Chapter 3: First Encounter
"Can you be quiet in there?" David yelled out. Charles was making too much noise in the bathroom on Sunday morning while he showered. "It's only six o'freakin'clock!"
"Some of us have to get up and work!" Charles fired back.
"And some of us would rather sleep in!"
"And some people would like it if you two would shut up!" Sabrina yelled from her room down the hall.
"Be quiet, Sabrina!" David yelled. "I'm trying to sleep!" He put his pillow over his head and went back to sleep. Before long, he was awoken again by a loud screech that filled the silent house. Glass started shattering all around.
"What's that?" Jordan asked. Everyone had run out in the hallway.
"I think that's our little friend," Annie said. They saw a blur fly past a window down the hall.
"What's going on?" a witch staying in a room down the hall asked.
"Get to your room and keep everyone else in," Millie ordered. They were forced to cover their ears from another blare of the dragon's screech. The dragon then burst through a wall and started flying towards them. A man with armor and a sword rode him. "Run!" They all ran down the stairs, narrowly missing the dragon's fierce claws and the Rider's sharp blade.
"What do we do?" Jordan asked.
"Keep running!" Millie yelled. She turned around and sent a cyclone up the stairwell, causing the dragon to stumble through the air. The Rider fell of and crashed through the rail and onto the floor below. David grabbed his sword that he dropped.
"I don't think so!" the Rider bellowed. He held out his hand and the sword slipped through David's hands and back to its owner. "Rosemary, attack!"
"Look out!" Jordan yelled to Sabrina. The dragon was closing in on her. She put her hand out created a force field. The dragon smacked into it and fell to the ground. It let out another scream.
"Ah!" the group yelled, covering their ears again.
"I thought dragons spit fire?" Charles asked. The dragon stood up and opened its mouth. Bursts of flames let out. Sabrina covered him with a force field.
"They do," she said.
"Altar Room!" Millie yelled to the few who remained in the living room. Sabrina grabbed Charles and orbed him there.
"Now what?" Jordan asked.
"Sabrina, orb me to the diner, please," Charles said. "I can't get fired from this job. I don't think there's much vision-seeing can do right now anyways." Sabrina looked to Millie who gave permission.
"We won't need him anyways," she said. "He might as well do something productive." Sabrina nodded her head and orbed Charles to the diner. She got back a moment later.
"Mom, what do we do?" David asked.
"I don't know what you guys will do when I'm not around anymore," she said. "Look in the Book. That's why it's there." David opened the Book and started to look through it.
"Robert!" Jordan yelled. He orbed in behind her.
"What?" he asked. The dragon gave a loud screech from beyond the door. "What the hell was that?"
"That'd be Rosemary as she's called, I guess," Annie said.
"A dragon?" Robert asked. "Wait, the dragon's name is Rosemary?"
"That'd be it," Jordan said. "What do we do against it?"
"Well, your powers are useless against it, and spells and potions are as well. Basically, all good magic is useless."
"What are we supposed to do, use evil?" Annie asked. Robert nodded his head. "Say what?"
"The Elders think that the only way you can stop him, is to trap him the same way that the Guild did."
"How can we crystallize him?" Millie asked, confused herself.
"They don't know," Robert said. "You have to figure out how they did it."
"How?" David asked.
"Well, some of you are going to have to take a visit to the Underworld."
"Robert, are you crazy?" Millie asked.
"It's the only way," he told her.
"He's right," Jordan said. "Sabrina and I will go down. I can use mind control on a demon, and hopefully find out all he knows."
"Fine," Millie said. "The rest of us will try to stall him."
"Hey, I found him in the Book," David said. "Draco, the Dragon Rider, was a powerful force for evil. He was used to kill witches and other warriors of good, until he was consumed with greed and started killing evil beings as well. The Guild then decided it best to put him in a crystallized state and end his reign of terror."
"Wow, that tells us a lot," Jordan said.
"Well, I found something," David said. "At least we have a name. The Dragon Rider is so corny."
"Okay, we'll go now," Sabrina said. She held Jordan's hand and orbed to the Underworld.
"Robert, orb us out of here," Mille said.
"Where can we go?" he asked.
"Let's go to the forest," Millie said. "I think we'll have better odds there. The dragon will have trouble maneuvering through all the trees." He agreed and orbed them out.
"Who do we ask?" Jordan asked once in the Underworld.
"I don't know," Sabrina said. "Let's find a demon first." They walked around for a while, looking for a lower level demon to control.
"There's one," Jordan whispered. She held her hand to her head and closed her eyes. The demon stood still for a moment. Jordan then let go of her grasp. "He doesn't know anything."
"How can you be certain?" Sabrina asked.
"Because I can see all of his thoughts and memories when I use my power." Sabrina stepped out of her hiding spot and vanquished the demon with a high-intensity light beam.
"This is pointless," Jordan said a few minutes later, after mind controlling another demon.
"I don't think any of these demons know."
"I think you're right," Sabrina said. "I think we need a new plan. But first, we need to find the place they used to crystallize him."
"How can we find that?" Jordan asked.
"I don't know yet."
"The suspense is killing me," Annie said. "When is he going to attack?"
"Maybe he doesn't know where we are," David said.
"No," Millie said. "He knows where we are. He can sense our magic."
"What will we do when he does get here?"
"I don't know. Robert, check with the Elders again. Maybe there's something useful they can tell us."
"I'll see," he said, orbing away. They heard a screech coming off in the distance.
"Here he comes," David said.
"Maybe we should have stayed in the Altar Room," Annie said. "It was safe there."
"We have to fight, Annie," Millie told her. "Running and hiding is not what we do. Now prepare yourselves."