Dragon Prince - Chapter Eleven
WARNING: This chapter gets reasonably graphic in it's description of the slightly goreish nature. Please read with caution and if you would rather not read it just leave me a comment and I will give you an edited summary of what you missed and let you know where it is safe to pick up again.
Dragon Prince
Chapter Eleven
Youngsaeng pulled his horse to a stop and she tossed her head to make her displeasure known. Less trained horses pranced in place, forcing their riders to fight to keep a hold of them; none of them liked the smell of the smoldering village ahead. Hyunjoong had never smelled a stench like it, but he could guess that over the scent of burning wood there was the smell of burning flesh.
He gagged and buried his face in the nearest available thing, Youngsaeng’s back. Immediately a smell of freshness and life mirroring the scent after a spring rain filled his nose. The man in front of him tensed but did not pull away as the prince took several deep, calming breaths.
“Youngsaeng?” Soojin’s voice questioned softly. Hyunjoong didn’t hear an answer but he felt Youngsaeng shift slightly.
For a few minutes there was silence, broken occasionally by shifting hooves. Then the prince felt an odd sensation on a small bit of the top of his head. It was followed by another in a different location, and another until it registered to him that the cool sensation was the splashing of raindrops. He lifted his head and caught a drop on the nose for his trouble, confirming that it had indeed begun to rain.
In the saddle in front of him, Youngsaeng had his arms stretched out and his face turned up to the sky. The man paid no attention as a few drops here and there fell on the exposed skin. In fact the corners of his mouth twitched up every time one did. Hyunjoong followed his gaze up to the sky and watched as clouds rolled and thickened, as if called into place.
Another raindrop slashed onto his cheek, then another and another. With each drop, the amount falling from the sky seemed to intensify. The rain swelled from a drizzle to a steady fall to nearly a downpour in very little time. Once it was falling significantly hard enough to soak everything Youngsaeng opened his eyes and lowered his hands.
Together the gypsies watched as steam rose from what remained of the village. The smell in the air began to dissipate, driven away by the now constant fall of water. Hyunjoong was sure, however, that the closer they went to the village, the stronger the smell would be once again.
“We leave the horses here,” Soojin instructed softly as if any sort of volume might rain all forms of terror down on them. “Go armed. Check for survivors and evidence of what happened here.”
There wasn’t a word offered in response from the people gathered as they began to dismount and withdraw various weapons. Hyungjoon slide from his horse and tossed Jungmin a dagger, keeping a second in his hand. Jungmin tucked the sharp blade away in his clothing and drew a sword from the packs on his horse. Beside him, Kyujong pulled his pack from the horse as well and slung it over his shoulders so that it settled on his lower back. Then he accepted the bow and quiver of arrows that Hyungjoon held out to him, both of which he added to his back.
Youngsaeng gestured for the prince to slide off the horse and he did so slowly. The other man followed at a much quicker pace, pulling a few things from his horse and adding them to his person. He then turned and gave the prince a hard look. “I’m not giving you a weapon, so you will just have to stay close.” He watched the prince for a moment as if trying to decide something and the prince met his gaze calmly.
A moment later Youngsaeng sighed and reached to his own clothing. From his waist he untied a long strip of fabric he had been wearing as a sash and held it out to the prince, “Here, tie this around your mouth and nose. You’ll thank me later.”
Hyunjoong nodded and accepted the fabric gratefully. He had been having trouble withstanding the smell from this far away before the rain had started, adding images to those that his mind were already concocting would be bad enough, adding the smell would be worse. He tied the slightly damp fabric around his head as he had been instructed, thankful that it smelled fresh just as Youngsaeng did. Once it was secure Youngsaeng nodded.
Soojin instructed some of the men to say behind with the horses before turning and leading the way towards what remained of the village. Youngsaeng and Kyujong fell in beside her to her right and her remaining sons flanked her to her left. Hyunjoong followed just behind them, longing for his sword. Although it was silent, he could feel the tension and unease in the air as the approached the village.
