Inferno Legacy: Loyalty of the Dragon (Book Two)

Chapter 15

        The following week was very uneventful as Inferno slowly healed and Cody and Mournful went out hunting for him and the others every day. During the little trips, Cody started to realize that not only were the deer big, but so were the other animals and even the plants and trees, and everything seemed to get bigger, if only slightly, the further they went. For Cody’s sake they avoided the neighboring deer herd as much as possible and instead went for smaller – though still enormous – prey like rabbits whose backs nearly reached Cody’s waist in height, squirrels that could stretch out to be longer than him from noses to tail-tip, and they even caught a turkey a few miles away that was as tall as Cody’s chest.

                Towards the eighth day it was decided that they would try to hunt a larger deer to feed Inferno. The idea made Cody shudder for a moment, but Destiny and Ashheart volunteered to go with to help. Both the dragon and wolf had grown over the course of a week until Ashheart was only slightly smaller than Destiny, who was just large enough to ride, since she stood shoulder to shoulder with Cody. Neither had hunted on their own but Cody could tell that both were more than capable of bringing down a large deer.

                Before long they managed to bring down the second largest deer in the herd: a buck that only stood about 15 feet tall. Cody noted that the buck, same as the larger one, had darker brown stripes along his flank, and up close he noticed that the antlers were the same dark brown as tree branches. Obviously it would help the deer appear to be only a tree to larger hunters. The thought suddenly scared Cody.

                “Mournful, why do things get so much bigger here? Are there things like giant wolves further in the forest?”

                Mournful, in her gryphon shape, responded in her mind, “The Hidden Mountain Pass seems to have that sort of effect on natives, though my kind were excluded somewhat. We are mostly still larger, some of us as tall as eight feet, but for the most part we do not grow much taller than humans. Dragons and wolves are the only other intelligent creatures native to this land, and it has certainly had an effect on the dragons.”

                “What about the wolves?” Cody asked. “Wargs and Wargals aren’t too much larger than the wolves of Semiones, and do larger wolves live here?”

                “That is normally a long story, but to make it short I will give you only a small history,” Mournful said as she sat down to rest from their weary hunt. “Wargs and Wargals were natives here once, towards the beginning of time. But as the dragons began crossing over to the other world, so too did the wolves. However, the dragons that left became even more feral and were set loose upon your world, causing the chaos and destruction know to you in stories. But the opposite happened for the wolves: those who stayed behind became vicious and those who went settled down in relative peace in Semiones. Those who lived in Semiones; the Wargs, Wargals, and wild dragons, stopped growing at a certain point, while those who stayed in Mrana Akano Furista continued to grow. For your own peace of mind I won’t say how much the wild wolves have grown since then, but there are large predators out here such as wolves, who are no longer as sophisticated as their distant relatives.”

                At the end of her story Mournful stood and walked over to their deer kill and with help from Destiny, Ashheart, and Cody, she managed to drag it bit by bit through the forest. The sun was down and darkness was descending in the mountains when they returned. There was a golden, glowing fire in the center of the little clearing they had made, and the three that remained: Inferno, Omen, and Avalsmokes, were having a light conversation together.

                “It’s about time you were back!” Omen announced when he saw them. “My stomach’s been howling at me all throughout the day.”