Chapter VIII

Stranger in a Strange Land

Disclaimer: See Chapter One.

They didn't stop to make camp that evening, continuing until one of the moons had set and the second looked to be getting ideas about going the same way.

Gull was beginning to tire, but declined when Inferno offered to take the burden of the shelter from him, despite his own fatigue.

Their earlier skirmish and the lack of likely campsites were reasons enough to continue on through the night in Inferno's eyes and it seemed that Breeze shared his sentiment, though she seemed to have deeper reserves than he did, because though he wasn't going to admit it, all that was keeping Inferno going was a stubborn desire to keep up.

He didn't even realise he'd drifted to the ground until his forepaws caught a fallen tree and he went tumbling across the skree, coming to a rest in an aching tangle of limbs.

He lay there in a daze, unable to muster the energy to move and before long, Breeze's face came into view upside down and slightly blurred.

"Here's as good a place as any to stop, but do you think you could manage to move a bit so we don't have to spend the night next such an obvious tell that someone's been here?" She asked.

Instead of replying, Inferno rolled onto his feet unsteadily.

"Where?" He slurred heavily, then an abyss opened up before him and he fell forward into darkness.


Breeze sighed as Inferno collapsed, his head coming to rest across her shoulders.

"You're a stubborn one, aren't you?" She mused to herself as she pulled him onto her back as best she could manage and started dragging him back to where Gull had cleared out a small hollow for them to rest in.


Somewhere along the line, things had gone wrong.

Incandiasa was quite certain on this point for a number of reasons.

Chief among them was the fact dragons didn't have monarchies.

"I'm sure you'd be thrilled by the royal library back at my palace."

"Fond as I am of scrolls, I prefer being able to query details." Incandiasa replied with an indifferent flip of her wings. "Of course, I wouldn't dream of keeping someone so burdened by duty as yourself from them to sate my curiosity." She added, consciously choosing her words to keep herself from becoming entangled with some obligation she didn't need.

"I'm sure my lorekeeper would be thrilled to help you. Too few people are interested in such topics these days, what with everything going on." Incandiasa's new temporary travelling companion,-a self-proclaimed 'SkyWing,' and evidently a Queen as well called Scarlet,-replied.

Incandiasa actually considered this. Consulting a Guardian, or failing that a similarly knowledgeable dragon would likely be invaluable.

She sighed as she reached her conclusion.
"I'm not sure I can spare the time. The friend I mentioned...He'd stand even less chance on his own in the wild knowing nothing than I would." She explained, thinking back to the events just prior to their violent exit from Convexity and the nightmarish power she'd witnessed, followed by a seeming miracle.
"A pity." Scarlet replied with seeming sympathy, though something about her manner didn't sit well with Incandiasa, almost as if she were being mocked.

Incandiasa paused as she heard voices and the crashing of a bipedal creature running through the brush.

"Hear that?" She asked.
"I do." Scarlet replied with a note promising violence in her voice.

Incandiasa followed as Scarlet crept through the brush, gathering speed as she got closer to her target while Incandiasa chose to simply move stealthily, letting the Queen crash ahead and put distance between them while she hid her presence from their quarry while she thought about how to extricate herself from this unwanted and quite likely unhealthy acquaintance.

It had been a little more than a week since she'd arrived in this twisted mirror-realm to the Dragon Realms.
She bitterly cursed herself for not listening to Vance when he'd said his going into Convexity was suicide.

It almost had been.

His psychic power had attracted a malevolent spirit,-either native to the Realms or an invader from the Dark World,- and when he'd attempted to counter it, had attracted the attention of a far more powerful and outright evil entity that had twisted his body into a horrifying, corrupted mess of limbs and teeth.

If the Purple Dragon, Spyro that she and Vance had been accompanying hadn't used whatever power he'd awakened on Cynder and shattered the entity that had been attacking Vance and herself, they'd likely both be dead or worse, rather than wherever they were.

What was more amazing, was that in the fallout of whatever Spyro had done, the broken mockery Vance had been reduced to had changed.

It hadn't been the sickening horror the demon had wrought, but a more…right…change, as if whatever was causing it had taken what he had been and corrected the wrongness done to him.

