Ep 20. Dear. Be Quiet. (4)

  After their uful meal, the two girls had colpsed within their respective rooms. With their stomachs full and their bodies finally able to rex after the tiring night, they’d immediately fell asleep.

  Serenis quizzically watched the younglings go to their rooms. It didn’t surprise her that Ilias would live in the same with her parents, but Raizel had caught her by surprise.

  “Bruton, does Raizel live here as well?”

  “For quite some time now. She does have her ow, but…”

  “But?”

  “She’s been avoiding it ever since her family’s passing.”

  “…I see.”

  ‘No wohey seemed so close.’

  While the dragonkin were by no means unfriendly amongst each other, there was still an air of respected seclusioween families. However, Ilias and Raizel seemed much too close, even sidering their simirity in age – but living within the same would expin it all too well.

  Aether worriedly looked towards the versing dragons. While they both looked fine, she didn’t doubt for a moment that they, too, were sleep-deprived like the younglings.

  “Dear, you should get some sleep too. You said you were all awake ht. Serenis, would you like to use my room for a while as well?”

  “Ah…I’m still alright, Aether. I’ll sleep at sundown.”

  “I’m alright as well. I should be going anyhow.”

  At the dragonlord’s sudden annou of departure, the two turheir attention towards her.

  “Already? Where to?”

  “I’m simply returning to where I came from towards the south…where I should be, I suppose.”

  Bruton threw the dragonlord a curious gaze upon hearing the answer.

  “Where you should be…would that not be this valley, at the home of our kin?”

  “No. There are things I must still see to.”

  “What things, if I may ask?”

  “…I pn to rid the star of its scattered divinities.”

  “Divinities?”

  Both Bruton aher momentarily froze at the ued respo took a few more seds for the couple to question the dragonlord’s sudden aogether.

  “By divinities, do you meawelve deities?”

  “Kill them? For what reason?”

  The dragonlord’s eyes shifted downwards, losing focus as Serenis lost herself in thought.

  “For what reason, you ask…”

  ‘I’m not too certain myself.’

  Truthfully, Serenis had not a single clue who these deities were. She only khat they existed, based on the scattered traces of the First she could feel throughout the star’s veins.

  Perhaps it’s vengeance.

  Perhaps it’s a desire to erase any traces of the First from this star, just like how the demonkin’s traces were erased.

  Or…perhaps, it’s simply a sinner’s struggle for absolution. For the numerous deaths that still weighed heavily upon her shoulders.

  “…Simply put, troubles from a distant past. Tell me, is there anything these ‘twelve deities’ have doo our kin?”

  Bruton aher looked at each other in fusion before fag Serenis to answer her.

  “Not that I know of. To be ho, I’ve only heard of their existence.”

  “I could say the same. Our elders did warn us against ever seeking them, saying that there was nothing good to e of it…but living in seclusion at our valley, the advice was already aplishing itself.”

  Both Bruton aher were elder dragons at this point. Their lives had doubtlessly stretched food two turies, if not three; the geion of elders they were speaking of, then, couldn’t have been far from the geion Serenis had left at the s before her death.

  ‘Nothing good, is it.’

  Were those warnings just a simple note of caution for their younglings? Or was it a result of the dragonlord’s as in the past?

  She didn’t know. She wouldn’t know, at least not until she could meet these divinities directly.

  “…If elders were warning you against seeking them out…that would mean one could find them by seeking them out.”

  Even though the dragonlord had firmed the existence of these divinities, even she could not pinpoint their location scattered throughout the ear. She still needed more information – information that she romised by a rather peculiar crow. Or man.

  ‘e to think of it, I never quite stopped to learhat was...hm. Well, no matter. I suppose it’ll appear if I but directly fly south.’

  Serenis slowly rose from her seat. As she prepared to leave, Bruton rose to his feet with her.

  “My lord, if you’ll allow it, I’d be gd to…”

  “Stay, Bruton.”

  Serenis held her hand out authoritatively, stopping the elder dragon from following her outside.

  “You’ve expining to do to your loved one. And you’ve children to care after.”

  Aether had remained silent, but her quizzical expression expined all too well how strange she found it for her husband to refer to this stranger as a lord. When Bruton finally took notice of this, he couldn’t help but feel responsible.

  Bruton still remained curious himself: how the dragonlord had returo life in the body of a human boy, what had happened in her era to warrant such as against the divine. But he could see that it was no time to be asking such questions.

  Serenis briskly turned around to leave. She was leaving right now on purpose – while the two younglings were still asleep, while Aether was here to keep Bruton at his .

  ‘It will be different this time. Never again will I live to see the First harm another kin.’

  “Farewell. Do pass my gratitude to the younglings.”

  Serenis opened her wings as the outside air greeted her. She was just on the verge of taking flight – when a strange, unfamiliar sensation would suddenly creep at her from the inside.

  Throb!

  ‘Huh?’

  She could feel a stabbiion within her insides. Serenis fell to her knees with a pained expression, gripping at her stomach.

  “Serenis? Are you alright?”

  Both dragons hurriedly rushed to her side as they saw the dragonlord fall to her knees. She adamantly held her hand out, w what the sudden pain had been.

  “It’s nothing. I…”

  Throb!

  Ahrobbing had Serenis grip tighter at her stomach. It was taking every ounce of pride to not let out a pained groan, though Aether could pinly see how much pain she was in from the dragonlord’s expression.

  “Is it your stomach? There shouldn’t have been anything to upset it in the food…”

  ‘…Food? Food cause pain?’

  For thousands of years, Serenis scarcely ate anything at all. And for the ey of her life, she’d lived as a dragonkin.

  Thus, she had absolutely no way of knowing.

  That a human – which she very much was, despite her current appearance – should not be eating raw pork.

  Aether looked at Serenis’ pained expression with a sympathetic gaze. Even Raizel’s expression hadn’t seemed so hurt when her arm was still in its torn, battered state.

  “…Would you like to stay a while longer?”

  “…”

  Serenis bit her lips. Normally, she would’ve deed; normally, her pride as a dragonlord wouldn’t even allow her to sider going ba her word before the kin. Even if that word was a simple decration of departure.

  But that was when she was a dragon, and that was when things were normal. Right now, it was her.

  And if there was ohing humans could sense far better than dragons, it ain.

  “…Please.”

  Bruton awkwardly picked up the dragonlord, carrying her baside for his wife to examine.