Brand spankin' new, never before seen (except on TG Storytime earlier today). I'll be posting this here at the same time as I do on TG Storytime and DeviantArt. Hope you enjoy.

~o~O~o~

Chapter One - The Dragon

I’d been flying for hours, longer than I should have been. I needed to find a place to sleep, or else I’d land somewhere on accident and somebody would find me. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere… There!

A large field, with a small lake. It was at least seven miles away from a town, and didn’t look too important. Hopefully, I could get some sleep there. My eyelids were already trying to forcibly close themselves on me, so I really needed to sleep. That lake would come in handy when I woke up, too. I was always thirsty after sleeping.

I made my landing and curled up a good fifty feet from the lake. I tucked my tail underneath me. If I didn’t, it had a habit of twitching while I slept. The sun was just starting to creep over the mountains when I closed my eyes.

It couldn’t have been twenty minutes later when I heard something nearby. I opened my eyes and saw a boy in the lake. The boy was too busy washing himself in the lake to notice me, it seemed. I couldn’t exactly blame him. I was lying down, sleeping when he arrived. It must have been the cool splash of water that he made when he decided to dive in that woke me up. I didn’t move, though, I simply laid there, and watched him. The innocence of youth… Not something his kind afforded mine. The boy climbed back out of the lake, ready to jump again.

Something moved. Oh, crap… It was my tail. I must have moved in my sleep. Sometimes, my tail has a mind of its own, especially when I’m trying to sleep. My tail hit the ground, shaking the ground and sending the boy face-first into the water. He surfaced a moment later and looked around. He noticed me for the first time, and crawled out of the lake. Would he run? It would be kind of funny if he did, seeing as he was naked. Humans hated being seen naked when they weren’t making babies.

The boy walked over to me and realized for the first time just what it was he was looking at. If he’d never seen a dragon before, I could understand his surprise at finding me near a lake in the middle of a field, but this was a common place to find us resting. Maybe he’d just never seen a dragon up close. That was common, too. I’d only ever seen a few humans up close, so the feeling was almost mutual.

I flared my nostrils a little, singed the grass near my face. The boy jumped back just a little bit, but his curiosity must have gotten the better of him, because he didn’t run. Instead, he leaned a little closer to me, studied me. I fully opened my eyes, which startled him again, then lifted my head up. My neck was long for my age, something I’m sure my parents would mention, if they were still alive.

“You’re being pretty rude,” I said, lowering my head again to look him in the eyes. It didn’t come out the way I expected it to. Clearly, I was still too tired to sound as annoyed as I felt. “I was sleeping.”

“I didn’t even see you there, until you opened your eyes.”

I chuckled. “Don’t know much about dragons, do you?”

“Only what I’ve read in my dad’s journals.”

“What’s that?”

“Pretty much boils down to dragons are dangerous.”

I wasn’t that surprised. It was the reason my kind were hunted, after all. “I look dangerous to you?”

“You just burned grass.”

“That’s what I do when I snore.” I moved my head closer to him. “Wanna see what happens when I’m tired of humans asking me questions?”

“So, are you dangerous?”

I shook my head. “Not to you. I don’t wanna make an enemy out of humans.”

The boy sat down in front of me. How did such soft skin deal with such hard ground underneath it? I had scales, and the dirt and grass around me still made it feel like I was sitting on a thousand tiny rocks.

“You’re not like the dragons my dad told me about.”

I laid my head back down. “There aren’t any dragons like the ones your dad has told you about.” Leave. Leave. Leave. “Why are you staying here if you think I’m dangerous?”

“You said you’re not.”

“It’s what I said, yes, but you’d be an idiot if you just assumed I was telling the truth.”

The boy stood up. “I can tell you’re too weak to stand, let alone kill me.”

“I know,” I growled, “I was sleeping.” I closed my eyes and pretended to get back to sleep. Hopefully it worked.

It didn’t. “Why are you sleeping here? The whole town uses this lake.”

That opened my eyes. I stood and looked around. There wasn’t anybody else in sight, thankfully. I knelt down and looked him in the eyes again. “What do you mean the whole town?”

“Well, mostly just the kids. We like to swim here.”

“Nude?”

“I like to skinny dip.”

“When will they be here?”

“I don’t know, it’s early. Some of my classmates might be here later.”

I leaned closer to him. “Do you any place I could go to get some sleep? I’m still exhausted, I was flying for almost an entire day.”

He smiled. “I do, actually.”

---

I wasn’t pleased at all with his ‘hiding place’. The boy instructed me to fly to the northeast, then come back south. When I arrived where he told me to go, I discovered a small town by the ocean, an ocean I hadn’t known was nearby. I could have found a nice, peaceful cave to sleep in.

In fact, a cave was exactly what I did find. A cave by the ocean, with a tunnel that led to a building, looked like the shed to a house. A few minutes after I got there, the boy walked inside and quickly shut the door, then did the same to a door that covered the tunnel I’d just come through.

