Dragon Falls (Indigo Apocalypse Book III)

Chapter One: Back To Playing The Game Of Royalty

HUNTOR:
Standing in fromt of the great castle that stood superjacent over the kingdom, the dracon fidgeted by my side. "Are, are, are you certain? Are you, certain, Son?" Son, gods, har-har, present company excluded, it was odd to hear Kneecora refer to me as, "Son." The former queen didn't look like royalty now. No, not when she was dressed in old pants and shirt, her turquoise wings folded neatly on her back with her tail. She had weeks worth of grim and caked dirt on her, as did us all from traveling over land and through the air. It had taken us a month to reach just the outskirts of the Snow Kingdom, and even taking the former queen's underground roads, still took us three weeks to reach the castle. The once great Capital was silent as the grave, all the occupants under the castle. After the Dark Queen ran away, and yes, it was still very entertaining to think of it that way, because it was true. The Dark Queen had taken one look at the Molten force flying in, and known she couldn't hope to win, so, she fled. Yep, priceless moment.
After her running away, many of us agreed that we got out lucky. That this war was far from over, and when it was, many many pieces on the board had to he swept aside. One was the lack of sunlight. Sydney and I had to bring the sun back. There were many theories I had on just how we could do that, but still, then there was the other theories I had in store, the—"Son?" Kneecora asked shyly. I brought my mind back around. I nodded at the former queen. "We'll take it all one step at a time." I said. I turned to my left, where Zavala stood, her eyes filled with affection for Kneecora. Sarah stood by her side, eying the former queen with mild interest.  I took a step forward, and the great doors opened, and several dracons stepped out into the lights of the Snow Kingdom Lights, the lights Sydney and I created. I smiled broadly as a familiar dracon stepped toward me swiftly. "Huntor oh Huntor Huntor Huntor, you're alright." "Hello Veevuqui." I held out my arms and she enfolded me in her embrace. I recognized her sweet scent, and it filled me with home. She pulled away and looked me over. "Freezing Dragon Talons look at you. You look, you look, you look like you've aged in years already." "Battle leaves scars on you." I said. Veevuqui pressed her lips to my forehead and pulled back and eyed Zavala and Sarah. "I'm happy you both made it out alright." Then, she looked at her mother. Everything about Veevuqui changed. She stiffened, and authority wrapped it's arms around her.
"Mother." Said Veevuqui professionally. "Veevuqui." Kneecora said, her voice shaking slightly. The other royal siblings stepped forward. Reequo spoke, his voice tight. "Why are you here trader?" Kneecora jerked as if by a physical blow. "Because she is here to redeem herself." I said, taking her hand. "Kneecora is fully aware of her wrongs and the crimes she's committed, but we have more prudent things and we're going to need her help." "What could we need her help with? She—"Reequo." Said Veevuqui calmly, silencing her brother. "We realize what you mean Brother." She said to me. "But we cannot allow the former queen to just walk away from what she's done." "I'm not asking you to." Said Kneecora. "I realize I have wrongs to answer. I fully expect the Kingdom to give me the punishment I deserve." Reequo didn't speak, luculently taken aback. To ease the tention, Zavala asked sweetly, "Can we come inside?" "Yes." Veevuqui said before any of the others could speak. Veevuqui turned and lead the way into the great castle. The entrance hall was just as lifeless as the entire kingdom. But instead of leading the way down below the castle, she opened her wings and flew off. I rose into the air on my own power and zoomed behind her.
    Veevuqui looked back and seemed surprised to see me flying. "How—"Godly power." I said with a grin. We met up in the royal eating hall, which, if you asked me, seemed like a royal slap in Kneecora's face, or a Royal "Fuck You." Veevuqui sat at the head of the table, another fuck you. But Kneecora sat without complaint. I sat on her right, Zavala on her left. Sarah sat on the arm of my chair, which was mildly annoying because of her fat ass hanging over the sides, just brushing my elbow. I nudged her cheek with it, unable to resist. Sarah purred contentedly. "Ugh, perve." I murmured. "You love me." She said sweetly. I sighed and faced Veevuqui. "Huntor, why don't you start by telling us your side." I nodded. "After leaving here, we tried to bring the world, the human world, together for what could possible tthe world's end, a World War III." "Ha, I—I—I." Sarah muttered. I ignored her. "That plan didn't really go down well. Humans, even when proof is right there in their faces, are unable to accept the world isn't as they once suspected. We've tried to expose the indigo, and yet the humans still wanna call us monsters demons yada yada. Moreover, I had to let one of my contingency plans forth. So instead, we sailed to fight the Dark Queen ourselves with the Rogue Armada I gathered." "You mean to tell me." Said Reequo. "That you faced the Dark Queen yourself?" "Exactly." Sarah chirped. "And yet you made it out not only alive, but with no injury." Said one of the others. "More or less." Zavala answered. "I, unlike them, was actually aboard the ship, and was briefly tortured by the Queen's spiders, and her, for a short time." Silence reigned. "I made it out." Said Zavala, rather defensively. "I, we—"Do not apologize." Zavala's tone grew sharper than daggers. "I'm alive, I made it out." Kneecora said, voice almost soundless, "She wouldn't have made it without my and Arachne's help." More silence. "Dragon dung." Reequo snapped. "Udder Dragon dung." "Yet fact." I said.
