Chapter Text
“We can't keep going like this forever. You need to face the facts.” A translucent dragon growls into Drae’s face before circling around and continues pacing. It's blue eyes pierce Draco's body, as his mind follows a thousand different thoughts a second. Brown scales reflect the light coming from the fire as blue fur slowly moves from the winds coming from the mouth of the cave.
“The longer you try and ignore us, the worse we’ll end up !” A different yellow and brown dragon grumbles in frustration as it snarls, blood flying out of its mouth.
Drae rocks in the corner of the cave muttering gibberish as blood drips from his mouth. A rain storm rages outside the entrance, Drae curls up further next to the fire to try and stay warm.
“This is too insane to be real. I'll wake up in my bed, get ready for the ceremony, figure out if I have a familiar, have my party, then sleep. Nothing wrong happened. I'm just having a nightmare. This is just a horrible paranoid ‘what if’ situation.” Drae attempts to lie to himself, and think of any excuse to what is in his face not being real while the rest of his mind is scattered. The brown and yellow dragon pace the walls.
A third, colored green and yellow stays far away to allow room between them and Drae while the fourth spirit with blue and green is curled next to Drae feet away with pity in its eyes. A soft wine squeaks out from the throat, causing Drae to unblock his surroundings and look at them.
“We’re all tired. With clear heads in the morning we can sort things out, but for right now, you need rest,” The green dragon lays down into a ball, “There is a big day ahead, you need to rest for it.” The dragon closes its eyes in trust. With a side glance he waits for it to attack, but after looking around realizes all of them are laying down with closed eyes near the fire. Drae’s body slowly relaxes for the first time the entire day. With a steady drizzling outside of rain, and the crackling of the fire, Drae slowly pulls toward being tired and lays down passing out. After the initial snoring the four in a collective thought got up and wait to make sure he was asleep before picking him up and fly away to find someone to save all five of them.
After making sure they were not going to drop Drae, the brown dragon lays on top of his stomach exhausted and passes out, blood dripping from both mouths still. The three others try their best to go as fast as they could.
The blue dragon notices a light far away and directed the other two towards it until they could hear who was at the light. They stopped and waited in the path that the strangers said they were going to go in the morning.
“Why did we stop, Winter?” The green spirit watches as the other two set down Drae and the brown spirit on the ground. The blue spirit whispers at the green spirit with despair and urgency.
“Quiet down Spring. We don't want to frighten the people who could save Autumn and Drae. They must think it was natural.” Winter whispers to Spring and she nods sadly.
“I understand.” Spring lowers her head as she whispers.
“Stop talking, sleep.” The yellow spirit curls up next to Drae and closes her eyes.
“Apologies, Summer.” Winter waits until Spring is situated before laying down. Winter lays next to Drae's right shoulder, Spring is on his left shoulder while Summer is on his right hand, and Autumn's head is near Drae's left hand. After some time, all fall into a nightmare fueled sleep.
Drae opens his eyes, in the middle of the forest with a weird crusty feeling on his mouth, and down his neck. He attempts to lift his arm but, as it lifts a feeling of a heavy weight in his hands prevent him from being able to lift very far off the ground, so instead he rolls onto his side. A sudden and instant feeling rolls in his stomach. What he could image lava feels like rolls up and out into the world. Drae's eyes tear up and, for a little with his blurry eyes he almost thinks that he actually did throw up lava because of how red it looks, until the smell of metal engulfs his nostrils.
“I just threw up blood.” The tears that were forming at his eyes are now running down his face as he watches blood drip out of his mouth after he somehow went up into leaning over the ground with another puddle. Drae tries using his tongue to check his lips to see if they are causing the bleeding, only to notice its absence.
Last night flashes over him and a sob shakes over his body. Images of his family surrounding him as his grandma held him down, and burnt a brand into his back waver into his foggy view with the sudden view of five sets of eyes, as well as the view of a knife close to his mouth while his grandpa holds his mouth open with a frown. His own scream fills his head with someone else's scream, but he doesn't know or care if the screaming is from before or currently. Black spots start appearing in Drae's view and a far away voice that sounds alarmed, until he feels a hand on his back and his whole spine and mouth feel like it was set on fire as he immediately faints.
“Good morning, how did you sleep?” Drae's mom turns on his light and he grumbles back incoherently. “Like a log. Well, today's your big day! I expect you to get up and ready for the party. It is after all, your 15th, so you get to spirit reveal!” Drae drags himself out of bed and gets dressed in a simple button up and tie with dress pants and shoes. After making sure it looks presentable he leaves his room and walks down the stairs, past the kitchen, and out into the porch where all his family is hanging out at.
The second Drae steps outside everyone looks at him and congratulate him for turning a year older. Everyone has a turn conversing with him and he has fun chatting with everyone until the sky starts to change into an orange hue.
