Chapter I: Year of the Dragon
..."Mal! Mal wake up! C'mon let's go! Hurry!" The baby fire dragon, Ignitus, eagerly awoke the sleeping Malefor.
Malefor opened one sleepy amethyst eye and waved Ignitus off. "Not yet Iggy, too tired...sleepy..."
"Hurry Mal! If we get there soon enough, we can see the eggs without being caught by the Dragonutes!" The Dragonutes were a race of Dragonmen notorious for being strong-willed, and strong soldiers. However, thanks to their undying loyalty and their fiery, powerful spirit, they made great guards, and sure enough, the four Elders of the Dragon Temple used them to ward off unwelcome guests. During the Year of the Dragon, when a huge cluster of eggs was delivered to the temple for protection and training, the amount of temple guards seemed to quadruple in size.
They especially liked to linger around the inner sanctum of the temple, located in the heart of the sprawling complex in the Mushroom Forest known as the "Sanctuary". However, if one were to get to the Sanctuary at a certain time, Temple guards were minimal as they changed shifts, and it was painfully easily for a small dragon or two to infiltrate the inner sanctum and see the legendary Egg Room. Supposedly all dragons came from the temple, but neither Ignitus nor Malefor knew how they came from the temple to a family of dragonflies in the outskirts of the Mushroom Forest.
They both knew they were dragons, they just didn't know how and why they were taken from the temple where their cluster-brothers and sisters were even now training to be warriors...and four lucky dragons...one from each of the four elements, were being trained to be Guardians. Of course, Ignitus knew he was a fire dragon, he discovered it after waking one morning and shooting a jet of flame while yawning.
Malefor had yet to learn any of the elements...and his purple color was unusual, he didn't know what element he represented. He knew the elements were Electricity, Fire, Ice, and Earth...on occasion he would run into young dragons who had left the protection of the Dragon Temple to train in the encircling Mushroom Forest. It was from these young warriors that Ignitus and Malefor received their education about the elements, and what was done within the sacred temple walls.
At night, Malefor would dream of being a warrior, accepted into the temple, and taught all four elements. He would rise to become the most powerful and kind dragon in the history of dragonkind. He would awake though to realize he was not a strong, legendary warrior, but was still a scrawny, lonely, misplaced, purple dragon. He was glad to have a friend like Ignitus...they weren't brothers...but they treated each other as such, they were both awkward individuals in a foreign (but not to them) society. Without Ignitus, Malefor wondered if he would have been an insane, depressed, angry dragon.
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Malefor stood up, yawned, and stretched. "All right Ignitus!" He said eagerly, "Let's go!"