Act 1: Childhood

Chapter 2: Back to Ness…

Party: Ryu, Sarah

Sarah stopped suddenly, and the force of the jerk caused Ryu to lazily open his eyes and stretch. Strangely, he found that Sarah didn't protest as the dragon whelp in her arms stretched and yawned. Ryu opened his eyes, aware that he was in a dragon form, though too tired to really be as ecstatic about it as he thought he would be originally. He looked upward at his sister's face, and what he saw there was enough to shock him.

Fear.

He had never seen such an expression on her face before. Always it had been something brave, or perhaps stoic. She had always been able to take things in stride. She had been the one that had stood up for him when he was afraid. But she couldn't be afraid now… that wouldn't be a good thing. Because that meant that whatever she saw would be worse than anything he had dealt with before.

And he was so tired…

Curiosity, however, beat out the foreboding that had taken root within his stomach, and Ryu stretched his neck in order to look out at the direction that Sarah was looking. When he had finally done it, and gotten a view of it, he didn't immediately connect what it meant. He saw smoke rising to the sky. Thick plumes of smoke, though from the distance they were away along the plains it didn't look terribly thick…

The plains.

Ness.

Ryu let out a cry of anxiety, and this jolted Sarah back into her senses. She shook her head, then continued to walk towards the town, though she was using a much faster pace now than she had before. Ryu squirmed, wanting to be let down, but unable to communicate with his sister effectively. It turned out that squirming got what he wanted, as he was set down as his sister sighed at him.

"Alright, alright, but please keep up…" she said to him, obviously preoccupied.

It took Ryu a few moments to find his balance, then a few more to figure out how to waddle around. The fact that it only took him a total of about a minute to figure out how to keep pace with his sister was amazing to him, though Sarah made no mention of it. Soon enough, Sarah was jogging at a decent clip and little Ryu was speedily at her side the whole way. It was exhilarating to be moving around in this new form of his. He did start to focus on the problem at hand instead of the amazing new sensations that he was experiencing, albeit reluctantly.

He did want to test out the interesting claws that he had, as well as figure out if he had a breath weapon or not, but the important thing was figuring out what was going on first, before doing something about it, and then he could work with his dragon form later. He sighed, though became delighted when sparks came out of his nose. Apparently, he did have a breath weapon of some kind.

The pair had been running at this pace for about a half an hour before Sarah slowed to a stop, looking around. She unclasped the spear that she kept in a sheath behind her back and looked around wary for an opponent. Ryu looked all around them quizzically, but all he could see was the borders of the plains. The cliffs behind them, Ness and the rolling grasslands in front of them, and the hills on either side. But between those borders, the only things that he could see were himself and his sister. He wondered what his sister was worried about, but a sinking feeling in his chest told him that he had to be ready too. After all, if something had found their village, and it was unfriendly, then it probably was particularly powerful.

The sinking feeling was growing steadily worse, and Ryu wondered, as he looked from side to side, wary of an attack, whether Sarah had felt this sinking feeling before he had, and that's what had caused her to come to a stop. It was possible, of course, that this sinking feeling had something to do with the dragon powers. Or it just could be his nerves.

However, it was his nerves that took the shock when suddenly appearing in front of them was a man. Not just any man, but a giant of a man. He had fierce blue eyes and no hair on the top of his head, though his black beard nearly had enough hair to cover it. He was easily seven or eight feet tall, and was quite large in the other proportion too. He was leaning on a sword that was taller than Ryu was, and probably thicker than the dirk that he carried. Ryu suddenly noticed with a jerk that he didn't know where his dirk was. Well, hopefully he wouldn't need it until the danger was past.

The man looked at them both. "Impressive," he said in a deep bass, but it was not a soothing or congratulatory tone. It was a deadly tone, and Ryu felt his hackles rise in reaction to the cold demeanor that the man was giving. "I do wish I knew where you Dragons got that ability from. It made things more difficult than I may have wished, but it sure did make it more fun." At this, he smiled. But the eyes remained cold, and the result was something that really didn't remind Ryu of anyone else's smile that he had seen. A sneer on a particularly nasty person's face was the only thing that came to mind as similar.

"What do you want from us?" Sarah asked tersely, her eyes meeting the cold blue ones glare for glare.

The man did not move, but Ryu got the distinct feeling that he was suddenly ready for battle. "Nothing you need to know about," was his only answer, and his only warning before he sword swept up from the ground and came at Sarah. She parried it away hard and jumped back a pace. Ryu closed in and raked his claws along the legs of the big man, but before he could make another attack, he was swept aside by the sword, and then suddenly blinded by the light coming from Sarah. Apparently she had taken the opportunity to transform.

The big man growled and while Sarah was busy transforming, he turned his attention on Ryu. Ryu was ready when the giant sword came to bear against him, and his small frame easily dodged out of the way. Getting an idea from the fight he had had with Sarah earlier that day, Ryu grabbed the sword and tangled it with his claw a little so that the big man would have trouble bearing it. Of course, Ryu had not accounted for the big man's strength, and he found himself raised in the air easily by the big man, and with a mighty swing, Ryu was wrenched away from the sword and to the ground hard. Even through the spring's grass the dirt rose from the stiff impact.

Just after being tossed clear, Ryu felt and heard the passage of Sarah's lightning breath that she had so kindly used to defeat him. This time however, when the breath cleared, the man was still standing there, looking unharmed. He had his sword in a guard position in front of his body, and it was now glowing a bright blue color that was quite like the color of the breath that Sarah had. Sarah seemed to notice this, and took a step back, ready to dodge or something if the man had some counterattack hidden up his sleeve.

