Culmination | A Tinkerbell Fanfiction

Chapter 13: Dragonsbane

The fairies met at the border to the Winter Woods at sunrise the next morning. The frost-talents were already waiting impatiently by the time the others managed to get there and Spike exhaled loudly, propelling herself off of her branch and sending a shower of powdered snow onto Peri and Gliss as they rushed to meet their friends.

"You made it!" Gliss cheered, not seeming at all phased by the bucketful of white plummeting on her head,

"Finally," Spike commented, folding her arms and fluttering over after her excited guildmates. "What took you guys so long? We were beginning to wonder if you were even gonna show up!"

"Yeah, sorry. Our riddles were a...little trickier," Fawn explained, giving her friends a sidelong glance. Rosetta and Silvermist stared on blankly while Iridessa bit her lower lip and looked up to Clank who nervously fiddled with their clue. Only Vidia seemed to display a different emotion; pure annoyance.

"You didn't find yours either, did you?" Peri guessed, noticing their forlorn expressions.

Rosetta winced and shook her head. "No," she replied. "None of us did."

"We've looked everywhere too!" Sil added, pushing her way to the front of the group. "And when we couldn't find ours, we even switched clues and we still couldn't find them!"

"Almost like they were..." Spike began.

"Never there in the first place?" Vidia scoffed. "Yeah, we figured that much out on our own."

"But...if they weren't where they were supposed to be...then what happened to them?" Iridessa wondered.

"And here's a better question; where are they now?"

                                                                                       ***

"Well," Scarab remarked, and the earth shook with a resounding clash of thunder, "We're here."

The rain had finally drifted beyond them, leaving only a faint drizzle in its wake, more than enough to keep them both uncomfortable, but leaving their wings somewhat dry for the most part. Bobble fingered his jacket uncertainly and Scarab, glancing his way, noticed this.

"This is as far as we go on foot," she warned him. "Kyto resides at the very top of the mountain, in the cave furthest from the sun." She pointed in the direction she meant, but even squinting, the tinker could not distinguish where that cavern was. "We're going to have to fly to get there," she rephrased, turning back to face him with a frown. "Are you sure you can do this? Your wings are...in pretty bad shape. I don't want you to push yourself more than you have to."

"No," Bobble answered, still gazing up nervously at the impending rocky cliff before them. "I can do it." He didn't give her any more confirmation than that but she didn't seem like she was expecting anything more. Once again, he tried to reach out to Scorpion, but the sparrowman gave no acknowledgment. It was as if he had simply vanished from existence. Then, he remembered Scarab's warning and he quickly jerked himself back into the present, blinking and twisting to face the older Protector, only to find her above him, already making her way toward the peak of the mountain, zig-zagging around raindrops at a speed almost faster than he could track. At her speed, she could give Vidia a run for her money for sure.

"All right," she announced, waiting for him to catch up before going any further. "So, I figure we're going to need a plan going into this. I've dealt with Kyto before and he can be a real pain when he wants to be. Dragons are naturally greedy beasts and are often difficult to bargain with and we have very little to offer him in return." Her eyes drifted to his hands for the briefest of seconds before moving on just as quickly. "Keep your talents at the ready," she went on. "He's likely going to try and betray us the moment he gets a chance. Your fire will come in handy here. It's very similar to his and there are those who believe it was the dragons who gave the fairies the ability of fire-talent as a kind of peace offering after the war."