Project iDragon

015: I am the Dragon Whisperer

The dragon snapped its teeth, and this time I decided it was smarter to stop moving before he snapped me in half. Its eyes glowed bright red in the same way that Selphon's glowed bright orange. I took a deep breath to focus as I stared down his snout. Before Selphon came to know me, he always seemed to take it as a challenge if I looked at this eyes, and a challenge from a big guy like the one in front of us, was not something anyone needed. I stared at his snout to ward off a challenge, and also because there was not much else to look at, there were his teeth, there were his eyes, and then there was his snout, and with a head big enough to snap mine from my body without a second thought, I took the only safe option there was, if such a thing even existed.

The dragon shut his maw and his head dropped a couple inches.

I allowed a brief smile before turning toward the girls standing behind me, to my surprise they were looking at me with something between disdain and shock. But there was no time to argue first impressions. "We should get out of here before he gets hostile."

"He still looks plenty hostile to me," The one in the hoodie noted loudly above the wind.

"Trust me," I replied and was about to start picking my way around when an anguished roar older than time caused everyone to throw their hands over their ears. Our four pairs of eyes looked to the sky and what I saw made me want to throw up over the edge.

The sky serpent was falling. At first it was impossible to tell, because it was just a gold speck flashing in and out of the thunder clouds, but as it grew closer, and its body accelerated to the ground (at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared) I saw its claws grasping at nothing, the fear in its eyes as its wings fluttered uselessly against its back. It screams loud and unbearable with a crescendo that shook the earth.

I didn't realize that all of us were screaming until the dragon's screaming stopped. It was like someone had unplugged a speaker, or had taken a knife to its vocal cords. The silence that followed was unnatural, even as the two girls and I continued our yells. The thunder still rumbled, the wind still howled, yet the world never felt so quiet.

I could see the dragon's eyes as it fell, I watched them, frozen in my spot as its body sped faster and faster toward the ground like a thousand-pound rope was being dropped from the heavens. But the sky wasn't heaven, the dragon wasn't rope.

A dark figure leaped away from the neck of the dragon as it fell. He circled several times as the sky serpent fell in a deadly spiral toward the ground. "Brace yourself," the girl with the head covering whispered. I wasn't sure how I was able to hear her above the storm, but in that moment even the slightest noises were loud.

The beast hit the ground every single one of its pounds of mass. The ground shook and snapped from the impact, almost as if a train had been dropped from the sky. A thousand pounds of mass, of tissue, of sinew, and bone collided violently with the ground. And the smell of blood poisoned the air as my legs grew unsteady beneath.

With each circle, the dark figure fell closer. His black jacket flapped violently in the air as he approached. I saw now that this figure was indeed a man, albeit a young one, barely a couple years older than me. The wings I had seen before were mechanical, a machine of some sort. They were panels strapped to his back, pulsing blue with light as slowed his descend considerably.

Even with the two dragons surrounding us, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the falling man as he dove in a stoop toward the bleachers. It became evident within a few seconds that he was going to crash into the bleachers. Those wings on his back didn't let him fly, they just slowed his fall. And he was falling.

Right toward us.

There was nowhere to go. We were trapped between a dragon and a hard place. One of the girls was pushing me to move but my legs were frozen beneath me. But just when I thought he was going to take all three of us off the edge, the man pulled a flip in midair so that his feet were beneath him.

The bleachers shook when he landed, sending shock waves tremoring up our legs. Hoodie girl stumbled backwards a few steps and instinctively I grabbed her arm and pulled her back before she fell somewhere we all would regret. The three of us backed up together to give the man some room.

He had landed several tiers down, one leg on the foot rest area while the other was bent over the seat. His arms were spread slightly for balance and as if by some invisible command, the light stopped pulsing through his wings and snapped so that they were folded vertically against his back.

He wore a long black jacket over a high collared shirt that rose to cover his face. Longish, dark, choppy hair fell over his face as he turned to shook an icy gaze in our direction. If I was frozen before, it was nothing compared to what I felt as his gaze bore down on me. Something in my gut was telling that I would have preferred dealing with the large angry dragon.

Lightning flashes briefly, illuminating the shaved left side of his head. But that wasn't what caught my attention, no, a long jagged scarred halved the side of his head, starting in the back and reaching all the way to the front. Just another centimeter or so, and it would have taken out his left eye. His stare was like poison, paralyzing and slow killing. I knew right away he was dangerous.

My eyes flickered to the golden serpent dragon, that had crashed over the fence the separated the football field from the parking lot. Its blood filled the air with iron, it's body laid unmoving like trash in the corner of the field.

I looked back to the man. He had done this.

A/N So first and foremost, the amazing art of Tern above was done by Dreamycakesss. He is so chibi omgs. Somehow I know it is not going to be enough to make any of you like him but in that pic at least we can pretend he is smol and adorable.

I could have literally split this chapter up into 10 separate chapters, but I'm being nice and not doing that. I'll only split it into 3-4-5 ish. Keep an eye out.