Chapter Text

Waiting for an invisible opponent got boring quickly, Shadow Milk realized. Circling above the evacuating civilians of the Vanilla kingdom almost lazily, eyes scanning over the sky. Light Furies were, evidently, as frustrating to find as ever.

Without a storm, Marionette was limited to her natural camouflage, so Pure Vanilla should have had a distinct advantage. However, the silly king and his even sillier dragon had never seen a Night Fury before. Shadow Milk was still in control of this fight.

This did not help his boredom.

He knocked his foot lightly to Marionette side, gesturing towards the evacuating civilians. A large group of them were conveniently standing right beneath one of the castles tall stone towers. So many people in one blast, how could he pass up such an golden opportunity?

Marionette twisted her mouth in an imitation of a smile (a very good one for a dragon, she had learned from the best!), turning towards the tower silently and slowly gaining altitude. Pure Vanilla probably hadn’t moved far from their original position, so they were safe to make space for a dive bomb. More power so the tower would crumble in one blast and fast enough nobody would have a chance to move. It was so perfectly set up! He needed to applaud the choreographer.

Air whistled around them as they dove, that subtle heat rising in Marionettes chest as she charged a plasma blast. She opened her mouth to fire and- something shrieked behind them. The Light Fury was right there and coming down fast.

Pure Vanilla hadn’t strayed far from his people it seemed.

“Shit!” he whisper-yelled, throwing his weight to the side as he and Marionette twisted out of the way of the blast.

For half a second, he thought they had succeeded. Their own attack went awry, hitting in what was probably a garden (a terribly boring garden, really. Looked to be mostly whites and yellows. And yet despite all the boring pale flowers, not a single milkcrown! He had to talk to the set designer of this place someday, really), but at least they had gotten out of the way.

He heard the bang before he felt it, the sound of that so familiar explosion of light and fire, right next to his ears.

They were hit.

Marionette jerked under him, her weight thrown sideways as she lost control of her flight, veering hard towards the forest bordering the kingdom and quickly losing height. Her wings flapped as hard as they could but they only continued to fall. Shadow Milk twisted to see where they had been hit and was horrified to see the flames still licking at the end of her tail. He couldn’t tell in the dark how bad the damage was, but what he could see didn't look good. There was no way she flew with her tail like that.

His arms gripped her neck as tight as he could to keep balance as she flailed, sending them spinning through the air. He leaned down to be heard through her wild roars and screeches. His oldest friend, hurt and terrified. “I know it hurts, but we’ve got to land. Spread you’re wings as wide as you can and don’t think about your tail, let it drag. You can slow our fall without it, even if you can’t fly,” he said, “I know you can do it Dolly.”

Somehow, Marionette managed to hear him despite the wind rushing through their ears and her own panic. Her wings shot out to their full spread and her tail went limp behind them. Hopefully, the wind had put out the flames, but he couldn’t turn to check.

Their fall didn’t slow much, the tops of the trees still quickly approaching, but at least they weren’t spinning wildly anymore.

Marionette turned sharply and without warning, shooting a plasma blast towards the hovering form of the Light Fury. The turn threw off their already shaking glide and left Shadow milk scrambling to keep hold. A saddle sounded so nice in that moment, but he and Marionette had never liked them.

“Marionette! WHAT was THAT for?!” he yelled, getting an angry roar in response as they began falling once again towards the forest. That shot had destroyed all their effort to not crash violently to their deaths, and it risked seriously hurting the Light Fury! They were trying NOT to do that! Marionette spread her wings wide again, trying to slow their fall into something mildly controllable. They once again settled into a shaky downwards glide, losing altitude quickly. They were past the point of slowing and without a tail there was no way they gained any height.

Shadow Milk’s eyes widened when he saw a patch of blue through the rapidly incoming green, a small lake. It looked deep enough despite its small size, but he couldn’t be sure from this height. They would have to act now if they didn’t want to miss it. “Think you can aim us there?” he shouted over the wind, pointing towards the water, almost directly beneath them now, “dive for it! It looks deep enough to not kill us!”

