Gold eyes opened, harsh ice wind snapping him into the waking world. He first registered the cold. Without anything on his upper body the cold bit into his bones. His pants, riddled with holes and still damp clung to his legs, starting to freeze them. It didn't register that he had all his appendages as flesh, merely that it was extremely cold and he ran the risk of frost bite. Glancing around with gold eyes, he spotted a cave entrance just a few meters to the left.
"God dammit, afterlife sucks... fuck..." he muttered, trudging through the snow. Reaching the cave, he shook his hair, blowing the snowflakes off. It was still cold inside the cave, but without the wind, it was better. Looking around, he checked to see what he had.
There was some grass, dirt, leaves, and a berry bush. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure if this so called afterlife had lethal berry bushes, so he stuck with an empty stomach and melted snow. Clapping his hands, he transmuted a bed in the back corner of the cave, nearer a smoother part of the floor. Settling down with the grass and bush transmuted into a kind of blanket, he used his arm as a pillow, completely forgetting his right arm and left leg were flesh, perfect mirror copies of their twin.
When he awoke, he screamed. Above him, regarding him curiously, was a massive blue head with green emerald eyes. Even as he scrambled for the wall, it watched him curiously, a large pink tongue slipping out, moistening the lips of its pentagonal head. Looking at it from a distance, Edward gasped.
It was a bloody dragon! Blue scales covered every inch of it, while blue leather wings were folded against the side. Great huge front legs supported it, while smaller hind legs gave it a posture that suggested a sitting position rather than a lying down position.
Forced against the wall, he recoiled, feeling the sharp rock dig into his right hand. Glancing at the bleeding wound, he did a double take, falling to his knees at the revelation.
He had two hands. Two, flesh hands. A slap made sure he was aware of a complete set of legs, no metal components anywhere.
"My limbs, they're back, holy crap they're back. This... this has to be a dream, or the afterlife... I have my limbs back," he whispered, marveling in the simple way that the blood ran over the fingers, feeling the warm liquid run over his fingers and wrist, down the arms to the elbow, before dripping onto the rock.
A deep rumbling noise drew his attention. Looking back to the dragon, he noticed warily how it was looking at him. While not an expert at judging animals, he knew something was off about this dragon. Call it an instinct. Giving a good look at the dragon, he frowned.
While this was the first dragon he had ever seen, he saw some things that shouldn't be there. A few claw marks here and there, a couple ribs poking through, scaly flesh hanging off of the bones slightly. This dragon looked abused, or the victim of a famine.
Seeing it look at his hand, still bleeding, he saw how the enormous green eyes tracked the blood, glancing at its place on the earth. Warily, waiting to snap back several feet, he held his hand out, face up. The dragon edged forward, sniffing at the air, somewhat intoxicated at the smell of the fresh blood.
Cautiously, it licked his hand, tickling him. The soft pink tongue was slightly dry, giving a sandpaper like feel as it licked the blood from him. Amazingly, the wound started to close over where the dragon spit was, until there was no blood at all and no wound for it to stem from. Glancing from the dragon to his hand, he laughed.
It was a gut wrenching, rib splitting laugh. He was laughing at the sheer impossibility of the situation. He went from sacrificing himself underneath Central city, making sure people like Dante could never make another stone. Then he's on a mountain top in the blistering cold, and now a giant ass blue dragon with healing spit was taking an interest in him.
The dragon tilted its head, confused as to why the small being was rolling on the ground, water falling from its eyes. Bending down, she licked his face, sticking his odd colored hair standing up. He laughed harder, the hot spit actually warming his cold body. The dragon, realizing just how cold he was, shuffled over to him, making a tent out of her wing.
Edward, stunned at the blue canopy above him, immediately began to feel warm. Rubbing his arms, his flesh arms, against each other to generate heat, he quickly warmed up, glad for the heat.
"Thank you, mysterious blue dragon. I kind of wish I could do something to help you out," he replied. Sitting down, he leaned against the large leg, the warmth heating his bare back. With the heat, the absurdity of the situation, and the complete and unexpected calm of being wrapped up in a dragon wing, he fell asleep, gold hair slowly moving down as the spit evaporated.
LINE BREAK
A loud roaring sound woke Edward up, the sudden motion of whatever he was leaning on sent him tumbling backwards, landing on his back. He winced as a few rocks dug into the bare skin. Ignoring the pain, he rolled over, getting into a crouching stance, assessing whatever was happening.
To his left was the blue dragon from the previous day, backed against the wall of the cave, position hunched, attempting to protect itself. To his right, was a massive red dragon, easily twice the size of the blue one, standing on its rear legs, teeth bared, emitting an angry growl directed at the blue dragon. Suddenly, it let lose a roar, fire spewing forth. The blue dragon responded in kind, but instead of fire, gale force winds erupted, meeting the fire and stopping it half way.
