The Gathering Storm
#7 of The Last Dragons, Revisited
Alrighty, here we go with the next couple of chapters of the new version of The Last Dragons. I hope you like them.
As always comments are apprecaited and requested.
Continued from 'The Life of A Dragon Lord'...
Suddenly, despite having been flying for hours without so much as a single major change in terrain to lighten my mood, I perked up, the light-bending shell I had placed around my body wavering a little as I recovered from the shock the surprise had given me. Despite the dawn creeping into the far off horizon, I had been almost asleep, my brain wandering far and wide while I flew automatically towards home, when I had felt a slight brush upon my consciousness, a touch that felt oh so familiar, sending an excited thrill down my spine. 'Alabaster.' The mental call came again and I cast my eyes around. The terrain below me was empty, lacking so much as a single animal to break the monotony. The form that I half expected to see was nowhere in sight, and no magic could be seen that might have hidden her. Judging from the snow-shrouded rolling hills below me, I was right around the border of Colorado, which meant my journey was drawing to a close. But the voice that had called me was my mate's, echoing its siren song through my skull.
'Pyre?' I called in return, eagerly hoping to see her somewhere nearby. 'Where are you?'
'Come to my mountain, love, I have a surprise for you.' She commanded and I felt the mental link cut off abruptly. Frowning, I immediately banked, heading for a nearby town. As much as I loved to fly, sometimes even a dragon needed help, and if I was to get to the mountain as quickly as possible, I needed a boost. Circling around, I found what I was seeking above a bustling truck stop. The thermal column rising from the hot truck engines filled my wings and I shot upward, my face to the stars above me, a broad grin on my lips as I soared. I loved to fly, I always had. Whenever we had gone on a vacation that required taking plane, I had enjoyed the flight almost as much as the vacation itself. I couldn't remember all the times in my youth that I had seen a bird of prey flying high and wished that I could do that, wished that I could dance with the winds as they did. But now that I could fly, fly better and higher than any bird, nothing came close to the sensation of almost absolute freedom that being aloft gave you.
When the thermal had taken me high enough, I ducked into a low hanging cloud and let the invisibility fall away from me for a while. To me, the cloud was more like to water than mist and I swam through it with ease, delighting in the weird sensation of a thin shell of ice forming around my body. The cold didn't bother me, for my scales preserved heat better than any human made garment could have, but I could still feel it's exhilarating touch. After a few moments of swimming freely in the cloud, I heard the roar of a jetliner nearby and I glided over near it, still inside the cloud. Looking at the windows through the thin veil of mist that was the upper edge of the cloud, I smiled to myself. Most of the windows of the early morning flight were covered by shutters, but one, near the back of the plane, had a young boy looking out of it. His face was lit with a look of pure wonder and I smiled to myself, the last remnants of my irritated mood vanishing as I remembered all the times I had done that, remembered the joy of seeing things from a bird's eye view. Smiling, I waited until he was looking in my direction then snaked my head out of the cloud, peering at him curiously. I saw his eyes grow wide as he spotted me in the fading starlight and I winked one eye at him before rolling over, my large sinuous body appearing for a brief instant above the cloud as I dove back down. My grin widened as I imagined the conversation that the child would be having with his parents when they woke up.
Having had my fun, I continued the dive, pulling out only when I was down low in the cloud. Then, I peeked out of the bottom edge of the mist, high enough up that it would impossible for anyone to spot me. I was over the mountains by this point and it took me all of ten seconds to find the one mountain in particular that I was looking for. When I spotted the distinctive glow that the spells cast on the mountain left in my sight, I felt my heart leap for the stars and I dove out of the cloud like an arrow, my invisibility restored. The wind whipping past my head in the dive was deafening and I grinned, tucking my wings tighter to my body, quickening the awesome dive. A few hundred feet above the ground, I snapped my wings out to the side and flared them wide, slowing me down suddenly. Though the motion made my wings strain against the air pressure, I knew my body could take it and set down easily in the meadow outside the cavern, my invisibility vanishing as I touched down. The entrance to the interior was open once more and I stepped hurriedly inside, not bothering to seal it behind me in my haste. Close to the far wall, inside the chamber where my mate had lived for millennia in her lonely vigil, I found the red dragon I loved curled up with her back to the door, the way she was lying telling me that she was curled around something.
"Pyre, are you alright?" I asked, approaching slowly. She looked back at me and I was surprised at the look on her face. She was smiling broadly, a slightly silly, and yet utterly contented look on her face.
