So, yeah, since I haven't gotten ANY reviews since the last update I'm extending the deadline til the next chapter and giving more info on the 'mysterious dragoness' that saved Aesir when he was younger. One or two things have been added to her appearance, but the more blaringly obvious ones as to who she is are still there. So c'mon everyone who're just reading, toss me a review and a guess!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted things I use, I do however own my OCs and this story.
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Chapter 3
Azure groaned as he started to wake from his slumber, feeling as though he'd slept on a bed of rocks that his rather soft and plush one. He blinked his eyes open to adjust to the bright sunlight coming in through his open window. As his slowly-awakening mind became more and more aware, he felt like he was missing something blaringly obvious. He couldn't put his claw on what it was until it hit him like a slap to the face.
"I slept in!" he shouted aloud to himself, panicked, "Damn it, I'm late for my classes!"
He leaped out of his bed, only for his legs to get caught on the strap of the bag he hadn't noticed he was carrying. This cut his jump short and made him fall flat onto his face and sent the contents of the bag flying all about the room. Various pieces of jewelry, from rings to amulets to bracers, as well as a few gems fell out, followed by a pair of large tomes that only slid a few feet before stopping.
"Ow," he groaned, rolling onto his side. This put his gaze directly onto one of the books that had been inside the bag, this one colored a myriad of reflective colors while the other was a silverish-grey. Curious, he got to his paws and walked over to it, saying, "I don't remember having this…"
Intrigued, and a little bit cautious, the blue dragon gingerly opened the strange book's cover. He glanced at the first page and was confused and little bit disappointed. On it was a diagram of the many elements, not unlike the ones Volteer drew in Dragon History class, but this one had been done in silver ink. There were three circles, one inside the other, which was different than ones he usually saw that only had two. The outer-most circle had the main eight elements, not that surprising, each one represented by the symbol of the element. The middle one only had two, a sun for Light and a crescent moon for Darkness. However, it was the inner-most circle that drew his attention the most. He rarely ever saw the third circle shown due to the rarity of the elements found in it, but unlike the two that he normally saw, an hourglass for Time and a strange spiral for Space, there was a third that he didn't recognize. It completely baffled him as to what it could possibly be because the ink constantly shifted into a different element on the diagram without any sort of pattern to it.
He carefully placed a claw onto the unknown element, and the pages of the book suddenly turned rapidly. Startled, Azure jerked himself away from the tome and fell backward while an impossible number of pages kept turning. Finally, after almost a full minute, it stopped, but it was only on the second page. As if it had only flipped a single page instead of hundreds or thousands more.
"This is getting weirder and weirder…" he said under his breath, warily getting closer to the obviously-enchanted book. When he was close enough to make out the runes on the pages, he began trying to read them. It didn't take him long to realize, "I've never seen anything like these runes! What the hell is going on!"
Suddenly a repetitive knocking started on the door to his room, but the voice that followed it was what snapped him back to reality, "Az, you lazy drake, you were supposed to wake me up this morning! Now we're both late and we've missed our first class, idiot!"
"Oh, shit!" the blue dragon shouted, scrambling to gather his class materials into his bag, accidentally grabbing both of the strange tomes and knocking a few pieces of jewelry inside in his haste, "I'll be out in just a sec, Annie!"
"You better be!" she shouted, obviously irritated, her voice sounding as though her nose was clogged up. As he grabbed the last of his notes, thoughts raced through his head like apes on fire. Why had he slept in? He never slept in! How had he forgotten that Annie had asked him to wake her up because her father had to leave to get his lesson plan ready early today and her mother wasn't expected back for another few days? And why couldn't he remember anything that happened last night? Did those strange books have something to do with it?
"Hurry up! We've already missed Dragon History and now we're late for Advanced Combat!" Annie shouted angrily, once again sounding stuffed up as she banged on the door. Snapping out of his train of thought, Azure finished putting the notes in his bag and hurried over to the door, opening it only to find a very irate, ill-looking Annie on the other side. Her green eyes were bloodshot and her face seemed mildly swollen. Her face was full of irritation, but she still seemed almost lethargic.
