Dragon Scales Book Two: Dragonet

Chapter 4

I woke up curled up in my nest of soft greenery Caelea and I had collected in the days that we lived here. I had taken to sleeping in a position with my elbows tucked in and my knees pressed to my chest with my wings acting as a blanket. If there's one thing I learned as a dragon hybrid is that there's very few positions that are comfortable to sleep in.

I sighed as I remembered the previous day's events, and resolved to find Caelea and apologize.

Slowly, I sat up, yawned, and stretched.

"My gosh, Fin, how long does it take you to get up? We have stuff to do!"

I whipped my head around to see Caelea standing in the entrance to my cave. "Wha- Caelea, look, I-"

She let out a snort. "Never mind, that, Fin! I got the door open!"

"What?!"

"Yep! I decided that, since you were being a stubborn little hatchling, I might as well be the grown-up and go ask Skeil to melt down the boulders. He's waiting for us to go in now."

"Wha... Who... Hu... I was being the stubborn hatchling!?!" I blubbered indignantly.

"Come onnnn..." Caelea whined and preceded to hooked her claw onto my already ruined pants and drag me towards the cave shaft. I began to pull away but stopped when I heard ripping.

"Stop that, Caelea, before you tear them in half!" I quickly untangled her claw and pulled away, my dignity lying in pieces on the floor along with a strip from my pant leg.

"Well come on already!" I rolled my eyes and chased after her as she bounded down the hallway. I quickly caught up, as I could maneuver through the caverns much easier then Caelea.

We soon arrived at the door to the hybrid place where Skeil was waiting for us.

He nodded a greeting to us, then says, "Well, as you two discovered the place, you should go first.

I nodded and stepped up to the door, now opening into a dark hallway with a lumpy melted floor for a doormat.

Peering into the cave, I sucked in a breath of astonishment. Because it was less of a cave and more of a grand hall.

It extended maybe fifty feet deep and thirty wide, the walls being either an incredibly detailed carving, or actual brickwork, made from a sort of blue-gray stone. The ceiling was a domed arch, with thick pillars about ten feet apart, a row on either side of the middle of the hall. At the end of the hall, the path split into two staircases, one going up and the other down. On the wall behind the staircases was a half-rotted tapestry showing what appeared to be a dragon and a hybrid orbiting each other in flight.

On the walls to the side, between each of the five pillars on each side, were rotting wooden doors. The thing was, though, they were human-sized, and wouldn't let a dragon older than four-ish months through.

I slowly began to walk forward toward the stair cases. I turned to the first door on my right and moved to it. It had rotted away around the edges and seemed crooked on its hinges. I slowly reached a hand out to push it, holding my breath for fear that letting it out would send the door toppling over. I grabbed the metal handle and slowly pushed. The door promptly ripped off its hinges and fell inward. I stuck my head into the room.

Inside the door was a short rising corridor that opened into a decent sized room. There were two chairs that appeared to have been modified, or even created, to accommodate wings and a tail. they were half rotted away. A circular stone table was in between the chairs. On the table was a glass vase containing some dead, wilted flowers that would probably have turned to dust if I touched them. A shelf against the left wall was filled with things like animal skulls and half rotted-away taxidermied animals.