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Snow crunched beneath Keira's cold paws as she hobbled away from her village burning to rubble. A smoky haze drifted up into dreary sky where vicious dragons cast a rain of fire over her town. The smell of smoldering death was strong in her stinging nostrils. She could hardly see anything through her tears, and she couldn't breathe as her chest heaved. Every step was harder than the last, and it felt as if her talons sank deeper and deeper into the snow, but... she made it.

She escaped death.

Keira sniveled as she stopped in her tracks, her limbs trembling violently while she struggled to stay standing. With one last glance, she turned around and watched as her village burned to the ground, the pure and utter destruction. She helplessly watched as everyone and everything she had grown to love disappeared in the flames, never to be seen again. The explosive fires flickered and flashed menacingly in her crimson eyes and embedded themselves into her memories forever.

Ravenous, murderous dragons shrieked and plummeted from the sky, tearing and blasting apart buildings with their fiery magic. Explosions boomed through the valley and deafened her ears. She could just barely hear the pained cries of the dragons she grew up with echoing in her mind.

Did anyone else manage to escape? I can't be the only one...

Keira winced and forced herself to turn her head away, holding back a sob. Now wasn't the time to feel sorrow. It was time to survive like her father had taught her. She had to move on... She had to stay strong even when all hope was lost.

"Someday you will be on your own," he had said, "So you need to learn what to do when you need shelter, food, and water. Those are the basic necessities to survive. Nothing else matters but that you are alive..."

She trudged forward through the drifts of snow that felt like mountains to such a young dragonet. Even if a stray attacker flew in her direction, it would be difficult to spot her white-scaled body from above when it was surrounded by nothing but snow.

Ahead of her was a pine forest at the edge of the valley where she could hide and build a shelter. It took her over an hour to reach it, and by then she had noticed that the attacks had stopped. There were no more cries and no more explosive flashes of light. Now the only thing hanging in the sky was a malevolent cloud of black smoke and the dim, orange glow of the remaining flames.

Shouldn't I go back and see if anyone is alive? she thought worriedly. Maybe her father was still there, waiting for her to come save him. Maybe he was looking for her through the rubble, hoping and begging that his daughter was still alive. And what if one of her friends was in trouble or looking for her, too?

No... I can't go back.

"Run, Keira!" her father had said. "Leave us! NOW!"

And she had listened. It was the last memory she had of him, his terrified expression as fire rained down from the sky. Everything happened so fast... Where had her mother been? Did she die too?

What about all my friends? She could hardly help herself anymore. She curled up beneath the first tree that she saw and started sobbing.

Everything. She lost everything.

It was frigid, she was shaking, she was miserable, and she was devastated. What would she do now? How could she keep going when there was so much dragging her down? She didn't have a home or a family to return to; she was alone.

Keira whimpered and curled as tightly together as she could, trying to protect herself from the cold, but she couldn't shake away the constant visions that tormented her mind.

How do I survive this, Dad?

* * *

"Why did we have to travel so far north to hunt?" Dorian complained. "We have perfectly good deer and moose near the city. They're very scrumptious too, I might add, and they don't make my wings ache to get them."

Fallon sighed at his brother and shook his head. "I don't want to take away our own food supply if we don't have to. It's better to hunt away from home, especially when we have time to kill."

"But the game up here is tough and cold... I'm cold too! Time won't be the only thing you're killing. We've flown for half an entire day already! It'll be nighttime before we return," he whined.

"Some advisor you are, not willing to follow your leader--your own brother no less--on a little hunting journey!" Fallon teased. "Think of the adventure!"

"I have plenty of_adventures_ in mind that DON'T involve freezing my scales off! I'm not an Ice-dragon like you are! I'd much rather stick my talons in the mud and conjure me up a nice, earthy shelter."

Fallon shook his head disapprovingly and cringed on the inside. Having his pristine, ebony scales smothered in dirt was at the top of his list of things not to do. He didn't know why Dorian would want to besmirch his verdant-green hide either. Scales were meant to be clean and lustrous, not dull and grimy.

"But it seems that your adventure may lead to something interesting, at the very least. Look over to the west..."

Fallon tilted his head to the left and saw giant plumes of black smoke rising from behind a mountain range. He couldn't imagine what caused it. Could forests catch fire this far north, with snow littering the ground everywhere he looked?

Whatever caused it, I have a bad feeling about this, he thought. It was a strong feeling in his gut; he had seen enough violence to know what could potentially be behind that mountain.

"It wouldn't hurt to check it out," his brother said. "We might find some good game fleeing the scene on the way. It'll probably be warmer, too!"

Fallon grimaced as they both angled their wings and flew towards the menacing cloud of smoke. "That's rather optimistic of you, Dorian. We have to be careful though. I'm sure we've crossed the border by now."

"It can't be more than a forest fire. Who would want to live somewhere like this?"

"You know very well that--"

"Spare me the sympathy act, Fallon. You know how much I hate the Northerners. Having one of their villages burn is just another mark on my list."