"Whoa, you look terrible, Annie," Azure stated after seeing her, concern in his voice, "You look worse than when we found out that you're allergic to the Sleep Element."
"Thanks for the compliment," she said sarcastically, her voice a little odd from her nose being congest, but still managed to hit his foreleg hard enough for him to let out an outburst of pain. Afterwards, she added, "And I still say that exchange student overreacted."
"You called the prince of a foreign nation a, and I quote, 'sexist coward' because he refused to spar with you because you're a girl," the blue male grumbled, rubbing the spot where she'd hit him, "and proceeded to challenge his honor, rather rudely I might add, in public. I think it was rather justified for him to put you to sleep for an hour after that, regardless of your allergies."
"Yeah, yeah, my Dad has to fill in for Terrador because he's swamped with work trying to get things set up to welcome the new Fire Guardian as well as teach his own Basic Combat classes, so I'd rather not be any more late," she said before quickly heading in the direction of the large training room that was located a ways away from the boys' dorms.
"Annie, wait up!" Azure called after her, hurrying to catch up. In his haste, he was unaware of the dim glow that came from his bag for a few moments before it faded. Neither of the drakes noticed the gold ring twisted onto Annie's horn, either.
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Aesir found himself avoiding contact with any of the other guests at the party. As much as he felt like he should at least try to interact with someone¸ he only spoke a handful of words to anyone that started a conversation with him before he simply moved away from the large groups in the room and headed deeper into the mansion. He wandered through the halls as the noise of the party gradually faded into nothing. After a while, however, he noticed something incredible.
It was an impossibly-huge library full of incredibly large bookshelves loaded with more books than Aesir could've ever imagined even existed. He slowly walked through one of the many archways that led into the library to find it was even larger than he'd first thought. You would've been able to fit at least four or five families of dragons in here and they wouldn't cross into each other's area without going out of their way to do it. He came to a halt in front of a glass case. It was a rather old-looking book that had at one point been the color of his scales at one point, but had long-since lost its luster.
As he started to try to decipher the runes on the cover, a feminine voice from beside him said calmly, "That book's one of my favorites; it's one of only two yet discovered tomes that talks about the ancient Aether Dragons and leads up to their rather sudden extinction. It's in their written dialect because, well, one of them wrote it. It was a pain to translate, but oh so worth it."
Startled, Aesir jumped to the side and fell into a fighting stance as he sized up the newcomer. As her voice had revealed, she was a she and was just smaller than a normal adult dragoness, which meant that she was more than twice his size. Her scales were a dark-orange color, as were her wing membranes, but her underbelly was a stone-grey. She had two pairs of very light-yellow horns, the top pair curling like ram's horns while the bottom pair curved like small boar's tusks only in reverse. She also had a strange red mark in the shape of a flame going over one of the grass-green eyes that looked at him curiously.
"Who are you? What do you want?" the silver said aggressively, baring his teeth.
"Easy, tough guy, I come in peace," she said soothingly, raising one of her forepaws as a sign of peace, "A couple of my friends told me about a silver dragon covered in scars that came with Cyril and Cynder, but he'd wandered away from the party after avoiding pretty much everyone that tried to talk to him. I'm guessing that's you?"
"And if I said I was?" he said warily, slowly relaxing out of his fighting stance and sitting down on his haunches.
"Well, I'd like to get to know you, after all we'll be seeing a lot of each other at the Temple," she said, smiling as she sat down as well.
"Are you a new student, too?" he asked inquisitively, but his tone and expression were more skeptical.
She seemed unbothered by this, though, and responded, "In a way, I guess I am. After I pass the last test today, I officially start my training to become a Guardian. I'll even start teaching to help take some of the burden off my uncle's shoulders!"
"You're Tremor's daughter?" Aesir asked, surprised as he have the dragoness another glance to size her up with the new information, "This is your hatch-day party?"