"Yes, I am fine." She said, her voice dripping with happiness. "Come look." I sped up my walk a little, coming up to where my mate was lying and stopped short. In a shallow depression in the stone that looked like it had been shaped specifically for this purpose, pressed up against my mate's belly by her tail, were eight dragon eggs, each one the size of a small boulder. Two of them were a creamy sort of red. Three more were bright white, but each had an odd opalescent sheen of a different color in their surfaces, red, gold and silver. Two were bright, shining silver and the last was golden. I stood still for a while, my jaw agape while my brain tried to reconcile what I was seeing, tried to grasp a hold of the concept that the eggs represented. After a few moments, I forced my voice to work, trying to say something, anything, but all I got was disjointed syllables that didn't come close to forming a word, much less a coherent sentence. Pyre grinned happily at my reaction and nuzzled my throat once more, giving my neck a gentle lick.
"You have it right my love." She stated and I finally was able to untangle my voice, a feeling of indescribable joy exploding into being in my heart. At once, I realized that this explained her odd behavior over the last couple of weeks, and the thickening in her middle. She had been carrying eggs. Our eggs.
"Wow." I finally managed, lying down opposite my love, our un-hatched dragonlings held tight between us. "I can't believe this. I'm going to be a father."
"Yes you are." My mate confirmed, nuzzling me happily. "And I have no doubt that you will be wonderful at it." Then, with a broad, happy smile on my lips, we settled our heads down next to our brood, neither of us desiring anything more in the world in that moment than to be there, our family held in our embrace...
***
Word spread swiftly through all of dragonkind, a wildfire of excitement kindling the interest of my people. Our clutch were the first dragon eggs to have been laid since we had gone into hiding, and it set off a heady mood of celebration throughout the community. My family was ecstatic of course, though my mother joked that there was no way she was old enough to be a grandmother. Many of our kind came to see the eggs in the next week, and, as if seeing the new generation of unborn dragons had sparked something in them, many more asked to be made mates soon afterward. The teachers in all my classes at school often asked what had happened to me, because I couldn't stop grinning, beaming at the turn my life had taken and it killed me to have to lie and say that it was nothing. What I wanted more than anything in the world was to announce it to the whole world, to shout it loud and long from the highest peaks. But as happy as the news had made me, a powerful new instinct awoke in my heart, coming into being in the moment that the knowledge I was a father-to-be clicked into place.
I spent all of the time I wasn't in school that next week casting protective wards all over the cavern and on the mountain nearby. I wanted to take no chances with my progeny. My mate had to stay with the eggs because they needed tending while they developed, so she would be one protector. But at my request, one other dragon would always serve as a watcher over the nest when I wasn't there, a task my friends and family leapt at the chance to perform. I was so busy and so distracted with thoughts of the future that I hardly even noticed that Juno wasn't at the dojo in all that time. But when the protection was finally in place, I spent a delightful week with my new family, my parents telling the school that I was down with the flu. I spent endless hours curled up with my mate, listening to my dragonlings as they shifted around in their eggs. When dragons laid eggs, the children inside were developed enough to move around, but their scales would not grow hard for a long while yet, so the shells were thick, strengthened with the innate magic of our kind. After that week, I would have to return to my human life because I would be missed if I stayed away longer than that, but for that week, I was happier than I had ever been before.
When the week ended, I found it extremely hard to focus on finals because my thoughts were constantly in the mountain with my family. I flew out at every chance I got, and constantly checked to see that my mate was safe when I was away. Despite the protections I had put in place, having a clutch of eggs had made me all the more aware of the threat that was still growing in my mind. And what was more, Juno still hadn't returned to the dojo, making this the longest that he had been away from the school since I had started to attend. No matter what rationale I tried to summon up to explain his absence, I just couldn't seem to shake the feeling that the two things were connected somehow, though how I couldn't seem to imagine...
***
Juno stood reluctantly next to his brother before the large computer screen in the main lab, the one with the map of the world spread out on it. Only a single dot remained on the screen, just one where hundreds had once burned. The dot was a mountain an hour or two outside of the city where he taught, so very close. If his brother was right, then they were closer than they ever had been in the history of their clan to fulfilling the oath once and for all. But if he had had any choice in the matter, he would have been anywhere but here. He did not want to be in the lab, did not want to be around his crazed brother and he especially did not want to be preparing to hunt down his young student and friend. But, he was still bound by the oath his family had sworn, thousands of years ago, compelled by the magic in his blood to hunt down the dragons and that settled the matter. Looking over at Jason, Juno noted the manic gleam in his brother's eyes, the hungry light that told him that his sibling had already lost what little control he had ever possessed. Yet more evidence that what he was doing was wrong, evidence that he was trying his best to ignore...
"General Grey, welcome back." Jason stated and Juno looked back over his shoulder to find the aging general standing there, waiting for them to speak. "We have good news."