“You can sleep here,” the boy said, sitting down on a pile of farm equipment. “My dad hasn’t been home in a few months, we haven’t heard from him in awhile. I’m about the only one that uses the shed.”

“Why?”

“Well…” He sighed. “My dad hunts dragons.”

I snorted out a laugh. “I should’ve guessed. So why do you want to help me sleep?”

He shrugged. “I’m interested in dragons. Dad hunts you, I’d like to study you.”

I curled up on the floor. “We’re not that interesting. We fly, we eat, we sleep, we crap. Other than the flying part, you humans do the same thing.”

“That’s not all you do. I couldn’t see you when you were sleeping in the field, and you’re pretty hard to miss.”

“That’s something humans don’t know about us. We’re like… How do I put this? We’re like chameleons, in a way. We can camouflage ourselves when we sleep, but only when we sleep.”

“Why would dragons need to camouflage themselves?”

I closed my eyes. “Because we want to sleep. And speaking of, you’re supposed to be letting me sleep, remember?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll be back in a little while to open the back door for you. Just don’t make a whole lot of noise, okay?”

I yawned. “I’m too tired to… Make…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence before I was out like a light.

---

Why did I smell fire?

I opened my eyes and saw the ground near my face was now burning. I quickly blew on it in an attempt to put it out, then stamped on it with my left hand. It hurt, but it didn’t take long to put it out that way. Yet another involuntary thing with me, one that had gotten me caught many times. I wasn’t lying when I’d told the boy that I burned things when I snored.

There was a rattling at the door to the tunnel. I lifted my head and watched the door. Did any of the boy’s friends know about the tunnel? Was his father, the dragon hunter, finally coming home? Crap. I couldn’t deal with that. He’d probably killed older, more experienced dragons than me.

The door to the tunnel opened, and the boy came in, carrying a fishing pole and two buckets. He quickly shut the door to the tunnel and set one of the buckets down in front of me. “Here, I thought you might be hungry.”

I looked in the bucket and saw three fish. Three small, wriggling, very puny fish. “Thanks,” I said. It was, sadly, a bigger meal than I’d had in days. “You got a stick?” I asked. He walked over to the corner and pulled what looked to be a simple metal rod out.

“Will this work?”

I grabbed it and shoved one of the fish onto the end, pulled it toward the center, then did the same with the other two. “Got one for you?” I asked. He pulled another rod and did the same to his fish as I’d done with mine, except that he only had two fish. I took his from him, and handed him mine. “You’re the one that caught them, you get more.” I coughed up a little fire on each rod and cooked the fish, something I did every time I caught fish.

We ate in silence. I ate slowly. I was hungry, but I knew it’d be awhile before I got another meal like this, so I took my time. The boy ate just as slowly, for whatever reason he was doing so. Maybe he didn’t get too many meals, either. No, he was too well built to be underfed. Maybe he just wanted to share a meal with me, I dunno.

I set my rod down and laid back down. “Thank you,” I repeated. “I haven’t eaten so much in awhile.”

“Why not? You’re… Y’know, huge.”

I glared at him. “Thank you for that most helpful comment.”

He laughed. “You talk like a girl.”

“I’ve been told that.”

“Are you… Gay?”

I glared at him again. “That’s not a question to ask when we’ve barely known each other a few hours.”

“So you are?”

“If you’re asking if I’ve been with female dragons, the answer is no. I haven’t been with male dragons, either.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know many more of my kind. Most of us are dead.”

“I know. I’ve read my dad’s letters and journals.”

“Let’s not talk about that.” I stretched a little bit. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Kineas. My parents call me Kenny.” He moved a little, but not a lot. “What’s your name?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a name. My parents were slaughtered before they could name me.”

“How old were you?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You didn’t have any reason to know. You might not have been born by then.”

“How long ago was it? I’m eighteen.”

“Oh. In that case, you would have been a year old.”

“You’re only seventeen? I thought you’d be smaller at that age.”

“I am small for my age. I’ve seen a few dragons that are younger than me, but bigger.”

“So,” Kenny said, “what kind of name do you want?”

“Huh?”

“You need a name, after all. What would you want to be called?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I hadn’t put much thought into it.”

“How about a simple name?”

“How about you name me? You’re the closest thing I can call a friend, so go ahead and find a name for me.”

He stood up and reached into a drawer over on the west side of the room, then walked back over to me with a notebook and a pencil. “I’ll make a list, and you pick which one you want, okay?”

If I had human skin, I’d be turning what humans called ‘red-faced’. “I don’t know how to read.”

“Oh. Yeah, that does make sense. Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Okay, an easier way to do this… I have a c…”

“What?”

“I said have again. My cousin died six months ago, he was on the front lines of the war with the Seles Plains tribe.”

“Sorry.”

“No. I just haven’t been able to accept it yet. Riley was like a brother to me. My dad’s not home a lot, my mom doesn’t really care too much about what I do as long as I’m not getting myself into trouble, and Riley actually paid attention to me, actually talked to me.”

