The Dragon Society - Intitiation
#2 of The Dragon Society
I'm back for round 2 of the story! Now would be a good time to point out that the characters in this story are largely based on real people, so they're (c) me. On the other hand, if someone wants to fan draw them or some such thing, it'd be prime to send me a message and consult on the thing. Matter of fact, I encourage it.
Don't wanna pay for anything though.
Anyway, enjoy part 2.
Stephen woke up in the same little cell that he found himself in the first time he had passed out in recent memory. Unfortunately for his somewhat teetering sanity, the changes that had altered his body remained. He idly poked his single horn with a clawed finger, noting that it was very sharp at the point. He smiled a bit softly to himself as he looked over his body. Yes, everything that had changed had stayed in its shifted format. He sighed, accepting his fate as it currently stood, knowing he'd be unlikely to be able to change it. He stood up and looked at himself in a full-body mirror.
He struck a pretty appreciable figure now, with little change to his actual looks, other than the scales in places and the obvious horn in the forehead. He took off his glasses and found he didn't need them anymore. Figures, he thought. If it is going to change and improve the rest of me, it might as well fix my eyesight, right? He smiled a bit to himself and flexed. He had to admit, the new muscles looked nice.
Meanwhile, his friends were making similar cursory once-overs of their bodies, and most appreciated their changes. Ray and Tim didn't appreciate their lack of horns, but after some mental deliberations, they decided the uniqueness of their pointy additions made up for it. Ray noted that he became a bit more wont to flash toothy grins. "Rather difficult to avoid," he said to himself, with a lisp caused by the tusks that extended down from his incisors. Tim played around with flexing and stretching to see what it did to his spines. He noted rather disappointedly that he wasn't able to extend or retract them.
Ogre looked over his body in the mirror in his little cell that he'd occupied in the same place the night before. Was it that a night had passed already? He didn't really know. No one did. But that wasn't really a deciding factor in his thought processes. He had a slightly different change from the rest--- instead of removing the fat and defining the muscles he already had, the change simply turned most of his fat into muscle. Now he was bigger than most of the competitors on those Strongest Man competitions. He grinned a bit to himself, punching the back wall of his room and laughing as his fist pushed several inches into the wall.
Dave was the least physically altered by his change. All it really did was decrease his fat content. He had never been particularly strong, in a weightlifting kind of sense, but he did notice that he was more dexterous and limber than before. He was able to stretch and put a leg on each wall of his cell and then to switch their positions from the two horizontal walls to the two vertical ones with little impact. He stretched out and smiled to himself.
Presently, a knock came at each of their doors, seemingly all at once, and they stepped out of their room, shielding their eyes from the bright light out there. The room was as before, but many of the dragons had departed. Now the only ones that remained were the eldest dragon seated in the middle of the platform and the two alongside him.
The one seated on his left, a female, was thin and not especially muscular, but she still had an aura of power, somewhat sinister, about her that none of the five could place. As Steve and his friends gazed at her, a thought crossed into their heads, saying the name Tanixamas. The friends immediately understood that this was her name, but didn't understand why. Her scales were blue, and three ridges crisscrossed down her back and her luxurious long tail.
The one on his right, a male, was immense. He was extremely muscled; he even had muscles in places that didn't fit into any anatomy textbook that they'd read. He grinned not maliciously, but ferociously. He had two impressive horns that emerged from his forehead and pushed out and around his sharp-toothed snout. His golden scales shone with a bright sheen, and his most notable feature was the impressive claws--- they seemed as big as any of their heads, each, easily! He didn't use telepathy to tell them his name. He merely grinned and announced in a double basso voice, "..And I am Fequagor. You'll remember it." His appearance left the five visibly shaken.
This left the elder in the middle. His scales were green, and seemed so tarnished with age as to be almost black they were so dark. But when light reflected off of them, it was clear that they were meant to be that color. He had two small horns that came off the sides of his head, with little curve to them. His tail ended in a pointed stinger, and it didn't seem that unlikely to them that it probably had a very potent poison on it. He nodded and in a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once, spoke simply, "I am Naxterimos, and I head this enclave."
