I instantly shot upward, subconsciously checking to make sure Leo was there, although I could feel him breathing.
As soon as I unfurled my wings and prepared to make a beeline for a safer area, the Marshae yelled, "Wait! I'm not gonna attack you!"
I paused, teetering in the air with indecision. They sounded young, only an adolescent male. I glanced back towards the Marshae, who was gazing at me pleadingly (however that looked on a crocodile dragon).
I huffed, lowering towards the ground. "If you touch one scale on Leo I'll make sure you walk away with none!" I growled, touching down lightly a safe distance away from the Marshae.
"Leo...?" His eyes flickered to the Desert Wyrm. "Ah. Alright, alright. I just need to talk to you."
I sat, still prepared to fly away at the speed of light when needed. "Fine. Let me ask this first... why is there a Marshae outside of the wetlands?"
"Why is there a Lunae outside the reserve?" It retorted.
Reserve?
"What the hell are you talking about?" I snapped, and I could feel Lunae energy beginning to crackle deep in my throat.
"Oh... so you're not one of the escaped. You're a rogue. Well, it's not my place to fill you in. And I wanted to ask you something else, anyways." It shrugged, clearly waiting to see how I took the lack of information, perhaps looking for an information trade.
Forcing myself to hold a calmer demeanor, I blinked slowly. I felt the crackle of energy dissipate to a low buzz, somewhere deeper in my throat. "What did you want to know?"
"You have a Desert Wyrm with you. I thought they were extinct. Where did you get it?"
Extinct... how old was the book I read, then? And that makes Leo's mystery even stranger.
"I'll tell you where Leo came from if you tell me what happened to the Lunae. Sound fair?"
The corner of the Marshae's lip twitched upward. "Sounds good to me. The Sand Drakes went through the Kingdom months ago, riding on giant Teryx. Bigger than I've ever seen, anyways. They took the Lunae to some kind of Reserve, I don't know where or why." It snorted, staring at Leo with an unreadable expression.
So that's what happened. I wonder if there were more Wyrms in the city that I didn't see.
I kept my expression firmly blank, instead I simply nodded and moved on. "Leo was in an abandoned home within the city. My guess is that's part of the reason why the Drakes were there, although I didn't check too well for any more Wyrms." I suddenly remembered why I landed here in the first place, tugging one of the lizards out of my saddlebags for Leo.
I fed Leo and parted ways with the Marshae, however a few questions still remained. I had wanted to know why the Marshae was out of his respective marshland, but I didn't have any more information I wanted to offer. No way I was giving up any information about the Lunar plant.
So I took off towards the savannah. The ground became more dusty, tall yellow grasses appeared, baobab trees appeared scattered throughout, and it was getting hotter by the second. Now I would look for a safe place to stay.
I settled for a cave that was partially hidden by shrubs. It wasn't as well hidden as I would have preferred, but the inside had several things that were also needed.
This included a small pool of water trickling from the side, nooks and crannies for item storage, an opening facing at just the right angle to let dry desert air in, but another smaller cavern in the back where I could stay out of the hot air.
I made sure Leo had a place to stay as well. I filled a decent sized dip in the cave floor with a fine sand from a relatively small nearby beach, then gently tugged Leo off my neck.
I set him down in the sand carefully, then backed away to see what he would do when placed in a recreation of his natural habitat.
He instantly began to bury himself in the sand, wiggling in place, flinging sand on top of himself with his tail. It was mesmerizing to watch. When he was done, only his tiny nose poked out. Of course Leo would be able to feel vibrations while buried, so he would know when to unbury himself.
I sighed, beginning to unpack what little items I brought. I wasn't going to let Leo out of my sight, if he was meant to be extinct and dragons were clearly after his kind.
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Over the course of the next few weeks, Leo nearly doubled in size. I wasn't sure if I was remembering exactly right, but I was almost sure the books I'd read had said Wyrms wouldn't get so large so quickly. Rather they were very small until 2 months, feeding on tiny spiders and even other baby Wyrms to stay hidden from larger predators. I shrugged it off, but soon Leo would be too large to carry and we would have to travel by land if I wanted to keep him as my companion.
Leo had even begun to speak a small amount of Dracae, the native language to most dragons except the ones in the far north. They still spoke an ancient language that may have been an undeveloped form of Dracae.
Leo had begun simple things such as 'yes,' 'no,' and 'hungry,' as well as other simple phrases that weren't as often used. He even said 'Leo' once when I called him by name.
Now he even needed a larger sand bath, the end of his tail poking out of the sand a ways whenever he buried himself.
Now I was planning on finding a deeper and larger cave, deeper in the Savannah instead of on the outskirts, one more suitable for Leo's quick growth. He seemed to be growing at a much faster pace than I had originally anticipated.
