• Dragoon Wars by Mike Benbennick
    Chapter 1 : Mistaken Hero

    The night was humid as a young slave began drenching the smoldering hot stones on top of Dragonroost castle with some type of liquid nitrogen to try and stop the emissions of heat from showing enemies one of the many secret entrances to the inside of Dragonroost castle. “You’re done,” remarked a voice coming from the shadows. The child began to black out the moment the mysterious voice finished speaking. All began to fade from the boys view. When he blacked out he felt a slight sensation as if he were being carried from his work by a cloud in the sky.

    The next morning as the boy awoke he noticed a small niche in the graphite wall beside him in his cell. The boy took a peek into the hole and saw the light of day. He immediately started picking at the hole, using his hands as shovels to scoop away layer after layer of rock, until a fairly large hole appeared in the wall. When he stuck his head in, he heard a faint cracking sound. He immediately started to delve deeper into the recesses of the mysterious tunnel. As soon as the cracking stopped the slave said, “Hmm, I wonder what that was.”, but before he could finish speaking he noticed a faint squeaking noise. When he reached the end of the tunnel he saw the light of day through cracks in the tunnel’s walls, and he began to wonder how he saw it from his cell when there were a whole bunch of turns in the tunnel. The problem was that he couldn’t get out because of rubble in the way. “Almost!” he exclaimed with a sigh, “Guess I’ll have to dig through.” Before he could remove half of the rubble he heard a low pitched grinding sound. He stopped and said, “I wonder what that was,” to no one in particular. As he continued his slow pace of removing the rocks he heard more and more of the grinding. “Uh Oh,” he said as the floor below him began to cave in. While he grabbed around uselessly he took hold of a small round object, but it wasn’t connected to anything. He began to throw it away but he thought better of it. He fell.

    When the slave regained consciousness he looked into his hand and saw that he hadn’t let go of the strange object. In fact it wasn’t even round. It was a ring that when touched had the feeling as if it were something completely different. “Well, can’t sit here all day now can I…” he said as he got up and began to scan the area he was now in.
    He noticed sculptures three stories high depicting all the heroes of old including Gardak the shield. As the young slave started his journey further into the vast hall he came across large nests made of petrified willow boughs with some griffon wings and twigs covering the openings in the boughs that appeared to have been there for millennia. Upon further inspection of these large nests he found eggs of a multitude of colors all the size of his chest and a little wider around. As he started probing them for further clues as to what they were a crack appeared in the one he touched first. After he finished probing the others he turned back to the first one and investigated the crack. From it a “meep”ing sound came. Although the child was no scholar he knew exactly what the eggs were. “DRAGON EGGS!” he exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loud for his own good. He dived into a nest as he started to hear footsteps coming down a set of stairs down a side passage covering himself in the griffon wings and twigs used to hold the nest together.

    As the steps started to close in on him he began to hear voices and immediately recognized the voice of the king. “Hast thou awakened o great one?” he asked. After the king spoke the ground shook with the force of thousands of barbarians charging forward to victory at a slow pace. As it began to settle a voice of the ancient tongue was heard all around. “I have… I have arisen once again to serve my kings needs.”

    “Have you found him?” asked the king in a serious tone.

    “I have” was the reply the king got. As the king left the young slave felt a chill down his spine as if someone were pouring ice cold water over him. He immediately knew he was being watched. At that moment the child began to fall asleep.

    The last thing he heard was, “Sleep young one, know that I will be watching, and awaken as Kralik the dragon warrior.

    As Kralik woke up he distinguished his newly grown scales that had just grown up his arms and across his chest. At first glance they appeared to be soft to the touch, but they were hard as steel. “But wait.” He thought as he remembered where he had been when he blacked out, “I’m still in the same room and my torch must have gone out”. “How can I see, as if the sun were out with no clouds in sight, in a cavernous chamber such as this with no light whatsoever”? On his left shoulder he discerned a strange image of a dragon curled towards its head with spikes jutting out of its hide and a pair of red wings protruding from its “back”. As he got up he found the fragments of the egg that had just recently cracked open before the king had come. He scouted the area looking for the dragon that must have come out of the egg, but to no avail.

