Welp, guess i'm not taking that big of a break from Dragon booster fanfiction as i thought. i tried working on my novel and i couldn't get myself to put out anything substantial, and this sequel keep coming up in my brain.

this is an amalgam of numerous ideas i've picked up about certain... things in dragon booster, and it might not all be Cannon, but i'm hoping it's at least entertaining. in any case, here's the prologue as a little starter.

Rating: Mature
Warnings: violence (possibly leading to blood). also for those sensitive to such things, possible anti-canon data will be presented herein.
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon booster, nor do i work in nerd-corps. i do this for zero monetary benefit, though it might advance my writing style or technique for having done the work of writing it.
Concrit: Strongly encouraged. Tell me exactly what you think folks! i can take it!

Philosopher’s Stone

Prologue:

The days at the ‘Endless sun’ draconium mine were always predictable. People woke up in the morning, the adults got off to work and the kids went to the company sponsored schools, the earth and bull class dragons worked with their riders down in the mining tunnels for twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, pulling red, green, black, blue, some brown and even some small deposits of orange draconium out of the earth, tunneling deeper and deeper into solid rock.

Events from dragon city over the past year hadn’t even touched them. Not a single wraith sighting, no stolen dragons, no mysterious occurrences, nothing. It helped that the mine was situated in the middle of the high desert, some thousand or so miles away from dragon city.

Then, one day, down in a shaft where they found several of their most productive veins came together, a strange thing came out of the walls as they pulled the draconium ore out.

A crystal.

Quartz-like, it was about 6 inches long, an inch and a half wide at its thickest point close to one end, irregularly shaped, but with smooth, large facets. It was somewhat broken at one end, but totally clear, save for the clouded, broken part on one end, it was totally unlike any form of draconium ore or draconium crystal anyone there had ever seen, particularly in the fact that it emanated a faint glow… pulsing through various colors intermittently. It grew brighter when touched, but the pulse always corresponded to the bone color of the dragon, or the primary and strong secondary colors of the human. A similar effect was reached when a piece of raw draconium was held close to the strange, raw crystal.

Further digging in the area where it had been found turned up nothing. Digging several meters in all directions from the find site turned up no other strange crystals, but it did prove one point, it was situated at the epicenter of their highest yield, and purest draconium veins.

The head of the mining company, a robust, but portly man of 39 named Taener Vorkas claimed the crystal soon after, and called up the research labs at distant Dragon city, as he didn’t have the capacity there at the mine to do any kind of proper examination of the stone. With no other reliable method for transporting the crystal the long distance along the barren desert highway, they said for them to send it along with their next outgoing shipment of ore some two weeks later.

Only a day before the ore shipment was ready to leave the mining town, a stranger appeared, alone and without a dragon, coming out from the rocky desert, demanding to speak to Mr. Vorkas. When he was let in, he offered the manager a large sum of drackels, somewhere in excess of one hundred thousand. Mr. Vorkas refused, saying that he already promised the science labs in dragon city the stone.

The stranger left as abruptly as he arrived, but the next day when Mr. Vorkas went to retrieve the crystal from his private vault and load it into one of the trailers for the trip, it was missing.

Getting better with your grammar. No error as far as I can see. Keep it up.

Here we go, the first actual chapter.

Philosopher’s Stone: chapter 1

Three months after the final downfall of the Scalesheen corporation, Word Paynn sat in his citadel going over some paperwork… not all of it pertaining to the legitimate activities of his company. He was managing the stables of his wraith dragons. Even with Moordryd, Cain and that female member he brought along with him into the Academy, the rest of the Dragon eye crew were continuing to bring in dragons, which made that one of their prime sources of income, as Word gave them a respectable sum of drackels for every dragon they hauled in for him. True, without his son leading them the rates had gone down drastically, but his wraith army was still growing.

He was still annoyed that the plan his strange new associate had come up with, even though the purple garbed man had been totally satisfied with it, had failed to eliminate the dragon booster or the black and gold dragon, expanded his army, or started the actual war. Further, the man hadn’t shown his face since he’d popped in to explain his reasoning the last time. True, human behavior around dragons in the city had drastically altered due to fear of what dragons were capable of, and perhaps dragons were being treated differently than before, so something had come of it, it just wasn’t what he’d been hoping for.

“You must be bored. Working on records rather than your gear.” A voice said that he’d not heard in months.

“And here I was just thinking how I haven’t heard from you in a while.” Word said, looking up at the man in purple clothing and black armor. “You really do have a tendency to do things like that.”

“Forgive me, then.” Du’rath said. “I’m a little surprised at you Word, no plots since the downfall of scalesheen?”

“I have a few ideas brewing.” Word said. “Nothing I’m quite ready to put into action just yet though, preparations still need to be made. Though, I will admit, it’s been a bit dull of late.”

“I thought you might say that. Since my plan failed to grant you any concrete reward the last time, I figured I might compensate you… might I interest you in a little research?” Du’rath said.

“Research?” Word said. “I have numerous avenues of that going on already, I don’t need some half cooked idea of new gear from an amateur.”

“You misunderstand.” Du’rath said, holding up a plastic box which he placed down on the opposite side of Word’s table, then slid forward across it to him. Word stopped it as it reached him with his left hand, then turned it around so the catch faced him, then popped it open.

Sitting inside the box, nestled in foam padding that was part of the box below it, and on top of it to keep it from moving about when the box was closed, was a raw looking quartz like crystal… which glowed in a myriad of colors.

“Curious…” Word said. “Is this a new kind of draconium?”

“No, it’s not, that much at least I am certain of, though it seems to react somewhat to draconium, and things with draconium inside them… try touching it.” Du’rath said.

Word reached out with his left hand and touched it with a finger, and the glow around it turned a dark purple, akin to black draconium, and remained in that single color until he drew his finger away.

“Like I said.” Du’rath said crossing his arms.

“And what do you want me to do with this?” Word said.

“Analyze it, experiment with it, find out what it is, what it does… and, most importantly, what can be done with it.” Du’rath said, raising his cloak hood over his head.

“Why bring this to me, why not do this yourself?” Word asked.

“Because last I checked, I don’t have access to a massive, state of the art laboratory, you do, and I’d much rather the dragon city official techs not get their hands on this stone.” Du’rath said, turning and walking back across the bridge to leave.

<<>>

Artha couldn’t help but smile. Things were going too well for him now not to. The scalesheen ladies were all completely satisfied with life in the city, his dad told him that they were charming company, all of them back at the home stable and his other stables around the city. Lance was only dissatisfied at having to help clean up after all the dragons around the stable, but having so much company, and baby dragons around, countered most of that. Fracshun too was enjoying being looked up to by all the hatchlings, and the ladies themselves seemed to adore him. There hadn’t been much, if any wraith activity, and Dragon thefts around the city, while still there, had dropped to an all time low.

Plus, Beau was fully healed, after having taken quite the beating from the ladies themselves during an altercation in the ‘scalesheen crisis’ as most folks called it these days. Connor said that gold draconium was an excellent healing agent, and apparently being a dragon that was gold boned meant that he healed, on average, quicker than most other dragons. Yesterday, the medics in the Academy infirmary had given their stamp of approval on Beau’s health, and now they could finally start one of their new classes, one that they’d been a restricted from beginning for a week until Beau was deemed ready.

“Battle track training!” Kitt said, looking out over the track. The structure was practically woven in and around the academy building, quite impressive. There were many obstacles, hidden doors where attacker dragons -some with and some without riders- would appear from without warning, and you’d have to fend them off, and still make it to the finish line within a certain time. Plus the track itself was designed with a very challenging layout.

Artha looked out on it with a mixture of awe and eagerness that was reflected on Kitt’s, Parmon’s, and their dragon’s faces. Beau stared in silence, but Wyldfyr started rumbling with anticipation.

“Ooooooh yeah… this is what I’m talking about!” Wyldfyr growled excitedly.

“Calm down boy, we’re going out there soon enough.” Kitt said, patting Wyldfyre on top of his head, in front of her as she rested in his saddle.

“I just hope Cyrano and I are fast enough to keep up. We get separated out on the battle track and we’ll be little more than targets!” Parmon said.

“Penn racing, you’re up!” The instructor said.

<<>>

“Alright ladies, you can line up at the starting line whenever you’re ready, but nobody goes till everyone’s ready.” Connor spoke through the megaphone. The scalesheen dragonesses had finally, down to the last female, laid all their eggs, and regained their normal figures. Now that there was no worries whatsoever about the condition of the eggs, aside from keeping them warm properly, he turned to giving them one thing they’d been lacking, proper exercise.

Not to say that they hadn’t been running around a lot on their own. Affecshun, the frisky, high spirited sky-class female had taken to running laps around her teenaged young that came to visit, up to about a week before she laid her clutch. Connor was fairly certain that the other dragonesses, particularly Compashun, the blue energy class female that had led them all, told her she was being crazy, but only when her body started receiving signals that the time was coming did she slow down. Now though, with the girls taking it in turns to tend to the eggs, and the hatchlings, the girls were getting proper exercise. At first, some of them had seemed inordinately slow, particularly for their breeds. Connor had thought this was to be expected, having been bred to extremely low standards themselves, but as they continued to work out routinely, even they improved to a level Connor found respectable. Affecshun showed a lot more endurance, if not speed, and some of the formerly slow ones were now finding they could put out greater and greater effort.

Gear was another thing the ladies were learning how to use. Both to mag it on, and how to handle having it used on them. One of the reasons he’d called in his most trusted keepers and trainers was to help the ladies understand how a normal dragon lived, particularly in the use of gear, which they all found clumsy at first.

The ladies were seeing a lot more of the city than just his stables. Whether along with him or one of his employees –Fixrr and Ratchytt liked showing the ladies Market row when they went out to pick up gear- they had many trips to see various areas of the city.

“Hey dad, can me’n Fracshun run with them?” Lance asked from next to him, already in the young dragon’s saddle, and their racing gear on.

“I don’t see why not.” Connor said, looking out at the lineup of the dragonesses, who had all heard the request, and were looking at the young rider and dragon with amused expressions. One thing Connor could be sure of, with the ladies, there was no rough tactics, all speed, and if someone was in trouble, the ladies would slow down to take care of whoever was in trouble. Fracshun couldn’t have had better training partners.

Fracshun padded out to the last remaining slot at the startup line, and one of the dragonesses next to him, Elashun the Turquoise female, chirred with a grin. “See if you can keep up today, ok?” she was always a speedy one, but then it was in her breed.

“Don’t count the kid out yet.” Adorayshun, the red female snorted.

“And… begin!” Connor said, then blew a whistle, and all the dragonesses, plus one young male and his rider, were off like a shot.

<<>>

“Not a bad run for your first time out on the battle track, Mr. Penn.” The instructor said as Artha and his team came off the track.

“Thanks!” Artha said, panting, along with Beau. The hour long training session had been a blisteringly fast paced run though the course, repeatedly, with the challenges shifting each lap, and even the dragons were feeling it. Wyldfyr leaned heavily against Cyrano, who’s thick legs looked kind of wobbly. Beau had to sit down lest he fall down

“As to you, Miss Wonn, you handled yourself beautifully out there. Mr. Sean, however… I’m going to suggest you spend less time studying the books in the library, and more time practicing with your blocking staff on your free hours.”

“Yes sir…” Parmon said, hardly paying attention. His staff work left a lot to be desired, so Artha couldn’t disagree there.

“Nice run, Artha.” Said a voice that Artha hadn’t heard much in a while. Turning around he saw Moordryd on Decepshun, followed by Cain on Coershun, and Sway, the high ranking female officer of the Dragon eye crew on Kykyr.

“Oh, uh… thanks Moordryd.” Artha said. He knew he was technically on better terms with the son of Word Paynn now, but things were still very tense.

“Now if you’ll excuse us, it’s our turn, and you’re blocking the entrance to the track.” Cain said.

“Oh, uh, sorry.” Artha said sheepishly before pulling Beau aside. The three dragoneyes walked past, but curiously, Decepshun’s tail tip strayed over to rub along Beau’s shoulder briefly as they passed. Beau and Artha looked, but the dragoness acted as though nothing had happened, and simply padded out onto the track along with the other two psi-classes.

Beau shook his head, and started walking out into the corridor. Their training session was over. Time to clean up, get something to eat, then relax.

No errors, as far as I can see. You are getting better, and I can learn a thing or two from you.

as apparently the PM system is currently broken, this chapter, at the time of it's origional posting, has not been proofread by Renesh. sorry!

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 2.

A few days later, Word was in another laboratory in his citadel altogether. Working on this stone quickly turned to him needing very highly specialized equipment, energy stream control of a caliber that his private laboratory simply couldn’t accommodate.

The strange crystal was being held gingerly by a servo-arm inside of a clear, cylindrical chamber in the center of the room, a large mass of expensive equipment attached to either end, comprised mostly of sensors, energy stream emitters, and of course the servo arms to move the objects being experimented upon within it.

Initial scans showed it radiated something akin to draconium energy, but then, not. The far more sensitive scanners here detected something similar. The results were somewhat confusing. They detected all the signals that distinguished the various colors of draconium from each other coming out of the thing, with one exception, and yet not the slightest hint of draconium power by itself emanated from the crystal.

Though that served to confuse Word more than anything, he decided that he would continue and start experimenting with it, to see what it could do rather than what it was. Perhaps he'd stumble onto an answer for the first question while finding out about the second.

At the moment Word was going to see what would happen if he passed a concentrated stream of draconium energy through the crystal. Of course, Word automatically wanted to know what would happen if he channeled black draconium through it. A thin metallic shield based upon an energy drain whip would re-absorb any energy passing through the crystal.

With a flick of a switch a charge was passed through the refined piece of black draconium at the head of the emitter, which then fired a concentrated beam of draconium energy out of its tip and into the crystal. The stone seemed to turn darker than Word’s fragment of black draconium from the shadow track, and the pulsing multi-colored glow around it became nearly as dark. As the stream continued to impact the stone, Word Modulated the frequency very slowly and carefully, logging the reactions to it.

Immediately Word saw that the stone began to put out a different energy frequency when bombarded by black draconium energy. The other signals diminished while the black one intensified. It remained fairly constant, with minor alterations when he made major changes in the modulation of the incoming energy stream through the draconium emitter. After about fifteen minutes of continuous bombardment, Word disengaged the beam. Unlike with plain contact with draconium or draconium infused organisms, when a beam of energy was fired at it, the crystal seemed to retain a charge of the specific color.

Word waited for several minutes studying the readings, but they remained constant, the crystal was holding onto the charge.

“Hmm… if I try another experiment with that thing still holding a charge, it will probably skew the results…” Word said, stroking his goatee with his left hand.

“Then again…” he said a moment later, and flicked another switch, and another emitter emerged inside the tube, this one topped with a chip of common white draconium, the polar opposite of the last one.

He got a drastically different reaction this time. As soon as the white beam hit the black charged crystal, the readings his sensors were getting started going all over the place. The crystal didn’t just become charged with a mixture of black and white, all the various colors started emerging, before a high pitched hum started coming from inside the tube, and it was rising in pitch and volume, along with a frantically cycling pattern of glowing colors.

“What is happening!?” Word yelled, alarmed, standing and backing away.

The crystal suddenly pulsed, and an expanding field of what appeared to be mag energy, randomly colored in all colors surrounded it, before it condensed, inside the tube, coalescing as though it was a mag-burst about to be fired.

Word instantly flung his hands up and generated a black mag shield, instinctively. The blast shattered the transparent cylinder and smashed into his shield… and broke straight through it, blasting him some twenty feet back.

Word regained his senses some ten minutes later. Staggering to his feet, clutching one of his arms, he looked at the tube. The tube had been blown apart and the edges were partly melted. The crystal sat on the bottom of the tube, the delicate servo-arm, where it had been placed, was a mangled mess. The fragile emitter that had caused the reaction had been damaged in the blast and was no longer streaming energy, but the crystal itself was undamaged… and had returned to its normal, clear state, the faint aura of all the different colors surrounding it again.

<<>>

Ten minutes prior, and many miles straight down in the ruins of the old city, A man in dark, elaborate armor was walking along, slowly, following a sixth sense as he tried to track down a black draconium bonemark. Armeggadon, former emperor of the black dragon eye empire of three millennia past, was attempting to rebuild a powerbase after having lost his former ‘student’ and the powerful armor he carried with him. His link with the amulet was broken, thanks to the boy’s complete rejection of him.

Similar to the dragon priests, Armeggadon had an incredibly developed ability to sense ambient energy. And as he searched with those senses, suddenly his mind was bombarded with the emanations of a strange pulse of power, the like of which he’d never felt before. He whirled around, looking in the rough direction of where it had come from. It was very distant, to be sure, but it was potent… and highly unusual.

“A pulse of all colors… what could generate such a thing?” the former emperor said, confused.

<<>>

“Lance, don’t overdo it with your thruster gear, they drain an awful lot of power, and prolonged usage can drain Fracshun’s energy reserves quickly.” Connor said to his son as he rode alongside him on Compashun. “Use short bursts to help you overcome obstacles along the track.

“Unless of course you’re on the home stretch and need to improve your placement, then, by all means, burn up everything you’ve got!” Slyder said from Skreet’s saddle on Fracshun’s other side as the three riders raced around the training track.

“Sound advice.” Connor called back.

In an effort to correct certain key flaws in their racing technique, Connor was riding alongside the two. Despite their best efforts, neither dragon could outpace Compashun, not only due to her stamina, but due to having a truly excellent partner riding her.

“But if Fracshun’s already going as fast as he can go, and he’s still not catching the other dragons, how’m I supposed to get a higher place?”

“Use the track to your advantage, go to the inside where others might go to the outside. Remember, the shortest path to the finish line is the quickest one, if you can take it.” Connor said. “Others might be faster, but if they take a path that is slightly longer than yours, you just might be able to cut ahead of them.”

“Whoah… thanks dad!” Lance said, then pulled back slightly, and held as close to the wall as he could on Fracshun at the next turn. By the time they hit the next straightaway, he found himself at least a length ahead of Skreet.

“Wow, it really worked!” Lance said, looking back at the other rider.

<<>>

“The crystal appears to generate and radiate the micro-particles that cause draconium to acquire its various colors, and their unique properties that distinguish each color from the others. However, when having energy generated by draconium focused back into the crystal, it becomes a focal point for draconium energy, and as long as more than one color is used, the energy generated takes on a ‘prismatic’ quality. In a fashion far more powerful than mag streams generated by my previously failed experiment, titled ‘chromatic dragon’ who could manifest and manipulate energy streams of any individual color it wished, but not multiple colors simultaneously.” Word spoke into his private vidd recorder.

“An unusual effect to this ‘prismatic mag energy’ showed itself in a small accident in the lab earlier. When I attempted to shield myself with a mag-claw technique -a mag barrier- the prismatic blastwave penetrated my defenses as though they did not even exist, and hit me at full power. I’m glad the energy I bombarded the crystal with was not a large quantity, for though the black stream was constant over some fifteen minutes time it didn’t even so much as amount to a kilodrac of mag energy. However, the resulting output of energy from the crystal was far more than I put in. I will have to experiment, with more safeties erected of course, using larger quantities of draconium energy…” here he paused for a second. “As a side note, I have observed that while the crystal does seem to radiate energy aligning itself with the sub-particles that distinguish the various colors of draconium from each other, there is one color of draconium that is not represented in its spectrum… and even more confusing is that it is not Gold, which has long been considered ‘pure’. In fact, it is grey that is missing from what this stone radiates. Further testing is required before I can confirm anything about this quality, but more important and of greater urgency is understanding the nature of the stone’s ability to generate prismatic mag bursts. If they prove to be able to penetrate other kinds of defenses as they have shown here, I may have a new weapon in my arsenal very shortly.

<<>>

“Excellent work out there with the mag moves boss. When’re they gonna teach those to us again?” Cain said to Moordryd as they relaxed in their dorm rooms that evening.

