The Dragon Society - Introduction
#1 of The Dragon Society
Hey folks, this is my first story. For those of you looking for yiffy goodness, this isn't the purpose of this particular tale. Yet, anyway. I don't have any plans to introduce that particular piece of storytelling yet. The fun thing is, this whole story actually is based on a bizarre dream that I had. I am also putting this up here to apologize for the constant changing of tense--- I probably should have gone through and corrected it all to one or the other, which is something I'll stick to in future stories. And I think I'm going to have to introduce some female characters at some point too.
At any rate, enjoy!
Stephen was mostly large. Not particularly powerful, nor really fit. He was tall and wide with the shoulders of a defensive tackle. He wore his hair normally, but few ever saw it because of his ubiquitous backward baseball cap. His clothing was normal; t-shirts with button-down plaid shirts over them, with blue jeans. He wore glasses, and had bright blue eyes, a sharp contrast to his dark skin. He had a chinstrap goatee that went around his round face. All in all, a pretty normal fellow.
He was really very smart, with good analysis abilities. Unfortunately, that made him a very lazy student, so his grades were not that great. He was lucky enough to be given a great talent for singing, but he wasn't a music major. He was a student at a university in the western US, a true college town where the city lived and died with the university and everyone was a sports fan. He didn't reguarly play any sports, but he did occasionally enjoy a friendly game of racquetball with his friend Tim.
Tim was a great foil for Steve. Small and thin, he was a diligent athlete; he specialized in fencing as the only sport he really played competitively. He worked a great deal on his classes, which was good for him, because he wasn't quite as smart as Steve, but he more than made up for it with his hard work, and got better grades. Their tastes were drastically different. Tim always dressed well, even if the situation didn't call for it. Standing next to each other, it was clear that they had to be friends - they looked too different.
Life was pretty normal for the two of them. Steve lived in the dorms and Tim lived in an apartment off campus. That was interesting, as well as somewhat counterintuitive. Steve had an old early 90's sedan/luxury car that he drove, and the most complicated thing Tim had ever driven was a go-kart. One would think that it would be the other way around, but it just wasn't so.
They both had ample fantasy background. They played tabletop RPGs frequently, and both were immersed in different MOORPGs. They had a mutual friend named Ray, Tim's roommate, who was the game master of most of their games, but who was also the only member of their circle of friends to hold a regular, year-round job. Maybe their background in the world of fantasy was what helped them stay sane in the bizarre story that was to come.
It began one day, when Steve and two other friends, Ogre and Dave, were on their way to Tim and Ray's place to play one of the many games of tabletop RPGs that Ray hosted. Ogre's real name was Jeremy, but he'd earned the name Ogre throughout the years for his temper and size. He was shorter than Steve, but just as round, giving him an impressive barrel chest. He was thicker than Steve, wore his hair bald, and had a goatee. Dave was taller than Steve, but thinner than him, and wore his hair in an outdated bowl-esque haircut He was also the oldest member of the group, by about three years. They arrived at the apartment (where Steve was set to move in when the current semester ended) and began their walk to the door, talking about nothing in particular. Something caught Steve's eye, and he bent down to pick it up. It was a coin, one he'd never seen before. He picked it up and got a closer look at it; there was a face on it he didn't recognize. He noted that there were four more there laying on the ground. He grabbed them, too.
"Hey Ogre, you see a coin like this before?"
"No, what is it?"
"I have no idea. I bet they're foreign, looks like some kind of head of state or something on it. Here, keep one, it looks like someone dropped a bunch here. Maybe they're worth something."
Steve handed another one of the coins to Dave and up they went into the apartment. Tim and Ray were waiting for them, having already set up the game. They had each of the required classes, so they made a good team, and they breezed through the adventure, not to the pleasure of Ray, who didn't think a session was any good unless the players had serious trouble with something. A bit perturbed, he went to get a beer.
"Hey Ray, check this out." Steve threw Ray one of the coins. Ray was built like a fireplug. Shorter than any other of the group of friends, he still had muscle on him, but that didn't hide his slight gut. He caught the coin.
"No, what the hell is it?"
