The Key to Dragons Chapter 1
Fighting off Strange Creatures in a Speedo
It started out like every other kind of day you could expect. He drove to his high school swim team practice enduring the harsh workout that was similar to every other day at practice that they had. After the entire team finished its dry-land session, they all put on their practice suits to get ready for the water. The suits they wore all came down to your knees in length and were skin-tight like a speedo.
Grunting, the teen jumped into the pool. Everything proceeded normally for him until about halfway through the workout. Suddenly, everything around him stopped.
"What the hell is happening?"
The boy stared at what was taking place.
"Did time just freeze all around me?" he questioned himself. He heard his own voice very clearly and noticed it sounded exactly as it would have above the water. What shocked him more was that when he inhaled to take another breath he surprisingly didn't take on a lung-full of liquid H2O. Now finally able to move his body, he reached forward with his hand and waved it.
"Okay this is getting very weird!"
Luke made an attempt to get out of his currently stuck condition. He only freaked out as the entire room seemed to literally melt away from all around him.
"What the hell is going on here!" he screamed. The next thing he knew he was knocked out cold and completely unaware of what became of him.
Meanwhile, in another world...
"The Wanderers have returned!" a male voice exclaimed loudly. The individual stood outside waiting to see if any of the creatures would appear in the center courtyard of the entire temple.
"Oh damn it. I better get the guardians." He muttered to himself. A few seconds later an entire hoard of the creatures appeared.
He was about to turn and run until something caught his attention. Lying on the ground in the middle of the courtyard was a human teenager. A small groan came from him and he slowly stood himself up.
"Uhh- What the hell?" he moaned.
He looked around and discovered he was no longer in the pool at swim practice. A cold chill crept down his spine. He turned to see the other person at the door. The male turned around and ran inside before Luke had a chance to say anything to him.
He saw several odd creatures that were walking about and causing random destruction to different pieces of décor in the courtyard.
With a good look at their bodies he observed that they all had jewel-shaped eyes, small-nimble bodies, bat wings, and two antennas that extended behind their spherical shaped bodies made him think he were fighting some weird creature you'd see out of a horror movie.
"What are those things?" he asked himself. Never before had he seen anything like that in his entire life.
All of the creatures turned their attention to Luke. He saw the other traits that stood out from the rest of already odd features. On the middle of their foreheads in between their eyes was a black compass symbol with a blue heart shape behind it.
"That symbol. That's a little strange."
Every one of the creatures stopped flapping their wings with the tips of them beginning to glow.
"Umm- what?" Luke asked himself confused.
The bats all opened their mouths and fired a massive blast of fire, ice shards, lightning, and pure energy.
"I'm done for!" he screamed. He closed his eyes ready to embrace of what he expected to be either death or an immediate fatal injury.
He opened his eyes five seconds later to find that, surprisingly, nothing in the fields of pain had been dealt to him. Looking down at his left hand, the realization dawned upon him that he was now holding an object that wasn't there before.
"What the heck is this thing?" he questioned.
"Wisdom Staff… Wisdom Staff… Wisdom Staff…"
Gripping the object and bringing it closer to him he saw it was a 48 inch long blue staff. The hilt of it was circular with two spikes protruding from the top and the bottom. At the top of it the shape of the staff curved into a circle shape with an empty circular hole in the weapon.
"Weird." he mused to himself. For some reason, he felt as if this weapon was very familiar to him.
"I don't know what you can do, but you better be able to get me out of this situation!" he screamed.
Looking at the staff, he assumed an awkward pose that could be the closest to what you could call a battle stance.
Rush!
The bats flew at him shooting fireballs, ice shards, electricity, and energy shots from all around.
"Whoa! Damnit! Ow! Stupid! Freaking! Super Powered! Mammalian! Bat! Things!" he exclaimed trying to avoid all of the incoming projectiles.
Glancing back at the bats he saw that one had ventured very close to him. Grasping the weapon with two hands, he took a vertical swing at the bat.
Wham!