As they neared, Hyunjoong found it difficult to keep his eyes on the remains of what had to have been a thriving town not to long before. His training had covered how to kill a man, coldly and brutally, but it had never covered how to deal with death itself, and he knew that death was what they would find. Instead of constantly turning over images that he couldn’t yet fathom, he took in little details. Details like how the ground they walked on slowly turned to mud, due to hard rain falling on soil freshly churned by horses’ hooves. How the water began to flow in slow streams and with every step closer to the village the streams began to run darker and darker in color, for reasons he didn’t want to ponder.
On the fringes of the village, houses still stood largely untouched by the fire. Most had doors hanging off the hinges or simply not there at all. The further they got into the village the worse state the houses were in. Some only had one wall that had been eaten away by flames until the roof had come to rest at an odd angle on the frame. Others had been so decimated by fire that they were little more than a shell with blackened ridges reaching up towards the sky.
The houses weren’t the only things that were more damaged the further they progressed into the village. There were people, people everywhere, but not a single sound of life from any one of them. Hyunjoong had gotten a glimpse of that before turning his attention back onto the buildings, the one thing he could handle.
When their slow careful walk reached the town square there was not a building left standing. It looked as if fire had torn through everything near, with disregard for anything in its path. What had very likely once been a church, laid in smoldering ruins beside a still steaming storehouse. Half of a large pane of glass with snaking lines through it was all that was left standing of what could have been a shop. Other buildings had nothing that could have defined what they had once been; only a frame of a door here, or an edge of a window there, remained. If Hyunjoong had to guess he would say that the fire had started here.
“Prince,” called a voice softly, and Hyunjoong blinked, startled from his perusal of the buildings. He turned and saw Youngsaeng standing before him, holding something in his hand. The other man handed the item to the prince without a word and Hyunjoong accepted it.
As it fell into his hands its weight felt familiar. He glanced down and confirmed that it was a dagger. Along the hilt of it were simple etchings that told where the blade had come from by their pattern. The hilt was wrapped in strong leather for the best possible grip and ease of use. The blade was only about the length of his hand, but it was stained red. Hyunjoong’s eyes widened at the sight of it and snapped up to look at the grim man in front of him.
His eyes, however, didn’t stay on Youngsaeng, but focused past him to the very thing he had been studiously avoiding. There, laying face down in the mud in the street behind him, was a woman, identifiable by her skirts. Red had stained the back of her shirt and a long tear ran down the fabric just below her shoulder blades where Youngsaeng had likely pulled the dagger from.
As if drawn from there, Hyunjoong’s eyes flicked from one corpse to another. A man with a sword clutched in lifeless fingers, his eyes stared unseeing to the sky as his other hand seemed to grasp for the long tear in his stomach that was allowing his entrails to spill out onto the street. Two children, a boy and a girl, were laying facing each other, spears protruding from their little bodies. A man’s head lay a few feet from where his body had fallen in the road. A young girl, no older then thirteen, lay naked and mangled in a growing puddle of water and fluid. By the burnt remains of the building lay a young woman, skin blackened by flame, and a tiny bundle only identifiable by the small fire blackened fingers that protruded from it.
Hyunjoong felt numb, as if he couldn’t process what he was seeing, and then all at once the horror of the images just in front of him hit him. He collapsed to his knees retching painfully onto the wet earth. His body heaved, again and again, emptying the contents of his stomach to the ground below. Gentle hands removed the fabric from in front of his face and rested on his back lightly, waiting. After a few deep breaths, the prince lifted his head and caught sight of another body and began the process all over again.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
Youngsaeng didn’t know how long it took the prince to get himself under control, but he waited patiently with a hand on the man’s back as he struggled to pull himself together. When the form beneath him stopped heaving, he offered him the half soiled sash to wipe his mouth with. Hyunjoong did so and Youngsaeng tossed it down into the mud when he was finished. With a firm hand under his arm, he helped the prince to stand.
“It helps,” he said, catching the other man’s attention, “to not think of them as people. Don’t try to puzzle out the horror that they died in; there will be time for that later. They are dead. Nothing more than dead bodies. Treat them like that.”