“When your dragons start transforming into elite class dragons. Unlike Coershun and Kykyr, Decepshun’s already pure black.” Moordryd said

‘Yeah, I remember that… Wait a second.” Cain said as though something just occourred to him. “If she’s already a pure black dragon, then shouldn’t she already be evolving?”

“Something to do with my bones becoming in tune with hers, then she’ll start to grow. I don’t know the specifics really.” Moordryd said, then popped on the television, channel surfing. Man it was boring here when classes weren’t in session. He’d go down to the gym to practice, but the second year students always challenged him to mag technique battles and always wiped the floor with him and his ‘hodge podge’ of various techniques. Some of the teachers said he knew techniques that were more advanced than his skill level should’ve allowed for, as he was missing several in-between level techniques. Moordryd cursed Armeggadon for having not taught him in a linear fashion. Skipping several techniques put him at a disadvantage.

“Well… how soon will they be helping our dragons evolve?” Cain asked.

“How should I know? Look, a year and a few months from now, you me and Swayy will be graduates with three fully evolved psi-class dragons, so stop worrying about it and keep up with the classes, ok Cain?” Moordryd said.

“Uh, right boss.” Cain said, then sat down. “Also, is it my imagination, or is Decepshun being more friendly with the other dragons than she was?”

“Aw scales, she’s not been getting… ‘friendly’ with Coershun has she? The last thing I’d need is her having a clutch here.” Moordryd said exasperated.

“Not like that really.” Cain said. “More like… well, you know how scared of her the other dragons were after you got back from that… little mission you went out on months back, shortly after…”

“Yeah ,yeah, I know what you mean.” Moordryd said. He’d filled Cain in on all the details about the bonemark shortly after revealing to him that he was in fact the shadow booster.

“Well, after that whole thing with the scalesheen dragons, she’s getting along a lot better with the other dragons, they’re not avoiding her like they used to. Coershun’s even sleeping next to her in the stables at night.”

“Well, at least she’s social again. Been acting weird to me too ever since I went and got that thing. A lot more independent. Sometimes she even refuses to do what I tell her, and that’s not good… most of the time.” Moordryd said, suddenly thinking back to the moves she’d pulled out of nowhere to help him win races that would have otherwise been impossible.

“Yeah, I guess. I wouldn’t want Coershun suddenly getting a different idea than what I wanted him to do mid race. Wouldn’t be good for either of us.” Cain said.

Umm...kinda akward without the PM system...do you want me to post my notes here, or wait till the PM system is back and PM them to you?

PM me the notes when the system's operational again. in the meantime, please, don't be shy about commenting on the content as opposed to the grammar. ^_^

Edit: and i noticed one MASSIVE error in the recent chapter on my own and fixed it. nearly a whole paragraph made little to no sense. *Bashes head into wall*

I have read this new story three times, and I am enjoying the story.

i went over this chapter myself, since things still aren't working... wonder what the big problem is with the PM system anyway?

In any case, hope you folks all enjoy.

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 3.

Word looked at his most recent gear invention with a sharp eye. Streamlined like most all his gear, it was based roughly upon the design of a mag cannon, the green draconium piece had a focusing cup situated around the precious crystal. He would have liked to cut a small piece of it out for use here, but he didn’t want to risk diminishing it’s energy output.

Behind the crystal there were three emitters; one of black, one of blue, and one of red draconium. Coupled with being inside a piece of charged green draconium gave it a high mix rate. A small discharge of energy into the crystal and the thing would generate a rainbow pulse of draconium energy similar to what had blasted him several days ago, only with the custom built apparatus surrounding the stone, and the reinforced structure of the emitters behind the crystal, the gear wouldn’t simply explode when exposed to the energy reaction. Instead, the energy would be turned into a concentrated, directed burst of energy, not unlike a mag-cannon blast, but far more potent.

Mounting this onto a headpiece wearable by his wraiths while not interfering with the wraith gear he had on them was a difficult enough task, now Word was wondering which of his wraiths to put it on for a real world test.

As for the test itself, he had a perfect idea on what to use, and where…

<<>>

“C’mon Conner, we’re gonna be late!” Compashun whined in through the window of the penn house kitchen.

“Easy there girl, I know you’re excited.” Connor Penn said, knowing what Compashun was anxious about. “Calm down and let me finish my breakfast at least before we leave… you ate your breakfast right?”

Compashun, with her head and most of her neck sticking in through the window, nodded emphatically.

“Thatta girl.” Connor said, reaching over and patting her on the head, right in front of the small fin that adorned the top of her skull.

Finishing up his pancakes quickly, and washing it down with coffee, Connor quickly hurried outside. Grabbing the saddle from the supply stall, he went to fitting it to Compashun, who after having some experience with her, Connor knew she always needed some slight adjustments made to the thing before they would be able to ride smoothly.

“Good to see you finally with a dragon again Connor, it’s been too long. I don’t think I’ve seen you with your own ride since Pax retired.” came the voice of Fixrr, Connor’s recently returned gear mechanic.

“Fixrr, she’s not exactly ‘my’ dragon.” Connor said to the green haired man.

“Well, if she’s not your dragon, you’re certainly becoming her human now. Every time she wants to go somewhere, you go with her.” He gave a small chuckle. “Don’t let me hold you up, just get going to wherever.” He said, walking past and on to whatever job he was supposed to be working on.

Compashun tilted her head, looking at Fixrr as he walked away, she then looked down at Connor.

“Never mind him. Let’s just get going.” He said, decided her saddle was set properly, and hopped up.

<<>>

Race time at the mid-city track stadium. The excitement was building as the racers lined up for a good old fashioned speed race, some of the favorite names in dragon racing there today. Phistus on Brutaris, Pyrrah on Phorrj, Wulph on Hyve, Dorsull on Highdyve, and Rancydd on Luutt.

There was one lesser name; Slyder Ronus, racing on Skreet. Their first return since a little more than two months prior, just as the scalesheen incident had began. Some of the spectators were interested in seeing how he did, considering that Skreet was the first of the dragons sold by scalesheen who was reintroduced to the rebellious females to appease them. Considering his mother was the leader of that movement made him an object of curiosity today on the track.

No less was the fact that about five minutes before the race was scheduled to start, the dragoness herself was ridden in by Connor Penn, who was fostering the scalesheen dragonesses at his own stable facilities around the city. The officials had made a special spot for her to sit and watch the event alongside the main set of bench seats in the stadium.

“There she is.” One of the spectators within earshot said as she padded up to the open sided tent they’d set up for her.

“That’s the one that started that whole incident? Doesn’t look like much.” another spectator said.

“Don’t have to look like much if you can sway opinions the way she can.” The first one replied.

Compashun snorted, and pointedly focused her attention out onto the starting line. She smiled and gave a trill when Skreet looked over and saw her there.

“Skreet! Run well!” Compashun called out in a high pitched cry.

“What’s this, mommy come to cheer you on your big race?” Brutaris snorted.

“That ‘mommy’ put you in the hospital once, Brutaris, or don’t you remember?” Phorrge rumbled.

“Yeah, yeah…” Brutaris growled, subsiding.

Skreet smirked, and said nothing.

<<>>

Some few dracometers distant, inside the academy building, several racing teams from other cities were gearing up for a race of their own. Artha Penn and Moordryd Paynn had been invited to take part in today’s exercises while the rest of their crews were on hand to watch.

“Good morning students.” The instructor said, walking out and folding his arms behind his back. “I see everyone’s here a good fifteen minutes early, so I’ll explain today’s exercise and you can use the remaining time to prepare before we get you all out on the starting block.” He waved his hand and a monitor that looked eerily similar to Mortis’s from down in the temple dropped down out of the ceiling.

“Today there will be no mechanical obstacles to hinder you as you progress around the training track, your obstacles will be a variety of attacker dragons, as there have been in the past several days, but also each other. However, each of you will be given free choice of gear allotment and setup, of any color and level your dragons can handle straight from the armory. You will be graded upon how well you can utilize each piece you chose in an offensive or defensive manner. Also, we will be grading you on mixing the use of these along with mag-claw and conventional martial arts.” The instructor concluded.

“Great, within a year they’ll be expecting me to do all that. I really don’t think I’m cut out for this.” Parmon said.

“Oh come on Professor, when’re you going to realize you need to toughen up in here!” Kitt whispered in an undertone to him, knowing exactly what the tan skinned young man was thinking.

“I’m a thinker, not a fighter! I didn’t expect the academy wanted us to all be brutes!” Parmon retorted.

“Mr. Sean, we do not train brutes at the academy.” The instructor said sternly. “We train warriors, and warriors need their bodies to be as honed as their minds. Your intellect is not in question, but you would do well to start training your body as well, or your team is going to suffer for it.”

“He’s got you there Parm.” Artha said, while the members of the other teams started sniggering.

<<>>

Word Paynn, as an instructor in the academy, had a great deal of access to the facility. It wasn’t unusual for him to be seen in any of the areas of the institution, even the wild dragon pens where he was now.

He was examining the pens to see exactly how they’d worked. He’d never taken a particular interest before -usually he just came to examine the dragons themselves- but today he had a reason for this. He needed to get a few… extra dragons out on the track during exercises, and he’d need a quick way to extricate them afterwards.

The pens themselves were held underneath the track, and a series of gates opened on command in order to entice the trapped ‘wild’ dragons out into the race track…. a rather harsh practice, considering what the scalesheen dragonesses had fought against a while before, but that was the least of his concerns.. They were loaded from the back, heavier blast doors there keeping the dragons from escaping out into the rest of the academy compound that way. Of key importance, Word found that the control mechanism was a very simple thing, needing only a password to activate and unlock, allowing any of the doors attached to the pen to be opened at will.

Word grinned and patted the visor and remote hidden in the folds of his cloak. This would be a most entertaining test… besides, he might be able to knock Penn’s brat of a son around a bit and make him fall behind his own son in the process…

“Hmm, I’d best make sure that it looks like my son does well against the wraiths then.” Word mused as he moved his waiting taskforce of wraiths into position, the lead wraith wearing the cannon he’d designed around the crystal.

<<>>

“Ok boy… we’re just racing alongside a dozen half-evolved elite class dragons… and Moordryd… it’s just a little training exercise, nothing to worry about…” Artha said, more to reassure himself than the dragon underneath him. Beau just looked back at his rider and snorted.

Clear on the other side of the starting block, Moordryd was wishing he could pull out the amulet and go shadow booster. This bunch of second year students included all the guys who wiped the floor with him down at the free-training range, and he was not looking forward to this ‘exercise’. He said nothing, but Decepshun could feel the tension in his body even as he sat atop her head in the saddle. She looked up at him with concerned eyes, and made a small noise of concern. Noticing this, Moordryd reached down with one hand and patted her atop her head, though she noticed he didn’t smile.

“Boy’s not acting his usual cavalier self, is he?” The Vysox commented from the back of Decepshun’s mind.

“No, he’s not.” Decepshun thought back. “I’m worried about him. He’s not been himself ever since we got here. The escapade outside the academy a few months ago was a reprieve for him, but he’s just as bad now.”

“He’s the sort to always feel oppressed when around those stronger than him. You wait till next year when we’re on top of everyone here at the academy, I think you’ll see him revitalized.” The Vysox said.

“You think so?” Decepshun thought back.

“Yes, but now, if you don’t mind, we’re about to start.” The Vysox said with a mental laugh.

Decepshun snorted and focused again on the world around her, rather than the one inside her mind. The track was pulsing colors, they were about to begin…

<<>>

Word watched from a hidden vantage point above the academy track intently as the battling racers exploded out from the starting gate. Before they reached the first turn, offensive gear, stages, fists, feet, and most importantly mag claw techniques were going off all over. And this before the challenge dragons had been released into the fray. He was going to gather a lot of excellent data from this.

His son was getting hammered by the second year students, as was Artha Penn, probably targeted because they were freshmen. It brought back memories of when he was a student here…

Word shook his head and almost growled. He had to focus here.

<<>>

Artha fended off attack after attack from the other riders. Sure, they were going after each other, but he was taking multiple swipes at a time. These guys really didn’t like freshmen. Chancing a glance, he saw Moordryd was in as difficult a position as he was. On either side of him were second year students. With his left arm he was blocking a staff swing with his own, and with the other one he was blocking a kick with his arm, that had to sting…

Suddenly, a mag bolt came flying at Artha from up ahead, and he barely managed to dodge it by half throwing himself off Beau's saddle, hanging onto it with one hand. However, the move dragged one of the other students who had been beating on him into the path as he tried to follow through... the bolt impacted him and sent him flying off his own dragon's saddle.

The bolt had been green, fired from a second year student riding a bull class dragon that was somewhat larger than Brutaris. While Artha was thankful one of his attackers was down, the number of those assaulting him hadn’t diminished, and once he got back into Beau’s saddle properly, he began to be driven back to the rear of the pack by a spray of mag claw bolts.

When he moved too far back in the pack to be of any concern to the second year student on the bull class dragon, Artha realized he was near to where Moordryd was being pummeled, pulling back on Beau to drop back a little further, he extended his staff and tapped the attacker on his side of the son of Word Paynn with the tip of the weapon.

“You know, it’s not polite to gang up on people!” Artha said, then swung the staff, connecting with a stinging blow to the surprised student’s helmeted head, knocking him clean off his dragon.

“Penn!?” Moordryd yelled, before turning his attention to his one remaining attacker, now able to focus on him, he fought the student off and actually knocked him off his dragon. “Why’d you do that? I had everything under control!”

“Yeah, like you were so going to win with two guys beating on you!” Artha shouted back.

“What do you want!?” Moordryd shouted back, realizing they were currently at the back of the pack.

“To turn the tables on these guys! Team up on them one at a time. Let’s use their little strategy against them!” Artha responded.

“One problem with that strategy Artha!” Moordryd shouted back.

“What’s that?” Artha shouted back.

“THEM!” Moordryd yelled, pointing forward, where the gates on the wild dragon pens were being opened, and a large number of riderless dragons were spilling out onto the track.

“Aw… scales!” Artha said as the head of the pack up ahead went into the fray, him and Moordryd soon surrounded as well.

<<>>

“Excellent work my son. You handle yourself well under pressure.” Word said, watching as he guided his wraiths in amongst the crowd of wild dragons, still deeply cloaked.

“The Penn brat shows almost as much skill.” Word said, stroking his beard. “I think I’ll test the new cannon on him first…”

With that, he suddenly pulled the wraiths out of cloak, and immediately set them to dealing as much havoc amongst the wild dragons as possible.

<<>>

“What!?” The instructor exclaimed, before slamming his hand on the button for the intercom.

“Security breach! We have wraith dragons on the battle track, I repeat, wraith dragons on the battle track!” he shouted.

Alarms started blaring all over the Academy building, various sectors were immediately locked down, the students in lecture hall classes were somewhat paniced, and up in the observation deck where Kitt, Parmon, and Swayy were all panicking as they tried to contact their team leaders. Cain, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to not make himself look like he was acting oddly during this sudden turn.

<<>>

“I know there’s wraith dragons on the track, they’re all over us!” Artha said, having to fend off the wraiths, which were attacking even more ferociously than the wild dragons. Those were actually beating a hasty retreat from the dark, shrouded bipeds.

“These are wraith dragons?” The bull class rider said, then swung a hammer that he’d pulled off the back of his saddle at one of them, sending the unfortunate beast flying, to crash into a wall, hard. “Hah! Nothing to worry about, I could take these all on by myself!” he said, seconds before an energy blast hit his dragon and sent them flying even harder than he’d just sent the wraith.

“What the!?” Moordryd said, turning to look… at the head of a pack of Wraiths, one particular beast had a strange piece of gear on its head…

“Some kind of mag Cannon!?” Moordryd said, before he had to duck a very oddly colored energy burst as it flew where his head had been a moment before.

“Why are these things attacking you!?” Artha said from next to him.

“I think my father just went crazy…” Moordryd growled. Then dodged the next pulse… this one flew past and hit a wall, which exploded outwards in a burst of bits of masonry.

<<>>

“The racers are coming up on the dragon-back drop. This is treacherous territory folks!” race marshal Budge announced as the moving pack of racers approached a trickily designed, steep downhill segment that twisted around in a turn that was really hard to control on.

“Pyrrah takes the lead by cutting to the inside of the turn, shooting past Dorsull! Phistus is battling with Rancydd, while Wulph and the rookie Slyder pass them by while they’re hammering each other!” He announced as they moved along.

Just as he took a breath to comment on the next event, as they were passing along a stretch of road that took them within sight of the racing academy, something unexpected happened. A wall on one of the higher levels simply exploded outwards, sending a cloud of dust and larger particles flying in all directions.

“Magna Draconis! What was THAT!?” Budge exclaimed, while suddenly all the spectators assembled gasped. Connor suddenly became very worried, and Compashun whined.

The explosion sent bits and pieces flying outwards and down, spraying the racetrack. This was such an unusual event that all the racers screeched to a halt… which was just as good as larger bits suddenly started slamming into the raceway in front of them.

“The academy!?” Dorsull said.

“What’s going on up there?” Slyder asked.

Wulph, ever the resourceful one, tapped his helmet comm. “Ferryt! Can you get me a visual on what’s happening up there?”

“Hang on sir, the smoke hasn’t cleared yet!” the other racers heard come through Wulph’s comm. “Wait… I’ve got visual conformation on the academy racers and… and some kind of strange mag pulses… aw scales, wraith dragons!”

“What’re you blathering about soldier!?” Wulph demanded.

“Wraith dragons sir, in the academy! They’re attacking the students!”

“WHAT!?” all the racers there exclaimed.

<<>>

“Holyscalesholyscalesholyscales!” one of the other students kept repeating as he pulled ahead, the cannon wraith continuing to fire at them.

“That thing is too powerful! I knew mag cannons packed a punch but this is ridiculous! ACK!” Artha had to pull to one side as a burst from the cannon blasted a hole in the ceiling and the debris threatened to fall on him and Beau.

“That’s not a normal mag cannon, I’ve seen plenty, and that…. thing on that wraith is different than any I’ve ever seen before!” Moordryd shouted back, before he had to dodge to one side.

“Well whatever it is, we’re getting nowhere trying to outrun them.” Artha called back.

“Then it’s time for a full frontal assault.” Moordryd said.

“My thoughts exactly!” Artha said, then wheeled Beau around and went charging back at the wraiths, firing mag bolts as quickly as he could at the wraith pack, Beau accompanying him with mag bursts.

The lead wraith with the cannon leapt nimbly to one side, but the other wraiths with it weren’t as fast, and started getting pummeled with mag-claw bolts, getting bowled over like pins, and the ones in the front took the ones behind them along with them as they all tripped over their forerunners.

“Hmm… my son’s probably confused. Should’ve had a meeting with him before this I suppose…” Word mused as he watched from his hidden vantage point above the track.

Word kept most of his wraiths occupying the students, while the one with the crystal cannon kept taking potshots at them with his direction. The pulses proved to be devastating, blasting out walls, and at the very least sending the dragons and riders that he hit with them flying like nothing else. He saw scorch marks appearing on them were he hit them, easily pummeling them. The true worth of the cannon came as each of the second year students attempted to deflect the attacks with mag barriers, only to have the shots pierce straight through them, one after the other.

The other academy students had slowly grouped up, surrounded by the coordinated wraiths who were proving to be tougher opponents than they were used to facing. They and their dragons made a ring and attempted to keep them at bay, having to deflect ramming gear projectiles, mag streams, and bite and claw attacks. Any move to escape was countered. Artha and Moordryd seemed to be doing far better than the academy students at handling them though, able to move about the section of track with relative ease, save for the one wraith that kept eluding them and evading their mag-claw attacks.

“Red, green, blue, light blue, white, purple… this crystal’s pulses cut through any kind of draconium mag-barrier.” Word said. “I believe that’s about enough of a test… now then, young mister Penn… I believe I owe you something for giving my son such a hard time getting into the academy.” Word said, turning his sights squarely on Artha.