"You found them at last?" The General asked and Jason nodded eagerly.
"We will need a company of your best soldiers in full gear." Jason stated and the General seemed surprised. "I have no doubt that the dragons will be on guard for us."
"You will have them then." Grey said, a smile coming over his lips. "We can be ready to go in twelve hours."
"Good." Jason stated. "All that you wish will soon be within your grasp general..."
***
Jason stood in his borrowed camouflage fatigues, watching the mountain before him with a careful gaze. The Marines kneeling in squad formations behind him were getting restless, but it wasn't like he cared much. They weren't here to be comfortable. His reluctant brother was kneeling beside him, touching the mountainside with one out-stretched hand. Jason had to give his brother credit, grudging credit it was true, but credit nonetheless. The mental discipline he had gained in his martial training had allowed him to see things that Jason never would. Already he had caught four wards that Jason had missed. A sudden glow spreading out in a wide circle from where his brother touched the mountainside indicated a fifth one being dispelled. Moments later, Juno looked around one more time before glancing at his brother and nodding. Smirking in anticipation, Jason waved the Marines forward.
The entire company gave the two brothers a wide berth as they passed and Jason's grin widened. He could well understand their fear. He and Juno were the last surviving members of the last family of dragon hunters in the world. No one else still possessed the magical talent to do what they had just done, so the Marines would never have seen true magic before. Jason started to take a step forward when Juno put an arm in his path. The elder brother glared hard at his younger sibling, a rebuke on his lips for his brother's reticence, but the look on his younger brother's face stopped him short.
"Wait a moment Jason." He said and Jason reached up to grab his brother's hand, but before he could touch it, Juno spoke. "Can't you feel that?"
"Feel what?" Jason asked, looking at his brother strangely, his anger fading slightly at the strange question. Juno was still kneeling on the boulder, his hand planted on the stone and he appeared to be concentrating hard on something that Jason couldn't see. Jason suddenly wondered if he had missed another ward, but that didn't seem quite right. Curious, the dragon hunter reached out and touched the stone at his brother's feet. It took him a moment but he finally discerned that the stone was trembling rhythmically, a beat that sent a thrill of excitement along his spine. Though he had never encountered the like of this before, the magic instincts that his family's oath granted him told him exactly what it was. "Dragon."
"Exactly. I knew this was too easy. It would be suicide to go up there with a dragon just waiting for us." Juno said, and stared up at the concealed cave, as if measuring the distance to it. To anyone else, it would be a cliff like any other, but to the dragon hunters, the entrance to the cave was outlined with light, the borders of the spell obvious. "I could have sworn we got all the spells."
"They must have put one in place to warn them if their wards failed." Jason replied, scowling up at the cliff. "Damn. Should have thought of that." The dragon hunter turned to the officer who was standing nearby, motioning towards the flat spot before the cavern. "Captain, send some men up the hill and secure the flat area."
The captain nodded at his command and ordered the leading squad forward. Bringing their weapons up to their shoulders, the Marines in the lead squad dashed quickly up the slope, spreading out into a line as they ran. The squad had barely gone fifteen yards when a deafening roar echoed from somewhere above them, a roar that was so loud the air itself seemed to tremble. At the same time, a huge dark shape shot from the cliff, the magic that hid the cave dissolving into nothing in an instant. The dark shape resolved itself into a dragon with many-hued blue scales, larger than any creature they had seen. Before the startled hunter brothers could react, the Marine officer shouted for his troops to open fire. The chatter of automatic weapons filled the air and the dragon's hide sparked as rounds shattered against its scales, doing no perceivable damage. The dragon dove down upon the advancing soldiers, a jet of bright flame shooting from its jaws, immolating the advancing squad and carrying on down the meadow towards the main body of the company. The rest of the leading platoon was engulfed in horrific flames before the two brothers brought their magic to bear.
Suddenly, the dragon roared in pain as its wings pinched together, held as if in a vise. The mighty creature fell from the sky like a stone and hit the meadow with an earth shaking impact, throwing up a spray of dirt and rocks as it skidded on the slope. The Marines, either braver than most men or terrified beyond reason, charged towards the fallen beast, a wild battle cry echoing from their throats, their weapons spraying hundreds of rounds at it. But the dragon wasn't dead, far from it in fact. Gouts of fire ignited the soldiers that approached it and the dragon ran across the ground with a speed belied by its size, its teeth plucking one of the Marines in its jaws and biting down with a sickening crunching sound. Blood sprayed the earth and the dragon threw the dead soldier into a group of his comrades. The valiant charge turned quickly into a retreat, the Marines running back from the dragon, the soldiers farthest from it still shooting, rounds skipping off of its armored head without effect.