“So it gets easier to ignore death then? Easier to see all of this?” he waved a hand wildly while being careful not to look at what he was indicating.
Youngsaeng met his gaze and held it for a long moment before answering. “Never,” he said softly.
“That,” the prince pointed at the dagger laying on the ground with a shaky finger, “is a standard issue royal military dagger. That is only given to the king’s personal army. He has to be informed that some of his soldiers have gone rogue and are doing this!”
“There is something else that you need to see,” Youngsaeng took hold of the prince’s arm and led him through the street. He noted that the other man did his best to not look at anything but the sky or the back of his head and he didn’t say a word about it.
“There,” Youngsaeng directed with a point of his finger and a gentle shove. He knew the prince had registered what he was seeing when there was a quiet gasp. In front of where the prince stood was a man, encased in a solid block of ice. Beside him was what looked like a stone carving of a man yet the detail and form of motion made it highly unlikely that it was a carving at all. All throughout this section of the village were examples, one after another of the elements in their raw use.
“Dragon magic,” Hyunjoong hissed.
“Yes,” Youngsaeng affirmed.
“Dragons did this!” Hyunjoong snarled, whirling to face him, eyes wild.
“No!” Youngsaeng snapped angrily.
“Your kind did this,” Hyunjoong accused taking a step forward.
“No.”
“My father was right to hunt and kill every one of you. Look at what your kind has done!” Hyunjoong snarled the prince looked like he was on the edge of doing something dangerous.
Youngsaeng acted first, his fist snapped out connecting solidly with the prince’s jaw and sending him staggering backwards. “Wake up!” Youngsaeng screamed, not waiting for the man to recover and return the punch. “Wake up and look at the world around you! Look at the evidence you can see! It wasn’t a dragon that did this; it would take five different dragons just to get every element here and more than that to do this sort of destruction. Do you think that would go unnoticed?! Do you think anyone could get away with all of this?!” he spread his arms to encompass everything that they had seen.
Hyunjoong watched him, shaking, but said nothing in response. “Think. I know you are smarter then you let on,” Youngsaeng said softly. “There is only one man in the entire kingdom that can do this and not have anyone say anything about it. There is only one man who has the kind of power to use dragon magic like this. You know who did this.”
“No,” Hyunjoong said softly.
“You know the truth.” Youngsaeng watched as emotions played over the prince’s face, emotions that he couldn’t quite put a name too, but that he wasn’t sure he wanted to. A part of him longed to reach forward and pull the other man into a hug and tell him it was just a bitter dream he would wake from. The other part of him was disgusted that he had even had that thought.
He was saved from having to do anything as the prince clenched first his jaw, then his fists, and turned and ran deeper into the village.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
It wasn’t hard to track the prince through the village when he was ready to. Fresh mud made an excellent substance to hold foot prints and the prince’s running steps were easy to trace for even the most novice tracker. Youngsaeng followed them as they wound their way out of town. He tried to ignore the places where the ground was disturbed as if someone had fallen onto it and gotten back up again.
He had been hunted all of his life, sought after for what he was. He was no stranger to death or hatred, having experienced and delivered his fair share of both. He even knew betrayal of the deepest kind, yet the betrayal he knew hadn’t happened to him, but to his kind. Only his imagination could supply him for what it must feel like to find that everything known was a lie and that the person you trusted the most is a monster.
Youngsaeng quickened his pace as the edge of the village neared. If Hyunjoong had run as far as where the grass began to grow, then his path would become significantly harder to track, even with the rain making the ground damp. He was running so quickly that he almost missed when the footsteps turned and headed directly into a house.
It seemed structurally sound, having been far enough from the center of the town that it had escaped the worst of the fire, yet Youngsaeng knew to be cautious. He approached slowly, listening intently for any sound that may indicate what would be waiting within. Instead of silence, or the breathing of a man laying in wait, there was the soft gentle sound of a song.
