WARNING: SPOILERS!!! ~A Watty's 2019 Submission!

Saved for the Pure Hearted Heroine

Nicky had a bad feeling as they entered Skull Mountain. No guards had tried to stop them at all. So what was waiting here for them in the prison?

She was also worried about Jayden, who kept his eyes on the ground. This was technically his home. This was where he was when he wasn't flying around in the Iron Wyvern. To see it as a prison... She couldn't imagine what he was going through.

When they entered, the place looked terrible. The water from the sea had been blocked by a dam, leaving only a large pit in the ground. And in the pit, chained to the ground, were two dragons. One looked older and was red. It lay on the ground, as if exhausted.

The other was purple, its chain attached to a tattered green dog collar that wrapped around its neck. He was sitting, whimpering like a dog.

"Red! Tengri!" Jayden ran to the pit, and the two dragons looked up.

"Are you flipping mad, mun!?" Sappy exclaimed, pulling at his tulips. "Those are blooming dragons!" But Nicky inched closer.

"Hold on, Sappy." She told the fairy, before carefully sliding into the pit towards the purple dragon. "Tengri?" The dragon looked to her, and let out a call similar to a bird and nuzzled her shoulder. She giggled, rubbing his big nose. "Tengri!" Jayden rubbed the other dragon's nose, looking worried.

"Nicky, do you have a spell that enables animals to speak?" She nodded, pulling out the Wizard's Companion and flipping through it to the spell. "Use it on Red and Tengri. Let's find out what happened." Nicky nodded again, before casting the spell over the two dragons.

"Oliver!" Tengri exclaimed fervently. "Oh man, am I glad to see you!"

"Tengri, she is not Oliver." Red told him in a regal sort of way. Nicky tilted her head, confused. "I know the boy whom I battled, and you are not him." She explained, and Tengri whimpered.

"Oh, I miss him!"

"Red, Tengri, what happened?" Jayden asked, studying the chains around their necks.

"Jayden!" Tengri squawked. "It was terrible! After you and the captain left, the crew came back here! And they brought that wolf girl's crew with them!"

"They brought Captain Swan's crew back?" Jayden asked, and Tengri nodded.

"Yeah! And they kept Red and I here to keep us safe! But then, this girl with purple eyes and these weird animal people showed up and took over! They trapped the crew!"

"Why?" Evan asked, sliding into the pit with Sappy. "Wouldn't they have turned them to stone too?" Red shook her head.

"They felt the people were better off as slaves. The nonmagic users were easier to manipulate. They are locked away, and if they misbehave, we're supposed to eat them." Tengri nodded back.

"Yeah! But we don't eat people! We prefer vegetables, with the occasional familiar. Snorunt is my favourite!"

"Where are the people being kept?" Jayden asked, and Red looked up.

"Up there." They all looked, and Nicky could see prism rocks being suspended in the air, and knew at once that whoever had been captured, was up there.