Night Fury's Wrath

Chapter 82: Into The Light

Moon damn it, Vaskr! Why did you have to inherit your father's stealth, too?

The thick forest wrapped around me, glowing with life even in the darkness. The sounds of nocturnal animals going about their lives served as the perfect cover for my slow steps over crusty leaves and brittle branches, even if my white hide only made sneaking around more difficult. There was a 'sick' place I passed through in the forest where everything was dying or dead, and it was eerily silent, but the cause was unknown. I even passed a half-dead tree at the edge of it, but the other half was perfectly healthy. While unusual, it wasn't at the top of my priorities.

My eldest hatchling, however, was clearly more adept at hiding than I gave him credit for. Vaskr wasn't quite as skilled as Aurora, of course, but he was still more than competent. In fact, I doubted anyone could disappear as thoroughly as my daughter, even Auroon. When she put her mind to it, she wouldn't leave even a single obvious pawprint behind. That was probably due to her abuse back home, come to think of it...

I shook my head, refocusing on Vaskr. Better than Aurora or not, he was still frustrating to track—and coming from me, that was a compliment. I was the best tracker in our family, thanks to my late mother's teachings, but even when I backtracked, his scent was simply gone.

I stopped and lifted my head to look all around me. "Damn," I muttered under my breath. I'd lost him again. Apparently, Nibbler was just as good at—

A faint scent carried by a gentle breeze trickled into my nose, which almost seemed familiar, but it vanished too quickly to identify. "What the...?" If I were anyone else, I would've thought nothing of it, but season-cycles of tracking told me that what happened was not natural.

"Come out of hiding!" I barked angrily. "I know you're here somewhere! You do not know what I'm capable of."

A tiny speck of white light flickered into view inches from my nose and slowly spun around me. "No need to get violent, young one," a garbled voice echoed around me. It had a strange undertone that I swore I'd heard before. "I mean no harm."

"Why are you hiding my son from me?" I demanded, following the light with my eyes.

"What makes you think I'm hiding him?" It asked. "It isn't very polite to toss around accusations."

I narrowed my eyes. "Scent trails don't just suddenly disappear," I answered, shifting my weight nervously. "That's unnatural. Also, I doubt my son is light enough to avoid leaving any tracks behind." Even Aurora couldn't do that, but she could conceal them well. There were no such tracks from Vaskr, which was impossible for a dragon, even if our species wasn't very heavy compared to others.

The light chuckled. "Wow, you are just as clever as you used to be!"

"What are you talking about?" I growled. "You know nothing about me." Even as I said that I got the feeling I was wrong. Something about this light made me uncomfortable, almost like it stared into my soul. "What are you?"

"Hmm..." The light spun rapidly around my head before shooting up above me, suspended just out of reach. "I suppose you could say I am one of your gods. I know a lot about you, Stormfly."

I backed up a step, growing uneasy. How did it know my name? "You're lying. Moon would've told me if there was another deity." I'd heard of the Sun, the Moon, and Death—the Scaleless gods were no concern of mine—but never a fourth dragon god. I doubted Moon would lie to me, but if what the light said was true, I was out of my league. I couldn't take on a real god alone.

The speck of light fizzled a little. "Ah, her. It is quite the challenge hiding from a First One, though she probably already knows I'm here..." The voice sounded oddly unafraid of that possibility. "That's why I have to keep moving, so she can't pin down my location. That's the perk of being a new god, I suppose; I have so little power that I'm hard to track, even for a First One with what might be boundless power."