He sent it soaring backwards into a wall. Without any time for relief, he followed up and swung his staff at another one.
Smash!
It was sent flying into a stone wall, and then crashed into the ground.
"This is getting ridiculous." He groaned.
Even with this he was barely able to fight back. This was really starting to really make him mad. It was next that he felt an intense rage was beginning to burn inside of him. Pointing his staff at the bats, a huge fireball spewed from his staff as he unintentionally focused all of his thoughts on that one emotion.
The projectile blasted a few of the bats and burned them to an ashy heap. Looking down at the staff he wielded in his left hand, he stared in complete shock.
"So maybe this staff is good for more than just violently being used as a blunt object." He mused to himself.
Luke turned his attention to the other bats and smirked with some new found confidence. He then closed his eyes and focused on the enemies.
Hoping to re-create the same spell, he concentrated on his feelings of anger again. Keeping his own attention solely on that, he was able to launch numerous fireballs at the bats. Not only that, he figured out that he could also summon ice shards and lightning bolts. After ten more minutes of dodging and launching magical spells at his enemies, he finally eliminated out the last one.
"I think that was all of them."
He smirked and was still in disbelief that he had just actually beaten them all.
The staff in Luke's hand suddenly glowed in a white light and then disappeared.
"That was an impressive display." A voice stated commending his performance. Luke smirked at the credit he had received for his fighting skills regardless of the fact that he had never done anything even remotely like this in his entire life until just five minutes ago.
"Thank you good-" he stopped. He stared up quietly at the mystery person seeing that it was in fact a nine-foot tall dragon that stood in front of him.
"If this had been ten minutes ago I would have been surprised but after that little experience I just had I really could expect anything at this point."
"Hello there, my name is Ignitus." He greeted Luke. Luke gawked. He was staring down at the sights of a massive sized red-scaled western styled dragon at least three times his size.
"So who are you?" Ignitus questioned him. His tone grew serious.
Luke shook a little bit feeling completely nervous. After all for all he knew this dragon was indeed an apex predator. Assuming the safety that Ignitus was actually a peaceful being, he proceeded to answer his question.
"I'm a human from planet Earth. I come in peace!" He stuttered in his defense. Ignitus gave him a blank stare.
"I'm sorry." Luke said back. He scratched the back of his head tensely. In the back of the mind he still felt like at any one of those moments he would have been ripped to shreds.
Following behind Ignitus were three other dragons. All of them were about eight to ten feet tall in height.
"Oh my goodness! Today's discovery has yielded very interesting results. This is colossal, monumental, huge, gigantic-" The golden-scaled dragon to Ignitus's left stopped as he bit over his tongue.
"A bit of loudmouth like always I see." The blue-scaled dragon on the right of Ignitus stated referring to the golden one.
"Both of you listen to me! Now is not the time or place for your bickering!" a much louder and deeper voice commanded. Luke saw that it came from the tallest and burliest green dragon of the quartet.
Shaking, he made a mental not to piss that guy off.
Ignitus nodded in agreement with the other elder.
"Terrador is right. We don't have time to be wasting on bickering. You two should be the ones who are all too familiar with that fact. Ever since this war has been breaking out, we have been dealing a lot more stress than we can handle. Things are starting to spiral out of control."
The two individuals, guilty of their little quarrel, put their heads down in shame and remained silent. Ignitus tilted his head back down at Luke.
"So another human has appeared here. This predicament has gotten stranger by the second." The dragon exclaimed. He let out a small sigh.
"He stared at me for a second before running away inside without even offering to help me." Luke explained. He folded his arms and cut a glare at the elder Ignitus.
"I understand that you felt as if he fled because he was a coward, but he did the right thing by coming to alarm us." Ignitus explained. "That aside, you were able to defeat all of those creatures with not much trouble. We owe you a bit of gratitude for that. Thank you."
