I have been picturing this part for a while HAHA. I'm glad I got to it.

We have Ridder and Baedden, knights traveling through the forest per Lord Bywren's orders. We have a little snippet of Malandra and Arjun and we have Rayne and a very interesting meeting.

MINE.

~Angel~

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“Bloody trees, bloody bugs, BLOODY HELLS!”

Knight Ridder's current companion, Knight Baedden had been swearing for at least two days. Where the other two of their party stayed at the farmer's in case another dragon appeared, Knight Baedden had the unlucky draw of straws to head with Ridder for Morio Forest.

“I thought boars were accustomed to forest life, Baedden?” Knight Ridder joked as they made their was slowly through the thicket, armor, shields, swords and knives with underclothes making it unbearably hot and sticky for them both.

“Eh, shut it, long ears,” Baedden growled at him, long snout snorting behind Ridder as he smack his neck again from something eating his flesh or his blood. “You're just lucky you got me and not the other two. I've faced dragons before, north where the bugs have the BLOODY DECENCY TO STAY DEAD!”

The jack rabbit's ears flopped around with the pain of Baedden's voice, Ridder was sure he would be going deaf soon, or perhaps he was praying for it.

“If you keep up the racket the dragon will find us soon enough,” Ridder said in a small mumble, cutting another good chunk of vine with his knife.

Then the scent hit them, the smell of soot and a dozen different burned trees. Ridder went quiet and still, before pushing through the foliage slowly and coming to the edge of the forest fire.

The sun was blinding as the pair crunched on charred ground, a small gust of wind whisking some of the ashen ground up and away in front of them. It looked as if the fire reached for miles, humps in the ground of huge burn fallen trees, branches laid out like bodies. It seemed they finally came across something to make Knight Baedden speechless.

“Bloody hells...”

Or not quite. Ridder started moving forward over the ground, sheathing his knife and looking at the spray pattern of the fire as well as how the trees had fallen. It had been almost a week since the fire went out, he determined and began to move in towards where the fire on this end of the forest started. Baedden followed, watching the black crows caw and fly off from the charred debris.

“Feels like death came through here,” Baedden mumbled. “Dragon fire can be like the damn fires of all the hells.”

“We keep moving,” Ridder ordered, “If there's still a dragon around, we kill it.”

“Confidence, Ridder,” Baedden stated as his bug problems seemed far off in the glaring sunlight. “Is something you don't lack, sir.”

“I've dealt with dragons my fair share,” Ridder replied, “This is why Lord Bywren put me in charge, Baedden.”

“How many you kill, then?” Baedden asked, snorting a bit through a hefty breath.

“Are we going to play the who has the bigger dick game, now?” Ridder's voice was low, a warning as one of his long ears twisted around, large brown eyes narrowing as he kept his pace up.

“Something to talk about, Ridder,” Baedden growled. “The gods know you're a quiet one, and all this—scenery makes me itch a bit for a distraction. So talk about something.”

Knight Ridder rolled his eyes a little but he didn't need his counterpart spooked before the real threat showed its ugly head.

“Alright,” Ridder answered, “Lets talk about kills for a bit, if it will help your mood improve.”

“That's better,” Baedden agreed, before his pacing seemed to increase, before the war stories started. Even the crows seemed to go quiet to listen.

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Magnus hadn't told Malandra about Rayne being his pupil, but Rayne had. It was a worry in the pit of her stomach when she was there, when she left, and now sat rock hard there while she poured over the magics of the last few millenia. Magnus knew the consequences of taking on a pupil without the other Keepers knowledge, but a mortal pupil? Surely he didn't want to endanger his life and hers like that? Obviously Rayne had no clue when she explained what she could in the little time her and Malandra spoke.

Dracen had told her mortal servant, which lead Malandra to believe he didn't know about Rayne being Magnus' pupil. That was better, Dracen was her little handsome hatchling but the male did have a mouth when it came to secrets.