Marionette growled, but listened. She pulled her wings tight to her sides like she was going for a dive bomb and angled them steeply towards the water.

Shadow Milk held his breath as water rushed over them, cold and uninviting, but strangely calm. Almost nice after the crazy rush of battle and falling uncontrollably through the sky. He waited to hit the rocks at the bottom and die a painful death. Such a boring death, not at all what he thought was scripted for him. Death by something fun like laughing too hard would be far more appropriate, and after his fall he always assumed he would die violently, killed in battle before he and the other Beasts could complete their mission (he remembered, for a moment, how he used to imagine his death. Before it all. All he had wanted was to have his family with him and Marionette by his side. He had always hated being alone. The Fount was a sentimental old fool). Of course, he’d prefer not to die at all, but if he had to die-

Shadow Milk realized he had been considering his own death for far too long.

The water around him was cold and biting, but he was alive. His eyes shot open. Marionette did the same, looking around the shockingly deep lake. A few small fish swam away from them rapidly, gathering around the edges of the lake. Far below them, a soft sand ground was overgrown with greenery and decorated with small rocks and shells. It was so perfect, almost like a fish tank.

A smile grew on his face, very different from his normal sharp one.

Marionette swam them to the surface, wings pushing them rapidly through the water. Their heads broke the surface and Shadow Milk let out a cheer and a laugh as Marionette paddled to shore, letting out her own roar of excitement.

Sand was definitely going to be in his armour for weeks after this, but Shadow Milk didn’t care as he let himself fall sideways off Marionette into the sand, collapsing on his back and letting his limbs spread around him. “WE LIVED!” he shouted, laughing wildly “I can’t believe that worked!” Marionette followed him into the sand, rolling around like a content cat and throwing sand everywhere. The rumbling purr coming from her chest sounded like his own laugh.

“Hey- hey- no! MARI YOU ARE THROWING SAND IN MY MOUTH-” he was cut off by a yelp of pain, Marionette going stone still next to him. She began flailing around in pain, wings sending sand flying and tail lashing.

The joy of surviving the crash was quickly forgotten as he rushed to Marionette’s tail, which he couldn’t get a good look at as it swung wildly. “Marionette!” he tried shouting, but she didn’t seem to hear him as she writhed in pain.

The moment her tail was in reach, he jumped onto it, pinning its length to the sand with his weight. The sudden presence on her tail made Marionette pause, panting in pain. Her wings twitched at her sides instinctively, itching to run and get away from whatever was causing her pain, but she stayed still as he looked over her tail despite definitely being strong enough to throw him off. It wouldn’t take a quarter of her strength to send him flying, and he let out a sign of relief that his (admittedly somewhat insane) idea worked.

Shadow Milk bit his lip to keep from swearing. His eyes went wide in terror.

It was bad, worse even than he had expected.

He was prepared for a lot of things. Burned scales, broken bones, maybe even burn deep enough to hit flesh or a ripped tail fin. Plasma blasts could cause serious damage, even to something as strong as dragon scales, Shadow Milk knew that first hand. Still, all of it he could have dealt with with the supplies Mystic Flour had forced him to carry in his small bag, which he was forced to carry since he and Marionette refused to use a saddle like the others.

Marionette’s tail fin was utterly destroyed.

Scraps of burnt flesh clung weakly to her tail, but nothing recognizable as one of her fins. Deep burns crawled up her tail and her remaining tail fin, eating through her scales and into blackened flesh. At least the other half of her tail was still in one piece despite the damage.

It would heal.

The burns would heal.

A missing tail fin could not be healed.

While most dragons rely to some degree on their tails to fly, Furies are especially dependent on theirs. Their incredible speed and agility in the air is largely due to the four fins on their tails. Without any one of these fins, a Fury would be rendered completely incapable of flight.

Shadow Milk remembered every word of that book. He had written it himself.

A downed dragon is a dead dragon.

Shadow Milk without his dragon was a dead Beast.

