Chapter 9
The dragon continued to stare at the floating elves in the stormy sky as Areon marveled at the scene.
"These guys are in a league of their own! There's no way I could lay a finger on any of them! Just being around this group makes me feel like I could get cut in half at any moment!"
Lucious sniggered at the response that Krieus had made.
"So you are aware…"
"I'm also aware that if you try what you have set out to do it won't end the way you think."
"Is that so? Are you threatening a noble?"
"No, it's simply a word of caution."
The lightning began to roar more viciously.
"I think that you're implying that I seek counsel from a dragon. Is that true?"
"I don't care what you think."
Lucious' face began to flush red with fury.
"I'll have you know that we ended our contract with the dragon empire many years ago. There'll be no consequences if we kill you."
Krieus cracked a small smirk.
"If you can kill him at all." Areon thought to himself.
"Honestly, I'm glad to hear that, your people are probably better off without them."
"What?"
It was clear that the chief elder was becoming infuriated as he raised his voice at Krieus.
As the intensity of the storm grew, Krieus began to realize that the storm was actually Lucious' doing.
"He's quite powerful indeed."
The elf continued.
"Don't play games with me you foul beast! I've become much stronger since our last encounter with your kind and can assure you that you aren't aware of everything!"
"With the short time that I've been here. I've become aware of a lot more than what you think. Your people have created a settlement on what used to be a dragon's training ground. Then when a dragon appears, their chief creates a storm and attempts to slay them based on a rumor. All while your people seem to be struggling to get by. A couple of them even tried to rob us earlier. Be frank with me noble, there was a battle going on here wasn't there? And you guys have lost terribly."
Thunder struck so loud that the ground began to shake, the wind and rain became more chaotic and the lightning transformed into more and more powerful blows upon the land.
"Enough!"
The surrounding elves began to back away out of fear.
"I will not be lectured by a criminal who has mercilessly assaulted our patrons on how things should be done!"
"Hey! Those guys attacked us first, I took them down out of self defence!" Areon avidly replied.
Though he immediately regretted it when the chief glanced in his direction. He saw his near bloodshot eyes and petrifying stare as he refused to acknowledge the boy's presence. He waved his hand to serve as a signal to the shorter elf behind him.
"Winstes."
"Already on it, master Lucious."
Then before Areon could react the short fat elf was right in front of his face and holding a erratically aggressive ball of lightning before thrusting it at him.
Krieus' tail came directly in the way of the boy as the blast exploded. The burst destroyed a massive part of the terrain creating a gap between Areon and the rest of the elves, the fissure spanned so deep into the ground that Areon's stomach almost began to turn. Areon fell back with his heart still racing, speeding along the way. He couldn't believe how fast he almost died.
Krieus growled at the remaining three.
"I'm beginning to lose my patience with you. It's just as the boy said. This was all self defence. Just let us go and we'll be on our way."
A smile tugged at the corner of Lucious' face.
"That is the last thing I'll do!"
Lightning swirled in a vortex as Lucious began to roar.
"Taste this dragon! We'll see how smug you are when your innards are spilt on the dirt!"
Though just before anything could happen an elf came running towards the three floating elves.
"Master Lucious! The storm! You must stop it immediately! The mother tree can't handle it!"
The elf spun his head back out of confusion.
"What?"
The weather began to quell and the sun in the sky was able to shine through again. This all happened rather quickly.
"What has happened to the mother tree?"
"It's terrible! The violent winds of the storm are causing it to sway too loosely! The roots aren't strong enough to sustain it! It's in serious danger of falling!"
"Damn it! The tree is weakening more than I thought. I cannot create storms anymore…"
After briefly grimacing Lucious whipped his head back to see Krieus, Areon and mister Puff Puff flying away.
"Damn them! Why wont they fight me with a warrior's honor?"
As Lucious was preparing to chase after them one his subordinates called out to him.
"Master, please we need to attend to the matters of the tree. We can chase the dragon later. If the mother tree falls, we have no hope for the rest of the elves."
With a burdened look Lucious put his palm to his forehead, rubbing it intensely as if to regret every single word he spoke with the dragon instead of just attacking it.
"My hubris made me want to bask in the moment. Though it won't happen again! He may be able to get away with this now but I will not stand to be made a fool of in my own territory! Not again, and not by a dragon!"
