"Hey look out! There's another one!" screamed one of the five men, who were restraining a relatively small dragon.
It was a female Welsh Green not causing too many problems as of yet. They found her sneaking from the Romanian dragon reservation towards a nearby farm. She was already closer than acceptable when they got an urgent message – an Urgent as they called it, so they quickly put together a safe twelve man group that followed her. It seemed like an easy job, twelve professional dragon tamers against one of the tamest species of the dragon kind.
A little while after they apprehended her, another dragon showed up. This time it was a Peruvian Vipertooth female. She enthusiastically joined the fun, trying to get a bite out of them. The moment she set her eyes on humans, she didn't spare the green dragon, whose yell alerted her, a second glance. Vipertooths liked people; they were one of the species that found them quite tasty.
When the second dragon came, the dragon tamer group was no longer at an advantage. It took at least six trained wizards to overpower a dragon and with two of them on the scene they had just the number.
Now, yet another dragon came.
The third dragon to arrive was an interesting dark-green one. Unlike the Vipertooth, it settled itself on a nearby rock, about fifty meters away. It was way too close not to present a danger, yet far enough to not endanger them with its flame.
"Just brilliant! Three are too much!" a wizard with long curly brown hair complained angrily. He only just managed to jump out of the Vipertooth's swishing tail's way.
"It's a hybrid! Gods, look at it, it's wonderful!" exclaimed a red-haired wizard with pimples on his tanned face. He was in a group fighting the Welsh green. The dragon was getting a little nervous already.
"I don't know about you, Charlie… hey greenie, look at me – Conjuctivitus! Hell - but I think there are more important things to do now. For example-" wizard standing next to the read-head gasped and by ear managed to dodge the unexpected burst of flame that the Green sent his way. She obviously noticed the curse that missed her head by inches. "I'll skin you alive you stupid green-"
"She'll grill you first, Nate," said a wizard from Charlie's other side dryly.
Nate chanced him a glare.
"Thank you very much, Karl," he frowned.
His second curse missed the dragon's mouth by two inches. She growled.
"As I was saying, there are more important things to do," he repeated finally in between two blasts of stupefy curses, which hit the dragon's head above its eyes. The dragon shook her head and sent another blast of flame at him, which he shielded away. "For example how the twelve of us can manage three adult dragons!"
"That hybrid may be ill. It doesn't look aggressive," stated Karl.
He looked ready to curse the green beast, but at the moment she was paying extra attention to poor Nate, trying to make him warmer. He had no chance to hit her eyes or any scale-less part of her, so he just watched the show for a while. It seemed he pissed the green dragon off a bit with those close calls.
"She looks healthy enough… leave me be!... but she's watching us as if we were a wonderful entertainment for the day. Go lay eggs or something! Won't turn that stare away even once. I'm getting goose bumps from her."
"This green's trying to help you out with that," came Karl's dry comment, as the green sent another fire blast at his colleague.
"You better help me instead," snarled Nate and banished some dirt into her eyes.
She yelped and then growled as they started cursing her in their earnest again.
"Wait, she? This is impossible – three females at once!" exclaimed Charlie.
"A Graphorn!" yelled an older wizard from the Vipertooth group.
They were standing in a safe shielding distance from dragon flames, but that meant the angry grey-purple beast would get to them. It never learnt to respect dragons. That was the reason there were so little of them left in the world. Their skin may be impenetrable to spells and fire in the most part, but dragons had more ways of slaughtering their prey.
This Graphorn was approaching them fast, running down the mild hill from the woods.
"I don't like those animals," mumbled Charlie.
"What is it doing here anyway?" whined Nate. "There are three dragons here; we don't need that ugly beast!"
"Ow!" yelped the curly-haired wizard.
This time the Vipertooth's tail hit him. It threw him good twenty meters away from his group, right into the way of the Graphorn.
"Merlin, Matt!" Charlie screamed in sudden anguish. "Look out!"
The curly hairedwizard named Matt looked up in terror at the furious purple beast. He lost his grip on his wand when he landed. It was lying more than ten meters away from him now. He would never get to it before the beast got to him. Never mind that it would be pretty much hopeless against an animal, whose skin was thicker than dragon's.
"The third one's taking off!" yelled Nate from his place next to Charlie. He just blocked the red-head from the dragon's flame, because his eyes were glued to his best friend, who was lying in the beast's way, wandless.