It took four seconds to realize that both the blue dragon was losing, and that this red one was pissing him off. Clapping his hands, he turned the rock underneath the red dragon into mud, causing it to sink several feet into the earth until more than half was covered. Another clap and the mud hardened into bedrock. Before he could... somehow... figure out just what was going on, the blue dragon slinked up to the red one, a less than friendly face marring the visage.
Spitting a few interesting words in what he could only assume was the language of the dragons here, the blue dragon turned around. Thinking it was over, he couldn't react to the tail coming down, crushing the red dragon's head into the earth. Any movements created by the red dragon stopped, signalling it was dead. Shocked, he could only watch as the blue dragon walked over to the exposed side, before taking a great bite out of the side.
He was about to scream and rant about the craziness of the situation, and by extension, the world, when he saw something amazing.
The flesh tightened on the blue dragon, muscle and fat filling out to a healthy proportion. The open wounds and obvious damage to the body was being fixed before his very eyes, until after three bites of red dragon meat, the blue dragon was what one would assume the peak of its health. For a dragon.
Glancing at the now dead red dragon, he had an idea. Pantomiming at the corpse, hoping to get across the message that he wanted to use it, the blue dragon nodded, happily slurping blood from the muzzle. Edward suppressed a shudder at that, the scene all to bloody for him.
Turning back to the dead dragon, he clapped his hands, laying them on the non bitten portion of the dragon. With bright blue sparks, the hide began to recoil, as if moving towards Edward, leaving exposed muscle underneath. After several minutes of calculations, tests and guesswork, he had created a coat and gloves from dragon hide.
The coat was made primarily of the softer belly, utilizing the scale concentration to provide a soft, flexible fabric that retained heat. Along the shoulders, and moving up the coat from the bottom in a flame like pattern were thicker scales, providing protection from wear and tear. The same followed for the elbows. The gloves were soft stomach flesh with scales acting as guards on the back of the hand and fingers.
With the coat on, it was incredibly warm now, instead of blistering cold pervading everywhere, even the cave. The blue dragon was surprised, sniffing at the exposed flesh, before deciding it was ok, taking another bite out of it. Edward shrugged, transmuting a knife from the wall, cutting a slab of meat. Transmuting a nearby flat rock to incredible heat, he lay the strip of meat on the red hot rock, cooking it.
Several hours later, the two of them had eaten their fill, the cavern filled with the scent of blood and cooked meat. Edward lay down next to the blue dragon, relishing in the feeling of a full stomach, warm rock providing heat, and something that could be constituted as a friend. While a little bit less than normal, it was a peaceful situation, one where he wasn't on his guard for anything. He was about to fall asleep when the dragon shifted, waking him back up.
"What is it now?" grumbled Edward, glancing at the Blue dragon.
And a green portal.
A flipping green portal, hovering there, not disturbing the world around it in any way. There were no shadows, no change of air current, no weird noise, no nothing. It just was. Walking slowly towards it, he and the dragon looked it over thoroughly.
"It doesn't seem evil or against us, but what is it?" wondered Ed. The blue dragon leaned forward, intent on sniffing it, when it sneezed. The forward momentum carried the tip of the nose into touching it, but that was all it needed.
With great gusto, the green energy began to flow up the arms, the chest, everything. Cursing, Edward grabbed the tail and attempted to pull, since by all laws of the universe this portal should not exist.
When the green energy reached the tail, it overlapped his hands, drawing him forth to whatever hellish nightmare it could be.
LINE BREAK
Glancing around, a girl of about 17 stood before a white circle, a staff more than a head high in her hand. Pointing it at the pentagon in the center of the circle, she chanted a few words, quietly enough that nobody else heard her. The five points on the shape lit up with green energy, shooting out and meeting at an origin point a few meters above the surface. Wondering what the familiar might be, the bluenette almost missed her familiar arriving from wherever it was called from.
A blue form spilled out, huge in size, covered in iridescent blue scales with huge emerald eyes. The dragon got to her feet unsteadily, looking around. A few other people like the one with gold hair stood around, wearing black and white. Off to the left was a bald person with robes, while before her was a girl with blue hair. The dragon looked around, hoping to find Edward. Realizing he was still clutching onto her tail, the dragon lifted the tail over to reveal the blond in red dragon skin.
Glancing around, hanging from the blue dragon's tail, he muttered some unintelligible under his breath, glancing around. There were kids probably no older than himself staring at him, gathered around some weird transmutation circle, wearing cloaks and a collection of slacks or mini skirts. From what he could tell, being several feet in the air, they were glancing between him and the dragon, a weird blue haired girl with a surprised expression, and an old man with a receding hairline.