The Fragile Dragons

Title: Don’t Trust Guardians to Read Your Mail
Author: Brandy
Word count: 1596

Dragon Bash was a big event it turns out, full of games, fireworks and food. Not that Arowzillian Eclipse or her reluctant sister Atonemay would know, seeing as they had never attended. This may have been a result of a sheltered childhood, though their parents insist it was because they were ‘total nerds’ and refused to travel to Loins Arch from Divinity's Reach in an ox cart without a proper Asura engineered air cooling unit installed.

So this year, the sisters had made a list of everything they’d planned to do at the event, during last day when they finally had time off to attend. The list was exactly three pages long and was scheduled down to the minute for maximum events and fun times including: 10:16-11:00am: Watch Moa Races, 12:38-12:45pm: Stop for cupcakes, 6:45-7:30pm: meet up with Eliana for drinks, 11:00-11:15pm: Fireworks and 11:20pm: Push Drakhen in harbour.
Not that the list mattered at all, because while taking a shortcut at 8:27am to get from the north gate to their planned breakfast stop, they had fallen through a lose patch of board walk and become trapped in a now blocked off and abandoned cellar.

___________________________________________________________________________________

“I could just cast geyser,” Arowzillian noted from her place against the dirty stone wall, looking at her sister, who was clutching a very angry hawk.

“I’m not letting you drown Commander Handsome with your crazy elementalist water powers,” the ranger sighed, carefully splinting a broken wing, “You’re supposed to be working on our escape plan.”

“Ugh, we’ve already tried everything. This whole place is spell protected or something so I can’t use elements to destroy or move anything,” Standing up she surveyed the area again, “Okay, so we use Not An Ice Bow to find us a ladder.”

“I already rejected that idea, he’s not that big.”

“Well… Then get him to send a letter to a guild member or something.”

“That’s… actually not bad,” the ranger pulled some paper and a pen out of her bag, “So… a desperate cry for help?”

“No, we can’t do that,” Arowz protested, grabbing the paper and pen and leaning against the wall above her, “I refuse to admit we are in trouble. We bribe them with loot.”

‘Dear Jim Snapperdaper,
Hey, you should totally come over to the northern district, exactly where I have drawn on the back of this letter. Totally a chest and like, mad gold drops. I swear.
-Arowzillian’

“You really think this will work?” Atonemay questioned, a thick layer of doubt in her voice as she read over the note before handing it back.

“Maybe?” Rowz replied, attaching the note to the owl’s foot and sending him up into the air, “We’ll wait and see I guess.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

A few hours or so later the snowy owl had still let to return, and Atonemay had taken to walking around the tiny room with a broken hawk perched on her head.

“So what’s plan B?” the redhead asked, now half asleep on the cold stone, “Wait till sun down than cook the bird?”

“What? No!” Atonemay protested as Commander Handsome squawked from his pink perch, “Are you crazy? You’re not eating my pet!”
“This is the reason people don’t like rangers Atone,” She sat up and stretched out her arms, “All this quality meat flying around you and I can’t even cook it.”

“I will kill you, I don’t care what mother says,” the pink haired girl threated as she glared.

___________________________________________________________________________________

More time passed, darkness fell on the girls and Arowzillian grew more and more annoyed.

“Don’t you have a parrot or something?” she asked after attempting to jump up the walls for the twenty-eighth time.

“That’s a summoned bird, it only comes out if I’m hit” Atonemay replied, tired of answering her sisters questions.

Arowzillian proceeded to throw a rock at her sister, hitting her on the leg.

“Ouch, what the fuck?”

“Why didn’t it come out?” Rowz pouted.

“It only has like, a 50% chance of- OUCH YOU BITCH!” the ranger stood up after the second rock hit her, a large tropical bird appearing on the ground beside her.

“It worked! Now send it to get us help!” the elementalist cheered excitedly, “Or food.”

Sitting back down the pink haired girl sighed, “I can’t… I have no control over it. It’ll just fly around for a few minutes and be useless.”

The two proceeded to watch as the bird flew around the cellar for a minute or two before collapsing tragically on the ground.

“It’s dead….” Rowz poked at the corpse, “You were right.”

