Everyone, including Vera herself, watched in awe as Sweetie started to tone down on her shrieks. Her massive body slowly relaxed on the ground as if a huge knife had finally been pulled out from her chest.
Once the ice had spread and coated the entire left wing of the dragon, Vera lifted her gaze back to Azure. Her eyes were asking him what she should be doing next. Should she take her hand off Sweetie now? Or should she wait a little longer?
Azure did not make any movement or sound and Vera did not know why, but she had a strong thought that it was a ‘not yet’. She seemed to be instinctively able to understand what the dragon wanted to say to her most of the times.
For a little longer, Vera did not take her hand off and just kept it there until something like a puff of smoke, just a little bluer than the ice-dragon’s breath, seeped out and spread all over the ice-coated wing.
Then Azure’s wing carefully reached out to Vera and draped it on her shoulder, nudging her backwards. And the moment Vera stepped back and retracted her hand, the thin ice that was coating over Sweetie’s ripped wing cracked. The cracks branched out and spread very quickly all over.
Sweetie then shook her wings out as if to get rid of the shards of ice that were stuck to her. The dragon’s movement was very clearly no longer pained, nor did she cry out at all.
When Sweetie finally spread out her wings and the broken shards of ice all fell off, everyone looked on in awe. The ripped wing had already been magically healed!
Vera’s mouth gaped open despite herself. Azrael too, jumped up for joy, utterly elated and relieved as he hugged his dragon. He did not care about the methods of how it happened, but after seeing that his darling Sweetie was whole and hale once more, he was just thankful and only wanted to rejoice with her.
A little while later, Azrael bowed his head to Vera. “Thank you, Princess.” His voice was filled with gratitude and amazement.
“Oh… I really didn’t…” Vera waved her hands, flustered at the sudden gratitude coming from Azrael. She still could not get used to being treated like she was someone so mighty and worthy of respect. “Uh, you don’t need to bow your head like that, really…”
Azrael looked up and grinned at her, then leaned in and whispered in a conspiratorial manner to her. “Princess, you should really start getting used to this. Because after this war, I won’t be the only who will be bowing my head to you. In fact, right now, if given the chance, most of us here would already be more than willing to lower our heads to you.”
Vera could only nibble on the insides of her lips. That was still a bit too unthinkable for her. But she quickly shook her head and stop thinking this matter for now. This could be put aside for consideration later when she had the time. There were more pressing matters to attend to for now.
Now that Sweetie was fully healed and that it seemed as though she was the key in healing the ice dragon’s injuries, they needed to plan for this next, most-probably the last, battle they were going to embark on. After this… she was going to head off on her rescue of Gideon. Her beloved. And she could not wait for that time to come.
Taking a few deep breaths, Vera squared off her shoulders and nodded at the dark fae commander.
The commander started revealing his plans to them. Of course, after having Azrael spilled out every bit of information he had found out from the other side of this other darker wall of darkness.
Once they were done discussing and came up with what they thought was the best strategy possible, they immediately sent a messenger over to Klauz and Evie to update them about the latest happenings.
While waiting for their responses, everyone took this pause in time to recuperate. They helped each other to heal wounds, and Vera went around to check on the wounded dragons and healing them back to their top form.
She was thankful that she did not seem to need any magic or extra strength to help in the healing of the ice dragons. It was like they had just needed her touch to activate their own healing ability that was seemingly locked within them. Vera’s touch was akin to a key that could unlock that magical healing ability inside of them. And this was really incredible.
However, Vera was saddened to find out that there were already a few casualties that were way beyond what she could help. Five ice-dragons to be exact, had already fallen in battle. These, she had to say goodbye to, and there was nothing else that she could do for them.
She had immediately told herself that this was how war was. Loss of lives were inevitable. They had also lost many soldiers from the monsters in this war. But considering everything that they were going through, it was already a lucky thing to not have lost even more lives than what they already have.
Thinking about it, Vera did not know how she had even managed to face it so calmly. She had never been to any battlefield. She only managed to survive until now because she had been riding on Azure, and he had been protecting her perfectly. If she had been on the ground, fighting… she still could not help the shiver that came crawling under her skin as she remembered the bloodbath she had seen with her own eyes while she was circling above in the air. She could not count how many times she had to look away or shut her eyes instinctively when the monsters’ tore their soldiers apart. But as the battle went on, she somehow managed to slowly build up the resistance and did not look away anymore.
“My Lady!” a voice echoed out and Vera quickly headed back to where everyone else were gathered as she knew that a response from Evie must have finally arrived.
