Reaver

Chapter Three

The wisp was right of course, I realized as I calmed down and was able to think it through as the rage left me.

I could barely control myself whenever strong emotion overcame me. There were anger issues that brought on bouts of violence, and I was never going to be content with the mere power I had now.

If there was one lesson I took away from my capturers it was some power was never enough. The pursuit of knowledge and power were the drive in life.

Even the most common of farmers to the highest of kings would seek out power. Their birth right had nothing to due to it.

However, what you did with that power would form the future of maybe more than oneself.

I had to face the fact when my mother ran away from the palace it wasn't to protect us. It was just for her to run away as she hadn't had wanted to face the danger. She had been very young and foolish at the time.

She had been younger then I was now, and I could see why she had acted as she did. Knowing how the dragons of her counsel and the Elders had treated me I could imagine she grew up quite sheltered and unprepared for what they had tossed upon her.

They had ignored thousands of years of laws and traditions to make her queen early due to the death of her own parents. I could see why two hundred years was the minimum age to be considered an adult if raised that way in her culture considering if dragon's lived their lives right they could live forever.

Even if they had been allowed to shift into their dragon forms at the time it wouldn't have helped anything, they would have lost their lives and died anyway. The Black Bloods had developed many foul means to trap and torture dragons over the years. Their dark foul research had proven useful at last.

My wingtips dragged rocky soil as I wondered upon the ground where the Mysts seemed to thicken the most. Barely could I see my own claw in front of my face, much less ten feet in front of me. But there was a feeling of being enclosed and watched closely.

However, the eyes were just a ghostly as the mist hiding them.

One couldn't help but wonder who was watching in this vast silence.

I had to be careful not to mow down any more trees in the process of being lost. Each time it seemed to spring out of nowhere and as the tree was leveled a blood curling shriek of agony.

The felled trees oozing a dark, sticky substance from its up turned roots that smelled of rust.

A strange emotion settled over me and soaked into me. The sorrow swelling in my body had lessened and been replaced by a hollow need to be accepted by anyone, for any reason.

It was a feeling I knew better then my own name.

Longing.

"I don't want to be this way," I murmured quietly to myself, almost hatefully.

But apparently Hiedel, who had found me after our fall, had heard me.

"Never mind a word from that wisp, fair queen, he is rather sour to be sent by the Queen Mother of Dragons to do his duty. He was sentenced to be the guide through the Mysts a few thousand years before she passed on. He's terribly lonely and already has a sour temper on top of that. It's nothing personal. He wasn't even that nice of a person back in the day anyway. Let us be merrily on our way to finding the answers to my...I mean your quest!"

He flashed fangs at me in a wide, many toothed grin. His attempted to lighten the mood.

I shook my head. "The wisp was right. I don't want to be this way."

Hiedel sighed, leaning on his forearm. "My fair queen, know you anything in which you search?"

"I am looking for the Sun of the Mother, am I not?" I answered almost automatically.

"Know you of this 'Sun,' what it is? Did they even tell you the details of this journey? You are going to be facing down a lot more then tame trolls and witches. The forest we are currently in is not the Enchanted Forest, but the Forest of Ancestors Blood. You cannot see them, but each tree here feeds on the blood of a dragon once gone. The trees need only a drop of your blood to produce more to survive for eons. They are Blood Trees, the only ones left in the world. The souls of the dragons live within their trees after they die. If angered the trees will attack, they are not peaceful if they are disrespected. I have noticed them shifting around us for a while now. We have been going in circles."

Something had not felt right in this forest since the beginning, but I could not fly up in the mist without it being dangerous, let alone walk and see in this damned fog. With a sense of dread gnawing deep in my bones, I knew what I was going to have to do.

Never before had I needed to bow my head before another, nor did I want too. I hadn't even done so before my capturers. But the only way I was going to do it was to complete the first part in the tasks that laid before me.

They would ask of me one of the very few things that I would not willing give. It was a price and also a test.

I must ask, not demand to get what I needed.

And damn it all, it made me feel sick to my stomach. I pulled myself up, as proud as any dragon should have been and in a silken voice called, "Shanyula? I request your presents."

Shanyula appeared as the floating little blue-gold ball before me. Thought it had no face, you could see the smugness rolling off of it.

"Yes, what is it you need? I'm shocked you lowered yourself to ask me to come back!" he said in mockingly.

I gritted my teeth as I nodded solemnly. "Please help me, oh great Shanyula, for we are lost. I must get past the Mysts. I have many important things I must see too and as soon as possible. I don't have much time to complete what I must."

He swirled around my head, sparks shimmering off and then rested upon my nose in a thinking pose. I held my breath not wanting to sneeze as the sparks tickled my nostrils.

I could feel myself starting to grow cross eyed with the effort.

Suddenly he shot up, whirling around to really look at me. "After a great pondering, I shall accept your words and help you, but," he said starting to glow a mysteriously green, "only at a price, princess."

"Con artist," whispered Heidel under his breath.

"Has been," quipped the wisp.