When Destiny Burns, Ep. 1: A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover

Chapter 3. 4 Patience

He looked around, trying to spot his dragon. He couldn't see it anywhere and that was a bad thing.

The Spartan jumped out of the tree and landed on the ground, nearly flattening the black reptile that was waiting for him at the base of the tree.

"Watch it!" He snapped at the unfortunate creature and readied his rifle once again. Confusion emanated from the dragon and he understood that it wanted to know why he had suddenly jumped into action like that.

Not that he would explain why he had done so.

His motion tracker didn't indicate anything abnormal; it was completely clear. And that meant trouble too.

It was just too quiet; too calm. There had to be at least two dozen animals in the vicinity of his tree, yet he didn't hear a single bird. There wasn't anything around him...something had scared the animals away.

"We got trouble," He told the dragon and slowly marched deeper into the forest, continuously aiming his rifle at any place where he thought he might have spotted movement. There was something in the forest with him...something near. It was hiding, he knew that. His motion tracker would have given it away if it had moved.

The thought of the red-haired hostiles slipped into his mind and he remembered how inhuman those things had been. The news of him raiding the capital city had quite relatively fast...and he had been on foot the whole time. There was a small possibility that someone had been tracking him and the only person capable of doing so was the other red-haired female

The Spartan made his way through the forest for another ten tense minutes, constantly keeping a close eye on his environment and constantly aware of the nagging feeling at the back of his mind.

When the eleventh minute passed by, he started to ease up. A few birds had started to sing their loud songs and his dragon –who had been awfully quiet for a while- immediately rose up in the air and started to pursue them.

He had learned long ago that animals were sensitive to changes in their surroundings. By making use of local resources, he could determine the things that machines could not. He didn't relax just yet, but he understood that whatever had been around had left again.

The dragon sailed over his head and narrowly managed to avoid a tree. The reptile was obviously a baby; its entire demeanor screamed childish at him. But at the same time, he could see how all of its actions were aimed at development and growth; it was hunting, flying and moving all the while it communicated with him on a human level of intelligence.

Now that he thought about it, the dragon was actually a pretty efficient being. It had only just been born and yet it was still smart enough to communicate with him on a mental basis and understand how to fly.

That was probably the reason why the egg had been a national treasure: the capabilities of the dragon. The UNSC could learn a lot from the reptile, even though they had less need for military advantages at the moment. The official story was that the war was over, but tensions were high and the stakes were even higher. One wrong move from either the Sangheili or Human groups and both races would descent into warfare again.

He was there to make sure that the war would be won before it started...well, he had been there. Now he stuck on some backwater planet with a telepathic dragon.

The Spartan became aware of a dry aching in the back of his throat, indicating that he was thirsty. There was a small, streaming river roughly a dozen meters ahead. The smart thing would be to go there and refill his water supply. His MJOLNIR had a built-in water filtration unit, good for a total of 500 liters of water. When times were lean, he could drink from the most polluted bodies of water without getting poisoned. He could insert a canister of fluids, which would be fed to his helmet where he might consume the water if needed.