    "Zavala was electricuted by the lightning of Kimopoleia, before any of us could get to her in time to rescue her, she was wallowed by the sea. Arachne swung in after her. "If so," Veevuqui said. "How is it she isn't under the Queen's control?" I gave her my wolfish grin. "Contingencies my sister, contingencies." "It was with Arachne's help and Kneecora's that I escaped. Kneecora faced down the Dark Queen herself, fighting her to buy me time to flee." "This is all just too much to believe." Reequo said. "Believe it Brother, because we're sitting right here. We have to move on to the war, to the true war that is going to take place. Word came in while we were on our way here via Amala. The Dark Queen's fleet is torn asunder. Her ships either scattered or swallowed by the sea. She has nothing and has to replenish what she lost which buys us some time. But not much of it." "What are you suggesting?" Veeevuqui asked. "I'm suggesting that we bring our own army to the board. Gather every indigo who can fight, every indigo across this continent." Silence reigned again. "Huntor." Said Veevuqui slowly. "Do you realize just how big this continent is?" I nodded sagely. "Hence why the war will happen here. An apocalypse is on the horizon Veevuqui, and we'll need everyonee to prevent it." "Is this another one of your contingencies?" Another royal asked. "Why can't you just bring back the sunlight huh? Do that and the Dark Queen goes away." "What, so she can return after another three thousand years to do the exact same thing?" Sarah asked. "Yeah sure, take the easy way out and pawn this off on someone else thousands or hundreds of years down the road. Or, gather everyone we can and face this here and now." "What my sister is trying to say, is that this would be a gathering of exponential, of near unspeakable lengths. Indigo from far and wide would be involved." "Exactly." Zavala said.
"You guys have to realize." Reequo said. "There hasn't been a great war in our world, not one that involved indigo across the continent. Yes, territories have warred against each other, but there haven't been any great wars since the rise of the dracons." "Since the fall of the Dark Queen." Sarah said. "Yes." Veevuqui said. Sarah turned toward the former queen. "I'm presuming that the truth behind that isn't so epic as what we were told?" "No." Kneecora said softly, shaking her head. "The Dark Queen fell yes, but she wasn't always the Queen of malice and venom, of spiders and, well, of other things." "What was she?" I asked. "She was, one of us, a dracon." Well that was a talon to drop. And of course, something just had to break the moment, in this case, it was an old face. A bronze dracon strolled in and said, "Well well well, looks like I found you all quite easily, and, hi-ho, what have we here, consorting with traders now?" "Hello Seeka." I said with a crooked smile. Seeka eyed Kneecora. "What stories are we telling now?" Kneecora flinched. "Seeka." I chastised. She shrugged. "The Dark Queen was apparently a dracon." Sarah said, rather tactlessly. "Well Dragon Talons." Said Seeka reverently. "How did she turn into that?" "More prudently, who knows of this?" "No one, but I, and the Molten Lord."
"Any particular reason you never shared this?" Reequo said. "Because I and he were sworn to secrecy by the Higher Beings to cover it up." "Seriously?" Asked Sarah. "She wasn't just a dracon, not just any dracon." "She was a goddess." I said. Kneecora nodded. "A goddess of darkness, dragon of the night, of shadows, she was, in essence, an ancient version of the daughter of Death." "You've, got to be kidding me." Sarah said. "The Dark Queen was the goddess of death? Literally, and no one realize that shit would get to her head?" "No." Kneecora said simply. "She was given her own territory to rule, but because of her, we'll say, ruling, she was given the most barren and desolate place on the continent. A place that was supposedly forgotten, but has instead been wiped from memory, and may only be found by those who know where it is." Sighing, Zavala leaned back in her chair, her wings laying over the back lackadaisically. "Where is it?" "I'd have to take you there." Said Kneecora. "This has the term—"Trap written all over it?" I asked Sarah. "Duhhh." "Hence why we aren't going." "What?" Reequo asked. "We, aren't going." I said again. "But someone will. And only as a back up plan." I ran a finger over the table. "We still have the problem of assembling an army, we—"That's not happening." Said one of the siblings. "One, the freezing continent is huge, it would take us months, years to trek across it." "Not if we used the portals." "None of us can open portals, that dung is talk of legends." Grinning, Sarah popped off my arm, the chair arm, and raised her indigo pendant. "Watch and learn." She purred. A portal opened behind her, a perfect oval of swirling indigoism.
