I was running through the ruins with my dragon, black draconium coursing through me.

I used to be human, but had been forced to drink black draconium, and it was changing me. It had tainted my blood. My appearance is only slightly altered, but the muscles, organs, even bones in me had changed. I had become part dragon, which was the reason I could run alongside him with ease when a normal human could not.

The ruler of the city was watching me, seeing how I took to the draconium. I knew that my body's unusual reaction would provoke experimentation. The sudden appearance of professional fighting dragons behind me made my hypothesis certain as they herded my dragon and me toward a tower rising above the ruins.

We tried splitting up, but more appeared and it was like we had our own escort. An escort that led to our doom. We were forced through the tower entry way and the fighter dragons circled around as guards.

The two of us looked around the tower, but saw nothing unusual. There was dust that had lain undisturbed and our footprints were clearly visible, dark against the floor.

There was a clang somewhere high above us and we looked up to see something falling toward us. It was a featureless ball made of common metal. I looked closer at it and saw a crack appear in the smooth surface. Something shot out of it and collided with my forehead with enough force to cause me to fall back. I sat up, wondering what hit me, and caught my reflection in the still mostly whole sphere. What looked like an oval medallion, flat grey in color, was magged to my helmet, just above my visor. It began to glow red and five red bars shot out and hovered, securely magged, to the sides and above my helmet. I tried to pull it off but it was magged too well. The sphere in front of me opened in half and a second system magged itself to my chest and a beacon on it shone red also.

Just as I wondered what was going on, the feeling of imminent doom made my body go cold and I looked up at the top of the tower. The voice of the lord of the city filled it and said, "You are now under my control."

Immediately, the two magged devices that had come from the sphere became active and took control of me. They changed my appearance to have the same markings, in the same areas, as a black bone dragon would. I tried resisting, but was then forced to transform into a half-dragon. I was commanded to return to him and shot past my dragon and out of the tower with the warrior dragons in tow. My dragon soon left the tower after us, but couldn't keep up, despair weighing him down, and returned to my friend's house.

When I came to his tower, I transformed back into a complete human and bowed to him, showing that I was fully under his control. He laughed with the success of my capture.

Internally I struggled against the draconium but it seeped slowly through my body, making the changes permanent.

I wished that the dragon booster would come, but I had little hope and fell into despair quickly. My mind became dormant and was only aware of my body's actions and senses as if it were watching a TV show. Mind-numbing trance-like state.