    As he entered a side corridor he heard a loud rumbling voice calling to him. “Come to me”, it said “come take a weapon from my scales”. As he came to the end of the hall he heard earth moving in a loud crash. A door began to appear from behind the hard rock wall. Kralik opened the door with a quick yank, wrenching the door free from the metal hinges. “Whoa!” exclaimed Kralik as the door began to fall over on top of him. He lay the door down as quietly as possible so that the king wouldn’t hear the crash of the door falling. He then proceeded into the room. As he crossed the threshold of the chamber he heard the voice again “Your weapon has been chosen o’ red dragoon”. As soon as the voice ended an exceedingly bright light shone, temporarily blinding Kralik. When his eyesight returned to normal he saw an immense red dragon with a spear plunged into his back. Around the midsection of the dragon he examined a sign saying “Take This Thou Who Art Worthy, And Wield It in This World’s Time of Need”. On the other side of the dragon Kralik found a set of armor, which, as he put them on, fit perfectly as if made specifically for him. There was a helm set in the crook of the dragon’s neck that looked like it may have come from a baby red dragon.
    When he got all the armor together he began his ascent to the top of the dragon to reach the spear. During his climb he noticed many dislodged scales that were hard as steel if not harder, but they were on the dragons leg. Kralik knew he might need a shield so he began to head towards them, but he quickly lost footholds. Kralik knew the only way to get them was to use all of his upper body strength. He quickly gathered a few with one hand, making sure not to lose his hold on the dragon with his other. When he finished he began his ascent again. When he finally reached the top he grabbed the spear in both hands and gave a quick yank, dislodging the spear and sending Kralik over the edge of the dragon. He tried to reach for anything to stop his quick descent, but nothing was anywhere near him. When he hit the ground he heard a humongous crack as his spine snapped out of place. He blacked out.

    As he came to he gazed into the eyes of one of the kings maids. She appeared to be around fifteen, with long brown hair and eyes like the ocean. She was trying to tell him something, but apparently the fall had knocked him up worse than he thought, for he couldn’t hear a word she said. As he sat up to look himself over he noticed a huge gash across his chest pulsating as blood began to seep out over his body. He hadn’t noticed the pain before, but this was too much to take. He fell flat on his back screaming. He began to spasm in an ungodly way. As he began to fall off the bed more maids appeared and kept him from hurting himself in his fit. When Kralik began to calm down they all began to chant in the calmest of tones as if nothing had happened. Kralik gained his hearing as the maids finished their song. He also noticed that the tear had become nothing more than a flaw in his bodily structure.

    As the maids began to leave, Kralik asked them to take him back to the cave where they had found him. The one he had seen first quietly agreed with a nod of her head. She began by taking a small flat stone with the king’s dragon insignia in it and put it on a chain. Then she signaled Kralik to put it on. Kralik wondered why she hadn’t just told him to wear it, but with a slight thought from the girl he found that her name was Sophia and she had been mute for as long as she could remember. “Huh?”, wondered Kralik as he reeled from the shock of a voice in his head. “Who is it? Who’s there?” exclaimed Kralik as he shuddered to think who it might have been. The voice replied “I am the girl right in front of you”, in the softest of tones. At that they started venturing back to where Kralik fell.

    During the arduous trek they had to go outside of the castle, into the moat, swimming underwater to get to a cavern underwater. When they got to the cavern, the girl said “I forgot to tell you my name, I’m Sophia”. “I’m Kralik”, said the young dragon disciple. At that they took each others hands and walked the last couple hundred feet to where Kralik left his armor and weapons.

    Chapter 2: First Battle

    As Kralik gathered the spear and dragon armor he had laid down earlier Sophia went over to the dragon and sat on the dragon’s front leg. When Kralik returned a minute later he had put on all the armor overtop of his bandages and clothes and gathered up the scale and spear, he heard Sophia scream as if in pain.

