Chp.20: Escape attempt

A few days ago, after Haku and the others left for the Bolvek tribe, Tikka and Kotaru stayed behind to take care of the fairies. Which wasn't exactly a pleasant task. "I hate staying here" Tikka grumbled.

"You know it's the best thing. We talked about it" Kotaru said as she finished feeding Sinar, Sarpa's son. While he posed no danger to them, they were too cautious to untie him even to eat. The food was always the same: raw meat (which Sinar, for obvious reasons, had preferred not to know where it came from), supplemented however with some wild fruits and herbs. Apparently, even though ogres were predominantly carnivores, they also had to eat a few vegetables from time to time. Haku and his siblings had noticed this nearly a month after capturing him, since Sinar's body had begun to waste away.

Tikka drummed her claws on the ground. "I know it is necessary, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I hate being the weak link in the group"

"No one considers you the weak link, Tikka" Kotaru told her.

"Oh, come on, you know perfectly well that it is like this!" Tikka snapped. "Haku said that too"

"Haku sometimes talks out of whack. Don't believe everything he says"

"But he's often right"

"Just because he's the smartest among us doesn't mean he's always right. Especially when he have to recognize the value of the others"

"Well, this time he's not wrong!" Tikka exclaimed tired of Kotaru's constant opining. "Let's face it, we have always been the weakest. We were the first ones excluded from meals and would have died if it hadn't been for the kindness of our brothers. Even now that we have grown up we are the most fragile and the least strong. It's not surprising that when it's time to choose who should stay behind, we're always first on the list"

"We have to control the fairies, to be sure that they eat and don't try to escape"

"Of course, right. They have to survive..."

"You know that Haku wants to keep interrogating them"

"Yeah. He always has questions and never definitive answers..."

Kotaru noticed a certain hatred in Tikka's voice. "Sister, did Haku offend you by any chance?"

Tikka shook her head. "No, it's just... I wish he'd told us what he wants to ask those fairies. So we could have asked them ourselves and at least we'd have something to do!"

Kotaru rolled her eyes. She too had the same thought, but she avoided expressing it aloud. "I don't think even Haku knows what he wants to ask them. His thirst for knowledge is infinite. Every time he finds an answer, a thousand more questions crowd his mind. So don't care about it, I don't think he hasn't told us because he doesn't trust us"

"I know he trusts us!" Tikka exclaimed. "It's just that... I wish he was more open with us, that's it. Talking to us more about what's going on in his head. I wish we had a leader who informs us about what he wants and what he fears"

Kotaru was quite surprised by those words. "Haku isn't..."

"Oh come on, don't try to tell me he's not the leader of our group! It's true, whenever there's a problem we have meetings and talk about it all together, but in the end he's always the one who plans everything and takes decisions, and we listen to him because we all know that a proposition from anyone else would never be as good as his. Even if he doesn't wear the title, he's our leader!" Tikka said. "And I want him as our leader, but I'd like if he show us that we can trust him. I always feel like he has secrets, like he's thinking about something beyond the plan that all of us know. I don't expect him to tell us anything that crosses in his mind, but I would like to know at least the most important details"

Kotaru narrowed her eyes. She knew exactly what Tikka was talking about. As she had expected, the others too had begun to notice that Haku didn't tell them everything. She promised herself to talk to him when he got back, very seriously this time. "Don't think about it now. Go down and feed the fairies. They'll be starving"

"Yeah, whatever you want" Tikka grumbled with some annoyance in her voice, walking down the cave.

The dragon reached the bottom within minutes. She found the two fairies in the usual place where they had left them, but even before getting closer she sensed that there was something unusual. Her sensitive hearing could perceive a strong tremor coming from the fairy with brown hair (Mirta, was that her name? Well, who cares); furthermore, dragons possessed a sense that allowed them to perceive the body heat of living beings, and she could therefore notice that the fairy's internal temperature had risen quite a lot. She appeared to be in the throes of a severe fever.

"Damn! What the hell is going on here!?" Tikka exclaimed getting closer to have a better look. Mirta was sweating profusely and her face was twisted in pain. Tears were streaming down her face and she had been crying for so long that her clothes were soaked through. Whatever was happening must have caused her great pain.

Tikka looked at the other fairy (Ella, maybe that was her name), who had a frightened gaze in her eyes as she stared at her companion in pain. "You, talk! What's going on?"

"I... I don't know!" the terrified fairy exclaimed.

But Tikka didn't buy it. She grabbed Ella by the neck and growled furiously. The fairy could feel the mighty breath of the dragon just a few centimeters from her face. "Don't try to lie to me! I'm not my brother, I don't care about keeping the prisoners alive. Tell me what's going on now!"

Ella gulped. "I... I assure you I don't know what's happening to her! This isn't what it was supposed to happen..."

"What do you mean with 'this isn't what was supposed to happen'?" Tikka hissed.

"M-Mirta... she... she drank the other dragon's blood!" the blonde fairy cried in the throes of sobs. "It should have... instead..."

But Ella was unable to say anything else: suddenly Mirta began to writhe furiously, as if in the throes of convulsions. She shook so hard it almost felt like her spine was snapping. That vision scared Tikka a bit: "Um... Kotaru? Maybe it's time for you to come to..."

Suddenly, the convulsions stopped and Mirta's eyes widened, and the fairy sighed heavily as if she had just woken up from a long sleep. Then, with a jerk, the ropes that held her imprisoned snapped cleanly. The fairy got back to her feet, still in the throes of some tremors, but now her gaze was full of determination. Tikka instinctively recoiled at the sight.