I could tell this was painful to him. I’d never known anyone that I had that much of a connection to. I envied him for it, all the while being sorry that his cousin had died. Hell, the person I knew the longest was Kenny.

“So, do you mind the name Riley?” he asked.

“Are you trying to replace your cousin with me?”

He shook his head. “Not really, but it’s not a bad name, right?”

“No, it’s fine. If you want to name me Riley, that’s fine.”

He smiled. “Cool. Now, if you don’t mind me treating you like a dog, I’ll go get you a collar, okay?”

I lifted my head and glared at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Of course I’m joking. Jeez, you act a lot like a girl.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He walked over to the door. “I’m gonna head home for now. My mom is probably wondering why I’m still fishing. I’ll be back later if you’re still here, okay?”

“Okay. I’m still a little tired, so I’ll probably stay. Nobody’s gonna bother me, will they?”

Kenny shook his head. “Nope. This shed is pretty much ignored, since a lot of people here respect my dad. He’s the only one besides me that uses it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Kenny.”

He nodded. “Yep. See ya later.”

I laid my head back down and closed my eyes. The last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep was the sounds of children playing in the town

---

Riley! Riley! C’mon, wake up, we’ve gotta go!

Was Kenny actually talking, or was I dreaming? I couldn’t tell right away. I tried to open my eyes, but it was difficult. Why did I feel sleepier than I had earlier? I was struggling to open my eyes, and that had never happened before. What was going on?

Wake up, Riley!

There it was again, like the sound of a distant train horn, you think you hear it but you’re not quite sure until it happens again. Kenny was calling out to me. Why did he sound like he was so far away? The shed wasn’t that big. I kept trying to open my eyes, but I just couldn’t. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone was holding my eyelids shut.

“Get away from him!”

Things were clearing up. I could actually tell that Kenny was close by. I still couldn’t open my eyes. What the hell? I tried to lift my left arm, but it felt numb. Everything about me felt numb, right now. I tried to push past it, to get up anyway. I managed to make it to my feet, but I was shaking, and I fell back down quickly.

“He’s not going to kill anyone!” Kenny shouted. I managed to open my eyes and saw a shape in front of me, standing there with their arms spread out. I imagined that was Kenny, trying to protect me from someone or something. I couldn’t hear or see anyone else, though, why? “Just leave him alone! He’ll leave!”

Finally I heard someone else: “Out of our way, Kineas, or else!” Another shape stepped into view, someone taller than Kenny. “What would your father think if he saw you keeping this beast as a pet?”

“I’m not a pet,” I said, though my speech was slurred. Had I been drugged? Did the people of this town have something that could drug a dragon? What the hell was I gonna do? I tried to shake it off, to get myself back to at least fifty percent, but it was difficult. “Let me leave, and I won’t hurt any of you…” I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down… I could practically feel the floor already.

The other shape pushed past Kenny and pointed something at my face. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I didn’t really care, either. This guy wanted to kill me, and I didn’t want to die. I tried to build up some fire in my throat, but I was too weak, whatever they’d used on me was too damned good. “Your kind killed my son, scaleface,” the man said, “don’t think I’ll let you just walk out of here.” He knelt down in front of me and did something that I couldn’t quite see thanks to the glaze over my eyes. “I’m gonna carve ya, stick your head on my mantle and your wings over the empty bed that used to be my son’s. But not until after you’ve felt real pain.”

I bared my teeth. “You’d kill me for something I didn’t do? By your own logic, I should kill you for the harm your species has done to mine, softflesh.”

I felt something now. There was something in my hand. It was obviously a dagger or a knife, but the drugs were still disorienting me, so it felt more like a spear. I went to pull it out, but the man in front of me twisted it, and it hurt. I screeched, a sound that would normally hurt a human’s ears, but these people were clearly driven to see me dead. It looked like Kenny covered his ears, though.

The fire was building in my throat. I reached out for Kenny and pulled him to the ground, then spat as much fire as I could possibly muster at the dark shadow group ahead of me. It was about then that my eyes started to focus, and I swatted away the guy that had stuck his knife in my hand. I pulled the knife out and dug it into the floor beside him. “I told you to let me leave, and you’re gonna do just that, understand?”

I turned around and made my way through the tunnel to the ocean. I dipped my hand in the water and let it soothe me. It stung like a bitch. I couldn’t stay there, though, and needed to leave. The only problem being that I could barely keep my focus on anything to fly, I didn’t know how to swim, and if I tried to walk away, I’d likely be hunted down and killed within a couple hours.

In no uncertain terms, I was screwed.

I heard a noise and turned back toward the cave. It was Kenny, roughed up but otherwise unharmed, and I might have done that to him when I pushed him down. “You probably shouldn’t be here,” I said. My speech was starting to get back to normal. I still sounded somewhat drugged, though. “They’ll probably wanna kill you for harboring me.”