Would she tell the elder Keepers? No. Magnus was her hatchling, her offspring, her blood and pain and love. She would tear their heads off if they touched him, and she knew Arjun would easily do the same without questioning as to why he was doing it. If it meant protecting his offspring, he wouldn't stop until all the blood was spilled.

She would have to keep her ears open, knowing that Dracen knew about the pair of them but he seemed to be keeping his mouth shut about that particular relationship. She hadn't seem the elder Keepers in at least 200 years, since Magnus was given his title and his section of the Word to protect. Malandra had educated her own son over the knowledge of the Word, and as such was there when he took over another Keeper's section, lair and work with his sudden abrupt death.

Malandra knew that Rayne wouldn't live long enough to attract much attention by just being a servant, mortals were rare who took oaths but not so rare with Keepers. They had much to take care of and mortals made good pets, or snacks depending on how well they did their jobs. What would trigger a curious eye with the others would be MAGNUS having a mortal servant, Magnus the dragon who just wanted to remain all alone in his lair without anyone or anything attached. She hoped that most would ignore it if the gossip even got that far. Most of the gossip now had remained within Malandra's young and immediate family, which most didn't really care about anyway. Magnus was being Magnus, that would be what they would think and not think about it again. Malandra and Magnus were the only two truly connected to the Keepers and the Word, she would take solace in that.

“Female, yeh'r doin' it again.”

“Doing what, Arjun?”

“Tail,” he replied simply. She looked from her four books she was scouring over to behind her, where her tail blade was shoving its way into the rock floor and splitting a new groove there. With that new one, she counted six other places with the similar splitting. She let out a heavy sigh, before pulling her tail free and resting it along the ground. Arjun, lounging on his back rolled over and brushed up heavily against his mate, nibbling along her wing and neck to calm her before resting his head behind her neck, intertwining his tail with hers to keep her from damaging their lair floor any longer.

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It took Rayne far more time than she originally thought to find her way through the now charcoal landscape. She recognized nothing and only knew she was headed in the right direction by the path made by Xipil's flames and rage. It would take many of Rayne's own lifetimes for the forest to recover and be as it once was, lush and wild with greenery. There was some hope though, already other foliage and many different kinds of flowers were peeking through the ashen ground, colors piercing the grey and black like dots of paint. She found the ravine and stream where she spotted the poisonous berries, seeing the shale rocks blasted with harsh flames. She was very lucky to be alive, to see how close she'd come to death here was disconcerting to say the least. She followed the stream to where she scaled up the ravine, knowing there here would be the best place to start searching for her missing bow. Xipil fell in this portion, but so many days had passed and what once was easy to spot had become invisible in an alien landscape. Rayne began to feel the foolishness of this venture as she bent under a fallen trunk, coughing a little when the soot under her feet clouded up in the air. If she couldn't tell where a dragoness had once been, how was she supposed to find where she fell? For all she knew Magnus had dropped it between here and home. That much land to cover would put her well passed dinner time, and with a dragon for a mate one did not want to be late. For now she would see if she could at least find where Xipil had fallen and search for her bow around there.

She covered her mouth and nose with her arm and started kicking up the layers of white and black ash. What was she looking for exactly besides the bow? She didn't quite know yet but something that size falling on the ground had to leave some sort of mark or groove.

She came to a large trunk, the base not pushed and cracked but cut, sliced through. She hadn't remembered Xipil being so exact with her pushing, and she certainly didn't do this without a tail blade. Rayne assumed it must have been Magnus who cut down this tree, scratching her head a bit as to why. She moved along it and saw the gauge marks closer to where the large branches started to veer off, gauge marks made after the initial fire had passed, the light brown under wood of the tree exposed and unmarred by licking flames. Xipil may have used this tree for something...or gone over it in her hasty escape.

Rayne ran her paw over the marks carefully, before she took another step and her foot slid far deeper than the one prior. She saw the incline of the ground then, a great large dent in the mostly even ashen surface. The tree blocked most of it but Rayne now had an idea of where to start. She pulled a somewhat still green branch from the inner branches of the fallen tree and began sweeping soot away around the large indent, hoping the bow had fallen out of her paw when she fell off Xipil's head.

