As Emperor Stormlight and the other dragon left to seal the ‘negotiations’, I really wanted to finish asking my question before it got away from me.
Wart was still glaring hesitantly, and Snow was trying to sketch Gale as he eagerly posed to be drawn.
So I asked Flash directly.
“Why did you use ‘scorch’ as profanity?” I ask.
The question seemed to fully confound him.
“You really don’t know what the Scorching is?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Flash sighs and gives a brief summary. From how there used to be enormous human kingdoms to being decimated by dragons.
It sounded an awful lot like our founding tale minus a happy ending.
It sounds bad enough as it is, I so don’t want to even think about how aggravatingly ignorant or casual the dragon side of this story might be.
“Changing topic then. Do you want to visit Misty? It’s not that long of a flight if you do.”
“We still have to deliver our goods. Unfortunately I have to wait for that.” Flash answers.
“I can see it on your face that you don’t want to wait. We can probably get you there in just a few hours or less if you let some dragons carry it.” I state.
Practically any of them would jump at the chance to do it.
They seem to like the idea of that a lot.
Maybe we can get filled in on what we have waiting for us on this continent.
After the woman is done with her drawing, it’s up to them to pick who they want to be riding with.
It’s not as much fun to share a dragon when there are plenty available. And what do you know? We have just enough right here!
The goods they were talking about all fit in a single hand-pulled cart.
It was left right where it was—a small clearing right near the edge of the rainforest ahead. It took a speedy flight to get here quickly, and it was still a couple hours travel at our speed.
Flash digs through the contents and pulls out a weathered piece of paper from within.
“A map.” He points, “This is Pyrrhia.”
He hands me a map of the continent, which is called Pyrrhia, at least to the humans here.
As expected, a lot of it is marked with the areas they consider dangerous, and some places are left uncharted. But there are also some interesting markers such as dragon palaces, so there must be other dragons out there, at least.
“I got this.” Gale puffs up and reaches around the entire cart ready to lift it up. “Look how strong I am!”
“You’re a dragon, you oaf. That’s not impressive for you...” I facepalm. Even the other humans were managing to laugh at him.
Flash points us in the direction to go as he explains the rest of their common knowledge.
It was mostly a depressing history lesson.
Lightweaver felt like it would never end.
He could tell Commander Ashwind and the other dragons were tired of looking at the MudWings.
But they couldn’t leave while Emperor Stormlight kept desiring more and more information.
It was getting kind of annoying, and most of it was just immediately translated to Ashwind since he would be the only one making use of it.
The surroundings, other kinds of dragons, things like that.
Ashwind was mostly cold and unreactive until they described NightWings’ appearance.
Out of everything, that felt like the craziest thing to let out a grumble at.
Lightweaver was dying to know how hearing that a bunch of dragons with black scales exist could be such a problem, so he just decided to ask.
“It was a dragon with completely black scales that murdered my original parents.” He huffed without a care. “I made sure I would never forget that.”
“You already can’t stand looking at the MudWings, don’t just extend that to dragons you haven’t even seen yet!” Lightweaver blurted out in disbelief.
Ashwind didn’t respond and he figured that was for the best, since he should be happy if this topic disappears. He also makes a mental note not to bring up his past around him.
Instead he turned his curiosity to a different source as they made the trip back to the beach.
“You asked me how I knew the old language, but how come you know it?” He questioned Emperor Stormlight.
It should have taken some time to learn enough to even get as far as he did.
“I just memorized the lessons, it wasn’t that hard. Don’t you think your excuse of a ‘long story’ is more interesting?” Emperor Stormlight answered in a casual enough tone, as if that was something anyone could just do in a few hours.
Though perhaps he had access to the best learning materials from his ruling position.
At least now Lightweaver knew how such a young dragon managed to become Emperor.
Commander Ashwind looked angry and annoyed that there wasn’t going to be any more fighting.
“All I heard was that none of the dragons on this forsaken continent deserve any respect,” He growled continuously, “And that they’re so technologically inept they cling to nonsense such as ‘magic’.”
Lightweaver snorted at the sentence.
“Magic exists. Otherwise, what would you call this?” He said, appearing behind him.
“What the hell is that?!” Ashwind jumped after seeing him appear behind while he’d clearly been watching him in front the entire time.
“Magic! Probably.” Lightweaver laughed like he always did when he got to reveal his power. Though calling it ‘his’ wasn’t entirely accurate.