Mirta's eyes fixed on Ella. "Let her go!" she screamed, and her power seemed to explode from her limbs. Tikka could almost touch it. There was something strange: that wasn't the power of a level gold... it was something more!

Mirta charged and punched Tikka in the chest. It was so fast that the dragon didn't even see it. She felt only a sharp pain in her chest before being thrown against the wall. Instinctively she opened her mouth and a clot of blood flowed out of it.

"Mirta! Are you okay?" Ella exclaimed as she saw her companion on her feet again.

Mirta nodded, even though she was still breathing heavily. "I'm fine. I was too debilitated, and my body was having a hard time processing that blood" she explained. "But it's done now. I'm in control. Now we leav..."

Before she could finish her sentence, a silver tail darted towards her face; Mirta saw it just in time and dodged at the last moment, but the tail planted itself firmly in her shoulder. A scream emerged from the fairy's mouths as the barbed point dug so deeply into her flesh that it split her shoulder blade and exited the other side of her body.

"Shit... I'm still too weak... my senses are dull!" Mirta thought, then she grabbed Tikka's tail. The dragon tried to free herself, but the fairy's grip was very strong. With a jerk, Mirta lifted Tikka by the tail and slammed her against the stone ground.

Tikka acted on instinct and rolled onto her back while still in the air, striking the ground with the hard spines on her back that cushioned the shock. Even so, she couldn't recall ever having experienced such pain in her life. The force with which Mirta had thrown her was such that the ground had cracked. Fortunately, as Darbi had demonstrated some time ago, this wasn't enough to do serious damage to a dragon, but it still caused tremendous pain.

Mirta seemed to want to slam her against the rock again, but her hand was suddenly given a new convulsion and she let go. Evidently, whatever she had done, it couldn't have ended very well, and although she said she was in control, she actually seemed to be trying very hard to maintain dominance over her limbs. Tikka took the opportunity to move away towards the tunnel that allowed to reach the upper part of the cave. There she positioned herself and planted her claws firmly on the ground, as if to prevent them from leaving.

Mirta managed to regain control of her hand and grabbed Ella putting her on her shoulder; with one leg cut off, she certainly couldn't walk, and she was too weak to fly. Then she looked at the dragon. "We're leaving now. Step aside or I'll kill you. You know that I'm stronger than you"

Tikka smiled. "Maybe, but you now are in a cave without any hiding place. I, instead, I'm in a tunnel full of them!" she said, and then she immediately ran behind a rock.

"What..." Mirta started to say, but suddenly a blinding light flooded the whole cave. The stone turned red and the skin of the two fairies seemed to turn into coal. Mirta immediately used all the mana she could to resist the intense heat.

The whole thing lasted just a second. When the light faded, Mirta's body had turned black and the fairy felt pain everywhere, but at least her internal organs weren't damaged; quickly, she began to heal herself. She heard a thud behind her; she looked away and saw that Ella had turned into a lump of coal and had crumbled. Her face was still visible, showing her clear shock and the scream that she was about to let out before being burned alive.

Mirta's body trembled and more tears began to flow from her eyes, even though just crying was extremely painful due to her still charred skin. Furious, she turned towards the tunnel, expecting to find Tikka or some other dragon there: "You...!"

She couldn't say anything else: a second flash of light hit the cave, and again Mirta felt every single piece of her body turn into shriveled coal. All she could do was focus on protecting her internal organs. This time, the intense heat reached even the bones of her arms and legs, snapping them in multiple places and forcing her to her knees. But once again the light faded, and Mirta began to regenerate.

"Damn! How is she still alive?"

"I don't know, but we need to strike deeper!"

Mirta's eyes had melted from the heat, so she couldn't see what was happening, but she could hear it: something big was approaching at great speed. She tried to punch it, but it was impossible with her muscles still charred. Suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, where Tikka had blown a hole with her tail, as if something had slipped inside.

Soon after, another burst of heat occurred, this time within her own body. Starting from her shoulder, the light hit her internal organs, burning her lungs, heart, stomach and even a large part of her liver. Mirta felt as though she were on fire from within. Her body fell to the ground, unable to move; but despite this, the fairy was still alive and was already using her mana to repair her organs.

"What the... what is she made of?"

"I don't know, but now I'm tired of this"

Mirta felt a strong pressure on her head, and then nothing. Her brain was literally reduced to pulp by a dragon's paw. And finally, the fairy died.

The paw belonged to Kotaru. As soon as she heard her sister's cry for help, she rushed to her aid. However, she had immediately understood that the fairy wasn't an opponent within her or Tikka's reach, so she had motioned for her sister to flee towards the tunnel. Then she threw in the cave one of those incendiary ovoid objects that Haku had stolen from the fairies.

After Haku had used one of the items to find out how it worked, there were fifteen left. However, Haku and the others only brought twelve with them, since only twelve dragons would have set fire to the wall (the other three would have entered the city to create the diversion). Therefore, Haku had left the other three in the cave, so that he could use them later. Kotaru had taken them and used them against the fairy, but after seeing that two of them hadn't been able to kill Mirta, she had decided to put the last one left in the hole that Tikka had created in her shoulder, so that it detonated inside her body.

Incredibly, the fairy survived even that, but taking advantage of the fact that she couldn't move, Kotaru crushed her head with her paw, killing her once and for all.

Finally the two dragons were able to breathe a sigh of relief. "What do you think just happened?" Tikka asked.

Kotaru shook her head as she looked at the cave, which was now filled with an intense smell of burnt flesh that would have surely taken days to go away. "I don't know. But when the others will come back, we'll have a lot to discuss"