<<>>

Artha suddenly found himself having to dodge a volley of strangely flashing mag-pulses from the cannon on the lead wraith. Instead of randomly peppering the other students, who were still desperately trying to protect themselves and their dragons, it seemed intent on destroying him.

“Artha!” Parmon’s voice popped into Artha’s helmet. “Artha you have to get out of there, I don’t know what that thing it’s using is, but it can cut through mag-claw barrier shields, and it’s very powerful, take too many hits from that and you’re finished!”

“Why’s there only one? If this is a new weapon he’s using, shouldn’t they all have them?” Artha said, even as he and beau dodged the attacks.

“Well…” Parmon said, thinking. “I suppose you have a point. Oh! Perhaps this is an ancient weapon he discovered somewhere! Maybe he’s trying to test it?”

“Then I cant let it fall back into his hands.” Artha said, drawing on Beau’s energy in a big way.

“What’re you doing Penn!?” Moordryd shouted.

“Sorry, but I can’t let this weapon go back to your father!” He said, then opened fire at the wraith dragon with a continuous stream.

<<>>

“What!?” Word said as he saw what Artha was doing through the wraith’s helmet cameras, right before the magstream hit it and overloaded his feed. “Upstart child…” he growled. He went to redirect the other wraiths onto them when he realized that suddenly there were a lot more students than there had been a minute ago.

“Where’d they all come from?” he growled.

<<>>

“Repel the wraith dragons! You are members of the academy, they are beneath you!” The instructor ordered as several dozen other second year students, including Chute in their number, came charging out onto the damaged battle track, weapons and mag energy charges ready.

“Alright, some reinforcements!” Artha cried. “Uh, Moordryd, little help here?” Artha said as he kept blasting at the lead wraith dragon.

Moordryd gathered a mag-charge almost before he realized that Artha was firing not at the wraith dragon itself, but at the strange cannon atop its head. With the gold mag-stream overloading it, it couldn’t seem to form a coherent bolt of power. Normally Moordryd would try to acquire his father’s toys for his own use, but having just been shot at by this thing, he gritted his teeth and opened up on the cannon as well.

The wraith-gear also being overloaded by the energy, the dragon was thrashing in pain, all its senses gone haywire.

“NO!” Word yelled.

“The heck’s going on Artha?” Chute yelled as soon as she and Twystrr, her half-evolved elite dragon were within range.

“This Wraith’s got some kind of weird mag cannon on it, it needs to be destroyed, help me!” he yelled back over the high-pitched sound of his mag-stream.

“You heard him folks!” Chute said. Seconds later, almost every other color mag-stream imaginable was being fired at the cannon atop the wraith dragon’s head, full force, from the other students.

The first thing that happened was the wraith-gear completely failed, a violent spark and a snapping-crack sounded the end of the black-draconium mind-control gear.

The second thing that happened, even before the dragon collapsed, was the energy-coils on the mag-cannon overloaded and exploded, sending pieces of the cannon flying everywhere, and throwing the wraith dragon, now reverted back to a simple magma-class, several meters back, where it collapsed into a heap on the floor.

The explosion of the cannon was a bright one, and everyone had to shield their eyes. When the spots and stars faded from their vision, they saw that the wraiths had pulled a hasty retreat, leaving their lost comrade on the track surface.

“Well that was impressive.” Artha said.

“Nice work with the mag-streams Artha, Moordryd.” Chute said.

“Uh, thanks.” Moordryd said, looking at the remnant pieces of the cannon on the ground in front of him. Decepshun leaned down to sniff at them as well.

As the others were inspecting the damage, Parmon’s voice came in through Artha’s helmet again.

“Artha, there’s something strange… on the track behind you. It’s giving off a weird energy signature.” He said.

“What is it Parm?” Artha asked.

“Look behind you, on the ground… It’s rather hard to miss.” Parmon said.

Artha turned around… and saw a shining point of light just… laying on the ground. It was glowing brightly, and appeared white at the core, but it had an ambient glow about it in many colors… not a rainbow, individual colors rapidly pulsing in a frantic manner all around it.

Artha hopped down off Beau, who looked back as his rider walked over to the strange object.

“Whoa… what is this?” Artha said, picking up the object. It was beautiful… it felt warm, and was solid and hard, with flat faces that he couldn’t make out through the glow.

“This is amazing… what…” Artha said, trying to study it closer… when suddenly it started to vibrate in his hand, and a loud whine in a rising pitch started to emanate from it… very, very loud.

“Artha, the energy readings are going haywire! Get away from it, NOW!” Parmon’s voice screamed through the comm.

Artha dropped the object, and turned to try to run… but before it even hit the ground… a blinding flash emanated, followed by an expanding blast of incredible power.

Everyone screamed and the dragons leapt away, though the concussion from the blast threw them all many meters down the track regardless of this defensive move.

When they blast finally subsided, and they turned around to look again… the track in a 10 meter radius around where the object had been was vaporized, beyond that, mangled wreckage for another 20 meters, the crystal itself having fallen down to rest upon the top of a pile of debris in what should’ve been a storage room two levels down.

Of Artha Penn, there was no sign.

I am FASCINATED by Professor!Word Paynn. :wub: There's something about your Word that's quite a bit different from the show's own, like more conservative, but it still seems like him in a sense, and an interesting one at that. :) It's a new take to see him doing the "record experimental observations" thing, and it makes me giggle and the same time watch with intrigue.

The crystal I was guessing would either have Gold or Grey not be able to be harnessed, and I was right. I wonder if it has to do with how the balance of Grey works. :plot: Also referencing the Chromatic Dragon in there. :D

Looks like everybody's doing good so far, too, but I guess that's about to change. Anyway, nicely done! Can't wait to see more.

Glad you like him like that. I see him as being a serious researcher when he's not plotting to rule the world.

Yeah, my theory on Grey versus gold draconium... will be explained. also, i figured, if you're making notes on your research, it'd be natural to make references to prior projects. glad you found it entertaining. ^^

I take it from the way you phrased that you might've missed chapter three... perhaps i posted it as you were writing up your own post? things like that happen from time to time.

Oh, snap, I did! :eep: Well, then, let's read Ch. 3.

*couple minutes later* Now THAT was drac! :D What a race! Whoowee, and what a twist. I wonder what's happened to poor Artha. On that subject, poor Moordryd too, getting ganged up on the sophomores just because he knows more. And Word being bullied and challenged in the past too. :P

What Fixrr said to Connor was interesting, though. I wonder if that will be of any significance later on. Keep it up!

Welp, i'm REALLY wondering if anyone's working on this PM system problem.

Skylii, please don't think i stole any ideas from you over in the 5-words thread, I've had this plot twist in my brain since halfway through Mother's Rage.

Philosopher’s Stone.

Chapter 4

The view from the street racing track, and through the big screen over the racing stadium had been focused on the area of the academy building where the fighting had been. Things had seemed to suddenly be under control, when an expanding, spherical looking blast of energy ripped through the walls of a large segment of the structure, large pieces of masonry flying out at high speed.

What accompanied this blast was even stranger… what appeared to be a large comet-like burst of energy firing upwards out of the explosion… careening high into the sky, through the many levels of dragon city.

High up in Sun city, many people and dragons let out cries of alarm as this blast rocketed out from below them, then arced through the sky even as it traveled upwards, orienting towards the west, and heading away at an incredible rate of speed.

<<>>

“Is everyone alright?” Chute called out.

“Just a bit deaf and blind here, nothing to worry about…” The sophomore who’d been riding the green dragon in the training exercise responded.

“Magna draconis…” Moordryd said, taking in the wreckage of the track and the surrounding levels of the academy… yellow light from the outside city was streaming in.

“Artha!” Moordryd suddenly heard the egghead member of the Penn crew yell as he came running out to the edge of the mangled mess of the track. “Artha!” he yelled with his hands cupped.

“Wha… he’s not here?” Moordryd said.

“He was standing right… there when the explosion hit…” Said Cain, who was coming forward along with Coershun.

“Wait, you mean…!” Moordryd stopped as he realized what had just happened.

“”He was going to check out something that came out of that mag cannon when it blew… it must’ve been the power source… oh magna draconis, if only I hadn’t seen it for another 20 seconds…” Parmon said, sinking to his knees, where his angle of sight suddenly picked up something. “Wait… what’s that?”

“Everyone get away from that pit immediately!” The voice of Sentrus said. Parmon looked up just as the imposing woman arrived at the edge.

“Extricate yourself from there this instant Mr. Sean. The unthinkable has just happened… and I don’t want to lose any more students. I want this area cordoned off.” Sentrus was saying to several other staff members. “Call Dragon-city Security, we’ll need forensic experts to analyze this blast. And someone find out how those damned wraiths got in here in the first place.”

“Sentrus, Ma’am?” Parmon said.

“Mr. Sean… I’m sorry.” Sentrus said, looking acutely uncomfortable with the whole situation.

“If you want to know what caused the blast… I think I know what it was.” He said.

“Oh? This might help. What?” she asked.

“That stone.” he said, pointing into the pit.

“Stone?” Sentrus asked, then looked into the craterous pit. “Oh my!”

<<>>

Lance had been working around the stable, cleaning up after the ladies and all the hatchlings. It was a job he didn’t enjoy, but had to be done.

Suddenly, his wrist-comm beeped, and he answered it.

“Parm? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“Sorry Lance, but is your father around? He’s not answering.”

“No, he’s not here. He took Compashun down to the stadium to watch Skreet race.”

“Oh dear, I need to speak to him.” Parmon said, sounding troubled.

“Is something wrong Parm? Is Artha in trouble?” Lance asked.

“Well… kinda…” Parm said.

“Aw scales, what’d he do?”

“Nothing! Well, he was… oh, I so need to talk to Mr. Penn!” Parmon said.

“Parmon, what happened to my brother?” Lance said, already irritated.

“Uhm… how to put this…” Parmon said. “He’s… missing.”

“Missing? How does someone go missing in the middle of the academy?”

Parmon suddenly seemed distracted. “Oh, here he is! Sorry Lance… I’ll explain later.” He said, then suddenly cut the connection.

“Hey!” Lance shouted at the wrist-comm just a second too late. “Aw scales, they never tell me anything anymore.”

<<>>

“Mr. Penn, how unexpected.” Sentrus said as the bald man entered the meeting room where she and several students, including Parmon Sean, Kitt Wonn, and Moordryd Paynn were sitting, along with Captain Faier of Security who was standing on the other side of the table.

“I had a feeling my team would be involved in something this big… where’s Artha?” Connor asked.

Everyone suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable.

“Oh no…” Penn said.

“We haven’t been able to find a single trace of your son Connor, but I swear, we’re putting every available resource into this.” Faier said.

“How’d it happen? What was going on in here?” Connor said, confused and sounding more than a little panicked.

“A group of wraith dragons somehow got onto the battle track, Mr. Penn.” Sentrus said.

Connor glanced at Moordryd. “I see… go on.”

“We were running an exercise which your son and young Mr. Paynn were invited to join in with, as it concerned mag-claw techniques. Everything was going fine until the wild-dragons were released onto the track. We’re assuming that the Wraiths slipped in via the wild dragon pens somehow.”

“One of the wraiths had a mag cannon on it’s head, a strange new kind, something we’ve never seen before, and it’s not the kind of thing that came from the ancient war, this is a new design… and apparently it was built… around this.” Sentrus said, placing the crystal out on the desk infront of Connor.

Connor stared at it. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“As well as I can surmise, this crystal was the focal point for the mag cannon. It somehow managed to incorporate all forms of draconium energy into a mag discharge. It pierced through our student’s best mag-barrier techniques like they weren’t even there. Artha lead half our second year students in an assault that destroyed the cannon, but this remained intact… and it was apparently overcharged from the assault.” Sentrus said.

“Then the braniac here told Artha to go pick it up. And right after he picked it up it blasted everything around it.” Moordryd said, scowling at Parmon.

“I didn’t think a focusing crystal could do that!” Parmon retorted. “It’s totally unlike any other mineral I’ve ever seen.”

“Wait, Artha was right next to this thing when it…?” Connor said, a look of sheer horror on his face.”

Everyone nodded silently.

Connor looked like he was about to pass out.

“Look, just because we can’t find him right now doesn’t mean he’s dead.” Faier said. “My predecessor as chief of security had a saying that held true, if macabre. They’re not dead until someone identifies a body, and since we have no body, we’re going to put all our energy into a full blown search.”

“I hate to do this, again, but we’re going to have to halt classes again. The massive breach of security we experienced today cannot go without our own investigation. The personnel from security need to be allowed to do their work, then repairs made to the academy building… and we can’t progress with the status of one of our students unknown as such.” Sentrus said, not wanting to say what she thought personally of Artha’s chances of having survived that blast.

“And the crystal?” Parmon asked.

“Normally we’d hand something like this over to security, but we’re going to do our own research, try to correspond with the archives to see if it, or anything like it, is mentioned anywhere in the libraries.

“You can’t do that!” Parmon exclaimed, which got him a very dark look from Sentrus, but for once, Parmon didn’t back down. “That stone is the only concrete starting point I have to find my friend! I don’t know what happened out there exactly, but if I’m going to find out then that stone and its properties has to be studied scientifically. It needs to go to central research, where my father works!”

Sentrus raised an eyebrow. “Your… opinion has been noted Mr. Sean, and while I see your point, the event occurred on Academy property, and it is the decision of the staff as a whole as to what to do with it. However, you can be sure that if we don’t make any real progress on our research, the next place it goes is to central.”

Parmon made an exasperated noise, but said nothing further.

“In the meantime, I suppose the… remainder of the Penn team and the dragon-eye crew can return to their homes… again. This semester really is going to be one for the history books. Twice in the same year we’ve had to suspend classes. I don’t think this has happened since… since I can remember having heard about.” Sentrus said.

Connor nodded.

<<>>

Beau was in shock… absolute shock. Artha was gone… he’d watched, transfixed as the crystal had let out that searing pulse of power… greater in sheer force than the blast he, Decepshun, Tyrranis Pax, and Abanndon had used to defeat Armeggadon. Artha had been trying to run, but suddenly it hit him from behind, and he looked like he’d gotten slammed into from that direction by a wall of force… then, his mouth opened as though he was screaming, right before he was enveloped by pure light. Then, he was simply gone.

“Beau?” Connor’s voice came from the door of the Academy stable stall he was in.

Beau looked up, whined, then stood and hurried to the man’s side, and shoved his face down and under Connor’s chest, whining.

“Easy boy, easy, we’ll find Artha… don’t you worry.” Connor said, patting the red and blue dragon atop his head.

“Man boss…” Cain said as he met Moordryd outside the academy stables. “I know we’ve tried to… yanno… get Penn out of the picture before but… I feel so…”

“Shut up Cain!” Moordryd snapped. “This… this just wasn’t right.” He murmured.

“What do we do Moordryd?” Swayy asked.

“You two go back to the compound. I need to see my father.” Moordryd said, then urged Decepshun into a gallop and was off.

<<>>

Lance was standing at the gate when Connor, Parmon and Kitt got back to Penn stables.

“Dad! Where’s Artha?” He asked, then looked at Beau.

The red and blue dragon looked incredibly depressed, and sad.

“Lance…” Connor said, as though he was thinking of how he could explain his brother’s absence.

“What happened to my brother!” Lance yelled, garnering him the attention of all the out-and-about scalesheen dragonesses.

“There was… an accident at the Academy.” Connor said.

“You mean…?” Lance said, the color dragining from his face.

“Nobody knows what happened really yet Lance. All we know is we haven’t found him yet.” Parmon said.

“Was it wraith dragons?” Lance asked.

“Yes and no…” Connor said.

“What do you mean?” Lance asked.

“Let’s… go in the house and talk about this…” Connor said, hopping down off Compashun’s saddle.

As Beau slunk off, the blue dragoness gave him a nuzzle. Beau looked back at her and forced a smile, then just trudged into his solitary stall.

<<>>

“My brother was hit by a bomb!?” Lance exclaimed, some short time later inside the main room of the house.

“Not a bomb, an energy pulse from a highly charged crystal.” Parmon said.

“It’s still an explosion! What, is he in the hospital?” Lance asked.

“Nobody could find any sign of him Lance. They’re looking any way they can.” Kitt said.

Suddenly, the door opened and Fixrr stepped in.

“Fixrr… I’m sorry, I have to ask you to leave.” Connor said.

“And what, find out what happened to the kid through gossip?” Fixrr said, staring at Connor. “Let me guess, he was hit by that blast at the academy today, right?”

Parmon and Kitt looked at each other, before Kitt nodded.

“I don’t suppose this also has something to do with that comet people saw flying up towards the sky around noon today?” Fixrr then asked.

“Comet?” everyone asked.

“Yeah, came flying up from mid-city somewhere right when the blast hits, and goes careening into the sky in an arc, headed out to the west somewhere.” Fixrr said.

Everyone stared at him blankly.

“I got a call from a friend of mine who works on gear for the people that live up there, ok? He told me all about it.” The man said, annoyed at the responses he was getting.

“A comet of energy?” Parmon said.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before…” Connor said.

“Something YOU don’t know, Mr ‘I was raised by dragon priests’?” Fixrr said.

Lance, Parmon and Kitt stared at the green haired man in abject shock.

“Yeah, I know about everything. Scales, you think Connor here was able to keep any secrets from me after I worked with him on the elite track?”

Connor shook his head. “Look, this is beside the point. I need to get a closer look at that crystal. If I can figure out how it works, maybe I can figure out how to get Artha back.”

“Why not just go beat it out of Word Paynn?” Lance said darkly.

“Lance!” Connor exclaimed.

“We know he did it!” Lance retorted.

“That doesn’t mean we can just go assault the citadel kid.” Kitt said.

“Took the words outta my mouth.” Fixrr said.

Lance stormed out without saying another word.

“I still think my father needs to see that crystal. He’d be able to figure something out.” Parmon said.

Connor looked out the window as Lance went to Fracshun’s stall… when the pair didn’t explode out and go charging out the gate a minute later, he knew that the boy was probably crying on the dragon.

“Artha… please be ok…” Connor whispered.

<<>>

Word was seething as he sat in his lair atop his citadel. The mag cannon was gone, and the precious crystal was in the hands of the Academy top staff, which essentially meant Akarai.

“Curse you Artha Penn… Like your father you insist on standing in my way. It’ll be virtually impossible to get the crystal out of the academy now…”

“FATHER!” Word heard the voice of his son yell out across the chamber. Spinning around, he saw Mordryd riding forward on Decepshun… neither looked happy.

“What do you want?” Word asked, irritated.

“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND!?” Moordryd screamed at him. “Your wraiths tried to kill me!”

“I made sure those bolts weren’t lethal at their level of power before I sent the wraiths out.”

“They were still targeting me father, explain that!” Moordryd snapped. Decepshun was growling low at Word.

“I was putting on a show for the benefit of the academy, so they couldn’t think you had any connection with them for being left alone.” Word said. “I should be asking you, son, is why you helped the Penn brat DESTROY MY MAG CANNON!” he finished yelling.

“When it looks like I’m about to be plastered dad, I go for breaking one of your toys over losing my life!” Moordryd snapped back.

Word gritted his teeth. Then almost growled. “The more important thing is the crystal. I wouldn’t have minded if you could’ve seen about recovering it for me. I’m going to make Artha Penn wish he’d never been born for this one.”

“He’s dead.” Moordryd said.

Word froze. “What?” he said, suddenly sounding worried.

“After we destroyed the mag cannon, he went to go check out that glowing crystal. It blew out several levels of the academy wall dad, and he was right at the heart of the blast. He’s been missing since. Nobody wanted to come out and say it since Connor was there but…” Moordryd said.

Word was silent. He slowly sank back into his chair, eyes wide and staring into space, a look of shock on his face.

<<>>

Armeggadon stood in a hidden nook, atop one of the stylized dragonheads that served as the end of a gutter in dragon city, looking over the academy, a great beast with an open wound, it looked to be.

“That strange energy… it came from here this time…” the heavy armored man said, looking the building over.

