~Aaron’s P.O.V~

I sat with my back rested against the wall of some broken down building, resting my legs for a short while. Most people seemed to have the same idea. We had forgone the idea of pitching tents, and instead decided to take advantage of the city houses. Furniture, cutlery and other such things were still in abundance. I had been surprised to find that they had been in relatively good condition, despite being two thousand years old. The only problem was that they were a little dusty, an easy fix.

The houses were gigantic. While not big enough to accommodate Kingston, Blu and Tyron would easily be able to fit inside. In most places, instead of having the typical rectangular shaped bed, the beds were round, and once big enough to have a dragon far larger than Blu or Tyron sleep comfortably inside. It made me wonder how big dragons eventually got, because, to me anyway, both the dragons I had been with were considerably large compared to everything else.

“Hello Aaron.” I heard Meriwether say, “Have you seen Anthony and Tabitha anywhere?”

“Anthony?” I frowned, “Oh wait, you mean Blu. I thought he said to call him Blu?”

She chuckled, “I'm his mother, I don't have to listen to him.”

I laughed back, “True, and no I haven't seen them. I think they were going to scout out the castle.”

“Aah, that’s right,” she sighed, “I thought they would be back by now.”

I shrugged, “It’s a big castle. Lots of areas to explore.”

She nodded her head, “I’ve been on the road so long I’ve begun to get worried over nothing.”

“Well with the threat we’ve had to face over the past months I don't blame you.”

“Yes. I’m glad all the worry ended up being for naut though. I don’t know if we would have been able to survive if we were attacked again without the walls to protect us.”

“I’m honestly surprised he didn’t,” I said, “I was expecting one.”

“Me too.”

We fell silent, watching as the people around us milled around doing various tasks I had set them to. The five thousand we had with us had spread out throughout the city, and now were doing their best to set up for the night ahead. A group of men were dragging a large discarded wooden plank that had once been used as a door post onto a woodchopping area, where another group were busy swinging their axes with the constant thud of metal against wood. Three minotaurs were piling up stone at one side of a house in an attempt to help fix it up a little later. The few builders I had talked too said the stone was of a strange and magical make, and no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t break it up. In the back of my mind I had made a note to ask the magicians for help later. If they could help remake the stone that would be for the best.

“Aaron! Mum!” came a familiar voice from above.

I looked up and grinned at the familiar sight of blue scales circling down toward us. Tyron was there as well, but Kingston was nowhere to be found. Though when I looked past the two dragons I saw a massive green shaped twinkling in the sky above. It seemed the dragon had returned to his original shape and had decided against landing amongst the people. Probably a good choice, he would likely squish a number of people without a second thought if he did decided to land, and scare the rest half to death. After the long journey we were all rather tired and skittish.

“Did you find anything useful?” I asked Blu as he thumped down onto the ground.

“It’s massive,” he exclaimed, “There are rooms everywhere. We even found the throne room. But mostly there were just hundreds of dragon skeletons.”

I could detect the sadness in his voice as he spoke, “I thought that might be the case. I’ve given specific orders to leave the bones alone until we can decided what to do with them.”

“Kingston said that it would be good to burn them, as that’s how dragon funerals are usually set out, “Tyron said.

“That would be good. I’ll make sure to set up some sort of funeral for them once we’ve managed to fortify a bit.”

“Thank you,” Blu smiled, “But that’s not all. I’ve figured out what we are going to do with city.”

I frowned slightly, “Really?”

He nodded eagerly, and hurriedly explained his revelation. As he finished talking I found myself quietly mulling over the dragons words. It seemed rather simple in practice. Starting with the outskirts we would begin to rebuild, demolishing what we couldn’t save and fixing what we could. Overall the houses would be smaller and more for human sized people, though as the town reached the centre Blu wanted the houses to remain a similar size to what they were now. It was a doable idea, but it would take a long time, years even, to completely rebuild everything. The problem was I didn’t even know how long we were going to be in the city, and it sounded as though Blu was thinking long term. A permanent residence. It guess, technically, it was his kingdom by right of blood, and it made sense that he wanted to fix it. But I didn’t know if I planned on staying forever. The whole point of this trip was to find a safe place to stay while we figured out how to get Teleran back, not build a completely new empire. I didn’t say that however.

“We could definitely start,” I agreed, “But for now we just need to focus on building a temporary shelter for everyone.”

“Your tents will be enough.” Tyron said, seeming to be on board with Blu’s idea than I was.

“Something a little more sturdy than tents,” I said, “I was thinking something that could hold up against an attack from Garagain.”

Blu snorted softly, as if he hadn’t thought about that little detail, “Yes, I guess that would be best for now.”

He looked around, studying the ruined shapes around him. Most homes had missing and collapsed roofs, or were not in a livable state, looking on the edge of falling over with the slightest wind gusts. I had soldiers standing outside most of the more dangerous looking homes, just in case any of the younger children decided they wanted to explore inside. We needed to get these places fixed, or at least not looking as though they weren’t about to fall over, and maybe add some magical defences in a few places. At least it would give us a chance if Garagain did decide to attack.

