//------------------------------// // Gerudo's Valley (Side Story) // Story: My Little Dragon // by Metal Pony Fan //------------------------------// Sand, it’s one of the world’s cruel jokes. It finds its way everywhere, even the little spaces between scales,and when that happens, the slightest movement is all it takes for it to rub and grind. And a small, red dragon was walking through an endless expanse of it. With every step, he cursed the sand, and the sun above, and wished he was somewhere else. A futile wish, he knew. He cursed again as a gust of wind blasted his face with sand, stinging his eyes. His wings weren’t big enough for him to fly away, and trying to walk across the desert would probably be his last mistake, a mistake that was looking more and more tempting every day. The only thing that kept him going was that he knew he would be able to leave someday. All he had to do was survive until then. That was why he was out here. He knew nodragon would follow him into the desert during the day, so his secret would stay safe. After a few more minutes of walking through the sand and sun, he could make out his destination in the distance. He just kept walking. He learned about the mirage the first time he came out this way. His destination was actually much farther away than it appeared. But it was ok, he had time. That was all he had. After a few more minutes, he heard a sound behind him. Had he been followed? He slowed down, but didn’t look back. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he knew, but he couldn’t keep going in the same direction. He strained to listen for any sign of whoever was following him, but at this time of day, the wind made that hard to do. He had to lead whoever was following him away from- He heard another sound behind him, it was faint, but close. It almost sounded like coughing. He turned around. It was a bad idea to follow somedragon out into the desert if you aren’t up to the trip, and it seemed like whoever was following him made that mistake. He started walking in the direction of the sound. Maybe, if he was lucky, that dragon would have food on them. Odd. He looked around, but couldn’t see any sign of another dragon. They either ran away, or they were really good at hiding. He got ready to defend himself should it be the latter. Whoever it was would find out that he was stronger than he looked. As he stood there, waiting for an attack, he heard the coughing again. It was right below him. He looked down at the sand. There was movement in the sand, and a strange clump of red grass. He grabbed it and pulled it up. It wasn’t grass at all, it was a dragon’s crest. It belonged to a bright, multi-colored hatchling, about a year or two younger than him, and seriously scrawny for her age. “Why are you following me?” The little blue hatchling’s only response was to cough up some sand. He dropped her and started walking in his original direction. The hatchling wouldn’t last long, so he didn’t have to worry about her finding out his secret. After a few more minutes, he heard more coughing from behind him. He glanced back. The hatchling was following him, limping on one of her front claws. He groaned. “Why are you following me?!” She snarled at him, and he snarled back immediately. Then he blinked, shook his head, and started walking away. “This is stupid,” he groaned, “do you really want to fight me? All I have to do is walk around in circles and the sun’ll kill you for me.” He glanced back and noticed that the hatchling stopped walking. He smiled to himself. “Good, now, if you run along home, you may actually live to see tomo-“ “Shut up!” The hatchling ran past him and stopped in his path. He stopped and dropped his head to his claw. This hatchling was getting to be a serious pain in the tail. “I heard you know where water is.” “Yeah? You heard that?” He rolled his eyes. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, what of it?” She pointed a claw at his chest. “Tell me where it is!” She was seriously trying to order him around? He was at least twice her size. He scoffed at her. “And, if I don’t? The hatchling bared her teeth at him. “I’m gonna make you tell me!” That was enough of this. He slashed at her, and she jumped back. She collapsed the moment she landed, clutching at her side as blood dripped from under one of her wings. He looked down at his claw in confusion. It didn’t feel like he hit her, and his claw was clean. Was she already injured? He didn’t have time to think too hard about it as the blue hatchling launched herself at his neck. He threw himself to the side, tumbling through the sand as her outstretched claws sliced through the space that was previously occupied by his head. He scrambled to his claws, but by the time he was up, she was after him again. She slashed at him repeatedly, forcing him back and advancing with every missed strike. She was too fast! He didn’t have a chance to counter-attack. His rear claw suddenly sunk in the sand. He couldn’t move! She slashed at him again, and he ducked. She tried to adjust her swing, but her over extended claw bounced off his horn with a loud clacking noise, and she lost her balance. Now! With the back of his claw, he swatted