Chp.36: He is alive!

The sixteen dragons hurried back to where the battle had just taken place. As soon as they were close enough they climbed the trees and jumped from branch to branch to continue. The poisonous vapor was still in the air and it would probably take days to dissipate.

The hideous silhouette of the dead hydra would have given anyone the creeps, but they had seen far worse in their lifetime. As terrifying as that beast might be, it was nothing compared to their two parents. While the headless body and the various severed heads horribly disfigured by poison and fire were enough to disgust them, they paid almost no attention.

The hydra minions were still around, but their behavior had completely changed. Now they were reduced to nothing more than animated, willless corpses. They wandered seemingly aimlessly and hardly considered the dragons leaping from tree to tree above them. It was unlikely they would have reacted unless they were directly in front of them. After all, being no more than corpses, their hearing and sense of smell weren't exactly the best, and without the hydra to direct them they became unable to track down prey or to congregate and function socially. Probably, once they left the area contaminated by the toxic vapor or it dissipated, they would immediately fall prey to some scavenger.

Next to the hydra, there was him. Haku lay there, almost completely covered by the great basilisk's bone plates. Some of the hydra's minions were trying to break through its protection, but the only result was to corrode even more and catch fire from the poison and fire potions in which the armor was soaked. Haku didn't even move a muscle, and he almost seemed asleep. Even with their extremely acute hearing, the dragons couldn't perceive the slightest sound coming from him: not a breath, not a gasp, not even the rhythmic heartbeat. His body was like frozen.

The dragons felt their hearts sink to see him like this. They knew their brother was now only a corpse. He didn't make a sound, he didn't move, he didn't even give off the typical smell of living creatures. He was dead.

It was the first time that Darbi had seen him like this, and as soon as he did he was overcome by despondency. Now he could no longer deny reality. He had a strong urge to get out and run to his brother, trying to wake him up any way he could, but common sense stopped him. He remembered Rhaegal's words: Haku wouldn't want them to risk their lives. Not to save a dead body, at least.

"At least he didn't turn into... those things" he whispered as he watched the minions keep trying to penetrate the armor. When he looked at them, anger flooded him and he pulled a javelin from his dimensional pouch, intending to kill them, but then something stopped him.

Even though it was night, the pale moonlight made the sky very clear; therefore, it was easy to notice the passage of a shadow. The gusts of wind that followed confirmed the arrival of a large winged creature. The dragons immediately snapped to attention and activated the invisibility rune.

A gigantic beast descended from the sky; for a moment they took it for a dragon, but then they noticed that it only had two legs, a sign that it must be a wyvern. Above it there were two humans. One of them raised a kind of scepter and in an instant several fiery beams killed every minion of the hydra in that area. Then the human whispered something, and the air around the hydra's body began to swirl, drawing out the poisonous vapor and creating a safe area for the wyvern to land.

"Nice work, Hara" the other human, a tall, wiry fellow wearing flashy armor, said. "Are you sure there isn't any hydra breath left around?"

"Do you doubt my skills, Carrion?" his companion jokingly said. "Don't worry about the hydra's breath and think about what could have caused this disaster. Reducing a calamity in this state it's not something everyone can do"

The dragons remained hidden by invisibility rune, listening to the two humans. If they were there it must be for something important.

Carrion looked at the hydra's body. The creature had all its heads severed and from the signs of injury it looked as if it had been hacked apart and burned from the inside. "Whoever did it, he knew what he was doing. First he corroded the heads and necks, and then set them on fire. An ingenious plan to say the least"

"That wasn't enough to kill this beast," Hara said, then she shivered slightly and looked around. "I feel watched"

Carrion nodded. "Yes, me too. There's something around here watching us"

The sixteen dragons widened their worried eyes. Could those two humans sense their presence even though they were using invisibility runes? Until that moment, no one had ever been able to do this…

Suddenly, Carrion moved with incredible speed and his sword whirled in the air; the movement alone generated a shock wave so strong that the tree in front of him split in two, and the two halves tilted slightly under their weight. Carrion expected something to fall from the tree, but saw nothing or heard the slightest sound. "Mh. Maybe it's just our impression. We just faced a tough battle after all" he said. "We continue to investigate"

Unbeknownst to him, Rhaegal was in that tree. The dragon had narrowly avoided the blow: when the sword cut the tree, it had done so within inches of his right leg. Rhaegal didn't dare move further to avoid attracting the attention of those two humans who seemed to have abilities beyond their understanding, and so did all the others.

The two humans went around the hydra, and finally found it. As soon as they saw Haku's body they were quite confused. "What kind of animal is that?" Carrion exclaimed. "Do you know it?"

"No. I don't remember ever hearing of such a creature. Judging by the bone plates it could be a great basilisk, but the physiognomy and the size are very different" Hara replied, then she looked at the dead hydra. They were now on the side of the back, so they could clearly see a large hole in it. "Whatever it is, it seems to have worked its way up to the brain and ripped it apart from the inside. It must have had little regard for its life… or perhaps it was driven by desperation"

"Really? Do you expect an animal to know that hydra blood is toxic?" Carrion asked. "It probably just saw a way to win the battle and it used it"

"Animals have a strange memory ingrained within them. They can sense danger from things they've never seen in their lives" Hara responded. "So I doubt that this creature didn't understand the danger of entering the body of the hydra"

Silence fell between the two humans for a few moments. It was clear they both thought the situation was weird. "Well, let's see what we have here then" Carrion said reaching down and trying to touch Haku, but as he did so he immediately retracted his fingers, which were eaten away to the bone and were on fire. "Shit!" he exclaimed as he used his mana to put out the fire and regenerate the wounds. Then he sniffed the affected spot. "This is great basilisk's venom! Why the heck is it here? And why is it setting me on fire?"

