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We were shot on the ground, everyone’s bodies scattered along the grass. I wanted to use my voice to call out and see if everyone was okay, but my mouth wouldn’t open to do so. My throat was dry, unable to call out. The strength in my body depleted, making my arms ache as I tried to push myself up on the grass.

Looking to my left, I saw Damian forcing himself to stand up. “Aurelia! Are you hurt?”

“Damian,” I said, lifting my hand up to reach his face as he neared me, kneeling by my side. As my fingers lifted, I didn’t recognize them.

They weren’t mine.

They were diseased blisters, the skin fading into a sickly gray color.

It didn’t work.

1.Teiimanam (Tee-maw-nawm): Clemmy’s dragon

2.Maxz (Mahz): Ability

3.Waimanimet (Way-mawn-imet): Abner’s dragon

4.Yamceeii (Yawm-say-ee): (Placed before the verb in a command)

5.Axuaeii (Ah-wah-ee): The verb to use

6.Uama (Wah-ma): Something to have/Theirs/Yours/His/Hers

7.Meiinaraux (Mee-naw-raw-ooh): Loker’s dragon

8.Tanaleiiman (Taw-naw-lee-mawn): Luella’s dragon

Chapter sixty-five

AURELIA

Iwas devastated by the results. It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Damian came over to hold me in his arms. His skin also turned a sickly gray color. Different purple blisters and boils emerged on his skin like disfigured bruises.

My eyes teared up as I watched everyone slowly fade away in an instant disease from what we touched on the ground. We weren’t safe anywhere. There was no one that could save us.

He held me, trying to comfort me. A tear trickled down his cheek, landing on my face, leading down as if it was mine all along.

“You have connected with me,” I said, whimpering as our bodies became soaked in pain and stings, remembering the beauty that marked the Celestials on my fingertips.

The pain that flamed our skin was merging, disintegrating into nothingness, combining with the diseased soil beneath us. Our filth and plague were fusing as one.

“What?” he asked, confused.

“Your tears. You’ve connected with me.”

“The tears!” he exclaimed, hope straining his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“The tale. It’s not the powers of the Scalebound. It’s the tears,” he said. “Yamceeii1axuaeii2uama3.”

“Oh, my scales, you’re brilliant. Clementine, Loker, Luella!” I cried, standing up from Damian’s arms, and looking for where to find them. My voice was hoarse and dry, crackling with each word straining through my throat. My body ached, the skin plastered, withering and shriveling by the second. Bone protruded through the knuckles at my fingers, the skin tearing in unnatural ways. The veins dulled.

I had no energy, and I needed to do it quickly before we became just another scattered plagued object of the Deathlies home.

Nearing Loker and Luella, something seemed off. Their sobs cracked the sky like a bolt of lightning, watching each other wither away from the plague.

“Loker! Luella!” I yelled, attempting to catch their attention as Loker was over Luella’s body.