The Forgotten Zodiac

"You mean a lot to me, too. But that's why I'm running! I don't want you dead!" Nate snapped at her, though he stopped struggling. He sighed. "The others need you, Seria. I'm nowhere near as important." He put his hands over hers, squeezing them for a short moment.

Then he pushed her to one side, rolling the other way, which broke her grip around his sides. He climbed to his feet and started running again.

"Not to me!" Seria cried after him, sounding terribly sad. She scrambled upright and quickly made her way back out from under the den of the tree branches, heading off after him again, keeping to human form. She grabbed his wrist, holding fast. "How will we find you again once we get far enough away from the dragon?" she asked, desperation in her voice. "I'm not going to let you go without knowing! I can't just let you go!"

((Were you gonna bring the dragon in, or just have it terrify the crap out of Nate and make him run? :T By the way, you has permission to hurt him. I trust you not to kill him. xD))

Nate slid to a stop, looking sadly back at Seria. "If that thing finds me, I'll most likely be killed. If I'm not...I'll find you!" He twisted his arm around, which broke Seria's grip. He didn't look back again. "Quit stopping me! You're only wasting time!" He shouted over his shoulder.

((Shush, Bunny. Don't question until it happens. Because I was literally going to do this right now.))

Seria bit her lip unhappily, then suddenly looked up and screamed.

A huge emerald green dragon landed in front of her, letting out a thunderous roar. It was massive, with thick dark green horns forming a crest on its skull. The dark green spikes carried on down its back, all the way to its tail. Before Seria could run, the dragon lifted a huge paw and brought it down on her, pinning her heavily to the ground.

She started to scream again, but it cut off as the dragon nearly crushed her under its paw. It had four toes on its huge front paws, with long white claws that were now digging into the ground on either side of Seria's head and body. The dragon snarled down at her, its huge slitted eyes glaring down at her.

She fought to get away from it, to get out from under the crushing grip of its heavy paw, but it just pressed harder.

((Lulz. xD))

Nate slid to a stop once more, spinning on the spot. His eyes widened with shock; how did it approach so quickly?! "Hey! Lizard-lips! Get off her!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, charging forward, towards the dragon. He blew fire at the dragon's rear; it did about as much damage as throwing a small rock would, but Nate was only trying to divert the creature's attention without hurting Seria.

The dragon lifted its head and spotted Nate, a threatening growl rumbling up out of its throat. The dragon snaked its tail out and slammed it into him, knocking him backwards quite a long distance. It had to have hurt, of course. The dragon's tail was extremely powerful. "Nate!" Seria cried out, immensely worried.

Nate was alive, of course. But the impact was fairly bad and had obviously hurt him. The dragonian could only watch in horror as the dragon clenched its claws further around Seria, then rose up on its back legs, picking the girl half-cat up. Seria screamed in terror, several horrifying thoughts racing through her mind in an instant.

Her terror grew, however, when the dragon threw open its wings and lunged up into the sky, taking her with it.

Nate roared as the dragon lifted off. It was nothing compared to the real dragon's roar, but it was shocking to hear such a noise come from Nate. He managed to climb to his feet and move forward a few steps, but he staggered and fell again. Dazed, winded, and filled with panic for Seria's safety, Nate proceeded to crawl back towards the town. He crawled until he could walk again, dragging his feet on the ground in a shuffling gait that suggested a leg injury. It wasn't broken, but he had landed on it, spraining it pretty badly. He kept a hand wrapped around his chest, where he could feel two broken ribs from the initial impact.

And still, Nate ignored his pain, able to imagine much, much worse for Seria.

After what felt like ages, he staggered into town and leaned on the door of the nearest house. He knocked, leaning heavily on the doorframe, hoping someone was in there. Seria had told the others to hide, hadn't she?

The door opened about one second later to reveal Luen, who had been watching from an upstairs window. He had already been heading down by the Nate had reached the door, which explained why he had gotten there so quickly. "Nate! What happened?!" he asked, quickly moving forward and looping one of Nate's arms around his shoulders so the dragonian could have something to lean on. "Where's Seria? She went out after you." the wolfling said, helping Nate inside. "How did you get hurt?"