Slowly he entered the house, giving his eyes time to adjust to gloom within. In the middle of the floor lay two adults in a pool of mostly dried blood. If Youngsaeng had to guess they were husband and wife. His gaze shifted from them to the producer of a quiet song. It was a song without words, but a melody that was familiar, and that he recognized as a lullaby from a mother to a child, a dragon lullaby.
There in the corner sat the prince with a bundle of something in his arms. He was rocking slowly back and forth while cradling it gently and humming. Hyunjoong’s attention was so focused on whatever he held that Youngsaeng was surprised when he looked up and directly at him. What the dragon saw, wasn’t a man who had been sent into turmoil by the crumbling of everything he knew, but a man who had found some form of clarity.
The prince climbed slowly to his feet, being careful not to jar the bundle in his arms. When he was fully standing, he shifted slightly and Youngsaeng saw the bundle for what it was, a young child, no older than four. “I am the Dragon Prince.” Hyunjoong said softly but firmly. “I do not know if your words are truth or lies, but I swear on my honor that I will find the truth and when I do, I will make things right again. There will be justice for this village, for this family, for this child.”
Youngsaeng nodded and something settled within him, something that he couldn’t describe. “If it is truth you seek then I will help you find it.”
Hyunjoong studied him for a moment before nodding sharply. The small child in his arms stirred and he glanced down at it, his face softening. “Shh,” he called softly. “I will make sure you are safe from harm,” he told it as he rocked it gently in his arms.
“Come on,” Youngsaeng urged softly. “Soojin will be glad that there is at least one soul alive.”
“Are you?” Hyunjoong challenged, catching his gaze again.
He didn’t need to elaborate, Youngsaeng knew exactly what he was asking and he knew the answer without thinking. “Yes.”
Chapter Twelve
Masterlist
AN: I am actually quite proud of this chapter. I feel like I was able to capture just what I wanted and use it to do what I wanted and I really like that. Some of you were really close on your previous predictions so bonus points to all of you. In other news, this chapter is a bit late and being posted at almost 2 in the morning (my time) because I am in the last few college weeks from hell. Tomorrow I take my last final and turn in the paper I just wrote for my English prof, and then I am done and only have to clean and check out of my dorm room before being free for summer. ^_^ *walks off belting out 'I will survive! For as long as I know how to live I know I'll stay alive!'*
Dragon Prince
Chapter Eleven
Youngsaeng pulled his horse to a stop and she tossed her head to make her displeasure known. Less trained horses pranced in place, forcing their riders to fight to keep a hold of them; none of them liked the smell of the smoldering village ahead. Hyunjoong had never smelled a stench like it, but he could guess that over the scent of burning wood there was the smell of burning flesh.
He gagged and buried his face in the nearest available thing, Youngsaeng’s back. Immediately a smell of freshness and life mirroring the scent after a spring rain filled his nose. The man in front of him tensed but did not pull away as the prince took several deep, calming breaths.
“Youngsaeng?” Soojin’s voice questioned softly. Hyunjoong didn’t hear an answer but he felt Youngsaeng shift slightly.
For a few minutes there was silence, broken occasionally by shifting hooves. Then the prince felt an odd sensation on a small bit of the top of his head. It was followed by another in a different location, and another until it registered to him that the cool sensation was the splashing of raindrops. He lifted his head and caught a drop on the nose for his trouble, confirming that it had indeed begun to rain.
In the saddle in front of him, Youngsaeng had his arms stretched out and his face turned up to the sky. The man paid no attention as a few drops here and there fell on the exposed skin. In fact the corners of his mouth twitched up every time one did. Hyunjoong followed his gaze up to the sky and watched as clouds rolled and thickened, as if called into place.
Another raindrop slashed onto his cheek, then another and another. With each drop, the amount falling from the sky seemed to intensify. The rain swelled from a drizzle to a steady fall to nearly a downpour in very little time. Once it was falling significantly hard enough to soak everything Youngsaeng opened his eyes and lowered his hands.
Together the gypsies watched as steam rose from what remained of the village. The smell in the air began to dissipate, driven away by the now constant fall of water. Hyunjoong was sure, however, that the closer they went to the village, the stronger the smell would be once again.
