Chronicles From the End of an Age

Hunting Humans - 10Yrs BTA

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The sorrowful keen of a wailing dragon pierced the sky. Several startled birds were frightened from their nests within the marshy forest, calling out warnings to each other as they fled. The keen repeated again and again, full of loss and anguish, slowly descending into sniveling whimpers as its source lost the strength to continue the sound. Four dragons sat in an empty clearing, the ground slightly raised within so it was out of the swamp. In front of them lay the bodies of two more dragons surrounded in dried blood, one with a gaping wound through the back of its skull, and the other with multiple mortal wounds on its chest and face.

One of the living dragons was hunched over their bodies, tears dripping from her eyes, her body shuddering with great sobs of pain. She had dark, mossy green scales, two straight horns on the back of her head, and a row of spikes running down her back. At the tip of her tail, which flicked back and forth in accordance with her distress, was a stinger that resembled that of a scorpion. Splashes of ruby red coloured the inside of her legs, bright and poisonous. The other dragons around her resembled her colours, though each had different splashes around their legs, whether that be pink, blue, or purple.

"Oh, Juwil... I am so sorry," A dragoness said putting a wing over the mourning dragon's back, "We will find whoever did this. I promise."

"It had to be a metal dragon," snarled another, a drake, "No other creature could make wounds this clean."

"But the wounds don't resemble anything claws would make," stammered a third, also a drake.

"Well, what else could it be? Nothing could have taken down two dragons so easily," grunted the first drake.

"Kaman, Ballor, pipe down will you. Now isn't the time for your debates," growled the dragoness.

"No... it's alright," Juwil raised her head, a tear trickling from her eye, "Whoever did this will pay, whatever it takes."

She looked over the two dead bodies of her siblings, regret and pain lancing through her heart. They would have had to have been dead for at least a day. It meant that they had been attacked not soon after she had left them. Whatever had attacked them had waited until she had left. The thought infuriated her. It had only been a normal job. Go out, look for human villages, and bring back what you find. Simple. And they had hit the jackpot as well. Twelve perfectly healthy individuals, and a screaming baby. Rarely were so many found at once these days.

"Maybe one of the humans..." said the other dragoness, taking a closer look at one of the dragon's wounds, "They could have been made with some sort of weapon."

"Couldn't be," grunted Kaman, the drake with the pink scales around his legs, "Look at how easily these scales were cut. No human weapon could do that."

It hurt to have Kaman speak so bluntly, but she understood it. He was an analytical dragon, who tried his best to figure out the situation without letting emotions guide his thoughts. It always helped to have him around when things went sideways... as they were now. Juwil took a deep breath, holding down the rising pain, and turned to the drake with barely veiled anger.

"None of the humans had any weapons on them besides some big stick," she spoke, struggling to hold down more tears, "We got rid of that though. There was nothing big enough to make these sorts of wounds."

Kaman regarded her for a moment, before nodding his head, "I'll figure it out Juwil. I always do."

The four of them began to walk around the clearing, searching the ground for any other clues as to what had happened.