Snapped out of his panic by a nudge to his shoulder, he turned towards Marionette. She tilted her head in question, but he could read the fear and pain in her large eyes as clear as any prose. A shaking purr rumbled out from her chest, as if trying to comfort him despite her pain.

Shadow Milk dug through the bag slung over his shoulder, never more thankful for Mystic Flours pestering. The supplies were meant for emergencies, when she couldn’t make it in time to heal them and they had to do it themselves.

Bandages, some sort of cream with instructions written in Mystic Flours neat handwriting on the back, gauze, a bottle of small and large pills he assumed were painkillers with a note telling him (him specifically, not just the Beasts in general. SHADOW MILK was written huge across the top) in large letters that the bigger ones were for dragons only, more gauze, and a small kit for emergencies sutures. Shadow Milk knew vaguely how to use all of it, but he had never really cared for healing. There were about a million and one more interesting things to research.

He grimaced and moved so that he was straddling Marionettes tail, as close to the damaged end as he could get without causing more pain. She let him pin her tail with minimal complaint. He pulled out the cream, gauze, and bandages after throwing one of the large painkillers to Marionette.

It just had to last long enough for the others Beasts to find him, or for him to find them.

He could do this.

He had to.

Shadow Milk grit his teeth and got to work.

—

Pure Vanilla woke up to a kingdom no longer on fire, absolutely no sense of time, an ache in his chest, and no Orchid. He could not hear the sound of his dragon, waking or sleeping, anywhere near him.

When he pushed himself out of bed in a panic for his oldest friend, he was met immediately with large, steady hands at his shoulders, pushing him gently back down into bed. He let himself be laid down without argument, opening his eyes to try and discern who was at his bedside.

To his shock, it was not any of the Vanilla kingdoms nurses or doctors (all of who he knew quite well), but Dark Cacao.

“Oh- hello, Cacao- is everything alright?” He rasped through his dry throat when the other Ancient turned to meet Pure Vanilla’s eyes with what was probably anger. He could feel it radiating from him like the cold winds of his snowy Kingdom.

Dark Cacao breathed slowly before responding, composing himself. He got the feeling he was trying not to yell and only barely succeeding.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, voice low and full of more emotion than Pure Vanilla had ever heard from the usually stoic Ancient. He sounded less like he was going to yell and more like he was holding back tears. Pure Vanilla opened his mouth as if to search for a reply but was cut off. “It was me who led us down this path,” Dark Cacao whispered, like a confession. A sinner in the booth, admitting something terrible to a priest that would never truly forgive him.

“Dark Cacao,” Pure Vanilla finally managed, “you cannot-”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I almost got you killed. I almost got Orchid killed. Those brave children and thousands of innocent people could have died today Pure Vanilla-”

“I know,” Pure Vanilla interrupted, “I know, trust me. Gods above I know. It was terrifying, I thought we were all dead.” he laughed, just on the edge of crazed, coughing and trembling as it sent his chest shaking painfully. “But you cannot allow all the blame for this to settle on your shoulders, it is too heavy a burden for any one of us to carry.”

“We thought you were dead and I was the one who-”

“Dark cacao, now is not the time for blame. We must regroup and move forward in our war with the Beasts.”

There was a long, painful pause.

“I suppose you are correct, Pure Vanilla. As you always seem to be.” Dark Cacao relented, slumping in his chair by the other Ancients bedside. Based on the empty glass that smelled faintly of alcohol and the yellow blobs of what was probably feathers scattered throughout his room, he assumed the other Ancients had their turns watching over him as well. Or at least Golden Cheese’s bird had been in to see him.

Dark Cacao reached for something on his nightstand, lifting a glass of room temperature water to Pure Vanilla’s lips. He drank it gratefully, soothing his dry throat.

The moment Dark Cacao sat back down, Pure Vanilla remembered his initial panic in waking up.

“Orchid! Where is Orchid?” he shouted, once again fighting to push himself out of bed even as his arms shook and dark Cacao rushed to gently push him back down.