Leaping down from his vantagepoint, he traversed the vertical levels down to down city’s nearly empty city streets, where an electronics store was showing several high-resolution monitors displaying the news. He couldn’t hear anything being said, but he watched and saw the explosive blast rip through the academy, coupled with shots from up as far as sun city showing the strange energy burst that flew up, into the sky, and then off into the distance… heading west.

“How curious…” Armeggadon said, before he heard someone approaching and leapt up clean over the small building and back into shadow.

<<>>

Fiery heat and blinding light had surrounded Artha. Fear filled his mind. The natural instinct to flee the force that threatened to destroy him overwhelming his mind, before he felt the strangest sensation tearing through his body.

The very next instant, he saw dragon city whipping by him as he rocketed skyward at a speed that he’d never reached before, even during that last jump at the extreme G competition. 200mph had nothing on this… though strangely, he hardly felt the motion.

The edges of his vision were tinged a fluxing rainbow of colors as he saw the golden mists and many different colored buildings of dragon city go by him in a mad blur, until suddenly, all he saw was blue sky.

He tried to look down, but couldn’t… until suddenly his orientation with the ground changed. He saw that he was more level with the world underneath him… but he saw that the city… sun city, the top of dragon city in it’s entirety, was far, far below him… and passing below him at an incredible rate.

“What’s happening?” Artha thought. “Is this a dream? It kinda feels like one…”

The edge of dragon city came into view only a few moments later… somewhere along the lines of 250 miles passed in a few seconds, considering that the academy was fairly close to the heart of the city. He saw the lip of sun city come level with the ground surface of the planet. The ancient craterlike valley that had been the building site for the ancient city at the bottom had been filled to overflowing with the vertical city.

And then, Artha realized that he was now far beyond the edge of the city, and unable to look behind him, realized he was now careening across an endless stretch of mountainous, rocky desert, with the ground only slowly becoming further and further away… until the ground far, far below was nothing but a brownish mass and above him was dark blue… in fact, he almost swore he saw stars through the edges of that multi-colored haze that rimmed his vision.

Then, he realized that the ground was now coming closer and closer. It started slow, detail on that tan mass below slowly becoming more discernable, until he realized what had happened. He’d been flung through the air in the way someone throws a ball, an arc. He’d finished going up, and now he was going down.

“Oh scales, oh scales, oh scales!” He thought in an absolute panic. At this rate, he was probably only a few seconds from impact. “Humans can’t survive this kind of hit! Oh…” his mind flashing to all the dragons he’d seen take nasty spills and shake it off without a second thought.

With the ground literally meters away, suddenly a massive flash blinded him, and suddenly his body felt very strange… right before he slammed into the ground.

He saw stars for quite a while, and he felt numbed. He’d expected to snap a couple bones at the very least, but eventually he realized sensation had returned, and nothing felt broken or ruptured.

Everything, however, felt wrong. Not painful wrong… weird wrong… however, aside this, the way he felt was… familiar, somehow…

“Oh magna draconis… if this is what I think it is…” Artha thought, before he forced his eyes open, and then shut them again immediately as the sun was shining right in his eyes.

He rolled over, as he was laying on his side, he could tell that much, and opened his eyes.

He expected to see his arms in front of him on the ground, instead he saw a pair of dragon paws.

He quickly realized that they were attached to a dragon’s body.

His body.

“Aw SCALES not again!” Artha whined out of his draconic snout.

...XDDD

Aw man what a way to kill the mood. ^_^ Here I was going all NOOOO ARTHA :( but then I learned he lived and it was all "phew thank goodness" then it was "...oh God. Here it comes. :P"

Not my idea anyway, that idea has probably been thought of many times before. :) I love Moordryd and Word's phase of shock. Wonder where this will go. I love how Parm is getting some spotlight too, I think he'll be a very key character in this story by assumption.

Hehe, yeah. you can blame something i saw at Deviantart for that. but it became a major plot point during planning, as you'll see.

Edit: no, wait, there was one other thing that inspired this twist. Zelda: twilight princess.

Oh my! Artha has become a dragon. Did the comet change him? Can't wait for more! :cookie: :cookie:

Oh wow. Just...wow. I'm not even going to attempt to put into words everything that's going through my head right now.


I got your email Skulder, but apparently I can't send you emails back. I tried responding to it and I got an automated message that said it couldn't be delivered. :/

Well, i can only hope it's mostly good things going through your head right now. ^^()

And as for the messaging system, yeah, this whole thing is messed up isn't it? i really wonder what the problem is.

Edit: and to keep off the double-posting rule, here's the next one!

Philosopher’s stone

Chapter 5

“Ok, ok, don’t panic… you’ve been through this before, it’s not the end of the world…” Artha was saying in a series of various draconic sounds… most of them forced grunts as he tried to reassure himself. He coupled this with pacing around in a circle… which ended with him sitting down in the shade of a large boulder.

“Think rationally… something really weird just happened, and… and I’m someplace I don’t recognize.” He said, looking around himself for the first time. He was lying in the shadow of a large boulder, but the sky above was a clear blue with a number of clouds high above.

Artha stood on all four paws and looked himself over. If he’d switched bodies again, then this was a dragon he’d never seen before.

“My body seems to be mostly white, underbelly’s blue, and I’ve got a torso like an energy or a sky class… half of the inside of my legs are blue as well, and on the outside white, but the paws are all blue, with… bright yellow claws? And there’s a ring of yellow scales on my wrists and ankles… oh, a tailspade like a psi-class, also in yellow… weirder and weirder.” he shook his head. “Can’t see my own face to see how that looks… wish there was a mirror… or a puddle around I could look into.” He snorted. “Though I felt some long ears flopping around back there… probably like a magma-class.” he rumbled.

“Ok… now that I’ve taken stock of my basic condition, what’s my situation?” Artha thought. “I… should probably get a better picture of where I am…” he looked around. “That hill looks like a high spot.” He said, and padded out towards it.

The hill was more a low, rocky mountain, and was farther away and larger than it looked at first. Some half an hour later of climbing up rocky shelves and through crevasses, Artha made it to the top and looked around.

All he saw, in every direction, was rocky desert, and mountains, as far as he could see.

“Magna Draconis, where am I?” Artha thought, jaw agape.

After circling a few times and glancing in every direction, Artha sat down on his haunches.

“Great… I’m out in the middle of nowhere, by myself, in the body of a dragon… now what do I do?” he thought to himself.

Artha sat there looking around aimlessly for a while, trying to see if he saw anything that give him a sign of which direction he should go… as he did so, he noticed that, now that he was sitting in strong light, those ‘yellow’ scales weren’t exactly yellow… they were shiny gold, similar to Beau’s gold scales.

“Whoah, gold scales? Huh… I think someone owns this dragon. Probably put these gold patches on with a Chromo-shifter.” He thought, then looked around again. “Though… if this dragon’s owned by someone, and I switched with it… how’d it get all the way out here?”

Suddenly, something tickled the sensitive nostrils Artha had just acquired. “What’s that?” he rumbled, then got to all fours again and sniffed at the air, slowly following where it smelled strongest down to the opposite side of the hill from where he’d awoken after that… very strange experience.

At the other side of the hill he found a overhanging ledge covering what was apparently a natural spring. It led down into a very narrow, low cave that drained the water away, but at the mouth it pooled into a rocky craterous depression in the ground, and while not crystal clear, it was smooth and reflective.

Artha first paused to look at his reflection in the water before testing it. The head was somewhat of a cross between an energy and a sky class dragon, rounded and full, but also elongated with a touch of tapering at the end. It was primarily white, but the underside of the jaw was blue like the rest of the underbelly. The area around the eyes was blue, and they connected to streaks of gold that broadened to cover the entirety of the long, magma class-like ears. The eyes were yellow, not exactly uncommon there.

“Ok, one thing’s for sure, this dragon’s some kind of hybrid.” Artha thought, then, satisfied that he’d examined the dragon enough, he went to take a drink…then spat. The water tasted like clay.

“Not exactly like those bottled waters…” He thought, frowning at the clouded water.

<<>>

Parmon, out on the road riding a rather glum Cyrano, was guiding him automatically towards central research when his saddle-com blipped up with an incoming call graphic. He hit the button to receive it and his father’s face appeared.

“Son, I just heard the news… I’m sorry.” The elder Sean said.

“Don’t be dad, I’m not giving up on Artha yet.”

“But, what everyone saw…” the older man said.

“I heard some mention of a strange ‘comet’ that shot up towards the upper atmosphere, coinciding with the explosion. Do you know anything about it?” Parmon asked.

“Comet? First I’ve heard… wait, you say ‘towards?” the older, tan skinned, maroon haired man said.

“Yes father, I said ‘towards’ the upper atmosphere. It came from mid city and was flung up, apparently by the explosion.”

Mr. Sean rubbed his chin. “This is a new development. I’ll have to find something on this… perhaps some witnesses at least to question for data and-”

“Father, there’s something else.” Parmon interrupted him.

“Yes?” the senior Sean said.

“The source of the blast was a strange crystal, the academy staff confiscated it after the attack and explosion, but I really think you should be studying it.” Parmon said.

“Crystal?” Mr. Sean said, suddenly riveted on his end of the line.

“Yes, I managed to get a good look at it, clear and faceted like common quartz, with a broken, rough end, and surrounded with a pulsating, multi-colored glow.”

“You’re sure of that?” Mr. Sean said.

“Quite sure, why?” Parmon asked.

“You just described a stone that was supposed to be sent to us several weeks ago, but was stolen from where it was dug up at a mine over a thousand miles away from dragon city.”

“What!?” Parmon exclaimed.

“Sorry Parmon, I need to get on the line with the academy. Could you do me a favor and see if you can gather that data on the ‘comet’ everyone saw? I’m probably going to be busy for the next few days.”

“Father!” Parmon said just before his father suddenly cut off the connection.

<<>>

Night fell some hours later, and for the first time, Artha saw the night sky as it was without the obstruction of the city, its lights, and the mists that surrounded it. Full of stars… so many stars that the sky looked to be covered with sparkling dust.

“Wow… that’s beautiful…” Artha rumbled aloud.

“’Course it is ya silly big-drag!” a strange voice… cawed at him.

Artha leapt up instantly. “Who’s there?” he growled into the darkness around him.

“What big-drag do all way out here? Is not nice place for big-drags, no!” the voice continued.

“Who are you? Show yourself!” Artha growled defensively.

“Ah, big-drag have nothing to fear from Kawya.” The voice said again. “Come out from cave, echo too much, yes! You see where Kawya is soon.”

Cautiously, Artha padded out of the small cave he’d been in.

“Yes yes, Kawya right here!” The voice came… this time easily identifiable as coming from a spot on the ground directly in front of Artha’s forepaws. Looking down and squinting his eyes in the dark, Artha made out the outline of…

“You’re a crowdrag?” Artha snorted.

“Yes, silly big-drag!” the tiny thing cawed and cackled. “What doing in Kawya’s rest place? Is too far for dragon that not have wings to go.”

“I… don’t know how I got here.” Artha said in a trill… a new tone for him.

“Oh, is bad thing for Big-drag then, yes?” Kawya well… cawed.

“Yeah… I don’t know where I am. And I need to get back where I was…” he trilled, then paused. “Do you know where a big city might be? Like, really big?” Artha chirred hopefully.

“No big city near, no. But lots of humans and dragons live in big hole in ground not far.”

“This… hole in the ground… wouldn’t be filled with buildings would it?” Artha trilled.

“Not filled, no. Buildings on edges and around top.” the crow-drag cawed.

“Guess that’s not Dragon city then…” Artha rumbled.

“What big-drags name?” Kawya inquired with two caws.

“Uh… Artha.” Artha rumbled after a minute.

“Huh, strange name for big-drag.” The little crowdrag hopped around in a circle and flapped his wings. “Well, Kawya rested, must go then.”

“Wait!” Artha snorted in alarm.

“Yes?” Kawya responded, looking like he was ready to take off again.

“You can’t just leave me here!” Artha whined

“Kawya busy, yes! Must go, yes! Be with other crowdrags soon. Big-drag Artha be with other big-drags. Go north to big hole.” Kawya replied.

“North?” Artha snorted.

“Yes, Kawya go south now, big-drag Artha go north then.” The little crow-drag cawed before taking to the air and flying in what was apparently a southerly direction.

Artha stared after the crowdrag for a minute, then turned and looked in the opposite direction. He looked into the tiny cave with the little, bad-tasting spring for a moment, considering it, and then turned and walked north.

The ‘valley’ he’d been in had hills surrounding it in all directions. The one to the north was a fair deal higher at the crest than the first one he’d climbed over. At the very top of this one, he got a view all around… and saw that the crow-drag hadn’t been lying. To the north… just at the edge of the horizon, he saw lights that looked brighter than the stars. Obviously some kind of town…. But it looked far away.

“And in Dragon city, there’d be too much mist or too many buildings in the way for me to see that far.” Artha mused, before he started walking north again, descending this hill into the lowlands, where he no longer had line of sight to the lights in the distance, having to rely on his sense of direction to keep him in a straight line.

Hehe, after I read this I just had to sketch out Artha's dragon form, so here it is so everyone else can see it. All I did was rotate it so it's right-side up, I didn't clean it or anything, so it's pretty messy.


http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u32/Ren...gons/img108.jpg


And yes, I'm aware my paws are epic fail. Feel free to remind me exactly how fail they are. >_<

Don't feel bad. Paws are hard. I've known awesome artists who all say 'hands, feet and paws are MURDER!'

In any case... Artha makes for a handsome dragon, doesn't he?

I don't usually have much trouble with hands(though, I don't usually have complex poses), but feet and paws are definitely murder.

And yes, he does. He's fun to draw. ^_^

That is holding true to the name 'Pendragon'. Arthur Pendragon, to be exact. Artha is named after Arthur. The head is like Decepshun's, but the tail is like Coershun. I am enjoying the story too.

And here's the next one. Some minor corrections will be forthcoming.

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 6

Artha padded along though the desert. He’d climbed over at least three rocky ‘hills’ that were more like short mountains. Lots of times his progress became him leaping from ledge to ledge, and a few times he’d miscalculated how sturdy a ledge was and part had given way under the weight of the dragon body he now resided within, and he’d had to scrabble up to what remained of it lest he fall.

The body proved to be very nimble and agile, able to manage very well over such uneven terrain, save for the couple of setbacks.

He’d have taken some solace in this if he’d managed to get another sighting of the town. He’d been walking since the previous night, and now it was coming close to noon. The sun was high and beating down on the landscape -and him- mercilessly.

“Man it’s hot out here…” Artha rumbled. “Feels as bad as the fire caves… ugh…” Artha suddenly lowered his head as a strange sensation came from over his shoulders, right before the steam-pores opened and gushed out overheated vapor, lowering his body temperature considerably.

“Whoah! So that’s steaming huh?” Artha snorted, looking at his torso. “Guess there are a few perks to being a dragon after all.” He snorted, then turned and continued his trek north.

“Man, if only the land stayed even, then I could really get moving.” Artha trilled. He was sure that if he could’ve gone 200 last night he would’ve been at whatever town the little crow-drag had mentioned by now. But instead, the only level areas were small stretches of dusty lowland between these rough stone mountains.

<<>>

Nobody saw Lance and Fracshun leave early that morning… at least, that’s what they hoped. It was a lot harder to sneak around with so many dragonesses and hatchlings in the stable. Lance had brought along a vid camera with a zoom function, in case he found anything he’d need to show to his dad later.

They followed a familiar route up through dragon city till they reached its top level, sun city. From there one hardly needed to follow a route to locate Word Paynn’s citadel. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Here we are Fracshun.” Lance said as they came to a stop next to a familiar ventilation grate on an external tube, Fracshun nodded grimly. He was as angry as his rider over what had happened.

They were far enough away from the building not to be seen by security of any kind, which Lance though was stupid of them, but it worked for his purposes. Fracshun hid himself while Lance crawled inside.

The pipe was every inch as long as he remembered. The first time he’d been sorry he’d been selected for the job. Now, all the young boy could think of was finding something out about what Word was up to, so he could get him back for what had happened.

Finally coming to the end of the crawlspace, Lance laid down on his belly and peered out of the grate on the other end. Word was there in his private lab, sitting in a high backed chair, elbows on the table in front of him, and his chin resting on his hands above it. He was studying some video, which sounded like some kind of battle. Lance got the vidd-recorder ready and tried to zoom in on the screen, but before he’d gotten ten seconds of data, the door at the other end of the bridge opened and a man in a dark purple cloak came storming across the bridge in a hurry.

“Who is that?” Lance thought as he turned the vid recorder on him.

“Paynn! What is the meaning of this?” the man yelled.

“Du’rath?” Word turned around. “Ah, yes. I should’ve known this wouldn’t get past you.”

“I wanted the crystal to be kept confidential. Now it’s in the hands of the academy staff and half the city knows about its existence.” The man, apparently named Du’rath, said as he arrived at the table across from where Word Paynn was sitting. He leaned forward and planted two gauntleted hands on the surface. “I said ‘run tests on it in the lab’. How you interpret that as ‘field test a roughly cobbled particle cannon with the gem as its core’ I’ll never understand.

“Sometimes learning how it works in unpredictable circumstances can lead to more data being acquired than structured laboratory tests.”[ Word said.

“While I’ll grant that, I doubt you could’ve gotten much out of the chaos that happened on the battletrack.” Du’rath said, standing upright and flipping his hood back, revealing pale purple-gray hair.

“This might be a blessing, in any case.” Word said.

“Howso?” Du’rath asked.

“I now have the academy staff doing research on the stone for me, along with the entire library of ancient knowledge. Who knows, there might just be an entry on such stones in there.”

“Word, you astound me.” Du’rath said flatly.

“I try.” Word said.

“Are you that stupid?” Du’rath asked.

“WHAT!?” Word yelled. “How dare you-”

“You’re an imbecile if you think they have a single entry on that stone anywhere in the archives. This isn’t some trinket from that war of yours three millennia hence, this stone is millions of years older than that!” Du’rath spat at him.

Word subsided in shock. “Millions?” he said.

“Millions?” Lance mouthed, stunned even from where he was sitting.

“Yes, millions.” Du’rath said. “The depth from where it was found alone proves that. I don’t need a bunch of librarians looking it up in tomes when this is the first time anyone on this planet has ever seen the mineral. I needed its qualities analyzed. Why I even thought to trust you with such an indescribably rare piece in the first place eludes me.”

Word glared at him. “If you’re quite finished?”

Du’rath flipped his hood back up, turned, and walked back across the bridge. Lance followed the stranger with the camera, zooming in as close as he could to see his face underneath the hood.

Almost as soon as he got to full zoom, the man in the dark purple cloak glanced slightly sideways and up, and looked straight at the camera lens, and his eyes pulsed briefly with a purple glow, before he turned his attention back to the elevator at the other end of the bridge.

Lance gasped, and immediately backpedaled through the tunnel.

<<>>

“Not far he says!” Artha growled. “I’ve been walking all day and there’s nothing in sight! And I’m too tired to run!” he continued.

He’d finally worked his way out to a long stretch of flatland that went on… and on… and on into the distance some two hours ago. At first he’d tried to run, but found he tired very quickly… plus his mouth and throat were parched.

The sun beating down on him, in the afternoon heat, didn’t help either. He braced himself as he felt another urge to steam come.

“Ugh…” he grunted as the steam came. “Hardly feels like it’s doing anything anymore.” He whined as he picked up trudging through the dusty flatland.

Once again Artha tried to break into a proper run, at least get somewhere over 100 miles per hour, but the limbs soon turned near to jelly under him, and he had to stop and catch his breath.

“What is wrong with this body?” Artha panted, then spat out a mouthful of desert dust.

<<>>

Moordryd had shut himself in his room at the compound since returning from confronting his father. The whole situation was insane. Just when he didn’t want to see Artha really hurt, boom, he was gone.

