Zuko Kai and the Bone Witch
Chapter 1 – Nightmare and Fire
Disclaimer: I own nothing but a sugar donut and like 3 dogs.
It was impossible… this must be a dream…
The little boy ran as fast as he could down the dark street, heaving gulps of cold foggy air. The street of the suburb was completely deserted, lined with houses that were as dark as the sky above. It was unreal, not a single source of light – the street lamps and the light that usually came from the houses had mysteriously failed, and there was not even a single twinkle of stars above the cloudless night sky - aside from the large white moon hanging up above, peering down nonchalantly at the misery of the little boy.
The boy ran barefoot and his feet were scraped and bloody, wearing pajamas that were clinging to his sweaty skin, and tears borne of fear were glistening on his face. He saw up ahead the candy-orange VW Beetle of old Mrs. Nahara who lived down the street and ran past it. He turned right by instinct at the bend ahead, heading to the direction of his school.
It had been a very strange night…
He remembered going to bed, being tucked in by his mother. He remembered the soft smile and warm kisses, and he remembered his mother saying, "Sleep tight, sweetie", and remembered dreaming, after he fell asleep, of running down a dark street, being chased by an unseen entity of pure terror.
Only, it appeared now that it was not a dream. Not a dream at all.
It made absolutely no sense. His mother never neglected to lock the door and the windows of their small apartment, and he, being rather short for a five-year-old, could not have reached up the side table where his mother always kept the keys. And he would have remembered taking the keys anyway. But, as of now, he could not even remember how he got out of the apartment. He could not even remember how or when he started running, or what he was running from, as the matter of fact. He just remembered running and being so very afraid of what was chasing him.
Up ahead, he saw the familiar bus stop sign and he ran ahead faster. His vision was blurred now by fog, the thick enveloping fog, and sweat and tear in his eyes, and by sheer exhaustion. And the fog was so awfully thick up ahead; the whole road past the bus stop was completely obscured and, aside from the top of the school building peeking over the fog, he could see nothing else.
He pushed himself to run faster, trying so hard to ignore the burn on his legs and lungs, which proved to be unfortunate because, as he lunged into the fog, instead of finding security and comfort in a familiar place that was North Hira'a School, instead he found himself falling off a cliff.
He screamed as he fell from hundreds of feet in the air, limbs flailing. He saw the city below him, bright and very unlike Hira'a, the Republic City as he would soon find out. There was a roar unlike any he had ever heard and he suddenly felt something gripping his body. He looked down and felt even more horror; a great scaly claw had seized him. The claw lifted him and turned him towards the owner of that claw: a humongous green-scaled dragon whose head was easily the size of a trailer truck. The dragon, flapping its great leather wings, its serpentine body undulating midair, opened its mouth. The boy could see fire lighting up the inside of the beast's throat. The sheer terror almost made the boy losing control of his bladder not shameful.
Then, a voice of a man pierced through the night just as the dragon spat the mouthful of almost liquid fire; an explosion of red light blasted the side of the dragon's maw, blasting its head to the side and diverting the majority of its terrible flame. A splash of it though slapped on the left side of the boy's face.
The boy screamed of pain, sheer burning pain that burnt him to the core of his being. The dragon let go of him as more blasts found their mark on it and it fled into the night. As the boy plunged back-first towards the earth, he saw a man flying towards him, his hand outstretched. The boy limply reached out before passing out.