Elements

Waking Up

It was always unpleasant to get lectured by the emperor, but his was just humiliating. He had her. He had the dragon. He had them both! Then three rebels show up and suddenly he didn’t have them anymore. Claqu did admit he let his guard down a little. He should have b3en more careful. He had also lost a ridiculous fight. It was three men against a squadron of well trained magicians and soldiers. There was no excuse for him losing.

            Claqu really should have been more prepared. Normally when he was escorting a prisoner back to Keenil, the capitol city, he would be extremely harsh and the prisoner wouldn’t have even an inch to breath. He couldn’t do that with Sorsa. When he looked at her he still saw the young child he had trained and laughed with. She may have run away, grown up, and learned some new tricks, but Sorsa was still his young apprentice. The dragon was a different story. Claqu only treated it kindly because it was Sorsa’s. Any other way it would have cowered in fear.

            On top of the humiliation, the rebels had knocked him out. The only time Claqu had ever been knocked out before was when his master was teaching him not to be so cocky while he was fighting. He had been 12 years old. These stupid rebels had only hit him once, and he was down! That never happened!

            After he woke up, he had found his prisoners gone, his men down, and nothing to go off of for a trail. He had tried finding any clues for hours... nothing. So he had set up camp again and was now in the middle of a conference with the emperor. Even in his own tent, Claqu felt exposed. The emperor’s ferocity mad one want to curl into a ball and hide, and the emperor wasn’t actually in the tent! They were talking through a mirror.

            “So you had both Sorsa and the dragon.. And they somehow managed to escape. Even with the dragon in a dark-cage and Sorsa drowsy and injured!!” summed up the furious emperor.

            “No. That’s not what happened....” Claqu failed at trying to explain.

            “WHAT HAPPENED CLAQU!?! Three men come from the forest and turn a squadron of your best men into a pile of meat! And on top of this they managed to kidnap your prisoners and knocked you out! What did you do that caused this to happen!?!”

            “I......um..............”

            “You are to come in immediately. I am well aware you have nothing to go off of to try and regain what you have lost. Therefore you will not start again, but come straight back here to the capitol.”

            “I can........”

            “No! I have been consulting the Hurithiu. Sorsa will come to us.”

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            it felt as if someone was continuously banging on her skull with a white-hot hammer. She was hot and sweaty, and yet she was shivering. Sorsa was extremely tired, like she had been carrying a tree trunk the whole day without stopping, and simply opening her eyes was a struggle. For the second time that day she had woken up to unfamiliar surroundings, and a random clearing in the forest with a fire in the center of it. It was morning now, about two hours after dawn.

            The first thing she saw after her eyes fluttered open was white. Pure white with small light coming through cracks. Sorsa was lying on her back on the barren ground. She was confused by this at first... until her eyes adjusted to the light and details began to pop out to her. What she assumed was a slanted ceiling slowly gained characteristics and turned into a gigantic, white wing, that stretched above her by several feet to the ground. Behind her head was a tail, completely covered in scales, that circled around her to her feet. To her right was a ginormous leg