Night Fury's Wrath

Chapter 35: Deliberation

-There will be an information dump in this chapter, but it isn't too long. Also, what happened to Aurora? Well, her POV won't show up in this chapter, mostly to keep the suspense. Hehe...

Enjoy!

-NFD

I had no idea what just hit me or why, but it wasn't killing me, so it couldn't be terrible, right?

When I finally tumbled to a stop, I groaned and attempted to roll to my paws, only to realize that something had wrapped itself around me, preventing anything more than a wiggle. I opened my eyes and froze at the white hide in the purple light of my scales attached to a slim chest that my face was wedged up against. I nearly panicked before I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose, getting a very familiar scent.

Suddenly, I was aware of soft crying, a head nuzzling me, and the trembles shaking through the dragon holding me. "M-Mom?" I squeaked. While pacing and lost in my thoughts, the last thing I expected was Mom tackling me out of nowhere! 

She squeezed me tighter. "Y-You're... alive," she whimpered breathlessly. "I w-was... so s-scared." How did she know about that? 

"Mom, h-how did-"

"It's okay," she whispered soothingly. "I-I won't... lose y-you again." 

I realized with a start that I had started crying as well, making me also realize that my 'control problem' had returned without me noticing. Over however long I've been gone, I rarely played, I rarely gave in to my immature desires, and I forced myself to 'behave.' That problem was small back in the Dark Zone, but it grew when we finally escaped. 

Now, Mom held me tight, and, once again, her proximity effortlessly destroyed the control I had over my mind. My control disintegrated rapidly, exposing the raw emotions left to fester underneath my flimsy control, quickly destabilizing the composure I had left. 

Inevitably, Mom defeated the last of my control simply by being near me. When that happened, I collapsed under the pressure and started crying my heart out into her chest. The stress of survival and my multiple brushes with death had finally caught up with me. Add to it the burden of keeping two other dragons alive, and the stress became too much to bear. I didn't even have the capacity to feel embarrassed for sobbing like a little hatchling.

Mom managed to compose herself enough to shakily purr into my ears, not daring to relax her hold on me for even a second. Something in my core hurt now, but it was a sore kind of hurt, a good hurt. 

I eventually calmed down until I fell silent, leaving me too mentally drained to do more than lie in Mom's embrace, hearing and smelling Dad just on the other side of her wings. My ears twitched at the sound of pawsteps past Mom's and Dad's purring, but I decided that they could wait until later. Right now, I was so tired...

A curious chirp sounded through Mom's wing. "Vaskr," Mom purred softly. "There's someone who wants to meet you." Another chirp seemed to confirm that as her wings released me. Everyone else stayed out of the way, watching from the sidelines.

I reluctantly rolled over to my stomach, almost bumping into Dad, and came face-to-face with a tiny hatchling, its blue eyes blinking curiously at me as it swayed on tired paws, but was determined to stay awake. Its wing and fin membranes were blotted with black, but the rest of its body was pure white, reminding me a little of Aurora. It inched closer to sniff my face, wrinkled its nose, then sneezed. 

I still smelled bad, didn't I?

Its blue eyes refocused on me, then chirped questioningly. I glanced at Mom, my tired brain struggling to understand. "Who is this?"