Holly's POV

"Yack!", Holly shouted.
It didn't hurt, but it felt SO weird.

She held out her talons, looking at them frantically.
She could SEE them, she could touch things, like Bait and trees, so why couldn't these humans see or hear her?

"WHAT THE FU-", she began, then remembered that Dusky was watching her and caught herself. She cleared her throat.
"- FRICK is going ON?!"

She flew up into the tree, cuddling Bait and Dusky, trying to let herself knew that at least somethings were real.

"What is this place? Why is this happening? Dusky? What is it?"

He was looking up at the sky, and when Holly followed his gaze, she saw a great shadow rapidly decending from the clouds.
It rolled over them like fog, like the entire world blinking, and when it cleared, they were somewhere else entirely.

It was still a mountain, but a taller, colder one, with snow scattering across the bolders.

They materialized nearly on top of a mountain goat, but like the humans, it payed no attention to them, chewing placidly.

Humans were also scattered around the bolders, lying on their somachs, still as corpses.

What are they hidding from?
Oh.

Probably from the giant cave that they were all looking at, or rather, from the thing inside the cave, that was growling, and rumbling, and emiting smoke rom within it.

A dragon.
I wonder of they'll be able to see or hear me.

The growling got louder as the dragon approuched the enterance.
She stuck her head out, yawned, and sniffed suspisiously.

She wasn't a very big dragon, not much bigger than Holly or Luna.
She had two wings, and orange scales, and lemon-yellow under-scales.

Small flames flickered in her mouth as she yawned.
She seemed muted somehoww, like a poorly animated version of what Holly thought a dragon should look and sound like.

Oh no.
This isn't going to be good, she thought, looking at the humans.

They were all holding knives and weopons, and looked very intent on something.

"Hi, look out!", Holly shouted to the dragon.
But the only one who reacted to her voice was Dusky.
He buried his face in her neck.

"I told you humans are creepy", he whispered.

The dragon looked at the sky, and without so much as a brief glance at the humans, she flew off into the distance.

"Now!", someone ordered in a low voice.

The three humans closest to the cave leaped out o their hidding places, and ran full-tilt into the dark opening.
It took Holly a moment to realize that one of them was Coyote.
But he looked older, more lined and grizzled.

Several minutes past.
The human who'd spoken climbed over his rock, and darted closer to the cave, staying near cover.
It was Cottonmouth.
He also looked older, with a new scare over his temple, and longer hair.

The clothes on these humans were also rougher, as though they'd been dragged through thorn-bushes, with no silver threads this time.
But Cottonmouth had new gold medalians on both of his shoulders, and a new green feather woven into his hair with gold thread.
He stared at the cave, as though he could pull something out with the force of his eyeballs.

And then, finally, the three humans emerged from the cave, two with their swords drawn, and the third, Coyote, carrying a dragon egg in his arms.

A small smile spread across Cottonmouth's face, like a snake slowly slithering out of cover, poised to seize its prey.

He waved to another trio of humans, carrying a box, and Coyote lowered the egg into the cushioned interior.

"I knew it", Cottonmouth sneered.
"Yeah, yeah", Coyote said.
"You were right. The emperor will be thrilled."

"How many were in the nest?", Cottenmouth asked

"Three", one of the other humans said, missing the warning glance Coyote shot at him.

"Go get them."

"Whoa", Coyote said, "I thought the plan was to start with one."

"I want them all. I said go get them."

"But, sire", said the human on Coyote's left, "Wouldn't that make the dragon angery? Didn't the scholar say-"

He never got to finish his sentance:
Without a halt, without even a moment's consideration, Cottenmouth stabbed him in the heart with a knife, and his body fell limply to the ground.
It happened so fast, Holly wasn't able to cover Dusky's eyes in time.
He whimpered, and buried his face in her wings again.

"Fine", Coyote said, throwing his hands up.
Holly covered her own eyes as the two other dragon eggs were lowered into the box.

Oh no!
Why can't I do anything?
Why ar these humans so stupid?!
Whatever they're planing to use those eggs for must be the worst idea ever!

The shadow fell over them once more, this time bringing them to a beach.

And there, laying in a hole in the sand, was a dragon nest.
It was already too late for these eggs.
Humans were already digging them out of the wet sand.

One of them, a girl with a jaguare tunic, stood above the rest.
"We should hurry. We don't know when the mother will return. We don't want her to come back and -"

"That's what all these warriors with spears are or", one of the others said, indictating a long row of armored humans.

"But she still could cause trouble for us.
The empress said stealth, so we can't let the dragons knew that humans did it."

After placing all of the eggs in a large basket, everyone stood up.
"Sweap away those footprints before we go", the jaguare lady said.

"Are any of the other kingdoms being this careful?", someone asked.

"We don't know", she answered grimly.
"The spies said that they were colecting eggs, but we don't know if they've succeeded in taming the dragons once they hatch, or what else they're planing to do with them."

"Stiring up trouble they can't handel, if you ask me", one of the others said.

The shadow flew down again, and when it faded, Holly and Dusky were in a rocky, sandy area at the base of aredish stone cliff.
Halfway up, a group of humans were hastily passing eggs out of a cave and into boxes, an dlowering them down to the ground below, where an army of sodiers on horses waited.

Cottonmouth and Coyote were there.
Coyote scaned the sky, while Cottonmouth kept his eyes on the eggs.

