It was dark.
It was dark and it was cold.
The banging on the houses front door had stopped. A thick haze left itself draped over the dragons usually sharp mind. But even a mind as sharp as an Ursa claw could be dulled by a week of no sleep. And a week of no sleep was what she had been given.
Damn it was cold Spark thought. 'And dragons rarely enjoy the cold... except for the frost dragons but no one talked to them.' Her mind trailed courtesy of the drowsy haze. 'The point is, dragons rarely enjoy the cold.' Bringing her mid back on topic. What made it worse was the mortal enemy to frostbite was fire. 'But there is no way i'm using fire here. Not now.' It draws them.
The steam of breath lifted away and scattered before the dragons eyes. The dark room stretched out beyond her vision. The wall pressed against her back whilst a sofa on the other cradled her in a snug, yet still lacking in warmth, embrace.
'I must have fallen asleep.' Whilst it was definitely needed, she swore at her stupidity underneath her breath.
Gently, with movement so quiet it barely disturbed the dust in the air, Spark twisted her body to lie on her stomach and with laboured strength, she rose up and took a peek toward to centre of the room.
She don't know why she did it. The ever warping shades of black made it look like the furthest wall could have either been 100 yards away, or brushing the end of her very nose.
Gentler still she lowered herself. Her body hugged the floor as she made her way around the sofa. She heard no breathing. The house, it appeared, was still.
The dragon found her feet and with practice's caution, searched the room.
It was definitely a living room, going by the sofa and what felt like small coffee tables which littered the room. However, the books lining the outside made it seem more formal. With a hand placed on the nearest wooden wall, Spark traced the perimeter before her hand found hanging cloth.
Curtains.
With a small sigh of relief, she opened it a crack. The window itself was boarded. But between the gaps of wood, Spark could still see the outside. The sun lay low in the sky, hung over distant mountains. "Morning, thank the heavens"
Leaving the curtains apart in order to allow some light to spill in, she returned her gaze back towards the unfamiliar room. The place looked warm, unfortunately the same couldn't be said about the temperature. More importantly however, the room looked undisturbed. No 'Broken' here.
Scanning the room she saw with what little light penetrated through the window, an old library. Seemingly large in comparison to how she remembered the outside looking like. Still sweeping over every object, more and more furniture and ornaments came to view. Stepping deeper into the stale dark, she approached a picture on a wall. Removing it, scraping a voilet scaled hand across it, she returned to the window.
'Might as well see whose house I'm in.'
A unicorns aparently. Unsurprising due to the location, though the place was a bit run down from decades of abandonment. There was however, one thing that caught her attention. A small dragon. In the dim lighting his scale colours were distorted. The eyes however, light great unfamiliar familiarity. She knew them. But she didn't know where.
Taking the framed picture with her, she set toward searching the second floor of the shadowed house.
The steps were claustrophobic. Even with her wings tucked behind her, they still grazed the walls at her sides. Peering around the corners at the top of the stairway, met by the same inky blackness the dragon woke up to, Sparks eyes cast to some strange shadow lying at the end of the hallway.
'Clothes?' She thought. 'Could be useful, especially in this temperature.'
With tempered caution she moved closer. Rather a large pile of clothes, oddly shaped on closer inspection. Spark was barely more than an arms length away now. She pressed forward, the house held its breath. Reaching out a hand, a swell of panic gripped her.
It moved. And again. And again.
It was breathing.
At such a close distance, the cracked and flaking scales could just about be seen. The contagious netted orange-red contusions over its body caused by a vicious change in its skin, leaving behind lines like the ground in summers drought. Just one touch, no matter how fleeting, would be fatal.
Spark drew her hand back sharply, scales visibly bristling. She wasn't in the mood to befall the same fate as this decrepit creature.
Quietly, with the skill of a level 10 thief, Spark made her way back down the hallway, dreading every soft click of her claws on the wooden hallway until she was greeted by the stairway.
The house was no longer the only thing holding its breath.
Footsteps were quieter than flying in such small spaces however and only a few more would place the dragon in the hands of freedom and safety.
The last stairway step betrayed her. A loud creak of rotting wood from the treacherous floorboards. On any other occasion a quick singeing would have sorted it out.
Movement from upstairs shuddered through the house sending a ripple of fear to the dragons core.
Another step and hammering blows fell down the hallway. Sounds of something reeling towards to top of the stairs. She sprinted to the entrance of the small house. Reaching for the doorknob she did something very stupid. She looked behind her.
Even in the almost perfect darkness of the house, the being of pure animalistic rage towering over her at the top of the stairway could be seen.
Wide bloodshot eyes burned into her. Its figure: hunched, form: imposing. It brought back images of Sparks father, pinned to the floor by a cracked clawed hand clasped over his mouth. His screams muffled as cracks spread across his face like an old porcelain doll before flaking a spitting dust as scales splintered. His once gracefully purple armour reduced to nothing. It took only a moment before the twitching, wheezing remains of Spike became her father no more.
She grabbed the door handle, yanking it open she sped past the threshold into the open morning as sunlight tumbled into the room behind her, a brush of wind at her foot told her the pursuer was less than an inch away. The little dragon was beyond its reach now. She turned around again to look at the thing that chased her so viciously.
On contact with the sunlight, the 'broken' flexed with pain. Its chest heaved as fire spilled out of the network of cracks that blistered his body. When its eyes fell on Spark, it surged forward into the air with malice almost as hot as the flames coating its body.
It barely made it past the doorway before the creature exploded in a boom of hellfire. Shards of ceramic and splinters of wood flew in all directions. The treehouse would no longer be a safe haven.
"Ok." She panted. "I still have plenty of time to find another safe hiding place" glancing at the picture in her hand, her eyes wetted. "Dad?" A small stinging sensation tingled around her eyes as a tear fell down her cheek. She smiled a smile so solemn it made the world fall silent once more.
Her smile faded. Something hit the pit of her stomach hard. Shadows creeped up from the base of the picture. A cold sensation washed over her neck. She turned to see the sun vanishing behind the mountains.
"Oh please no."
Sounds of screeching and howling emanated from the woods branching out from the foot of the mountain.
"It's not morning..."
She watched as eyes peered from the gloom before her, dark shapes lined the forest.
"...It's evening"
The sun, plunged the dragon into darkness