Hara also looked a bit confused. "There shouldn't be. Unless...". A thought suddenly struck her. "These bone plates are also of great basilisk! Is it possible that... they're just an armor?"

The woman moved her scepter and after a few seconds the air around her thickened forming what looked like filaments, which slithered through the openings in Haku's protection and detached one of the bone plates, dragging it in front of Hara. The woman looked closely at the plate and exclaimed: "As I suspected! On one side there are great basilisk's poison and a fire potion smeared, while on the other side there is nothing! And these plates are attached to the body by these kind of lianas!". The woman was definitely amazed. "These plaques are just an outer shell!"

Hara moved her hand and the smoky filaments she had created penetrated every opening in Haku's armor and split it from the inside. Haku's real body emerged from them.

Carrion's eyes widened and his mouth opened so wide that his face nearly buckled. "I can't believe it..." he whispered. "It's a dragon!"

"What? This is supposed to be a dragon?" Hara murmured surprised and also a little disappointed. This was certainly not how she imagined dragons.

"Well... a baby dragon actually" Carrion explained better. "He mustn't have hatched for more than a few months..."

"And is he already that big?" Hara exclaimed. If placed upright, the dragon would have been nearly three times her height, yet he was only a few months old? "Wait... is it a he or a she? How do you tell the gender of a dragon?"

Carrion grabbed the dragon's head and showed its horns. "I can't say with absolute certainty, but I suppose it's a he. Male dragons have much more showy horns than females. They use them to attract a mate, like deer do"

Being compared to deer didn't please the sixteen dragons who were listening to the conversation, and even less did they like that the two humans were touching and using their brother's body as they liked. Many of them felt the urge to climb down from the trees and jump on them. They were held back by the awareness that those two humans weren't something they could compare with: not only had they sensed their presence with the rune of invisibility, but they were also very strong. If they tried to attack them, they would be killed in an instant.

"Now that explains everything. Dragons are very intelligent, even when they are so young. Even if they aren't very strong, they are quite cunning" Carrion muttered to himself. "This one must have covered himself in bony plates and poured great basilisk venom on himself, then destroyed the heads somehow, and finally worked his way up to the brain. Judging by the shape of that wound, he must have done so that the hydra would bite itself" he said, pointing to the large wound on the monster's back, which clearly bore the marks of its teeth. "That's how he hurt it. He was too weak to hit it from the outside so he found a way to tear it apart from the inside. Very clever"

"Well, not so clever. He died to kill the hydra anyway" Hara said.

But Carrion shook his head: "No, Hara. This one is still alive"

The sixteen dragons stationed in the trees froze at the words. Different emotions exploded within their souls: relief, pure joy, fear of deluding themselves, terror for their brother's fate. They didn't know what to do, so they made the obvious move: they stood still and invisible listening.

"If he had died, he would have already turned into a minion. He was immersed in the cloud of toxic vapor, so he must have inhaled a lot of it. Not to mention that it was directly in contact with its blood. By now he would already be a mindless corpse wandering in the woods" Carrion continued. "Use your divine power, Hara. You can feel the life coming from him"

Hara closed her eyes and expanded her consciousness towards the dragon. At first she felt nothing, as she would have expected from a dead body; but then she used her divine power to improve her perception, and she felt a small light of life within that being. "How is this possible? The internal organs have completely shut down! Even the brain and the heart have stopped working!" he exclaimed.

"Dragons are very difficult to kill. When environmental conditions are adverse, they can go into a state of hibernation" Carrion explained. "Well… we call it hibernation, but it's actually a much more complex process. Virtually all of their life processes stop, including breathing, heartbeat and brain activity. It's as if their bodies are… well, dead. They can remain in this state indefinitely"

Hara looked at the dragon in front of her. "So, right now he's in a state of hibernation?"

"That's right. Sooner or later he'll wake up" Carrion replied. "The poisonous breath of the hydra owes its dangerousness to the large amount of mana that composes it. But the mana contained in the bodies of dragons is immense. Probably, right now this dragon's mana is destroying that of the hydra's breath piece by piece. When it has eliminated everything, the dragon will awaken"

"Do dragons have that much mana to counter the hydra's breath? Even when they're that young?" Hara asked sceptically.

"They have a lot more, actually. An adult dragon wouldn't even notice that they had inhaled the hydra's breath. There's a reason dragons are immune to any disease, poison, or curse" Carrion explained. "This one is still very young, so he will probably take months to recover"

Hara nodded. Now everything was much clearer to her. "Okay. Let's take him to our camp"

Carrion looked at her in surprise. "What are you doing? You know the law, we should kill him. It's dangerous to leave a dragon alive"

"You said it, this one is still young. It won't be dangerous if we take sufficient security measures. And the great Heloisa teaches us to repay favors" Hara said. "I don't know what his intentions were, but this dragon by distracting the hydra allowed us to avoid the massacre of our troops and end the war. We owe him a great favor. Sparing his life is the least we can do. We will use our divine power to cure him and then we will take him to the king, and he will decide what to do with him"

Carrion seemed to think about it for a moment, then he nodded. The two humans climbed back onto their wyvern's back and the latter grabbed Haku with its claws, and then it flew away.

The sixteen dragons were finally able to emerge from their hiding places. Despite the situation, all of them had smiles on their faces. "Alive... he's alive!" they exclaimed, their hearts filled with joy.

But now they had another problem: Haku was alive, but he was in the hands of the humans.