Dragon Child

Follow the Human

Drazealite and Zahanort where miserable in the cold rain and pounding wind. Even with their thickening scales they where still cold. If they stayed out it the rain much longer, they might freeze. The only place of warmth for them was in the object the leatherhide they had been following had made. They where sure that the human had fallen asleep but it would still be dangerous.

“I say we go in and wait until morning comes,” Drazealite said shivering a bit.

“Fine but we must be careful,” Zahanort said nervously, “If that thing wakes up it may try to kill us.”

“I know,” the young dragon muttered.

The two young dragons crept up to the object the human had erected in the clearing. They paused outside of the structure an listened, the human made a few strange noises, but its rate of breathing betrayed it as being asleep. The young dragons shoved against the part of the tent the human had entered by, it wouldn’t open for them.

“It won’t open!” Zahanort whispered to Drazealite.

“Let me see,” Drazealite said pushing Zahanort aside.

Drazealite shoved against the structure and saw that the bottom part of the structure was not connected to the rest of the structure. Drazealite prodded at the loose part of the structure and his nose slid under it. Drazealite sniffed and noticed the place reeked of human, a down right awful smell, but at least it was warm and dry.

Drazealite kept pushing and managed to get in up to his wings before he encountered a problem, his wings where stuck. He fidgeted a little and managed to slid his wings under and wiggle the rest of the way in. He shook the water off himself and froze as the human grunted and rolled over.

“Drazealite?” Zahanort whispered, “Are you ok in there?”

“Yeah,” Drazealite whispered back, “Just don’t shake the water off when you come in, and careful it really stinks in here.”

Zahanort slid his snout under and managed to wiggle most of the way under. Drazealite helped him through when his wings got caught on the loose piece of the structure. When Zahanort got all the way through, Drazealite had to smack him with his tail to keep him from shaking off the water on his scales.

“Whoa,” Zahanort said drawing his head back, “your right it dose stink in here!”

“Shh!” Drazealite whispered glancing at the human nervously, “it still has its shiny talon around here somewhere. If we wake it up it might use it!”

“Right, right! Sorry! Umph!” Zahanort whispered before he tripped on something and came dangerously close to stepping on the human.

Drazealite looked at what Zahanort had tripped over and saw it was the human’s shiny talon. Drazealite fingered it and felt how cold it was with drawing his foreclaw. Zahanort examined the talon as well and seemed to be studying it much more closely than Drazealite had.

He poked it with his own talon and ran a scaly foreclaw along the sharp part of the weapon. He picked it up the weapon in his mouth by the part he’d seen the human hold it and quickly spat it out.

“Yuck!” Zahanort said sticking out his long forked tongue, “That thing taste disgusting!”

“Then toss it outside where the human can’t use it,” Drazealite whispered.

Zahanort grabbed the shiny talon with his teeth, being careful to keep his tongue away from it. Zahanort carried the talon to the break in the construct and tossed it out into the rain where it quickly sank into the mud. Zahanort walked back in and looked down at the sleeping human.

“Maybe we should kill it?” Zahanort suggested.

“No way we still need to let this thing guide us to Rhzvanzin,” Drazealite said, “we let the thing live.”

“Kind of looks like him doesn’t it?” Zahanort said.

“No way, the skin and soft scales are the wrong color for starters." Drazealite said angrily, "Then you got the fact that Rhzvanzin is like twice as fast as the thing a lot thicker. Not to mention it doesn’t smell like Rhzvanzin at all and,” Drazealite said poking the human in the ribs, “its flesh is rather soft.

The human rolled over and made a few muttering noises from the poke before rolling onto its back. Both of the young dragons froze as the human sat up and opened its mouth wide before making some weird clicking sounds. The human opened its eyes and stared at the dragons as they stared back at him, everything was quiet except for the storm raging outside.

Suddenly the humans eyes widened as the realality of the situation hit him and he screamed kicking at Zahanort. This caused the two young dragons screech and crash into the poles holding the tent up causing it to collapse and them all causing everyone to scream louder and panic. Confusion rained in the collapsed tent as its three occupants clawed and thrashed getting more and more tangled and panicked with every passing moment.

