“Who are you,” Zoltar asked
through the paw clamping him to the floor.
“I was about to ask you
that,” the creature snarled back, “what are you doing here?”
“I’m Zoltar and I was just
walking through the forest looking for food. Now get off me,” Zoltar hissed
crossly. This something was sticking its claws into his scales and was sitting
on him in a rather humiliating way.
“Fine, but no funny
business!” she exclaimed, slowly releasing her grip as she got off
him.
Zoltar jumped up, rubbing
his jaw irritably. He looked at his attacker and gasped. It was a wisp talon;
her scales rippling streams of colors. Her tail was long and whip like and her
claws were hooks that could easily open a coconut in one slash.
“Wow,” Zoltar murmured
staring at the waves of gold and emerald rolling down the wisp talons sides.
“Sorry if I was too rough,”
the wisp talon apologized, “You can never be too careful around these parts.”
Her golden eyes darted at the dead shadow talons around Zoltar.
“It’s okay,” Zoltar said,
opening and closing his wings trying to get out the stiff feeling, “if I had
been in the same place I probably would have done the same thing." Then a
flash of realization spread across his face and he asked in a
slightly annoyed voice, "Have you been following me?”
Suddenly an ear splitting
roar filled the air behind them and the ground shook from the stamp of heavy
paws.
“Quick!” the wisp talon
hissed. “Into the trees.”
She bolted past Zoltar and
scrambled up the nearest tree as easily as a squirrel. As her emerald tail
disappeared through the deep green leaves Zoltar anxiously looked around for a
gap in the trees. He couldn’t climb and the forest was too thick for him
to fly through. His mind raced, looking for a way out. There was no Scorpus to
save him now and he was miles away from the clearing he had landed in a few
hours ago.
“Are you coming?” the wisp
talon asked almost in a confused manner, poking her head back through the
leaves.
“I can’t climb,” Zoltar
exclaimed in terror, frantically scrabbling at the bark in the hope that he
might be able to climb the vertical trunk. The metallic clanging of razor
sharp talons against rock was getting louder and the bushes in front of Zoltar
were starting to glow red.
“Grab on!” the wisp talon
shouted, swinging her tail down through the leaves. Zoltar lunged forward,
grabbing her tail.
“Oof, you are heavy,” the
wisp talon gasped, hauling Zoltar up onto the trees lower branches. Zoltar
scrabbled at the wood, trying to get a foothold on the dry timber. Chunks of
wrinkly bark dropped to the ground under Zoltar, making dull thudding as they
hit the soil.
With one last heave the
wisp talon managed to drag Zoltar up onto the branch. Zoltar dug his claws into
the bough and clung there like a scared cat.
“How much do you weigh?”
the wisp talon huffed, sitting on the branch next to Zoltar.
“It's muscles,” Zoltar
pouted in a dignified manner, “I'm a trained warrior, you know.”
“Shh,” the wisp talon
hissed, turning a shade of dark emerald that matched the green around her.
Zoltar looked down and his
heart stood still. The beast was just below him. The gold veined spikes along
its back gleamed in the dappled light streaming down from the trees above.
Muscles rippled under it sleek, black fur. It was busy snuffling at the patch
of ground he'd had been standing on. It look up as though alerted by a noise
overhead. Zoltar ducked behind some leafy branches, hoping the extra cover
would hide him. The creature had one last look around, its glowing red eyes
scanning the forest around it. When it could find nothing the beast lumbered
back the way it had come, trampling bushes as it went. All was silent except
for the sound of his heart hammering in his chest and his shaky breaths.
“You’re new around here,”
the wisp talon said unexpectedly. The sudden noise caused Zoltar to temporarily
lose his balance on the branch he was on. He flailed his wings wildly trying to
regain control, but slowly he tipped backwards. He ended up hanging upside down
from his tail like bat, his legs pawing at the air as if the branch was still
there.
“Definitely new,” the wisp
talon said playfully, laughing as she gently floating down to the ground
and turned to face the upside down shadow talon.
Zoltar wrinkled his snout
and scowled irritably, blowing plumes of smoke that ended up clouding around
his face and muzzle. Zoltar coughed.
“Let me help you down,”
giggled the wisp talon, thoroughly enjoying herself. Her scales were a seething
tide of pinks and purples.