“He has a pretty short life span. I kind of feel bad that I keep summoning them just to have them die a minute or so later.”

“So…”

“So?”

“Can I?”

“Can you what?”

Arowzillian summoned a fireball, the flames crackling along with her laughter.

“Oh my god, fine, cook the fucking dead bird.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

“We could portal out if we had a Mesmer,” the Elementalist suggested as she licked tropical bird meat off her hands, having devoured her part of the meal all but instantly.

“Yeah, because random mesmers just fall from the sky and port us out to safety,” Atonemay snapped, nibbling on a drumstick after having apologised to it for ten minutes, “This isn’t fan fiction Zilly, this is real fucking life and you need to accept the fact that plot holes are just going to be given to us. I mean for one-“

She was interrupted though, as a drunk norn Mesmer fell through the broken boards and landed beside them.

“Hello ladies, the names Plot Hole McGee,” He said politely, reaching out to shake both their hands, “I happened to be in the neighbourhood, completely not purchasing some shady Rytlock Brimstone / Logan Thackeray sex holograph videos in case you were wondering, and happened to hear you ladies arguing. And I thought, ‘Well, I am a gentleman who does not buy porn in back alleys, I should probably help them out’. So I jumped down here, not, of course, after hiding my stash of weird furry fetish material I don’t have behind a rock-“

“JUST FUCKING PORT US OUT!” The two shouted in unison, jumping up and grabbing their weapons, Atonemay’s meal abandoned on the floor.

“So demanding,” Plot Hole commented as he cast a portal on the ground, which the girls all but dove into, disappearing and reappearing in the cold night air on the street above.
A loud boom filled the air and Atonemay checked her watch in a frantic hurry.

“11:13! Fireworks! We need to get to the harbour!” She panicked as Rowz grabbed her arm, starting the mad dash down the street in a swirl of lightning blasts, speed boosts and elite rampaging skills.

They ran in the direction of the fireworks, unable to see them past the building wreckage, making it to the waters edge just in time to see the sparkle of the last one fading into darkness and hear silence begin to fill the air.

“We missed it,” the ranger said, hands on her knees and breathing heavy from the run, eyes on the edge of tears, “We completely missed everything.”
Rowz collapsed on the ground beside her, closing her eyes, “We didn’t even get to see fireworks in the end.”

“Hey there you guys are!” a shout came from the end of the board walk as a group of misfit losers approached, led by a norn guardian with an owl perched on his shoulder.

“Where have you been?” Yumi asked accusingly, poking the fallen girl with her staff, “You were supposed to help with guild activities and what not.”

“If you read the letter attached to the bird on Jim’s shoulder you would know!” Arowzillian shot back to the other elementalist, not moving from her spot on the ground.

“Oh, him,” Luna laughed, “He’s Not An Ice Bow so we all completely ignored him. Also, look at this new skirt I got today!”

“I told you it was a dumb plan.” Atonemay groaned as the owl flew back to her. Her face lit up as Eliana offered her a cupcake, stuffing it into her mouth in a un-lady like way.

“Shut up,” Rowz fired back as Tiny Belen pulled her up, dropping a healing turret in case she was damaged.

“Glad you guys are alive though,” Kersuru offered them both fancy festival drinks, “Or I’d have to listen to Yumi bitch about your death for the next month.”

“You can really feel the love can’t you?” Drakhen laughed, happy to finally not be the one being picked on.

The group continued on with their conversation, telling the days adventures, showing off new items and sharing left over festival foods. The sisters fell comfortably into group atmosphere, anger about the day being replaced with warm laughter as they stood on the boardwalk, night stars and street lights sparkling on the waters reflection.

“Maybe we didn’t miss everything,” Arowzillian whispered, grabbing her sister’s hand and resting her head on her shoulder.

“No. We got here just in time,” Atonemay whispered back, leaning into her as they enjoyed the conversation.

“Hey Atone?” the redhead asked as she checked the rangers watch.

“Yeah?”

“It’s 11:20pm.”

With a shared smirk the Eclipse girls separated and moved to either side of Drakhen, who, as luck would have it, was sitting on a post at the edge of the water. With a quick shout of ‘Now!’ the two pushed the warrior into the water, happy to have at least crossed one thing off the list.


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