"You were saying?" Sarah asked primly. The portal melted into nothingness. "We'll get to the how later." I said. "What matters is gathering forces." "Which isn't happening." Reequo insisted. "You know, war is a very, very, very, profitable, era." "What do you mean?" Veevuqui asked. "For those entrepreneurs who know how to work it to their advantage, it can be, very, profitable." I slid the backpack off my shoulder. "Especially, if someone had just the right kind of bargaining chip, or, payments, like, this." I slid a glittery, glistening bundle out of the backpack, and laid it on the table. Seeka grinned from ear, to, ear. "A certain dracon told me, when I killed my first Ragni over two years ago, or so, to hold on to the silk, that they were priceless here, and could be traded for practically anything." "Impossible." Reeequo said. "You, you, you, you mean to tell me, to tell us, that you've killed Ragni Di Morte and lived?" "Of course, we all have." "Het hem." Zavala said quietly. "Present dracon excluded, though I'm pretty sure you've killed one or two." I pulled out the Ragni daggers. "Recognize these? I have quite a few pairs of Ragni blades." Veevuqui shook her head.
"I'm suggesting," I said as I slid the silk back in my pack. "That you take the silks I and the rest of my gods will hand you, and join us in this war. We will need armies yes, and I have a feeling that they'll need the right incentives, all in their own right." "Not everyone is going to go for Ragni silks." Reequo said, though I could tell he was onboard with it. I grinned and asked, "So, how much do you believe those go for? Gold wise?" "Well," Veevuqui sat back, running a hand through her hair. "You could by a territory with just a few dozen yards of silk. It's that valuable." "There are imitations of course, replicas that are cheaper." Reequo put in. "But the real deal, taken from a Ragni corpse, those are what territories across the world fight over, moreover, because of their rarity, and the violence of the spiders, no one risks their lives to steal them anymore." Sarah leaned toward me, her but pressing into my elbow again. "How about the daggers?" "They, those don't have a price on them, mainly because there is no logical way of acquiring them." Reequo frowned as he said it. "Well, if you aren't gods of course." "Technically, we weren't gods when we first learned to kill them." I said. "But I get your reasoning." "Look at it this way." Said Zavala. "We have the means of buying a plethora of armies, and to keep them fed and in very good comfort. In essence, the Snow Kingdom and Molten Kingdoms are the richest territories at the moment." Reequo opened his mouth, but one of the other royals cut him off. "Enough Reequo. We get idle hands are the devil's workshop, but just shut up. We need armies, and Ragni silk is the perfect bargaining tool." "You all already think we ought to be in this war?" "Yes." Kneecora spoke up, her eyes hard. "Because this is going to be the greatest war of indigo existence. Even after a hundred generations indigo will still be talking about it. Who fought bravely, who ran and hid, the Snow and Molten Kingdoms have to work together in this. Too many centuries we've fought against them. It's time we worked with them and fought as one." "Pretty speech, but we seem to be bypassing a major point here." Reequo said. "How are we going to convince these territories? To gain their loyalty in fighting on our side and not their own or the Dark Queen's?" "All one needs, is the proper leverage." Sarah said dramatically.
Later that day found us in the courtyard of the castle, Kneecora and Veevuqui talking quietly together, Reequo listening in. Kneecora's face was filled with agony as they spoke. Giving them that time, I turned to Sarah, "The right kind of leverage?" "Something Ken told me to say." I shook my head. "No doubt from those movies they love." "Probably." Sarah said. Zavala stared upward, at the eight glistening, forever moving lights that surrounded a small golden dragon star. "So beautiful." She purred reverently. I stepped up to her side. I was worried, worried about Zeej. I thought that us coming back here would start something between her and I. I had hoped that her and I were passed all of that. Passed the sexuality, and it seemed that Zeej was fine, perfectly fine. I laid a hand on her arm as she continued to stare. "There is beauty in a dark world." She murmured. "There is light in the dark, always is light." "Always is light." I thought. I tucked it away as Veevuqui called my name. I crossed the little distance to stand by Kneecora. "Yes Sister?" Veevuqui took my hand in her's and said, "I cannot speak for all the warriors of this kingdom, but I will say that we will join you. I, will convince Decre to join this war. Knee, Mom, is right. We need to work with the Molten Kingdom. Join forces and fight the Dark Queen. While she licks her wounds and takes the time to gather her forces, we should do the same."