Chapter 4-2

Almonihah obediently started restarting the fire, but couldn't help but ask, We're going to burn them? At his mentor's nod, the half-bronze-dragon asked further, Why?

“They may not be Javni'Tolkhrah, but they're still chaos-touched,” the older half-dragon replied, switching back to the Common Tongue. “Never a good idea to leave chaos-touched corpses laying around for something to eat. Never know what it might do to them.”

“Oh...” Almonihah seemed a little unsure at this answer, and hurried to help with the burning of the bodies.

It took them several hours to burn all of the bodies. They seemed to burn reluctantly, producing an acrid, pungent smoke that seemed to get into the back of Almonihah's throat and burn like acid despite his best efforts to avoid breathing it. By the time the last of the fell-wolf corpses had burnt down to ashes, Almonihah was more exhausted than he had been since his first day with Zrathanzon, especially since a few of the hours spent on the task were hours he would normally have been sleeping. However, despite his fatigue, he didn't complain when his mentor said they were moving out. Even if it meant forcing himself to walk despite his exhaustion, he didn't want to spend the night near the ashes.

They only traveled a couple of miles that day. Zrathanzon called a halt when they reached a small clearing at the side of a stream, and then suggested that it would be a good place to clean their clothing and equipment to try to get the smell of the smoke out of them.

“We don't want to have such a strong scent. It'll chase off the game and attract more attention we don't want,” the Ranger explained.

They spent the remainder of their afternoon cleaning, which only made Almonihah even more tired when it finally came time to sleep. He fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down, but his sleep was far from dreamless. He saw the fell-wolves again in his dreams, only this time it was not Zrathanzon but his mother who was at his back, and no matter how well they fought, there were always more and more, until he was certain his arm would fall off before they could fend them all off. Just when he was sure they would be overwhelmed, he heard a huge roar behind him. He turned to see his father in his full draconic power plowing through the beasts, his claws flashing and fangs snapping. The fell-wolves fled before the onslaught, leaving the path clear for his mother to run to his father.

For some reason, she slowed and then stopped short of the bronze dragon. There was a tense silence for a moment, and then a bright light coupled with the sharp crack of thunder. Again Almonihah watched his mother fall, struck down by lightning...

Almonihah started awake, his heart pounding. After looking around for a moment to reorient himself and reassure himself that he had simply been dreaming, his pulse slowed. His mind started to process the dream, recognizing the ridiculous nature of it. It hadn't been his father whose lightning breath had struck his mother, it had been a blue dragon. Zrathanzon had told him so.

But he had never seen for himself.

Frowning, Almonihah shook off the thought, telling himself that he needed sleep if he didn't want to feel even worse in the morning. He rolled over and slowly drifted off to sleep.

Almonihah awoke with a bit of a lingering cough and aches in places he'd forgotten he could ache in. Zrathanzon, as usual, had already arisen and began morning preparations. Despite his aches, Almonihah arose to join the Ranger in preparing breakfast, trying to put the dreams of last night behind him.

The only sign that Zrathanzon was thinking of what had happened the day before was a new focus and emphasis on Almonihah's weapons drills to help him competently defend himself. Otherwise, the day passed uneventfully as they continued south and west, heading for one of the communities the older half-dragon had not visited for a while.

“They're a bit less accepting of me than a lot of the other towns along the Road,” he explained to his pupil, “But I try to check in on them every now and then anyways.”

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A fairly short post this time, despite having officially started on the Quark-NaNoWriMo thing. While I have several things I could say about this section, I think I want to keep them to myself. Just... well, let's say there's at least three reasons for the name of this chapter.