Classy, Controlled Chaos - The STEAM Team Adventures

🐉 Dragon's Doom [5/5] 🐉

Edward's POV:

Over the next few hours, we would be receiving a total of three letters coming from different people.

It wasn't a lot, but it was important nonetheless.

Words weren't my best subject, but I did my best to stay focused.

Addison and Marshall huddled together, reading through each scroll out loud.

Sophii was eyeing them suspiciously, but she did nothing more than give them some weird looks from where she sat beside me.

I decided to summarize each of them for the shadowshifter to understand and absorb some information.

Not that it would matter to her, but maybe she'd find it interesting.

The first one was from my dad, King Arthur.

He stated that Everhallow and Northwynd really did become allies and that Tia would be needed more than ever in future battles. She would be fighting in the frontlines to sweep most of the targets and leave the armies to finish off what it was left.

It was a solid, but brutally orchestrated battle plan that he and the leaders of Everhallow agreed on.

What unnerved me the most was that only he and the other kingdom's leaders were the only people he that consented to this agreement... He mentioned nothing about Tia.

Speaking of those two royal serpents, the next letter was from King Lance of Everhallow.

According to him, Tia was their secret weapon that he was grateful to have access to. We would be receiving a portion of the loot gained from the fighting, as well as immunity from attacks from the two allied kingdoms.

He spoke of Tia as an object... Red flag.

Tia's letter came last, and it hit us hard.

She would not be returning to the Horizon Library for as long as she was fighting for Everhallow, which could be months or even years.

Apparently, she was forcefully drafted into a mission to take down an old enemy of Everhallow's: the hidden kingdom of Whisperwood.

Even though it's just a chain of floating islands shrouded in Spiritvale's cloud level, a group that was scheming against the kingdoms was said to be active in the eerie forest.

This would be the initial event for the start of Northwynd and Everhallow's brutal genocide: the Break of Dawn.

Tia said she would freeze-dry the island chains with her frostbreath, making the bridges that connected them a dangerous place to be.

Luckily for Northwynd's troops, each knight had ice skates built into their boots, making it easier to skim across the battlefield.

It gave them a very useful advantage, especially when it came to speeding across the area.

This would let them push through the difficult terrain, even though the fog was dangerously thick.

Their target, dubbed the "Dragon's Doom" alliance, were unaware of Northwynd's frostbreathers.

Tia said that this would be an easy victory, regardless of the lives that were lost.

She's starting to scare me.

"What do you mean, starting to?" Marshall blurted out, comfortingly tucking Addison into the warm nook of his wing. "Tia's been this way since, what, since she met your dad! How isn't she scary?"

"I said that out loud?" I pondered, then realized the words that left my mouth.

No wonder why some people say I'm such a klutz, even my words fumble before they accidentally slip past my lips before they're ready.

"Duh," Sophii meowed, playfully batting my thigh to lighten up the mood. "Parkour match?"

"Bad timing." I sighed, reaching down and scratching the fur beneath her chin. "Maybe later, when we're not so stressed out..."

"We can't catch a break, can we?" Addison grumbled, crossing her arms.

"Apparently not." Marshall shook his head, patting her on the head. "This is a lot to take in, especially for the four of us."

I scoffed. "Tia's probably having the time of her life right now, fighting relentlessly... Wait 'til she discovers what genocide really is."

"Called it," The sorceress sighed, pulling in one of the blacksmith's fiery wings. "I said it before and I'll say it again: Genocide is the new norm. Always has been since five years ago."

"Hopefully she doesn't get slaughtered," Sophii shuddered, weaving in between my legs. "I'm worried for her."

"Her physical body is the least of our concerns." Marshall snorted, crossing his arms. "She could get body slammed by a meteor and the rocks would shatter instead."

"She's not invincible, though!" I sputtered out, a sense of dread sinking into my chest. "If anything, she's probably going to go insane at the LEAST!"

"Aren't we all a little crazy at this point?" The shadowshifter meowed, sitting down on her furry haunches. "Like, talk about genocide... I think mental illness is the new norm."

"Stop with the jokes," I snapped, promptly placing a hand over her muzzle. "Neither of those are funny. Let's not talk about them that way."

"We need to prepare for the worst, though." Addison interrupted, pulling herself away from the blacksmith and leaning against the guard railing. "Tia's invincibility may not apply to everything, she might have an Achilles' heel."

She reached one hand down toward the labyrinth of bookshelves below us, a burst of her dark magic flowing from her hand and toward a pile of novels on the ground.

Marshall seemed like he was about to stop her from using her limited ability, but he didn't move.

A small, pocket-sized book levitated from the ground, Addison's Darkness cloaked around it in a veil of shadow.

It seemed ancient, to say the least.

"After spending five years reading every book in this library," The sorcerer began, lifting the book and holding it in her hands. "This journal has exactly what we need. I just know it does."

We each knew better than to doubt Addison.

"May you elaborate further, please?" Marshall asked, crossing his arms and tucking in his blazing wings.

"May you pwease ewabowate fow me, my deawest maiden?" Sophii mocked him, keeping her voice low so the blacksmith wouldn't hear him.

"Shut." I hissed, cupping her face in my cheeks and vigorously shaking her fur. "No time to be silly, our lives are at stake if not Tia's."

"When I was younger, my mentor kept this book hidden from my curious eyes." Addison chuckled, recalling the memory. "The moment she left, I snuck into the Archives where she had hidden it and read it all in one sitting."

She opened the book, gesturing for me to come over. "Take a look for yourself."

The four of us crowded around the book, which was open to the first page.

We scanned through the text, skimming through the page.

There: the information we needed.

"Frostbreathing: Combat and Countering."