Chapter 2: The Prophecy
"Look," Stiles said as soon as he saw his dad. "I know what you're going to say, and in my defense we were already in the neighborhood."
John pulled Stiles into a rough hug and shook his head. "Stiles," he said.
He felt Stiles relax slightly into the hug, but tensed up again when John softly cuffed his head. He pulled back and looking sternly at his son
"What the hell were you thinking?" John snapped. "They are dragons, and you cannot heal like some werewolves we might know!"
Said werewolves (and kitsune) looked down or away, abashed.
"I know dad!" Stiles said. "But I had a theory I wanted to test out!"
"And what was it?" John growled.
"That they were hungry." Stiles said, holding his hands up defensively. "I just wanted to see why they were attacking us, and it seemed that food was a good answer!"
John pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "You mean to tell me," he said slowly, "that you went into a dangerous situation with dragons that breathe fire and acid to feed them?"
"W-well," Stiles stuttered, "Um, well you see, not exact—yeah?" he said quickly under his father's furious gaze.
John opened his mouth when his phone started ringing. He pulled it out and glanced at the name before putting it up to his ear.
"Yeah? Tell me you've got something." He said. The pack members turned to look at John curiously.
"Yeah, we'll be over there as soon as we can." He said. At Kira and Stiles's questioning gazes he said, "That was Deaton. He's found something."
"Thank god," Stiles muttered, sagging slightly. "Let's go!"
John shook his head, but did not protest when they all piled into the car. Scott, Stiles, and Kira were calling everyone in the pack (and Argent) to gather at Deaton's.
"So?" Stiles asked before John could once they all had entered the clinic. Deaton was bracing himself against the counter, head bent down slightly. He glanced up as they entered before allowing his head to drop again, as though it was physically tiring him to keep it up. He looked haggard, his normally composed form was bent and bags sagged beneath his eyes. He was trembling in a way that told John he'd had one too many cups of coffee.
"What did you find, Deaton?" Argent snapped.
Deaton looked up. "An old prophecy," he said.
"What, like a prophecy prophecy?" Stiles asked. "Those exist?"
"Well, it's not too surprising if dragons do . . ." Isaac muttered.
"Yeah, but that's in our faces attacking us with burning acidic infernos," Stiles said. "Prophecies are just weird. Voldemort might have gone after Neville instead of Harry, you know."
"You are such a nerd," Lydia said, sniffing disdainfully.
"What does it say?" John interrupted the brewing argument, looking at Deaton.
Deaton cleared his throat and looked at a small piece of paper in front of him.
"Six dragons, fiery creatures under the sun,
Six Riders, fierce warriors who follow only one
One trapped in life, unable to speak of home
One trapped where water and land turn to bone
One trapped in a loop, awaiting the final war
Two trapped in stone, together forevermore
The last trapped in metal, ever in pain
The Master of Dragons will rise again."
When Deaton finished there a moment there was silence.
"That sounded like a fairy tale," Derek growled. "We don't have time for that, Deaton!"
Deaton shook his head. "Derek, it took me a long time trying to get my hands on this." He said. "I had to ask some of the oldest, most revered Druids for this—using some very powerful magic to contact them that took a lot of strength from me. This prophecy—it is in the back of all Druids' minds, because it has been around for a very, very long time. I don't see it as a mere whim or fairy tale, nor do most Druids."
"It said 'Master of Dragons'." Lydia said. "What does that mean?"
Deaton sighed heavily. "I'm guessing someone who has control over all dragons." He said. "Someone who could put a stop to this slaughter."
"Then we should try," Scott said. "I mean, it can't hurt, right?"
"How do we know he won't side with the dragons and not us?" Isaac asked.
"We don't," Argent said. "But the prophecy also spoke of six Riders—perhaps they could be persuaded."
"If this prophecy is so old, won't they all be dead?" Kira asked.
"Yeah, probably." Isaac said before Deaton shook his head.
"'One trapped in life, unable to speak of home,'" he quoted, "'One trapped where water and land turn to bone' it sounds to me as it they've been kept around."
"How can you do that?" Derek growled.
Deaton sighed, rubbing a hand over his bald head. "There are some ancient magics that can invoke a Destiny," he said softly. "A Destiny that will not allow those involved to die until the Destiny has been completed. I know it has been cast only once, over two people. It is . . . no one knows how it is done; that knowledge is lost. However, it may be what has happened here."
"Who were the two people?" Stiles asked.
"It does not matter," Deaton said tiredly. "Only that it can be done. And that . . . that is what I am guessing has happened here."
"Then we need to find them and bring them to our side." Scott said. "How to do we begin?"
Deaton sighed again. He rubbed his eyes before looking up. "There's an old summoning spell," he said quietly. "That can only be cast with the right things."
