Tales of Avalon: The Maid and the Falcon

✧ Chapter 11: White ✧

Penny wiped her forehead and spat out a mouthful of blood.  Her tongue burned where she'd bitten down on it, but it was better that than the alternative.

Silently, she finished tying a bandage around her leg, breathing slowly in an attempt to quiet the pain.  I know she hates me, but this is absurd.

The mountain peaks around Penny glistened with snow, gorgeous and ethereal, but she was in no position to appreciate them.  A shrieking roar sounded and Penny ducked behind a rock to avoid being seen.  A brilliant rush of light, white with rippling colors in it, thundered past the rock; Penny felt the heat and force of the blast from where she sat and held her breath.

After aching, horrible minutes, another roar echoed through the valley and wingbeats glided away.  Penny spat the blood that had pooled in her mouth and risked a burst of restoration magic to patch it up.  The wingbeats did not return; clearly, her pursuer had left.

Penny stood and cursed mentally as her leg began to burn.  She had blocked most of the force of the blast and kept her leg, but it had taken a lot of her strength.  She began to appreciate what the ancient warriors must have gone through while clearing Crista Magna of its red dragons.  This was a smaller nest, but it still was not easy.

With a sigh, Penny started back to her base camp.  When she arrived, she tucked into her camouflaged lean-to and began slowly working restoration magic into her leg.  She couldn't afford to be careless with it; such injuries had been linked to madness.

The Queen is definitely after blood.  There was no other reason for Penny to be sent to do such a risky thing alone.  She had been told that the Kaster Pass nest was exhibiting odd behavior and sent to check on the dragons inside, but somehow the entire nest had been sharded.  What could have broken an entire nest to the point that every dragon in it grew a heart shard?  Whatever had happened, it must have been devastating.

After about six hours, Penny sat up with a groan.  That had taken a lot of magic out of her, but the dragon burn had been healed and the residual contamination had been expelled.  She could safely rest for now.  Even now, the dragons had not completely sharded; if they had, her base camp would be in the center of a vast area of destruction.  Something was keeping them restrained, for which she was thankful.

Unlike Crista Magna's Red Age dragons, these were white dragons.  They did not breathe fire, but rather an incredibly powerful and forceful light that burned things away.  When sane, they were powerful protectors and had a vibrant culture, especially fond of poetry and snow sculpture.  When sharded, they were capable of more destruction than any other dragon.  And there was now an entire nest of sharded whites in Kaster Pass.

Penny reached into her pouch and pulled out a dragon shard the size of her fist.  This one had been young, and not too hard to release from its misery.  Even so, the shard was an indisputable treasure, and she felt a tinge of guilt over what she was about to do with it.  But there was no other way.

Quietly, Penny cracked off a chunk of the shard and swallowed it, feeling it break apart in her stomach and release vast amounts of dragon magic.  Thanks to her father's draconic heritage, she could use the stuff, though she still had to be wary of insanity.  If someone who wasn't descended from a dragon attempted to eat a heart shard, they would go instantly mad; the risk was lower with Penny, but there was still a chance.  Heart shards were dangerous things.

Penny focused for another hour on slowly collecting what she could from the chunk of heart shard and letting go of the rest, before it started to burn her internally or drive her insane.  Finally she opened her eyes and stood; the remains of the small shard she'd broken lay glassy and magicless on the ground in front of her, as all heart shards did when broken.  With a sigh of regret at the waste, Penny pulled out her sword again and began to run up the mountain toward the dragon's nest.