How fortuitous that my second chapter is the loredump chapter! Woohoo!
Inkstruction Week 4 - Important Exposition
Chapter 2
After the smoke cleared, Yama and Gawain set to cleaning all the soot off the floors, walls, and ceiling. Really, all they had to do was remove the impossibly thin layer of black, ball it up, and put it down the sink. The orb of charcoal was a pea of ink, and Yama was sent to dispose of it down the drain. Hopefully, some fish didn’t end up choking on it, or at least the one he may end up eating.
“Is that all you needed me for?” Yama repeated to his mother.
“Well, now that your father is feeling better,” Guinevere said, turning to pat the massive, brown dragon on the leg. “We needed to tell you about the impending war.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Yeah, we know,” Gawain rumbled. “We only heard about this a few months ago.”
“But then why didn’t you say anything beforehand?” Yama cried. “I feel that this is sort of important!”
Guilt flashed across both of his parents’ faces, and his father began nervously tapping his claws together. They thought the conflict wouldn’t escalate to nearly this point, so they neglected to tell their son anything. Guinevere believed that her first duty was to protect her son, so she wanted to shield him from something like this. She taught him how to fight, and her husband taught him how to be a dragon. Something like this was unheard of in all the years they lived, and they realized that a world-changing event like this couldn’t be ignored.
Yama crossed his arms and was tapping his foot when Gawain finally broke the silence. “It hasn’t started yet, but we’re pretty sure that a war between all three races will be coming,” he said.
Yama’s eyes widened. “All THREE races?! Humans, wyverns, and dragons?”
“Yes,” his father confirmed.
The Half-Dragon sputtered, his wings flaring. “How—why—”
Guinevere placed a hand on her son’s shoulder and made him follow her to the living room. Gawain kept pace, and they all sat down. Yama and Guinevere sat on a gold-trimmed loveseat with white fabric and permanent butt-grooves from years of use. It groaned in protest under the combined weight but held steady. Gawain plopped himself down on what looked like an oversized dog bed near the fireplace. Yama took his tail and draped it over his lap, a nervous habit where he would play with it like a stress toy. A fire was already roaring in the fireplace, and both Gawain and Guinevere turned to face their son. Neither one was eager to try and explain this global political conflict, and they both exchanged looks of panic. Yama saw and grimaced.
“Alright, seriously,” he began. “Are either of you going to tell me about this massive war, or are we just going to sit here blinking at each other?” The Half-Dragon crossed his arms and leaned back, awaiting a response.
“Y’know, it’s not easy to talk about a war with your child,” Guinevere retorted, her eyes narrowing.
“It’s not like we have notecards or something to prepare us for this,” Gawain maintained.
“Well then just tell me!” Yama cried. “How did this start? When will it start? Are we going to have to go and hide? Are we going to DO something about this? Are you suggesting that we are going to try and stop a war?! Are—”
“We were getting to that!” his mother interrupted. “You know how humans hunt wyverns for materials and things like that?”
“Yeah?”
Guinevere explained that humans, in their quest to try and obtain valuable materials from wyverns for building weapons, armor, vehicles, and all manner of other complicated projects, overhunted them. Some species went extinct, and many more were dangerously close to dying out. The surviving species began attacking human settlements, killing, pillaging, and even capturing some humans to bring back to their nests. No one knows what happened to the ones who were captured, but the earliest captives hadn’t been seen in months. Some thought that they were already dead, but when wyverns would attack other villages, they would drop off scraps. Rings, clothes, jewelry, weapons from the ones who carried them. It seemed like an intimidation tactic at first, but then it escalated to body parts. No one knew if there were any captives still alive, but every attack was larger, more organized than the last. Some larger cities sustained heavy damage over the years, but larger cities soon began to fall. The Prominence Empire, where most of the humans live, sent armed forces to the borders and even had hunter and military incursions on wyvern territory.
The Prominence Empire, considered the pinnacle of human achievement, sent their best weapons to conduct bombing raids. Yama sat in awe as his parents took turns describing airplanes, large wood and metal contraptions that allow humans to fly like dragons. They weren’t as fast as dragons, however, and were quite loud due to the gas-powered engines. However, they had large guns on them specially designed to pierce thick scale and bombs that could destroy a mountain peak. They were much faster than the conventional dirigible, but dirigibles were better-suited for cargo and people transportation. Guinevere had ridden in a dirigible once before she met Gawain, and she had almost gotten airsick due to turbulence and the constant swaying of the deck.
“Why were you on the there in the first place?” Yama asked when he felt there was a reasonable pause in his mother’s phrase.