“She’s fine, Pure Vanilla, lay back down. You are hurt and I was told very sternly to keep you in bed. You bruised your ribs, as well as quite a few other places. You were lucky to get out without any broken bones, even with your armour,” Dark Cacao said, keeping one of his hands firmly but softly on top of Pure Vanilla to stop him from bolting or whatever other insane plan he had concocted to go find Orchid. “You’re right to worry, she was severely wounded by your fight with the Beasts, but Golden Cheese got her to White Lily quickly. We’re lucky your kingdom is closest to the nest.”

“She’s okay?” Pure Vanilla’s voice was small and high with fear, his eyes wide as he stared up at the other Ancient.

“Other than the fact that we wouldn’t let her see you? As healthy as she could be.”

“I will have to make the flight out to thank the Bewilderbeast myself for his aid,” Pure Vanilla whispered, holding a hand to his rapidly beating heart as his breathing evened out. “Wait- does that mean she is-”

“Waiting outside for one of us to let her in? Yes. She fled the nest and flew back here as soon as she was healed, beat Golden Cheese home by many hours. It took several barrels worth of bribery fish to convince her not to barge in here to check on you herself, but you needed rest.” Dark Cacao smiled, the small, barely visible thing that pure Vanilla knew meant he was amused. The other Ancient showed little emotion, but Pure Vanilla had learned over the years how to interpret the minute changes in his expression and voice. Dark Cacao was one of his most trusted friends and allies.

“Stay in bed,” Dark cacao said sternly as he stood, “I will go find Orchid for you.” Pure Vanilla sat up against the pillows the moment the other Ancient was gone. He hated to lay still for so long, but his ribs protested the idea of doing anything more than sitting up.

Outside, he could see he colorful forms of many dragons flying around. It seemed they were helping repair the damage from the attack and put out the small fires that had been missed by the earlier efforts to extinguish the Kingdom.

Outside, he could see the forest that bordered the city. The feeling was still there, deep in his chest but fighting outwards.

The Night Fury was out there, and so was its Beast.

Pure vanilla needed to find it. He wasn’t sure why but he knew he had to. Something was drawing him out to the forest, and whether it be curiosity, guilt, or something more like fate he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he needed to find that dragon.

The door to his room slammed open, crashing against the wall as Orchid forced herself into the room. Down the hall, he could hear Dark Cacao shouting something, but he didn’t care as he opened his arms wide to accept his destiny.

Orchid jumped, practically flying across the room and onto his large bed. This was pretty much the only reason he had chosen to keep the unreasonably massive bed despite being the only one who slept in it.

The Light Fury stepped gently over him, careful no to put pressure on his chest as she nuzzled at his hair and face. A deep purr rumbled through her chest as her wings wrapped protectively around them, stopping anyone from getting to close.

Pure Vanilla wrapped his arms around her neck as best he could, careful not to jostle his injuries. The smile that split his face was wide and tear-stained.

“I missed you too, Orchid,” he whispered.

—

“Well..” Shadow Milk said, looking down at his work, "you can't say I didn't try." Marionette growled behind him, trying to twist her body to look at her tail without throwing Shadow Milk off. “Don’t get growly with me Dolly, you know I never bothered to learn this stuff!”

It was, generously speaking, a rough job. Shadow Milk had probably gotten more of the disinfectant/burn cream/he-wasn't-quite-sure-cream stuff on himself than her tail, and had wasted half the bottle because he forgot to wash her tail off before hand and ended up pushing sand into the wounds, leading to an incident that had led to both of them, once again, getting soaking wet. The gauze was technically there, but he couldn’t figure out how to make it stay where he wanted it to while he tried to bandage it so it had shifted around a lot. Tail fins were hard to bandage! That part was mostly not his fault!

Mystic Flour would have hit him over the head for this, probably before ripping the medical supplies from his hands and doing it herself in a quarter of the time. Eternal Sugar and Burning Spice would have laughed until their lungs gave out. It was hard to remember how Silent Salt would have reacted. How long had it been since they spoke?

