Chp.20: A year earlier

A year earlier, after the battle with the hydra, Haku's siblings had returned to the scene of the battle and found that their brother was not dead and witnessed his capture. They had tried to find a way to save him, but unfortunately there hadn't been time: in less than a day, Haku had been taken away and none of them had any idea where he was.

Afterwards, the dragons had been forced away. As the hydra's toxic vapor began to dissipate, the humans continued to approach the corpse to retrieve it, and thus approached them as well. The dragons had been forced to retreat into the woods more and more and, finally, they had reached the border.

According to the plan, they would have had to continue and cross the desert to reach the Thul Oasis, where they could have lived in peace until they reached adulthood. However, they weren't willing to do it, not without their brother. And so, by mutual agreement, they had decided to travel to the Jurao Kingdom and look for Haku.

Clearly, the situation was very bad for them. They didn't have a plan, they didn't know what they were getting into, they didn't even know which direction to go. Under normal circumstances, they would have had no choice but to move blindly and hope to stumble upon some clue, which clearly could have led them to a bad end. But by an incredible stroke of luck, a source of information had just come to them. Indeed, five sources of information in truth.

They were five adventurers who for some reason were arriving at the border. Obviously, the dragons had spotted them well in advance with their overdeveloped senses, and so now they were secretly watching them. "Judging by their equipment, I doubt they are warriors. None of them have weapons" Rhaegal murmured. "They must almost certainly be mages"

"Shit" Sisna grumbled. All of them, Haku included, had always considered mages more dangerous than warriors. While warriors could only use mana to fortify their body, mages could use it to create traps, summon barriers, and use long-range attacks. From a strategic point of view, it was easier for the dragons to fight against the warriors, who fortunately from what they understood represented the majority of newcomers capable of using mana.

Rhaegal's face was worried. He wasn't the only one: their other siblings weren't quiet either. "Are you sure you want to talk to them, sister?"

Sisna had proposed that idea soon after they'd sighted the five adventurers. The others had planned to kill them immediately: it would have been easy, since they could have used the rune of invisibility to get close and hit them without them noticing, but doing so would have gained nothing. They could have tortured them, but it would have been a risk: not only did they not have a safe place to lock up the prisoners and which would prevent their screams from resounding throughout the territory, but moreover their victims were five, and it would therefore have been easy some of them break free. The dragons had gone through that experience once before and didn't want to repeat it.

Thus, Sisna had proposed to use another strategy: talk to the adventurers. It was a huge gamble, but it had already worked once and yielded a lot of information. Apparently, the newcomers spoke more easily if they were convinced they had a friendly face in front of them, rather than under torture. Therefore, Sisna was sure she could get the five adventurers to have a civil discussion.

Of course they would have killed them anyway afterwards: they wouldn't have been foolish enough to let them go alive. But until then, they could behave as kind and reasonable people.

"We need information, and this is the easiest way to get it" Sisna said. "It is unlikely that they know anything about Haku, but they can tell us a lot about the kingdom where he was taken. Through them, we could trace where our brother is now"

As Haku always said, even the smallest seemingly information could be crucial. There was a reason their brother was so thirsty for knowledge. Every detail could have been right. For example, the adventurers could explain to them how their nation's laws regarding dragons worked, and through them they could understand what happened to Haku. And that was just one possibility. Sisna wasn't Haku, but she was still a dragon and as such she had a very high attention span, which allowed her to catch even the slightest nuances in people's stories.

However, a friendly chat between a dragon and a newcomer wasn't something that could come easily. If Sisna had presented herself to the adventurers, there would almost certainly have been a fight. She knew this, and so she had devised a plan. Just as with Nogg it had been necessary to act correctly in order to win his sympathy, and consequently obtain his information, so it had to be the same with the adventurers. "Remember what I told you. You won't have to intervene..."

"...until you say the phrase 'you are mean to me'. We remember that, sister" Darbi grumbled annoyed. It was in those moments that he could see that they were really all siblings: just like Haku, Sisna too repeated the plans a hundred times to be sure they understood everything.

Sisna aimed to manipulate the adventurers, so she had come up with a cunning play that foresaw her, Rhaegal, and Darbi show up at different times. First Sisna would meet them alone and fight with them, then as soon as she said those words Rhaegal and Darbi would reveal themselves and do their part of the plan. Obviously, in all that time the three of them would not have been without protection: Corgorin, Serengal, Malchia, Keita and Finiar would have constantly remained behind the adventurers using the invisibility rune, ready to kill them if the life of their siblings had really been put at risk. Tikka, Kotaru, Kialandì, Maleficent, Teramon, Maldor, Glausar and Jatara would instead have remained hidden much further back, so that even if the first line of defense had been discovered they could have intervened and defend their siblings in turn. They would prepare some nullification runes, so if the mages proved too dangerous they could nullify their spells.

The big risk was represented by the fact that the five adventurers were almost certainly mages, and therefore could have possessed tricks that they didn't know. However, Sisna was confident that they could face them: after all there were only five while they were sixteen, and also based on what they knew about adventurers none of them had to be above the level gold, so they could be manageable.

