I was slammed onto my back, the old pile of bones was squeezing my throat. I gasped for air, and my lungs were denied it. I felt my face turn purple, and my vision had black dots dancing around.

     "Stop!" I heard someone shouting, and the weight was lifted off of me. I struggled to take a deep breath, but finally began to feel better.

Kintes was pinning the old dragon down, a ferocious glare burned through his eyes.

"Get off me, ya Treesnapper!" He growled.

"What's wrong with you?!" Nota walked over to him. "We just helped you, and you tried to kill Zepth!"

"She said Grilop sent ye!" He barked back. "Grilop's been after me hide for decades!"

"Wait, what?" I coughed out and swallowed hard. Kintes let the old dragon come to his feet, but kept an eye on him.

"Ye heard me." He spat, shoving his shoulder into Kintes grumpily. "That hatchling tried to kill me. He told me to stay in the trees. He told me to hide-"

"Hide from what?" Nota blinked.

"From the Sulona army." He looked down, remembering the past...

"Many years ago, when Grilop was still my young grandson that went to join the war, I never dreamt he'd be on the opposing side.

"Blatua was my home, and it would have been Grilop's too, if his mother hadn't taken him across the ocean for a 'new start'. So, my grandson grew up in a tiny speck of mountain forest land called Tagonia. They hoped they could blend in and disappear. Of course I couldn't come. Just look at me, ya think a skeleton would ever be welcome there? Ha!

"I got word that after Grilop and his mother were welcomed into Sulona, he went to join the army. He wanted to do good, that hatchling.

"Sulona ordered their troops back across the ocean. Grilop was a masked fighter among thousands that rained from the skies and blasted Blatua lands with flame.

"He found me in my den. Grilop told me to head to the trees, because the army was ordered to clear out the caves and check every single one.

"Next thing I knew, the trees caught on fire. Everything I knew was being burned away before my eyes. Ya think Calif was always a land of dead trees?"

We all stood there, unsure of what to say to the broken dragon. I finally stepped up.

"He couldn't have known, Moridax-" I looked to him sympathetically. "Grilop would never intentionally try to kill you. He thought he could save you-"

"How could you know?!" He spun around and snarled at me. "Ya never knew him! Ya didn't know what those monster did to my home, ya weren't there!"

"Zepth's right." Nota quietly walked beside me. "Grilop may have been a grouch, and I'm starting to see where he got that from, but he has never killed."

"Even in the war." Kintes nodded. "I bet he tried to save all the lives he could, even if it went disobeying his orders. That would explain the scarring. Army officers burn those who disobey."

I looked down. "Sulona is a monster to him, just as Blatua is a monster to us."