By all accounts, he should have tried to hide it if he ever wanted to have a chance at being a thief again. But since Stormlight found out about it, it was already too late for that.
“How do you use it?!” Ashwind followed with a question. He sounded almost panicked, but it didn’t seem like it was from the realization that magic existed.
“You have to perfect your concentration if you wanna do anything fancy like this. And then there’s the luck factor of being born with enough talent.” Lightweaver answered, before pausing and clarifying what ‘talent’ means.
“Also I don’t mean talent as in being a genius. I meant it in the ‘you either have magic or you don’t’ kind of way.”
The camp was filled with plenty of talk about meeting human natives.
They’d missed it, but clearly something fun happened here. Or maybe it wasn’t actually that fun, as most of them were just brewing in even more concentrated dislike for the dragons of this continent upon hearing how pitiful the human living conditions are here.
Commander Ashwind was already doing commander things.
Lightweaver almost forgot he was also under his command, until he got reminded.
“Lightweaver, since you have that—I’m sending you to scout the rainforest.” Ashwind ordered. “Make a team or do it alone, that part is up to you as long as you can handle it.”
“Why do we need to bother scouting when we can just ask the MudWings? Something about RainWings and how they’re too lazy to get involved in anything. Besides, they said they were mainly vegetarians anyway.” Lightweaver griped in response.
“I would say the same if I thought it would save them to do so. You wouldn’t even be able to afford an apple with that amount of credibility.” Ashwind scoffed, “Plus a few scouts have been going missing, that’s reason enough to go take a look.”
It sounded like he was done, so Lightweaver looked away only for him to add a final remark under his breath.
“They better not do anything to encourage me to burn their forest down.”
...
Lightweaver collected everything they learned so far and decided to enter alone, since it would take far too much concentration to juggle a dynamic illusion over multiple dragons.
He tested on the MudWings just to be sure, and just like with humans, he could simply make himself invisible to them.
This was basically impossible to pull on another IllusionWing even if they had zero talent. And even on humans they could still see the blurred outline of his form.
The clarity of an illusion depends entirely on how well the user can mentally visualize what they want to show.
If they were invisible, then the environment behind them would constantly be changing, and that makes it impossible to have a clear mental image unless they stand still. Thus complete invisibility would always create a rather conspicuous visual distortion.
An IllusionWing would just be able to see him anyway if he tried an invisibility trick, but these different dragons didn’t even know it was a thing outside of this so-called ‘Animus Magic’ some of them supposedly had.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
The morning sun was starting to peek over the horizon as Lightweaver finally started entering the rainforest.
It was a welcome relief to feel the ground gradually become more firm and less messy.
Aside from the buzzing insects and croaking frogs, there wasn’t anything of note aside from the huge trees surrounding him.
At least, not until he started to hear voices ahead.
When he got close enough to see the source, he could see all of the previous scouts were trapped in crude metal cages arranged about a small opening in the trees.
The dragons here were much more prismatic and radiant than the MudWings.
And there was a gathering of them.
“...it would be easier to just throw them back out.” The fatter of the group finishes.
The soft-lavender colored dragon looks slightly annoyed before formulating a snappy response.
“This isn’t the same as some random dragons bumbling in. Many have already tried to take our rainforest in the past; am I the only one left that cares what’s going on outside, or what it means for us?”
“Sure, because keeping them in these cages definitely won’t bring us even more trouble than the easy solution.”
“We need a real queen this time.” The lavender dragon continued, “Perhaps our royal challenge has gotten too peaceful. The next competition should be something combative—like tranquilizer duels at the very least..”
The fatter dragon flashes a golden color before smirking.
“I’ll do it as long as you promise me enough tribute! I don’t care all that much for being queen anyway...”
Lightweaver burned every detail of their appearance into his memory before they left the cages unattended.
Now given the opportunity, he hurried close to the first cage where a thin dragon with dashes of white scales over her eyes was bordering on careless bliss inside.
She turns to see him and barely gives any reaction.
“Oh, someone really made it all the way here.”
“What kind of reaction is that?” Lightweaver said, checking the front of the cage and peeking through what appeared to be a hole for a key. “Let me find a way to get you out of there. I learned how to pick locks from a human, so a shitty lock like this isn’t going to take long.”
Of course humans were godly at picking locks they could reach, at least until dragons started realizing they could just look inside the lock.
“But I don’t really mind being here. They give us fruits and stuff!”
