The Crown's Fire - Chapter 42

Chapter 42: The Golden Dragon
At Ebodia Encampment

As time passed, Lurio had no choice but to inform their Queen about Ezekiel’s disappearance together with Tarah. He didn’t bother to dispatch a search team for them in fear that the prince was having problems with the dragon inside of him.

The last time they talked about it, Prince Ezekiel had mentioned to him how dragon scales had grown all over his body, which meant that it was almost impossible to hide his problem from others at that point. It would clearly make things hard if his situation was discovered.

Still, the only consolation he had was knowing that Tarah followed after the prince. Hopefully, the two were together. He only knew a few details about Dragonriders since it had been a long time since their bloodline ceased to exist. There were no textbooks about them as well, so most of the details he heard about them only came from hearsay and other rumors. Some of what he knew were from a few books he saw, but there was not much information from them at all.

“Prince Ezme is planning to deploy a search and rescue operation for Prince Ezekiel and Seer Tarah,” Atlas reported to him. “They will leave before dawn.”

“And I don’t understand why we’re not doing the same thing,” Elijah retorted. “Why are we just staying idle like this?!”

Lurio let out a heavy sigh as he looked straight at the anxious men before him. “There is a valid reason why I’m asking you two to hold our men back. Once His Highness is back, he’ll be the one to explain everything to the two of you,” he insisted. “I’m unfortunately in no position to disclose more about the matter. You will just have to trust my word on it..”

He then turned to Atlas. “Atlas, please inform the Princess that they must do things discreetly,” he firmly stated. “We don’t want our soldiers to panic and feel disheartened. No one must find out that both our prince and seer are missing.”

Atlas’s shoulders dropped at the order, but he stood up from his chair and murmured, “I’ll handle everything in the camp and make sure that things are going well then. I’ll do as you say, Milord.”

As Atlas excused himself, Lurio then looked at Elijah and said, “Queen Dana will arrive soon. Choose a few of His Highness’s Dragon Knights that can accompany us. Five knights will do.”

Elijah snapped his brows, but before he could complain, a white portal suddenly opened inside the meeting tent. Right then, Queen Dana appeared before them.

At the queen’s sudden arrival, Lurio and Elijah quickly moved to greet their queen with a curt bow.

“Your Majesty…” they both greeted.

Nodding back, Queen Dana signaled for them to go back to their seats while she took the available seat to face them.

“Tell me what exactly happened,” she calmly asked with knitted brows.

Lurio looked at Elijah and gave him the signal, which the latter quickly understood as he stood up. “I’ll take my leave then.”

Elijah was soon gone, and Lurio took a deep breath before stating his piece. “His Highness wanted me to keep this a secret from everyone, but right now, I don’t think I can keep this information from you anymore.”

The lines on Dana’s forehead deepened. “Get to the point, Lurio.” she firmly insisted. “What is going on?”

Lurio gulped. There was no other choice now. The Queen must know about the prince’s situation.

“The Dragon King…” the wizard began. “Vulcan’s soul is residing inside the prince’s body.”

“What?!”

Predictably, the queen burst out her disbelief. Right then, Lurio explained everything he knew and how he found out about it. Once he was finished, there was a terse silence as Queen Dana placed a hand on her chest while tears started running down her cheek.

“So that was the burning pain I felt for almost a week after I sealed the dragon souls in the Forbidden Forest back then,” she gasped. “That was before I found out that I was also pregnant with Ezekiel…”

Right… He recalled how their Queen complained about the burning feeling inside her stomach back then. However, their healers couldn’t find anything odd inside her body except for the fact that she was three weeks pregnant.

“It merged with my baby without me realizing it,” Dana murmured. “Still, it should’ve stayed dormant inside Ezekiel because he has my divine blood in him. Unless it finds a…”

“According to His Highness, it all started when he strongly desired to become the most powerful being to help the kingdom in its fight against Helion and to prevent his sisters from being used as leverage for alliances,” Lurio explained, recalling what Prince Ezekiel told him. “Also, Seer Tarah… Prince Ezekiel strongly believes that Seer Tarah is a Dragonrider.”

“But they are long gone,” Dana remarked, to which he didn’t comment since that was what he also thought on the matter.

“His Highness said that Vulcan can smell the dragonrider’s blood on her,” Lurio replied. “Still, there must be something there since Seer Tarah is from the kingdom of Zion.”

“And now, they’re missing inside an inhospitable forest. We need to hurry and find them,” Dana weakly said. “I also need to inform Stephan about this.”

Lurio gulped. He just knew that he would face the king’s wrath for keeping such an important detail like this from them. Still, he agreed with their Queen. King Stephan must know about this now.

However, before Lurio could speak once more, Atlas suddenly barged into the tent.

“A dragon… A golden dragon was seen flying in the sky!” Atlas reported in haste. “It’s hovering over our camp!”

Lurio looked at the now pale-faced Queen. “No, it can’t be,” Dana gasped.

Nodding, he and the Queen quickly went out of the tent. Right then, the moonlight glow shining on their camp was swiftly engulfed in darkness as the looming shadow of the dragon enveloped them. It was a sight unseen in the sky for over a millennium…

“Prepare for battle!” Atlas shouted.

“No!” Queen Dana immediately shouted in authority. “No one should harm the dragon unless it attacks us first!!!”

Confused, everyone looked at their Queen whose eyes were still fixated on the majestic dragon that seemingly simply flew away from their camp.

“We missed an opportunity to attack it!” Princess Ezme, who suddenly appeared in the scene, grunted. “Follow the damn dragon!!!”

“No one moves!” Queen Dana commanded. She then faced Princess Ezme and firmly stated, “I will deal with the dragon like how I dealt with them years ago, Princess Ezme. Please focus on the purpose of why your reinforcements are here… which is to help us fight our war against Devon. The dragon is mine to deal with…”