“We leave the horses here,” Soojin instructed softly as if any sort of volume might rain all forms of terror down on them. “Go armed. Check for survivors and evidence of what happened here.”
There wasn’t a word offered in response from the people gathered as they began to dismount and withdraw various weapons. Hyungjoon slide from his horse and tossed Jungmin a dagger, keeping a second in his hand. Jungmin tucked the sharp blade away in his clothing and drew a sword from the packs on his horse. Beside him, Kyujong pulled his pack from the horse as well and slung it over his shoulders so that it settled on his lower back. Then he accepted the bow and quiver of arrows that Hyungjoon held out to him, both of which he added to his back.
Youngsaeng gestured for the prince to slide off the horse and he did so slowly. The other man followed at a much quicker pace, pulling a few things from his horse and adding them to his person. He then turned and gave the prince a hard look. “I’m not giving you a weapon, so you will just have to stay close.” He watched the prince for a moment as if trying to decide something and the prince met his gaze calmly.
A moment later Youngsaeng sighed and reached to his own clothing. From his waist he untied a long strip of fabric he had been wearing as a sash and held it out to the prince, “Here, tie this around your mouth and nose. You’ll thank me later.”
Hyunjoong nodded and accepted the fabric gratefully. He had been having trouble withstanding the smell from this far away before the rain had started, adding images to those that his mind were already concocting would be bad enough, adding the smell would be worse. He tied the slightly damp fabric around his head as he had been instructed, thankful that it smelled fresh just as Youngsaeng did. Once it was secure Youngsaeng nodded.
Soojin instructed some of the men to say behind with the horses before turning and leading the way towards what remained of the village. Youngsaeng and Kyujong fell in beside her to her right and her remaining sons flanked her to her left. Hyunjoong followed just behind them, longing for his sword. Although it was silent, he could feel the tension and unease in the air as the approached the village.
As they neared, Hyunjoong found it difficult to keep his eyes on the remains of what had to have been a thriving town not to long before. His training had covered how to kill a man, coldly and brutally, but it had never covered how to deal with death itself, and he knew that death was what they would find. Instead of constantly turning over images that he couldn’t yet fathom, he took in little details. Details like how the ground they walked on slowly turned to mud, due to hard rain falling on soil freshly churned by horses’ hooves. How the water began to flow in slow streams and with every step closer to the village the streams began to run darker and darker in color, for reasons he didn’t want to ponder.
On the fringes of the village, houses still stood largely untouched by the fire. Most had doors hanging off the hinges or simply not there at all. The further they got into the village the worse state the houses were in. Some only had one wall that had been eaten away by flames until the roof had come to rest at an odd angle on the frame. Others had been so decimated by fire that they were little more than a shell with blackened ridges reaching up towards the sky.
The houses weren’t the only things that were more damaged the further they progressed into the village. There were people, people everywhere, but not a single sound of life from any one of them. Hyunjoong had gotten a glimpse of that before turning his attention back onto the buildings, the one thing he could handle.
When their slow careful walk reached the town square there was not a building left standing. It looked as if fire had torn through everything near, with disregard for anything in its path. What had very likely once been a church, laid in smoldering ruins beside a still steaming storehouse. Half of a large pane of glass with snaking lines through it was all that was left standing of what could have been a shop. Other buildings had nothing that could have defined what they had once been; only a frame of a door here, or an edge of a window there, remained. If Hyunjoong had to guess he would say that the fire had started here.
“Prince,” called a voice softly, and Hyunjoong blinked, startled from his perusal of the buildings. He turned and saw Youngsaeng standing before him, holding something in his hand. The other man handed the item to the prince without a word and Hyunjoong accepted it.
As it fell into his hands its weight felt familiar. He glanced down and confirmed that it was a dagger. Along the hilt of it were simple etchings that told where the blade had come from by their pattern. The hilt was wrapped in strong leather for the best possible grip and ease of use. The blade was only about the length of his hand, but it was stained red. Hyunjoong’s eyes widened at the sight of it and snapped up to look at the grim man in front of him.