Lightweaver could choke on this strangling naivety.
“Also I can escape whenever I want anyway. My fire is the only thing that makes me special, or useful.”
“Then why don’t you do your job and go report what you found like you were supposed to?” Lightweaver grumbled, unimpressed.
It was such an insane reasoning that he almost forgot he wasn’t doing this because he was patriotic or anything of the sort.
The caged dragon huffs and looks towards the protrusion of metal keeping the door to the cage locked shut.
Then a bright crackling sound erupted which forced Lightweaver to snap his focus to whatever she was doing.
The metal was sparking and melting away under a jet of almost pure white plasma, radiating enough heat to distort the immediate surroundings..
The dragon cut through the metal with ease and opened the cage while coughing and steaming from the mouth.
“I NEED WATER SO BAD!” She screams and scrambles in the camp’s direction.
Lightweaver didn’t know what to do besides cover his snout with a talon in disappointment.
He’d leave the rest here while he advanced forward for more information.
He didn’t bring any real weapons, though he did hide a staple of the Shadowclaws just in case.
They all learned how to use it. But he hated when something became messy.
A thin and sturdy metal wire was all it took to cleanly assassinate any dragon. It easily slipped under scales and sliced throats with almost no clean up required.
He didn’t want this to become another mess. Not like that time.
With a little bit of focus, he disguised himself as what he assumed must be a RainWing.
Since they seemed to have such varying coloration, he thought it would be a safe guess to merge the patterns from the two dragons and then choose a slightly altered color.
One of them changed color, so he figured color would be the least likely to give him away.
Lightweaver couldn’t modify his body shape too much, as this wasn’t the same as taking the form of an existing dragon.
It was easy to visualize a dragon he’d seen before, but creating an entirely new appearance is a disaster. It would have to be good enough.
If only he had some kind of mirror or reflective surface, he thought.
If he could just find some way to get a look at himself then he could stabilize his mental image of whatever form he’s taken.
Subtle patterns on the snout with minimal structural changes was the most he could get away with considering they were going to be looking at his face the most.
‘Ah, I’m so stupid!’ He suddenly thought.
Lightweaver realized he could form an illusion in front of him and use that for reference for use on himself.
His disguise was suddenly much clearer now that he had a tangible visualization of what he wanted to look like.
As he progressed forward, he eventually found a village of similar dragons.
It consisted mainly of hammocks and treehouses.
Some smaller dragons were even bouncing up and down on an elastic platform woven out of plant matter.
In the center was a larger, flat platform where the dragons he just saw were gathered.
That looked like where the important details were taking place, so that was where he went.
He could already hear a cut off conversation between six dragons on top, some donning wreaths of flowers around the neck or wrists..
“...that’s nonsense! The selection is supposed to be a peaceful competition!” One of them complains roughly.
“It is peaceful, they’re just darts.” The fatter dragon from earlier says with a snort.
“And what did Grandeur offer you, ‘Queen’ Dazzling? You know she’s going to win, age won’t be enough to slow her down.”
Lightweaver could already guess this was some kind of competition for a throne.
It seemed crazy, but if they were really going to just hand out a ruling position over a stupid competition...
He could deduce the fatter one as Dazzling, and the lavender one as Grandeur from that information. Well, now he knew how the fat dragon gained that bulk. Way too many bribes!
They all looked in his direction as he landed on the platform with confidence. One that may or may not be rewarded.
“I want to compete too.” He said, unsure of what else that could be said to be included.
Seeing that their colors changed based on mood made him extra nervous. He had no idea when and to what color he should be changing.
“...Who are you?” All six ask the same question at almost the same time, shifting to the same emerald-green color.
Lightweaver’s mind raced for a few moments, the focus on his disguise slightly wavering and shimmering with a momentary haze.
He needed a name that would fit in. One that could belong to a female.
The naming scheme wasn’t clear just from the two names he had available to analyze.
All he could do was guess, and at that point he might as well poke fun with it.
“Snake. I’m Snake.” He declares after a few seconds of pause.
“Ugh, another dragon to share the throne with.” One of them lamented out loud with a grumble.
It worked. Lightweaver grinned at the chance.
‘Yes. I’ll swallow your kingdom whole like a snake!’
With that, he followed the group of five deeper into the jungle until it was time to spread out and hide within the loose perimeter enforced by the ‘witnesses’.
There was no real way for them to witness the entire thing, but they didn’t have to, because this would be decided by the last still awake.