"It's a coin, isn't that obvious enough? I found it outside, got no idea what the hell the guy is on it." Not to be left out, Tim received a coin as well.
"I don't recognize the face on here, it's probably not American," said Tim.
"I was thinking about that myself," said Steve. "The script isn't anything I recognize. It doesn't really look like any writing I've ever seen."
"But I have," said Dave. "Didn't you ever see the Lord of the Rings movies? That's obviously Elvish."
"Bullshit," everyone agreed. To be sure, they put in the first movie and got a good look at the ring's writing and compared it to the script on the coins. "Nope, that's not Elvish. Looks like it, though, I could understand where you're coming from with that thought, Dave."
"Well, if it isn't Elvish, what is it?" asked Ogre.
"I looked around on the internet and I didn't see any references to whoever that face might be, or the script," said Ray after having returned from the other room, holding his now half-empty beer.
"Must be some kind of novelty thing, then," concluded Steve.
Everyone agreed with that, and pocketed their coins. It was pretty much the end of that discussion, they decided, and then spent the rest of the night talking about the
tabletop game and what horrible, devious thing that Ray was going to cripple them with next session. They finished up with some good drinking, except for Steve, who had to drive himself, Ogre, and Dave back to the dorm.
It was after he went to sleep that the strange things began to happen.
He dreamed. That in and of itself wasn't unusual, it was the content of the dream that was odd. Of course, all dreams are odd, but this was odder than most. Sometimes when you dream, it seems real, and you can feel things happening in your arms and legs, and you're active. These dreams aren't common, so they often stick out, if you can remember their content.
In this dream, Steve wakes up. He's been sleeping on a little pile of hay. He knows because he still has some sticking in his skin. His skin? He looks at his body. His gut and man-breasts are gone. Instead, he sees a sculpted frame, defined with muscles. I could get used to this, his dream-self thinks to itself. On the other hand, he knows in the background, in his cognizant brain behind watching this scene that he hasn't been physically transported or anything, because he's not wearing his pajamas. That's when he decides to get up. He's not wearing any clothes at all, and he finds this curious, but he feels unconcerned. He leaves his little room with the straw bed, and he enters a round room. It's incredibly large. He looks and sees an elevated series of desks, like in Congress, and a further elevated desk in the middle of them. The men and women seated behind the desks are all older, but some are younger than others--they are seated towards the edges of the platform. In the middle, an older man sits. He immediately recognizes the man there as the one on the coin. The man smiles.
"Good, initiate. You have arrived."
Blinking, Steve looks around. Initiate? What the hell? It's then that he notices his four friends also standing there. Their bodies are all also improved as well, with muscles where once there was fat. Steve blinks and rubs his eyes, but it all stays the same. He looks back at the old man, who smiles again, and starts laughing. It's then that he physically feels something inside of him snap.
Steve awakens from his dream (nightmare?) in a cold sweat. He rolls over and gets a drink of lemonade from his fridge, shaking his head as he shakes off the haze of sleep, what very little there is. It all feels so vivid... what a creepy dream. He takes out the coin and takes a look at it, the old man on the face still there and still the same. He flips it over to the other side, where there seems to be the head of a dragon. "What the hell is that? Looks like something out of the games I play." He grabs a book and compares a picture within to the picture on the coin. No match. He shakes off the heebie-jeebies that the whole experience gave him, and decides to head back to sleep. Fortunately, this time his sleep isn't disturbed by disturbing dreams.
The next morning, he rises out of bed and stretches. It's a Tuesday, which means he has voice lessons with one of his professors, and then he has a couple choirs that meet that day as well. He finishes memorization of one of his songs, and then goes through the choir classes with nothing interesting occurring. He eats lunch, and then heads back to his room to play some computer games. His cell phone rings, and he picks up.
"Hey, what's happening?" Tim's voice comes through the line.
"Oh, just about to sit down on my MMO and play some, probably a long time, since I have nothing better to do. You?"
"Ah, I was just gonna tell you about this weird-ass dream I had last night."
Hoping it might be a coincidence, Steve allows Tim to tell the story of basically the exact same dream that he had that evening. A streak of cold shoots up his spine, because now he knows that it was no coincidence. He and Tim talk briefly about it, then it's agreed that they should all meet to talk about the bizarre dream.
