Sweet Waters Throne

232 Chapter 23The terminology, “the tears of the fire” was new to Visera, she never heard about this deadly portion which can kill a dragon. Maybe it’s because she was born and raised during an era where dragons didn’t exist. She was stunned at this and asked, “Did you see it?” and Aurora shook her head “No”.

They went on to talk more about these Dragon Hunters and how they managed to bring doom to two generations of dragons. The first time was when they brought doom to the very first king, and then when Alienor saved the dragons and his tribe, they came after Euric Morrow three hundred years later.

It seemed these Dragon Hunters were constantly looking for dragons and their existence so they can kill them. Its what they did for living, and this scared both Visera and Aurora. Now that they had truth of what truly happened to Artodo, they knew they had to stop these Dragon Hunters before they cross the Freezing Sea and cause chaos.

Even Lord Spider saw this coming, “If they were to cross the Freezing Sea and march towards south, I’m afraid none of your dragons will survive” he said warning Aurora to either take urgent measures or await carnage, to which he advised her not to wait around for her dragons to die, she must act now before they cross the sea.

The next day Aurora flew Vizoro, and Visera flew Huyana straight to Blackmount where they would plan on how to overcome these hunters before they destroy everything.

When they landed on Aurora’s Hill, Torgo welcomed them with good news. “The eggs have hatched, all of them…” he said with excitement. “They are all males” he added.

Aurora shed a small tear, Visera held her tight and they didn’t waste no time. They walked to the cave to see these new dragons while accompanied with the other four dragon keepers. The new dragons were so small and they fit inside Aurora’s hands as she picked them up. “Oh, my babies…” she wept.

“Where is the other dragon, the purple one?” asked Visera.

“His Grace took her for a ride” replied Torgo.

.....

Aurora wasn’t informed of this, “When?” she asked with concern.

“It’s been three days Your Grace, he flew with his sister”

“Princess Aeryn? She was here?”

“Yes, Your Grace”

Both Visera and Aurora looked at each other, it’s clear they didn’t like what Artemis did but what could they do, he wasn’t there at the moment. Torgo explained the purple dragon may lay eggs soon, while the maroon one was yet to show any sign of carrying eggs.

Aurora let down the new dragons and walked to the maroon dragon. Like a mother to her daughter, Aurora felt the sadness in the dragon’s eyes. The sadness may have come from the dragon’s lack of laying eggs, “My love, why are you sad?” Aurora asked her dragon in Low Moor while soothing her back.

The dragon neighed and shook her head, Aurora went on to kiss it and after sometime, the dragon wasn’t sad anymore. “You do not need to lay eggs to be perfect, you are my son’s dragon, do you what that means? It means you will be possessed by a King of Maldonia, the most powerful man in the realm” continued Aurora still in Low Moor and this even made Visera smile, she loved the connection Aurora had with her dragons.

Vizoro and Huyana were then brought inside the cave to relax while Aurora and Visera went inside the castle to rest after a long ride. There were things to do, but they can wait till tomorrow after all it was dark already.

That night Aurora struggled to sleep, the nightmares intensified today and she could feel the flames up close to her, as if it was burning her skin while she was still alive. Then she saw something strange ─ a dragon fighting a dragon. She couldn’t see who the riders were, but she felt the anger between these two dragons. They kept on pouring flames at each other, fighting using their teeth and wings until they both fell on the ground which was covered with burning buildings and screaming people.

It was chaos, everyone was running and screaming. The dragons didn’t let go of each other even when they were down, they kept on hurting each other and showed no sign of letting go. Aurora was stranded in the burning city, she tried to speak some sense to the dragons. “You are both mine, and I command you to stop” se screamed.

But then a voice came from behind her, “The other one is mine, and she will do as I command. Burn her!” but she couldn’t see who actually said those words, neither did she recognize the voice since it was so thick and everything was so chaotic during that time. Aurora was nearly burned by the other dragon, she had to run and hide herself as the burning things fell on her.

She suddenly woke up breathing heavily and sweating as if she just ran a marathon. If Artemis was there, he would usually sooth her back to sleep, but she was all alone in her chambers today and she knew sleep was the last thing she needed that time. Hence she went on to Torgo and asked to be with her three new dragons again, the dragons were brought inside Aurora’s chambers and they spent the night with her.

But only if Aurora knew that those were not the dragons she was supposed to be worried about, maybe she wouldn’t have hugged them tight and whisper to them, “I’m your mother” in Low Moor after every five minutes.

Now let’s go back to Arboil, the city where Artemis and his sister were. They flew from city to city flexing with their dragon and having fun, Aeryn couldn’t remember the last time she was this happy. The inn keepers let them sleep for free and offered them tasteful foods, which of course Artemis had them tasted first before they could eat for themselves.

When they were asleep, many people gathered outside of the inn to see the purple beautiful dragon from a far, they were scared to get close because many of them heard about what happened in Old City and they didn’t trust Artemis not one bit. But they were still mesmerized by the beauty of this dragon.

That was in Whtebridge, and Artemis thought the city was too crowded and they must find a more discreet city, that’s when they flew to Arboil ─ the hometown of Lysene, Lord Leoric’s whore. The moment Artemis arrived in Arboil with his dragon, a letter was sent to Lysene in the Mines through a raven.

Lord Leoric read the letter and he smiled, he knew exactly what to do in order to secure himself one of the dragon eggs if the dragon was truly about to lay eggs.

Since Arboil wasn’t so crowded and not so modern like other cities, Artemis and Aurora found no inns nearby and they had to sleep under an open sky. None of them seemed to mind this, after all it was part of their short holiday and they wanted to make it memorable.

The dragon a few distance from them, and that night it laid eggs and struggled the whole night. However, both Artemis and Aeryn were so tired they couldn’t hear the dragon roaring silently as it released the eggs. The two siblings may be asleep, but Leoric’s spies weren’t, and they were paying close attention to the dragon as it released two huge eggs.

“It’s laying eggs, keep close…” they whispered in the midst of the forest. They carried spears but not laced with the tears of the fire, how stupid of them, a dragon can burn them in seconds with their spears.

After releasing the two eggs, the purple dragon fell down and fainted. This was normal for dragons, the task of laying eggs wasn’t easy for them. Vizoro needed two weeks of rest after she laid out the three eggs, and she did faint too after releasing the eggs. Hence this made it easy for Leoric’s spies to walk towards the dragon and steal the two eggs while Artemis was fast asleep.

The spies who stole the dragon’s eggs were ten in number, and they agreed to split up, five of them travelled through West and the other five took the East. By the next morning, they were already on ships making their way to the Mines to hand over the eggs to their master, to which they were to be rewarded with one million gold coins for each egg.

During that time, one million gold coins could change lives of so many people, it was a huge amount of money and many of these spies were poor men, hand picked by Leoric himself because he knew poor men can be easily manipulated.

Aeryn woke up first, the chilly morning couldn’t keep her asleep anymore. She pulled over her sheets and tried to sleep again, but she looked at the dragon and saw it that it was asleep too. She couldn’t tell the dragon actually fainted, all she saw was that it was asleep, and she went back to sleep too.