As the Marines cleared his line of sight, Jason raced forward, ducking the ricocheting fragments of bullets like so many raindrops, his hands glowing as he crafted magical energy into a blade, a sword of ancient style. Before the dragon could react to the magic user, he sliced across its flank, a smile spreading across his lips as the dragon roared in agony. Boiling hot blood sprayed across the hunter and Jason sliced once more, opening more of the dragon's hide. The beast collapsed into a writhing heap, screeching loudly, but Jason was oblivious. All he perceived was the taste the dragon's blood on his tongue, its flavor igniting an inferno in his heart, a swell of magic energy rising within him as he swallowed the bitter drops. The feeling that it gave him was ecstasy itself, the strange taste driving him mad with delight. The second he had tasted the dragon's blood, all he wanted was more. Looking down at his enemy, he saw that the dragon had ceased trying to fight but its chest still rose and fell, its blue eyes wide with pain. Snarling, a bloody haze lowering over his eyes, Jason raised his sword once more, preparing to deliver the killing blow, but he found his arms trapped by the same spell that had knocked the dragon from the air.
"Jason!" Juno shouted, seizing his brother by the shoulders, holding him back from their foe until the haze lifted and his eyes focused. "We need it alive, or have you forgotten why we came here. Let it be."
"Alright." Jason finally said, taking a deep breath and wiping at his face with his sleeve. "I'm alright. Captain, leave a squad here to secure this one, then form the rest of your men. We are going up to the cave."
"No way, you bastard." The Captain snarled, looking at the brothers with very deep rage in his eyes. "I just lost a lot of good men in matter of moments. We are going no further until you level with me. What the hell was that thing? And what are we looking for out here?"
"What do you think it was, Captain?" Jason sneered, looking at the man with a look of utter contempt on his blood stained face. "That was a dragon and we are looking to capture one or more of them alive for study. Now, if you don't order your men to get going in the next few seconds, I am going to melt your bones into dust while they are still inside your body, then find someone who will."
The captain blinked and seemed about to argue, but Jason's eyes flared with a dangerous light and the officer instead moved off and smartly formed up his company as he had been ordered. The Marines detailed to guard the downed dragon stayed as far away from it as they could, the rest following the two hunters up the hill, eyeing them apprehensively. The soldiers knew that their weapons were useless against the dragons and they knew too that the hunters didn't seem to care. Jason led the way forward, oblivious to the soldier's distress; to him, they were a means to an end; it didn't matter how many of them died as long as they got a captive dragon or two. Juno could hear the Marines arguing over the sanity of advancing into a dragon's den while they followed the elder hunter at a distance and Juno had to agree with them. He wasn't so sure about it himself. The soldiers seemed particularly concerned that all they had to defend themselves with were two men who wielded enormous power and didn't seem to have reservations about sacrificing them. Juno started to turn around and silence them, but he didn't, knowing that they had every right to complain. It wasn't like he hadn't been thinking the same thoughts for the last few weeks.
The small force of soldiers got into the entrance of the cave without any more trouble and advanced slowly inward, the two brothers in the lead, their magic at the ready, the Marines' tac-lights throwing odd shadows all over the place. They had gone most of the way down a passage and had just glimpsed a large cavern at the end before the bad situation changed drastically for the worse. All at once, an ear-splitting roar filled the cave, a roar even louder than the blue dragon's had been and a scarlet dragon burst from around a corner of the tunnel, its mouth open. Juno had the sudden impression of a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel and barely had the presence of mind to raise a barrier of magic energy before him. A heartbeat later, a gout of flames leapt from the mouth of the dragon and boiled around the shield, slamming into the ceiling above where he stood. Juno could feel the extreme heat of the fire even through his shield and he knew without a doubt exactly why there had been so few dragon hunters left even before they had began to renounce the oath. As powerful as he and his brother were, as practiced as their arts had become, the dragon was more powerful still, much more powerful. His shield was already crumbling before his eyes, flames beginning to lick around its edge, and the fire was only getting more intense. Concentrating all his might on maintaining the shield, the dragon hunter hoped that it would be enough. Then, though he didn't see it, he felt his brother's spell slam into the dragon a moment later.
