Their heads stick out one by one behind the bushes, making mental notes of the layout of the area and where each of the dragons are located. Byeol has changed her form to a cat once again, hopping onto San's shoulder and cowering like the rest, to make their presence as inconspicuous as possible. Their eyes flick to the right than to the left, tracing the ground as they stop at the mouth of the cave. They count the number of dragons outside- one, two, three... which means that all are outside.
One problem is that the red dragon is resting near the opening of the cave, eyes closed and snoring loudly, but they doubt that it would stay asleep for long.
Whatever is beyond the cave is unknown to them, as the inside of the gaping mouth is too dark, but they have to believe that that is where the Arcus is located, or else the journey would be pointless. Hongjoong is about to start skirting the edge of the forest, but Narae stops him.
"Wait, the thought didn't come to me back then, but why didn't one of us just teleport into the cave? That would save time, plus since none of the dragons are in there, we could actually make it out without being noticed."
"That's a great question," San sticks out his lower lip. "But our powers don't really work like that- well, we can teleport to somewhere we know of. Since we don't know how it looks like inside the cave, we can't teleport there. We can only teleport to a place where we know what it looks like. Your palace, for example. We've been there a million times so we can teleport there easily, but since this is our first time seeing what's inside of the cave, we can't."
"Ah," she replies shortly, nodding.
Before anyone can say anything further, Hongjoong slips noiselessly and runs towards the direction of the cave from the side, where he'll hopefully not be in the field of sight of the dragons. He skips and rolls before he halts against the outside wall of the cave, his chest heaving and he puts out a thumbs-up.
The rest of the royals put out a thumbs-up, including Byeol who has her paw out, but their mouths aren't saying the nicest things about the king.
"He looks stupid," Mingi snorts.
"He looks like he's trying to play the role of a hired assassin," Yeosang agrees.
"One who thinks it's cool to jump from one roof to another while rolling like a log," Wooyoung adds.
"One who would accidentally fall through the roof of the house the guy he's supposed to kill and blow his own cover," Yunho utters.
"Then gets assassinated himself," Seonghwa finishes.
"Hey, stop saying mean things about my fiancé," Narae shoots back while keeping her voice low. "I'll kick all of your butts if you don't stop being mean to him."
"Ah, gosh that's painful. I feel like my heart is shattering into a thousand pieces," San manages as he clutches his chest while his face scrunches up in pain.
"Same here..." Jongho mutters, but his voice is more of a melancholic note.
"What are you guys going on about?" Narae's forehead crinkles, her eyebrows going down.
"Looks like we lost our chance with you, princess," San puts the back of his hand onto his forehead, head pushed backward. Byeol licks his cheek before licking her paw. "I never thought there'd come a day where you finally fall for your fiancé."
"Therefore... our chances are flying away... it feels like our wings have been ripped off, the blood dripping along the crooks of our skin..." Jongho muses.
"Can both of you stop being so dramatic?" Mingi deadpans. "We don't need your poetic wonders right here when we literally have three humongous dragons right in front of our eyes. Try saying that when your butts are on fire."
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Arcus // ATEEZ ✔
FanfictionShe has her head in the clouds, but eventually she will have to come down... She holds the key that can yield the bearer the greatest power ever imagined, yet she hid it in a place where no one could reach. After an accident caused her to lose her m...