He shrugged. “I surprised you don’t wanna kill me.”

“You didn’t do anything to me. I don’t see the point in hurting people that don’t deserve it.” I laid down. I knew I didn’t really have the time to, but I needed to. I kept my hand in the water, it was helping. I’d heard stories from what few other dragons I’d met that water had special properties to us. Whether or not that was true, I didn’t really care at the moment. It was at least psychologically helpful.

“I know some place you can go, if you can manage to fly,” Kenny said as he sat down beside me.

“They won’t come after me?”

“I told them not to. Told them my dad wouldn’t harbor a dragon, but if one asked to leave, he’d let it.”

“Is that true?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I hope so.”

“Me too.” I turned to him. “So, where can I go?”

---

My hand still hurt like a sonuvabitch, but I managed to keep moving. Kenny had led me up a series of short paths to a forest on the outskirts of the town. There wasn’t a lot of space between the trees, but I kept following Kenny to wherever it was he was leading me.

I distinctly remembered Kenny saying I’d have to fly somewhere. “I thought you said we’d have to fly.”

“I forgot about her summer home, sorry.”

“Summer home?”

“Yeeeeeaaah, she’s kinda weird.”

“Why am I almost afraid of this?”

“No, no, she’s cool. She has a lot of fun using potions.”

“Potions? She’s a magic user?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve never seen her use any actual magic, just potions.”

“And you’re sure she’s safe?”

He smiled. “C’mon, Riley, it’ll be fine.”

“I still don’t even know what’s going to happen here, y’know.”

We continued through the forest, where I knocked down more trees that I was too big to fit between. Finally, we found ourselves at the doorstep of a small cottage that looked like it would barely fit Kenny, let alone anybody else.

Kenny knocked on the door, and the whole time we waited, I looked around the forest, hoping not to find some of Kenny’s neighbors following us. My hand was still sore, and since running required I be on all fours, that made running away from anyone practically impossible. This forest was so dense, I’d never be able to fly out.

The door to the cottage opened and a thirty-something woman appeared in the doorway. “Kineas, Kineas, Kineas… What have you done this time?”

Kenny was pretty obviously flustered seeing this woman. I had to admit, for a human, she wasn’t all that bad to look at.

“Can we come in, Sharena?” Kenny jerked a thumb at me. “He needs a place to hide for the night while his hand heals up.”

The woman - Sharena - moved out of the way. “Please, I’ve always enjoyed entertaining the company of dragons.”

Kenny walked in first, then I poked my head inside. On the outside, the place barely looked big enough to be an outhouse, but on the inside, it was more than twice the size of Kenny’s shed. “What’s going on here?”

Sharena smiled. “Trade secrets, sweetheart. Just come on in, okay? I promise you’ll fit through the door.”

I sighed. I don’t know why she thought I’d fit, because I was clearly bigger than the door. I moved a little bit of me in, and then I was suddenly in the middle of the room and Sharena was closing the door behind me. She walked over to what looked like a small drink bar and poured a drink into a glass. “So, Kineas, what can I do for you today?” she asked.

“How’d you do that?” I asked, interrupting Kenny from answering her question.

“A simple spell, even Kineas could do it, if he just tried.”

“So you are a magic user?”

She took a drink of whatever she had in the glass. “Everyone on this planet is a magic user, even dragons like yourself, it’s just that only a few people have the ability to cultivate enough mana to use the bigger spells.” She walked over to me and held her hand against my forehead. “You’ve got quite a bit of mana in you, Riley.”

“Sharena,” Kenny said, walking up to us, “wait a sec, how did you know Riley’s name?”

She was still smiling. “I can read your friend’s life through his mana, I can see his pain, his fear, his fury, his sorrow and his joy. You’ve had a relatively difficult life, Riley, even for a dragon. You were only hours old when your mother died, is that correct?”

I nodded.

“It was eight years before you met another of your kind, and the one you met was the white dragon.”

I nodded again.

“The white dragon?” Kenny asked.

“Your father doesn’t speak of him in his journals, Kineas, something I asked him to do. There’s only so much a young boy can learn about dragons before he starts to hate them, all because of the white dragon’s actions.”

“Every dragon knows who the white dragon is,” I said, “he’s a monster, born from pure hate.”

Sharena continued: “If the white dragon wasn’t around, humans and dragons would be able to live in harmony. He was the first of your kind to draw human blood, correct?”

“Only after he decided to kill my parents.” I took a deep breath. I was getting too angry.

“How’d you meet him?” Kenny asked.

“I was bathing in a lake near a small town. I don’t remember the town’s name anymore, and the town’s not there anymore. He tore it to shreds, burned it so far into the ground that the grass can’t even grow anymore.” I looked over at Kenny, who looked horrified. Sharena was right, thanks to this very story about the white dragon, he’ll probably start to hate us. Hopefully not me, though. “I don’t know how many people survived, maybe just me, a boy my age and his sister, and the white dragon.”