Introductions complete, for the three on the platform, the five looked at each other nervously. Stephen cautiously starts, "Well, that's, um... well, I'm Ste--"
"Silence! While you are here and in your current states, you have no names!" Fequagor bellowed. The five cowered at that. None of the others saw fit to speak up in the face of this brute. They were terrified of him, and for good reason. It seemed that the huge dragon would most likely decapitate them with hardly more than a thought.
"Don't scare the whelps, Fequagor. You'll have ample opportunity to do that in due time." The elder dragon, now known to the five as Naxterimos, smiled to himself at what must have been some kind of inside joke. It didn't make them feel any better.
Yes, Fequagor, don't make them pass out again; it's hard enough when they do it just once. The five recognize the voice in their heads as that of the female, Tanizamas. You want answers, I can read it in your brains. You're confused, that's understandable. After all, all we've done is destroy your worldview. The voice laughs a somewhat cruel laugh inside their heads. Ogre is rubbing his ears in irritation.
"Of course they want answers. Well, let me start with questions. Ever hear how all legends begin with some truth? Well, those games you play have some truth to them yourselves. Those damned Knights killed enough of us to send us into permanent hiding. Which is why we have to use trickery to contact anyone." Naxterimos' clawed hands produce one of the coins that brought them into this mess. "Occasionally we'll find some humans who meet our... specifications. When that's the case, we'll comprise some method to bring them into our fold. But this much should be obvious to you by this point."
The comforting female voice filled their heads again. When we see fit to bring humans into our fold, it's because we are in need of new blood to flesh out our species. There aren't many of us left, and we haven't learned to reproduce quickly enough to make up for our falling numbers. Needless to say we have to bring in new humans fairly regularly.
"Wait a minute!" cut in Tim at this point. "You basically brought us in to your.. your... fold to be breeding stock?!"
"No, it's more complicated than that. That's just the take that Tanizamas takes because she's in charge of that particular bit of how the Society deals with that end of the problems we face. Often it's just for a change of pace that we bring in more," Naxterimos said.
"Or for battle!" bellowed Fequagor. "Oftentimes we are at war with one of the other races of this dimension we have retreated into, and when we lose soldiers, we need to bring in new bodies to deal with the threats they pose."
"Wait, there are other kinds?" Steven looked incredulously at the head, Naxterimos.
"Yes, there are. Wolves, Foxes, Bears, Horses, all sorts. Usually we're on good terms with them, but occasionally disputes flare up and this causes wars, great and small. We once were actually part of your world, that's the stories of going out "dragonslaying" that your old English and other cultures play up. Of course, this was cleaned up by churches and the like in your world; they wouldn't want you to know the truth; indeed, there were areas where we had colonies and the like. When a knight went "dragonslaying", he wasn't alone. Often they brought many soldiers with them, and great battles were had. Eventually, the pressure became too much and our wizards had to open portals into this alternate dimension where we couldn't be found. By that time, though, our numbers were decimated."
"What, couldn't you handle a few guys in armor?" It was Ray's turn to be incredulous. As the usual game master, he was intimately familiar with how the dragons in his games could fend off all but the mightiest of challengers.
The battle prowess of humans after we left trickled down quickly. Without the forces of dragons to fight against, their skill for battle was needed less as history pressed on. While humans may be mentally and technologically evolving, their battle prowess decreases with each generation.
That made sense. Most people didn't feel a need to get big and bulky and learn how to fight to kill dragons. It's a need that had probably been rooted out by evolution. The skills of a warrior, at least of a sort the dragons ought to recognize, had dissipated through the years.
"So," said Ogre. "What's the case for our being here?"
The two dragons on each side looked to Naxterimos in the middle. He took a breath.
"When we first arrived in this dimension, the denizens here were originally in stages curious, appalled, and hostile to us. We literally had to fight to find a place to live. Many of us and them died in the battles that raged in the First War. Eventually, however, an intermediary, the great Gryphon orator Egeron, arranged a truce between our two sides, and there was peace for centuries.
"Years after all involved in the wars had passed on, piddling struggles between the different regional areas cropped up. Each species has their own area that they hold on to, and while on the whole, relations are good, at times, relations will sour between one species and another. At present, we are in battle with none of the groups except for the Foxes."