Drae's parents bring him over to the circle of concrete with chairs surrounding the edge. His parents don't pass the line and only push him onto it while everyone takes a seat except for his grandma and grandpa. Drae glances at the knife in his grandpa's hands before watching his grandma step onto the concrete with a metal pole and the family's brand on the end. She links her arm with Drae's and brings him to the middle where a fire is burning in a pit. His grandma places the pole into the hole and has Drae go to his knees. She let's go of him to circle him.
“What a strong healthy man you will be. I can already feel you have a spiritual connection with multiple spirits, but I don't know how many. My, you are the first case I have seen this in. Let's see here,” Her hand rests on his heart and she nods. “It seems that you have four spirits! I've only ever seen two at most, my, what a turn out!” She laughs and a small whisper mumbles around the family. Drae watches as his grandpa's hand raises and the mumbles quiet immediately. Drae looks to his grandma confused.
“What does that mean? Am I going to die!?” A light panic settles over Drae as a feeling of caution mumbles in his brain.
“Nonsense child, as I said before, you are strong and as healthy as everyone. Here, it's time to start, so you must be quiet from now on. This is your only warning.” Drae sees from the corner of his eyes when his grandpa starts walking over to them. He stands next to them waiting.
A pair of handcuffs clip on Drae's arms and when he looks up, he sees his father's face as he avoids eye contact and backs away to his spot in the crowd next to his mom. No one meets his eyes as he looks around the crowd.
Drae's face is pulled back to look at his grandma in the eyes. Her mouth is stretched into an eerie smile as she locks eyes with him.
“What's going to happen?” Her hand falls over his mouth as she shushes him.
“Quiet Drae, unless you wish to be separated with your tongue next time.” A gasp shakes out of his mouth as the grin grows on her face.
Drae's mom walks up and hands his grandma an old book then backs up to her spot again. Drae watches in dread as his grandma mutters in a different language as she flips through the book while walking over to the fire pit. After awhile she finds the page she wants and gets to work.
After different members hand her different things as she calls them out she looks back at Drae while throwing in the last ingredient.
His grandma kneels over the fire and starts chanting something before grabbing the red metal and pulling the brand out and aiming it a him. With a burst of understanding Drae shifts away only for someone to grab his shoulders and rip the back of the shirt up to reveal his back.
“No, stop, wait! You can't do this!” Drae thrashes around and causes the person holding him to rip his sleeve open. Another person runs up to help hold him down, this causes panic to boil in his veins and he struggles with all his force while the sleeves continue ripping off. A third person grabs the front of his throat and they over power him.
Drae tries yelling anything to make them let go and once he can feel the heat from the rod he can feel tears at the edges of his eyes.
“Five to one, one to five!” Drae watches with fear as his grandma finishes the chant and slams the brand down on his lower back. Drae imagines what it would feel like to be melting plastic flies around his head as well as the thought of how hot the sun is burns into his spine as the feeling of being overwhelmed and getting pushed out of his own body continued until for a second he thinks he can see his body from a birds view before his grandma rips the brand away from his burning flesh and what connected with the metal, stayed with the metal. The only thing he can do is cry and scream.
He feels like he might hear someone telling him to be quiet, but all he feels is the throbbing of his heart in his back, until he sees his grandpa's face and his hand keeping his mouth open while holding the knife out. His grandma looks around his grandpa with disgust yet joy.
“I warned you.” Her voice is warped beyond recognition.
Drae tries to remember what she warned him about, but mid though fire erupts in his mouth as well as the feeling of liquid filling his mouth. Drae attempts to spit out the liquid but it only comes pooling out. With the last of his strength, he lets out a roaring scream as his view splits into five and his pain doubles.
With sudden strength Drae breaks free and, after stabbing his grandparents, dropping the knife in the fire he suddenly runs away faster than he ever has until the rain starts to pour.
Drae snapped back to reality as he stands in the middle of a small clearing and looks around. He's never seen these types of trees around where he lives. Drae wraps his hands around his body and slowly waddles around until he spots a cave and jogs over to it. He finds a pile of sticks inside and makes a fire to warm up.
After he calms down a little, the feeling of not being alone still crawls on his skin so he looks around only to see three translucent dragons standing and a fourth one somewhat behind them bleeding from the mouth, just like Drae. With an increasing sense of fear, Drae tries to close his eyes then reopen them to make them go away, but after trying multiple times with no difference he ignores them for the fire.
Once one of them tries moving is when Drae freaks out and tries to leave the cave, only to become freezing cold and going to a corner far away from them and as they kept moving Drae was having to accept the fact of what happened, but not ready yet he pushed it away, and kept pushing until he started muttering to himself.
The dragons try talking with him a couple times, but every time only causes Draco to go further into his own self made pit of insanity. No matter how much he tried blocking the voices out of his attention they just remind him of the pain just too much.