Sharena nodded. “I remember that day. I was there. So was Kineas’s father. We were hunting the white dragon, and we just barely managed to make it out of there alive.” She walked back over to her drink bar. “I don’t have anything to outright heal your hand, there’ll always be a scar, but I can make it look and feel years old.” She took two bottles from under the bar. “And I have something else for you, as well.”

“What?” I asked.

“Obviously, you’re going to stir up quite a bit of racket anywhere you go by virtue of just being a dragon. If you drink this,” she held up a bottle of orange liquid, “you’ll be hidden. By all accounts, you’ll be a normal teenage human. You’ll be able to move freely.”

“For how long?”

“As long as you choose. Should you decide to acquaint yourself with the finer points of potion making, you could make yourself a reversal potion quite easily within a week with simple things from your local pharmacy. Just, for the love of all things sacred, don’t forget the drain cleaner, it’s one of the most important things, and too many would-be potion makers decide to skip it, it causes their basements to explode.”

That was just… Yeah, I was confused. “Is this gonna hurt?” I asked.

“You’ll fall asleep within seconds, and when you wake up, you’ll be a new human.”

“And the other one?”

She held up the bottle with light blue liquid. “This is the one that will heal your hand. I suggest you take it first, since it’ll take effect immediately.”

I took the bottle from her hand and gulped it down instantly. It tasted funny, but I didn’t feel anything. “Nothing’s happen - “ I was cut off by a sharp pain in my hand. It hurt about as much as the knife blade, and it was concentrated right on that spot. I screamed, loudly, and nearly fell onto my side. It was sheer pain, and it wasn’t stopping.

And then it did. It didn’t hurt anymore, and it really did look and feel as though I’d gotten the wound years ago. “You didn’t say it’d hurt,” I said, wiping away the pain sweat I’d worked up.

“Sorry, sweetie. You’ve got a pretty low pain threshold for a dragon, Riley.”

“I’ve noticed.” I wiped more sweat from my brow and then looked at the orange potion she had in the second bottle. “I’ll be indistinguishable from any other human?”

“No one will be able to tell the difference.”

“Not even if I step on a scale? I weigh a lot, y’know.”

She smiled again. “This is magic, sweetheart, it can do much more than people think. You step on a scale, you’ll weigh no more than the average teenage human.”

I took a deep breath. “So, what am I gonna look like?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“This scares me, y’know.”

“You’re one step closer to human already, Riley, just take the next one.”

I took another deep breath. Take the plunge, take the plunge, take the plunge… I took the bottle with the orange potion and poured it into my mouth. After one quick gulp, I set the bottle down on the table beside me, and then I was on the floor with my eyes glazed over, and I was out like a light.

~o~O~o~

Chapter Two - The Knight

I was ready to draw my blade the second someone came into view. The hiding spot I'd picked was out of the way, but that didn't mean an attendant wouldn't step in for a smoke or something. I didn't want to kill anyone, but I couldn't afford to be seen. I needed to rest, but the odds that I'd be able to while looking out for anyone were slim. My nearly ten hour trek from one continent to the next was a mistake.

I closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment. I needed just a quick rest. Twenty-five seconds of sleep wouldn't be a problem, would it? No. I could afford that. I just needed to keep track of time. I opened my eyes again a moment later, feeling no more rested than I had been before. The idea that I could get any rest at all was likely a mistake. I should have known that.

I felt it when the train hit something on the rail. There shouldn't have been anything on the rail. I stood and nearly fell over when the train came to a sudden stop. That wasn't good in any way. I needed to move, to get off the train. I kept a firm grip on the hilt of my blade and slipped between the multitude of boxes in the train car.

They were fast. I counted six of them, all dressed in black. I could tell they were here for me. One of them slashed open the crate I was hiding behind, only to find me gone. I flicked on my flashlight, making him look up, smiled at him, then swung my sword and lopped his head clear off. I sprung from the ceiling of the train car and took out another one of them, bisecting him from right shoulder to left hip.

The other four rushed me immediately, but they weren’t difficult to kill. A severed head, a broken arm and impaled chest, a pair of legs kicked out from underneath a man I cut in half, and finally a simple impalement. When I was done, four more carcasses laid among the two that were already there.

I sheathed my sword and used a crate to brace myself when the train suddenly began to move again. Great. Whatever the found on the tracks must have been cleared off. Oh well. It just meant we’d get to wherever this train was going, finally. I didn’t even care what the destination was, I just wanted to be gone.

---

The train came to a more controlled stop somewhere. I could hear people outside, one of them mentioned a dragon. The outer door of the train car opened, and I ducked out of sight again. I had to decide whether or not I was going to hop off the train here - and potentially kill this man - or get off elsewhere.

“Can you believe this? Somebody dumped some mannequins back here!” The man picked up one of the limbs. “Good ones, too. This really looks like blood.”

