Night Fury's Wrath

Chapter 43: The Power Within

-Ready for a chaotic chapter? A bunch of things are about to happen, and they will answer questions—while creating more questions. Chapter forty-one was—intentionally—confusing to many of you, chapter forty-two explained some of it, and this chapter will put a lot of it together. The information will be scattered throughout the chapter, but it is there. 

By the way... remember Deathy? Hehe.

Enjoy!

-NFD

~~~

Draining the mountains' energy was supposed to be a repetitive and boring task, and it was, for the most part. It was as easy as flying around the edges of the island for faintly glowing stones, which stood about two body-lengths tall, then placing a paw infused with magic on the designated circle. The rock then began to hum, and the two mountains' peaks dimmed a little. By now, the two mountain peaks were no longer glowing. Moon never mentioned how many stones there were, but it was simple in practice.

Of course, it didn't stay that way.

"Any ideas?" Astra murmured.

I squinted at the distant, floating thing on the ocean from our cover in the field's shadows. "Destroy it?" I suggested uncertainly.

"What if it's a scout?" She countered. "If it doesn't return, then more might come looking for it."

"But we can't let it reach us," I objected. "We don't know how many are on that thing." The 'thing' was clearly of Scaleless origin. Even though its name escaped me at the moment, I had seen them before back at Little Peak, so I knew Scaleless made them from trees. This one looked like a dinky little thing, but we obviously couldn't see how many Scaleless were on it from so far away.

Astra shot me a skeptical look. "We have a god, the former Siegebreaker, multiple Soulburners, and someone connected to an entire island's worth of Lunar Energy," she said dryly. "I doubt a few Scaleless would be much of a problem."

"Believe me," I muttered gravely, remembering the incident with arrows and poison a long time ago. "Scaleless shouldn't be underestimated." If my magic hadn't stepped in back then, we would've fallen prey to the Scaleless. It would be foolish to rely on the same thing saving us again.

"What if we tried talking to them from afar?" She warbled. "You can connect our minds, right?"

"Not reliably. I don't remember how to make them understand us. Auroon might know."

"We shouldn't bother him with this. As much as I'd like these Scaleless gone, he'd probably get angry and blow them to bits, which doesn't help anyone." She looked into the distant forest with a worried sigh. "He's pushing himself again, and that's partially my fault for slacking on my responsibilities. He doesn't need more stress."

I ran the options through my head, coming up with a worryingly short list. "All we can do is wait and hope the island can turn away Scaleless too," I summarized despondently. "Great."

"I'll do this one," she murmured. "My scales blend in better than yours. Then, we'll look for the other stones and keep an eye on that Scaleless thing." She didn't wait for an answer before stalking closer to the exposed stone and activating it. Even the soft blue light didn't reveal her as much as it would me. 

The reason for her concern about our scale color was simple, the stones drained any active energy or magic nearby, not only the mountains, so our invisibility was always shredded whenever we activated a stone. It was a waste to keep refreshing it, so we went without and relied on natural camouflage. Needless to say, Astra's pitch-black scales melded into the dark better than mine, so she usually activated the exposed stones. Before we spotted the Scaleless thing, there really wasn't a need to stay hidden, but after the latest Scoot attack, it didn't hurt to be careful.