“I can get down myself,”
Zoltar huffed as he swung from the branch and landed facing the other way. He
turned to face the now mountain stream blue wisp talon. She was trying to keep
a straight face, but her scales gave it away, with little bursts of cherry pink
popping out from under the vial of blue.
Rolling his eyes in
exasperation, Zoltar decided to try and change the subject. “You never answered
my question,” he gesturing for her to follow him into the forest.
“What question,” the wisp
talon asked, following Zoltar, but keeping her distance at the same time.
“I asked if you were following
me. I heard noises behind me while I was traveling through the woods,” Zoltar
explained, stopping to sniff at a disturbance in the leaf litter. It smelled of
shadow talon. One of the shadow talons in the group must have got away somehow.
'He must have the rock
slab,' Zoltar
thought as he followed the scent into a deeper part of the jungle.
“Well yes, I wanted to see
whether you were a threat or not. Why do you think I attacked you?” the wisp
talon asked from behind Zoltar.
“Well,” Zoltar started, “I
don’t know.” He was still thinking about the shadow talons and wasn’t paying
his full attention to the wisp talon.
“There are a few dragons on
this island that are from the mainland and they are not friendly. The latest
ones have been a sea talon and ice talon,” the wisp talon explained. “But they
won’t last very long. They never do.”
“Mm,” Zoltar mumbled
absentmindedly. The scent of shadow talon was getting stronger
“Anyway I didn’t get to
tell you my name. It’s Emerald,” the wisp talon smiled, showing her sparkling
white teeth.
“Mm hmm,” Zoltar muttered,
picking up the pace. The smell was unmistakable now, but there was another
acidic scent tied in with it, one that smelled of chemicals and volcano gas.
“Wait!” Emerald suddenly
hissed, dashing over to Zoltar, “You can’t go that way.”
“Why,” Zoltar asked,
stopping for a second.
“That’s where the beast
lives,” Emerald explained, her scales a pale red and brown. Zoltar peered into
the dark trees. The air was a misty yellow that had distinct odor of sulfur.
“Emerald,” Zoltar started
slowly, “does this island have a volcano on it?”
“Yes, but it hasn’t erupted
in decades. Back when it did erupt though, it made this island one of the lushest islands around. We live on the second mountain from this one," Emerald pointed a claw at a mountain towering over the forest a few miles away.
"Why not this one?" Zoltar asked, hoping to get a little information out of Emerald.
"Well, the beast tends to hunt around here, so we try not to come into this part of the forest. We only come here when we need to gather some camouflage roots for the village. I was busy digging up a tuber when you crept past. I
followed you and that how we have ended up together,” Emerald smiled sadly.
Zoltar could see there was something that she wasn’t telling him.
“Is there something else
you want to say? I can see it on your face,” Zoltar said, trying to encourage
her to tell him.
“Yes,” she sighed, “we
really want to get off the island and away from that awful beast,”
“But the beasts have been
here for centuries,” Zoltar said, confused. “Why do you want to get of the
island now?
"There is only one
more beast left on the island; the others died out long ago, but we are still
plagued by it. It has grown smarter over the years and has learned to gnaw at
the tree trunks to topple them and the wisp talons roosting on them. It never
hibernates anymore. It gets at least one wisp talon a week.
There used to be hundreds
of us, but now between the beast attacking us and the wisp talons that brave
the maze's predators, we are slowly going extinct and there is nothing we can
do,” Emerald heaved another great sigh. Clouds of grey and black rolled across
her wings and scales.
Zoltar didn’t know how to
respond. He knew that he should feel happy about this. After all the news about the wisp talons decreasing in numbers was a good thing
for the shadow talons. It meant that if they had to go to war with the wisp
talons they would almost certainly win. But somewhere in his
heart he knew it wasn’t right. This was the wisp talon’s home and it wouldn’t
be right to take their home and kill them if they fought back. They were here
first, but what of the shadow talons then? Were they doomed to stay in the
shadow lands until they went extinct? The shadow talons had no choice. It was
them or the wisp talons and Zoltar knew that he had to side with his tribe. The
wisp talons would just have to find a new home somewhere out on the continent.
“Anyway...I have to go,”
Emerald said suddenly as she turned to go back into the forest,
"Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?" she probed almost hopefully, smiling
warmly at Zoltar. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she stated, pausing to look over her
shoulder at Zoltar, “Don’t go out after dark,” and with a flick of her tail she
disappeared into the dark green forest, leaving Zoltar to his thoughts.
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