smiles at that, patting his friend on the neck and responding, "Hopefully, if all goes to plan, there will be no need to enter the fray."

Ausren digs his nose into the snow and then yanks his muzzle up without warning, flinging the snow into the darkness.

"It's dark. Even I can hardly see. Can we go now?"

Laughing softly, Leo wraps his hands into the handles on the saddle and replies, "Yes. Quietly now."

"Who do you think I am? A fledgling? I know how to be quiet," Ausren responds testily, creeping out from the cover of the trees and onto the open snowy expanse. This is probably the most dangerous part, crossing the man-made clearing up to the fort. The watchtowers are made with two windows, one facing into the courtyard and one facing off at a 45-degree angle into the forest. It is a proficient way to cover your bases and be able to defend the fort from both outside and internal attacks. It allows the other towers to cover the flanks of the towers to their left and right. However, it leaves a blind spot for the other towers, right where the outside window is. Of course, this would never be a problem if all towers were manned at once. The fort would be covered in 360 degrees of view. But if a dragon was to, say, crawl up the tower from the base and in line with the window, then they would be completely in that blind spot.

The hard part is getting across the clearing to the base of the tower in the first place.

Low to the ground, Leo pressed to his back, moving fluidly but quickly, Ausren scurries to the base of the tower without problem. Once there, he pauses for a moment, tilting his head back to the forest for a moment.

"We have company. Dneir and Enozarc are not far from the edge of the forest."

Frowning, Leo casts a glance over his shoulder. He is greeted with a blurry view of the trees far off in the distance. The enhanced eyesight is allowing him to see much better than the average human, but it has its limits.

"How do you know?"

"I can smell them," Ausren murmurs.

"Well, as long as they don't do anything stupid and get us caught, they can observe all they want."

A feeling of humor echoes through Ausren's mind and, without further ado, the dragon reaches up and sinks his claws into the uneven surface of the tower. Then, like a cat leaping up into a tree, he launches himself upward, latching all four feet to the rock.

Besides the rustling of his wings and the soft scratching of his claws against the stone, the dragon makes no noise. For a moment, Ausren stills, the pair listening intently for any slight sound of alarm. Nothing comes, only the faint yawn of the man perched in the tower above them.

"Perfect," Leo laughs silently, and Ausren responds with a strong feeling of satisfaction.

Slowly, careful to make as little noise as possible, the dragon crawls his way up the tower, one foot after another. He doesn't seem to struggle with any of it, his muscular legs holding the two easily in the vertical position. Leo, for his part, is sitting well on the dragon's back, knees clamped tightly to the dragon's sides and hands secured in the handles. It's a little bit of a struggle, but not nearly as much as it would have been before the soul-bonding experience.

Finally, Ausren comes to a stop. His head, with his neck stretched all the way out, comes to just below the lip of the window. The poor man on the other end of that dragon-killing crossbow has no idea that a dragon is hanging just inches out of his view.

He's going to get one massive shock.

Now, for the hard part on Leo's end. Reaching up with one hand to secure a hold on the spikes running down Ausren's neck, Leo kicks his legs free from the stirrups. Then, hauling himself up by sheer upper body strength, the boy climbs the spikes like a ladder, helping with his feet when he can reach.

Eventually, he is balanced between the horns on Ausren's head, staring at the lip of the window just inches above his head.

"Ready?" Leo asks his companion.

"Of course," Ausren responds.

Reaching up, Leo slowly and carefully slides his fingers onto the ledge. Then, with his grip secured, he lets out one last shaky breath.

No turning back now.

Without warning, Leo kicks off of Ausren's spikes and hauls himself easily up into the window.

The guard on duty, a rather large warrior with dirty blonde hair and plain brown eyes by the name of Andres, lets out a yelp and nearly falls out of the piloting chair in shock.

"What the--!" he starts, his voice high-pitched in surprise.

Leo lets him get no further, vaulting from the windowsill and kicking the poor boy in the head with a well-placed shin kick. The warrior lets out a low groan as his brain rebounds off his skull, and then slumps out of his chair sideways, unconscious.

"Sorry," Leo mutters with a wince as the boy hits the floor with a thunk.

From the confines of his mind, he hears that familiar ruk ruk ruk laugh. "Good work, Riorra."

Leo spares the dragon a grin as the prince crawls up into view. Then, spinning around, the boy bolts down the spiraling stairs. If he sticks close to the wall, he should be able to get to the barracks. From there, hopefully, no one has cleaned out his bunk yet and he can just grab his kit from there. If not, then after he located Ruhban, he'll have to enter the main keep and steal supplies from there.

