King of The Dragons (Wings of Fire X Monster Hunter)

Part 2: Chapter 19, 20, & 21

(3rd Pov Glory)

"Watch him carefully," Glory instructed Clay. "Don't let him talk."
"MMMMMFF," Deathbringer complained though the vines she'd tied around his snout. She didn't want him spilling the beans to Clay before she could get away into the forest. Also, she'd gotten sick of listening of listening to him yammer all night long trying to derail her plan. This way she'd been able to watch the sunrise in relative peace and quiet, shortly after which Clay had shown up.

"No worries," Clay said. "I'll just sit here and be my usual intimidating self." He threw back his shoulders and tried to scowl.
"Absolutely terrifying," Glory assured him.
Deathbringer managed to look skeptical despite the vines obscuring most of his face.

"I'll send someone else soon to take the next watch," she said, baking away.
'But first I'm going to catch a monster.'
It wasn't that stupid of a plan, no matter what Deathbringer said. A lone RainWing was exactly the kind of target the monster would go after. And she couldn't rick enlisting another RainWing as bait - they were all too dopey to be any use, even Mangrove.

Besides, as far as she could tell, she was the only RainWing willing to use her venom on other living things. It wasn't her favorite thing to do, but it was still a weapon - a powerful one that few dragons knew about - and she was sure she could use it to escape any situation if she had to.

She headed back to the tunnel first. She was still certain that it was connected to the missing RainWings, although she couldn't figure out how.
It started with a question: Who had put the tunnel there in the first place? And then: What was their plan - to steal a RainWing here and there? Why?

Glory nosed around the forest near the tunnel opening until she found a clearing where she could sit and think for a moment.
Burn seemed like an obvious subject, since her stronghold was not far from the tunnel. But Glory had seen the look Burn's face when Glory's venom sizzled  on Queen Scarlet's scales. It was pure shocked terror. The SandWing queen had clearly never seen anything like Glory's venom before. If she were the one abducting RainWings for the past year, surely she'd have heard about their training sessions and she'd know all about it.

Glory stopped at a small bush and sprayed it with her venom. Black goop splattered over the leaves, and almost immediately the whole bush wilted, shriveled up, and died. Glory tilted her head at it, feeling weirdly guilty.

Maybe she could practice her aim while she waited for the monster to attack her. She chose another bush with long dragon-tail leaved and tried to hit just one of them.
half the bust went fzzzzzrrrt and melted into the grass.
"Hmmm," Glory said aloud. "Not awesome."
She tried again. And again. The clearing was starting to look a bit worse for wear.

Glory stopped and smacked herself with her tail.
'Try using your brain for half a moment, Glory.'
If she made a mess like this with her venom practice, the surely the other training dragonets would have, too. So even though Bromeliad wouldn't show her where Kinkajou had disappeared, there was a chance Glory could find it on her own.

She started at the waterfall and circled out from there, walking so she could study the bushes as she went past them. Fat spiny frogs stared at her, making worgle-WORG noises in their throats. A pair of red and gold birds with large beaks followed her for a while, gossiping loudly in what sounded like garbled dragon language.

But she found nothing - no signs of venom anywhere. Maybe the training sessions had been in a whole different part of the forest; maybe the secret tunnel really had nothing to do with the abductions.

Glory stubbornly kept searching. What other reason could there be for the tunnel? Who would need to get quickly between the desert and the rainforest? No one . . . no one came to the rainforest at all, and the RainWings certainly never left.