((Collab with
Lizica ))
Screaming. Shouts. Piercing animal cries and the crunching of bones as they bumped, scraped, bit into each other.
These noises still crashed through Sei’s head like the crashing of waves, even long after he had fled their dark and boney shores, now stained red with the fall of Bayne. The now distant rumble echoed through trees, the groaning of a rising beast born of the residents’ fear and anger, giving new meaning to the nightmarescape that trapped them.
What seemed like spots of red blotted Sei’s vision as he moved through the trees, and his bones shook like trembling paws, not with shock or fear, but with the white hot rage he never imagined would ever pierce his heart. Snapping his maw to relieve some tension, he thought back to Bayne, wondering what it would have felt like had there been flesh on that bone...
That wasn’t something to think about now, though. Bayne was not the only business for Sei to take care of. Kasai had been Verso and Recto’s guardian, and Sei in his place, but they were not the only ones a part of the two’s lives. Sei kept this in mind as he tried to quell the embers inside his heart, the Crystal Crags lying ahead of him.
At the far edge of the coast, this particular cavern yawned open to him. Its breath was damp and dark, and the wind across its mouth made a low howl. Flattening his ears, Sei reminded himself why he had come in the first place. Lonely though this cave was, he was to go down into it. He
had to.
The small dragons had occasionally made offhanded mentions of family, and Sei had gleaned that they might have siblings living in this particular cavern. Of course, that didn’t tell him if that was a plurality of dragons, or just a duality of heads. Either way though, no matter their form, siblings meant family, and family meant that they should probably know that one of them had gone corrupted. At least, Sei hoped that his sibling guess was correct as he took his first step against the clammy grey rock of the cave. It was as though its damp air chilled his heart along with his body.
The cave was deeper than it appeared on the outside, and as he journeyed farther in, even the clouded sunlight reflected off the crystals began to diminish. A small stream ran along the bottom, and Seishin followed it through the shallows while small, blind cavefish sometimes tapped against his ankles. He wondered just how far this cavern led. Desperately wishing that he had his normal form only so the rattling of bones didn’t echo off the walls, Sei almost considered turning back, but a small shaft of light ahead caught his eye, and a sudden noise made his ears perk up.
“A dragon with two heads was hatched from a single egg,” came a voice, and the skeletal head and long neck of a dragon emerged into the shaft of light, its horns curled and its eye sockets unreadable. It was twice Sei’s height.
“They hatched from their egg on the same day, at the same time, from the same nest,” said a second skeletal head, coming to light to the right of the other.
“And yet,” said the first, “they are not twins.”
“How is this possible?” asked the second.
“I, uhh….” Sei tried to wrack his brain as quickly as possible. Whether or not he actually had a time limit, he didn’t know, but when someone greets you in such a way, you feel rather obligated to answer as soon as you can. “Uh, b-because they have the same body?”
Sei’s mind may have been a bit too consumed with Verso and Recto to really think the riddle through, but to be fair, it
did sound pretty reminiscent of the two. Perhaps today just wasn’t Sei’s best mental day.
The two skeletal heads considered his answer only briefly, before the head on the left said, “I mean, that’s true, but that’s not the right answer.”
“Maybe it’s a dragon terminology thing,” said the head on the right.
“The correct answer--” began the head on the left.
“--is that they are not twins--” continued the head on the right.
“--because they are
triplets,” said a third voice, and a third head craned itself forward into the light in between the other two using a very uncomfortable-looking limbo maneuver that made their vertebrae grate. The bones snapped in satisfaction when their neck was properly upright; and now the center head was slightly taller than the other two.
“Still a good guess, though,” they said, tilting their head around to stretch.
“O-oh,” Sei uttered, shocked by the third addition to the dragon, “I, uh, good one.”
Suddenly feeling the weight of six eyes watching him, Sei made quick to introduce himself and his purpose before they started asking more questions. He gave a small bow and knelt his head down as he greeted them.
“Seishin, spirit kitsune from the Highwind Woods.”
“Trip,” said the head on the right.
“Puck,” said the head in the middle.
“Tich,” said the head on the left. “Collectively, you may call us Triptych.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Sei lifted his head back up as each of them introduced themselves. “Why I came… It’s about your…. siblings, I presume? Verso and Recto.”
“Recto-verso?” repeated Tich.
“The runts?” said Trip.
“I, uh, I suppose,” Sei answered hesitantly. “M-my mate, Kasai, he had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on them in case of any trouble, as the two seemed like they needed it, but he…. I had to take his place. B-but, I’m afraid I have failed…” Sei swallowed hard before telling them, “Verso and Recto have been corrupted by the Sowers. Where they are and what they’ve done, I’m not sure anymore. But… I thought I should at least let you know.”
He might have been expecting a reaction of horror, or even of despair, but instead found that the three heads of Triptych looked--
impressed.
“They’re still alive, after all this time?” said Trip.
“No one thought they would last very long at all,” said Tich.
“It’s always trouble when someone of the ‘truth and lies’ variety is hatched,” said Puck.
“They’re really only made for the one riddle, but they couldn’t even do that one right,” said Trip.
“Was your mate one of the guardians?” asked Tich with interest.