When Zahanort and Drazealite felt rain falling on their scales they finally started to calm down. They looked around them and saw that they had torn the tent to shreds in their panic. The human had reached the edge of the clearing and was continuing to run, he had slipped out through a tear the dragons had caused and did not look like he planned to slow any time soon.

Zahanort steeled himself and chased after the fleeing human, he would not let his only chance of finding his friend slip away from him. Drazealite snapped back to the present and chased after Zahanort, no way he was letting him look better than him. The human heard the two dragons tearing through the forest after him and started running faster, but he couldn't out run young energetic dragons.

The two dragons followed behind the human for almost an hour before they came to a stop. They had been tiring quickly but so had the human, several times they thought it was finally going to stop then it would look behind it and see them persuing it and it would run just a little faster. The human finally staggered to a stop and gasped for breath.

Before the human had time to look behind it the two young dragons slipped into hiding hoping the human wouldn’t detect them. The human jerked around violently and scanned the forest in a violent manner before it stood still and seemed to just listen. Finally the human sighed and fell back against a tree and slid to the ground and fell asleep in the mud and pouring rain making a strange laughing sound.

Drazealite and Zahanort sighed themselves and stumbled to the driest part of their hiding places and collapsed. Soon the forest was filled with the snoring of two dragons and a human.

Somewhere nearby a creature watched the dragons and reached into the debths of their minds to find out why they pursuing the human so. The dragons turned in their sleep but remained asleep as the creature reached through their minds.

The creature saw the image of a human child raised among dragons reflected in the mind of each dragon. They hoped this human would lead them to the human they sought. The creature smiled and turned to seek out the human they sought, the creature had been waiting for one such as the human the dragons knew as Rhzvanzin for a very long time.

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No one noticed the creature slip into the camp.

The creature now looked like a rain drenched figure entering the camp in the middle of the night. Everyone continued to sleep peacefully as the creature slipped through the camp heading for the knight's tent.

The knight had been up late pouring over the maps deciding on the route his self made army would take in the morning. The knight heard the creature approaching and tensed. The knight grabbed his shield and sword and ran into the ran toward the tent entrance to see who was coming.

He never got that far, as he was within an arms reach of the entrance the flaps where tossed aside and a shrouded figure easily shoved the knight to the ground. The knight rolled onto his feet even as he fell and was up in the blink of an eye.

When he looked their where a dozen black knifes floating in front of his face and the knight froze before dropping his weapon and shield. The man knew he stood no chance against magic, so why bother trying. The knifes withdrew to the shrouded figure and vanished up his sleeve.

The figure threw back his hood revealing a narrow, lightly tanned face with almond shaped eyes. The figure had long hair like liquid gold that fell to his waist and hid ears that looked rigided. The eyes had vertical pupils and an orange iris that burned with the might of an unknowable power. The man's eyes looked like those of a monster's, but the knight didn't mention this in case the man took offense.

The man had a powerful and deep voice as he spoke to the knight, “Mind if I join your little quest knight?” the man asked.

“No,” the knight stammered taken aback by the request, “go right ahead.”

The man gave the knight a razor toothed smile as he said, “Good.”

The man walked out of the tent and the rain seemed to stop just to let him pass. The man spotted Rhzvanzin curled in his tree hollow and smiled and gave a deep throated chuckle. The man walked over to a group of men and altered their memories to include him before the man fell asleep.

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Rhzvanzin awoke to Sara softly poking him with the toe of her boot.

“Time to get up,” she whispered to him.

Rhzvanzin rolled onto all fours and shook the moister that had accumulated on him off. He crawled out of the hollow he had slept in and stretched hearing his joints creak as he did so. He straightened into an upright position and looked around the camp was a flurry of activity. Men where running to and fro with their foreclaws laidened with various things. The only ones who did not seem to be busy packing was Rhzvanzin’s friend from the watchman tribe, Rhzvanzin himself, and a man shrouded in black clothing with a sword slug over his back that was twice as big as the one Rhzvanzin had seen last night.

Rhzvanzin looked at the man with curiosity, the man smelled different from everyone else he had ever met. Rhzvanzin also had no memory of ever seeing this man in the tribe the knight had put together. Rhzvanzin was about to go over and ask the man who he was and if he knew the way to the Boulder Fall clan was.