"They plague us with their trickery!" Fequagor was shaking with anger. " Years and years we had good relations with them, until their penchant for petty tricks drove us to fury. We since suffer none of those rogues to practice their roguish trade in our lands!"
Naxterimos irritably continued after Fequagor's outburst. "The foxes are intelligent. They do not directly attack us; they know that such an action would be foolish; our might is simply too much for them. But they are too clever. They set up traps, ambushes. Their armies use trickery and magic to defeat our raiding parties. Usually minimal casualities occur, but one particularly brutal living forest spell claimed a couple dozen of our forces, and we felt the need to repopulate. That is why you have been brought here."
"I know this is a bit of a ridiculous question after all you've told us, but magic is real in this world, too?" Dave questioned, with a sheepish smile on his face.
Shouldn't that be obvious at this point?! Tanizamas glared at the tall half-dragon.
"So we're here for combat. Why us?" Steve asked.
"Because your minds could handle the strain of what was required of you. Without that, you likely would have been driven insane by the changes that went over you (and are still to come) and would not be able to aid."
"What if we don't want to help?" Tim asked.
"Do you really think that's an option, whelp?! You've been brought here to serve, and you shall serve! Now until your training is complete, you shall have no names! You can use your pitiful human names, but those mean nothing in this world!"
And with that, the lights in the room dim and the three dragons seated on their platform disappeared.
Or rather, the platform and room disappeared. The five friends found themselves outside, in a world that looked similar to the one they left, but with subtle differences. For instance, instead of the red brick the buildings of their world were made of, these were made of gothic stone, wood, mud brick and thatch. And they were a good deal smaller, with less stories. As a matter of fact, the whole place looked as if they took their world, and subtracted about 600 years of time from the place. It was all a lot to take in, and they didn't get much of a chance to take it in. Soon after they're able to scan the area around them, a shadow passed over them. Thinking it was a cloud, Steve looked up, and found to his dismay that it was the giant golden dragon, Fequagor.
" Hello there, whelps! It's time for your training to begin, but first, it's time for you to be placed into your barracks. You'll follow me."
The five felt compelled to follow, but certainly by no magical means.
They arrived at a squat thatch-and-wood building, with a door and perilously few windows.
"That's all the amenities you'll be getting while you're under my tutelage. Now you get in there and get used to the surroundings; I'm going to be back in thirty minutes and I expect all of you to be ready to work!"
The huge dragon put a ton of extra force into the word "work" and it actually seemed to hit the five of them with a palpable amount of force, with the way they flinched from its impact. They entered the building, a bit slowly, worried about what was going to happen to them in the days, weeks, and months to come. They each entered the room to find actual beds, which was a step up from the straw they had been sleeping on for what seemed like several nights, if the crick in each of their backs was any indication.
Tim laid down in his bed and looked up, grateful that they weren't bunkbeds. He was not certain that any bed could hold that much weight off the ground, but then he noticed that there seemed to be something more to the wood of each of these beds, and he thought it must have something to do with magic. He thought back to the world they'd left, with schoolwork and free time and girls. Oh yes, girls. Back in the other dimension, Tim was a veritable ladies' man. He brought a different girl back to the apartment each week, which caused him to catch plenty of grief back with his friends. Thinking about that, he clenched his fist, knowing that in this world he was nothing but small potatoes. He thought about his old body, about his hands with soft pink flesh and nails, and he looked at his fist. Shocked, he saw that it had returned to his fleshy, pink, human hand. With a figurative light bulb appearing over his head, and he thought about his draconic, clawed hand, and clenched his fist. Before his eyes, his hand shifted back.
"Guys!" he yelled. "Look at this!" He demonstrated, and they gaped. "Apparently, all I have to do is will it, and I can change it! I just have to will hard enough!" And with that, he closed his eyes and clenched his muscles and hands and clamped his eyes shut. Very slowly, his body began shifting back to his human form. Then of course, a small earthquake occurred and broke his concentration, and he quickly went back to half-draconic.
" Good to see you're exploring your abilities already, whelp." The booming voice and quaking footsteps of the gigantic Fequagor interrupted him. "But that's not what you're training yet! Get out here onto the green, on the double! It's time to teach you whelps something of combat!"
The five grudgingly trudged out the opened door, not exactly looking forward to this particular training session.