from the ashes of tragedy comes hope
#1 of a chance for a new life
Hey guys, I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything or made any comments cause I've had a few internet troubles but I have been reading your stuff. I'm quite disappointed that no one has bothered to review a few of my later works (mostly songfics, though they still seem to get read and rated a fair bit I would love to hear exactly what you all think). This story marks my first venture outside of Spyro and Cynder, without those guidelines I may just be able to expand a bit and get better, or burn to ashes in a torrent of low ratings and reviews loaded with complaints (but I will stick with dragons cause they rock), hopefully not the latter. Once again I will use the name of Ryan as it has stuck with me as a generally good name for a Character. Not to common but not strange and obscure, As usual I will attempt to write a witty remark on the law that states people of age less than 18 are to be not viewing this story, even though they should've fucking guessed as much by now if they have seen even the banner, which makes the statement of this in each story rather useless. NOTE: none of the characters in this story are in any relation to the stories I have previously written. And all names are coincidental of all Spyro series or anyone else's stories you may have read. Batteries not included ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter one 1- from the ashes of tragedy comes hope ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I live the equivalent childhood that insane murderers have, and yet I keep my sanity, why?, I can feel myself on the edge of a cliff and I am threatened constantly by the risk of falling, at times I try to push myself over, to let it all go and to end my suffering by ending all rationally thought. But something keeps me anchored here, not strong enough to pull me back but enough to keep me there until I learn how. That something is the torrential rain and the howling wind, that something is the burning flames and billowing smoke, it is night and the calming darkness it brings and the day with a radiant sun to fill my energy, simply watching a flower bloom in a day and a tree grow in a year. It is my simple moments alone that help to dull the bone crushing pain of my existence, knowing that by the laws of equivalent exchange, that which governs the world we live in and nature, my suffering brings these beautiful things to the world, in all their glory...... Ryan walked home, once again, an emotional mess, he stared at the ground in front of him as the sadness and hate burned inside him like a pillar of fire. He reached the last road he had to cross before his house, how easy it would be to step in front of a car, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He sighed inwardly and crossed the road warily at a small lull in the traffic; he completed his half-hour walk home moments later as he walked up his drive way and entering through the door. It was the middle of August and school was as terrible as it could get for him. He was barely getting average marks in school, not because of a lack of intelligence, he was actually quite smart in many ways but none of them could be applied for school. It also didn't help that he was constantly trying not to break down into tears or attempt to kill the other kids in his class, this was because he was their prime pick to bully. No reasonable adult would guess it unless they saw it because it was nothing like what they grew up with, but then many things had changed since then that they should've realized things like this would eventually as well. The reason they didn't even think it possible was Ryan being the average height of a 15 year old and about 65 kg at only 11 years old, and this made him easy for verbal abuse while the kids stayed out of range for him to beat them. But every time he tried he got into trouble because he was 'bullying' them for 'no reason', they always got away with it to, because they covered each other's backs but no one covered Ryan's. To the world he was seen as the big bad kid picking on the weaker one, and if he did hurt someone they would be left with a visible injury and they could prove he did it, but they left scars on him that were worse than anything he could do to them, but to show someone those scars meant to open up, something that he could never do to another human being. As if not already bad enough he had bright blonde hair that made him stick out in a crowd even more than his towering height did, coupled with a nose that everybody kept telling him (although he could not see or feel anything wrong with it) was way too big and made him even uglier, if that was possible. Now you'd think that he would be glad to get home after all that but his house was hardly a home. His older sister despised him, but luckily she would be moving out sometime this year and sharing a place with one of her friends. His parents had always told him how ungrateful he as for the great life they gave him, and he did have a good life, materialistically that is. He was devoid of love from his parents, his mother always favored his sister over him and made no attempt to hide it, giving her sympathy over Ryan no matter what the case was, while his father worked 16 hours a day to provide them with a good life. Of course Ryan would've rather lived on the streets and have his dad a normal father, rather than a dad who yelled at you for anything, and even the smallest things like eating chips