“A coelophysis fell through our ceiling the other day--” began Puck, and as a whole, they indicated with one bony claw upwards towards the deep crack from which the shaft of light spilled. “--and they told us about some crazy shadow going around, along with magical protective Spirit-ordained guardians?”
“Being by a guardian is the probably the only way Recto-verso would have survived this long,” said Trip.
“Ah- No, no, not a guardian.” Sei shook his head, pulling himself out of his stupor upon hearing their reaction to Verso and Recto’s fate, “He just… He did his best for them, no matter what. He cared for them as much as he could, just like he always used to do….”
His voice started to choke up, so for a moment Sei left himself to mournfully gaze towards the back wall, but with the glint of fond memories still dancing in his eyes. After a small pause, he continued.
“Kasai, he’d always keep any suspicious creatures away from where the two were, try and lead them away from dangerous areas, leave them food in their home every now and then…”
“All
that?” said Trip.
“Sounds like a swell guy,” said Tich.
“That’s more than
we ever did for them,” said Puck.
“It’s nothing personal,” added Trip.
“The weyr usually only gathers together when new wyrmlings hatch so we can teach them our riddles,” said Tich.
“Multi-headed dragons are ordinarily very solitary creatures,” said Trip.
“Well, you know, such as it is,” said Puck.
“Anyway, those little idiots had better be grateful for what your mate did,” said Trip.
“Well, Kasai and I… we never really let them in on what we were doing,” Sei reluctantly told them, “Kasai had figured it best not to let them know, else they become the targets of any Sowers or other threat that would want to exploit the bond Kasai made with them. Although I disagreed with him on complete secrecy for a number of reasons, I respected it when it came my time to take over.”
“You mean you two did
all that without even the
possibility of a ‘thank you’?” said Trip, appalled.
“Why on earth would something like that be such an issue to the point where you’d need something like
secrecy?” said Tich, mystified.
“And can you really call it a bond if neither Verso nor Recto even knew what you were doing?” said Trip, critically.
“I mean, those Sowers can’t be
that bad,” said Puck, dismissively.
The dragon may as well have headbutted Sei in the gut with all three sets of horns, and he recoiled as such at these last words.
“These Sowers are the reason my mate is
dead!” Sei spat, “Killed by one of their corrupted in cold blood!
At a neutral watering hole! And of course they couldn’t even be bothered to stick around, leaving me to find what they’ve done, clean up their mess....” He took in a sharp, shaky breath, fighting against the twitching feeling in his tail and top of his head. “And there are still countless others left dead, all senseless murders, thanks to the Sowers.
You are literally nothing but bones right now, thanks to these Sowers!!”
“We figured it’d wear off,” said Puck, in a much smaller voice than before.
Sei’s gaze burned hard as smoldering embers. “Even Verso and Recto almost killed someone-- that lion, Calix-- were it not for the Lionheart! But it’s not like they can protect every single creature those to go after now.”
“Calix? Calix the
nemean lion?” Tich sputtered. It came out as a spit-take of words. “
Verso and Recto tried to murder a
nemean lion?”
Trip facepalmed with force, his bones making a loud hollow smacking sound, and Puck let out a laugh that was not exactly mirthful and not exactly derisive and not exactly confident.
“Okay, yeah, that--that
is bad,” said Tich.
“That is very bad,” said Trip.
“That is
extremely bad,” said Puck.
“So where are they now?” Tich asked blankly.
“I….I don’t really know,” Sei admitted, his tone softened again. “The Calix incident was all I’d heard about, which was somewhere by the edge of Highwind Woods and the Shadowed Pines. I don’t know if they’re still there or not.” Sei swished his tail in thought, pacing. “When I tried to look for them, all I could find was a trail that started, stopped, went all around… But to nowhere in particular, not that I could see.”
“Huh, that’s an odd trail,” said Puck.
“If they’re anything like the last time we saw them, they’d usually just blunder through the woods leaving a messy trail of broken twigs and squished moss behind them,” said Trip.
“But if they’re
not like the last time we saw them, that’s kind of the entire reason someone needs to track them down,” said Tich.
“...And then do what, exactly?” Puck asked as a genuine bewildered question, turning to Sei.
“Perhaps…” Sei thought hard, “Perhaps, now that we have three new sets of eyes, that trail could be a good place to start?” He gave them a quizzical look, hoping to gauge reactions. “It may not be much, but we
do have to find them. And I don’t know what else we can do.” He gave a small despondent shrug at the end.
Triptych shrugged, too.
“Try to keep them from picking more fights with mythical self-important lions?” Tich offered.
“A plan’s a plan,” said Trip.
Flashbacks continue.
Seishin leaves the scene of Bayne’s lynching seeing red but still recognizes that his protector duties do not end with the Sower’s death. He makes his way to a deep cave in the Crystal Crags, where he finds Triptych, Verso and Recto’s bigger three-headed sibling, and relays the current news about V&R. Triptych (composed of heads right to left: Trip, Puck, and Tich (pronounced “Tick”)) are, uh, not very tactful about all this, but they’ve also been literally living under a rock, so perhaps some of their words can be slightly forgiven. Maybe.
Anyway, once Sei convinces Triptych of the severity of the situation, they all agree to go help find the corrupted V&R and see if they can help.
Also everyone was bones in this meeting, did we mention that, so that was fun for them.