Cyril snorted. "Well, at least the first human that came here wasn't running around in only a pair of skin tight clothing shorts. Which I might add, for a male of a two-legged species that wears clothing, kind of makes them seem a little on the-"
"Shutup!" Luke shouted back. "It's not my fault the one time I get sucked into another world just so happened to be at the same exact I was wearing a leg-lengthened speedo for swim practice! Which I might add, our entire team practices in!"
"Ignitus, I'm not sure how much we should trust this one. Remember how the first one showed up?" Terrador stated.
Ignitus turned to him. "That one is still being questioned and the circumstances we found him in were very different. I understand your concern."
Luke was confused. "Are you talking about that guy that I saw earlier in the courtyard?" he asked.
Ignitus nodded.
Terrador looked at Ignitus and then to the other guardians. They all made a little bit of small talk before Ignitus turned back to Luke.
"Alright child, listen to me." Ignitus stated. "Follow me inside and we will sort things out from there so we can figure out what to do."
Luke nodded. "Better than standing around here outside, it is so cold right now." He shivered and rubbed his cold, goose-bump covered arms in an attempt to stay warm.
The five walked into the building and down a long corridor. Luke looked around in complete amazement of the place. High ceilings, hand-painted stone floors, and lavishly decorated rooms filled with dragon statues and paintings were among some of the things he saw. At the end of the corridor, or what Luke would refer to as a hallway, they came to a very large circular chamber.
The elders all gathered around a pool of slightly green tinted water in the center of the room. Luke stood next to Ignitus and simply gazed into it.
"What is that?" he asked. He was slightly curious to find out what exactly they were doing.
"This is the pool of visions. It acts a sort of means of seeing the unseen." Ignitus explained.
Luke simply nodded. "So it's kind of a way of seeing premonitions?" He perked up his brow at the fire dragon.
"If that's what you want to call it then. I guess so." Ignitus replied.
"Would you mind me asking you? What happened leading to the events of you ending up here?"
Luke coughed a little bit and then shook his head looking down. Taking a deep breath to calm himself down a little bit, he gazed back up at the group and explained to them everything that had occurred.
"Hmm- This is very interesting. Volteer what do you make of this?" Ignitus questioned.
Volteer smiled at Luke with his eccentric and kindly demeanor. "This is a very unfamiliar development we are seeing here. What I am intrigued about is that all of these events seemed to be happening in a coincidental fashion."
"Now that you think about everything that has taken place, as much as I hate to agree with him I believe Volteer is right." Cyril stated.
"This happened in a coincidental fashion? What do you mean by that?" Luke asked.
"What I am saying is that everything that has happened perfectly set you up to coming here. It is as if somebody made this transpire instead of it being something that randomly occurred by chance."
"I absolutely agree. And for one thing I still don't think that Luke should be trusted. Similarly to the other human here, he might be at work with Malefor. This could all be a setup by for us to gain another ally who is really serving as a double agent. You never know with what's going on these days Ignitus. " Terrador said.
Grunt.
Ignitus was becoming annoyed with the Earth Guardian.
"Terrador, I understand your point of view, but I trust this child. I know that we are at war right now with Malefor, but you must never let your paranoia control you to the point of losing your trust in people who are telling the truth. For all we know I could have been a double agent working for him." Ignitus stated.
"If that were the case then I would have found out and killed you a long time ago." Terrador answered back bluntly.
"I would not have expected anything less from your loyal duties as the Guardian of Earth." Cyril commented.
Luke simply rolled his eyes at all the comments. "So what now Ignitus?" he questioned.
"We should decide who you will stay with tonight. Tomorrow morning we will fetch the moles to come size you up for some adequate clothing. You can't run around in public half nude wearing that skin tight pair of cloth around your legs. I do hope you know that." Ignitus answered.
"Yes sir, I understand." Luke replied.
Volteer and Cyril snickered a bit at the remark with them earning a cold frown from Luke.
"Alright now that that's settled, Terrador will show you to his room. That's where you be sleeping during the span of your stay here." Ignitus explained.
Terrador's eye suddenly started to twitch and he was blushing a bit out of anger.
