Nova Tier 1 Dark - A Slight Detour

Nightfall, in a deserted park.

“This is a lot less spooky than I’d expected when you told me we were going to a cemetery,” Flash commented, looking up at the full moon in the sky. It cast long shadows across the grass, turned deep grey from the cold light seeping through the clouds. As an Earth rider primarily, Flash probably had a really skewed idea of what ‘spooky’ entailed- and by that, Nova meant that he probably would think a walking skeleton staring him in the eye was ‘less spooky than expected’. Ah, the joys of having a rider with zero self preservation skills.

Nova blinked once, cutting off the aqua glow of his eyes for a slight moment. His glowing eyes perhaps didn’t help with the atmosphere here, either. Some crickets chirped in the distance, and he could see crumbled gravestones scattered across the place. Whoever those belonged to would probably be pretty mad about it, but whoever those belonged to had also been robbed at least six times so they could get in line.

“So tell me again why are we desecrating graves in the middle of the night?” A semi curious Flash asked a while later, sitting cross legged on the earth, large white wings crossed as he stared at his dragon using his four arms to dig at the soil beneath one of the more intact graves.

“Grabbing some souls,” he shrugged as if it was an everyday occurrence, then paused a little to look back at him. “I am going to be real honest, I have no clue what I’m supposed to be doing with them. I’m a Dark cross, sure, but any magic other than going formless and your guess will be as good as mine. Apparently I need souls to do Dark magic or something, but there’s this whole process about ethical soul use- which I did read! Mind you!- and I thought desecrating graves that’s been already robbed like ten times over would be slightly better than doing it to fresh ones.”

Flash pinned him with an unimpressed look. “So you’re saying that further destroying the untouched bits of these graves would be a better idea?”

Nova’s crest flattened and he looked, pardon the pun, a bit crestfallen. As if he had genuinely didn’t think this through, which knowing him he probably didn’t. But he was committed to it now, since he’d already gone through a few small piles of bones in the process, so no point in stopping now, right?

A haunting howl cut through the air, unnervingly close to the two.

Flash whipped around, wings out. “Nova, what was that?” The Avio looked prepared to fight as always, but perhaps it was just the atmosphere of the day that got to him more than usual- Nova swore he could see a bit of fear cross his eyes. “Nova?”

Scrambling to cover up the last bit of the dug up bones with a loose layer of soil, Nova turned around and locked eyes with a pale creature crawling over one of the fallen gravestones. It was translucent and its edges strangely wispy, and a little shorter than his height. It unsteadily walked on all fours with a stubby tail and a face with too many sharp teeth poking out of its jaw. All of that meant to him that it was either a fellow Dark dragon, or some sort of supernatural creature guarding the graves. From the predatory look on its face, and the fact that Nova couldn’t detect a single dribble of Dark magic from it, he had a sinking feeling that this was the latter.

“Uhh… Uhh… Begone!” Nova waved one pair of his arms at the burrow-wright in a threatening pose, feathers up and tail spikes raised. It almost resembled the time Flash saw a documentary where a Carnotaurus waved hilariously tiny arms at its mate. He tried really hard not to burst out laughing. Nova shot him a terrified look, though, as it did not work and the burrow-wright kept advancing. Frantically, Nova scrambled for some magic that would repel the creature- all the magic he knew was Earth magic, and he doubted chucking stones at an incorporeal creature would work very well. Maybe it was time to improvise?

Nova breathed deeply, feeling his lungs expand with cool night air. Think about something creepy, something Dark dragon ish, he thought.  Maybe then I’ll do some proper Dark magic. But what can I think about…

Just then, the burrow-wright bounded towards the two of them at an increased speed, startling Flash into flinching and Nova out of his thoughts. Without much thought, the black-and-green feathered dragon screeched, an inky blob of darkness erupting from his mouth and covering their hasty retreat. I guess that worked?

(“Huh, maybe I scared him more than I was supposed to,” the Dark dragon muttered in the darkness as she changed forms back into her regular one.)