Another man pulled himself into the train car and looked around at the bodies. “These aren’t mannequins, dumbass! Somebody greased these guys!” The second man pulled out a radio. “We’ve got… I don’t even know how many corpses in the eighth car, looks like they were chopped up, we need security here.”

Crap.

I got ready to draw my blade, but then I heard shouting from outside. The two that had gotten in the train car jumped out and went of to see what it was. There was cursing, and fighting. Dammit, the war hadn’t followed me, had it? I drew my sword and rushed out the car after the other two.

It was worse than I thought. It wasn’t the war that had followed me. It was him.

He was one hundred and forty feet tall, at least twice as long and I don’t know how wide. Colored bone white, with a great deal of blood splotched around his body, as if he painted himself with it. His eyes were solid black, with small white dot pupils that always looked like they were staring at me. His head was horned, like he’d been spawned by a demon rather than a dragon. Plumes of fire burst from his nose every time he took a breath. Across his left eye was a scar, though it was hard for me to believe he’d ever been injured in any way other than self-inflicted harm. Another scar adorned his stomach, this one larger, more recent.

I jumped upward and toward the nearest building. It had been quite some time since I saw this dragon. I’d been fourteen when he tracked me down and slaughtered my sister. How could he have found me now? Was he stalking me? What could he possibly want with this town?

The dragon lifted his head and opened his mouth, letting out a roar that I was too familiar with. I stood there, like I always had, just like that day. I couldn’t move.

Crap!

---

Nine Years Ago…

I dropped my dragon toy down the stairs and quickly stumbled after it. How could I do that? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Mom grabbed me by the arm and stopped me from falling on my face. “I thought I told you to go to bed, young man,” she said, a playful tone in her voice. Mom rarely ever reprimanded me, even when I did something wrong.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

“So why were you playing in the hallway?”

“Because Circi wouldn’t let me play in our room.”

“Maybe because you and your sister need some sleep, sweetie.” She walked down to the landing halfway down the stairs and picked up my dragon, then tossed it to me. I fumbled with it for a second, but I didn’t drop it again. “Now go to bed, okay?”

I nodded, then turned around and started to walk to my room, but I stopped when I heard the front door rapidly open and close. I heard panicked voices. Dad was home! I bounced down the stairs and saw him arguing with Mom. What was going on? He pulled his sword and sheath off of his belt and placed them on the table, then grabbed a suitcase from the kitchen closet. What was going on?

“Dad?” I asked, stepping away from the stairs.

He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Cres, go wake your sister up, we have to leave now.”

“Why?”

“Don’t question me, Cres, we just need to go!”

Dad didn’t yell at me often. In fact, this was only the second time in my life that he had yelled at me. The first had been when I touched his sword the first time. Whatever was going on, this was serious.

I ran up the stairs and opened the door to my bedroom, which I shared with my older sister, Circi. She wasn’t a heavy sleeper, so it took me little time to wake her up. “Dad says we need to go,” I said, “he won’t say why.”

“Dad’s home?”

“Yeah. He says we need to leave. He sounded worried.”

The ground started to shake. What could be causing that? What was going on? I followed Circi downstairs and then she was pushing me back up the stairs. I only caught a glimpse, but I watched fire burst through the front door.

And I heard screams.

The ceiling suddenly caught on fire. I ducked, like I’d been taught in school. Why was everything burning? Where was this fire coming from? I followed Circi into the bedroom, where she opened the window and looked down. “Okay,” she said, turning back to me, “we need to jump, Cres.”

“But, Mom and Dad…”

“I’m sure they made it out, but we can’t get out downstairs, so we’ve gotta jump out the window, okay?”

“But we don’t have anything to land on!”

“I’ll go first, and I’ll catch you, but you’re gonna havta jump when I tell you, understand?”

I nodded, then watched as she climbed into the window, then jumped down. I quickly rushed to the window and looked out and down to see if she was okay. I didn’t want to think of the alternative. I watched her crawl out of the bush that Dad planted outside his study. Good. I didn’t want her to be hurt.

“Jump, Cres, now!”

I climbed into the window and took a deep breath. I just had to jump, that’s all. It wouldn’t be hard. I just had to jump.

The heat on my back made the decision for me. The fire had spread to the bedroom, and everything was burning up, popping, crackling. I let go of the sides of the window and felt gravity doing its work. I fell, and landed in the bush, just as Circi tried to catch me.

She pulled me out of the bush and brushed me off. It didn’t look like I had any cuts or anything, so I was okay. The smoke was billowing out of the first floor windows, and I could tell nothing on that floor would be exempt from the fire’s rampage. I hoped Mom and Dad got out before it got too bad.

Circi grabbed my hand and pulled me around the house, where we saw that it wasn’t just our house, but the majority of the neighborhood and the town, as well. There were fires everywhere, and not everyone was lucky enough to make it out of their homes. I saw more than one flaming corpse hanging half out an upstairs window.