"Then I'm going. Get ready, all of you" Sisna said, walking towards the adventurers. While it was a risky situation, traveling without knowing where they were going and what they could face would be much more dangerous. Besides, it wasn't the first time they had faced an uncertain situation. When they had captured the fairy delegation months ago, Haku had taken great risks to allow them to kill their warriors: if he could do it, so she could too. They had the same blood after all, and in terms of courage Sisna wasn't inferior to anyone, not even to Haku. She wasn't reckless, but if there was a need to risk, she had no problem doing it.

The others nodded. "Fine, but be careful" Rhaegal said before activating the invisibility rune and disappearing. Before long, everyone else did the same. Sisna suddenly found herself alone. However, even if she couldn't see her siblings, she could still sense them nearby: adding up all the smells, sounds, body heat and electric field that were in her vicinity, she could tell for sure where they were. As a result, she wasn't the least bit intimidated, because she knew for sure that she wasn't alone.

However, the newcomers couldn't know this. That was the great advantage of dragons: they didn't rely solely on sight for orientation. Sisna thus, just as she had done with Nogg, pretended not to have noticed the adventurers and waited, behaving as she normally would. This was part of the strategy: if they had thought they were the first to see her, the adventurers would have less suspicion that it was a trap.

The adventurers were none other than Efren, Sarah, Carlos, Martha e Lisah. All of them were apprentices of Nogg, the wizard hunter that the dragons had slain a few weeks before. During all that time they had followed his killers: they had in fact understood that their master hadn't been eliminated by any beast and they wanted to find out the truth. Though the dragons had been good at hiding their tracks, occasionally they too had left a clue; taken individually it wouldn't have attracted attention, and indeed probably would have passed for natural, but added to the previous clues it made it possible to understand that they belonged to the same creature. A slightly cut rock, the marks of a claw, an abandoned bone with particular teeth marks: all signs that by themselves meant nothing, but which when put together formed a well-defined trail.

Of course, the road hadn't always been clear. Several times they had had to change direction and they were wrong. Also, the changing battlefield between humans and beastmen had forced them to move further west. By a series of happy coincidences, however, they too had finally reached the border and were now inspecting it for the next clue.

"These rocks are blunt" Sarah murmured as she looked at some stones on the ground that had been lightly incised. That detail wouldn't normally have attracted anyone's attention, but they had seen it on many rocks before on their journey and knew it was the claw mark of a large, heavy creature. "It must have passed through here"

"It's close" Carlos murmured suddenly.

The others looked at him confused. "We have seen this sign many times. How can you tell?" Efren asked.

"From the humidity" Carlos replied. "I noticed that all the other rocks with these marks were wet both outside and inside the cut part, because during the night the humidity had had the time to condense and settle inside it. This mark however is different. The rock is wet, since it's always exposed to moisture every night, but the claw mark is dry. That means the creature that left it mustn't have passed this way before this morning"

The others understood his point of view. "If so, then it can't be far away" Efren said. "Lisah?"

"As you wish" one of the twins said, and very quickly conjured a spell that increased her vision. Suddenly she was able to see at distances impossible for a human. However, that magic didn't guarantee efficient vision like the one of the dragons: Lisah could only see colored spots, but using her experience she could recognize when something wasn't part of the surrounding environment. And in fact, as soon as she noticed a very large silver spot, she was sure that that was their goal. "It's ahead of us. I'd say less than a kilometer"

"Very good. Let's go!" Efren exclaimed, and the five adventurers immediately set off for the indicated spot. Thanks to a special magic, they could run without making much noise, allowing them to approach stealthily but quickly. When they were close enough they hid behind some bushes and slowly approached: after all, the first rule of hunting was never to attack a prey unless you were sure it was a prey. They had to know what they were dealing with before fighting it.

What they saw surprised them quite a bit. They were used to many oddities, but they were unable to understand what the creature before them was. It looked like some sort of large silver-scaled lizard. It was resting placidly on the river bank, lying on a rock sunbathing.

"What is it?" Martha asked. "I've never seen such an animal, and I don't remember the master ever telling me about it. Do you recognize it?"

The others shook their heads: none of them could identify the creature. However, they were able to notice some details. "Those teeth… they're the right size! I'm sure they match the ones we found on the master's bones!" Sarah exclaimed. "It must be it! We found it..."

"Mh?"

The creature lifted its head and looked in their direction. This amazed them not a little: they were hidden at a great distance and were further protected with magic! What senses did that animal possess to be able to feel their presence? But what happened next surprised them even more. "And who are you?" the lizard asked in a slurred voice, as if it had just woken up.

The jaws of the five adventurers dropped. "Did... Did that animal just talk!?" Carlos exclaimed, the first to recover.

"Animal? How dare you, rude!" the lizard growled. "I'm not an animal, I'm a dragon! And I have a name, my name is Sisna!"

The five adventurers' eyes widened. A dragon! That was certainly not something they had expected! Still, this seemed to fit all the clues they'd found. But a dragon, at least from their point of view, should have been very different...

There was no time to think about anything else: Sarah stood up and started muttering something. If the creature in front of them really was a dragon, then they had to get rid of it as soon as possible. Besides, maybe it was the one who had killed their master. A small ball of fire began to form in front of her hand, and was then hurled at Sisna.