She hadn't seen the end result of the transformation, because it had been at that moment they'd been ejected,-quite violently,-back into what she had assumed was the Dragon Realms…at least until she'd encountered what she'd assumed was an Ice Dragon, only to have the crazy bastard attack her when she'd caught him up to ask for some help finding her bearings.

If she hadn't cloaked herself in a sphere of fire and charged him, his initial blast of ice breath would likely have shattered her.
The fight had left her with some nasty scratches, which she'd had to be content simply cleaning, since healing crystals seemed to be rare or non-existent wherever she was.

She was snapped from her musings as she saw she'd reached the edge of a clearing and saw Scarlet addressing a dark blue adolescent dragon and a brown adolescent, both of whom looked ever so slightly terrified, a fact Scarlet seemed to be enjoying immensely, up until the dark blue one pinned her tail to the forest floor with a sword that presumably belonged to the decapitated, roughly dressed human lying in the dirt among various ornaments.

Incandiasa simply crouched motionless while Scarlet raged and swore, eventually recovering enough sense to pull the sword free, before collecting the stolen treasures and taking to the wing, seemingly having forgotten about Incandiasa.

When Incandiasa was sure Scarlet was gone and wasn't simply hovering overhead or had circled back and was hunting her, she cautiously crept into the clearing and examined the human's corpse.

It looked malnourished and as if it had spent most of its life living hard.

Satisfied its corpse had no stories to tell, she moved onto the sword that Scarlet had simply discarded. She carefully picked it up between her talons and examined the ornately worked basket hilt.

A feeling of excitement ignited in her gut.

She knew this weapon.

As if on cue, it crackled to life and she released it before she lost her talons to its edge.

It dropped, then slowed to a stop before it dug into the dirt, held by a wraith-like hand gloved in black leather, attached to a leanly muscled arm inside a battered black long-coat belonging to a grizzled man who in life must've spent most of it grimacing in distaste or sneering.

He was dark, imposing and the hint of burning red light beneath a black eye-patch and topped by a very official looking officer's cap left anyone who cared to judge in no doubt that Commissar Rigal Chekhov had been had been a formidable dispensary of military justice in life.

Now in death, he was a figure of nightmares for anyone he was unleashed against.

"Dragon." He greeted simply, before kicking the corpse at his feet. "About time one of you found me." He said gruffly.

"A happy coincidence." Incandiasa replied, not bothering to hide the irony in her voice as the spectral commissar retrieved his sword's sheath. "I was hoping I'd find you with Vance, to be perfectly honest." She added.

The Commissar snorted.

"Would've been preferable to being used by this criminal scum." He replied mordantly, before looking to the sky. "This place is at war." He said, vindictive satisfaction clear in his voice.
"So I noticed. Any idea where Vance might be?" Incandiasa questioned.

Rigal shook his head once.

"I know he's here, but's he's beyond my sight." He replied, before looking curiously to the south west. "Seems your new friend has found some friends and those juvies have gone to ground." He added almost casually. "It would be in our best interest to leave before she comes looking for you." He replied, before crossing to Incandiasa's left foreleg and belting his sword's sheath to it, before sheathing the blade and fading from existence.

Never knew he could be so personable. She thought with something like resignation, before taking to the wing and heading south east, away from where she'd heard Scarlet heading.

An update this soon after the last?

This is what happens when I get helpful advice and enthusiastic reviews like the one The Friendly Space Marine left. Kudos for the help.

Is this coming out of left-field?

Why yes, I suppose it would seem a bit like that if you're reading this story cold. I'm trying to make this story as accessible as possible, but as I've said previously, it continues on from another story after a fashion, so it may be a little bit like that until later on.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently brought Shadow of Mordor.

Oh my Valar, I had no idea what I was missing.

Onto whom I have to thank for reviews this time:

The Friendly Space Marine, who you all have to thank for this update, EVILMINIONKEVIN, zero fullbuster and that's it.

Guess there aren't many names this time around, due to a speedy update.

On another note, I'm going to be sending a sample of my original work to a publisher soon, so wish me luck there.

Now if you'll excuse me, the statue of a certain Dark Lord has a date with a few barrels of black powder…

See you all next time.