Dragon's Blood

The Truth

Iyla knew what the creature in front of them was, it was blindingly obvious but yet completely and utterly impossible. She knew because her flat was full of them, beautiful carvings made by her Uncle. But they weren't real, dragons were definitely not real.

The obviously completely imaginary dragon snorted and a lick of pretty real looking flame hit a box of cereal, turning it instantly into a small pile of ash. Still trying to convince herself that what was in front of her was a figment of her imagination, Iyla reasoned that it was not actually as big as she would have expected a dragon to be, about the size of a horse, as far as she could judge. Everyone knew dragons were enormous creatures; well, they were in films anyway. And, of course, as they weren't real, size was actually irrelevant.

Whatever it was, real or not, it was presently crouched down in the shadows at the back of the stock room and Iyla could see strong muscles bulging under a tough hide and four powerful legs with dangerous looking talons. A long sweeping tail stretched almost to Bill's feet, with evil looking spikes running down its length and a sharp, bony, spade like tip. Its neck was long and slender and despite the scales and spikes, the overall impression was one of grace. It looked straight at Iyla, its amber eyes burning from the semi-darkness. It shifted its weight slightly and stretched out its wings, taking down a few more rows of shelves loudly as it did so and shrinking back from the noise nervously. Iyla couldn't help but marvel at them, they were like enormous bats wings with thin leathery skin stretched over what looked like long boney fingers.

Bill jumped back as its tail flicked near his feet, the first of them to wake from their stupor and react to what was happening, "That's it," he said urgently, turning to Iyla, "We need to get out of here. Now!"

"Bill," Sam said in a low voice, his hands out to his side, palms facing the floor in a stance as if trying to keep things as calm as possible, "Stand still."

"You want me to stand still? To stay in here with that - that - thing?" Bill asked in a hoarse whisper, looking at Sam as if he'd gone mad.

"Just stand still and let Iyla get a bit closer to it," Sam repeated, "We'll be safe once she's in front of us."

Now it was Iyla's turn to look incredulously at her Uncle, what was he trying to do, use her as bait?

"WHAT?" she whispered.

"This is going to take some explaining, I realise that," said Sam quietly through  gritted teeth in the understatement of the century, "But what we don't have just now is an awful lot of time so if you could just TRUST me and DO WHAT I SAY, that would be a BIG HELP." Whilst whispering, he still managed to enunciate the important words to get his point across.

Iyla looked at the ... whatever it was, because it wasn't a dragon, that would be ridiculous. She took in, once again, the sharp talons and general spikiness and looked back at her Uncle. He couldn't possibly really want her to get between them and - it? Could he?

Sensing her reasonable apprehension and clear confusion, Sam tried again, this time taking his fixed gaze from the creature and looking straight at Iyla as he spoke.

"Look at her Iyla, look into her eyes and tell me you honestly feel afraid of her," he said, but Iyla continued to stare only at him.

"Trust me," he said, it was all he had, he just had to hope she did.

"This is a dream," Iyla decided out loud, "I'm asleep and this is just another one of my crazy dreams."

"Then no harm will come from doing as I say will it?" Sam said reasonably. Bill meanwhile was looking at Sam in horror and assuming Iyla would do no such thing.