"Yup, my name's Pyra, and you're Aesir, right?" she said, laying down so the two of them were at eye level. After he nodded, she continued, "Cyril and Cynder told most of the guests who you were, but they avoided any questions about your past. Why?"
The silver looked Pyra up and down, noting how her expression changed from happy to concerned and how her eyes never looked away from him. She wanted to know about his past for the same reason Cynder hadn't let him die in that puddle and offered to bring him to the Dragon Temple; the dragonesses both genuinely cared. Once again, the young drake felt a pang of sorrow and regret in his heart, but again pushed it to the side.
"They only know a little about my past, and not all of what I told them was the truth," he admitted, looking away from her, "I'd like my past to remain out of public knowledge, it's…there are things that I've seen and done that I'd rather keep to myself."
"How about this, I tell you something about me that isn't something I usually tell people, then you do the same with whatever you feel like sharing that I don't know, okay?" she offered, smiling a bit, "It can be your gift to me, and everything will stay between us."
After a moment of hesitation, Aesir turned back to look at Pyra and saw her in place of the fire dragoness laying in front of him. Her gentle amber eyes that became like a storm when the two of them were threatened, her kind smile that she saved only for him, her blue scales and slender feminine form that hid the powerful muscles that allowed her to protect them from those who wanted to harm them and also kept him warm on cold nights, and the tear-drop-shaped mark on her cheek that sometimes seemed to move like a drop of water. But all of these traits were gone with her, taken from him four years tomorrow on his hatch-day, and he felt a lump grow in his throat. In the blink of an eye, though, he found himself looking at Pyra once more.
"Okay," he said finally, looking the to-be Fire Guardian in the eye, "But not until after you pass your test."
"Deal," she responded, giving him a playful smirk as she stood up, "C'mon, the party was winding down when I left to come find you so I'm sure that Cyril and Cynder are probably getting ready for my test right about now."
He stood up as well, nodding, before the two of them left the library. As they were leaving, neither dragon noticed the faint glow that surrounded the book inside the glass case before it slowly faded out of sight.
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When Aesir and Pyra arrived back in the room where the party had been held, the few guests left were already on their way out the door. This left only Aesir, Pyra, Cyril and Cynder who were discussing something out of earshot, a red dragoness that could only be Pyra's mother due to the close resemblance, and Tremor. This seemed to give Pyra's earlier statement more of a foothold in fact, but it also reminded him of something. He also had to pass his own test to actually attend classes at the Temple, when was he going to do it? Before he had long to ponder it, however, the Ice Guardian and onyx dragoness noticed the two of them and began making their way over to them.
"It is time for your final test," Cyril stated once he and Cynder reached them, "and, after much deliberation on the rather unique circumstances we have before us, we have chosen the appropriate test."
Both Aesir and Pyra exchanged confused looks before the fire dragoness responded, "What is my test, exactly?"
"You've already shown that you possess many traits that a successful Guardian needs," the ice dragon explained, "Mastery over your element, knowledge in the history of the dragon race and the history of your element, and several others have been tested and you have passed them all with flying colors. But a Guardian is more that just a powerful fighter or a well-read dragon; a Guardian is, above all else, a teacher to aid each generation of dragons go on to better the Realms."
"Your test is to help Aesir pass his own," Cynder said simply, causing the two to look at the older dragons in shock. However, she continued, unbothered, "And his test is to find the exit to the maze."
"What ma-?" he started to say before Cynder's eyes and the markings on her head flashed a bright white for a moment and Aesir and Pyra collapsed to the floor, both in a deep sleep.
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And there you have it, I decided to merge their tests into one single one, really, for various reasons that you will find out in the next chapter. Also, the rest of the main gang at the Temple will be announced next chapter as well, with the one who correctly guesses the 'mysterious dragoness's' name getting to place an OC in it. And to those who haven't figured out who Annabelle's parents are, really? It's not that blaringly obvious? Should I just have someone hold up a giant sign with their names, or what?