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The Misadventures of an Unexpected Dragon

By Theo Winters

4:

I stayed low to the ground as I made my way up towards the caldera, passing over the thin vegetation that covered the otherwise rough ground. I had never actually been to the park before, only having seen it from the air, so it was interesting to see it as it unfolded under me. There was a feeling of desolation to all of it, even though the eruption was decades ago.

There were a few spots of snow on the side of the mountain, but the rest was just raw stone. I could see the dome at the center of the caldera, rising upwards and letting out a constant trail of smoke, or maybe steam. Whatever it was, I hoped that it was safe to be around, as I could already spot a number of dragons sitting around the dome. Though would smoke actually be a problem for a dragon?

They weren't the only dragons around, there were a number of them in the air, and a group hanging around lower down the side of the mountain, there colors standing out against the gray, browns and greens of the mountainside. None of them seemed to be paying me any attention, which was for the best. No matter what I looked like, I was still an imposter in the group, and this could go wrong fast if one of them out that out.

It was easy to spot Cheasequah in the lower group of dragons, his colors making him stand out even compared to the others. I adjusted my wings, banking towards him as I started to slow myself down and descended. When I was only a few feet above the ground, I flared my wings back and dropped onto the hard ground. I had landed a little further away than I would have liked, leaving me to walk about fifty feet to where Cheasequah was standing, along with three other dragons.

"I'm glad you could make it," Cheasequah said, giving me a short nod. The other three dragons, all European, were looking intently at me.

The largest of the three, his scales a dark green, spoke first. "Who do you represent?"

I shrugged a little bit. "Just myself, though I'm here to aid my friend," I said.

The trio moved closer to me. Even the shortest of the three towered over me, making me feel rather tiny. It was easy to forget when I was just with my new friend, but night fury's were small as dragons went. I found myself puffing up a little bit, fluttering my wings and jutting out my chest, trying to make myself look impressive. It caused Fern to slide off down my back to land on the ground by my tail. Naturally the other dragons ignored her, she was just a kobold after all.

"It has been a long time since I've seen one of your kind," a squat gold dragon said, his belly was large enough that it almost touched the ground as we walked. "Very rare, and your colors are rather unique for the species."

I nodded, not sure how I could respond to that without bringing up further questions that I didn't want to answer.

The third dragon, a young-looking silver dragon moved in a bit closer, and then reached out to pluck the glasses from my face. "Why do you have these?"

"It's hard to read without them," I replied, reaching up and taking them from his claws before placing them back on my snout.

"I see," he replied in a tone that made it clear that he didn't, but also didn't care.

I looked between the three of them, trying to take them all in. They all looked back down at me, and judging from the frown on the green dragon's muzzle, they weren't exactly happy that I was here. "I assume the three of you are in charge of this gathering?" I asked.

"Yes, we have called this gathering," the gold said with a dismissive snort, like it was something that should have been obvious.

Using the tip of my wing, I motioned back down the mountain. "One of you should go down and talk to the rangers at the observation post. They told me they are a bit concerned about having so many dragons in one place and if we could avoid causing a freak out, it would be to our own benefit."

The glare I got from the trio made it clear that they were extremely unhappy that I brought that up, the glare I got from Cheasequah just confirmed it. The three European dragons shared a couple of quick looks, then the green dragon motioned with his head towards the silver.

Letting out a sigh, the silver dragon fanned out his wings. "I will speak with them, and warn them to stay away from us," he said before leaping into the air, his wings slamming a wash of air down over us as he took off.

I wasn't sure that was the right thing to do, but he was gone before I could protest. Shaking my head, I looked back at the other two dragons. "Shall we have some introductions?"

"No," the gold dragon stated, then turned and walked away from us. The green dragon followed a few moments later, though he went by wing instead of claw.

"Rude," Fern said as she climbed back into my back.

"That's one word for it," I replied with a snort, then turned my attention back to Cheasequah.

The other dragon was shaking his head, a frown on his face as small ripples of light danced along his antlers. "You should not have spoken to any people on your way here, and you should not have told them about what we are doing here. You have now called a great deal of attention to yourself, and those three will not turn away for very long."

He then let out a sigh, and shook his head. "I know there is no way for you to avoid attracting attention, but you should not actively seek it out. Careful how you tread, and remember that you are here to help me, and nothing more. Do not try to take advantage of this moment."

"How would I do that?" I asked. It was an honest question; I really hadn't put a lot of thought into the whole situation before that moment. I really had no idea what was going to happen next, or even if he could turn me back into a lion. There were a lot of unanswered questions, but I had simply just gone with what Cheasequah said. Maybe being a kobold was still having an effect on me.