It turned out that he did, and it was a good thing that Sarah was ready for it. The man slashed the sword downward in her direction and a bolt of the breath came at her. She quickly jumped out of the way, and when the bolt had subsided, the big man and the larger of the two dragons were pacing each other. Ryu was still struggling to get up.

The female dragon growled low in her throat, and this earned a derisive laugh from her opponent. He then charged, and Sarah deftly blocked his sword swings with her claws, the same way that she had blocked the dirk in the battle with Ryu. However, because of what had happened to Ryu, she did not try to tangle the sword to try to disarm her opponent. Even if she was larger and heavier than Ryu's dragon form, it was not enough to counter the strength of her opponent, and she knew it. She was trying to find some sort of advantage. Without her breath weapon and the ability to disarm her opponent, she was quickly running out of ideas.

Ryu tried to help as best he could, but even after getting up and returning to the fray, he couldn't do much more than annoy the man. The big man was concentrating most of his defenses on Sarah, and ignoring Ryu like one ignores a fly in the room. When Ryu came up to bite, scratch, or otherwise bother the man, he would use a single swing of the sword to get rid of him, and then the sword was flashing back at Sarah before she had a chance to take advantage.

The battle continued this way for a while, and Ryu was tiring out. He realized that since this was his first transformation, he probably would not remain in dragon form much longer. And when he became a boy again, he knew that it would be hard to be even as much of an annoyance to the man as he was as a dragon, and that he might not be able to survive too many more of the sword strikes without his hard dragonhide protecting him. He decided it was time to try something desperate.

Instead of trying to sneak in and deliver a quick blow and then get out of the way before the man could retaliate, Ryu jumped as high as he could, aided by the small wings that he had growing out of his shoulders, and landed on the man's back and bit into the back of his neck. The man howled with pain for the first time, and this caused Ryu to redouble his efforts. It was working! Then suddenly, he felt a hand grip his tail, and with a mighty yank Ryu was pulled of the man. But the momentum carried Ryu a very long way before hitting the ground, and he was flying fast enough at that point to know that he would not be conscious after such a landing.

Ryu awoke, coughing and spluttering. He wiped his hand… a boy's hand… across his mouth to attempt to get the dust out of his mouth. He sat up and leaned against the wall that he hand landed next to and evaluated himself. He found that other than a severe headache and the feeling that his mouth had been washed out with dirt, he was right as rain. The darkness of night was oppressing, but looking around, there was nowhere to shelter himself from the outdoors. He was leaning against one of the only standing walls.

He suddenly gasped, and then hated himself for gasping. Was this Ness? Was this all there was left of the town that he had grown up in? What had happened to Sarah? Mom? Elder Hammet? What had really happened? Ryu looked around dumbly for some sort of obvious clue, but all he saw was wreckage. There weren't any bodies however, and Ryu was glad of that. He had seen a dead body once, and he was not ready to repeat the experience, especially several times over.

Ryu looked down at himself. He was still clothed in the ritual garb that he had worn that morning, and the only indications it had been worn were things he could remember, such as the scratches along his side from Sarah and a burn mark on the back from where the breath had hit him. But there was no evidence of his fight with the dragon, or the fall after being tossed off the man. He felt around, and found his dirk lying by his side. So it seemed that whatever he was carrying or wearing when he transformed would transform with him…

Ryu felt the tears finally come as he realized that he wanted to know more about his dragon and more about himself, but there was no one to tell him. He didn't know where to go, or what to do. All he had was himself, the clothes on his back and the dirk at his side. That wasn't exactly much to start with. He wanted his mother… he wanted Sarah, and there was no way of telling where they were, or how to get there if it wasn't where he was sitting.

Ryu crawled around some of the wreckage and collected some things that seemed like they would be off use. There was a slightly charred bedroll that was lying in the back of one of the buildings' remains that Ryu took, and there were a few of the food storage boxes that had made it through all right. Finding himself famished, Ryu tore open one of them and dug into the food that was waiting inside. Once he had eaten his fill and drunk of the stream that flowed through the town, he packed up what he could with whatever bits of rope and cloth that he could find and outfitted himself.

He had latched on to a particular memory of his father, when he was leaving that previous winter for serving in one of the Temples around the world.

"Ryu, Sarah. I know you'll both do well this year. I'm upset that I cannot be with you during this time of change, but you both know I'll be back soon enough. But there are a few things I would like you to know before I leave.

"Remember that Ness is under the protection and rule of the King of Wyndia. The King's castle lies in the northern mountains, in the city of Wyndia. It is not hard to find, though you would need help if you were to travel there now. If anything happens and you can't get to Ness for whatever reason, that is where you are supposed to go. He knows about us and will bring you under his protection for as long as is needed."

"But daddy," Sarah protested, but she was cut off by her father.

"I know, Sarah, its not going to happen to you guys. It has never happened before. But it is something that you need to know just in case it does happen to you. On your way, enlist the help of some people to guide you through the mountain, and once you make it to Wyndia, you'll be as safe as you would be in Ness."

Ryu let his tears fall as he thought bitterly about the fact that Ness hadn't been too safe for the Dragon Clan that day. Though he was ready to start north to the hill lands, he still had the headache, he was full, and it was extremely dark. He laid out the bedroll in a darker corner of one of the remains of the buildings, hiding himself from the view of as much as possible and cried himself softly to sleep. His dreams did not provide any comfort.