Discovery and Decisions

"Who took our sister?" I asked Corentine while still looking her in the eye.

"It was two dragons from the origin faction." She replied with a look of regret.

I closed my eyes and Apollonia's bright happy face flashed in my mind, a feeling of regret overwhelmed me.

"I should have never suggested that we split our group, it is my fault this happened."

"Brother you couldn't have known, its not your fault." Corentine replied.

I shook my head and turned around, "Lets go meet our guest."

I leapt into the sky and started flying in the direction of the fallen dragon with corentine quickly following after me despite her injuries.

I didn't have to fly for long before the massive form of the dragon came into view on the beach below, I quickly descended to land in front of the dragon.

Even though he had a massive hole in his chest I could still see him drawing shallow breaths, truely us dragons had a constitution like no other, any other living thing would have died instantly with a hole through their body.

After landing I slowly approached him, as I walked towards him his eyes stayed glued to mine as if he was holding on through shear force of will.

When I finally got to him I looked down on him with disgust and said "were have you taken my sister?"

Through his labored breathing I could make out his response which was "You should have never been born, your only purpose now is to return what was stolen."

Then before I could continue my questioning, the light faded from his eye's as he seemed to have said what he needed to.

Seeing that he was already dead, I decapitated him then cut open his chest and reached inside, quickly finding what I sought. I then pulled his massive heart from his still warm corpse and ate it whole.

A feeling of warmth spread throughout my whole body, it felt like I was absorbing a part of his soul, I felt an itch on the nape of my neck that seemed to spread down my upper back before dissipating.

"Brother, your mark." Corentine said to me.

"what about it?" I asked.

"It grew." She replied.

I turned my head to look at my back and although I couldn't see my nape I could still see that indeed my mark had grown, on the edges of where my mark had once stopped a new design had spread out now the edges resembled flames.

It seemed that as apart of my mark of domination I was able to partially absorb the power of other dragons through the act of devouring their flesh.

I quickly turned my head back to the now dead red dragon and began to eat more of his body. In dragon society it was considered taboo to cannibalism each other but it wasn't unheard of a victor eating some parts of their opponent after a battle. But quite frankly I couldn't care less about that, if there was a path to becoming stronger to take back my sister then I would take it.

With every bite I could feel more of the dragons essence filling me, although it wasn't as much as when I ate his heart, after eating as much as I could I would say that it was about the same yield as when I ate the heart.

I licked the blood from my maw as I turned to look at my back again, now seeing that the flames at the edges of my mark had doubled in size.

Now that I had my fill I walked back over to the dragons decapitated head and picked it up, then I turned to my sister and said "Lets go back to the tree, I found the river" Then leapt into the air with the head still clutched in my claws.

after flying for a while I found the river again, then we followed it until I felt us pass through the barrier and saw the great tree again. We immediately flew straight to it, and outside I could see Delmar pacing about clearly worried.

As we landed near him I tossed the head in his direction, which caused him to look quite surprised then he immediately asked "What happened?"

"Apollonia was taken, but I managed to kill this one that was trying to capture Corentine." I replied.

He walked up to the dead dragons head and looked at it for a moment before saying "how did you manage to kill Naran, he was almost an elder dragon."

"Luck I guess, I managed to hit him with a my dragon breath before he could react as he was focused on my sister."

Behind me Corentine looked absolutely dejected saying under her breath "If only I had been stronger."

Delmar looked up at me with a steely gaze before walking up to me and forcefully pinning my neck under his massive claws and said "why did you leave my barrier, you knew that we are being tracked."

I could only struggle to respond and said "we were unaware that we had left your barrier then when we went to find the river back, they were attacked."

He lowered his head down to me and said with a snarl "It was your responsibility to protect them, this falls squarely on your shoulders." before releasing me.

"Now that they have your sister, they know were you are. We need to leave, now." He continued.

"Are we not going to save her?" I asked.

I whipped his head around and growled "Fool that is exactly what they want, your sister will have to wait until we have more allies with us."

I looked at the ground, I knew that he was right but I couldn't help but want to save her. It seemed my bullheadedness was rearing its ugly head again as I had made up my mind.

I looked back up at him with a look of resolve I said "If you want to run then go ahead but I will not let them have their way with her, whether or not its a trap doesn't matter, I will save her before its to late."