The white haired teen sighed. Artha had gone from being the little thorn in his side to a fiercely competitive rival. His skill had gone rapidly from being a complete novice to rivaling his own. The fact that he was the dragon booster made the rivalry even more intense… and gave Moordryd something to strive for like he’d not had in his whole life. Kitt had always been a good competitor, but when the son of Connor Penn came in, there’d been something different…

Decepshun was affected by the turn of events as well, he’d noticed. Seeing the disguised black and gold dragon looking like he wanted to die as the lot of them had been heading home. There was something between them these days, Moordryd was sure of it, but at the moment, the last thing he wanted to do was press it.

His wrist com suddenly blipped in a weird way, the speaker putting out a tone that was garbled with static.

“What’s with this stupid thing now?” he said, looking at the thing. The screen had popped on, but it was fluctuating.

“Great, now this thing’s on the fritz. As if I didn’t have enough problems.” He growled, then slapped the thing.

The holographic screen cleared up… slightly, but was still very fuzzy. A text message revealed itself, and he could just about make most of it out.

“Meet me, same place, have a job for you… what?” Moordryd said, then smacked the thing again.

“Get here or else? Who in the… oh…” Moordryd said, suddenly realizing who was sending him the message.

Turning around, he stormed out of his room and through the lounge. Cain looked like he wanted to say something to him, but a glare silenced him.

Out in the stables he gathered white aero and rapell gear and two red thruster pods and put them on a mag rack and dragged the thing over to Decepshun’s stall. The psi class dragoness looked up as he got there.

“We gotta go Decepshun.” Moordryd said, gesturing to the gear on the rack.

The dragoness cocked her head sideways at him.

“My father’s new ‘associate’… the one that we met at the hostage situation? He just contacted me… somehow.” Moordryd said. “Like I said, we gotta go.”

Decepshun narrowed her eyes and growled for a moment before she magged on the gear pods and her saddle, kept alongside her in her stall for quick access.

Moordryd hopped up on her and put his helmet on, and they were away.

<<>>

Connor was down in the ancient dragon temple, researching every ancient piece of text he had at hand. When the dragon priesthood had vacated this temple and left it in his sole care, they’d taken much of the ancient texts along with them, leaving Connor with only what he absolutely needed as guardian of the black and gold dragon and the amulet and gauntlet. Now though, he wished he could’ve been delving into secrets as ancient, or even more, than those of the library in the academy.

Parmon was out doing something that he’d said was an integral part of the investigation into what had happened to Artha, though his attempts at explaining how it actually applied went over even his head. Half of it involved questioning witnesses in sun city, the rest was somehow mostly calculus. Connor trusted the young man, but even he didn’t know what that method of investigation would accomplish.

“Hey Connor, have you seen Lance? I can’t find the kid anywhere.” Kitt’s voice said as the elevator door opened.

“Lance isn’t around the stable?” Connor said, turning around.

“No, and I haven’t seen him all day.”

“Oh no…” Connor said. “I really hope he hasn’t done anything rash…”

“Me too, but he’s really angry right now, so who knows what he did.”

Connor turned and went towards the elevator, when suddenly it went up to the top of the shaft.

“Now who’s using it?” he said, pausing at the back of the overhanging top jaw of the star class dragon statue.

The elevator came down a minute later, and out popped Lance on Fracshun.

“There you are!” Kitt said.

“Dad! I have got to show this to you!” he said, holding up a vid recorder and trying to pass it to him from Fracshun’s saddle… where he fumbled and lost his grip on it.

Connor dove and barely managed to catch the thing. “Lance, you have to be more careful than that!” he said from the ground next to Frachun’s paws.

“Uh… sorry dad.”

“What’s so important anyway… and where were you all day young man?” Connor asked sternly.

“I… went to Word’s Citadel.”

“What did you do?” Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“Nothing!” Lance said defensively. “Well… nothing except use the recorder, I swear.”

Connor looked at the thing. “Did you find out anything?”

“I sure did! C’mon, put it up on the monitor, you guys have got to see this.” he said.

Connor looked wryly at the thing, then pulled the data storage device out of the recorder, and activated the monitor, plugging it in.

“Ok, I see Word in the citadel… doesn’t look very happy.” Connor said.

“He wasn’t, but that’s not important, look!” Lance said as suddenly the camera view rapidly panned to the right and resettled on a figure in a purple cloak came storming across the bridge…

<<>>

“Magna Draconis, I’m so hot!” Artha panted as he forced himself to keep trudging through the desert.

The flatlands never seemed to end… sure there was the occasional little bump, but once he’d gotten past those mountains it just seemed to stretch on forever.

“What I wouldn’t give for some of that nasty water back with Kawya…” Artha whined. Forcing himself to keep putting one paw in front of the other… even though it was getting harder and harder to keep himself moving in the same direction. He’d gone from moving steadily across the desert to realizing at times he’d turned towards the north west or northeast, or even further away from north. Either it was the heat affecting him, or the fact that the only landmarks around were scrub brushes, and though those were thin, they were dotted all about enough that he couldn’t rely upon them.

“Ooh…” Artha arched his back as the urge to try to steam came over him again… but hardly any steam came out at all, and it didn’t lower his temperature either.

“What’s wrong with this… dragon’s body?” Artha rumbled, blinking as he tried to continue. But before he’d gotten five steps from where he’d been standing, his legs wobbled and gave out on him, and he slumped to the ground in a heap.

Keep it up. Poor Artha has not reached the city yet. Lance's errand was a good one.

yet another chapter. New oc's showing up!

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 7


Somewhere southeast of the town of ‘endless sun mesa’, a pair of riders were racing across the desert. One, a young woman on a female bull class dragon, the other a young man on a male earth class.

“Ranna, slow down will you! Stonhyyd can’t keep up!” the brown haired young man called from the back of his earth class dragon, who was struggling to keep up a pace that the comparatively swift bull class ahead of them was managing to maintain for far longer than he was.

“Oh come on, Shoyani’s a girl, your big, tough boy dragon should be able to keep up, shouldn’t he?” Ranna, the rider of the female bull class dragon called back as she raced along the beaten path in the desert sands.

“That has no bearing on this whatsoever and you know it!” the earth class male’s rider called out.

“Yeah, I know.” Ranna grinned. “Just makin’ sure you did.” She said, then urged her dragoness on to an even quicker pace.

“RANNA!” the young man called out.

“Catch me if ya can Boll!” Ranna yelled as she sped away from the struggling earth class.

<<>>

Moordryd saw the cloaked man standing atop the building before he and Decepshun had landed. The rooftop was far enough away from dragways to be unnoticeable, and in darkened down city, where it was perpetual night, it was impossible anyone would see them out here.

“Quick as I’d hoped.” Du’rath said without turning around to face them, cloak flowing slightly to the side in the gentle breeze.

“What do you want?” Moordryd spat.

“I take it you’re in a foul mood over your father’s decision to test a new weapon on you and your classmates.” The man said.

“How’d you know?” Moordryd asked, while Decepshun snorted, eyes widening.

“I gave him the crystal he used as its core.” Du’rath said.

“You gave him that thing!?” both Moordryd and his dragon started in shock. “Why I oughtta…!”

“I did not intend him to turn it into a base weapon. He was supposed to experiment with it to find out its properties.” Du’rath said, turning around finally, and Moordryd could tell by his expression that he was very angry, though his voice betrayed almost nothing.

Moordryd stared at him for a minute. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Retrieve the crystal for me then deliver it, unseen, to this location.” Du’rath instructed.

“Getting that crystal’s not going to be easy… they’ve got it in the heart of the academy.

“It will not remain there for very long.” Du’rath said.

“You telling me to hurry?” Moordryd asked irritated.

“No, common sense.” Du’rath said, exasperated with the young man’s attitude.

“What then?” Moordryd said confused, while Decepshun raised an eye ridge in confusion as well.

“Eventually the academy is going to have to admit defeat on understanding the crystal. When they do, they will assuredly hand it over to those who had prior authority, the techs at city central research. You will acquire the crystal either when it is relocated, or when it is in the less secure research laboratories.” Du’rath explained.

“I see you’ve thought this out.” Moordryd said.

“I at least try to do that, unlike your father.” Du’rath said, then backflipped off the building, just like how he’d ended their last encounter atop this building.

“Guy’s either a master acrobat, or a psychopath to do that without a dragon.” Moordryd grumbled.

“I’m betting on the latter.” Decepshun growled.

<<>>

Ranna and Boll slowed down to rest their dragons somewhere around mid-afternoon. The dragons’ cooling gear had been working overtime, and they were drinking now from their hydropacks. Each one had two of these on them, for good reason, it was too easy to become dehydrated out in the desert, and carrying plenty of extra fluids was a good way to stave it off while working off excess energy.

“Ranna, I know you like the speed aspect, but could you at least slow down so I don’t lose you?” Boll said.

“What, big boy afraid of being alone?” Ranna giggled, urging her dragon into a walk, as it was better to keep them moving slowly than to stop dead after a vigorous run.

“Of course not!” Boll retorted.

“Then what is it?” Ranna said, glancing about, when something caught her eye in the distance.

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t run off and get into trouble.” He said, just before Ranna urged her bull class female, Shoyani, into a dash off into the open desert, away from the path.

“… Just like that. RANNA!” he called after her as he urged his surprised earth class dragon to give chase.

Somewhere about four hundred yards away Shoyani came to a skidding halt, kicking up a cloud of dust and sand, right before Ranna leapt out of the saddle and went to something that Boll couldn’t see on the ground, as it was obscured by a scrub bush. As he got closer, though, he realized she was kneeling next to something large and pale colored.

“What is that?” he muttered before he stopped Stonhyyd and leapt off as well, going to her side.

“Boll! I think it’s still alive, but barely!” Ranna called to him as he approached.

“What is-magna draconis!” he exclaimed. Laying there in a heap was a white, blue, and shiny gold colored racing dragon, clearly far different from a bull or earth class, perhaps less than half the weight of either breed, or even lighter considering it’s slim, lithe build. Its eyes were closed, its breathing was rapid and shallow, and the steam vent pores on its back were slightly open and slack.

“Boll, this dragon’s in trouble, we need to help it.” Ranna said.

“How in the magna draconis did a stray get all the way out here?” Boll said, still in a bit of shock over the discovery.

Ranna stood and looked off into the desert. “Its pawtracks go off into nowhere, this dragon’s been out here for a long time, it’s probably dehydrated… Shoyani!” she called to her green dragon, who grunted at her in response. “Your hydropack, the full one, now!”

Shoyani immediately magged the hydropack over to her rider, who caught the fully loaded thing, and placed it on the dragon’s head, and slapped it to open it up forcibly. The fluid immediately started running down the tube, but she grabbed it at the end and squeezed it.

“Doesn’t it need water?” Boll said, confused.

“Boll, its unconscious, if the water flows free it’ll go straight into this dragon’s lungs.” She said, allowing a number of droplets at a time to fall onto the dragon’s tongue, watching till it swallowed reflexively. “Good, it’s not so far gone it won’t swallow.”

“We can’t stay out here all day Ranna, either that dragon’ll get cooked by the sun or we will. We don’t have a third set of cooling gear.” Boll said.

“In that case.” She said, after making sure the dragon swallowed another mouthful of water from the hydropack. “How much can Stonhyyd carry?”

“A couple tons, why… oh no.” he said, realization dawning. “I’m not carrying him all the way back.

“He’s too long, particularly with that tail, for Shoyani to carry back, and you said it yourself, we can’t stay out here all day.” Ranna said.

Boll groaned then looked down at his dragon, who looked up and him and snorted.

“Like we have a choice buddy?” Boll said, and Stonhyyd groaned.

<<>>

Parmon rode Cyrano back into the Penn family stables and hopped off the bull class, who magged his gear off onto some racks that were open in the gear room. Parmon watched as Cyrano went over towards Beau’s stall… only to be sidelined by Determinnayshun, the female bull class from scalesheen who’d been trying to get more and more familiar with him ever since they’d met after the scalesheen hostage situation. Cyrano normally wasn’t against it, but lately he wanted to be at Beau’s side… seeing as the star class dragon was so devastated.

Parmon went into the main house and poured himself a glass of orange juice, then sat down to start correlating some of the data he’d managed to gather from witnesses up in sun city. He spent a few minutes at this task before he realized that the house was silent.

“They’re probably down in the temple.” He thought before going back to his work, before he sat upright with a jolt. “If they’re down there they must be having an important discussion, I need to get down there!” he said, then immediately jumped up from the table, grabbed his notes and ran out of the house and into beau’s stall… finding it empty, he closed the main dor, and opened the elevator, and jumped in.

One rapid ride later the door opened up into the temple, and standing there observing something on the monitor was Connor, Kitt, Lance, Beau, Fracshun, Wyldfyr, and Cyrano.

“I should’ve known you’d all be down here. What are you looking at?” Parmon said, coming forward.

“Parmon, perfect timing, you need to see this.” Connor said.

“Need to see what?” Parmon said, coming up and looking at the monitor.

“Oh! How did you get this?” He asked Connor.

“Lance went on a little spy mission.” Connor said, mussing the young boy’s hair. “Now let’s watch this from the beginning…” he said, then pressed a button on the remote and rewound it.

A few minutes later, as it finished, Parmon stood there with his jaw slack.

“Kind of a lot to take in, isn’t it professor?” Kitt said.

“You’re telling me!” Parmon said. “Several million years old!? This is incredible! A draconium impacting material from before the dawn of civilization! This could shed light on the mysteries of draconium like nothing in history!”

“First things first, we need to find Artha, and make sure that this crystal cannot be used again by Word.” Connor said.

“We also need to figure out who this Du’rath guy is and what he’s up to.” Kitt said.

“Yes, this new development is troubling.” Connor said, shaking his head. “Word’s not the type to want to share power, and this person seems to be trusted and valued to the point where he can insult Word and get away with it.”

“Yes, most troubling.” Parmon said, rubbing his chin. “Is that everything? Because I really must get back to correlating my findings if there’s nothing else.”

“Findings?” Connor asked.

“Yes, I’ve been gathering data all day on the flight of that ‘comet’ that was sighted yesterday… the one coming out of the blast? I think I have enough to start calculating the flight path now.”

“So you’ll be able to find out where Artha is!?” Lance said.

“Well… hopefully, yes.” Parmon said.

“Well get going!” Lance shouted, grabbing Parmon by the wrist and dragging him back to the elevator.

<<>>

Toma Lirius was sitting at the kitchen table in the Lirius family’s small house in the eastern quarter of the town of endless sun mesa. He was doing his math homework, his least favorite subject, and couldn’t help but look out the window every couple minutes and sigh wistfully. What he wouldn’t give to be out riding a dragon like his older sister did every day.

“That is, if I HAD a dragon!” he grumbled, bitterly. His parents weren’t exactly well to do. Ranna was supposed to have joined the mining business with the dragon they bought for her, but instead she went and got a job at a local diner instead, and used the well bred bull class female for small errands and joyrides out through the desert with her friend Boll, so there wasn’t any money left to buy him a dragon, even a young one.

Sighing and shaking his head, Toma turned back to his homework, and continued working at the annoying geometry problem. It was triangles again. He was starting to hate triangles.

Halfway through the problem, the wall vid unit started beeping. Since he was the only one in the house –his dad was still at work and his mother was out shopping for food for dinner- he hopped up and went to answer it.

“Toma, good, somebody’s home!” Ranna said after her face appeared in the holographic screen.

“Ranna? Is there a problem?” he asked. She never called while out on a joyride, and she should’ve only been halfway through the one she’d left on earlier.

“Toma, Call the dragon vet, ask him if he could come over and meet me when I get here.”

“Ranna, what’s going on?” Toma asked.

“Toma…” She groaned. “Look, just call him, we’ve got a hurt dragon here and it needs help.”

“Aw man… Ranna, is it Shoyani? Stonhyyd?” Toma asked.

“No!” Ranna exclaimed, then put her hand over her face on the other end for a second before looking back at the vidlink. “We found a stray out in the desert, in really bad shape, unconscious. Home is closer than the clinic. Please, just call him!” Ranna said.

Toma nodded. “Right!” he said, suddenly very serious, then closed the connection and pulled up their contact list and selected the number for the doctor.

Good story. Keep it up. :) :cookie: for your latest chapter.

Well that was a really long time. i guess i owe you folks a bit of an explanation.

Short version, my computer got corrupted.

Long version, my primary comp got a malicious spyware program on it that makes it largely unusable. It's being worked on and i have all my important stuff backed up, but untill the other day i couldn't work on any of my projects. but now i can and i'm back.

So here's the next chapter, finally!

Philosopher’s stone

Chapter 8

A vague semblance of consciousness returned to Artha, unable to open his eyes or move, all he could do was listen in a strange limbo state.

“Heat shock and dehydration. He’s lucky you found him when you did.” A man’s voice was saying.

“And mom’n pop never thought my ‘exercise rides’ were good for anything.” A young woman’s voice said.

“Well, now what do we do with him?” a younger man’s voice asked.

“We could keep him!” a boy’s voice piped in.

“Well… let’s talk that over with mom and dad first.” the young woman said.

“Aw…” the boy responded.

With that, consciousness faded again into a silent blackness.

<<>>

Wyldfyr had just finished a short exercise run with Kitt, and she’d taken his gear and returned it to the Penn garage. His rider was distracted, and very agitated. He watched her walk inside now, repressing the urge to whine.

It was the evening of the day after that disaster on the academy battletrack. Lance hadn’t made another excursion, since Connor was now watching him like a hawk despite his discovery that Word wasn’t working alone. Parmon had set up in the kitchen with a pile of papers, diagram tools, and a calculator, and Connor more often than not was down in the temple, hoping to find SOMETHING in his lore, though they’d all heard the man in purple and black say that there would most likely be no ancient records.

Cyrano was kind of disturbed from all this, and Fracshun was still angry. Beau had been in a seething rage after watching the video, but after cooling down a bit, he’d gone nearly catatonic, laying in his stall. With no avenue to exact revenge or rescue artha, it was like…

“Wyldfyr! There you are.” A female dragon’s voice trilled. Wyldfyr turned his head and saw a richly colored blue energy class female trotting up to him.

“Oh, hello Compashun.” He chirred to her. He’d met her at the end of that whole debacle two months prior. One on one she was actually quite friendly.

“I heard what happened… how’s Beau holding up?” she trilled.

“Not well.” Wyldfyr rumbled, shaking his head. “He was in shock yesterday, then angry when we went over exactly what happened, now he’s just depressed. Parmon thinks Artha might still be alive, but I don’t know…”

“What exactly did happen?” Another female dragon trilled coming over. Empathya, the black and navy blue colored psi-class female. “Nobody could get many details out of Cyrano, and Beau hasn’t said two words to anyone since you guys came back.”

“I’m not too sure about it myself, as I wasn’t really in the front lines.” Wyldfyre rumbled. “All I know is there was an attack with some kind of special weapon involved, which was destroyed, then a part of it exploded… very violently, and Artha was standing right there when it happened.”

Compashun made a sympathetic whine. “Poor Artha.”

Empathya nodded. “He was a nice enough human. I can understand why Beau’s acting this way.”

“Not just nice. Those two were bonded.” Wyldfyr chirred.

“Bonded?” Both of the girls trilled.

“It’s something you have to experience to really understand… When a dragon and human are together and go through so much together, they become so meshed together that they act as one being, and you can’t bear to be without them for long.” Cyrano, the green bull class rumbled as he came out of the stall where Beau was still sulking.

“What, you’re like that with Parmon?” Empathya trilled.

“No but I’ve been hearing about nothing but that from Beau this afternoon.” Cyrano rumbled in reply.

<<>>

Lance sat next to Fracshun in a small alcove under a dragway in the upper levels of down city, relatively safe territory. He’d left to think, but nothing had come to him. He thought being away from all the scalesheen girls would’ve made it easier, but it wasn’t. His mind was still as blank as it was there.

Fracshun lifted his head and let out a chirring call right before a young sky class dragon leapt down from the road above to the front of the alcove. Riding it was a tan skinned, green haired boy; Lance’s friend Spratt.