the little blue pest away, sending her sprawling in the sand. He freed his leg from the sand as she struggled to her claws. Why did he sink? He saw the hatchling grin at him before he realized why. It was the hole she was buried in, and she had been steering him towards it for the whole fight. She leapt at him again, but he had had enough. Instead of dodging, he charged into the attack, ducking his head and taking a hit to the shoulder for the chance to strike back. Ignoring the tearing pain as her claws cut into his shoulder, he slashed up at her, hoping to gut the little nuisance. She altered her course with a flap of her wings, and all he managed to do was grab some fur. He continued his slash, turning it into a spin and whipping his tail around, batting the hatchling out of the air. She went tumbling across the sand, and he ran after her as she rolled onto her claws. She tried to leap out of the way, but he pounced at her, grabbing her mid-leap and slamming her to the ground below him. She squirmed in his grip, and he lifted her in his claw and brought her slamming into the ground over and over. After several hits, she stopped moving, and he dropped her. Finally, the little brat was out of his scales, and he could get back to what he was doing. He turned and started to leave, but glanced back one last time. “Tough luck ki-“ She was breathing. He could hardly believe his eyes, but the hatchling’s chest was still rising and falling in an even rhythm. What was this urchin made of? “Still alive?” He walked over to her. “I’ll fix that.” He flipped her over and put his claw to her throat. Her face was a bloody mess, most likely from a rock in the sand, and aside from the rise and fall of her chest, she didn’t move. Her face was far more damaged than he would have expected, even if she had hit a rock. Fur is softer than scales, he supposed. “How are you still alive?” He put his claw around her throat and started to squeeze. She twitched as he tightened his grip, but didn’t wake up, didn’t offer any resistance. Blood dripped from the wound on his shoulder, mixing with the blood on her face. As he stared at the blood, something inside him snapped. “Why aren’t you dead yet?!” He screamed at the helpless hatchling. “Why are you still alive?!” He shook her, as if to wake her and demand answers. “GAAAAAH!” He tossed her away from him. Why? Why was she still alive? Why was he so angry about it? He had fought with countless other dragons. He had killed some of them, and others had come close to killing him, but none of them had ever made him this angry. You fight to survive, that was a fact of life. It was all he had ever known. He won this fight, he survived, so why was he so upset at the outcome? The hatchling had the same goal he did, to survive in this wasteland and the blight on creation known as Casull. How many times had he been in the same position the hatchling was in now? How many times had his survival hung on the whims of another, only to be saved by their disinterest? He looked over at the hatchling. He walked up to her, and sat down beside her. If things had only been slightly different, he could have been laying there. He looked down at his claws. She was still unconscious. It would be so easy to just slash her throat right here and now. He thought of all the times he had been knocked out during a fight, all the times he had woken up and slipped away in defeat. With each fight, he grew stronger, and each loss grew further from the last. But, he had to wonder, at some point, did somedragon stand over him like this and made the decision to let him live? He flexed his claw. That dragon was an idiot. The hatchling woke to a stinging pain in her face. She was too weak to move, or even open her eyes. All she could do was sit there and endure the pain. It was a weird pain though; it was moving. One side of her face would hurt, then the other, then her forehead, then her chin. Suddenly, she felt something pull her by the crest. Then, she felt herself get pulled forward. Something surrounded her. She didn’t know what it was, but it was hot, and it stung her face even more. She forced her eyes open, but everything was blurry, and her eyes started to sting, so she shut them. She became aware of something filling her ears and nose. It wasn’t pleasant. She opened her mouth to cry out, but her mouth filled with the same thing that filled her nose and ears. She gasped in surprise, pulling whatever it was into her lungs. Panic filled her as she tried to expel the substance, chest spasming as she desperately tried to exhale, but her lungs just kept filling. She didn’t notice when she was pulled back, out of the substance that surrounded her, but she did notice that her choking and coughing was actually starting to clear her lungs. Her throat burned as she was racked by a fit after fit of coughing. Her chest convulsed, spewing forth the vile substance that coated her lungs. After a while, the choking started to subside, and she could feel cool air enter her lungs. Cool air? She was in the desert; cool air was a thing that didn’t exist in Casull. She opened her eyes and stared at the ground. It was dark, but she could make out the rock beneath her claws. It