His eyes, however, didn’t stay on Youngsaeng, but focused past him to the very thing he had been studiously avoiding. There, laying face down in the mud in the street behind him, was a woman, identifiable by her skirts. Red had stained the back of her shirt and a long tear ran down the fabric just below her shoulder blades where Youngsaeng had likely pulled the dagger from.
As if drawn from there, Hyunjoong’s eyes flicked from one corpse to another. A man with a sword clutched in lifeless fingers, his eyes stared unseeing to the sky as his other hand seemed to grasp for the long tear in his stomach that was allowing his entrails to spill out onto the street. Two children, a boy and a girl, were laying facing each other, spears protruding from their little bodies. A man’s head lay a few feet from where his body had fallen in the road. A young girl, no older then thirteen, lay naked and mangled in a growing puddle of water and fluid. By the burnt remains of the building lay a young woman, skin blackened by flame, and a tiny bundle only identifiable by the small fire blackened fingers that protruded from it.
Hyunjoong felt numb, as if he couldn’t process what he was seeing, and then all at once the horror of the images just in front of him hit him. He collapsed to his knees retching painfully onto the wet earth. His body heaved, again and again, emptying the contents of his stomach to the ground below. Gentle hands removed the fabric from in front of his face and rested on his back lightly, waiting. After a few deep breaths, the prince lifted his head and caught sight of another body and began the process all over again.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
Youngsaeng didn’t know how long it took the prince to get himself under control, but he waited patiently with a hand on the man’s back as he struggled to pull himself together. When the form beneath him stopped heaving, he offered him the half soiled sash to wipe his mouth with. Hyunjoong did so and Youngsaeng tossed it down into the mud when he was finished. With a firm hand under his arm, he helped the prince to stand.
“It helps,” he said, catching the other man’s attention, “to not think of them as people. Don’t try to puzzle out the horror that they died in; there will be time for that later. They are dead. Nothing more than dead bodies. Treat them like that.”
“So it gets easier to ignore death then? Easier to see all of this?” he waved a hand wildly while being careful not to look at what he was indicating.
Youngsaeng met his gaze and held it for a long moment before answering. “Never,” he said softly.
“That,” the prince pointed at the dagger laying on the ground with a shaky finger, “is a standard issue royal military dagger. That is only given to the king’s personal army. He has to be informed that some of his soldiers have gone rogue and are doing this!”
“There is something else that you need to see,” Youngsaeng took hold of the prince’s arm and led him through the street. He noted that the other man did his best to not look at anything but the sky or the back of his head and he didn’t say a word about it.
“There,” Youngsaeng directed with a point of his finger and a gentle shove. He knew the prince had registered what he was seeing when there was a quiet gasp. In front of where the prince stood was a man, encased in a solid block of ice. Beside him was what looked like a stone carving of a man yet the detail and form of motion made it highly unlikely that it was a carving at all. All throughout this section of the village were examples, one after another of the elements in their raw use.
“Dragon magic,” Hyunjoong hissed.
“Yes,” Youngsaeng affirmed.
“Dragons did this!” Hyunjoong snarled, whirling to face him, eyes wild.
“No!” Youngsaeng snapped angrily.
“Your kind did this,” Hyunjoong accused taking a step forward.
“No.”
“My father was right to hunt and kill every one of you. Look at what your kind has done!” Hyunjoong snarled the prince looked like he was on the edge of doing something dangerous.
Youngsaeng acted first, his fist snapped out connecting solidly with the prince’s jaw and sending him staggering backwards. “Wake up!” Youngsaeng screamed, not waiting for the man to recover and return the punch. “Wake up and look at the world around you! Look at the evidence you can see! It wasn’t a dragon that did this; it would take five different dragons just to get every element here and more than that to do this sort of destruction. Do you think that would go unnoticed?! Do you think anyone could get away with all of this?!” he spread his arms to encompass everything that they had seen.
Hyunjoong watched him, shaking, but said nothing in response. “Think. I know you are smarter then you let on,” Youngsaeng said softly. “There is only one man in the entire kingdom that can do this and not have anyone say anything about it. There is only one man who has the kind of power to use dragon magic like this. You know who did this.”