Fallon hated it when his brother would suddenly show his darker side. He was always a cheerful dragon until anything about the North was mentioned. He was thankful that Dorian only ever showed this side of him when they were together.

Fallon growled, "The war is over. Dragons don't have to keep dying..."

Dorian scoffed but snapped his maw shut, a clever retort brewing in his mind. Ever since their father died in the war, he hadn't quite been the same.

Fallon ignored his brother for the moment and scoured the land carefully ahead. Everything was so bright and white that he could hardly keep from squinting. The source of the smoke was still hidden behind a ridge, but they were just about to come into view.

At the bottom of a valley, he saw a northern village left in ruins as smoke billowed out from the rubble. The fire had died out recently by the looks of it, but it had finished its dark deed.

Fallon gulped and dropped down to the ground, landing in ashy mud just outside of the town. He made a disgusted face and lifted his forepaw out of the muck, not liking the feeling of dirt squishing between his toes one bit. He grumbled and shook the mud off of his talons as he looked around.

Small, cobblestone streets lined the flattened and charred village, and there were splatters of red blood painted on the stones. The blood was dry, but Fallon could guess that it had been almost a full day since the attack.

An attack... Who would destroy a village like this?

The war with the North had ended over a year ago now. Most of the animosity had died out, seeing how neither side wanted to see their kind slaughtered anymore. So, who would try to start it again? Radicals? Or was it just a dispute between rival clans?

As Fallon looked through the rubble and lifted up some charred, fallen debris, he slowly realized that there weren't any bodies around. How could there be no bodies with all of this blood spilled over the ground? He investigated further, and he found some tracks. In the mud, there were large paths that looked like a dragon's body had been dragged across it.

Fallon winced. He wasn't in the mood for more death.

"Whoever did this didn't want to leave any traces of themselves," Dorian observed. "It's too clean, aside from what the fire did. No paw prints or anything."

Fallon shook his head. He did see paw prints, but they were small, the size of a dragonet's, and they were the only ones around. "The snow probably melted and took them away... but these... These were made after the fire had smoldered down." He pointed to them.

Fallon followed the prints around a corner, and down the street he saw a cluster of dead bodies littered together. His stomach wrenched itself and made him want to vomit. The chill in his bones tingled throughout his black scales, making him shudder.

"Oh... At least the bodies are frozen," Dorian said nonchalantly.

"Your optimism is very grim today," Fallon grumbled and walked over to the bodies, his face scrunched with repugnance.

"I mean, the sight is bad enough, think about the--"

Fallon rubbed his runny nose. "No! I don't want to think about that. It's already hard enough to breath."

Even though the bodies were frozen, and more or less preserved, the scent of death lingered with the smell of scorched remains. A faint scent of blood was mixed in there too, though it was much harder to pick up, especially with the cold making his nose drip.

Whoever the attackers were didn't discriminate. It looked like every member of the village was here--young and old. Each body had a deep cut in the center of its chest. Fallon could hardly bear to look, but he needed to know what happened.

Then Fallon's breath caught. Movement. The body of a white-scaled dragonet twitched in front of him. He quickly padded up to her and saw her there, curled into a tight ball trying to stay warm, shivering and whimpering as he approached. She was nestled in beneath a dead dragon's torn wing, presumably her father, and she was covered in dirt and grime.

She whined and covered her head with her paws as if he were about to attack her. Fallon slowly reached out with a paw, but she squeaked and tried to crawl beneath the dead parent. Fallon felt a pain in his chest as he watched her struggle. She looked like she was a little older than his son.

What if this happened to my city? Would my son survive?

"Did... Did she drag all of the bodies here?" Fallon wondered out loud.

"Impossible." Dorian said, staring down at the little dragonet as he approached, with a mixture of feelings etched into the green, pebbly scales of his face. "She's just a dragonet."

"Come here, little one. We won't hurt you." He spoke as softly as he could, stepping closer to her trembling body.

She shook her head and tried to crawl away from them and escape. After she clambered to her paws, she tried to run but she ended up falling into the mud.

Fallon reached out to help her up, but he pulled his paw back with uncertainty. If he helped her, would he just be prolonging the inevitable? She didn't look like she was injured, but he had no idea how long she had been exposed to the elements. What if he brought a Northern dragonet back to his clan?

What would my mate say about that? he asked himself.

She was the only one that survived the attack, as far as Fallon could see, and she was still trying her damnedest to survive. How could a little dragonet be so courageous in the face of death?

She didn't deserve to meet her end yet.

"We have to take her back."

"She won't make it," Dorian stated. "We shouldn't waste our time with a Northern dragonet anyway."

A furious, icy glare stared down Dorian as Fallon growled angrily at him. "We can't just let a child die!" He stamped his talons down and huffed before he walked over and picked up the squealing dragonet. She fought back and squirmed in his grasp, but Fallon didn't give her much time before leaping into the sky on three legs.

Dorian reluctantly followed behind his brother with a sigh. "I guess we'll have to find food some other time."

* * *