Now that we had our fill for the time being we decided that it was time to head back to the great tree to continue our training.
Like before we flew above the canopy to find our way back as the tree was easy to find, or so we thought. When we got above the tree line there was nothing but regular forest as far as we could see.
'We must have accidentally left the range of Delmar's barrier.'
My sisters were clearly worried over the fact that we had no idea where we were, but I knew that even without the tree on the horizon we did have a way to find our way back.
"Calm down, we only need to find the river that runs through the forest, then follow it up stream to find the great tree." I said to my sisters, to which they immediately calmed down and nodded in agreement.
Looking up at the sky I saw which way the sun was headed as it was still early in the day to find which way was south.
I quickly started to fly in that direction, but after an hour of flight there was still no sign of the tree or the river and we had made it to the coast.
"What do we do now brother?" Apollonia said with a hint of worry in her voice.
"We should split up, I will go east and you two will go west. We will meet back here in four hours, I am fairly certain that the river that runs out of the great tree meets the coast to flow into the sea at some point so hopefully one of us will find it." I said.
My sisters nodded and we each started in our respective directions.
'Stay safe you two.'
As I flew east the forest on my left seemed endless, never getting any thinner. It went like this for another hour before I could make out a break in the thick forest below.
I had found what I assumed to be the river, how we had missed it, I had no clue. It seemed so obvious to me now that I couldn't even dream of flying past it.
How had we gotten so turned around that we go that lost was beyond me. But as I had found what we were looking for I turned around to head back to the meeting spot and await for my sisters return.
Upon returning to the meeting place I found that they had still not returned, but I wasn't to concerned they still had two hours until we were supposed to reunite, so I landed on the sand below to rest.
About an hour after I had landed I decided to take to the sky again to keep an eye out for them and so that they wouldn't miss me as they returned.
After I had been waiting for thirty minutes I saw two figures approaching me from the general direction that my sisters had gone.
I let out a sigh of relief, but as the two figure quickly approached I could see that one of them was flying erratically, almost as if they were trying to catch the other.
Sensing that something was wrong I took off in that direction as fast as my wings would carry me.
I quickly got close enough to see what was happening, Corentine was flying straight towards my location as a dragon twice my size tried to grab hold of her mid flight. The only thing that kept her out of its reach was her impressive flight speed for her age, otherwise she would have been caught long ago.
Now having a grasp on the situation I redoubled my efforts in getting to my sister, and as I grew closer I tapped into my destruction mana.
Who ever this dragon was, they were clearly hostile and trying to harm my family, the latter of which wholly enraged me.
By this point my sister was about a mile away so I knew I couldn't attack without the risk of hitting her.
As we closed the distance I kept debating with myself on if I could eliminate this threat at all, as they were clearly a adult dragon who was at least a couple hundred years old.
After a few more minutes of flight Corentine's stark while figure was close enough where I could see that she had injuries all over her body. In fact I was amazed that she was still airborne at all still.
But this fact only fueled my rage even more, and she was now close enough were I felt confident that I would not hit her with any of my attacks.
I quickly started to prepare my dragon breath, pooling as much destruction mana within my throat as I could muster. Then with one final look at my sister I unleashed it directly at the adult dragons chest.
The beam of black flame rocketed through the air and within moments it hit home, I was now close enough to see the surprised look on the other dragons face as my destruction mana disintegrated his body.
The thing that happened next was what surprised me the most, as I continued to unleash my breath but only a few moments after it had impacted the dragons body I clearly saw the beam pierce through his body and continue into the distance.
I quickly stopped my attack, not wanting to damage the environment then studied the other dragon. He looked straight at me before falling from the sky like a stone.
By this point Corentine had almost reached me so I resumed my flight and quickly made it to her, then descended to the ground with her at my side.
When we reached the ground I turned to her and said "Where is she? What happened?"
To which all I heard was frantic muttering, this only made me more angry as we didn't have the time to waste with her habit of being nonverbal.
So I walked up to her and put my face directly in front of hers and said again in a deep low voice "Where. Is. She?"
To which she seemed to snap out of it and and took a deep breath as she looked me in the eyes "They took her."