    He began to rush over to the other side of the dragon to get at whatever was going at her, but even before he got to her he heard a faint scissoring noise slowly growing louder. When Kralik rounded the bend in the dragon’s neck, two Jembies lash out at him quick as a wink, but Kralik was the faster. He ducked under the arm of one and speared the other in the chest sending chunks of meat everywhere. As he tried to pull his spear out the Jembie he had speared put a vice-like grip on the spear making sure that Kralik had no protection from the other except for his armor. The other Jembie lunged at him with its jewel encrusted hand, tearing at whatever flesh it could reach, while the other began to inch towards Kralik. As the Jembie on the spear began its ascent, Kralik saw a crystal in its forehead, covered in a thin layer of mucus green skin. When he noticed this he raised his palm skyward and spoke in a language he had never heard before, “*I call upon the powers of the sky and my kin, lend me the power to smite this powerful foe, FLAME STRIKE*” as Kralik ended the spell bolts of lightning ushered the demons into a frantic escape, but not even the ones hiding in the ruins of the castle could escape such a mighty spell. They were obliterated all the way from the castle to the river running down mount An Durian.

    As Kralik sat down to regain his strength he noticed an old man in the northern corner of the cavern sitting by the maid who had brought him down to recover his items. When Kralik felt that he could stand, he walked over to the old man saying, “Hi, My name is Kralik.”, then asking “Who are you, and why are you here?”, in an unpleasant tone. As the old man got up Kralik noticed that he was far stronger than he appeared at the time. “People call me King, but you may call me Gandarind”, he said in an all too polite tone for what Kralik deserved for the way he asked the questions, “And I am here to help you get stronger for the one you will have to do battle with in the near future”. Kralik walked up to him pointing and yelling into the face of Gandarind saying “You’re the one who put me into that darn cell, why the heck did you have to put me into that musty, smelly old cell?”. “I did what the fates decided I had to do. They ordered me to send you there so that I could watch my next successor, and possibly my last,” he said in a calm tone, “and besides, I knew your father very well, so what better a way to repay the man who helped me become who I am than by raising his son in my citadel for him”. “That doesn’t explain why you had to put me away into the prison instead of just raising me as your son or as a servant.” Kralik said as he began to jog up the stairs, leaving Gandarind in the dust.

    As Kralik rounded the last bend in the stairs the wall in front of him shifted, and out popped Gandarind. “There is no way you can beat me in a race while in my own kingdom”, he said as Kralik leaned against the wall, slowly catching his breath. “Don’t bother trying to catch your breath”, said Gandarind with a sigh, “We have a long way to go and only a short time to get there in”. While they were walking along the castles paved road, a group of thugs shimmered into view, as if they had been made of pure crystal particles gathering to make various forms, but when they tried to attack they were held back by an invisible wall. “Prepare y’self,” Gandarind said, “I can’t hold them for long”. As the wall began to fade Kralik let loose a ball of fire from his hand, turning many of the thugs into smoldering ashes. One of the remaining thugs came up behind him and attempted to knock him unconscious, but as soon as she came up to him Kralik unleashed a flurry of blows upon her with the blunt of his spear, knocking her off her feet and making sure she wouldn’t be able to get up for awhile by knocking the air out of her lungs.

    While Kralik fought off the remaining thugs Gandarind began to falter. He began to trip on his own feet while trying to protect himself with a long sword, as the thug lashed out at him with his mace, but Kralik placed his spear between Gandarind and the thug, clanging against the cold iron of the mace. As Kralik brought the spear around to lash out at the thug, the thug dropped low and hammered Kralik’s legs with a devastating blow. When Kralik fell down the thug brought his mace up to bash Kralik’s skull in, but Gandarind sent a wave of flame towards the brigand. As the ball of fire hit, the brigand fell with a thud.

    “Why did you help me?” asked Kralik. With a sigh Gandarind took a seat on a pile of the dead bandits and said “For the exact same reason that you helped me.” “And what reason was that?” wondered Kralik. “You want to know more of what you have become and what you are destined to do.” exclaimed Gandarind.