Magicae: Magic

Chapter Fifteen: Alarya (Snapdragon) Zaniki: Torture

I look behind myself, looking for the mob and Lana, but only see closed doors. 

She's probably in there, but maybe she escaped. I tell myself as I continue running. 

Suddenly, my foot's in pain again as I remember that I broke my foot. 

I've been through worse, I remind myself, recounting some of the times things went wrong. 

For example, the time that I found a baby dragon roaming the Exponentia Desert and attempted to help it. Baby dragons, contrary to popular belief, breathe even worse fire than adult dragons, like snake venom. The baby breathed fire on me and I ended up in the hospital with a seriously injured ear that I couldn't hear out of, hence my extremely good hearing from when the ear was fixed. 

Anyway, I decide to take it a little slower because, as much as Ally thinks I don't know it, an injury, no matter how small, is still an injury. I decide with a quick decision to go to my own house, figuring that if I'm caught I know the place better than anyone and therefore have a good chance at escape. I jog to the outskirts of town and hear something. Someone. Someones. I hide behind a building, just in case, and try to find the speakers. I can tell one of them is Holly, but the other one—wait. It's Kendall. They're talking about flying and I don't want to interrupt them. Kendall explains something and Holly copies, until they're ready to actually fly. Kendall does it first, flying pretty expertly until her landing, which ends in her being very dirty. Holly starts to copy but hits her leg on a tree, becoming unconscious. I try to run over and help but Kendall runs into the woods with Holly before I can get to them. 

It's probably for the best, they'll find Cinnamon. 

I continue with my original plan and quickly find my house. Once I get there, I pause in front of the door, deciding whether it's worth or if there's even a point to coming here. I go in anyway and immediately wish I hadn't. Imagine your own home, as if a burglar came in and ransacked it and stole everything. This is at least ten times worse. I see blood splotches, and holes in everything. I carefully step inside, and feel some dried blood crack under my weight. I don't dare check the upstairs, and instead look for a spot to sleep. I find a small part of the couch that's not completely destroyed and curl up to sleep.

-={+}=-

Something scrapes against the roof of the house, waking me up. I can tell the noise is from the roof, but I run up the stairs and grab the cord hanging from the ceiling. I pull on it and back up, as a panel from the ceiling falls down, a ladder with it, leading up to the attic. I climb up the ladder just as a claw breaks through the roof. It's not right by the ladder, luckily, and I quickly jump up and out of the new hole in the roof. I find myself in front of a dragon. To be specific, it's the dragon that Lily, Ally, and Nari are tied to, but that's not the point. It's a fucking dragon. I leap onto the dragon and grab my knife off of my belt. Before the dragon can do anything I've cut the ropes binding them.

"Ow!" Nari exclaims, reaching over to a deep-looking cut on her leg.

"My bad," I find a long and thin bandage on my belt and handing it to her. 

She quickly attaches the bandage and I stab the dragon. My knife comes out green with dragon blood and everyone else seems a little bit disturbed. 

Ignoring them, I turn to Nari. "Breeze. Now." I seem a bit demanding but she doesn't mind. 

Quickly creating us all a huge breeze rather than individual ones—probably so that we can't separate—and we're off. The dragon must feel our weight leave him and quickly turns around, smoke literally coming out of his nostrils. He turns around and begins to follow us closely.