A sharp honk echoed through the causing Rhzvanzin to jump and search for the source of the noise. Sara just laughed and signaled for Rhzvanzin to follow her, Rhzvanzin still wanted to know what had made that awful sound but complied. Sparing a glance over to where the mysterious man had been sitting Rhzvanzin saw nothing.

The knight blew on what looked like a goat’s horn and the horrible noise Rhzvanzin had heard before repeated itself. Rhzvanzin thought about breaking the horn but that would probably upset the knight.

“Everyone fall in and prepare to march,” the knight cried when everyone in camp had gathered close.
The announcement was met by several moans and yelps from those who had yet to finish packing their hordes. The knight waited until everyone had fallen in line before he spun his horse around and spurred it forward. Everyone in the camp hustled after him.

The knight had been riding for only a few minutes before he rained in to halt. Rhzvanzin stood on his hind legs to see why they had stopped and saw that a structure spanning the river in front of them had collapsed. Rhzvanzin wondered why that would stop the march since the river was not more than fifteen feet across and could not be more than ten feet deep.

Any dragon could easily cross the river with hardly any effort. Yet the entire camp seemed to be hesitant to try to cross the river, this made Rhzvanzin wonder if there was something monstrous living in the water. Looking in at it it didn't seem so.

“Engineers!” the knight called, “fix this bridge as quickly as you can. Blast this could set us back a full week!”

Then Rhzvanzin saw the man shrouded in black walking up towards the river and begin simply walking across the water. When the man reached the opposite shore he walked up to a tree, pulled his sword, still in its sheath, from his back, and held it before him. He swung at the base of a particularly thick tree and the tree jumped up nearly a foot as it passed. With out even stopping his swing the man swung his sword upwards cutting the tree in half while still in the air. Drawing a dagger the man’s arm moved to fast for even Rhzvanzin to follow. When the two halves of the tree hit the ground, they had no branches on them. The man placed his sword back on his back and sheathed his dagger before he picked up both halves of the tree and tossed them high into the air.

The men from the camp scrambled back as they saw the pieces of the tree heading for them. Both halves of the tree landed on the bank and fell across the river lying side by side, the two halves formed a makeshift bridge. The entire camp was still with shock at what the strange man had done, even Rhzvanzin.

Rhzvanzin had seen something like this before, a fully-grown dragon would sometimes do this to help younglings across rivers that where to wide to jump and the current to fierce to swim. Nevertheless, this dragon was hardly older than Rhzvanzin was judging from size and he had done it with ease. It seemed that Rhzvanzin was no longer the strongest dragon in the camp.

“Are you coming or not?” The man asked in a deep voice that radiated power.

Rhzvanzin was the first to recover, walked calmly to the edge of the river, and jumped it without even touching the makeshift bridge. He sniffed at the shrouded man to show that he did not need his help to cross a river. Sara and the others from the watchman clan where next to recover since they had seen Rhzvanzin perform similar feats of strength if not quite on the same scale.

Slowly the rest of the camp followed the members of the watchman tribe still looking nervously at the new rival for the strongest man in the camp.

After everyone was across the river, the shrouded man walked over and destroyed the bridge he had created by smashing it with his fist. The logs splintered and jerked violently falling into the river and started to float away. Rhzvanzin was unimpressed, even he could smash a log, and he was not the strongest youngling in his age group.

The knight shook himself and called, “Come on you wusses, enough gawking. We need to get moving we’ve wasted enough time already.”

The knight turned his horse and continued down the trail that had been worn through the forest by frequent travel. The small army he had amassed hurried to follow the knight as if being to far from him would kill them. Only Rhzvanzin and the shrouded figure stayed behind.

They glared at each other for nearly a minute and then the shrouded figure seemed to vanish. Rhzvanzin knew that this was not so because a huge cloud of dust was thrown up along the trail. Rhzvanzin hurried to catch up with the rest of the camp knowing that he would never catch the shrouded figure in a race.

When Rhzvanzin caught up with the camp and took his place among the army, he noticed that the shrouded figure’s place in line was only a few men behind him. Without knowing why, this made Rhzvanzin very uncomfortable.

