Fang's Heart 🐉 | Rayaari

Chapter Twelve: First Moon

"Has he not poisoned
thy drink with the
blood of his enemies?
For whoever
sips from that
cup shall, too, die."

🐲

Deluged with foreboding redolence, Api's features twisted in apparent repugnance at the sight.

She had forgotten these parts in Kumandra still existed. The obvious reason was because it was abandoned, out of limits, reclusive-- restricted. Not even life itself spared in these areas. The soil was grimy, rivers stagnant with stygian pollution, trees and shrubs bereft of any greens, and the breeze carrying a pungent odor of decay.

"Do you think she'll be here?" Api preambles as she follows Pengu, landing on the ground with a grimace.

The ghastly ambiance was not something to be taken granted for. However, as dead as the place seems to be, it was still no question that something is in their midst.

"She has to." He simply states and ceases, surveying the area.

"She has no other place to be." He faintly whispers, deaf to the other dragon's ears.

"How long has it been since..." Api pauses, sentence cut short. What was the word for it?

"Since her outfall." She corrected, gaze heated behind Pengu's head.

The water dragon's eyes brewed dark but he maintains his facade. Calm like the river but coursing with pigmented apathy.

"Years perhaps. Hundreds or eons." He replies impassively, beckoning for the fire dragon to follow him, much to her chagrin.

Api rolls her eyes, if her pupils were any more visible than they are. It would seem that the mighty water dragon was still affected after centuries of depreciation.

It was an infamous tale, two dragons of water and light falling in love. Then came the conflicting quench for power of the light dragon, thus resulting to the antagonistic dragon's eradication. It was, of course, adverse and most dragons knew. Some lived up to see the tale and word traveled fast across Kumandra. Humans wrote what they heard, often exaggerating on their scrolls, even making it as part of their festivals.

It was a good diversion to stir away the real problem.

Api wasn't born yet when it occurred. She heard yarns befall from her brothers' lips. There were different versions she knew; a classic tragedy of lovers, connection mingling with hatred, and various metaphoric sonnets of romance.

'How quaint,' she thought and a smug smirk managed to crawl to her mouth. It didn't go unnoticed as Pengu raised one fine line of his brow to her direction.

"Stop with that look."

"I'm not doing anything." She says innocently, humming a low tune.

Pengu eyes her one last deadpanned look before huffing a frustrated steam out of his nostrils.

"Do whatever you please."

As the two delve deeper into the dystopian woods, the ambiance alters more menacingly. They halted when an opening of the cave lays meters from them, thorny vines and large boulders covering most of the entrance.

It felt alive in Api's perception, almost breathing.

"She's in there?"

Stoic as his features may be, it would seem his insides were in a buzz. Dread and a familiar feeling of longing he came to loath over the years.