"Wait! Why can't he stay with Cyril, Volteer, or you Ignitus?" Terrador asked.
Ignitus smiled with a bit of a hidden devilish grin. "Because Volteer is watching the other human tonight, Luke can't stay with him. Plus last time I checked you said he could be a double agent for all we know. So if he stays with you, I know that you will definitely keep a strong watch on him." He stated with a laugh.
"Ugh. Alright, I will watch the boy tonight." Terrador groaned. He gave up on the argument.
"Come on Luke!" He ordered. Luke then looked to Ignitus with an expression begging him to let him stay with somebody else. The elder sneered at his plea and walked off bidding them goodnight.
Later on that night...
Luke was in Terrador's room sitting on the floor cross-legged. The earth guardian sat in the opposite part of the room facing him.
"How am I supposed to sleep tonight?" Luke. He was pissed that there was no soft surface to lie on such as a bed or even a simple gathering of straw. It was when Luke first entered the room earlier that had the misfortune of discovering that dragons normally slept on the hard floor.
Terrador smiled in pleasure. "Well that's easy. You just curl up on the floor in whatever position you feel comfortable with, close your eyes, and fall asleep."
"I'm not in the mood for a smartass!" Luke bellowed back.
Terrador looked down at him. His eyes had that stern kind of expression beaming from them. From what Luke considered, he found Terrador to be the equivalent in attitude of a military drill sergeant.
"Don't disrespect the one in charge over you especially if that someone happens to be me. I don't tolerate any kind of damn funny business!" he growled.
Luke stopped and kept quiet out of fear that Terrador was going to either beat him, torture him, or even the previous two plus killing him. If any of those happened to him, he hoped for only the first one.
"Yes sir. I'm sorry Terrador." He apologized before curling up into a ball on the floor.
Terrador turned back and lay down on the floor to try and get some sleep. Luke tried to do the same only he found himself shivering, his back hurting, his crotch itching due to the wet tight swim-suit, and his entire moral completely crushed.
He was lying there for two hours before the cold from the night fully set in. He started shivering to the point of his teeth chattering. Fed up with it, he stood up in an attempt to try to find something that he could use to either cover up or lay on to keep warm with. He made a few steps towards the door until he suddenly tripped over Terrador's tail.
Smack!
His face had a nice date with the rocky and cold floor.
Luke flipped over on his back and he put his hand up to his nose. Even though the room was dimly lit with the fluorescent resembling lights they had scattered throughout the walls on the temple and various rooms, he could tell that there was blood on his hand.
"Ow." he moaned.
The dragon stirred and he opened his eyes. He looked at Luke in a state of shock. "Are you okay Luke?" Terrador asked.
His tone was now gentler and seemed kinder than before.
Luke rolled his eyes and ignored him. "Why the hell would you care? You don't even trust me as far as you can throw me." He barked in a spiteful manner.
The dragon grabbed Luke by the arm and he curled up around Luke's form. Completely trapping Luke with his body, he brought his head down to where it was face to face directly with the teenager's.
For a moment, the two didn't know what to say as things were incredibly awkward between them.
"What do you want from me?!" Luke screamed. He was confused and terrified of a large dragon roughly five times the size of him.
"Are you cold?" Terrador asked. Luke still gave the same horrified expression of fear.
The elder dragon smiled with a now peaceful presence to his character.
"Listen to me, I am a sorry about how I acted towards you earlier Luke. I just had trouble trusting you because I figured that you were an immediate threat to us.
Luke, amazed by the sudden apology and change of tone, smiled slightly at him.
"I'm sorry for how I talked to you." Luke apologized back. "Why don't we start over from the since we didn't get off to such a good start?"
"That would be perfect." Terrador responded. He smiled at Luke, then laid his head down, and closed his eyes slowly falling asleep.
Luke giggled slightly and he then rested his head next to Terrador's. Closing his own eyes, he slowly drifted into the world of his subconscious. For the unknown days that lay ahead of him, he knew that he would need as much rest as possible.