Arriving at the apartment, they order out for some pizza, deciding that this is going to be an evening of long talk. Ray speaks up first.
"Let's compare our stories; do our dreams differ in any way?"
Everyone runs through their own tale, and except for differences in the way each tell it, it seems that all the dreams were exactly the same. They sit and stew for a while, and after a while, all the coins are out, with each looking at them in turn. That old man still rests on each coin, and it doesn't appear to ha ve changed. Dave speaks up.
"I'm gonna get rid of this coin. I think it's probably where the dreams came from!"
They all think that's a good idea, and soon all the coins rest in the garbage can. Then the pizza arrives and they forget all about the coins for a while. Steve's phone rings. He reaches into his pocket to get his phone, and inexplicably, the coin has returned, resting comfortably against his phone. The call forgotten, Steve jumps up.
He holds up the coin for everyone to see. "Son of a bitch, it's back in my pocket again!" Quickly, the others all check their pockets, and they indeed have returned. They all shout, and there is a general ruckus as each of the group is infuriated and confused about the coins. They start throwing them, only to find them still in their pocket. This continues for a while, until Ogre, the biggest-voiced, yells for everyone to "STOP! We have to be calmer about this--- for some reason, these damn things seem attached to us, so throwing them isn't going to get rid of them!"
They all sit down, ashamed that they responded in such a juvenile manner. Now they really are silent, each holding his coin. Suddenly, Dave perks up. "Hey, now that I think about it, doesn't that room that we saw in our dreams look a lot like the basement of the Round Cafeteria?" (The Cafeteria was named after a Dean of one of the schools, Herbert Round)." Dave was the only member of them to have really seen that place, since he worked on the construction crew that repaired (and subsequently closed off) that particular floor of the building. He quickly explained to the others about it, who all had not been in school when that renovation had occurred. They finished up the pizza and headed for the cafeteria. By now, it was late, and the place was closed for the evening.
They arrived at the Round at around midnight, having spent a long time stewing over the coins. They arrived at the door to the place. Inexplicably, it was unlocked. The Round usually closed at 10:00 or so, so they found this unusual at best. They entered the building, one at a time. No one brought a flashlight, foolishly, but that didn't matter, as some ambient light managed to stick through from outdoor lamp posts, as well as some lights inside the building. Dave led the way to the stairs that led down to the lower floor of the building. Fate, figuring that it was about time for some more strange things to happen, saw fit that at the bottom of the stairs, the door that led into the room was wide open. Light was streaming out from it. Pulses quickened among the five. Ogre, being the most assertive, kind of scoffed at the nervousness of the rest of the group.
"What are you guys so freaked out about? It's just a door." He then proceeded to walk down. When he passed through the door, however, he shimmered and disappeared.
The rest of the group freaked out. They shouted and ran over each other running away from the door. They were about 60 feet away from the stairs when Steve stepped out in front of them and stopped them with an authoritative "Wait a damn minute!" And they stopped. "We can't just leave him down there--- what happened to him we don't know, but that isn't right! We can't just run off when we don't know what happened!"
To everyone else, it seemed to make perfect sense. So they walked back to the stairs. Still no sign of Ogre. They didn't know what to do; what had happened? Steve shrugged.
"There's no turning back. We need to find out what happened to him! There's got to be some explanation for that bizarre... teleportation." Steve finished his statement by striding bravely down the stairs. That of course didn't belie how utterly terrified of what might happen when he stepped through that door. In the back of his mind, though, he had some idea. He reached the bottom of the stairs, then the door and---
He woke up on a small pile of hay. He shivered all over; here was the dream. This was what they'd seen in their dream. He looked around; there were cold stone walls around. The outline of the room looked sort of like the lower room of the Round. The difference was, it seemed to be made of different materials. The doors didn't match what he'd seen before either. He stood up and remembered something. He looked down at his body--- sure enough, the excess fat on his frame (something he'd been used to for a very long time) was all gone. He shivered again. He again realized that he was naked--- this time, he felt odd about it, because this time he knew it really was him this time. Now the shivers were coming on regularly. Everything was just like the dream.
