Book 4: Chapter 3

Prika threw a bag off a cliff and exhaled. Tafel stood at the edge, staring at the bag as it fell and splashed into the water below. It was such a large bag, but it disappeared without a trace, lost underneath the foam above the sea. Tafel turned her head and frowned at Prika. “Is that what it means to clean up the mess? Throw the bags of garbage into the ocean?”

Prika raised an eyebrow. “How else would we clean up the mess?” She shrugged and stood up, resting on her hindlegs. She stretched her front legs forward and up before exhaling with a groan. She dropped back down onto all fours. “Well, that was the last of it. It’s time to pay Sung a visit!”

“You’re really interested in that mate-attracting device she claimed she’s made, huh?” Tafel asked. She disappeared, teleporting onto Vur’s head. “I don’t think there’s any device that could do that for you. If it were that easy to find love, no one would be single.”

“Eh, what do you know about love?” Prika asked with a snort. She spread her wings and leapt into the air. Vur followed after her. “Haven’t you ever heard of soulmates? This device is definitely going to locate mine for me. I can feel it. After all, Sung was always a little weird. Without that device, how did she find a mate before me? It’s simply not possible.”

It didn’t take long for the trio to reach a cave near the sea where Prika’s sister resided. Without knocking, Prika rolled aside a boulder in front of the entrance and stomped into the passageway. “Sung! Are you home? I’m here for that device of yours.” There was no response. Prika lumbered deeper into the passage and poked her head into a deep hole to her right. “Sung? You there?”

There was a thumping sound, and from the other end of the cave from one of the many tunnels, a red dragon’s head poked out. “Don’t you know what time it is, Prika?”

“Hmm?” Prika extracted her head from the hole and blinked at her sister. “What do you mean? Were you sleeping? Why does it matter what the time is? We never care about the time.”

Sung glared at Prika and snorted. “What did the words on the boulder outside say?”

“Do not disturb!” Prika nodded. “But when I rolled it away, the words on the other side told me to come in, so I did.”

Sung sighed. “And you wonder why you couldn’t find a mate for the longest time.” She shot a glance at Vur and gave him a small smile before whirling around. “Well, follow me. You wanted to look at that device, right?”

Prika trotted forward before Vur could even move. In her haste, she stepped on Sung’s tail, pinning it to the ground for a second, causing the red dragon ahead to stumble. “Oops,” Prika said and lifted her paw. “My bad.”

Sung turned her head around and gave Prika a dirty look before continuing down the passage, her tail raised higher up this time. “I shouldn’t have even told you about this device,” she said and snorted. Her voice echoed off the cave walls. “But I have a hunch, Vur here isn’t really your mate, right?”

“What nonsense are you spouting!?” Prika asked. “What do you mean Vur’s not my mate?”

“Well….” Sung didn’t even bother turning around. “He doesn’t smell like you. And since he’s not saying anything, I’m guessing I’m correct?”

“You’re wrong,” Prika said. “We’re mates.” She turned towards Tafel and Vur. “Isn’t that right?”

Tafel scratched her head. “Eh…, yeah, sure. We’re mates.”

Prika ground her teeth before exhaling. “And there you have it. So, what kind of device is this anyway? What does it do?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Sung said and turned to the right, entering a tunnel. “Here’s where I set it up.”

Upon entering the cavern, Prika, Vur, and Tafel were greeted by the sight of a giant metal ring embedded on the perfectly flat wall opposite them. There were lines and circles drawn on the wall within the ring, and Tafel thought they looked familiar but couldn’t quite tell what they were. Somehow, they resembled the symbols Exzenter had drawn to set up a teleportation formation between continents, but the symbols here looked fiercer. “Is this a transportation device?”

“Ooh, Vur’s pretty smart, huh?” Sung asked and glanced at Vur, completely ignoring Tafel, who wore an ugly expression on her face. “Yep, it’s exactly what you think it is. It’s a transportation device, but! It can actually transport you to another time or dimension. Think about it. There aren’t that many dragons here, right? So, why not go somewhere where dragons are abundant? It’s that simple.”

Prika blinked and looked around. “How do you turn it on?”

Sung walked over to the side of the room and flipped a switch. The ring on the wall hummed before spinning. A breeze gushed in from the passage, ruffling Tafel’s hair as mana surged into the room, accumulating on the wall. The symbols lit up, and a green portal appeared in the air. “Like this. Wait a moment,” Sung said and glanced at the wall that the lever was on. There were a bunch of symbols and buttons sticking out of it. “It’s not calibrated yet, so—”

Thump, thump, thump, thump!

“Uh…, Prika?” Sung turned around, but there was one less dragon behind her. “…Did she go in?”

“She went in,” Tafel said and nodded.

Sung sighed and slapped her paws against her face. “This moronic sister of mine….” She groaned and stared at the portal. “I even told her to wait.”

“Is there a problem?” Tafel asked.

Sung nodded. “She can’t come back without the receiver.” She pointed at a translucent crystal with green lines inside of it that was in the corner of the cavern. Her gaze fell on the green portal, and she sighed again. “And I already pressed a button that messed with the coordinates of the location, and I’m not sure what it was at before…. At least, it should be set in the same dimension. You’ll have to go in and find her and give her the receiver to bring her back.”

Tafel raised an eyebrow. “I have to do that? Why don’t you chase after her?”

Sung tilted her head. “Isn’t she your mate? Obviously, you should be the one to go.”