“Circi! Cres!” Mom shouted from somewhere. I spotted her before Circi did, and Dad was there as well. They were running toward us. Time slowed to a crawl for just a moment as a giant foot came down in between my parents and me. I looked up and saw black eyes with white pupils staring down at me.

The eyes turned from me to my parents, and then a roughly half-circle shape appeared in the blackness underneath the eyes. The half-circle was red-orange, and then it opened further. The red-orange in the half-circle spread outward, in a cone-like shape. It grew, and grew, and grew, and then encompassed my mom and dad.

Heat spread from the cone, but I was frozen solid, watching my parents burn.

The fire shooting from the dragon’s mouth stopped almost as quickly as it began, and the dragon moved on, torching the rest of the town.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I simply sat there, on my knees, looking at the charred remains of my parents. Hours passed, and I didn’t move.

I couldn’t move.

---

Present Day

That same dragon was standing in front of me yet again, staring at me yet again, scaring me yet again. Thanks to that roar, I just couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and tried to find something else to focus on. It wasn’t easy. No. Not just difficult. It was impossible. There was only one thing I could think of anywhere around me, and it was the dragon.

“You!” I shouted, hoping my voice sounded less like a frightened boy and more like a man who could actually fight a dragon. “Have you been following me?”

The dragon looked in my direction again, but didn’t say anything, or move, or do anything other than stare at me. It was like he was looking through me, somehow, like he knew something about me that I didn’t.

He was taunting me.

I remembered that I had my sword drawn, the sword that had been my father’s. It had been the only thing spared when the house burned down that day. It was the only memento I had of my entire family.

The dragon stood on his hind legs and spread his wings. He roared once again, then flapped his wings and took off. The wind from his flapping wings nearly knocked me down, but I braced myself, and when the dragon was gone, I felt my heart rate return to normal.

I looked around the train yard and saw several warehouses on fire, with people dragging bodies out of them. So many dead, all thanks to that dragon, who may very well be following me.

Crap.

---

The sun was setting as I made my way through the Seles Plains, using the railroad tracks as my one and only guide. It’d be too difficult to see the tracks, soon, thanks to the clouds that were about to blot out any moonlight I’d potentially get. I looked around, hoping to find some place to rest for the night.

An arrow flew past my head. I drew my sword and prepared for the oncoming assault. My muscles tightened up, ready for the battle. The Plains Tribe always hunted in groups of six or eight. There would be two archers, one on either ridge surrounding me, and between two and four lancers. There’d be a single swordsman, who’d be the one to engage in single combat, and then finally one commander, who’d be kept out of the fight.

I looked to the ridges, but there was no one there. My eyes roamed downward and to the left, where I saw something that looked like a cave. The sun was almost down entirely, so my night vision would be kicking in soon, but for the moment, I could barely see the cave. I took one step off the tracks toward the cave, and another arrow nearly hit me in the back of the head. I spun around and held my blade ready.

I hadn’t been expecting a lone girl who didn’t even look a day older than me. “All the money you’ve got, and your fancy sword,” she said, ready to loose the arrow she was aiming at my head. She was clearly one of the Plains Tribe, going by her clothes and her war paint. The war paint was a recent addition to the Tribesmen, based more on old myths and legends than on whether or not it really frightened their targets. She was wearing a cloth skirt, a bikini top and a pair of combat boots that looked to be a size or two too big.

There was something odd about this girl, though. I’d met many Plains Tribe women, older and younger than this girl, and none of them seemed as… confident as she seemed to be. Something about this girl told me that if I didn’t comply, that arrow really would be in my face.

I slipped my sword back in the sheath and unclipped it from my belt, then knelt down and set it on the ground. As I did, my free hand went to the knife hidden and sheathed on my boot. I stood up and held the drawn knife in my hand, then tapped the side of the blade against my arm. “You sure I can’t block it with my knife?”

She smirked, then disappeared into a light puff of smoke. Now that was quite the trick. I knelt down again to grab my sword, and then I was suddenly looking up at her arrow pointing straight at my eye, that smirk still on her face. No wonder she seemed confident, she could move faster than anyone could see.

I just wasn’t too happy about an arrow in my face.

She said, “If you thought I’d missed you earlier, you’re wrong, I just prefer not to kill people when I can rob them.”

“You’re pretty good.”

“No, I’m pretty broke, and I need your money. Your sword would just be a bonus.”

“How do you do that?”

“This is a robbery, buddy, so I hope you understand that I’m not here to answer twenty questions.”

“I’m intrigued.”

“And I’m bored, so either gimme the money and the sword, or I’m just gonna leave.”

“Really? You’re trying to rob me, but if I don’t give you anything, you’re just going to walk away with me alive?”

“Y’know, that is actually a major hole in this story. Hrm… I guess I could kill you, but you could have a family somewhere expecting you. On the other hand, you’re walking the train tracks at night alone and you’re packing a sword, so odds are good you’re a loner, meaning I could grease you right here and now and nobody would ever know or probably even care.” She drew the arrow back further. I had little time to act. “Option one or option two?”