He swallowed hard and opened the door to what he knew exactly was on the other side. There was the raised platform, with the older people sitting nearer the middle, the younger to the outside, and that damned old man there in the middle, smiling irascibly as all the other times he'd seen him. As he got out there, he saw that Ogre was already out there, and the other three (who had apparently stumbled in after they'd seen him stumble through the portal and disappear just as Ogre had. Why'd I have to find those damn coins?
And he arrived at the same position as to where he was in the dream. And he looked up at the old man, who, as always was smiling. "Good, initiate. You have arrived." This time, though, Steve isn't just going to stand by.
"What the hell is that? And this?" he asks, indicating his body. "And all this?"
But just like in the dream, the old man has no answers for him. He just smiles and starts to laugh. And that snap that happened in the dream happens now.
But this time, there's no merciful awakening to stop him from enduring what follows. His eyes screw shut as he feels his body alter itself. His fingers and toes extend, and there is uncomfortable crunching and sliding sounds all around him. He feels like yelling out in pain, but he finds it isn't hurting--it's just an incredibly uncomfortable sensation. He feels something shoot out from his forehead, and there is extra weight there. His shoulders ache and tremble as he feels his skin stretch out and something dislodge itself from its back. Now that does hurt a little bit. But he gets past that sensation as his neck, wrists, hands, shoulders, feet , and ankles itch uncontrollably, then the itching ceases completely. He feels something burst from behind him, and he momentarily worries that he's vacated himself. He finds himself on his knees, eyes still clamped shut. Eventually, the crunching, sliding and shaping sounds finally end. There's panting from all corners of the room.
At the same time, all of the others in the room, all four of his friends are experiencing the same sensations. Some are a little different than others, different things happening. No one dares open their eyes, for fear of what they might see. Steve opens his eyes first, and he stares at the man in the high chair. Except there is no man. What is seated is what appears to be an anthropomorphic dragon with a lengthy white beard. He grins a toothy grin. Steve wants to scream, but he's too overwhelmed. All of the others seated on the platform have shifted, seemingly silently (or maybe he just thought his crunching was louder) into anthropomorphic dragon forms. They're all smiling now. He tries to scream, but he finds himself voiceless in shock. He looks at his own body now.
Where once were feet, are now the lower claws of some sort of lizard. Thin red scales cover his ankles and feet (claws?) and his hands, which now have vicious claws on them. He rubs on his neck and shoulders to find those same thin, red scales covering them. He reaches to his forehead, and expecting nothing in particular, finds a prominent horn sticking directly from the center of his forehead, similar to that of a unicorn. And as if that wasn't enough, he reaches behind him and finds a small pair of vestigal draconic wings, as well as a short draconic tail. He quickly fires his gaze across his friends and sees similar changes, with small differences.
All of his friends have sprouted short tails like his own. Tim's scales are a tealy mix of blue and green, and he has no horns on his head, but has some spikes running down his spike, most shorter than two inches. He looks just as shocked as his friend, and Steve's eyes pass on to the next. Ogre has sprouted burnt orange scales on his extremities, and his wings are bigger than the others', but his feet more resemble those of an elephant, no doubt to support the extra bulk in muscle that he's put on in the change. He has small horns that have sprouted from each side of his head, which bend forward after a fashion. Ray has the smallest amount of change, but then Steve looks a little harder. Ray's scales are an off-yellow; they blend in with his still human flesh better than the others'.He has a prominent pair of tusks that push straight down from his mouth, and Steve imagines that if we were to grin, it'd be fairly terrifying. Dave has grown taller. His scales on his extremities, neck, and shoulders are a dark gray, almost black. His horns, like Ogre's, are on the side of his head, but they bend upward rather than forward.
He looks up at the dragon sitting in state on the middle chair (throne?).
"W-w-w-w-what..." he manages to stammer out, before passing out from shock.
The female sitting next to the male dragon on the throne in the middle looks to him, after all five of the half-dragons have passed out from the shock of their change.
"Do you think they will be the right ones, Nax?"
The old dragon smiles to himself again. "I am certain, child."
So that's it! For now, anyway. I'll write the next part when I feel inspired, which might be sooner rather than later. Thanks for reading!
Khabi