Cheasequah shook his head. "Just... don't," he said, then with a snort took to the air, leaving me and Fren behind.

I sat down on the stone, finding it rather comfortable for being a chunk of rock. I craned my head back to look at Fern. "What do you think?"

She thought about it for a few moments then shook her head. "I don't like them. They are all rude," she stated.

"Very," I replied, nodding my head. One of my ears perked up as I started to hear a distance thudding sound, which echoed around the mountain. It took a few moments for me to finally place it as a helicopter, but one that was quite a distance away. "Do you hear that?" I asked Fern.

The kobold shook her head, happily eating out of the bag of trail mix.

My hearing had always been improved when I was a kobold, but as a dragon apparently it significantly better than even that. It also meant I had no idea just how far way the helicopter was, or if it was even come towards us, though all things considered I was fairly sure they were. The real question was if they were the local news or the military.

Turning around, I glanced back up into the caldera, not surprised to find at least a dozen other dragons looking back down at me. Gulping, I lifted my paw up and gave them a little bit of a wave, then adjusted my glasses.

There was a wash of air as something flew over my head. I simultaneously ducked, while snapped my head up to watch as an Asian dragon quickly passed over me. I had never seen one up close before, and was surprised at just how bright the scales were, shimmering with shades of light blue across the length of its body. It moved in an interesting way, its whole body flowing gracefully through the air as it pulled upwards then twisted back towards the ground.

It landed a dozen feet away, the head turning to look at me. A thick mane ran down the length of its body, a dark midnight blue, almost lost against the brightness of its scales. Step by step, it moved closer to me, sniffing at the air. Its face looked more like a canine then a dragon, with large green eyes that were focused upon me. The body rippled as it walked, rising and falling between the four legs, like its hind end was trying to stay to close to the front.

"I do not know you," she said, her voice light in the air. Her eyes were still locked on me, the black of her iris seemed blacker then possible, blacker than any sort of black I had ever seen before.

"Nore I you," I replied.

She slowly moved closer to me, sniffing the air again as her eyes slowly tracked over my body. I couldn't help but fold my wings tightly against my back as I started to wilt under the attention.

Then suddenly we were nose to nose, her eyes looking directly into mine. "You do not smell like a proper dragon," she said, her voice hushed as she leaned in even closer, until her lips were almost in my ear. "You smell like a lion."

Well shit.

She reached out with the thin fingers of one forepaw, the tips of each one coming to sharp point with no difference between the scales and her claws. Slowly she brushed the tips of her claws along the side of my wide muzzle, her touch was ice cold as I felt a tingle of magic. "Now, you do not," she said, then pulled away from me.

I just stared at her, not quite sure to make of what had just happened.

"It has been over a century since I last encounter one of your kind. You hardly ever leave the northern reaches, so what has brought you to us?" she asked, raising her voice as she spoke.

I stood there dumbly for a few moments, still a bit shaken up by what had just happened. I had no idea if she was trying to protected me, or just getting rid of a bad smell. The whole situation was all a bit off kilter for me. After a few moments I reached up to rub the side of my head as I tried to compose myself. "I'm here for the same reason you are."

She nodded, then leaned her head to the side so she could look behind me. "And I see you brought a kobold with you." As she spoke, she moved around me to get a closer look at Fern, giving her a sniff, then pulled back to face me. "Well, if you must."

"I must," I said, curling my tail to brush the fins against Fern's back. "I'm Theo by the way," I added, offering out one of my paws.

"I am Taura, and I'm sure we'll speak more later," she replied, giving a little bow of her head before she leapt back into the air, flying up the side of the caldaria. The air seemed to bend around her, like she was flowing through it instead of flying. As soon as she was gone, a dozen more dragons came down to see me. They were mainly European, but there was one Quetzalcoatl I could see, and another had three heads with brown and green scales in something close to a natural camouflage pattern. Nealy all of European dragons had kobolds with them.

Lifting my paw, I gave them another little wave as the swarmed around me. "Hello," I added.

The three headed dragon spoke with every head at once. "I did not know that there were any night furies on this side of the world," he said. His triple voice gave his words a weird harmonic that wasn't quite unpleasant, but all the same wasn't exactly easy on the ears.

"There's at least one," I replied, giving he a thin smile. "How about yourself? I'm not sure I've ever seen a dragon like you before," I asked.

He chuckled and returned the smile with all three of his heads, showing many more teeth than I was really comfortable seeing. "I am a Zmei," he said, rising up a bit and placing one paw against his broad chest.

That was good to know, but it didn't do anything to help me.

"He's from Russia," one of the others helpfully added.