“I was sent to protect some cargo. The Guild had gotten their hands on some valuable kills, and I was hired specifically to hold off some pirates,” she explained.
“Air pirates?” Yama gasped.
“Yeah,” Gawain confirmed. The two turned to look at the dragon, who was examining his claws. A black smudge had appeared on his index claw, and he was licking and scratching it on the ground to try and polish it.
Before he could continue, Guinevere admonished her husband for his nasty habit.
“What?! It’s my claw! You don’t have any, you can’t tell me how I clean them!”
“Don’t stick your finger in your mouth! You don’t know where it’s been!”
“She’s right, dad. That’s pretty gross. You could have stepped in something, for all we know.”
“You do the same thing!”
Eventually, the conversation returned to the air pirates. All Gawain really had to say was how they would attack dirigibles and hunt wyverns out of season, but it was hard to catch them because their crafts were modified for speed and power. Their hideouts were hidden in secluded areas under thick trees or even underground, so they had the run of the black market. Yama paid attention but realized that his parents did tend to stray from the topic they wanted to talk about in the first place.
“Uh, guys?” Yama interrupted at one point. “The war? What about the major war again?”
“We were getting to that!” they both exclaimed in unison.
“Basically, humans and wyverns are about to start fighting because humans have been overhunting them for years,” Guinevere explained.
“But what about dragons?” Yama asked. “Why are they in this war if they’ve got nothing to do with this?”
“Because they’re the only ones with heads on their shoulders,” Gawain replied. He explained that dragons had seen the fighting coming for years and tried to intervene on the wyverns’ side. They were told to keep their snouts out of this, and the dragons reconvened later. Supposedly, they wanted to prevent the war because the fighting would tear apart the rest of the world, but they were only on one continent. Out of the other six, there were only two major human empires. Everywhere else was either covered with dragons or wyverns or completely inhospitable. Yama could see how the fighting may spread if word got out that there was major fighting over on their continent of Rifaca, but the Half-Dragon didn’t remember if there were any alliances around the world. Then again, he hadn’t really been paying attention for the past two decades.
“So, you’re expecting this fighting to affect us?” Yama asked slowly.
“Of course, it’s going to affect us!” Guinevere shouted. “We live here!”
“Then what do you want us to do about it?!”
“Stop the war, obviously,” Gawain added, still picking at his claws.
“And how do you expect us to do that?”
“Do you know why we live here?” Guinevere asked, placing a hand on her son’s shoulder.
“Because you two wanted a child and the rest of the world wanted to set you on fire?” Yama joked, not being able to contain a smile.
“No! Well, yes. That’s not the point I’m trying to make!” She slapped the back of his head or at least tried to reach over and do it. “Both you and your father have magic! Do you know how powerful you really are?”
Yama had never considered his Earthbending to be all that great. Sure, he could move large boulders, but his father literally moved a mountain. He saw it, too!
“Are you suggesting that we try to insert ourselves into this fight?!”
“Yes, but not just the three of us!”
“Yama, there are many more magic users in the world aside from us,” Gawain said. He rose from the cushion and stood at his full height. Even the runt of the litter was still intimidating. “All we need to do is find them.” He stared stoically into the distance, even though his wife and son thought he looked ridiculous.
“Do you know where to find them?” Yama asked, arching an eyebrow at his “heroic” father. Gawain realized he was still doing the smolder, so he blinked a few times, shook his head, and looked down to his family (both trying to hold their giggles).
“Magic is extremely illegal, both for humans and dragons,” his father explained. “The only reason I was even allowed to practice it was because my family bought off the entire police force, and we still ended up robbing them,” Yama remembered the stories his father told him of being raised in a crime family, how the scars on his knuckles came from various forms of abuse and digging for valuable gems and metals. He hated his family, but still had entertaining stories to tell.
“So, the more secluded they are, the better the chances of finding them?” Yama asked.
“Thanks to your father, we already have a good lead!” Guinevere said, clasping her hands together in excitement. Gawain grimaced heavily.
“What’s wrong?” Yama asked, slowly beginning to realize that he may know where they got this “lead.”
“We have to go find my family,” the dragon muttered.
“They won’t try to kill us on sight?”
“Oh, if only. That would make things so much easier!”
“But, like, why do we need to find them? What lead do they have?” Yama asked.
“We have a family friend; an outcast like us. Only the Matriarch knows where they are, however.”
The Half-Dragon’s eyes widened. The Matriarch wasn’t one to be trifled with, and he knew that his family might be in over their heads if she was their only way to finding another magic user.