was smooth and hard, but most of all, cool. She looked up, but something hit her in the face, stinging her eyes. She put up a claw to pull it away from her face, only to find it attached to her. It was her crest. But it felt weird, it felt… wet? That wasn’t possible. Water was scarce, nodragon would waste it by doing anything other than drinking it. Most of the time, you couldn’t even find water, and had to survive off the blood of wild beasts, or, if they didn’t kill you first, the juices of nomadic plants. This didn’t add up. Cool air and water? Last she remembered, she was in the desert, in the middle of a fight. Did she lose? Was she dead? Before the nomadic plants killed them, she heard some of the old monks talking about Alysium, the place of Typhon’s legacy, where the sacrosanct and the meek found refuge from fate. Was this it? Was she dead? She pulled her crest back, out of her face. She couldn’t be dead, she could still feel pain. Her face still hurt, and her throat was still burning from almost drowning. It felt weird to her. She knew the word, but the idea of drowning seemed so unnatural. In a place like Casull, with so little water, having so much of it that it could kill you seemed like mere fantasy. Ok, if she was still alive, where was she? She looked up. Instead of sky, there was more rock. Was she in a building? It was dark, so there were no windows. Not a building then. That was another weird thing about Casull, every building had windows, and sometimes, they were huge, overlooking the vast desert. Of course, the buildings were thousands of years old, so maybe there was actually something to look at back then? This had to be a… what was the word, cave? The monks didn’t get to teach her very much before the plants got them. The wall in front of her was solid, so she turned around, looking for the exit. What she found was a red drake, drinking from a pool of water, the same drake she had been fighting. A new possibility presented itself to the hatchling. They were both dead and ended up in Abbadon to fight for eternity, like the Architect and the Ravager. At least, she thought it was the Architect and Ravager, but she was only sure about the Architect part. Why did those monks have to go and get eaten by those plants? There was a problem with that theory though, and it wasn’t just that she didn’t pay enough attention to the monks; she was pretty sure that she was the one that lost the fight. That brought one last possibility to mind: he let her live. She backed away from the drake. This had happened once or twice before; some dragin lost a fight, but survived and came to the monks for help. She didn’t understand why, but those dragins were always unhappy. Even after they laid eggs, they stayed unhappy, and they usually left before the eggs hatched. She didn’t know why they would be unhappy about surviving a fight, but she didn’t want to find out. “Why did you let me live?” He glanced up at her. “Because I’m an idiot, I guess.” He went back to drinking, and the hatchling just watched him, tense and ready for anything. After drinking his fill, he sat back and picked up a bloody cloth from the ground next to him. “What’s your name?” This had to be the water she heard about. He nearly killed her to keep this place a secret, so why would he bring her here. “Why do you want to know?” He washed the cloth out in the pool of water and started to clean out a scratch on his shoulder, the scratch she gave him. “So I know who to kill if anydragon finds out about this place.” That scratch was his only injury, where did all that other blood come from? She realized that her face still stung, and she lifted a claw to her cheek, touching it softly. Pain flared where she touched, and she pulled her claw away. “Yeah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Your face is still pretty messed up.” The hatchling walked over to the water, keeping an eye on the drake. He watched her , and noticed that she didn’t look away from him. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it while you were out.” He leaned down and started drinking from the pool of water, keeping an eye on her the entire time. She thought it over for a moment before looking away. She looked into the pool, at her reflection. Her face was covered in scratches, and her cheek was swollen and discolored. “It looks like you did.” His face contorted as he swallowed wrong and started choking. “What?!” He smacked himself in the chest as he coughed in an effort to clear his throat. “You got hurt while we were fighting! You attacked me, remember?” “Yeah, yeah,” she dismissed his words with a wave of her claw, “whatever.” She leaned down and sipped at the water. It reeked of sulphur, but it was still water. She drank greedily, filling her stomach with as much water as she could. By the time she lifted her head from the pool, she had finished drinking more water than she ever had in her life. She looked over at the drake. “Rainbow Dash.” He shook his head and looked at the hatchling beside him. “You say a lot of weird stuff, kid.” The hatchling stomped her claw. “I’m not a kid, I’m 6 years old already!” “Yeah, yeah,” the drake waved his claw, mocking her actions