Eternal Fire

Chapter 26

Ember eyed the weird dragon, neither breaking their gaze, the demon dragoness looked around as well, causing the other four dragons and the humans to turn to see what the two dragons were looking at. "Stay here. And actually, do that." Ember growled to Soot next to her. "Use that grey hide of yours to blend in with the cave whilst you are staying in the cave." She stood, her injuries protesting, and she realised that she was tired, even after having a sleep, Ember started to walk across to the dragons and humans, stopping a bit away from them. She bared her teeth as half of the humans tried to get closer, leaving some, the ones with the things on their backs behind, before growling when they did not listen. "Why are you here?"

The dragon who had walked out of the trees talked as though she did not grow up knowing the language of dragons, the dragon was a female, even though she sounded different. "Nothing of your interest." The dragon paused before muttering under her breath. "Leave, they will attack." The dragon's eyes flickered towards the humans, who had weapons at the ready. One of the humans shouted something, causing the other female to launch forwards. Ember crouched before launching herself at the incoming dragon's wings, only to be sliced by the wings, down her side. Ember snarled, launching a stream of fire from her mouth, lighting up the area around them, towards the dragon, who charged towards Ember, the dragon's wings were a little outstretched, but were brought together when she neared, slicing Ember's neck. Ember stumbled back. What was that dragon made of?

Ember reached for areas of warmth, taking away the dragoness's heat from the inside, who fell to the ground. "If it weren't for your scales, I would leave you like this, but here's some warmth." She returned some of the dragon's warmth back, enough to keep the dragon alive, but not enough for the dragon to put up too much of a fight. The humans were shouting, light appearing in the darkness from the objects that they were holding. "No. I don't like the look of those." She heated the things up, the humans dropped them to the ground, and started to run towards the other dragons. Should she let them go? They didn't know how she took the weird dragon down, but what was a few humans to her? She started to reach out to their warmth, their bodies shining brightly as they rose when she was searching for warmth. She screamed. Water hurt. She blindly took heat away from the general area of the humans, causing shouts to fill the air. She heated her scaled, needing to remove the water from her skin, and the pain subsided as the water disappeared. She looked at the sky, feeling for heat, but they had gotten too far away from her now. She felt for the creatures that she had gotten, feeling two dragons and two humans. 

"You can come out now." She shouted towards the cave, towards Soot, who carefully left it, his head peeking out first, his body leaving the clutches of the cave moments later. 

"Who is that? What happened? Who screamed? Where are they all?"

"It's fine, I'm just a bit injured. I figured that someone may want to have a look at her, her scales are weird, I have no idea what they are made of, careful of any edges, including the wings, they are really sharp. There were some water dragons, and they hurt. Some went down over there, two dragons and humans, something like that. The rest got away." She was probably a more injured than a bit, but there was no need to worry the dragon. She stretched her warmth seeking mind and warmed those who she had brought down, only enough to not die, no need for them to get away. She sat down, pushing her fire back, breathing the stuff wasn't that hard to control, most easily mastered it, so it was mostly foolproof, taking and giving heat was a little riskier. But she'd managed. 

Soot looked at the dragon near to Ember. "Let's go and look at these who you brought down, lead the way." Ember stood up, using her heat seeking sight to help her navigate the short distance to the fallen creatures. Why a dragon would help a human Ember couldn't get her head around. They walked over to the forms of the creatures on the ground, Ember kept an eye on the temperature levels, they were getting a bit cold, so she gave them some extra heat. She didn't bother with one of the humans, the male had fallen of the dragon that he'd been riding and hit the ground, it was a bit of a mess. The other human was barely clinging on to life, it seemed that humans didn't deal with having their warmth taken from them very well. She gave that human thing a little more warmth, the human, a female, had managed to stay on the dragon, it seemed like there was something on the dragon that helped the human to stay on, but the human probably had to attach itself to it, something the other hadn't gotten around to doing.