For now, the boy alights on the ground level and gently pries the heavy wooden door open. It squeals loudly, but no one should notice that. They should be inside, eating, and then stumbling to the barracks. Slamming doors is pretty commonplace.

Slinking across the courtyard, sticking close to the wall, Leo makes his way through the fort to the barracks building. Hopefully, as it is dinner time, it's relatively empty. This all rests on the shoulders of not being found within the walls of the fort.

Messing up is a luxury Leo can't afford.

With the hood of his cloak flipped up, the boy walks confidently into the open and directly up to the barracks door. From a distance, he should be easily mistaken as Ruhban. Actually, he's quite used to being called Ruhban directly to his face. Regardless, from a distance, all the soldiers should see is the outline of one of their own.

Pulling the door open, Leo struts into the barracks. He's also learned that as long as you act with confidence, most people won't bother to question you. Hopefully, with the hood and confidence duo, anyone he does run across will quickly pass him by.

Thankfully, the hallway is empty, and as he reaches the room that has been his home for the last month. Before he can hesitate, Leo yanks the heavy wooden door open and darts inside. The room is, mercifully, empty. Not too unusual, actually.

Leonidas only spares the room a glance before walking to his bunk. It is, semi-depressingly, just as he left it.

"I supposedly died and none of you idiots bothered to clean out my bunk?" he mutters, pulling the bedroll out from underneath the bed. The bedroll is, as it is supposed to be, packed with the bare minimum required to survive: A foldable bucket, a pot to cook with, a hunting knife, a few pairs of clothes, and some jerky. With the roll secured, Leo snatches his plain sword off the wall and slides it onto his back. It's a bad position should he need to draw it and fight, but really right now he just needs to carry it. Only in the worst possible situation should he need to draw it.

With his things secure, there is only one thing left to do: write the note, attach the necklace, and leave it somewhere Ruhban will be able to find it.

Going to the drawers housed near the door to the barracks, Leo pulls out a piece of parchment and an ink-and-quill. All the Forts are required to stock the barracks with the required materials for each of their soldiers to write at least one letter home. The boy isn't sure why, yet. He hasn't caught anyone using it.

Laying the parchment on the top of the drawer, Leo scrawls his note in the least amount of words possible. If he had longer, he could draft a multiple-page essay to his twin, but he only has minutes until he is inevitably caught. So, as quick and to the point as possible it is.

With the letter complete, Leo folds it quickly, slides the necklace between the pages, and lays the package on the pillow of Ruhban's bunk.

I don't know where you are right now, Ruhban, but please read that. Please, know that you are no longer safe with Cecil. Please… listen to me.

The boy allows him just a moment to stare at the bunk, and the small strip of green-blue dragonhide tacked to the wall above it, shimmering slightly in the torchlight. Extending his hand, Leonidas lets his fingers trail over the strip, grimacing at the texture.

All this killing and for what? Neither side has made much progress in dozens of years. Dragons and humans alike are just being slaughtered, fruitlessly.

And somehow I'm the awful one?

Sighing, Leo turns from the sight and exits the room, supplies in hand. There's no need to linger any longer. In fact, the longer he stays, the more risk he puts both himself and his dragon at.

Pausing at the door to the keep, staring down the long, dark hallway behind him, Leo breathes, "I'm sorry, Ruhban," and pushes out into the courtyard. It is still quiet and empty as the human makes his way back to the watchtower. The only sounds are muffled laughter from inside the main building.

Idiots.

Once again, the large door at the base of the tower creaks open, and the boy slips back through the opening. Running up the rickety stairs, one hand braced on the wall, Leo allows himself a slight smile.

This is the beginning of a new adventure, after all. One where he will have value, and perhaps find a goal to reach outside of Cecil.

It's exciting, despite how terrifying it is. This is the turning of a new leaf.

"Welcome back, Riorra," Ausren murmurs, the tendrils of his mind brushing against Leo's own. "Do you have everything you need?"

The dragon is crouched outside the window, clinging to the tower still, his shoulders level with the opening and his neck bent around to allow him to gaze into the slit. His eye is brilliantly bright in the dim lighting.

Leo vaults the still-unconscious guard and hands the bed-roll over to Ausren. Sliding onto the dragon's back and once again securing his hold, the boy allows himself one last look at the place he called home. He allows himself one last look at the world he will never be able to enter again.

Unexpectedly, he finds himself smiling.

I've found something better.

Laying one hand on the side of Ausren's neck, he smiles into the scales there and breathes, "I'm ready. Let's go."