Marionette finally got tired of waiting for him to get off, gently titling her tail to throw him onto the ground as kindly as possible. She brought her tail around to her face, twisting it this way and that. The reality of her injury seemed to sink in as her eyes widened. Shadow Milk laid a hand gently on her neck, petting her smooth scales in calming circles.

“I know,” he whispered, “we’ll figure it out. We’ve just got to make it back to the others and I’m sure Mystic Flour will figure it all out.” They both knew a missing tail fin could not be healed. There was nothing to be done. Still, they allowed themselves to ignore that truth. The Beasts had come back to complete their mission after being sealed beneath a tree for millennia (though their mission has been put on hold for now, soon enough they wold be free of their debt to her. They would find a way to destroy her before she destroyed them and soon it would be time to complete their true mission once again), if anyone could do the impossible it was them.

The Beast of Deceit and the last Night Fury would not so easily be grounded.

Finally, as the sun passed its apex, Shadow Milk let his eyes leave his dragon and take in their surroundings. He had been so focused, he hadn’t taken a moment to figure out where they were.

They were in some sort of large pit, high stones wall rising around them in a rough circle. Branches from the surrounding forest stretched out over the pit, leaving only a small patch of sky right in the middle to light up the area. The lake took up more than half the space in the strange hole, fed by a thin waterfall on one edge. Looking around, the land surrounding the pit was pretty barren. Half sand, half grass, a few large-ish rocks and some thin trees. Absolutely nothing useful.

They were rather deep down, but Marionette was strong.

“Lets get out of here,” he said, pulling himself onto the Night Furies back when she kneeled down for him. He grunted with the effort, more tired than he realized from the long flight, the following battle, their crash landing, and his time spent crouched on the ground trying to wrap up Marionette’s tail. His legs ached from his position atop her back. She rumbled her concern, tilting her head to meet his eyes. “I’ll be fine, stop worrying,” he scolded. Marionette growled but didn’t argue further, she knew which wounds to poke at when it came to Shadow Milk.

Backing up close to the wall furthest from the waterfall, Marionette took a running start and launched herself into the air. Her wings flapped powerfully, sending waves through the lake below. They made it about halfway up before her flight began to falter, unsupported by her injured tail. The Night Fury threw herself into the wall, trying to latch on with her claws and pull them up the stone.

They fell, Marionette hardly managed bring them safely down to the ground in a shaky glide. She staggered as she landed, nearly falling onto her side.

Without pause, she tried again. Throwing herself up the wall and pumping her wings powerfully, but unable to get more than a few meters off the ground.

Many attempts later, she was panting and exhausted and no closer to getting them out of the pit.

“Okay, flying is a no go. There has to be another way out,” he said, moving to get off Marionettes back. She growled, wings rising to keep him trapped where he was. “Really? Now? I’m fine, let me down!” Marionette made no move to let him down.

“Fine, can you at least let me see? We don’t have forever, and walking there is going to take soooooo long,” Shadow Milk grumbled, but patted her neck in reassurance. They had lived through worse, and they would make it through this. Marionette relented, letting her wings drop and walking slow circles around the grass to let him look around without leaving her back.

He had heard it, while he was dealing with Marionette’s wounds. The sound of the Ancients arriving and the Beasts fleeing. He wondered what tipped those idiots off, how they had discovered their plan. He had been so careful in planting that rumour about their attack on the Golden Cheese kingdom, high in the cold mountains where rumours were scarce and likely to be believed. Shadow Milk hated when people went off script, especially monsters who had the audacity to call themselves dragon riders.

The Beasts had, luckily, agreed on a meeting place before the attack on the Vanilla Kingdom, so that if one of them were to be separated, they could find each other there afterwards. It was on the opposite side of the island, as far from the kingdom itself as they could get without leaving its island.

They had also agreed to only wait until the night of the full moon. The chance of one of them dying or being captured was slim, but it had to be acknowledged. Shadow Milk just never thought he’d be the one making them wait.

Shadow Milk knew there were only five more nights until the moon began to wane, and it was a several hour flight to the meeting place even with Marionettes incredible speed. That wasn’t even considering the potential time delays caused by the amount of dragon rides probably swarming around the kingdom. 

