"What?" Kaedros asked as he bent lower to get a better look at where Taria was pointing.
She shoved her spear into the monster's neck, and the metal clinked with something hard. Kaedros' sharp eyes locked onto it, there, half-buried beneath the mangled fur and flesh, was a thin metal band, inscribed heavily with runes.
Kaedros narrowed his gaze. Something about it stirred an unpleasant familiarity. Then his eyes locked on the small crest etched just beneath one of the runes.
"Are people… keeping them as pets?" Taria asked, voice skeptical but thoughtful. "I've never heard of that before… But if they can be tamed, Scabber pups might sell well."
"Certainly not," Kaedros said coldly.
He touched a finger to the monster's blood and brought it to his nose. The scent confirmed his suspicion. A harsh, artificial stench, chemicals, alchemy, and smoke.
"Come on. Look how ridiculously large this one is. It's obvious some rich noble's been feeding it," Taria insisted. Kaedros wasn't sure if that was irritation or jealousy in her voice, and he decided not to find out.
"Can you see that under the glyphs?" Kaedros asked, pointing.
Taria squinted. "Where?"
"There, right under that swirl pattern," he said. "That little drawing."
Taria leaned closer. "Oh. Yeah, I see it now… Looks familiar. What is it?"
Kaedros' face darkened. "It's the insignia of the Celestial Order."
Taria flinched at the name. It brought with it the ghosts of memories, ones tied to power, to wealth, and to all the things she'd once dreamed of having but was born too far below to reach.
That was ripped away from her brutally.
Kaedros noticed her sudden withdrawal. Way she subtley stepped back. The way her face stiffened.
"What is the Celestial Order doing with a… mutant monster?" she asked, barely hiding her revulsion.
Mutant monster. Kaedros liked that name.
He shrugged, it wasn't any of his business. Dragons are mostly lazy to care about anything that won't bring them interest. "Aren't they the kingdom's biggest collector of monsters, dead or alive?"
"How do you even know it's them?" Taria asked. "Anybody could slap an insignia on a band."
"The chemical smell. Can't you smell it in the blood?"
Taria gave him a flat look. "I smell blood and rot. That's it. Are you sure you're not hallucinating? Do you even have some smell-sensing technique?"
Kaedros shrugged again.
How would he explain that he wasn't human, but a Dragon Prince with superior senses? Or that he'd once almost torn apart a high-ranking Refiner of the Celestial Order, and remembered exactly what they smelled like?
"Whoever did it, this creature was experimented on. Look at the fur. See the patches? Scars. Signs of restraint, needles, branding."
Taria stepped forward to examine them. "You're right…"
"What do we do with the body?" she asked after a pause.
"Nothing," Kaedros replied. "We leave it. And we won't turn in the bounty."
"What?" she said with wide eyes, greed shining through. "We came all this way! I fought that thing!"
"The bounty was to eliminate the nest. This thing already did it. The monsters are dead, we're too late."
Taria threw her arms up. "So I got smacked halfway to death for nothing?"
"You gain experience. That counts for something."
She waved her bloody spear in the air. "That's not payment. Where are the coins for my hard work?"
Kaedros sighed. She was always like this. Desperate. Hungry. Too familiar with suffering. They could always look for better bounty. This lowly, they are even more greedy than humans.
"Don't you know higher levels mean higher pay?"
Taria's eyes flicked toward the dark forest beyond and she shuddered slightly. "With higher risk too."
"You can't grow without risk," Kaedros said, his voice now steely. "And trust me, you don't want to stay weak."
Taria went quiet. "I know what happens to the weak," she said softly.
Kaedros nodded. "Good. Let's head back to town and prepare for the next bounty."
Taria blinked. "Next bounty? I don't think that I can fight anything again, today. My ribs are probably broken!"
"We've done what we came to do. And don't ask about this thing," Kaedros said, nodding to the corpse. "It doesn't matter where it came from."
"But don't you want to know how it got here? Who made it?"
"I could find out," Kaedros admitted. "But what for? It doesn't benefit me."
He fixed her with a hard stare. "And don't tell anyone what you saw."
The Celestial Order. Mutant monsters. No thanks. He'd killed his fill of their kind for now. Getting involved would just draw more attention to him.
"Who would I tell?" Taria muttered. Her voice was quiet but bitter.
She had no one. Since her mother died when she was twelve, she'd lived in shadows, scraping together food and dodging beatings. Friendship was a luxury the poor couldn't afford.
Kaedros had been the first to speak to her like she wasn't invisible. The first to choose her.
"Very well," Kaedros said. "We saw nothing. We know nothing."
She nodded.
He wasn't afraid of the Order, not really. But he wasn't ready to start a war either. Not yet.
"If only this dead meat was edible," Taria muttered, kicking the monster's corpse.
And that's when it happened.
The runes around the metal band suddenly glowed red, a dull but rising light. Kaedros' instincts screamed. And his eyes narrowed.
"Move!" Kaedros shouted.
He lunged toward her, grabbing her just as the corpse exploded in a blinding surge of fire and bone.