After what felt like hours she yielded nothing, occasionally she would see a branch so smooth and unmarred she thought she'd found it, which made her hopes diminish greatly. She sighed and looked herself over, patches of soot and ash all over her once cleaned clothes and fur and shook her head a bit. She should have never cleaned herself this morning if she was going to get this dirty later on. She grumbled, defeated and began to make her way carefully through the path she already dusted off and looked to the sun to see how late it was and which way she needed to head for home.

She kicked something, frowning before she saw the familiar round cylinder of her quiver roll a little. Half of it had been eaten away by the fire, but she missed it on her initial sweep of the place. She started using the branch near where the quiver was, and low and behold she sifted the bow free, covered in grey dust but intact. Even the bow string only looked dusty as she started to try to clean off the soot. She shook her head a little, with her dirty paws she was only putting new ash over the old ash on the bow. She looked to the sun again and decided she had time to clean herself and the bow up, far beyond the now ashen former forest. There was a pond on the other side of the damage, that would do so she didn't trek to the stream nearby, knowing she would just have to wash up again later if she went that way.

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Baedden was currently on a story about some bar wench in a tavern ten cities over when they found more greenery and less ash. Ridder had chosen to ignore most of the story and keep his concentration on the ground before them, he was sure by this point Baedden wasn't paying attention to where he stepped in the slightest.

Ridder spotted the game trail, glad to see it through the thick foliage and started making his way towards it with Baedden still snorting and cackling behind him. Baedden doubled over with laughter at a particularly crude part of the story, making Ridder sigh heavily and wait for his counterpart to join him back in reality.

“Baedden, we should keep going, its almost evening,” Ridder grumbled at the boar.

“HAAAAAAHAAAAAA~!” The boar still cackled, clearly this story had distracted him from the fact the dragon could easily swoop down and snatch him up in deadly jaws for the sound Baedden was making alone, or Ridder might have been praying for it. “You got a stick up your—”

Ridder's ear turned, ignoring Baedden easily as a new sound eddied in his long ears. He frowned as they both quirked forward and pin pointed the abnormal noise through the usual animal calls and movements.

“Ridder?” Baedden questioned, standing upright and putting a hoof on his shoulder. Ridder shushed him immediately, making sure he knew where the sound was coming from before his ears lead the way. Baedden tried talking again and Ridder immediately turned to him and placed a finger over his nose and short muzzle, ears still turned towards the foreign noise. Baedden wouldn't have been able to hear it yet, but Ridder could easily, and even pin point a distance away. He wanted to make sure they were quiet as they approached, and Baedden had a bad habit of being as loud as the environment allowed if not told to be quiet.

They moved almost silently through the brush, the game trail giving them the easier path to follow as Ridder knew he wasn't imagining the noise any longer. He stopped as the path gave way to a clearing in the trees, sparkling water reflecting along the soft grasses in front of them. By that point Baedden could hear it too, the soft singing and humming of a woman and small amounts of splashing water. Ridder slowly came into the clearing before standing still and quiet.

A grey tigress was standing knee deep in a clear pond's waters, holding a bow as she cleaned it off with a tender paw. She was almost naked save for her underthings and a cotton shirt hanging loosely on her frame. She kept singing and humming to herself, silver strands of hair reflecting light like the water's wavy surface, her face frowning at a particularly grubby spot on the grip.

Baedden came up behind Ridder, both just standing and staring at the figure before them in disbelief, before her head turned to them. Her first reaction seemed softly confused, then her eyes grew and the terror was there, her bow gripped tighter in her paw as the three of them regarded each others presence silently.

Her eyes wandered to the pack and other clothing on the pond's edge, before looking back to Ridder and his counterpart. She slowly made her way out of the water, eyes still on the knights before grabbing the pack and bolting for the woods.