earlier, “whatever, pipsqueak.” She glared at him. “What do you mean pipsqueak?!” “I mean pipsqueak.” He yawned. “I’m only 7, and I’m about twice your size.” “Luck of draw.” She looked into the water, staring at her reflection. She was pretty small, but it wasn’t like she could do anything about it, half the time, it was a struggle just to keep from starving. “Rainbow Dash is my name.” He snorted. “That’s a weird name.” “Yeah,” the hatchling ran a claw through her multi-hued crest, ”but you gotta admit it fits.” She sat down, dangling one claw into the pool. “And it’s all I really have.” The drake glanced over. ”Yeah, I guess it fits.” He laid down and rolled onto his back, wincing at a sharp pain in his wing. “But, whoever named you must have been dull.” Odd, he didn’t recall hurting his wing. “You don’t know the half of it!” Rainbow flicked her claw at the surface of the water, smiling at the splash it created. “He was always like,’vaka so, Regnbogi, vaka so. Sefvren efr.’” He looked over at her, slowly rubbing at a pain in his leg. “I must have hit you harder than I thought.” “Hmmph! It’s called Kykren.” Rainbow paced along the edge of the pool, wondering what it would be like to get in the water. She had read about it once, in one of the books at the monastery, about a thing called swimming. But there was something you had to do during swimming. What was it called again, holding breath? “Is that what they call it now? It’s getting to be impossible to keep up with hatchlings these days.” The pain was getting worse. He could feel more and more injuries all over his body, injuries he couldn’t remember. He tried to ignore them, tried to close his eyes, but the pain was still there. “You mean, you don’t know about it?” Rainbow laid down near the drake. “It’s the language of Typhon, the monks taught it to me.” “Not all of us were raised by monks.” Why was there so much pain? And why could he smell smoke? The brightly-colored hatchling rested her head on her claws. “Yeah, I guess not. So, are you gonna tell me your name?” He let out a low sigh. “Yeah, it’s-“ “WAKE UP!!” Sharp pain exploded across the drake’s face, and his eyes flew open. He found himself looking up at a pair of amber-gold eyes. “Y-you actually woke up?” One of which looked back at him while the other looked in a different direction. “You’re not dead!” He was rapidly lifted, and promptly squeezed. He tried to fight against the force that threatened to crush him, but found himself far too weak. “Ack! Kckh! Ch-choking! “Oh! Sorry!” He was immediately shoved backwards, and tripped over something cold and hard. “I didn’t mean to! But you scared me, I thought you were dead.” “Give me time.” The drake forced himself to his feet. He found himself in a forest clearing. Trees several times his height surrounded it. Smaller plants thrived in the open area, filling the clearing with various shades of green, brown, and even blue. The smell of smoke hung in the air even though there was no fire in sight. Beside the drake was the wreckage of some sort of steel contraption. Parts of it were dented and bent out of shape, while others were shredded, claw marks clearly visible on the surface. Inside, scorch marks marred the steel, and bits and pieces of chain lay scattered around. There was no machinery inside, no mechanisms or moving parts. It wasn’t a contraption at all, it was a box. “How much time do you need?” He looked behind him. He could now clearly see the owner of the off-kilter golden eyes. She was a reasonably sized grey dragin, a little bigger than him, and with an impressively shiny coat of grey scales and gold spines. Then she smiled, a huge, happy grin, one that just screamed cheerful, even if her teeth could put a shark’s to shame. “Oh, I get it!” She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side with a little giggle. “That was a joke.” “Yeah, it was.” The drake sighed. What was going on? Where was this place? And what was that earlier? A dream? No, it was real. Those things happened, but it was a long time ago. Some sort of memory then. But why? And why now? He looked back at the grey dragin as she smiled. “Who are you?” “Oh” Her eyes popped open. “I forgot to introduce myself!” She snapped to attention and saluted with practiced precision. “Derpy Scales! Mail-dragon, first-class, weight class two, cargo class three, speed class seven! It is my duty to deliver you safely to the council of Soefren in Dragartha.” “A Dusk Tribunal, huh?” He shook his head and started laughing. “I should have known that’s how I was gonna end up.” “Um,” the grey dragin slowly lowered her claw from the saluting position, ”I’m not sure what that is, but if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your name?” The drake's sudden laughter was a bit off-putting, and the grey dragoness shrunk back a little. "And what's a, um, Tribunal?" The drake looked over at the wreckage. It was so amazing how, sometimes, all it took was a tiny bit of information to make everything fall into place. The chains, the burnt and twisted steel, everything he failed to understand was now clear. It wasn’t a box at all. It was a cage, his cage. “My name is Fire Flash, and the Dusk Tribunal is a death sentence.”