“No,” Hyunjoong said softly.
“You know the truth.” Youngsaeng watched as emotions played over the prince’s face, emotions that he couldn’t quite put a name too, but that he wasn’t sure he wanted to. A part of him longed to reach forward and pull the other man into a hug and tell him it was just a bitter dream he would wake from. The other part of him was disgusted that he had even had that thought.
He was saved from having to do anything as the prince clenched first his jaw, then his fists, and turned and ran deeper into the village.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
It wasn’t hard to track the prince through the village when he was ready to. Fresh mud made an excellent substance to hold foot prints and the prince’s running steps were easy to trace for even the most novice tracker. Youngsaeng followed them as they wound their way out of town. He tried to ignore the places where the ground was disturbed as if someone had fallen onto it and gotten back up again.
He had been hunted all of his life, sought after for what he was. He was no stranger to death or hatred, having experienced and delivered his fair share of both. He even knew betrayal of the deepest kind, yet the betrayal he knew hadn’t happened to him, but to his kind. Only his imagination could supply him for what it must feel like to find that everything known was a lie and that the person you trusted the most is a monster.
Youngsaeng quickened his pace as the edge of the village neared. If Hyunjoong had run as far as where the grass began to grow, then his path would become significantly harder to track, even with the rain making the ground damp. He was running so quickly that he almost missed when the footsteps turned and headed directly into a house.
It seemed structurally sound, having been far enough from the center of the town that it had escaped the worst of the fire, yet Youngsaeng knew to be cautious. He approached slowly, listening intently for any sound that may indicate what would be waiting within. Instead of silence, or the breathing of a man laying in wait, there was the soft gentle sound of a song.
Slowly he entered the house, giving his eyes time to adjust to gloom within. In the middle of the floor lay two adults in a pool of mostly dried blood. If Youngsaeng had to guess they were husband and wife. His gaze shifted from them to the producer of a quiet song. It was a song without words, but a melody that was familiar, and that he recognized as a lullaby from a mother to a child, a dragon lullaby.
There in the corner sat the prince with a bundle of something in his arms. He was rocking slowly back and forth while cradling it gently and humming. Hyunjoong’s attention was so focused on whatever he held that Youngsaeng was surprised when he looked up and directly at him. What the dragon saw, wasn’t a man who had been sent into turmoil by the crumbling of everything he knew, but a man who had found some form of clarity.
The prince climbed slowly to his feet, being careful not to jar the bundle in his arms. When he was fully standing, he shifted slightly and Youngsaeng saw the bundle for what it was, a young child, no older than four. “I am the Dragon Prince.” Hyunjoong said softly but firmly. “I do not know if your words are truth or lies, but I swear on my honor that I will find the truth and when I do, I will make things right again. There will be justice for this village, for this family, for this child.”
Youngsaeng nodded and something settled within him, something that he couldn’t describe. “If it is truth you seek then I will help you find it.”
Hyunjoong studied him for a moment before nodding sharply. The small child in his arms stirred and he glanced down at it, his face softening. “Shh,” he called softly. “I will make sure you are safe from harm,” he told it as he rocked it gently in his arms.
“Come on,” Youngsaeng urged softly. “Soojin will be glad that there is at least one soul alive.”
“Are you?” Hyunjoong challenged, catching his gaze again.
He didn’t need to elaborate, Youngsaeng knew exactly what he was asking and he knew the answer without thinking. “Yes.”
Chapter Twelve
Masterlist
AN: I am actually quite proud of this chapter. I feel like I was able to capture just what I wanted and use it to do what I wanted and I really like that. Some of you were really close on your previous predictions so bonus points to all of you. In other news, this chapter is a bit late and being posted at almost 2 in the morning (my time) because I am in the last few college weeks from hell. Tomorrow I take my last final and turn in the paper I just wrote for my English prof, and then I am done and only have to clean and check out of my dorm room before being free for summer. ^_^ *walks off belting out 'I will survive! For as long as I know how to live I know I'll stay alive!'*