“Hey Lance, what’re you doing all the way down here?” Spratt asked.

“How’d you find me?” Lance responded, looking at Spratt in surprise.

“Remember how we put a tracking tag inside each other’s helmets?” Spratt said, tapping his own.

“Oh, right.” Lance said, then sank back against Fracshun’s side.

“Something wrong Lance?” he asked. Bumpyrr, the young sky class dragon, padded forward and nudged Lance with his head gently.

“Sorry…” Lance said. “I came down here to be alone.”

“What’s the matter Lance?” Spratt pressed, hopping down off his dragon’s saddle. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“You heard about the academy?” Lance said.

“About the accident? I heard someone’s gear overloaded, that’s about it.”

“That’s what they’re saying!?” Lance exclaimed, sitting bolt upright.

“It’s on all the news networks…” Spratt said. “Something about wraiths and a gearpod overloading, I don’t know much else.”

Lance sunk back into Fracshun’s side again. “I can’t believe it…”

“Lance… please tell me what’s going on.” Spratt said.

“It’s… really complicated Spratt.” Lance said.

“Please tell me.” Spratt said. “You left me out before and that wasn’t good for either of us. C’mon Lance, let me help.”

Lance sighed. “Alright…”

<<>>

Consciousness returned again to Artha Penn, this time entirely. He was able to open his eyes and look around himself at his surroundings.

He was inside some kind of building. The walls were made out of metal, the floor was poured, smooth concrete, and the ceiling was quite high, at least 15 feet. And the floorspace was at least two to three times the size of any of the ‘single’ stalls at his dad’s stable.

He was laying in was appeared to be a low walled, cordoned off area enclosed by movable partitions that were bolted into slots in the ground. They came up to about his shoulder height… at least with his draconic shoulders. If he’d been human they would’ve gone clear over his head. Inside this cordoned off space he’d awakened in was a padded mat that he’d apparently been sleeping on… and a trough full of water that was hooked onto a wall.

Suddenly realizing how thirsty he was, Artha stepped over to it and immediately put his mouth inside the trough, similarly to how he’d drank when he’d been in Beau’s body months earlier, though this maneuver was easier with the much smaller chin and shorter snout. He relished the plain, but clean water, drinking deep.

Once his thirst was sated, he looked around again, this time noticing that there were three other dragons in the structure; two green bull classes and one brown earth class. Also, there were two doors in the walls. One was a huge stable door that dominated one of the walls of the building, and another was a human sized door on the wall opposite that one. There were also two windows in a third wall… they were uncovered, but no light came in. Peering at them, Artha realized that it was nighttime outside, so there was no light to let in.

Artha nosed at the low divider walls around him… they’d be easy enough to jump over, but judging from the sounds of snoring, the dragons were all asleep around him… he might as well not start off their meeting by being rude and waking them up. Two of the three walls were solid and unmoving, but one moved slightly, a gate. It didn’t move much, but Artha was easily able to make out a simple latch that held it closed.

As he went to open it with his mouth, he suddenly heard voices coming from somewhere. He looked around and then scanned with his sensitive ears, and located it… coming through the small door.

“I still cannot believe you dragged a stray all the way home Ranna. What if it’s sick, or has parasites?” an unfamiliar man’s voice was saying.

“The vet checked him over for that stuff dad, he’s fine.” An oddly familiar younger woman’s voice said.

“Still, you didn’t know that, and you put him in our stall. If he had anything, he could’ve infected all our dragons!” a mature woman’s voice said.

“So what was I supposed to do, leave him out in the desert?” the younger woman’s voice said.

“Well… obviously we wouldn’t expect you to do that dear. That would’ve been cruel.” The mature woman said.

“I would’ve expected you to take him straight to the vet. He’s set up to handle excess dragons. What we’re going to do with this one when he’s well I have no idea.” The man’s voice said.

“I could ride him!” a young boy’s voice said.

There was a brief pause. “Now, Toma, we don’t even know what this dragon’s Temperament will be like…” the older woman’s voice said.

Artha was so focused on hearing the faint dialogue going on through the door he didn’t notice one of the bull class dragons rouse itself and walk over towards his mini-stall.

“Well hello there.” The bull class rumbled… it’s ‘words’ carrying a distinctly feminine tone… though rich and deep.

Artha made a small startled yip as he whipped his head around to look at her.

“Well, you’re a jumpy one.” The bull class female snorted. “My name’s Shoyani. What’s yours?”

Artha gaped for a second before he answered tentatively. “Uh… Artha.”

“Artha?” Shoyani said, tilting her head slightly to one side. “Nice name. Sounds a bit human, but it’s nice. I’ve met dragons with worse names.”

Artha looked down embarrassed and unsure. “Uh… thanks.”

“Shoyani, would you please go to sleep already…?” a groggy male dragon’s voice suddenly cut in with a grumbling rumble.

“Sorry Rokhaan, but our guest’s awake.” Shoyani grunted to the earth class male.

The brown dragon lifted his head and looked over at Artha. “Oh, well I’ll be. So the boy’s not dead.” He said, then rose to his heavy paws and stretched before tromping over.

“Mmm… ‘s all the racket?” the other bull class, again a female, said, lifting her head. “Oh!”

“Artha, these are Rokhaan and Karana, they’re partners with my master’s father and mother.” Shoyani rumbled.

“Hello!” Karana grunted, then yawned. “Forgive me, it’s rather late for my schedule.”

“Mine too.” Rokhaan snorted. “Perhaps we should save the chatter for tomorrow, at least.” He continued, just before the human sized door opened, spilling light into the large stall.

“Was wondering what the commotion was.” The human man’s voice said. It was a man with short trimmed brown hair.

“Oh, isn’t he a big fellow!” a human woman’s voice said, as she peered out from just behind him.

Artha hunkered down slightly, so he was less visible over the top of the partition. Being in a dragon’s body in a strange place and surrounded by dragons and people he didn’t know was more than enough to dampen his usual outgoing personality.

“Oh, look, the poor thing’s scared.” She said, then clapped her hands together. “Shoyani, Rokhaan, Karana, go to your beds now. Stop crowding him.”

Shoyani gave Artha a wry grin, but tromped back to her mat. The other two snuffed briefly and did the same. “Do you think he’s hungry?” the human woman then continued.

“I’ll get him some feed!” the young boy’s voice said, excitedly, before Artha could hear him run off inside.

“Toma!” The man said.

“Oh Raul, leave him alone, he’s just fetching the big fellow something to eat.” The woman said.

“I don’ want the boy to get the wrong idea Kalia.” The man said. “If this dragon’s aggressive, we’re going to have to bring it to the authorities to be dealt with. It’s a stray, or maybe even wild.”

Artha yelped and then backed up against the back of the pairitions. “Dealt with? I’m not dangerous!”

“Oh now look at what you’ve gone and done! You’ve upset him!” Kalia, the mature woman, said.

The man grumbled. “All to the better if he does. He’ll know what will happen if he does anything stupid.”

The woman then abruptly shoved the man back inside. “Out! Leave the poor thing alone! To go from collapsing in the desert to being threatened like this, that alone is likely to make him vicious!”

A few moments of silence later, the boy appeared at the door carrying a rather large bucket of moist dragon feed. Before he could enter, the mother was there taking it from him.

“I’ll feed him Toma, you go to bed, it’s past your bedtime anyway.” Kalia said.

“But ma… I wanted to feed him!” the boy, Toma, said.

“Tomorrow Toma, you need to get some sleep if you’re to stay awake at school tomorrow. Go on, get!” she said, ushering him off. A moment later she approached his partitioned stall slowly and held out the bucket of feed.

“It’s ok big guy, I’m not going to hurt you… here, want something to eat?”

Artha looked down at the bucket of feed, then sniffed at it. The barest scent of it suddenly made his stomach growl. Without a second thought he buried his muzzle in it and started chowing down.

“Goodness, you were hungry!” Kalia said over the sounds of the feeding dragon.

Keep it up. :) Good, Artha is awake.

Artha gets nomnoms. :3 I don't know why, but for some reason that amuses me to no end. I'm weird. XD

Aren't we all? :P :D

Man, i can access another computer to write, but that doesn't mean i can access the same creativity.

Location location location when it comes to my inspirational spark. i only hope my computer gets fixed really soon.

Edits for grammar coming soon.

Philosopher’s stone

Chapter 9.

After a second sleepless night, Connor came walking downstairs in the early hours of the morning. The entire situation was a nightmare that he kept wishing he could wake from.

He was so groggy that he walked right past the kitchen table and to the stove where he poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot that had sat there overnight and turned around to put the mug in the microwave before he realized that Parmon was sitting at the table with a heap of papers infront of him

“Parmon?” Connor said, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.

“Hm?” Parmon said, sounding distracted.

“What’re you doing up so early? It’s barely light out.” Connor said.

“Is it?” Parmon said, looking up to the window. “Oh… look at that.”

“When did you get up?” Connor asked.

“I… never went to bed.” Parmon said in a very distracted tone, going back to the papers infront of him, working with a calculator, ruler, protractor, compass and a pencil over a large spread sheet of graph paper.

“You’ve been up all night?” Connor said, astonished.

“I suppose so.” Parmon said, making some small calculation and then adjusting some curved line. “Now then…” he said, drifting off into a low murmur.

“Oh, and that coffee’s fresh, I made a fresh pot last night.” Parmon said before Connor put it into the microwave. Checking, Connor found that the coffee was decently warm, if not steaming hot, so he only put it in for a couple of seconds.

Taking his coffee out of the house, Connor looked around the stable yard. It was quiet now. All the dragons and hatchlings were asleep. Connor walked around the yard looking in on them all. The scalesheen girls were all curled up protectively around their broods as they slept.

Beau’s stall was a different story. Beau was curled up in a ball, tucked against Cyrano’s side, while Wyldfyr laid against the star class’s other side. When a dragon was depressed those dragons close to the afflicted would go to support them. Beau was asleep, but from the expression on his face he wasn’t sleeping well.

Passing by the stall after a moment, Connor found himself infront of the gear stockroom and workshop. Fixrr was in there working on a piece of gear, a piece of blue balance from the look of it.

“What, is everyone pulling all nighters today?” Connor said.

“Hm?” Fixrr said, turning around. “Oh, morning Connor. And no, Parm woke me early with his rustling around in the kitchen, so I thought I’d get some work done.”

“Hm…” Connor said, glancing out into the stable yard before he took a drink from his mug.

“So he did my job before you called me back in huh?” Fixrr said as he pulled off one of the cover plates of one of a pair of pods of blue balance gear.

“Yeah… Parmon’s good with gear.” Connor said absently.

“Mmm hmm… What with his father in central research and all…” Fixrr said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to work there himself… or opens his own gear company. Kid’s a wiz at this.”

Connor looked over at Fixrr with a raised eyebrow.

Fixrr sighed. “Have faith in him Connor. He’s very intelligent, and he’s trying to find his best and closest friend. He’ll find Artha.”

<<>>

Artha awoke from a very light sleep still in the partitioned stall in the building he’d found himself in hours earlier. At the urging of the humans and dragons around him he’d gone back to sleep, as the hour was quite late, but now after having slept for so long he was wide awake with the start of an unfamilliar sound… water running in pipes inside the walls.

“Mmf…” one of the other dragons… the brown male, Rokhaan, snorted, shifting. “Already in the shower…”

“Wha?” Artha trilled in a low tone, standing up so he could look over the edge of the partition.

Rokhaan lifted his head and looked over at Artha with sleep filled eyes. “My rider’s allready taking his shower. We’ll be out the door in under an hour, mark my words.” He rumbled heavily in reply, then slumped down again on his sleeping mat. “Then it’s a whole day of digging in the mines…” he snorted, then fell back into a light snore.

“Mines?” Artha trilled very quietly.

Somewhere around 30 minutes later, Kalla -the mother of the family- came out into the multi-dragon sized stall pushing a cart with four large buckets of moist feed, and a fourth empty container, with hooks on it. She went to Rokhaan’s spot first and dumped the contents of the bucket into his feed trough. “Ok lazybones, wake up, time for breakfast.” She said, briskly rubbing Rokhaan atop his huge head. The earth class dragon grunted, then yawned and stretched as he rose, then shoved his face into the trough and started munching away mechanically.

Once she saw him eating, Kalla turned and looked over at Artha, seeing him awake and watching her. She smiled. “Well hello there, how’re you feeling this morning?”

“Better I guess…” Artha trilled.

Rokhaan snorted in laughter briefly from his meal, but said nothing.

“Well you don’t sound scared anymore.” Kalla said, coming forward and holding out a hand tentatively.

Artha looked at the outstretched hand confused for a moment, not moving.

“Oh.” She said slightly sadly, retracting her hand. “Well, I guess this is all still scary to you… I’ll give you some time.” She said, then took the empty container and put it over the edge of his partitioned stall, then dumped the contents of one of the buckets into it… apparently a spare feed trough.

She roused the two green dragonesses and fed them their morning meals as well, then returned to the house.

“First time around humans?” Rokhaan snorted in gruff laughter around a mouthfull of food.

“Wha?” Artha made a noise of surprise at the question.

“You responded to her like you expected her to hear what you were saying.” The earth class responded.

“Oh, right…” Artha said, looking down.

A few minutes later, the father of the house came out and picked up one of the heavy type saddles and carried it over to Rokhaan, who’d just finished his meal. The earth class magged it on and then his rider hopped up. Without a word the pair walked towards the large door, whick opened to show a street of grey concrete outside, with houses, small two level ones, on the other side of the road. The sky was crystalline blue, completely clear, and a warm breeze blew in for the moment that it took the bull class male to clear the doors, then it shut behind him.

“And there goes the breadwinner, off to work.” Shoyani, the younger bull class female snorted.

“Where does he work?” Artha trilled.

“Down at the mine, not much else around here, unless you’re working at one of the supermarkets or diners, like my Ranna.” Shoyani rumbled her reply, then turned to look at him again properly. “So how’re you feeling today? You were in pretty sad shape when we found you in the desert.”

“You found me?” Artha trilled.

“Well, you’d hardly have ended up at our house if you’d been found by one of the security detail.” Shoyani snorted.

Artha actually chuckled at that one. “Yeah, I guess not.”

“Got any other questions? I won’t have to go anywhere for a while, it’s Ranna’s day off today.” Shoyani rumbled.

“Uh, yeah, what is this place?” Artha trilled.

“The Lirius family dragon stall, silly!” Shoyani snorted with laughter.

“Uh… I kinda meant… what city this is…” Artha rumbled.

“Yeah, I know, just tryin’ ta make ya smile.” Shoyani said.

“So where am I?” Artha repeated, trilling.

“Endless sun mesa, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Speaking of… where’d you wander in from? We’re pretty far from any big cities here.” Shoyani chirred curiously.

“I’m from Dragon City.” Artha grunted.

“Whaaaaa?” Shoyani made a confused whine as she tilted her head at him. “You’re from Dragon city? That’s over a thousand miles due east of here. And we found you south of town.”

“I… really can’t explain it…” Artha trilled, looking off to one side, his head spinning. “Thousand miles from dragon city… wow, I really got sent far… now how do I get home?” he thought.

“Wow…” Shoyani rumbled. “I’ve never been anywhere but this town. What’s the city like? I’ve seen bits and pieces on the racing channel.”

“The city? Oh, it’s… a very big place.” Artha trilled, voice drifting off.

<<>>

“Lance, you’re talking crazy.” Spratt said.

“Look Sprat, you know word’s a bad dude, you saw what he did to the dragon booster and the black and gold dragon! I know he’s behind what happened to my brother, and I need help here!” Lance argued.

“Lance, this is kinda too big for just you and me. Paynn industries has stuff all over the city… and this is one BIG city.” Spratt said, Bumpyr, the young white dragon nodded in agreement.

“We don’t have to watch everything he does. Just watch for anything weird happening. We’ll find something.”

Spratt tilted his head at his friend. “You’re sure this’ll work?”

“It has to…” Lance said, turning away before he mounted up on Fracshun again.

<<>>

The light on the ride home to Penn stables brightened considerably as Lance ascended through the city. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been gone, as in down city was perpetual night.

“I never even got tired…” he said to himself, then suddenly yawned. “Whoa…”

As he approached the stable on Fracshun he saw his dad and Fixrr standing out in the grounds between the stalls, scrubbing down Compashun, the alpha of the scalesheen dragonesses. She was the head of a line, with all the other females behind her.

“Great, no way to sneak back in now…” Lance muttered.

Just as Lance expected, as he rode in the gates, Connor turned to look.

“Lance? When did you leave? I’ve been up since 5:00 this morning and I never saw you leave your room.” Connor said, pausing with the scrubbing brush still resting on Compashun’s right shoulder.

“Uh… I couldn’t sleep so I went for a ride, guess I lost track of time… heh.” Lance forced a chuckle.

Connor raised an eyebrow at that, then sighed, going back to scrubbing at Compashun’s hide. “Well, put Frahcsun back in the stall and then you can catch up on your rest.” Connor said.

Lance, thanking his lucky dragons that his father hadn’t pressed the issue, immediately went to do that, when suddenly, from the house, they heard an excited yell.

“EUREKA!”

Keep it up. Good story.

As far as I can, no grammer mistakes. Keep it up.

And on to the next one!

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 10

“What is going on?” A very groggy Kitt said, walking into the kitchen while still pulling on her clothing. There she paused as she observed Parmon holding up a piece of graph paper like he’d found a page out of the original Magna Draconis.

“Professor?” Kitt said, just as Connor and Lance came charging in. Several dragon heads also peered in from outside through the door, among them, Fracshun, Beau, Wyldfyr, and Cyrano, though some of the ladies were peeking in through the windows.

“What’s the yelling about?” Connor asked.

“That was my question.” Kitt said.

“Mr. Penn, do you have a map anywhere handy? Or a planet globe?” Parmon asked anxiously.

“What? Why?” Connor asked, lost.

“I need to verify a few coordinates.” Parmon said, continuing, “I got them from my calculations based upon eyewitness accounts and one bit of video footage of the, ah… ‘comet’ that was observed coinciding with the blast at the academy.

“Lance.” Connor said, pointing to his office down a hallway. “There should be a map book in the bottom right hand drawer of my desk.”

Lance nodded and nearly sprinted the short distance. Normally Connor would’ve said something about running in the house, but at the moment he didn’t particularly care.

“After observing the video data I obtained, I realized that the trajectory of the object was not directly vertical, it was obviously affected by gravity, and moved in the manner of a kinetically launched object.” Parmon said, which got him blank stares from the humans… and the dragons who were watching him through the open door and windows. He sighed. “It acted like… like if you fired a ramming gear ball at a very high angle, an arc.”

“Oh!” Kitt said.

“And this led you to what?”

“A series of calculations to come to where that arc might end. I had Dragon City’s core as a starting point, and now I have a rough end location, I just need to put it to a map to see exactly where it is!” Parmon said as Lance came running back with the atlas.

“Here!” Lance said.

“Ah! Perfect.” Parmon said, opening the atlas to the first pages. “Now let’s see…” he laid his calculation paper down next to it to make sure he was on the right digits and ran a finger down from the top and side of the grid-covered worldmap.

“Ah hah! He’s… oh dear…” Parmon exclaimed, then slowed.

“What?” everyone said.

Parmon circled a tiny spot on the map with his pencil, then stood aside. “He’s… here.”

Lance, Connor and Kitt stepped in to see.

Parmon had circled a spot in the middle of the open desert wilderness, roughly a thousand miles from Dragon City.

<<>>

A vidcomm unit beeped in the Endless Sun Mesa Security station. It was a small facility, two floors, wide and long enough for offices, locker rooms, a small crimes investigation lab, and a stable out back for their dragons… all bull class dragons with blue chromo-shifter patterns on them. At the moment there weren’t many officers in the station, most were out at a nearby diner snacking on doughnuts and coffee.

The one officer on duty picked up the transmission, a middle aged man with a bit of extra weight to him.

“Endless sun mesa security, is this an emergency?”

