By The Way, Danplan Oneshots

Wrong (2)

FINAL CHAPTER OF THIS BOOK, MORE BELOW

The world was silent.

Everything around was barely a whisper in the charred remains of the forest, and that was when Stephen woke up.

The silence was what had woken him, he supposed, as he opened his eyes painfully. One of them was swollen shut, the bruise spreading all the way down his cheek. The purple-haired brushed his fingers against it with a small wince.

Clouded memories were flickering in his mind, but they were too blurry to make sense of. All Stephen could focus on was the painful throbbing of his head, and how blood was dripping down his neck.

It was then, when he slowly looked up, that he noticed the carnage around him. The burnt corpses, the splatters of blood staining the once peaceful fields – his breath hitched as the smell of burning flesh hit his senses.

With a panicked cry, he pressed himself against a tree, yelping when his arm jostled painfully. Like his face, it was horribly swollen and turning purple. Hosuh would know how to fix it.

Hosuh.

Hosuh's scared eyes looked at him in the last moment of peace, when they realised they were both going to die. Stephen was more hopeful, ready to take Hosuh's hand and run. This was a death trap. The king must've known this.

The dragon was huge, it's slitted eye trained on the army in front of it. They were just ants to this thing, Stephen realised.

Stephen felt his hand reach out, ready to take Hosuh's soft hand, but a startling pain struck against his head and he felt himself flying through the air.

Then, blackness, with the flickering thought of Hosuh still clinging onto his mind.

"Hosuh?" Stephen croaked, his jaw stiff with pain. He stood up shakily, pushing the pain back.

Where was he? Hosuh had never left him, if he wasn't here now then he could only be –

"Hosuh!" Stephen yelled, eyes searching wildly through the corpses. His heart was beating erratically as he looked, hoping, praying –

There was no white cloth in the charred remains, nor was there any trace of Hosuh. Stephen let a flicker of hope flare in his chest which gave him the strength to keep looking for his friend.

No, they were more than friends now.

"Hosuh!" Stephen stumbled through the battlefield, his laboured breaths echoing in the silence.

His pace grew faster as he spotted a familiar bag at the edge of the clearing, shadowed by the broken trees. Stephen grabbed it, pressing it against his chest. Sure enough, when he opened the bag he found jars of herbs with Hosuh's untidy scrawl labelling what they were.

He looked up from the material, eyes widening at the unmistakable dragon footprints that lead far into the forest. Without a second thought, he followed them, his heart sinking slowly in his chest. If Hosuh had been chased by the thing, despite his best wishes, there was no way he would've survived.

Stephen picked up his pace, ignoring the steady throbbing in his head, ducking under the fallen tree trunks as he went. Giant claw marks were etched into the bark and dirt around him and he tried not to keep focus on them.

"Hosuh!" Stephen yelled again. He listened as his voice echoed through the trees, but heard no reply. "Hosuh!"

Thankfully, the dragon was nowhere in sight. Stephen guessed it has left once everyone was dead, and moved to the castle the king wanted to protect so dearly. He didn't spare a thought to what had happened to him, rage boiling in his chest at the thought of the man. Whether he knew it or not, he sent all the soldiers – and Hosuh, his only true friend – into a death sentence. The castle could burn for all he cared.