'You—you have a ray of sunlight!' The voice spoke again.

Celia glanced around, briefly unable to locate the source of the voice. At first, she expected some sort of transparent specter. However, after she saw no such image, she looked to Irin as he continued to gaze at the light. "Irin?"

The dragon's amber eyes lost their gaze as he turned to Celia. He blinked a few more times as if he needed to clear his vision, then looked up to and focused on the human girl.

"Did just hear you?" Celia asked him in a wavering voice, "because that would be ridiculous, right? Right? Please tell me I'm not going crazy." She emitted a flimsy laugh that swiftly died into a squeak.

Irin exhaled a plume of breath in a snort, 'You've never heard me before, so why should you suddenly be able to now?' He seemed to roll his eyes in disbelief as he looked back to the ray of light.

"I am going crazy!" Celia shakily exhaled and slumped back across Verbena's shoulders, "all this traveling must have messed with my mind somehow." She cradled the glowing sphere in her arms.

Verbena worriedly nuzzled Celia's back, 'You not crazy!' She assured with a soft purr-like sound, "you healthy and perfect human.'

At the same time as Verbena's words, Irin also responded. 'You CAN hear me?!' Several clips of snow slid off of his side as the ice-covered dragon jumped back in surprise, then lowered his head towards Celia's face.

Celia searched her mind for possible answers, but could not explain to herself why she could suddenly hear Irin's voice. She glanced down to the ray of light, "maybe this is the cause?" She ungloved her hand and wiped her nose on the bare skin. "Or maybe I hit my head or something."

She searched her mind for a second mindlink, but only found the one she had with Verbena, and Irin's voice did not come from Verbena's mindlink either. Irin's voice simply appeared in her head as if she heard the voice with her ears. Celia frowned at the lack of possible explanations.

Irin paused and contemplated the events, then glanced back down to the orb and became excited again. 'Let's figure that out later, I need to show Xan this,' he grabbed the ray of light in his mouth, much to Celia's shock. 'This should calm his anger,' he turns and dashed off with the beacon.

"Wait!" Celia gasped and reached towards Irin to grab him, but her distress-slowed reaction time caused her hand to only grasp empty air. "Irin! Please don't run off with that!" She pushed herself off of Verbena's side and wobbly stood to her feet.

Verbena glared slightly as she sorely stood with soft moans. 'I'll go get him," she glowered. Without casting a thought to the offered food, she ran off after the disappearing source of light.

Celia sprinted after the three of them and continued to think of an explanation for the events as she followed. Many potential explanations came to her mind.

The ray of sunlight could have allowed it. However her mind countered with a new question, why didn't something similar happen when she found the first one?

The events may have come with her heritage. If her lineage explained the sudden events, then why she couldn't understand other dragons before?

The only plausible explanation in Celia's mind came in the form of the idea that perhaps she had a bit of magic inside of her after all. Her magic also could have been late to bloom into reality, which could explain why it suddenly appeared now.

Celia shook off those thoughts and instead refocused on following Irin and Verbena. She looked ahead and saw the light far ahead. Irin's body eclipsed the glow and Celia felt like she was chasing shadows.

Though Verbena managed to keep up, Celia swiftly fell behind and the glow grew distant. The human female found her foot speed lacking in comparison to the two dragons ahead of her.

Eventually, Celia arrived at the entrance of the room Irin ran into, but slipped on a bit of partially-melted snow and fell onto her rear. Celia winced and caught her breath as she landed on the hard stone ground. As she stood back up, she looked up to Xan as he studied the sphere.

Xan briefly locked his focus on the orb, then turned his grey eyes towards Celia, "h-how? How did you get this? We were in a cell for basically the entire time we were in there. There is no possible way you could have found and stolen this."

"The Ulven that freed Verbena and me gave it to me," Celia replied, "I'm not sure why exactly, or how she knew—"

'I told Hytha we wanted to return light to the world and she helped us!' Celia looked to Verbena as the dragnet trumpeted and flashed a draconic grin, 'she wants to return the sun to the world like us!' Her tail waved a bit in her pleasure. 'she was also super nice, though she said I was a fake dragon or something like that, I a real dragon! Not fake!' The green dragonet snorted as she spread her wings and displayed her emerald green feathers.

Xan froze as he heard Verbena's words without Irin's assistance. "Huh," he blinked, and looked to Verbena with a shocked expression. After a few brief seconds of his wide-eyed stare that earned a snort from Verbena, Xan decided to contemplate that later and looked away as he shook his head slightly.

The human male looked to Celia "I guess your plan to talk to people worked. We had to find the right person to talk to, but it worked."

He laughed a bit and rubbed his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, —" He choked a bit on his own words, "that, that hurt my pride to say, and you constantly beat on my pride." He sighed a bit. "I should not have doubted you. It takes a lot of bravery to come this far from your home alone except for your dragon, and obviously, you still managed to find one of the lost rays of sunlight."

He stood up from the stone shelf he had perched on during his tantrum and approached Celia. "I'll try not to doubt you again, and as long as we both survive, I could always try joining your guild." A small smile crept along his countenance, "I probably have a lot to learn myself." He offered the sphere of light back to Celia, "for now, you should hang onto this."

"Thank you, Xan," Celia accepted the golden orb from Xan and gently held it in her hands. "So, what do you suggest we do now?"

Xan blinked in surprise at Celia's question, then smiled a bit, "Well, Verbena needs to go back and eat the food Irin caught for her and rest more. Once she recovers, we will continue north, for now at least."

Celia nodded in understanding, "I agree that we need to try to locate the fourth ray of light before we go for the one in Urre, any specific ideas on where we should start other than just somewhere in the north?"