My first thought was to ask him why he was all the way over here, but then same could have been asked of myself, so I decided it was better just to bite my lip and say nothing more about it. "Ah, of course. Well, it's a pleasure to meet you all," I said, looking around at the small group that stood in an arch around me. At the same time Fern was starting to talk with the other kobolds and passing around the remains of the trail mix.

A few moments later the helicopter I had been hearing came up over the top of the mountain. I had actually forgotten about it, the sound just blending into the background while I was talking to the others, until it simply was lost. We all looked up at the aircraft as passed over a couple thousand feet above us. Even so I could still make out the logo of a television station on the side. A few moments later a second followed along, both of the starting to circle around the mountain.

"We're going to be the top story tonight," the Quetzalcoatl muttered, her voice had a rolling quality to it, with something that sounded like chimes underlying the words.

"Hopefully the green dragon got to talk to the park ranger. Now as long as no one tries to buzz them, everything should be okay," I said.

"That is very unfortunate," a female European dragon, her scales blood red, said while looking up at the helicopters. "This was meant to be a secret meeting, and this is hardly secret. They might have well invited the locals for all the good that it would do," she added with a snort.

"I don't think they care," the Zmei said, shaking his heads. "And I'm sure that even if they did know what we were doing, there would be nothing they could do to change it."

The red dragon leaned back on her haunches, stretching her neck out as she focused on the helicopters. "For the moment they only seem to be watching us, but that could change at any time."

"We should probably check the news and see what they are saying," I mused, then turned to look at the collection of kobolds. "Fern, how's reception here?"

My girlfriend turned kobold jumped at the mention of her name, then started digging through her satchel and pulling out my cellphone. She tapped at it a couple of times as the screen light up. I wasn't too surprised to see other kobolds doing the same thing with all different sizes of phones and tables.

Finally, she looked up at me, and gave me at so-so gesture.

I nodded, then glanced back at the other dragons, who were all giving me disapproving looks. "What? How many of you have cell phones?" I asked, only to have the looks grow more intense.

Shaking my head, I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest. "So, I guess the main question is, what is the whole point of this meeting? No one has actually bothered to tell me about it in the first place. I just got dragged along to help a friend."

"Really?" the red dragoness said, pulling back and placing one hand against her chest. "Do you really think that they would tell us and you? None of us know why we are here, just that it would be in our best interest to take part."

"I think our hosts have found some sort of treasurer cache, and are looking to hold it over us," the three heads of the Russian dragon said.

One of the other European dragons snorted. "Why bring us together to do something like that? It's not as if they would share it. They are probably going to try and kill us to take our Hoards."

The Zmei let out a deep belly laugh at that, his heads bobbing in time. "I would like to see them try to get any of mine," he said.

"My hoard is hardly worth the effort," I mussed, rubbing my chin. I mean I didn't actually have a hoard, not in any way that a dragon would think of it. I have a few collections of things, but how many dragons hoarded old games or toys?

Now that I think about it, I was sure there were some dragons who collected that sort of thing.

The Quetzalcoatl let out a snort, ruffling her feathers. "They have decided to partition up the land between them and the rest of us," she said.

"Yeah, they will take all of it, and we'll have some island somewhere to share between the rest of us," the red dragoness replied, rubbing the side of her head, eyes narrowing as her wings twitched against her back.

"I think the locals might have something to say about that," I replied. In all truth, if all the dragons here decided to try to take over, they would be flattened in a day. Dragons were tough, but they were far from indestructible and a missile to the face would put most of them down.

"Even those three aren't so stupid as to try and attack the natives," the red dragoness snaped. "And if they are... well I don't know about the rest of you, but I would be on the natives side."

I nodded in agreement, my tail sweeping across the ground behind me.

There was a ripple through the air as Taura swept over us, sending dirt and other debris fluttering up around the rest of us. She spun around a couple times above us, then flowed down to land at the center of the group.

"Show off," someone muttered.

The Asian dragon looked around at the group, her eyes glittering a little bit. "What are you all doing here, do you have nothing better to do then gossip?"

With a snort, the red dragoness moved up closer to Taura. "Of course not. What else is there for us to do, unless you know what is going on?"

The other dragoness shook her head. "If I was aware, I would share that with you. I do not trust our hosts. They have something planned, and I do not believe it will benefit us as much as it will them. We must be ready for anything that happens."

A moment later a deep roar echoed across the mountain side, almost shaking the ground under us. Everyone in the group, dragon and kobold alike, turned to look up towards the top of the lava dome. The three leaders of this group were sitting at the top, the sliver having let out the roar while the gold was sending a blast of flame high into the air.

Apparently, the time guessing was over.

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This story was written and copyright 2020-2021 by Theo Winters, reposting and archiving are allowed as long as this copyright notice and the author's name are not removed. This story cannot be published without permission of the author, violators will be given to the dragons.