"If it hasn't worked yet", Coyote growled, "why do you keep trying? This is a pointless waste of soldiers and scientists. The only thing we've gotten so far are malled faces and burned out laboratories.

"I will figured out how to control them", Cottonmouth said.

There were two more new feathers woven into his hair, along side new strands of gray.
The grooves in his face were deeper now, especially along his forhead and between his eyes.

"We'll have to scare them into submission. They WILL be my weopons, once I break them."

Coyote looked at him uneasily.
"You mean the emporer's weopons."

Cottenmouth smiled tightly, leaning forward to see the last of the eggs reach the ground.
There were six of them, Holy noticed with a grimice.

"Let's go", Cottenmouth called as soon as the boxes gad been lashed to their horses.
He turned his own horse, and Coyote caught the reins to stop him.

"What about soldiers still up there?"

"They can catch up", Cottonmouth said dismissavely.
He twitched the reains out of Cyotee's hands, and kicked his horse to a gallope.

Cyotee looked up at the figures slowly inching down the cliff on the long dangling ropes.
But after a moment, he sighed, turned his horse, and followed the others.

So only Holly was left when the dragon returned.

This one was bigger, sandy-tan with flecks of black, and Holly was pretty sure she glimsed a barb at the end of her tail as the dragon swooped into the cave.
She exploded out of it a moment latter, roaring in fury.
The last soldiers didn't stand a chance.

Holly covered Dusky's eyes as fire blasted from the dragon's mouth, turning anything close to her into a crisp.

The next moment, they were in a stone piramid with a sand pit in the center of it.
Widows on the walls iluminated words painted in gold on the ceiling: "Obidiance", "Self-preservation", and "The emporer protects us all."

Human soldiers lined the walls, wearing padded armor, bristling with spikes and sharp weopons.

In the center of the sand pit, a dragon egg was hatching.

One human stood close to it, but his face was shielded by his helmet, and his body was covered with armored plates, so Holly couldn't tell who it was.

He held a long metal stick in his hands, hovering over the egg.
As the tiny hatching dragon puched the shell aside and hobbled onto the sand, the human ponced.
Acircle of wire at teh end of the stick closed around the dragonet's neck.
It squeaked in fear and surprise.
It tried to turn around, but the human used the stick to bring it to the ground.

Holly tried to look away.
She covered Dusky's ears as he hid his face in her neck.

The human proded the dragonet with a different stick, forcing it to its feet.
The dragonet staggered in the sand, hissing, snapping its teeth at the armored figure.

Get 'im, little guy.
Don't let him win.

Finally the fog came down, and now they were in a rectangular box of a room, long, and lined with long tables on either side.
On top of the tables were cages, each one with a dragon egg in it.

Holly growled.
There were so many; at least twenty.

The door at the far end was suddenly flung open, and Cottonmouth stormed in, followed by another man carrying an egg-box.

"In here", Cottonmouth said, throwing open one of the cages.
"I don't believe there was only one egg in that nest. That dragon was enormous."

"Biggest I've ever seen", the man said anxiously, unpacking the stuffing around the egg.

"How could a dragon of that size have only one?", Cottonmouth demanded.
"And why would it hide it so carefully? Are you lying to me? Did my stupid brother leave them all behind?"

"I'm not lying!", the man cried.
He clasped his hands together.
"I promise, sire. We had the hardest time getting to it. I promis we wouldn't have risked getting sent back."

Cottonmouth snorted.
"That I can believe. Well. . . . it had better be worth it then."

He leaned closer to the sheel, glaring at the faint shimer of orange underneath.

"At least it's a big one. When I break this dragon, it will burn the diamond army to ashes for me."

"I heard-", the man began, then cut broke off unhappily.
"What?", Cottonmouth snapped.
"I heard the Diamond Empire and the Jaguare Empire are trying to tame dragons too."

Cottonmouth laughed bitterly.
"Yes. No one can keep a secret around here. But most of the dragons in their territories are those swiming ones. Can't breath fire, according to the schoolars."

The mist again, this time casting them into darkness for longer than before.
But at leangth. it lifted again.

Now they were in a field of tall green plants.
All around them, humans picked tomatos and pea-pods, filling their baskets, and chatting as they worked.
The blue sky soared overhead, sunlight and peaceful.

Dusky lifted his snout and took a deep breath.
Through their scales, Holly felt Dusky's heartbeat slow, despite all the humans around them.

Then, a terrible roar split the air, a wordless cry of fury that sounded like all of Holly's depression and anxietity and anger rolled up and set on fire.

Three dragons burst out of the forest, flying low enough for Holly to smell the smoke coming from their nostrils, close enough for her to look into their eyes as they passed.

One of them was the dragon from the red stone cliff.
The one in the lead was nearly twice that size, a huge orange dragon with rusty, pumkin-green underscales, lashing her tail as she flew.
The third was a black dragon, with flecks of red, his whose face was one of grim determination.

The humans around Holly screamed, dropping their baskets and runing in the direction of the buildings in the distance.
The dragons opened their mouths and set the fields ablaze.

Holly hugged Dusky, but the flames burned around them.
The plants srivled and turned to ash as the fire raged, but Holly, Dusky, and Bait were left unscathed.

Stealing dragon eggs.
That's what the humans did.
This. , . . .
is the Scorching.

A/N: This chapter took surprisingly long.
IF you enjoyed, remember to add a vote, comment, and share!
Wordcount: 252

Renx out!