Dark Enchantress was going to kill someone for this failure.

She’d probably have his head for missing such a perfect opportunity to take out Pure Vanilla.

Refocusing, Shadow Milk studied the walls of their prison. Too smooth, not enough grips for he or Marionette to climb out (not that he had the physical strength to rockclimb to the top, but whatever), none of the trees were strong enough to hold their weight, and none of the rocks were tall or large enough for them to use as a boost to fly out. There were some roots hanging down from the trees above, but they were far out of reach, even if they could hold his weight.

Suddenly, his eyes caught on a small chink in the rocks, just about a meter over his head and obscured by greenery.

He gestured for Marionette to bring him closer, pushing the bottoms of the hanging plants and revealing a dirt tunnel in the stone walls. Just as he expected. It was just about big enough for him to get through, but it would be a squeeze. There was no way Marionette would make it in. Still, it might lead to the surface. If he could get there, he could find a way to get her out too.

Shadow Milk hated to remember it, but he had once been The Fount of Knowledge. If anybody could think of a way to get them out, it would be him.

Dropping the plants, he stood carefully on Marionettes back. His muscles protested the movement angrily, and he could almost feel his bones trembling, but he pushed through. Tomorrow would be a bad day, but for now he could still stand. Reaching up, his fingers gripped the edge of the hole, but barely.

“Dolly? Some help please?” Marionette was still grumbling her displeasure at his insistence on pushing his body, but she understood the necessity of getting out as soon as they could. Slowly, the dragon stood on her rear legs, balancing her front claws against the wall for stability as Shadow Milk stepped carefully from her shoulders to her head.

With Marionettes help, Shadow Milk managed to pull himself up with shaking arms and collapse onto the dirt ground of the strange tunnel. Shouting a thanks down to Dolly, he began to crawl forward through the tunnel, which sloped gently upwards. By the look of the walls and the small size of the tunnel, it had been dug by a juvenile Whispering Death a few years before. It had been unused since then. Crawling was only marginally less painful than walking, but at least he didn’t have to worry about being mauled.

A dirt wall came up in front of him as the tunnel turned suddenly upwards, light shining down from above. Shadow Milk giggled to himself as he crawled the last few meters to freedom, standing at the end of the tunnel and looking-

upwards, to where there was still a good few meters of space between him and the surface.

“Dammit,” he whined, reaching upwards despite the futility of it. His hands couldn’t reach the top even when he jumped, which only caused him more pain. There was no way he was walking tomorrow.

Muttering under his breath about the stupidity of it all, Shadow Milk turned and crawled back the way he came.

Marionette was waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, waiting to catch him when he inevitably fell while trying to gently lower himself back to the ground. She set him on the ground and watched with a rumbly mimic of his own laugh as his legs gave out under him. When he looked up at her from his new position flat on the ground, she was making a very convincing replica of the human expression known as ‘I told you so.’

“Shut up,” he rasped, “I know you did.”

Marionette rolled her eyes. He had taught her too many human expressions of annoyance.

The sun was making its way down through the sky, casting the pit partially in the faint glow of sunset, but mostly in stark shadows from the walls encasing them.

Shadow Milk growled at the setting sun, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes in frustration as he barely held back the urge to scream.

Without warning, Marionette grabbed him by the back of his soft armour like a misbehaving kitten, dragging him off to the edge of the pit where two large rocks and a dent in the wall made something resembling a shallow cave. She set him down to warm the ground with fire, spinning in a circle around him to make a space large enough for both of them.

Shadow Milk took the time free from her grip to remove his armour, the soft scaled leather made light with him in mind. His arms still shook with the effort. He threw the armour unceremoniously to the side.

When Marionette laid down, he was quickly pulled to her side and tapped by her wings with no chance to escape. It was warm, comfortable, familiar. He always felt so safe, tucked into her protective embrace.

“Fiiiiine, have it your way. Tomorrow, we’ll find a way out.” Shadow Milk said, letting his tired eyes shut. “Tomorrow for sure.”