“Alright,” I said, standing up from where I had been sitting, “I better get back to helping. It would help if we had two dragons with us as well.”

Tyron grunted, “Of course, relying on us all the time.”

I laughed, “It’s a compliment. You are probably the strongest in the entire force.”

“Hmm, can’t argue with that,” he gently bumped Blu causing the other dragon to snap out of his train of thought.

“Oh, yes, of course, we would be glad to help,” he said with a smile.

~Tabitha’s P.O.V~

I picked my way through the broken city, placing my feet carefully at different areas, trying to make sure I didn’t step on anything that would fall away. The three others behind me in the group followed in my footsteps. We were traversing along the top of a massive mansion, far bigger than any of the other homes around us. Which was saying something, considering each home was about as big as a normal human’s mansion.

The roof we were heading across had many broken holes and questionable holds along its length, which was why I was going first. I was the lightest and the most nimble. If anything broke, well, I would be able to get off it quicker than the other three men I was with. So, I kept going, carefully testing each foothold until we found a safe place to move on.

“This must've been the place of a dragon noble. Either that or a big embassy,” said a scout.

I nodded my head in agreement, “Yeah, It’s massive. No wonder Aaron wanted us to check it out.”

“I don’t think it’ll be a safe place to rest though,” mentioned one of the other, older scouts, “The roof is too unstable. It seems as if it might collapse at any moment.”

“I agree,” I replied as we reached the other side of the roof.

I peeked down through one of the many holes and grimaced slightly as another skeleton met my eyes. There were hundreds of them, everywhere. Inside houses, along the streets. Whatever had killed them… it looked like a massacre. No one had been left alive, not even the children. I sighed softly as I studied the skeleton in slight interest. This time it was another child, at least it seemed that way, for the skeleton was not even the size of a horse. Maybe ten years old, though it was hard to tell with dragons. 

“What a tragedy.” said another scout, a fairy with broad shoulders and a full head taller than me. He crossed his palms and bowed his head, “May you rest in peace now little one.”

I murmured a quick prayer under my breath before looking out over the city again, “Come on, we better continue moving.”

We climbed down a semi safe area on one side of the wall and made our way onto the next building. We continued like this for a couple of hours, moving through the many broken down homes and crushed staircases. The city was a mess, and the further we went out the less ‘safe’ places we found. On each house we deemed trustworthy we carved a circular symbol in the side of the wall, which the older scout then made glow with the small amount of magic he could produce.

As we got to the edge of the city we found a massive wall circling the outside, though it obviously hadn’t done its job as there were massive chunks gone all along its length. It looked as though it had been blown to smithereens. The river could be seen flowing not too far from the ruined wall, the crystal water was as clear as the sky, and flowed all the way from one side of the valley to the other… at least from what we could see.

As we neared the banks I looked into the water and found broken slabs of stone lining the bottom. On the other side it seemed as though there had once been a building, but that had now fallen victim to the same destruction as the city. I sighed softly as I sat down at the bank, the others joining me as we looked around and the incredibly peaceful but morbid valley.

“I’ve been thinking,” said one of the younger scouts, probably a year or so older than me, “We were told that this was some sort of safe kingdom right, but it obviously wasn’t a safe kingdom for the people that once lived here, and they were dragons.”

I didn’t say anything. I had been thinking the same thing. Whatever had destroyed this place had done a thorough job.

“That is true, but it also happened two thousand years ago. Whatever did this is likely long gone,” said the mage.

“It doesn’t seem like it. I mean, wouldn’t the place be overgrown and all that.”

“True, but there was a lot of magic involved in the creation of this place. Maybe that prevented the plants from growing,” suggested the fairy.

The scout nodded his head thoughtfully, though didn’t seem convinced, “I guess… but with what we’re up against now I find it a little hard to believe that this place will hold out against it.”

“Of course it’s going to hold out,” I said, finally speaking up, “There could have been any number of reasons why this place fell. It could have been a surprise attack, or an infiltration. We are not so susceptible to such tricks. Defending this place will be far easier than defending Teleran.”

“I guess,” the scout scratched the back of his head with a sigh, “But still… I don’t see how we would hold up against Garagain should he choose to attack us as we are now.”

I studied him a moment longer, “We defended Lysia.”

“Yeah but that army was far smaller than what attacked Teleran. Against that monster’s full forces…”

I sighed softly and looked away as the party fell into silence, taking in what he had said. It was completely reasonable to have such doubts. They were questions that I had no answer to. Even with Blue, Tyron, Kingston and Aaron, I wasn’t sure that we would be able to hold them off. But we couldn’t afford to have doubts now, we needed to hold onto that hope there would be something we can do.

“Let's hope that there's others who haven't fallen to the devil yet. If there are, maybe we can get their help as well.”

“Surely there are others,” said the fairy with a smile, “We couldn’t be the only ones to escape Garagain’s wrath.”

I smiled and nodded my head, “Yeah. Anyway, I think we have rested long enough. Let’s head back to Aaron and the others and tell them what we have seen.”

“Good idea,” said the mage, and the others nodded in agreement,

Together we made our way back into the city, this time taking a much more direct route through the city, avoiding the broken homes and the skeletons inside.