One of the original six, with a fruity-sweet smell, dropped out early—for some reason.
He was given a satchel of darts and a blowgun. There were more than enough darts for five targets, but he had no practice with this kind of weapon. It shouldn’t be too different from aiming breath attacks.
Morning was progressing, and there was no doubt he wouldn’t be able to get away with any crazy illusions if there was any more light than this. There was a limit to the amount of nonsense he could do in plain sight.
Lightweaver cautiously moved forward with the assumption that they could camouflage, but they could climb the trees quite easily as well.
As he moved forward, he kept the illusion of himself shifted slightly off so that incoming darts would be more likely to miss.
Sure enough after a few paces of not really trying to hide, one of the competing RainWings swings down from a low branch and tries to shoot him while hanging upside down by her tail.
Lightweaver easily dodged the imprecise projectile.
The same could not be said for the foolish dragon that tried to surprise him from a position they could not dodge from.
‘One down.’ He smirked as the body made a heavy thump on the ground.
Not far from his position he could hear a short scuffle. That probably made two down.
He wondered how stupid he must look just walking around without trying to hide or anything.
It couldn’t be expected that his next opponent would do something foolish and easy to punish.
As if he’d called it, another dart whizzed past from behind him, lodging into the ground by his talon.
This time he didn’t dodge it, but it passed through his offset illusion.
Lightweaver knew it would be pointless to try and turn around, and instead chose pretending to sleep.
It was the dragon he recognized as Dazzling that carelessly strolled past him with a celebratory gait.
Lightweaver laughed and took out another dart as he approached from behind and manually stabbed the needle under her scales.
She quickly gasped in surprise and changed colors to what must have been to express shock, before passing out like the others.
The fourth one he was the one to get the jump on, which only left the last.
Judging from the ones he’s seen so far, it had to be Grandeur—that lavender colored dragon he initially saw.
It was quiet for a while as he moved farther from the recent action.
He was starting to get bored. Quite the dangerous feeling when alertness is needed.
Keeping a dart ready to shoot was the best he could do on that front. There were way too many angles to be attacked from like this.
Just when he thought he was getting tired of the flush greenery, he saw the last thing he expected to find here.
There was a human standing behind a younger tree, watching him.
It was bewildering when he considered how he was told the natives reacted to dragons here.
Though he was also told these dragons were supposed to be vegetarians, so it’s probably just a big coincidence that they aren’t as worried.
Well, it wasn’t his problem if they were just going to stand there and stare warily. If he kept looking at the human he was just going to get shot from behind.
So he scanned the foliage repeatedly until he heard a shrill wail from where the human was.
Lightweaver quickly snapped his head over to see the human falling over with the definite form of Grandeur standing over them.
Of course, it would be obvious in hindsight that she could care less about the human over landing a dart on him.
But this was not a time for thinking.
Lightweaver didn’t consider himself to be here out of some kind of righteous crusade or responsibility, but he still felt a flare of anger that made him understand the appeal of such motivation.
He was already an exceptionally quick thinker and multitasker, but what about when thinking was completely thrown out?
Grandeur could barely raise the blowgun to her maw before Lightweaver closed almost half the distance and got his shot off first, his illusion disguise almost flickering completely in the process.
He swerved around the only dart she could get off before arriving just in time to push her body to fall somewhere but on top of the tripped human.
Lightweaver pondered over his victory while looking up at the canopy while completely forgetting what else he just did in the process.
The human somewhat understood what happened and kept trying to touch him before sneaking off somewhere after he didn’t react to his illusion disguise being touched instead of his physical form..
He was ecstatic and dreaming of history books exaggerating him as being the dragon that conquered an entire kingdom alone.
The key word being ‘exaggerate’.
All he had to do was win a competition!
He would prefer King Snake, but since this continent seems to be quite biased on the leaders being female, Queen Snake will have to do for now.
I took another small liberty while writing this chapter.
Okay, so RainWings don't really have fire breath to easily work with metal. I just thought it would be a great way to demonstrate that a dragon with gifted flame quality could cut through metal. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that RainWings probably banished instead of imprisoned because they literally can't keep a dragon imprisoned.
Plant-based bindings could be burnt off or cut eventually no matter how good you get at tying them up. The best practical idea I could up with for them was actually just to dig a huge pit in the ground with unclimbable walls and too narrow to use their wings to fly out.
Also a small fun fact: Emperor Stormlight has a photographic memory.