or walking in front of the TV earned you a glare to melt glaciers and a tirade of insults that better suited people in Guantanamo bay. And though he never hit him there was always that fear, and always was he told he was useless and lazy, which embedded sadness and anger deeply into him, forever. THREE YEARS LATER Ryan allowed a small glimmer of hope as the plane soared above yet another beautiful mountain range covered with forests, he was on his way to a new life in Hudson Bay. A beautiful serene bay in Canada, his father had gotten a job there for a multi-billionaire business man who needed his own mechanic and had happened upon him on a visit to a company he'd recently bought in Strathpine. His car had broken down at the driveway into Ryan's father's self-owned business and he had repaired it quickly and effectively with much praise from the man. The second Ryan's dad had been told he would get a large property with no tax and a yearly salary of $470,000 on the condition of being at the beck and call of the rich man's mechanical needs he had accepted with much happiness. Now Ryan was to get a second chance on life, but he still didn't care to show emotion outside of himself nor let anyone in just as a precaution, to put it metaphorically, He had built a sphere of steel around his heart to keep it safe. Just as the hostess finally reached the back row (which was where he had been placed because the rich man had only given his father two first class tickets, so he was alone in the back row as his sister had opted to stay with her friends) the plane suddenly rocked to the left, throwing the hostess and the unseat-belted people into the chairs, then the plane angled itself sharply downwards, aiming at the forest not 300 meters from the base of a large mountain. Various loose objects flew to the back of the cabin, plastic knives and forks rammed into people's head and the laminated safety brochures cut deep as they flew past. Ryan, being in the last row, was one of the last to be hit, and as the plane came within a hundred feet of the ground Ryan was wacked by the flat side of a large book, and blackness quickly over took him. â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€" Cynder purred contently to herself as she stretched on her favorite rock, she knew that she wasn't really supposed to be out here and the sky inside was exactly the same as outside but she still preferred the real thing. Her Black scales would have glittered beautifully in the light but she herself could not reach them to clean, but she did clean her under belly so her red-purple scales were shiny and beautiful. She also made sure to keep her scythe like tail blade razor sharp and polished, she was about a meter tall from foot to back and two and a-half meters from nose to tail with a wing span about 3 meters all the way across. She looked up to the sky, emerald eyes glittering, and saw one of the strange things humans used for flying, she wished that she could get a closer look, but then the flying tube gave a hard dip to the left, so it was aiming almost the direction she was in and plummeted to the ground. She watched, frozen in terror as the thing smashed into the forest, not 300 meters from her with a ground shaking collision, trees and chunks of dirt flew everywhere as the flying giant was ripped apart and pulverized, as suddenly as it had happened it had stopped, and to her surprise no flames appeared present. She shakily got up and, stopping a moment to compose herself, ran through the trees to get to the wreckage. _______________ Ryan groaned as he slowly regained consciousness, his head thumped and he was in pain all over, he could feel a large bruise on his head where the book had hit him and something sharp had left him with a deep cut on his arm and a cut ran along his side, both bleeding freely, and his legs felt like they were being crushed. He cracked opened his eyes and found the chair in front of him had broken off its base and was sitting, with the dead body of a rather obese man, on his legs. He slowly moved his arms forward and shoved the chair off him, which took so much effort that he almost past out again, and then he pulled himself out of his seat and crawled out of the steel wreckage. He dragged himself over to the nearest still-standing tree and sat himself on the soft grass, lying in the shade it provided, he didn't bother looking for survivors, the only people that had any chance of surviving the crash had been those in the row he was in, but they were most defiantly dead, shards of steel through the head wasn't usually survivable. He groaned as a fresh wave of pain rolled over him and he coughed violently, after it had sub-sided he put back his head, so he could die more comfortably. But as he slowly drifted off he heard the sound of feet on grass and roused himself again, he might as well find out if anyone else survived before he died, tell them what he thought of this hole of a planet, and so slowly he opened his eyes to see the last thing he expected. ______________________ Cynder shivered in the foreboding silence and the stench of death hung in the air like an unwanted guest. As she gazed upon the wreckage her stomach knotted and she fought revulsion, as a dragon she had eaten animals and she was never even slightly queasy when ripping them apart, but this was something different. Slowly, Cynder made her way through the twisted piles of metal and the disfigured bodies, most of them were twisted at unnatural angles, some were impaled on various