Lucious then stuck his hands out and lightning began to form one more time. It formed as a cage of lines covering and surrounding the entire land, it was a sphere of lightning from end to end. Without another word he keeled over from exhaustion and panted for air. This technique was not a small thing to do, combined with the fact that he had performed a natural disaster just mere moments ago, this was quite the fatiguing process. As he felt the strain of his actions catch up to him Lucious gasped.
"That should buy me at least a bit of time. I won't let you get away. You damn dragon!"
Winstes, his loyal subordinate, went over to check on his well being.
"Do you really think that the cage will hold the dragon?"
"Honestly, after observing his abilities he is much stronger than I anticipated. Something like that won't hold him down. But he won't dare to go past it because of the boy…I'm ready to go, take me to the tree. Then once that problem is sorted we will place a bounty on that damn dragon's head!"
Meanwhile as Areon and Krieus were flying through the sky the saw the lightning cage form.
"Aw shucks! What do we do now?"
Areon comically threw his hands up in the air.
"Nothing. If we don't want to kill these people's ruler then we should just sit here and wait it out, he'll run out of energy eventually."
Areon was still puzzled by what Krieus meant.
"How long do you think he has in him?"
"He seems like quite the exceptional combatant. But given the fact that he would have to maintain something big like this, on top of the fact that he's still using a formulation technique. I'd give him maybe a day or two to keep this up. He's probably going to form a search party so that he can find out where we are. But as long as we keep hidden for the next little while we should be okay to leave once his technique wears off."
"That's still crazy long! I wanna be that strong when it comes to using element stones!"
"You'll be able to do more than him if we focus on your training. Now, we need to find a place to hide because we just made ourselves fugitives."
Areon giggled at the statement while mister Puff Puff groaned once again by how much danger he was in.
The two ended up landing near a deep valley.
"Okay Areon, unfortunately we can't train here since these guys have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble. I'm sorry that it turned out like this, two hundred years ago this place was just fine."
The boy scratched the back of his head, he couldn't even fathom that amount of time passing so he just decided to accept the sentiment.
"It's okay if anything I should be apologizing. I didn't know how quick that Winstes guy was. They really could have killed me if you weren't there."
"They probably would have died if you weren't here either... But in a sense, I'm glad that they're still alive, it gives them a chance to fix things with their land, for their people."
"About that, I'm not really sure, but it seems like the elves here are pretty roughed up. Is that because of the battle you mentioned earlier?"
"All manner of things can happen when tribes like this get pushed into a petty squabble, but yes, that's what my guess is anyway. If I had to answer, I think that this is a remote elf tribe that got into it with another tribe, most likely fighting for resources."
"I see… and now because they lost, they are dealing with a lack of resources since they were ransacked by their opponent, that's really sad."
"Indeed it is, that's what happens when you have bad leadership."
The day soon stretched into nightfall, and Areon became bored.
Areon laid on Krieus' back for a while before deciding he wanted to leave.
He lightly nudged Krieus with mister Puff Puff eagerly wagging his tail behind him.
"Hey pops, can I go for a walk? I can't seem to get any sleep, me and mister Puff Puff are dying of boredom over here."
"Mmm…"
The soft groan of the dragon made him apprehensive.
"Are you sure you can't sleep? Did you count to a thousand?"
Areon enthusiastically nodded his head.
"I did it twice."
"...Okay, but don't go too far. They're still looking for us."
"Got it!"
So Areon went out from the valley and he and mister Puff Puff began to explore the disheveled territory of the elven tribe.
He became very familiar with their plant houses and plants for street lights and all forms of their environment. Growing completely astonished from it's destroyed beauty. He saw that everything here was truly made of plants.
But one thing struck out to him as the most interesting. He found a garden of flowers next to a weirdly shaped pond with a green ethereal glow. Which perfectly reflected the moonlight. He loved everything about the scene playing out before him. He loved how the petals would flow through the air and he loved how they smelled. In this moment Areon realized that the true beauty that the elf's love for nature could produce.
He was immediately drawn towards it. He went down the hill and admired the area. And while he was picking up flowers with the intention of showing Krieus what he had found, he heard a voice from afar.
His heart sunk immediately.
"You there! Aren't you a little too young to be out this late at night?"
"You gotta be kidding me!"
Areon's face turned completely pale as he realized he had somehow been caught, almost immediately after promising not to.