“Yes! Well… no… maybe?” an unsure male voice came over the line.

“Easy there son.” The man said, sitting more upright and looking at the image.

“Well… ah… I’d like to…” the tan skinned teenager with red hair said before someone apparently took the comm Unit from him, as the visual skewed wildly as it was moved.

“Give me that!” a female voice said before the officer found himself looking at a young woman with turquoise and neon pinkish purple hair with a decorative headpiece holding it in place. “Uh, hello, officer, sorry about that.” She said, then cleared her throat. “We’ve been trying to find a missing person, and the only clue we had about it is leading us to a spot in the desert that your town is nearest to. And we’d like to ask you to investigate the area, please?”

The security officer raised an eyebrow at that. “A spot in the desert? What, you looking for a ring of kidnappers with a desert hideout?”

“We’re… not really sure, officer.” The young woman said.

“Well, what then? I’m not sending good officers out on a wild dragon-chase with no details whatsoever.” The officer said. “Now please, just answer my questions for a minute, maybe I can make better sense of this that way.”

“Oh, right… ok.” The young woman said.

“Are you filing a missing persons report?” the officer asked.

The young woman looked behind her for a second before turning back. “Uh, yes, sir.”

“Alright then.” The officer typed something up on the computer next to him. “Name of person?”

“Artha Penn.” The young woman said.

“One second young lady…” the officer said as he pulled the name up. “Ah, there we are… seventeen years old, five foot eight, one hundred and fifty pounds… heir black with blue and white highlights, blue eyes… that all correct?”

“Yes sir.” The young woman said.

“And can I have the name of who is making this call please?” the officer then asked.

“Kitt Wonn, of Penn racing.”

“Alright, now this location you mentioned?”

“It’s at coordinates 1684-398 on the global grid system.” She said, looking at a piece of paper.

The officer raised his eyebrow again. “Young lady, that’s in the high desert mountains, lots of steep cliffs and ravines. Through terrain like that it’ll take my men several days to get out there on our bull class dragons.”

“What, you don’t have anything lighter?” Kitt said, sounding suddenly somewhat angry.

“Out here, bull classes are the lightweights. Only other breed we have are earth class dragons. Don’t worry though, I’ll get someone onto this right away.”

<<>>

“Toma, I’m going out to pick up some more dragon feed and a few other things, you keep an eye on our ‘guest’ till I get back, ok?” Ranna called back into the house through the open door as she helped Shoyani mag on several cargo containers for the shopping trip while the white, blue and gold stray watched intently.

“Sure.” Toma replied from the couch in the den just on the other side of the wall. He’d returned home from school less than half an hour earlier but he was already playing dragon racing with a friend of his on the handheld vid-game controller.

“Are you listening to me Toma?” Ranna said, pulling her green hair into a ponytail for riding, walking back inside. “I really need to do this, mom asked me this morning and I couldn’t leave ‘cause there was nobody here to mind the fellow out in the stable.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him, alright?” Toma replied, sitting up and looking straight at his sister as he said it, before sighing and settling back down on the couch.

“Thanks little bro.” She said, mussing his hair as she walked past him and out the door.

“Hey!” Toma said, then huffed and ran a hand through his hair to neaten it before going back to his game.

Toma sat and listened till she heard the stable door close after Ranna rode Shoyani out, then opened the audio channel to his friend. “Hey Glenn, could you do me a little favor?

“What’s that?” The blue-green haired little boy on the other end of the line asked.

“You know that saddle that Catalogue company sent when you got Hammyrr?” Toma asked

“You mean the one that you have to lay on your belly on?” the other boy asked.

“Do you still have it?” Toma asked.

“Yeah, it’s sitting next to all the rest of our gear gathering dust.” Glenn replied.

“Could you bring it over to my house, like… oh, I don’t know… right now?”

“What’re you gonna do with it?” Glenn asked.

“Bring it over and I’ll show you.” Toma said, then closed the line and exited the game abruptly.

<<>>

Artha had settled down again into a light doze after Shoyani had left with her rider. He was anxious about what was going on at home, and thinking about it was draining him as much as running would have done. Plus, he was bored stiff here. The only thing that broke up the morning was when he had to… ‘answer nature’s call’, which was extremely embarrassing when he had to let Ranna clean up.

He sighed as he looked at the walls enclosing him. He could’ve easily gotten out of the partitions in the large stall, but he didn’t want to give his ‘hosts’ the wrong idea, and turn him over to the authorities as a violent or aloof dragon, so he simply curled up inside the partition when there was nobody around.

Artha’s new magma-class shaped ears pricked up slightly when he heard a dragon approaching outside the stable. It had the pacing of a bull class, but the thuds of the pawfalls were nowhere near as heavy as Shoyani’s or Karana’s, the dragon of Ranna’s mother.

“There you are! What took you so long?” Artha heard Toma say from outside the stall.

“I had to go hunting for the thing. My dad piled a ton of stuff in where it was.” Another young boy’s voice replied. “What do you want it for anyway?”

“Have a look.” Toma said before the stall’s large door opened. Outside with Toma was another boy holding a standard dragon saddle sized for a child, and a half-grown bull class dragon with a chair style saddle.

“Whoah! Your parents got you a dragon? And… is it a sky class!?

“Not really sure what class it is, but it’s one of those speedy racing types!” Toma replied, in a very excited tone which made Artha suddenly get very worried.

“C’mon, let’s get this on him so we can go for a ride.” Toma said, making Artha let out a surprised snort.

“Your parents got you a dragon, but no saddle?”

“Uh… they forgot that you need another kind of saddle for this type, c’mon!”

“Magna Draconis, why me?” Artha whimpered, backing up in his suddenly suffocatingly close partitions.

Great chapter. Artha's prolong exposure from the Changelings. Poor Artha.

Ok. Good news is my main Comp is back up and running. however i'm still settling into things so my chapters are still shorter than they used to be.... that or i'm recognising too many chances to make chapter breaks and should just slap several of them together in the future. *shrug*

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 11

“So… that’s it? We just sit and wait here?” Lance said.

“Unless you can manage to find a dragon that can get out there…” Kitt said, pointing at the circled spot on the map. “Faster than the ones they have out at… whatever that town’s name is, yes.”

Lance cast his eyes down. Having gone from a state of agitated excitement over being able to help find Artha to once again not being able to do anything was a rough rebound for the boy.

“Alright, alright, enough!” Parmon said. “If there’s anything I remember from when I was crossing the desert when my family moved to dragon city, it’s that you can find many small water springs out in the desert. It’s how the Hydrags and wild dragons survive out there. Though, the area he’s ended up in is a little less hospitable than the region immediately surrounding dragon city, that only means there won’t be anything out there to hurt him.”

“Professor…” Kitt said.

“Yes?” Parmon replied, looking over at her.

“Stop talking.”

<<>>

In the Lirius family stall, Artha was balking at being saddled.

“C’mon boy! Please? I’ll give you a dragonola bar!” Toma said, holding out one of the dragon treats.

“No! I don’t want any of that nasty… huh?” Artha whined, then snorted. He then started sniffing at the offered bar shaped mass of dragon food.

“Yeah, that’s it… just let me put the saddle on and you can have all the dragonola you want.

“That’s weird…” Artha chirred, sniffing the bar closer. “It doesn’t smell that bad… not nearly what I remember.” He continued, remembering when Voiciferous had tried to steal Beau with that fake commercial gig. Closing his eyes tightly, Artha extended his head out a few inches more and gently closed his dragon mouth around the end of the bar, an inch away from Toma’s fingers, and gently bit off a bit of the bar.

He immediately pulled his head back and scrunched up his face, expecting the bad taste he remembered to fill his mouth yet again… but instead, he got a rather interesting flavor bursting from the piece of the treat. He opened his eyes and rolled the piece around in his mouth before he started chewing it.

“Mmmf! This isn’t half bad!” Artha purred around the bit of food.

“I think he likes it.” Glenn said grinning.

“Can I have the rest?” Hammyrr, the young bull class dragon Glenn had rode in on rumbled as he nudged Toma from behind.

“You want the rest? Well, if this big fellow will put the saddle on, we can all go where we can get some snacks, how’s that sound?”

“More dragonola bars! C’mon big guy, put the saddle on! I want some dragonola!” Hammyrr grunted at Artha excitedly.

“You sound just like my little brother.” Artha trilled before he realized what he was saying and his ears drooped slightly.

“Aw, you want more big fella? C’mon, just put the saddle on and we can go. Besides, you don’t wanna stay shut up in here do you?” Glenn said.

Artha’s ears pricked up. Stay inside? Of course he didn’t want to do that! He immediately sent out a tendril of mag energy that snagged the saddle from Toma’s hands and attached it to the back of his head, the way he remembered doing it when he was inhabiting Beau’s body.

“Ok, let’s go then!” Toma said, going to open the gate.

“Odd color mag stream…” Glenn said quietly as Artha sent out another yellowish colored mag stream and gently picked up the young boy and put him in the saddle.

Artha wasn’t really pleased at being ridden by a total stranger, but he really wanted to have a look around this town. See what he could figure out about the way back to the city if he could.

Toma was a little unsteady with the controls as he rode Artha out of the stall, which was typical of not having really ridden a dragon before. Thankfully, his touch was so tentative that it allowed Artha to have his own head about things, and take in his surroundings.

The town here was built directly on the desert surface. Nothing here was elevated like in dragon city. He didn’t even see a single dragway for as far as he could see. The buildings themselves were built out of metal panels, most of which had seen spotty repairs here and there, with oddly angled metal panels bolted over what appeared to be damaged areas. And like the metal they were covering, most of those panels looked more than a little aged, if not rusted.

“Kinda run down isn’t it?” Artha trilled, before he felt a twinge run through his spine as Toma suddenly pushed really hard on the saddle handles, making him feel an intense urge to leap to his right, which he did… straight into a wall, with a resounding impact.

“Ok… so it’s a bit different than the vid game’s controls…” Toma said, shaking himself after the impact.

“Scales kid, go easy on the controls!” he whined. Remembering when beau, in his body, had handled the controls in a similar fashion and sent them all over the track, an experience he did not want to repeat.

“Ok, let’s try this again…” Toma said, pushing forward on the controls, and sending Artha into a sudden sprint.

“This was a really bad idea!” Artha let out a panicked roar as he was suddenly urged to go barreling down the packed dirt road at a full gallop, Hammyr and Glenn struggling to keep up with Toma on the mature, speed oriented hybrid dragon.

<<>>

Moordryd stood behind Vizz in the surveillance center in the dragon eye compound. The other teen was working on a delicate hacking job as he worked his way into the academy security system, carefully avoiding setting off triggers in their ingrained security network.

Vizz shuddered. “Look, you tell me to do a job, the least you could do is let me do it Moordryd!”

“You’re doing fine Vizz, now just finish it.” Moordryd responded.

“No, I’m not, you standing over me is driving me nuts! Just… go sit down or something!” Vizz spat.

Moordryd growled but took a few steps back, watching as the surveillance expert continued the job.

“Scales…” Vizz muttered. “Whoever thought up this security measure's either a genius or… Oh for… Magna Draconis!” he continued, making Moordryd raise one half of his monobrow.

A minute later, the screen suddenly opened a new window with a very grainy, low quality image.

“Are you in?” Moordryd asked, stepping over again.

“As in as I’m going to be boss.” Vizz said. “I don’t know if the designer was crazy or brilliant, but the main defense on the security cameras from people hacking in is a program that detects a ‘data drain’ from the camera feeds. If I try to take up too much of it’s data stream it’ll set off the trigger. This… is the best compromise I can come up with on short notice.” He said, gesturing to the grainy, blurred image. “A low enough resolution that won’t trip the detection program.”

Moordryd nodded at Vizz and looked at the screen. From the shapes he could see, there were numerous whitish blurs in the rough shape of people walking around a dark space, with a glowing point of light slightly off center.

“Vizz… I think this’ll do just fine…” Moordryd said.

<<>>

At the moment, scores of the dragon academy staff members were looking up ancient tomes of knowledge. Every once in a while someone would stand up with a tome, approach the stone, and try something, usually to no result.

Akarii sat and stared at the stone as it lay before him… glowing in that multicolored radiance. But behind that beautiful glow was a power as deadly as any of the weapons from the ancient dragon human war, three milennia past. For the hundredth time he put his hand to the stone… and watched as the glow around where his finger came close changed to a pure, unchanging white glow.

“Dragon Master…” a younger instructor said.

“Yes?” he responded, pulling his hand back from the stone.

“It’s Dr. Sean again, sir. He want to talk to you…” the younger staff member said.

“About the stone, yes. He’s called twenty times in the last two days.” Akarii said, sighing.

“He is right, sir… the stone was promised to them before it… fell into our hands, we verified it.”

“Be that as it may, it’s already cost us one student, a very promising one at that. I want to make sure we leave no avenue untried on our side of this investigation before we release this… thing… to central research.” Akarii said, authoritatively.

“Understood Dragon Master. I’ll inform Dr. Sean.”

“For all the good it’ll do.” Someone else muttered, though Akarii could make it out.

The dragon master sighed and put his chin on his knuckles as he studied the stone again. He understood the scientist’s reasons for being so demanding. His son was Parmon Sean, the close friend and racing team member of Artha Penn, the one who had ‘dissappeared’ in the blast from this very stone.

“Forgive me, Dr. Sean, I need a little more time.” Akarii said, mostly to himself.

Poor Artha. He is getting a repeat of the Changling!

Doing this without the benefit of my Proofreader. not sure why she's inactive right now, but i figured i'd let you guys see what i have raw in the meantime. Edits come later.

Edit: feb 21, Renesh is back, yay! edits now coming.

Philosopher’s stone

Chapter 12

Artha finally came to a stop, after running in jerky spurts of speed through the dirt roads of the run down looking town. Every building was made out of cheap materials, and all looked at the very least somewhat worn and degraded, if not having had large patchy repair jobs done to them.

After catching his breath, he lifted his head to take stock of where he’d ended up. Toma was doing something with the Comm unit on the saddle, so for the moment, he was in control of himself.

They’d stopped at the edge of town somewhere. To his right was open desert, to his left was the primary gate to the town, a big metal structure with the name ‘Endless Sun Mesa’ in metal written atop it.

“What’re we doing all the way out here?” Artha trilled, confused.

“I dunno.” Hammyr, the young bull class dragon said, then tromped over to a public water trough and started drinking. Artha looked at the young dragon, glanced back up at his young rider, and gently padded over to join the bull class.

Several minutes later, Artha looked up as four other young boys, three riding bull class dragons roughly the same age as Hammyr, and one earth class dragon that looked a little older, came ambling up.

“Oh, wow! A speed type dragon!” the boy riding the earth class dragon exclaimed.

“How fast can he run?” one of the bull class riding boys asked.

“Where’d your parents get the drackels for that fellow?” another questioned.

“You wanna ask questions, or you wanna race?”

“Race? You? You just got that dragon Toma, even with a speedy looking thing like him I don’t think you’ll keep up.” The last bull class rider said.

Artha’s golden eyes narrowed. Despite his situation, he was a competitive spirit. And the thought of losing a race to a bunch of hatchlings of notoriously slow, heavy breeds when he was, apparently, a mixture of several of the fastest known, got his fire burning.

Artha pawed at the ground and lowered his forequarters.

“Well he wants to race, at least.” Glenn said grinning.

“Fine, just try not to crash too much, ok Toma?” the skeptical boy said as the other young dragons lined up under the sign, facing into the town. This was apparently going to be a road race.

“C’mon boy.” Toma said, this time being more gentle with the controls as he had Artha line up with the younger dragons.

“On your mark…” Glenn said from the farthest right position.

Artha lowered his body slightly.

“Get set…”

The muscles in Artha’s limbs tightened in preparation for an initial launch.

“GO!” Glenn shouted, and suddenly all the boys dragons bounded off from the starting line.

Toma was a fraction slow on the controls, so when Artha leaped out from the starting line, Toma was caught slightly unprepared and was nearly thrown off the saddle. Artha immediately sent out a magstream to steady the boy.

“Thanks boy!” Toma said.

Artha just focused on the race.

<<>>

“Thanks boy!” Toma said, grabbing onto the controls again and bracing himself in the saddle. The dragon seemed to be looking out for him, Toma realized, and smiled as he focused on the race.

He knew the course they intended to take well. Once or twice he’d ridden along on Hammyr’s back as Glenn showed him the path. It was a simple one, following the bends in a winding road that hadn’t been so much as planned, but grew with the town. It weaved in a series of S curves through Endless Sun, and at this time of day the town was more or less quiet, so they didn’t have to worry about crashing into other dragons.

<<>>

Almost immediately Artha came face to face with the racing tactic of Green bull class dragons he’d come to know so well racing against Phistus. Rather than trying to outrun him, the smaller dragons, with a weight that nearly matched his lightweight status, tried to smash into him, or at least knock his legs out. Artha suddenly found himself having to cope with that as they went into the first curve. Putting on a burst of speed just as the skeptical boy’s bull class dragon made that move, and slammed into a thick metal wall… that showed numerous dents which made sense if these races were a frequent thing here.

<<>>

Toma glanced over his shoulder as Makkis’s bull class slammed into one of the barriers on the side of the wall, he’d almost expected something like that, but wasn’t sure when it was coming. The dragon he was riding on seemed to have even sharper reflexes than he did, and he was very grateful, even at the smaller size, the young bull class dragon could deal out heavy blows, and the dragon he was on was oriented on speed, not power.

“Good one boy! C’mon, let’s keep them all choking on dust!” Toma said, pushing forward on the saddle’s controls.

Artha felt the draconium inside him pulse slightly as he put on an even greater amount of speed, for the first time since being put into this dragon’s body, breaking 150 miles an hour.

<<>>

Over a thousand miles away, right at that moment, the red and blue star class dragon, Beau, lifted his head up suddenly from his depressed stupor. He’d just felt a tiny, distant spark of… something, he couldn’t tell quite what. He sensed a lot of things most dragons, and people, couldn’t. it felt oddly familiar, but it was also different. He couldn’t really be sure. Tilting his head, he tried to puzzle it out.

<<>>

“Oof, man, we needed a lot of stuff, didn’t we girl?” Ranna said as she put the last of the large supply of groceries in the mag gripped containers on Shoyani, who grunted and nodded to her rider.

“Well let’s get home, I’m sure Toma’s bored stiff having to watch that big boy we dragged home.” She said as Shoyani magged her up into the saddle.

<<>>

“WAHOO! I’ve never gone this fast in my life! Keep it up boy!” Toma said, hardly controlling the dragon, save to make sure he stayed on the right path. Wherever this dragon came from, he knew racing.

Toma glanced back and saw the other boys drifting behind, though all their dragons were putting out a monumental effort, and they were starting to look exhausted. The pacing of their races had never even come close to going this fast.

<<>>

Ranna just walked Shoyani out to the edge of the road and was about to take the bull class out into the road when suddenly, coming tearing around the bend in the road was a pale colored dragon which both Ranna and her dragon were very surprised to see out and about. It took a moment for them to register that he was now wearing a saddle, and had a rather small rider in that saddle.

“Toma!?” They both exclaimed, though one did it in words and the other did it in a snort of shock.

<<>>

“TOMA! SLOW DOWN!” Glenn shouted, but his voice couldn’t carry the distance, and he didn’t know the Comm code for the saddle that the other boy was using, having never really bothered to check the thing after his family had realized they’d been sent the wrong model.

“This pace is going to hurt our dragons if they keep it up any longer!” Makkis said over his Comm. “I’m pulling out!”

Glenn started to feel worried, maybe racing with this dragon had been a bad idea.

He suddenly realized he was right when he saw Toma’s Sister Ranna pull past him on her adult bull class dragoness, shouting at the boy on the white, blue and gold dragon up ahead… far ahead. In fact, within a moment, the white dragon pulled past the bend in the road and disappeared.

