Taking Sides

Chapter 12: Magic

-Chapter 12: Magic-

I woke to find that Tyran had assumed his quadrupled form to sleep, and had placed his snout in my lap while I, myself dozed. It was obvious enough from the slight smile on his snout that he was happy, and I didn’t want to disturb his sleep by moving, and instead, settling for lying there and stroking his horns as he snored slightly, purring in his sleep, like a large cat.

Eventually, I dozed off again, and woke to see Tyran nosing me awake, still in his quad form. “You still sleep in your biped form, father? After all these years…”

I shrugged. “I was human for nineteen years. They are permanently biped anyway. Besides, I have no idea how to change forms, and I don’t think I can change when I’m Aurak.”

Tyran snorted and changed back to his biped form. “Perhaps. Maybe we’ll try it later. Now, we must go to the research room. Faelius is waiting.”

I cocked my head. “Research room?” Where’s that?”

Tyran snorted. “I see you’re picking up your old habits already… The research room is where you’re supposed to show us how to use technology. You’ve already been inside before, I think.”

I blinked, trying to remember any mention of such a room, but drew a blank. “Don’t think so… No one mentioned that name explicitly anyway…”

Tyran snorted. “That explains why. It’s just the room full of the human gadgets and such. They also said that there’s some metal thing there that makes a racket when you pull a string… Does that help?”

My mind clicked. “Ahhh you mean the generator, and the room they left the thing in?”

I received a nod, while at the back of my mind, I found Aurak still dozing. I let him lie.

“Shall we go, father? Lest we miss breakfast. I hear its chicken.” Tyran remarked, while making his way to the door.

“Chicken again… ugh.” I muttered, groaning, as I followed.

Tyran stopped to stare at me for a moment. “I thought you liked chicken?”

I snorted. “Used to, but I got sick of it because the army serves it every day, and it tastes terrible. Trust me, if you ever eat army food, don’t judge. Just go and spit it out somewhere. It’s bad, but human food in general is okay.”

Tyran chuckled. “Perhaps. Try it again, but cook it with your own flame. You’ll like it once again, I promise. Trust me.”

I nodded, ruffling his mane while we took off. “Of course. What sort of dragon would I be if I don’t trust my own son, hmm?”

Tyran batted my wingtip playfully. “Not a very good one I’d say.”

I nodded, and we continued flying, when I realised that someone was calling up to me from below. Or rather, he was calling up to Aurak… It was another gold dragon. Probably a friend of his. This, of course, complicated things, as I had no idea who that was… To make things worse, Aurak himself was still happily whiling his time away in dreamland….

I waved tentatively to the other dragon, while I shot a look at Tyran, who made eye contact, and mouthed, “Wake him.”

Mentally, I began to prod the actual Aurak to wake up, before whoever it was that I was waving at realised that something wasn’t quite right about the Aurak that was waving at them…

<What?> Muttered a groggy Aurak, whom I finally managed to wake.

I mentally pointed him to the gold dragon below, who was flying up to intercept me. <Someone’s looking for you. Who is that anyway?>