"And what do we need?" John asked.
Deaton looked at his papers, shuffling them and putting one on top. "We need an iron bowl, a leather band with some runes pressed into it, we need a parchment paper with more runes, and we need the scale of a dragon. Then we fill the bowl with gas and then set fire to it all. While it's burning, we need to say a chant."
"Doesn't sound too hard," Scott said. "I mean, we've got the dragon scales around town."
"Which is why no one has tried it yet," Argent said, realization echoing in his voice. "Because no one has seen a dragon before."
"Exactly," Deaton agreed.
"Let's do it," Scott said, suddenly in charge. "Stiles, go get the bowl. Lydia, the leather band and the parchment—copy the runes onto them with Deaton. Isaac, Derek and I will go find the dragon scale. Mr. Argent, would you go find the gas?" At Argent's nod Scott gestured for them all to head out.
John hadn't been assigned anything, so he headed to his car and headed to the station to deal with the results of the mall.
"How'd it go?" Jones asked immediately when he walked in the door.
It hadn't taken people long before they realized that when John disappeared after a dragon attack, he was meeting with the pack.
"It went okay," John said tiredly. "They've been trying to see it they can appease the dragons with food."
"Did it work?" Moles asked eagerly.
John shook his head slightly. "They're still trying."
"What's the point in having a supernatural protection group if they can't stop these things?" Jonckner asked snidely.
"Look, dragons have been dismissed as a fantasy by even the supernatural world." John snapped. "Suddenly they exist and have been attacking us for no reason. At least they're trying Jonckner, which is more than we can say for you!"
Jonckner looked down, fuming. John turned away. "Anyone else?" He growled. There was some head shaking and John stormed over to his office to file a report and maybe take a moment to breathe.
Thirty minutes passed, and his phone rang. John saw Stiles's ID and held it to his ear. "Yeah?" he asked.
"Dad, we've collected everything. Wanna see this?"
"Sure," John said. "I'll be there in five."
No one asked where he was going as he left; his expression saying enough.
When John got there after driving down the deserted streets he saw that the bowl had already been set up. Argent and Derek were wrestling with a large gas tank, hooking up a nozzle to it and bringing the nozzle down to the bowl.
"Not too much," Derek was saying. John was good at his job—as a sheriff and a police officer you had to be able to read people's body language and facial expressions. Derek was uncomfortable with the gas and the fire, and, his minds flashing back to Stiles's chessboard, John certainly couldn't blame him.
"Of course," Argent said. "We just need enough for the ritual to work."
John went to stand by Stiles, who looked torn between excitement and cautiousness. John felt pained to see that, but remembered that the last time Stiles did an ancient ritual he had been possessed by an evil fox spirit. John wrapped his arm around Stiles and squeezed slightly. Stiles looked up at John and smiled slightly. The two Stilinski's focused again on the rest of the pack, no words necessary.
"Ready?" Lydia said nervously. John blinked, wondering why before he saw Peter Hale, Derek's creepy uncle, lurking in the shadowed corner of the room. Whenever he saw Peter, John felt the urge to go for his cuffs—or his gun.
Peter raised an eyebrow at John as if he knew exactly what John was thinking about. John looked away, unable to look the elder Hale in the eye.
"Ready." Scott confirmed, looking at Deaton, who had a piece of paper in one hand and a lighter in the other.
Argent sent Derek away, who joined Malia and Kira in another corner of the room. Argent shrugged on some heavy duty gloves and turned the dial for gas release slightly. It hissed slightly as it was released, and John's nose was filled with the scent of rotten eggs. Deaton stood just far enough away to be safe and clicked the lighter on. He looked down at the paper and took a deep breath, throwing the lighter into the bowl that was covered in gas. There was a burst of fire, temporarily blinding John. As he blinked furiously, he heard Deaton's voice calmly reciting his ritual.
"I summon thee, creatures of old,
Spirits of the earth and sky
Allow the ancient Destiny to unfold
For the hour of the Dragon Master is nigh."
The room rumbled slightly, and the fire went from orange to blue to silvery grey. The light was getting brighter and brighter until no one could look at it anymore. John raised his hand to shield his eyes, and distantly he could hear a shriek unlike anything he had ever heard before, like a plane going at high speeds, but higher and higher until he felt like his eardrums would burst and he heard the screams of the other and he clasped his hands over his ears, feeling Stiles at his side doing the same and then—
Then it was over. John blinked at the sudden loss of the noise and the light and found that the bowl had been crushed until the weight of an enormous man.
Far away a black ear twitched, a massive body shifting slightly. A purring growl was caught in its chest as it waited, silent and deadly. He was nearly returned . . .
