Dragon Proxies

End of Peace

Day 6, the month of Tantalus, the year 1019.

The air felt heavy.

A young man opened his eyes and found himself standing in the middle of a floating rocky platform. The platform was unstable as it would shake the moment he tried moving. The sound of rumbling earth was everywhere as he looked around, but all he could see was blood-red.

From the corner of his scarred right eye, he could see that the edges of the platform he was standing on were starting to crumble little by little. He was on his own in the middle of an unknown space and the only weapon to protect himself from any possibility of being attacked was a rusty old sword he was holding.

His ears picked up a sound like a low growl, prompting him to turn around. He held the old sword in front of him as five gigantic figures suddenly formed in front of him. He tried to threaten them with his sword, but no words came out of his mouth. The figures-in the form of dragons-spread their wings to form a dome around him on the platform, but as threatening as the situation was, he had no plans to throw his life away.

He readied his sword but then looked up when he heard flapping wings above him. He saw the silhouette of a dragon much smaller than the other gigantic dragons around him. He jumped back before the dragon could step on him as it landed, shaking the entire platform as a result.

He kept his sword ready for a preemptive strike, but the sight of the smaller dragon's glowing red eyes froze him in place. The glare pierced his very soul, feeling as if the dragon was tearing him apart from inside. His legs gave up on him as the dragon refused to look away from him and stomped closer instead.

His sword fell into the ground with a loud clang but his hands were shaking too much to be able to pick it back up. He could feel cold sweat dripping from his cheeks as he could sense the malice from the smaller dragon. He might think that the additional smaller dragon was not a big threat, but he felt more fear just by looking at that one dragon compared to the other five combined.

And yet, the smaller dragon felt familiar to him for some reason.

The smaller dragon approached him and the only thing in his mind was no longer to fight but to run. He could not run as his legs refused to listen to him and he was left to crawl backward until he was at the very edge of the platform. The dragon drew closer and left him without more footing space, making him fall into the depths of red nothingness below.

Even as he fell, the vision of its glowing red eyes continued to haunt his mind.

---

"GAAAH!!!"

With a loud rustling sound, a young man suddenly jolted awake and sat on his bed. His thin red shirt was drenched in cold sweat that was still trickling from his pitch-black short hair. He could feel his heart thumping to the point that he could almost hear it beating. His breathing was short and quick as if he had been doing strenuous activities, but he recalled doing nothing else but sleeping in his bed.

He tried calming down his breathing as he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He rubbed his eyes before covering his face as he recalled anything he could remember about the dream he had just now. Everything was as clear as day; the blood-red atmosphere, the figures resembling dragons, and how he woke up after he apparently fell from that platform with the smaller dragon staring right into his very soul.

He had to wonder if it was truly a mere dream; it felt too real to be one. Especially when it was not the first time he had that kind of strange dream.

"It's... that thing again..."

He whispered to himself, looking back into similar memories-those dreams about dragons surrounding him-that kept haunting him for as long as he could remember. He could not remember how long he had been having them, but it was getting more and more frequent the older he got.