The dragon cried out in surprise and anger as the magic invaded its body and the flames flooding from its jaws were cut off suddenly. The huge creature fell back from the cave mouth and then flopped onto its belly, going still in the middle of the chamber beyond as its legs ceased supporting it. Juno dispelled what remained of the shield once he was sure that the dragon wasn't faking its distress, looking up at the ceiling in surprise; the stones there were actually glowing, the heat making the air ripple around them. Then, a scrabbling sound reached his ears and Juno looked around for its source. Despite the magic that sheathed its body, holding it in place, the dragon was trying desperately to move, its claws screeching on the stone as it tried to pull itself along. Following its wide-eyed gaze, the hunter noticed a pile of what looked like stones, piled up in a depression near the other end of the cavern. The scarlet beast struggled against Jason's spell with a desperation that Juno found curious, straining with all its might, its huge muscles rippling as it tried to move. As the Marines followed the two brothers into the cavern, one of their tac-lights washed over the pile of boulders and the hunters realized exactly what they were seeing, what the dragons had been trying so desperately to protect.
"Dragon eggs!!" Jason said, hurrying over to examine them. "Can you believe it?"
"No, I can't." Juno replied, walking over with his brother. It had never occurred to them that the dragons might have reproduced. As he stood there, looking at the clutch of large eggs, Juno couldn't help but marvel at the varying colors that the egg shells possessed, a strange, almost otherworldly beauty held in their surfaces. But as his brother knelt beside them, touching the nearest one with his hands, something about the eggs began to bother the younger brother, though he didn't know what it could be. "What are you doing Jason?"
"These are exactly what we need." Jason stated, his hands stroking the surface of the single golden egg with hungry reverence. "These are better than adult dragons. Static reservoirs of magic, ripe for the taking. Can't you feel their power? All we need to do is get them back to the lab and the rest should be simple."
"This is a bad idea." Juno stated and then shook his head as his brother continued to examine the eggs. "This isn't right. The dragons inside these eggs have done nothing."
"Yet Juno, yet." Jason stated and then looked up at his brother once more. "Have you forgotten what our father taught us? Our oath was to hunt down all dragons. That includes their offspring. Besides, the dragon in the clearing isn't going to live without help and their mother is paralyzed. Do you really believe that these...children...will live without their parents?"
Juno did not answer, instead, he looked at the eggs once more, then back to the scarlet dragon that was now quivering with rage and grief, her moans deep and resonant. The younger hunter had to look away from the trapped mother, her pitiful moans tearing into his heart, shredding his self control to ribbons. While the Marines began carrying the eggs carefully from the chamber under Jason's direction, Juno walked away for a moment, trying to pin down what was wrong with the eggs. Finally, when he paused to examine a set of strange carvings on the floor of the chamber, shaped almost into a picture, the thought finally occurred to him. One of the marines was lifting one of the silver eggs, grunting with the effort of lifting it and Juno looked back at the mother, the problem instantly clear. The dragon in the meadow had been blue, and though there were several eggs that were red and gold, none of them had had that color. Which, if he remembered his father's teachings, meant that the dragon in the meadow was not the sire of the eggs. There was another dragon out there, the real father of the eggs and what was more, he felt sure that his student was the father. That thought was strangely comforting, and it took a moment for the hunter to realize why. Knowing his student like he did, he knew that once he found out what had happened, nothing in the world would stop him from getting revenge. Juno smiled ruefully; if anyone could put a stop to this nightmare, than it would be him.
"Juno, lets go." Jason called from the cave mouth and the younger hunter started to follow his brother out of the cave. But as he passed the paralyzed dragon, she let out a hopeless whimper so full of sadness and sorrow that it shattered his heart into tiny pieces and he staggered to a stop, wincing. That did it. That was the tipping point. This whole thing was wrong; the Marines knew it, the female dragon knew it, he knew it, hell, the unborn dragons in the eggs probably knew it too. Turning to the dragon, he glanced over to make sure his brother was out of earshot, then knelt by her head, laying a gentle hand on the warm scarlet scales of her forehead.
"I know you have no reason to trust me," He whispered, and her eyes looked up at him accusingly. "I don't even know if you understand what it means for me to do this. But I promise you, I will do anything I can to help you and your kin. I swear it upon my honor." Getting to his feet before he completely lost his nerve, Juno jogged out of the cavern, finding the soldiers loading up in choppers in the clearing outside. Joining his brother aboard the nearest one, he found the elder brother giving him an irritated stare.
"What kept you?" He asked and Juno shrugged.
"I wanted a closer look at the dragon." He said, the lie slipping from him with surprising ease. "It isn't like we have ever seen one before."
"Why would you care to see one up close?" Jason asked when the chopper lifted off. "Last time I checked, you didn't like our duty much. Besides, we got what we came here for."
"Well, I can still be curious." Juno said and his brother rolled his eyes, looking longingly over at the helicopter that held the eggs inside it. Unnoticed, Juno stared down at his hands, wondering just how he was going to keep the promise he had just made...