It never crossed Leila’s mind that breathing could be potentially life-threatening. Not until she was curled up along with three or four - she couldn’t get a clear count: they filled space for seven but she didn’t know how many guides they had in the lot - of her fellow Lost Souls, and the sounds of her inhales and exhales that she tried so hard to suppress still sounded like the loudest sounds in the environment in which nothing moved except of the distant, gradually closing, footsteps.
Click. click. click.
Leila stared very hard at the wall the the boulder in front of her - the only thing in her range of sight without her changing her pose - and she dared not as much as turn her head as all she could do was wish that whatever conspicuous signatures of their existence that must be present at this time was not picked up by the two beings that were strolling slowly down the caves, chatting.
Click, click, click
The footsteps were still the only things she heard. Leila couldn’t even focus on what they were talking about. Their voices were overlayed with the echoes of their voices, and echoes of that, and so on until what remained to be perceived by the girl hiding behind the rocks was a blurry mess of syllables that she did not, and could not, think of making out meaning from. In that state she couldn’t think of anything but the imminent threat of -
Click.
The footsteps ceased for a moment and for that moment Leila almost thought also did her heart.
And then they continued, only now decreasing in volume, and - judging from that - distance. What was happening? Did the witches not notice them? Or did they, only that they decided not to assault them? Were they safe now? Leila didn’t know enough, and she was still afraid.
Click, click, click...
She didn’t dare move until the footsteps have faded into silence and the two figures - if Leila was there to see - would have long vanished into the depths of the cave.
* * * *
They made their way down the mountain and back to Sol. They reported their findings. The prince assembled his men. Leila felt like she missed a lot of information and that only added to the panic.
The long hike they had to take down the mountain, however, did give her much time to piece things together and to catch up with what was happening. Not like it made it an easy thing to do, though. She was tired. She didn’t climb down the mountain as much as she staggered her way down, having to cling to rocks or trees of other things - and almost people, even, a couple of times - for support as her steps proceeded. She was still wearing the archer uniform she picked up when they first arrived in Sol, but the cloth was now ripped and chipped in places and carried much grey and brown of the earth and dust it gathered as the faded green that was its own color. The light from the amulet had only been barely visible for a long time and now it was hard to determine whether it was even glowing anymore. Every part of her body seemed to ache and it distracted her much from thinking and much of her other normal functions.
Ugh.
At least now they knew that the witches were behind this , and they needed to stop the witches. To do that, they needed the dragon.
And they were now headed back up the mountain, towards the dragon.
* * * *
It turned out there were a few details she missed out earlier. “the dragon” was a term that was barely accurate.
Because the monstrosity that now stood above them, whatever it was: curved, thick horns, scaled skin, steps and groans that shook the ground, and wings that sent out strong gusts of wind with every flap - this thing was pretty certainly not what they met in the caves back then.
It, again, occurred to Leila - in the form of a dragon’s exhale that was a deafening roar carrying a fan of bright blue flames that scorched the ground and everything else in proximity and heated the surroundings into a wavy blur seen through a lens of hot air; and, therefore, in a slightly different sense of meaning, so to speak - the idea that breathing can be potentially life-threatening.
* * * *
This was the scene of another battle. The soldiers fought bravely.
Many of them died.
Leila had not recovered from the last blow from the dragon when she noticed Harper and Hakuren working their way further up the mountain nearby. The great tree whose trunk she was resting against was without leaves and parts of its branches carried signs of being scorched slightly. Leila’s boots were rooted on the slight slope that was the hillside, supporting the proportion of her weight perpendicular to that of the force provided by the tree. The air all around that they were submerged in was now unbearably high in temperature - drops of sweat almost seemed like they would evaporate entirely before they get the chance to come dripping off the skin. The equipment made it even more uncomfortable - and Leila was wearing relatively light clothing. It was hard to imagine what the soldiers must have felt like in their layers of armour - not that one would wish to experience the discomfort of imagining that, as several of them rolled down the hillside growling in pain and despair as their highly heat-conductive instruments of protection became stoves that were impossible to escape.
Leila had no idea how she ended up this far into the front lines. Perhaps it was because in that direction was where many of the soldiers were moving.
Perhaps it’s harder to think straight when she was afraid. Or confused. She was both at the moment. Though, there was probably more that contributed to this confusion - her amulet had started to glow again. The liquid, after the brief period of recovery, was still only a little more than half in volume, yet it had enough power to exert its influence. It was like back at the caves with the mushroom - it felt almost like she was not making the decisions. Something else was calling the moves before she had time to flesh everything out. It felt unreal, and unsafe - but it worked and Leila decided it was probably best not to add to the burden by attempting to resist it.
Hakuren kept on rambling and throwing his jokes and satirical remarks and several other things. Leila never quite understood what they were thinking. But she knew one thing for sure: she’d take “running like chicks from the shadows” any day.
Yet, again, she wasn’t the one calling the moves right now.
She got onto her feet and, in a slight jog - probably the swiftest form of motion she could manage under this state - caught up with the pair of Lost Souls, the knight and the ice mage, just in time to catch Haku’s briefing of his assault plan that involved provoking convection currents sufficiently strong to lift human beings.
Leila look up - with her hands still pressed on her knees supporting her upper body as she had yet to catch her breath and was panting heavily - at the two of them, an expression on her face that was hard to read but probably explainable as “genuinely worried”; because a brief evaluation returned the results that the only form of such convection currents she could come up with at the moment was incidentally identical to what they called back home a tornado.