“Is there a three?”

“There’s barely a two.”

“No three?”

“Two’s disappearing as we speak.”

“I like three.”

“Option two has officially been taken off the list, so I guess you’re gonna get that arrow in the head you asked for.”

I slammed the knife into her foot and quickly grabbed for the arrow she was about to lose her grip on. I just barely managed to stop it from going into my eyeball and pulled the bow from her hands. “Yep, option three.” I stood up and smiled at her. “Works every time.”

---

I sat against the cave wall, carving the core out of an apple that I’d found discarded along the tracks. The girl was beside me, playing with her bow. I would have tied her up if I thought it would actually do anything. She was calm now, didn’t seem like she wanted to rob me anymore. Maybe she’d just been lonely.

I cut out a chunk of apple and threw it in my mouth. “What’s your name?” I asked.

She looked up from her bow in surprise. “What?”

“Your name,” I said, slipping another chunk of apple into my mouth. “Everybody’s got one.” I cut out one last chunk of the apple then tossed her the half I didn’t eat. “Mine’s Cres.”

She pulled her own knife - much bigger than my own, I noticed - and started taking chunks out of the apple. “Sarika.”

“Nice name.”

“It’s the only thing I remember from my mother. The last thing I heard her say.”

“What happened to her?”

She closed her eyes. This was painful to her, I could tell. “I was only five when it happened. We were crossing the ocean between Qinata and Seles. My father was rowing the boat, my mother holding onto me. I remember the water around the boat started to heat up, like… Like somebody turned on a stove burner and we were the ones boiling. I looked at my dad, and it was almost like he knew exactly what was coming.”

“How do you know?”

“The look on his face. He seemed… Resigned to it. Not even three seconds before it happened, he closed his eyes, and I watched a tear fall down his cheek. That was when the fire shot straight up, out of the ocean, and incinerated my dad. I grabbed for my mom, and she held me as close as she could. I started crying, and she whispered things in my ear. She tried to soothe me, but it didn’t help.”

She reached up and wiped tears from her face. “You don’t have to tell me anymore if you don’t want to.”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll tell you.” She took a deep breath and then continued: “Its head rose out of the water first, those eyes… Black as the night. Its scales were a kind of - “

“Bone white,” I finished for her, “with spots of blood all around him as if he painted himself with it.”

Sarika’s eyes were full-on watering now, and I could tell that mine would likely follow. “You’ve seen it, too? The white dragon?”

I nodded, slowly. “I was nine, he took everything from me. Destroyed my home.” I picked up my blade from beside me. “This is all I have left of my mother, my father and my sister.”

“It’s not just us he stole lives from, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve lost friends, loved ones and homes to the white dragon.” She unslung her quiver from over her shoulder and unzipped a special pocket. She pulled three arrows from the pocket, arrows with very unique heads. “These were given to me by a man who lost his children to the white dragon. He was no good with a bow, but he could make arrowheads.”

“And he gave them to you?”

She nodded. “I don’t rob people who’ve lost stuff to the white dragon.”

“Only three?”

“He said they came from a special kind of sword, the only sword that’s injured the white dragon. He only had enough material for three arrowheads.”

“You mean somebody’s stood in front of that beast and stopped pissing their pants long enough to hurt him?”

She nodded again. “It’s hard for me to believe, too, but I could tell he wasn’t lying.”

I took the arrows from her and examined the heads. They were plain, simple triangles with sharp points. The man clearly understood that whoever tried to kill this dragon with these arrows wouldn’t give two shits whether or not they had a special design. I tossed them back to her. “Does the dragon have a weak point or something?”

She shook her head. “Not unless you count the eyes, but I’m pretty sure he told me to aim there because they’re eyes.” She returned the arrows back to her special quiver pocket. “I only ever saw the white dragon one time after he murdered my parents. He was too far away for me to do anything, and I still wasn’t as good with my bow as I am now. I don’t remember where I was, but it was eight or nine years ago.”

I stared at the fire. She could have been there, my hometown. “I saw him today,” I said, my voice low. “He stared at me like he knew exactly who it was he was looking at. Like he’d made it his personal quest in life to track me down and hurt me.”

She whispered, “Sorry.”

I tossed the apple core at the fire, causing sparks to shoot out. Sarika pulled back a little. “It’s time I make it my quest to hurt him. I’m tired of running away from him.” I looked over at her. “I could use your help, seeing as you obviously know how to handle yourself in a fight.”

She nodded. “Nothing would make me happier than to see that bastard’s head lopped off.”

“Thank you, Sarika.”

“What few friends I have call me Sari,” she said.

“Thank you, Sari.”

“No, thank you for asking me for help. Nobody’s ever done that before.” She set her quiver down on the ground. “Now, do you mind if we start this quest tomorrow? I need some sleep.”

I choked back a laugh. I tossed some dirt on the fire to kill it, then closed my eyes so that I could get to sleep.