objects, others still were in more than one piece, certainly no one could have survived. She called out softly, hoping against hope that somebody would answer. She started when she heard a low moan, followed by violent coughing, she rushed towards the noise and saw a human had dragged itself away, she hesitantly advanced towards the resting male, not knowing how he'd react to something he never seen before. She sat down a few feet away and looked him over, his clothes were ripped and looked more like rags, A cut on his arm had almost stopped bleeding as had one on his side, though a thin trickle still ran down his forehead, She leaned in closer to see if anything else was wrong when he opened his eyes. â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€" Ryan had learned not to show his true feelings through the constant attacks on him, someone could yell things at him until their throats were sore, or until they ran out of words but he wouldn't even flinch, on the inside as well as on the outside. So when he saw a dragon sitting in front of him with a concerned look in its eyes he barely raised an eyebrow. But that was on the outside, on the inside his brain was working over time to come up with a rational explanation for it. He looked over the dragon and came to a few conclusions; he had always had a fascination of them so he knew a lot about them. She seemed to be a subspecies of the European, as it looked like one in every way except size, but even then it was rather small, and so it was still young. He also guessed her to be female, as her body seemed built less for strength but more for speed. He would have gone on examining her but a fresh wave of pain rolled over him and he blacked out once again. ____________________ Cynder's paws shot forward to catch the boy as he fell towards the ground, she lay him down gently and placed him on his back, she then clenched shut her eyes, allowing tears to build up, And then leant over the boy. Her tears fell down onto the gash on his arm, the second they made contact the wound seemed to wriggle before, ever so slowly, healing, she went about this process on each of the worst wounds. Dragon tears were a potent medicine which came in four levels, tears taken by force were rather weak and good for small cuts, freely given tears that were forced by the dragon itself, like in this case, could heal larger injuries. True tears could heal many sicknesses and life threatening wounds while the ultimate healing were tears of love, which could heal mortal wounds and the most deadly of diseases. Once she had finished she took a deep breath and tried not to fall asleep, using the tears could take a lot of a dragon. Once Cynder had focused herself she realized that the sun had set and the moon had begun its rise, with a great sigh Cynder used her tail to hack up a few branches and, with a small breath, started a little bonfire to keep the human warm and to ward off the blood sucking insects of the forest. Cynder lay down next to the male so as to keep an eye on him, for when he Awoke the loss of blood may affect his thinking and he could wander of, he would be easy prey for the larger animals around the forest, she settled in and decided that he wouldn't be waking up soon, so she allowed herself to drift off into a shallow sleep. Ryan awoke in a daze before the memories flooded back he cracked open his eyes and sighed at the recent events that whirled around his brain, waking up like this becoming a habit, he thought to himself. He stretched his arms when he realized that the large cuts were gone and his head didn't hurt at all, he looked about to see the sleeping dragon lying next to him. After a quick look over of the dragon again he could tell that its body was definitely built more for speed instead of strength, so it was more than likely to be a girl, he already thought so from his brief memory after the crash but it's best to make sure. It's a good idea to be able to address her properly when she awoke because an angry dragon is not fun to be around. He quietly got up so he didn't disturb her and stretched in the light glow that was given off by the rising sun, he looked around at the broken wreckage and sighed, not much could disturb him further than he already was and the sight of bodies like this really didn't do much for him. He walked over to the still rather intact tail part of the plane he had been sitting in, after climbing over the seats and the five or so bodies he checked found that most of the food there was good, the covered dinners would need heating but that wasn't a problem with a fire breathing dragon about. He also found that some of the drink cans had survived the crash so he collected these to and carried them carefully back to the fire, he placed a few of the packets in the fire on the edges to heat up and went back to the wreckage to search for the luggage bay. His clothes were already torn from the crash but hopefully some form of clothes could be found, he found a few scattered luggage bags and two of them had men's clothes that would be appropriate for him to wear, he also managed to find his luggage bag and it was in good condition so he brought them back with him to the fire after getting changed into some loose black shorts and a comfortable loose shirt with twin dragons wrapped about a sword on the back. As he sat down he noticed a long stick with a hook like end, perfect for retrieving the tin foiled-dinners, he grabbed the stick and pulled out one of the dinners. Using his ripped clothes as