A Pet for the Dragons

3.

ARIKA

As I slowly started to surface from the nightmares that plagued me regularly, I noticed pain. I mentally searched my body to find the source of pain but couldn't. However, the pain was there. It was just that I couldn't quite locate where it pained precisely, but I was in pain.

Too much pain. I'd never been in this much pain, in this kind of pain.

I breathed, trying to ease the pain, but it only seemed to get worse the more I became aware of the pain. The more I became aware of the pain, the more I became aware of my surroundings.

It was unnaturally cold, and I shivered. I wanted to curl up and rub my feet together for warmth, but I couldn't move my body. The pain was holding me down, keeping me from surfacing from the nightmares.

I groaned... or tried to let out one.

I tried to remember why I was in so much pain. However, I couldn't. All I saw was white, and the sound of sea waves crashing filled my ears. That soothed me for a second.

The sea always soothed me the same way it daunted me. But for now, I imagined a calm sea and some seagulls flying in the distance, the dolphins dancing in front of my ship's bow— I tried to imagine all the things that calmed me down to divert me from pain and for a moment, it helped.

I sighed but felt something move beside me. I tried to open my eyes to see what had moved, but all strength seemed to have left my body suddenly. Just the mere task of opening my eyes to see felt too much.

However, I sensed more movement and some growls that reminded me of wild animals. A shiver ran down my spine. I wasn't used to hearing growls like that. I was more used to hearing whales' calls and the sea's roar. Growls meant I was somewhere on land and in the woods—I hated woods.

I heard more growls, and this finally made me force my eyes open. At first, I didn't see anything. My vision was blurry, but I saw patches of colour. I had been expecting a shock of green in my vision, but instead, I saw patches of grey, darkness, and something dark greyish that seemed to move.

I blinked a couple more times until my vision finally started to clear up. I could see more blobs of colour and even make out some objects. I could make out a human-like figure lingering above me, and another one stood a few places away, staring at me.

I blinked several more times to clear my vision. As my vision started to get clearer and clearer, I noticed that the human I was staring at had an odd grey tint to its skin. When the blur was finally gone, I realized it wasn't human.

No. It looked like a human, but it wasn't one—the horns and scales on his forehead and neck were a dead giveaway.

A dragon. A Drakkon!

My eyes widened as I studied the creature in front of me. He had horns that curled towards the back of his head and was covered with thick, long dark hair.

The forehead and the rest of the face were framed with scales of a strange grey tint, and his skin had the same grey tint. However, it wasn't the scales nor the horns that made my heart stutter.

No. It was the eyes. The he-dragon I was looking at had a deep set of eyes that seemed to possess a strange inner glow. I wondered if it was because they were dragons or if it had something to do with the snow dust they consumed.

Whatever the reason behind his glowing eyes, they had a piercing intensity while analyzing me.

"She's awake," another voice said and lifted its head. I realized that the strange weight on my chest had been someone's head—another dragon. But what was he doing there?

I stared at the second dragon. He had some of the same features as the previous one, but his scales were black instead of grey. However, his skin looked more humane than the grey dragon's.

The black-scaled one also had the same intensity about himself, but he seemed a bit more gentle than the grey one. The grey one looked at me ferally as if I owed him something, and that wasn't a good thing.

It flickered a feeling in me— related to a crucial memory I was desperately groping for in my head, but I just couldn't catch it yet. However, I didn't have to remember anything to know I was in trouble as the two dragons stared at me pensively.

"Can you hear us?" the grey one asked. His voice had a deep boom that reverberated through the whole room.

"Arika?" The black one said my name, and the grey one scowled at him. I shuddered at the almost murderous look that flashed into the grey one's eyes. It reminded me of how ruthless and fearful the dragons were.

Again, that odd feeling stirred into me. I knew I was having difficulty remembering something very vital. I needed to recall it before it was too late.

"Where am I?" I asked, taking several breaths between each word and spacing them out until it didn't feel like a complete sentence anymore, but they seemed to have understood me.

"You're in the Arctic," The black-scaled one answered with a business-like tone. "Being held as our prisoner in the Gallow Castle for not delivering on the promised item,"

The grey-scaled one frowned at him, but he flashed the same look to me— like I owed him something.

What did I owe them? What did I fail to deliver to the dragons? What deal did I make with the dragons? I forced myself to remember; soon enough, I could remember everything.

Abandoned port. Servers. Explosives. Countdown. Gunshots. Bloods. Screams. Big scary wolf and many other things. Images flashed in front of my rheumy eyes rapidly until I was blinking rapidly.

I'd promised to deliver some servers to the dragons in exchange for a chest of Drakkon gold. The servers were gone now. I remembered the explosion. I could still feel how it shook me while I lay in the snow, bleeding.

"Where are the servers, Arika?" the grey-scaled dragon asked, and my eyes flashed back to him. My heart was beating hard in my chest suddenly, and it was all I could hear.

Black dots started appearing in my vision until they covered all of my vision, pulling me back into the abyss of nightmares.

~

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