"We're dead," remarked Karl dryly.
"Merlin, she's going for Matt!" groaned Charlie.
The dark-green dragon crossed the land between Matt and her rock in a few seconds. She arrived just as the Graphorn closed in, lowering its horned head at him.
Surprisingly, she growled and struck out with her clawed paw, throwing the monster a great deal further. By the time it managed to get up, she was there. A rather thin bright-blue flame broke forth from her nostrils. In a matter of seconds all that was left from the beast was a little bit of its head and its horns. Those were out of way of the unusually thin fire range.
The dragon took the Graphorn remnants into its mouth with an air of dragony satisfaction, and flew back to her rock, shocking everyone who was watching. Matt was left sitting on the ground, open-mouthed and completely unharmed.
After a while, he scrambled to his feet hastily and grabbed his wand. He glanced apprehensively at the hybrid dragon. He thought it forgot about him after getting another prey. One glance told him that he was wrong. The dragon was watching his every step, the head of the Graphorn smoking and sizzling with heat between her fore paws. She didn't look like taking off anytime soon.
He just joined the now taxed Vipertooth group once more, when the Welsh Green decided she had enough of those stupid two legged animals and flew off away, back to the reservation mountains. After that, it was only a matter of minutes until they managed to subdue the Peruvian Vipertooth into leaving, too.
When both dragons left, the group turned to face the dark-green one. She was stretched out on the rock comfortably and was bathing in the sun. Her eyes were closed.
"Do you see what I do?" one of the wizards whispered with awe in his voice.
Dragon hybrids were rare, but his one was unique, one of a kind.
"She has the tail horns like a Horntail does, but they are gold," stated Nate.
"Those golden horns on her head make her a Longhorn, along with her colour," added Matt, still more than white from his near-death experience.
"That ridge is just the right form and height for a Norwegian Ridgeback, apart from its colour," Norwegian ridgeback had a black ridge; this hybrid had a dark-green one with golden spikes.
"The flame is blue as the Swedish Short-Snout has, and probably equally hot," joined one of the former Vipertooth group, "but it's thin as a Welsh Green's flame," he added.
"Only Ukrainian Iron-Belly has claws that size."
"Her head horns seem a bit shorter than what Longhorn has, though."
"I think they aren't, Andy. It just looks like that, because she is larger than a Longhorn," an older wizard from Vipertooth group frowned thoughtfully. "She could care less, though. With an arsenal like this, she's almost invincible. I think the temperature of her flame is higher than Short-Snout's, too. Graphorns are extremely resistant to fire. Even Short-Snout would need a minute or so to burn it down like this."
The blond short-haired Andy nodded.
"Her wings resemble a bat. Indicates a Hebridean Black. Just dark-green again, and golden spikes. She likes those colours, doesn't she?" noted Karl.
"Probably. What species do we have left?" smirked Charlie, his blue eyes bright with joy once again.
"Well," frowned Karl. "We have signs of a Horntail, Longhorn, Ridgeback, Short-Snout, Iron Belly, Hebridean Black and possibly Welsh if we take the width of her flame into account. That's seven."
"Yes," said one of the older. "Missing species are Opaleye, Vipertooth and Chinese Fireball."
"What colour are her eyes?" asked Charlie suddenly. "Would be fun if they were Fireball's red. Do you know? I didn't notice."
"Matt?" a black-haired man, resembling a member of some Mediterranean nation, asked.
"I don't know, Alejandro, I can't remember. I was looking into her eyes and she's been staring at me long enough, but I don't know. I thought a saw red, then I though perhaps green or blue, or yellow… I just don't know."
"Pity. Do you think she is venomous, by any chance?" continued Charlie eagerly.
"How do you want to find out?" Alejandro raised his dark eyebrows.
"If she opened her mouth, we would know."
"Yes, but somehow I want her to stay asleep."
"She's not asleep."
Charlie and Alejandro both stopped their conversation and stared at Matt.
"What do you mean? Her breath's calm, she's relaxed, closed eyes. Fore leg turned upwards. Dragons only do that when fast asleep."
"I don't care," Matt shrugged. "I still have this uncomfortable feeling, as if she was watching us. I had the same feeling when she was sitting there during the battle, staring at us."
"But…" Alejandro started to protest.