Jag came over and relieved Luen of Nate's weight, since Luen was barely strong enough to help Nate walk as it was. The gryphon helped Nate over to a couch nearby and let him sit down on it, not saying anything, waiting for Nate to speak.

"Th-the dragon..." Nate shuddered, struggling to talk with his broken ribs. "It took Se-Seria...I tr-tried to distract i-it, but...it took her..." He swallowed hard, forcing himself back onto his feet. "We have to g-go help her, we c-can't si-sit around and wait..."

Jag pushed him back down without hesitating. "Three things." he said, folding his arms over his chest and opening his wings to block Nate's path if he tried to get up again. "One. You'll get yourself and probably a few of us killed if you go out like this. Two. You said the dragon 'took' her. It didn't kill her there, on the spot of wherever the attack came from. Plus, it didn't kill you. That alone tells me a lot. I've seen dragons once or twice. I know how powerful they are. It could've killed you, but it didn't. From this situation, I can deduct that it wanted Seria alive, for reasons unknown. Three. I lied about a third. I just explained my third theory in my second by accident." He snorted. "Bottom line. The dragon wanted Seria alive. If you provoke it and make it mad, it might decide she's worth more dead. Plus, you need at least a day to recover somewhat so you can run properly. I know that some halves, namely dragonians and raptorixs, heal faster than the other kinds. Lily can patch you up well enough so that by tomorrow, you'll be...better. You'll at least be able to withstand some extreme walking and running. Luen, go get the others. We split into three different houses to make sure the dragon, if it came here, wouldn't find all of us."

Luen nodded, then turned and ran out to round up the others.

"A day?" Nate snarled. "That thing could be feeding its children for all we know!" He tried to get up again, but collapsed back on the couch before he could. He decided to take the chance to think about things rationally. No dragon would take live prey back to their nest, no matter how hungry their kit were. Females commonly collected food for their young, at that. Nate relaxed quickly, forcing himself to do so. Lily was quick to get to work, treating Nate's scrapes and bruises, then moving on to bracing the sprain. She didn't know what to do for the broken ribs, though.

Once Lily was done, Jag came forward. "Nate, take off your shirt." he ordered. The dragonian complied, albeit painfully. While Nate was doing that, Jag was digging around through his own bag, searching for something. He pulled out one of his shirts and promptly started ripping it to shreds. Once it was in shreds, he started tying them tightly around Nate's chest, binding his ribs firmly inside. "Whatever you do, don't move around a lot." the gryphon said. "You have to stay still. This binding is just an extra precaution, though it does help somewhat. Just relax, hard as it must be for you." Once he was finished, he folded his arms again, watching Nate closely.

Nate sighed, obviously grumpy with his current situation. Before long though, he passed out; his subconscious had forced the unconsciousness so that his body could begin repairing itself. Lily watched him sleep, wrapping her arm around Jag's. "Do you think he'll be okay?" She asked quietly. "And what about the healer? Will she really be fine?"

"He'll be fine." Jagat answered, stroking Lily's fingers with his free hand. "As for the healer, I have no idea. We just have to hope that my reasoning was close enough to the truth for Seria to be safe."

"Let...me...go!" Seria cried out for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Shortly after the dragon had lifted off and had left Nate behind, it had flown for only a few minutes to a cave near the town. While it was true that the huge dragon had flown much faster than a horse could've run, it still, in total, wasn't that far from the town. The forest green dragon had landed on its back legs at the mouth of a cave set high in a rocky formation, slowly folding its wings and heading inside. Seria hadn't stopped struggling against the creature, even though her efforts were literally tiny against the dragon. It hadn't so much as weakened its hold on her.

The dragon lumbered to the very back of its cave, where a bit smaller cave waited. Once it was inside this smaller cave, it then blew a short breath of flame out, lighting several huge chunks of logs on fire and giving Seria light to look around with. Then the dragon set her down, very carefully. Seria immediately stumbled away from it, still terrified of it. She ran back until she found herself against the wall, then turned and pressed her back fearfully against the side of the cave, watching the dragon and waiting for it to hurt her.

Nothing happened.

The dragon just watched her through its great red eyes, laying down so that it blocked the entire way out into the bigger part of the cave. It folded its paws, watching her a bit curiously.

Slowly, Seria mustered up the courage to look around and gasped when she realized what was around her.