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The human that Drazealite and Zahanort had been following made strange noises as it reached a clearing it the forest that was coated with stones. The human staggered foreword and fell face down onto the rocky ground and simply lay there for a while.

“Is it dead?” Zahanort whispered to Drazealite.

As if to answer Zahanort’s question, the human jerked its head up and searched the bushes behind it where the two young dragons where hiding. The two dragons froze and the human struggled to its feet and jerked around searching for the dragons he knew where out there. The human had started behaving more and more unusual as the days had passed.

The human shouted something out into the forest, the young dragon had no idea what the sounds meant but they where sure they where aimed at them.

“Should we try and ask it where Rhzvanzin is?” Zahanort asked.

“No,” Drazealite said quickly, “If we can’t understand it, it probably can’t understand us.”

The human jerked again and hurled a rock in the direction of the two dragons. The human shouted something and pounded its chest once before it took on a combat stance as if challenging the dragons. It stood there for a moment before it shouted something again and tossed more rocks while still shouting.

Drazealite and Zahanort heard a strange clopping sound and saw several horses pulling something similar to the structure the human they had been following used to erect every night. The structure had a single human driving it that brought it to a stop next to the human who was still throwing rocks and shouting. Several other humans stuck their head out of the structure to see what the noise was all about.

The human controlling the structure seemed to ask something to the human that the two young dragons had been following. The pursued human shouted something at the human controlling the construct in the same voice he had been shouting into the woods. While what he said was unknown, they heard the word ‘dragons’ used several times in his shouting so the two young dragons knew that he was talking about them.

“Dragons?” the man controlling the construct asked.

The man the dragons had been following continued his shouting and pointing into the forests. He soon resumed throwing rocks while shouting into the woods. Drazealite remained silent even as one of the rocks hit its target; even Zahanort was silent under the barrage of rocks. They might be able to handle one human Leatherhide without its stick-thrower, but their looked to be ten humans in the construct.

The man controlling the construct made a motion with his hand and the men inside the construct jumped out and restrained the shouting man. They tied up the man’s fore and hind claws and tossed him into the construct before the continued on down the trail. The two young dragons slipped out of the forest and grabbed onto the underside of the construct.

Drazealite peaked through the thin part of the construct to see what was inside.
He saw lots of boxes and strange objects inside, the men who had restrained the leatherhide where looking out into the distances but the leatherhide was not. The leatherhide’s eyes went wide and it started its struggling and screaming again. Drazealite quickly ducked back under the construct before anyone else saw him.

The two young dragons held onto the underside of the construct unnoticed and undetected even by the horses just in front of them. It seemed that all of the strange smells emanating from within the construct was enough to cover the smell of dragon. The construct continued until darkness fell before it stopped and the humans inside climbed out of the construct and fell asleep.

When they where sure that everything in the camp was asleep the two young dragons crept into the construct looking for something to eat. They where tempted to eat one of the horses that where tied to a nearby tree but that would be noticed by the humans. So they helped themselves to any creature they found wandering around in the construct.

They caught and ate a few rats that took the edge off their hunger and looked for somewhere they could hide inside the construct. They found that moving several boxes would create a small cave they could hide in unnoticed unless something happened to look intently in just the right place.

The leatherhide was still awake and watched the two dragons with wide eyes but did not say anything. While it did make a few muffled sounds, it could not seem to make the sounds it had been making the whole time they had been following it. Zahanort noticed that it had something tied around its mouth that prevented it from making much noise.
Zahanort sniffed at the thing wrapped around the human’s mouth but made sure not to touch in case the thing came loose and let the human start screaming again.

The leatherhide tried to head butt Zahanort and made some soft snarling sounds as if it was trying to attack the dragon. Zahanort licked the human on the nose to taunt it and regretted it deeply when he got the taste of the human.

Zahanort spat and coughed at the taste before walking to the hidden cave he had made for himself and slid the crate that hid the entrance back into place. Zahanort curled up and before he fell asleep whispered to Drazealite.

“Do you know where this thing is going?” Zahanort whispered.

“Nope,” Drazealite said, “but the leatherhide was heading this way as well. Far as I am concerned, sticking with this thing will still take us to our destination. Plus, traveling this way means we don’t have to walk all day.”

“Thank the lord for that!” Zahanort muttered before falling asleep.