<<>>

“Woo… those 12 hour shifts really take it out of you, don’t they Rokhaan?” Raul Lirius said as he guided the tired earth class dragon out of the great central pit that was the outer face of the mine. That was where they now kept the machinery that kept the mine in the lower tunnels going, pipes leading from the lowest levels of the mine converged at massive pumps here topside where water from underground springs that might be accidentally tapped into were pumped away, then sent to purifying stations. Power generators supplying light through the primary tunnels, mag-lock mine carts and conveyors powered mostly by several dragons working as a living power source. Also there were numerous supply sheds, a mess hall for break hour, and the offices of the company’s pencil pushers, some of those structures being built into the walls of the sides of the pit, so they’d have an overlook of the rest of the pit.

“Hoo! I’m tired and sore, but working down there makes a dragon like me feel alive!” Rokhaan rumbled in answer, even though he knew his master couldn’t hear the words.

Raul just nodded and patted Rokhaan on one of his massive shoulders as he and several dozen other men, women, and their dragons marched upwards out of the mine.

<<>>

“Whoah, that’s one big hole in the ground.” Artha snorted as he ran along the curving road that ran the edge of at least half the massive pit. What must have been over three or four Dracometers in diameter, or maybe even more, and at least 8 deep, it was a huge pit carved out of the otherwise flat landscape, and entirely ringed in rusting metal fencing, thick bars designed to at least provide a hindrance to most normal dragons. Even as fast as they were moving, Artha got a clear view of hundreds of earth and bull class dragons and their riders doing all kinds of tasks all over the walls and in the depths of the pit. Plus, all over the pit there were numerous tunnels going into the walls of earth, which they disappeared into or emerged from.

“C’mon boy, faster, faster!” Toma said, pushing forward on the controls, sending a slight jolt into Artha, which in turn made him want to run faster, pushing him up to nearly 160.

<<>>

Raul finally saw the gate that led out of the primary mining area, and smiled. The path up to the gate was one of a set of winding, inclined paths from the depths of the pit, and for a dragon that had just been worked hard for a whole day, that was no small thing to overcome, even if it was an earth class… or maybe more so. The earth class dragons got worked even harder than the bull class dragons, with their greater natural aptitude for the heavy digging work itself.

“C’mon buddy, once we’re on the flat road again we’ll be home in no time.” Raul said. Rokhaan snorted and pushed up the hill alongside the other dragons.

The group was the first to get out of the gates that day, and they’d just started to file out of the gates when suddenly a blazing white blur streaked through them all at very high speed, sending a series of surprised roars through the group of dragons as the form darted through the throng and out the other side, careening along the road.

“What in the Magna Draconis!?” Someone exclaimed, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

Raul looked after the shape, and couldn’t believe his eyes. That was the dragon that Ranna had dragged home, and it was speeding away with… someone riding it.

“Dad!” He suddenly heard Ranna’s voice, and turned to see her, on Shoyani, come riding up.

“Which way?” She asked.

Raul pointed down the road where the dragon had gone, and Shoyani immediately started to push her way through the throng of confused miner dragons.

<<>>

Kalia Lirius, on Karana, rode back to the house after having been out working her shift at the local medical center. She was a nurse there, treating both humans and dragons, mostly for the small injuries incurred during normal mining work, bruises, cuts and scrapes and the like, and generally keeping the hospital well organized if there was any kind of major emergency at the Mine.

“Come on Karana, a little faster! I’m sure that poor dragon’s dying for some company right about now, and I’m fairly sure Ranna’s out shopping for me like I asked her to.”

Karana snorted in assent, an picked up the pace for the last block and a half to the house. Once there, Kalia tapped the remote stall door opener button on the control panel of her chair style Saddle.

When the door opened, there was no sign of the white, blue and gold dragon.

<<>>

“WOOOHOOOO!” Toma cheered as the finish line, the blank end of a road bordered on both sides by homes and with a guard wall making sure people and dragons didn’t just go running straight into the desert came into view. Toma kept the pace up until they had virtually hit the wall, then immediately pulled back hard on the controls, Making Artha plant his claws and come to a skidding halt, kicking up a huge amount of dust and turning sideways in the effort to halt all the momentum he’d built up.

When the dust cleared, Toma looked around and saw that the other kids were nowhere to be seen.

“I think we just broke the record for the town run!” Toma said in shock. Then started chuckling. “Oh I’m SO gonna rub their noses in it tomorrow at school!”

Artha simply stood there panting as he caught his breath, and steamed a little. He kept it under control, not simply letting it go till he’d totally regained his normal temperature. His trek through the desert had taught him the folly of trying to do that.

Several minutes passed, and there was still no sign of any of the other boys.

“Wow, we really did leave them in the dust, didn’t we?” Toma said, then suddenly peered down the road. “Oh wait! There comes someone now… and… uh oh!” he said, suddenly sounding scared.

Artha picked up the tone in Toma’s voice and looked. Running down the road towards them was Shoyani and Rokhaan, carrying Toma’s sister Ranna, and his father, Raul.

Neither of the humans looked pleased.

“Ooooh, somebody’s in trouble!” Artha purred with laughter. The situation was so similar to something he’d seen Lance do years before, when he hadn’t yet gotten Fracshun.

Toma gulped.

really been a while...

Apologies for the number of spelling errors and typos people may be seeing of later. Renesh hasn't been around... i'm honestly starting to get worried.

Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 13


“See anything yet?” a lieutennant of the endless sun mesa security officers said into his communicator. He and his subordinates were combing the area near the coordinates they’d been given by their chief.

“No. I know I said this before we left the station yesterday, but I’m certain this whole thing was a prank.” One of the other security officer said.

“Coming out to the middle of nowhere the mountains in the middle of summer… whoo! Magna Draconis I’m glad we have cooling gear.” A second subordinate officer

“You bet. If we didn’t our dragon’s be suffering from dehydration, or heatstroke. Or both!” a third chimed in.

“Oh be quiet and keep searching for… whatever it is that we’re supposed to be looking for-whoah!” The first officer said as suddenly his green dragon took a tumble.

“What happened? Are you ok lieutenant?”

“I’m ok, my dragon just fell into… some kinda little depression in the ground.” The lieutenant said.

“Little what?” One of the subordinate officers asked.

“I think he meant a hole.” Another subordinate replied.

“Oh, a hole… well where is it?”

“Well it’s…” The lieutenant brought up his locator and checked his coordinates. “Well paint me yellow and call me a newt. I’m standing right at the exact set of coordinates that we were given from dragon city!”

<<>>

“But dad, all I wanted to do was go for a ride!” Toma said as he was dragged into the house by his father. Artha settled down in a corner of the family’s stall near the door as Toma, Ranna and their father entered the house so he could hear the heated discussion.

“You rode an unknown and untested dragon Toma, do you have any idea how foolish that is? What if he didn’t want you on him? He could’ve thrown you! Into a wall most likely!”

“He ran fine for me dad. So I was a little rusty on the controls, he didn’t try to have me off or anything.” Toma retorted.

“Bit of a commotion you caused boy.” Rokhaan, the earth class dragon rumbled around a mouthful of feed. “What possessed you to go out anyway, you should’ve been resting."

“I feel fine, honestly.” Artha trilled. “I just… really wanted to get up and move, that’s all.”

“You speed types, never happy standing still.” Rokhaan grunted.

“Rokhaan, go easy on the kid.” Karana rumbled. [i]“So he needed to stretch his legs. At least he was good with Toma for it.”

“Yeah yeah…” The earth class grumbled.

<<>>

Akarii sat in his office, the mysterious crystal laying on the desk before him. Two days of frantic searching and not a lick of information on anything even remotely like it in all of their library, and they were certain they’d looked in every book, scroll, and loose sheet of parchment they had from the ancient war.

The dragon master reached over to his desktop communicator and dialed in the number of Dr. Sean at central research.

<<>>

Parmon was sitting in the gear garage in the Penn stables working idly with a piece of broken gear, the only thing that took his mind off of Artha he was finding.

The communicator on the wall next to him started beeping, Parmon was so engrossed in his work he didn’t even register it. It stopped ringing on the fourth tone, then a few seconds later Connor’s voice could be heard through the wall inside the house.

“Hello? Yes, yes we did make that call. Did you find anything?” Connor was saying. Even muffled through the wall, Parmon suddenly sat bolt upright. He got up so fast he tripped over the work stool and scrambled back to his feet, running out of the garage and towards the front door of the Penn house, which he came screeching in through seconds later.

“I see… you found the coordinates then?” Connor was saying.

“Yes, we did. But the only thing we located at the scene was a strange depression in the ground, kinda like a crater. Didn’t find anything inside it, but there were tracks leading out of it.

“What kind of tracks?” Connor asked.

“Some kind of dragon. Definitely a quadruped, and a mid weight, definitely not a bull or earth class. Trust me, I’d know if it was one of those.” The officer explained.

“And that was it?” Connor asked.

“We had one of our men follow the tracks, but the trail disappeared over a mountain. The rest of our men combed the area for hours. We couldn’t find any trace of anyone or anything over several square miles. We’re continuing the search through the night, but our field officers are running low on supplies.”

Connor nodded silently. “Thank you for letting me know officer.”

Parmon stood there staring as Connor closed the connection. “You’re giving up?”

“Do you think I want to Parmon?” Connor snapped at the tan skinned teenager, then his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to give up, but I just… don’t know what else I can do right now.”

“Well I’m not giving up either!” Parmon said.

“Do you have any ideas?” Connor asked.

“Only one… really.” Parmon said, sighing. “I am convinced that Artha is out there, somewhere. And he needs us. I just need to know a few things first.”

“Like?” Connor asked.

“Well… uh… what do I need to bring along on a trip through the desert? Eheh.” Parmon chuckled nervously.

Connor smiled.

<<>>

That night, Vizz, as usual seated in the surveillance center in the dragon eye compound saw a change in one of his screens. The one observing through the jacked academy security cameras showed a minor change. A shape moved over towards the glowing point of light on the screen, and then suddenly the light moved, and then winked out.

“Hey Moordryd!” Vizz called out.

“What is it Vizz?” Moordryd replied over the comm.

“I think they’re moving that stone you wanted me to keep tabs on.”

“Already? That was fast. Thanks Vizz, keep me posted.” Moordryd replied before closing the channel. Less than a minute later Vizz watched on one of the security monitors as Moordryd on Decepshun, and Cain on Coershun, went riding out the front gates of the compound.

<<>>

“First thing I’m doing is putting up a lost dragon alert on the infonets. This dragon’s in too healthy a shape to not have an owner.” Kalia Lirius, mother of the family, said as they all sat at the dinner table.

“But ma!” Toma moaned.

“No buts mister. Who knows, that poor dragon might have an owner somewhere searching for him.” Kalia said.

“Yes!” Artha grunted to himself.

“I doubt it.” Raul, the father said.

“Wha?” Artha snorted in shock.

“Why do you say that?” Toma asked.

“It’s a mutt. You don’t put much of an investment in a mutt. A purebred, sure.” The father said. Artha felt his heart sink.

“Oh come on dad, you don’t mean that.” Ranna said.

Raul made a noncommittal noise. After that Artha heard mostly just the sounds of utensils and food being served.

<<>>

“Scales, they had to give it an escort didn’t they?” Moordryd said as he stood on the roof of a building, watching a sizable number of dragons ran along a dragway below, keeping position around a central one, the rider of which carried the container holding the crystal.

“What’re we gonna do Moordryd?” Cain asked, looking down alongside him.

“Not looking good. Those’re all academy staff members and their dragons.” Moordryd said.

“Think we can take them?” Decepshun thought, knowing the Vysox would hear.

“The way you are now? Not a chance. If I was to try to give you the raw energy we’d need to overcome those dragons and their riders, I’d burn you out.” The Vysox replied.

“Burn me out?” Decepshun thought.

“In blunt terms, I’d fry your nervous system with the sheer onrush of black draconium energy. You might be able to handle it if you were fully evolved into an elite class dragon, but then, if you were, you wouldn’t need the power surge. Catch twenty two.” The Vysox replied.

“Scales…” Decepshun rumbled.

“What was that Decepshun?” Coershun trilled.

“Nothing… just discussing our options with my mental roommate.” Decepshun trilled, watching the dragons run past.

“We’re definitely not taking the crystal from that group.” Moordryd said.

“What about the shadow-” Cain started to say, which instantly had Moordryd and Decepshun facing him with very sour looks.

“Chute, a second year student at the academy can hold ground against me, even when I’m in the armor. And you want me to try my luck in it against a round dozen of the staff?” Moordryd asked, very slowly.

“Ah… good point…” Cain said.

“Back to the compound Cain. Looks like Vizz is going to have another surveillance job ahead of him.” Moordryd said before he pulled Decepshun around and had her start running back the way they’d came.

<<>>

Kitt Wonn came riding back into the stable on Wyldfyr late in the afternoon that day. She’d tried what little she could do as far as investigating. She’d questioned everyone she knew in the seedy corners of down city if anyone resembling Artha had suddenly shown up in the past few days, confused and disoriented. Herself holding out hope that that ‘comet’ was some kind of ridiculous side effect of that crystal going haywire. As that had failed, she was now returning feeling rather depressed. That depression was nearly replaced by confusion and curiosity as she saw Cyrano standing in the middle of the lot inside the Penn stables area, being hitched up to Mr. Penn’s trailer, Connor himself, Parmon, Fixrr and even his dragon Ratchytt loading jugs of water and a few barrels of dragon feed into it.

“What’s going on?” she called out as soon as she was within range of them. “Someone planning a trip and didn’t tell me?” she asked.

“Kitt! There you are.” Connor said, turning away from the job as she approached.

“Somebody mind explaining what’s going on?” Kitt asked again.

“We received a call back from that town near where Parmon’s calculations said that… ‘comet’ would’ve landed.” Fixrr said even as he rolled a barrel of feed into the Trailer.

“And?” she pressed.

“They didn’t find any sign of Artha… though they did find some kind of crater where the genius’s calculations said he would’ve ended up.” Fixrr continued.

“That’s it? A crater?” she asked, tilting her head.

“They did mention something about dragon tracks.” Connor said.

“A crater and dragon tracks? So what’s that have to do with this?” Kit asked.

“Oh, this? The genius kid is determined to go out there and conduct his own search.” Fixrr said, while Parmon tried his hardest to push a hand cart with one of the plastic jugs of water up the short ramp into the trailer.

“Oh that’s rich.” Kitt said, rubbing her temples with her hand after she pulled her helmet off.

“What do you mean by thaaaAH!” Parmon said as he lost his grip on the hand cart and sidestepped as the thing rolled backwards, fell over, and sent the jug of water rolling across the lot, the scalesheen dragoness’ and their young hatchlings watching the escapade with more than a few purrs of laughter.

“The thought of you, Mr. Wannabe hero, going across the desert by yourself. What do you expect to do when you run into a pack of hydrags?” she said.

“I, ah… well… I hadn’t thought that far ahead, really.” Parmon admitted.

“I thought so.” Kitt said, hopping down from Wyldfyr’s saddle. “Fixrr, Ratchytt, double whatever amount of food and water Parmon thought to load for this trip.” She said to the Gear Jockey and his dragon as she strode towards the house.

“Why’s that Ma’am?” Fixrr asked.

“Simple.” She said, turning giving a wry smile. “I’m going with him.”

As she went inside Connor sighed. “Well, at least you won’t have to worry much for your safety Parmon. She is very skilled.”

“Next thing you know Lance is gonna want to join this little expedition too…” Fixrr said, then paused. “Hey… where is that kid anyway?”

Connor and Parmon looked at each other.

“Uh…” Was all Parmon said.

“Knowing him, likely getting into trouble…” Connor said.

<<>>

Spratt, riding his young sky class Bumpyr, rode along a surface street somewhere in down city. Lance had told him of a number of places Word Paynn had used as bases of operations in the past that weren’t his main citadel. He was running past one of them now, the former headquarters of ‘slithercorp’. The place was darkened and empty, as it had been for months now after the end of the human wraith crisis. He’d been coming past here each day since he and Lance had split up surveillance duties, and tonight nothing seemed different than any other day.

“I’m beginning to think this is a waste of time Bumpyr.” Spratt said, which got a chirr and a headbob in agreement from the sky class underneath him.

“Why don’t we just call it a day and go home? Nothing’s happen…” Spratt started to say, then paused as he heard something new. The sound of the footfalls of heavy dragons pulling a large trailer, approaching their position.

“Quick, this way!” Spratt said, pulling Bumpyr’s controls and having the dragon bound into an alleyway across the street from the ‘slithercorp’ building.

Less than half a minute later, the sound of the dragons manifested itself into a pair of green dragons, being ridden by men wearing a uniform from some out of city draconium supplier came up to the front of the slithercorp building and stopped. Then they just sat there.

“What’re they doing?” Spratt whispered, before pulling out his binoculars, he wasn’t very far away from them, less than twenty meters away from them as he and Bumpyr hunkered down behind some trash bins in the alley. There was something very, very strange about the men, and he needed a better look.

“Whaaa…?” Spratt said after a moment, making Bumpyr gaze out as well,m then make a very, very tiny whine.

“They… they’re sitting there… staring out into space… it’s like nobody’s home…” Spratt said, focusing the binocs on them. Both men had a blank expression, and glassy eyes that just stared straight forward. Neither of them made any move to enter the building, or even guide their dragons anywhere.

“This is getting really, really weird…” Spratt said, and was contemplating calling Lance when suddenly the shuttered gate at the front of the slithercorp building’s loading bay opened. Without a word or gesture, the riders immediately guided their dragons inside, still with that same blank expression.

“Bumpyr, you stay here, I’m going to get a better look.” Spratt said, but Bumpyr shook his head in alarm and made a little squawk.

“You’re too easy to spot! Don’t worry, I’m not going inside.” Spratt said, tapping the binocs he’d kept his grip on. Bumpyr grudgingly lowered his head and let his rider off.

“Be right back.” Spratt said before quickly checking the street, and then darting across.

Once at the other side of the street, Spratt immediately flattened his back to one of the outside walls, and then slowly and carefully peered inside the still open shutter gate to the inside of the building.

The men had parked the trailer at a slight angle, allowing Spratt to see the back door. From his vantage point, he had a view of the back of the trailer, and the right side, along with the riders. He fought the urge to lift the binocs and look through it again, and he felt grateful he had, when a moment later, a door leading from this large loading bay to the inside of the building opened up and a man in a voluminous, dark purple cloak and hood stepped out, his shiny black armored boots clinking on the metal floor of the bay.

“Did Security follow you?” the man immediately said to the riders.

“No.” both riders said… in complete unison. It sounded unnatural to Spratt.

“And Paynn doesn’t know about you being here?” the man asked.

“No.” they replied in that unsettling unison again.

“Good.” The man said, walking to the back of the trailer and opening it. A faint glow emanated from within, and Spratt chanced a peek with the binocs.

Inside the trailer he could see barrels of raw looking rocks, very, very dark in color, and glowing a deep purple.

“Raw Black Draconium?” Spratt whispered to himself.

“Perfect, unload these, quickly, and bring them inside. Then take the trailer and dump it in some alley deeper in Down city, make it look like a crew robbed you of it. Then head ‘home’.”

“Yes.” The men said, and immediately dismounted. They went to the back of the trailer, on opposite sides, but when they got there, they went in shoulder to shoulder, and mechanically bent over and grabbed crates at exactly the same time, then backed out, in exactly the same fashion, and carried the crates in to the interior of the building shoulder to shoulder.

Spratt was so engrossed looking at them that when the man in the cloaked started to turn he nearly jumped as he ducked backwards out of sight. After a span of twelve heartbeats, Spratt poked his head in again, just far enough so that one eye could see around the door…

And saw that the cloaked man was gone.

“I think Lance is gonna want to hear about this…” Spratt thought to himself before he made a mad dash across the road again, back to Bumpyr, who grabbed him with a magstream halfway across the road, and put him back in the saddle. Without a word exchanged, they turned and galloped down the alleyway, jumping low walls and fences, heading towards the nearest lift up to mid city.

coolness! its a great story! i think it would be a great movie!