Piles of gold coins and treasure chests full of diamonds, rubies and other sorts of treasures littered the ground around her. Seria blinked in shock, then returned her gaze to the dragon, which was still just watching her. "W-what do you want?" Seria called, though her voice was a bit shaky with fear.

The dragon shook its crest, looking uninterested.

"My friends aren't going to let you keep me here!" she warned.

Again, no reaction.

"They'll come for me and you'll...you'll have to let me go!"

It yawned.

Seria sighed, then murmured "Who am I kidding? If they come here, they'll just get killed. It would be better for them to leave me here and just continue on their way." She sighed. "But they won't do that. Especially not Nate. He's too noble. Sort of stupid, really. For him to want to save me."

The dragon tilted its head at her, listening to her voice.

"Why would he want to, anyways? It's not like I matter." she murmured. "I've never mattered to anyone that I've wanted to be mattered by." She brushed a hand over her face, sliding down to sit against the cave wall. "Any love I've ever given has been thrown back in my face. Maybe that's all my love is worth. Nothing." She pulled her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "What do I do when no one wants me to be theirs?" she asked softly, knowing she wouldn't get an answer.

The dragon tilted its head back slightly, watching her closely, then craned its head back to watch the approaching evening.

"They're in here." Luen said, ushering the others towards the house Jag, Lily and Nate were in. It had taken him a while to find them all. They had really scattered when Seria had told them to hide.

"What happened?" Werr asked at once.

"Seria was taken by the dragon," Lily said quietly. "Nate was injured in the process, but we don't think that she's been killed..."

"She's...what? That dragon...took her?" Werr blinked in surprise. "Why would it do that? It doesn't make much sense..."

Jag shrugged. "We can only hope that it doesn't want to kill her, which I'm highly suspecting that it doesn't." he said. "If it wanted her dead, it would've killed her when it first landed. Also, it left Nate alive, which surprises me. I'm positive that it knew he was a dragonian, by scent, and dragons usually can't stand them and are violent towards them." He flapped his wings once, then said "Anyways, we're going to find the dragon's den tomorrow, when Nate is mobile. Obviously the dragon would have a den around here somewhere, or else it wouldn't bother taking Seria anywhere."

"Yeah," Werr frowned, starting to pace. "Do you think Nate would be able to track down the dragon?"

"Ohh, ohh!" Spy perked up at the mention of finding things.

"Probably not. It was flying, remember?" Forin shook his head. "Even if Nate had seen the dragon's direction, it's still impossible to tell exactly where it landed..."

Spy was jumping up and down now, squealing with excitement.

"So how are we going to find out where Seria is?" Werr sighed in exasperation.

Spy stopped jumping and started glaring at them. Apparently, he thought that they all had forgotten about him a this point.

A hand closed around Spy's tail, lifting the little creature up off the ground. Welk studied him for a moment, then said "Hey, can't you track things by scent?"

"Give me him!" Jag said, rescuing Spy from Welk's unknowingly-painful grip. "If you're gonna pick him up, do it by the scruff of his neck. It's much less painful because it's the natural way he would be carried by a bigger chimera."

"That seems worse." Welk said, frowning.

"Well, it's not." Jag said, gently holding Spy like someone would hold a baby and stroking his soft belly. "How would you like it if someone suddenly picked you up by your tail?"

Welk gulped. "Point taken." he said, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Jag rolled his eyes, then looked down at Spy and said "It is true, though. You can track just about anything, right?"

Spy giggled and nodded. "Anything, anything! If I have a scent, I can find anything. Anyone. Anywhere. Really, it's true. I dunno how, but I can." He curled up in Jag's grip, licking the griffin's fingers happily, his tail flicking around joyfully.

"Didn't Seria leave her bag?" Werr asked, looking at the others. "Can we use that?"

"She did." Luen said, holding out the healer's nicked up bag. It was scraped and a bit ragged from years of use, but it was still holding all of Seria's important equipment in.

Jag nodded, then said "Make sure you don't lose that. Tomorrow, Spy will get Seria's scent from that bag and we'll follow him to her, which will also lead us to the dragon, so...be forewarned." Jag scratched Spy's belly gently, then moved his hand up and scritched at his head, behind his ears and down under his chin. His clawed fingers were perfect for scratching through the chimera's thick brown fur.