Xan shook his head with a small sigh, "no leads this time, but maybe your charm will help find leads in some of the northern towns. There are fewer settlements the farther north you go, so that at least limits how many civilizations and ruins we may have to go through. But for now, Verbena especially needs to rest. We could probably explore this place a bit if you want. I've traveled through sections before, but I've never been all the way to the bottom."

'I want to go too,' Verbena snorted and shook out her feathers a bit as she folded her wings back to her side.

'No, rest, I'll reheat the termivore for you.' Irin gently used a wing to usher her back out of the room.

Verbena hesitated as her stomach audibly growled at the thought of a decent-sized meal. Eventually, she complied but snorted in a display of her displeasure as she left the room with Irin to return to her meal.

Once they were both gone, Xan looked to Celia, "Can you suddenly hear Irin speak? Because, I can suddenly hear Verbena talk and if I am going crazy, I at least want to make sure I am not alone in my insanity."

"I can hear Irin too," Celia assured, "though I've tried and failed to come up with a reasonable explanation to how and why I can suddenly hear him. Now that I know you can hear Verbena too, I have even more questions!" She emitted a sigh, "why does everything have to be so confusing?"

"Whenever something strange happens, I just chalk it up to fickle and strange nature of magic and go on with my life. It's simpler that way," he shrugged a bit, then moved to exit the room.

"Let's go see if we can find the main room of this place. I have been here before, but I have yet to find it. Don't worry about getting lost, the dragons all find us if we do, and I have markings on the intersections from the last time I was here." Xan smiled, then invited Celia to follow with a wave of his hand as he left.

"But there has to be some kind of explanation," Celia followed him through the entryway, then caught up and walked beside him as they traveled down the tunnels.  "There is always an explanation."

"You obviously don't have much experience with magic," Xan stated as he scanned the symbols on the wall under the light of the small piece of sunlight. "I never noticed how intricate these markings were before," he hummed and studied the markings as he strolled.

Celia also gazed at the markings on the wall, then blinked in surprise when she noticed the people and animals drawn onto the walls. Celia only vaguely recognized a few of the creatures.

"Do you know what creatures these are? Many of them are unfamiliar to me." Celia asked Xan as they descended down a flight of stairs.

"Irin and I think they are animals that went extinct when the sun disappeared," he admitted. "Not many large creatures are left compared to how many different animals are in the paintings, and many of the small animals have also disappeared completely as well. Not much survives without the sun."

"It makes me wonder what it was like back then," Celia admitted in a soft voice, and the two remained in silence except for the sounds of their footsteps for a little while as they continued.

As they walked deeper into the manmade tunnels, Celia noticed the number of crudely drawn dragon-like outlines. Some of the dragon-like shapes were made of faded white pigment, while others were pure black.

In some of the images, the two colors fought, while in many others they were separated. Humanoid beings that had been drawn in simple lines standing before the larger dragons. Some of the human-like figures bowed before the dragons, while others held stick-like objects in their hands.

A strange feeling crept in Celia, as she noticed an image with rust red marks under the outstretched wings of the black dragon as it breathed fire on the stick figures on the ground.

Celia had a suspicion that the markings on the wall recorded a story of the past, and maybe even the future.

"I think we found it." Xan's voice broke the silence with a loud and complex echo that continually repeated "found it" in a slightly distorted voice.

Celia tore her eyes away from the walls and into the room ahead of her as Xan walked ahead. "Woah," she pipped as she gazed into the room.

The most eye-catching part of the room was the massive pile of snow in the back of the room that led up to a gaping hole to the outside. The hole took up most of the wall and expanded to encompass half of the room. The falling snow drifted softly outside. Occasionally, a new snowflake added itself to the pile, but the hole was overall well sheltered from the wind.

"Looks like the storm calmed down as well," Xan remarked as she looked up to the hole, "the winds shifted again."

The room, like the others, was also decorated with similar markings as high as the beings could reach, though handprints dominated the painted designs on the walls. However, Celia could not explain how some of the five-fingered prints had been placed nearly twenty feet off the ground.

For some reason, strange red splatters like spilled paint marked the ground, black scorch marks blazed all parts of the room in random lines, and in a few places claw marks marked the surface of the hand-hand-chiseled stone. Parts of the walls were strangely chipped as if something large had slammed into the vertical stone.

"There must have been a fight in here," Xan approached one of the claw marks on the ground and measured the space between the gouges with his boot. "Whatever made these was definitely bigger than anything left alive today. This monster was definitely bigger than any dragon I have ever seen, and Irin is quite small for a male dragon. He's still rather young though, so he will grow bigger. But definitely not this big." He scuffed his foot against the ground.

Celia approached as well and noted that Xan was definitely correct, and the creature, by her estimate, had been at least five times the size of Verbena. "I am kinda glad that thing is gone."

Xan looked at the pile. "what is left of its remains are probably under the mass of snow. I doubt anything of this size would be easy for the scavengers to completely eat. The largest of the bones, especially the skull, would be too much of a challenge to crush into small enough pieces."

"Unless it escaped through the hole that is," Celia shivered in the cold draft. "I do not know what is worse, the thought of its remains being under there, or the thought that it may still exist somewhere out there."

Xan scoffed, "It would just be another frozen corpse, and I doubt anything could live this long. Whatever did this is long dead. Was probably long dead before the sun disappeared." He looked to Celia, then frowned slightly as he noticed her uncomfortable countenance. "Why don't we go see what else we can find around here. Irin and I once found some gold coins here that I traded in one of the towns for supplies. Speaking of which, I need to give you a new weapon before we leave."

Celia nodded to Xan as he turned and left the room, then turned her back to the room and followed him.

Author Notes:

Celia and Xan have made up, and the light reunited them under a common goal.

What else awaits the them?