gloves so he didn't burn himself he gingerly opened the top of the packet. Cynder's nose was assaulted by the beautiful smell of cooked vegetables and meat with herbs lightly spread through, it was the most she could do not to jump up and attempt to find the source of the smell but that could well awaken the boy and perhaps frighten him. Instead she slowly lifted one eye and surveyed her surroundings; the boy was holding a silver container that emitted the beautiful smell. He had a strange three pronged object In his hand and was about to stick it into the box when he paused and looked up at her. Ryan paused and looked up at the seemingly asleep dragon, if her eyes were open he couldn't tell it but he had felt like someone was watching him intently. He realized that the smell from the dinner was easily strong enough to awaken a dragon, what with their excellent sense of smell and all, and she must be hungry. He carefully dragged himself over to sit in front of the dragoness and put the food down in front of her with a smile. "I can tell your awake" he said quietly, her eyes shot open and she looked up at the boy with interest, "what?" "You speak my language?" she asked with a curious look on her face. This time it was Ryan's turn to be stunned, "what?" she asked innocently, doing a perfect impersonation of him, Ryan laughed happily and the dragoness joined him. "Well I shouldn't really be surprised" said Ryan once they had finished laughing, "according to legends some dragons learnt English and could write in our letters. But then some legends say you're all giant fire breathing monstrosities with no regard for life so you can't believe everything." "Hmm" thought the dragoness, "some of our European ancestors had a bit of a liking for gold, and you humans seemed to have an awful lot of it, and a few bad and greedy dragons sorta ruined it for us. But we're not the only ones to make bad decisions, what about all those knights of yours that hunted us near extinction", Ryan shook his head and turned to the fire to retrieve the other dinners before they burned. "Well, humans are just afraid of things they don't know" said Ryan sadly, "I'm one of the few people that wouldn't freak out the second I saw you, but anyway" now he turned around to face her again "we sorta got into a discussion without much formality, I'm Ryan." He was about to reached out his hand to shake but stopped and instead simply dipped his head. "And I am Cynder" replied the dragoness with a bow of her own head, "so Ryan, do you feel okay, you did lose a lot of blood" he smirked and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm alive, uninjured, except for lack of blood, and not surrounded by hateful people but with a kind dragoness, how could I not be okay?" she chuckled to herself but he had already continued, "Speaking of which, how did I survive? I remember having cuts and bruises everywhere but now I've only got a few small scrapes" "To put it simply, dragon's tears can heal" said Cynder, to prove her point she clenched her eyes shut then open them for a single tear to fall on her claw, she hovered her claw tip over a small cut on Ryan's leg and let it drip onto the mark. He twitched his leg as he felt a strange burning sensation come over the cut and he watched in awe as the skin seemed to ripple and pull together seconds later all that was left was flawless skin. "Wow" was all Ryan could manage few a while before he shook himself enough from his thoughts to say "I knew parts of dragons were magical and could be used for many things and your blood is very useful but tears? Guess you learn something new every day. Maybe the crash was a good thing for me?" Cynder smiled at him and he returned it but then he seemed to sadden and sighed "but a rescue team will be here soon to check out the wreckage, and I'll have to go back to that damn world" "You don't want to go back?" she asked inquisitively, "won't you miss your friends and family? And the other humans?" "No?" said Ryan bluntly, "the worlds full of hate and a lot of it seems to get directed at me, besides, I've got no friends, and my family that is still alive treat me like shit. If I were to miss anyone it would be you when I go back". Cynder was slightly shocked at his answer, they had known each other for less than an hour and already he liked her more than the rest of the world. "Well", she ventured cautiously, "maybe you'd like to come live with me?" Ryan smiled at her warmly but shook his head. "I'd be a burden" he said with regret, "the years of neglect gave me food as my friend and I'm nowhere near fit, and with the dying out animals round here you need all the food you can get", Cynder laughed happily much to the boys confusion. "Trust me, you'll be no burden at all, we have enough food to feed our city half over again" she said with a smile, "so if you would like to you can stay" "We? City?" he replied excitedly, when she nodded in return he could help but smile. "you know, I always liked dragons but I, and the rest of the world thought you myths, or extinct at best but now I being invited to live with you, how could I say no." they stayed silent for awhile to think things over a bit when a loud growl was heard from Cynders stomach, she blushed a bit and Ryan just laughed, he passed her one of the dinners and they ate happily together. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well there you go, don't know how long it'll be till ma next installment but hopefully it will be soon cause I want to see what will happen.