"He's right," joined the older one from before. "We know that Matt can feel a prolonged stare. This dragon's strange. Hybrids are just as aggressive as pureblood ones. This one didn't bother to so much as twitch her tail in attack yet."
"If you don't count the Graphorn," remarked Andy. "That one ended up quite nicely." He pointed at the horns near the dragon's head.
"This is a typical picture of a sleeping dragon," opposed a brown haired wizard who alerted them to her arrival.
"She's not asleep, Wins," said Matt firmly, glaring at her.
"I doubt she would fall asleep with twelve people in her close vicinity," added one of the older tamers.
"We've already established that this dragon doesn't behave like the rest of them. It can be sleeping just as well, Martin," Wins was shaking his head.
"She's a female, Wins, not an it," said Charlie, gazing at her fondly.
Suddenly the dragon opened her eyes, raised her head and looked at them. They all leaped back in frightened surprise. Matt didn't leap as far back as the others, already expecting something like this, and it left him standing closer to her than his friends. She seemed just as alert as when she threw the Graphorn away.
"There you have it," growled Matt.
She turned her head slightly and stared at him intently.
"Don't look at me like that. Do you have any idea how unpleasant that is?" he complained cautiously.
The dragon tilted her head to the side and measured him up and down with her gaze slowly, as if contemplating the amount of meat on that funny little animal. Matt shivered. He could practically feel that look physically.
"You know what this means, don't you?" said Martin quietly. "She's cunning if she tried to persuade us she was asleep. That means she is intelligent. Be careful, this one will be completely unpredictable."
"And look at her eyes!" exclaimed Charlie happily. "Pupil-less and colourful. No wonder you didn't know, Matt, she has all the colours swirling around constantly."
"So she has something from the Antipodean Opaleye, too. Mainly if the colour changes in sync with her mood. Eight-species hybrid as of now."
"Hey, dragon!" Charlie suddenly let out a loud yell, as if thinking she was deaf. She looked at him and raised her head a bit higher. Her eyes turned reddish-green and the colourful sparkles started moving faster.
"Charlie!" barked Martin sharply. Red with Antipodean meant anger. The velocity of swirling meant intensity of emotion.
"I just want her to open her mouth. Would you open that beak of yours for a while?"
Her eyes whirled to a full-blown red. Suddenly, two bright-blue, mushroom shaped clouds of smoke burst forth from her nostrils. Charlie's chin fell.
"That is… that is…" he stuttered. "T-that is… that is… that…" his voice failed. Matt couldn't help the laugh that escaped him.
"That is-that is obviously a Chinese Fireball part of her, Charlie. Stop annoying her."
"I think he actually amused her. Look, her eyes are green-blue now."
"In the presence of people? The number of species she is built of must have addled her brains," grumbled Wins.
The dragon hissed and sat up. She glanced at Wins with an angry, fast-swirling glare.
"Shit. She's obviously intelligent as a Kneazle at least. Seems she can understand us," Andy jumped backwards. The dragon didn't seem too pleased with that comparison also.
"Moreover, she uses that intelligence in comparison with other dragons. They aren't stupid; they just act on their instincts and urges rather than intelligence. Other dragon would have thrown itself on us already. Maybe her genes couldn't hold that much various information and balanced in making her tame, unable to feel uncontrolled fury," hypothesized one of them.
The female dragon looked at them, tense and obviously insulted. She opened her mouth and let go of a loud, strangely melodic roar.
"She's venomous! D'you see those teeth? The sharp ones! They're greenish, too!" yelled Charlie excitedly.
"The width of flame and now yell is Welsh Green for sure."
"So she has a bit of all the species. Elwin will have kittens."
Dragon closed her mouth, snatched the graphorn's head angrily and took off to the mountains, not sparing the twelve humans another glance.
Matt watched her go with a frown.
"She gives me such a creepy feeling. Different than I usually get," he grumbled to himself.
"She's strange enough. Let's go, we were gone for too long. The others in the settlement must be worried."
AN: Hi people. For those who are new to this story (and maybe those who aren't), this is a rewritten chapter one of this story. My English is gradually getting better as I write and I decided to replace all the published chapters when I go through them and give them another editing round (I think it is quite necessary). Anyway, nothing of importance was changed, just grammar, some words, some things were added... things like that, nothing life-threatening :)