Inferno Legacy: Valor of the Dragon (Book One)

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

            Nothing happened. Cody knocked on the door again, louder. Unexpectedly, the door just swung open to reveal nothing but darkness. Cody stepped forward as quietly as he could, careful not to break anything in the old house, if it could even still be considered as house. Then suddenly the door slammed shut behind him. There was nothing but pitch blackness throughout the house, with the windows apparently sealed shut with planks of wood. Is the house occupied? He asked himself.

            Before he could think further, he felt a chair. Maybe sitting would relax him more. He could already feel his heart pounding in his chest faster than he could ever imagine. He slowly lowered himself into the chair, which was far more comfortable than he expected. Then he saw something. Fire.

            There was a small fire right in front of him, but it couldn’t have been fire. It didn’t seem to give off heat, but cold instead. Most startling of all was its color. He hadn’t noticed the flames before because they were black. He began to watch them intently as they sort of changed.

            A tiny white flame flickered into existence right in the center. It slowly expanded until the entire fire was a piercing, radiant-white light. Then, a new black flame came from the center like the white had done, and it extended to the edges, but it paused at the end, leaving a tiny white outline. It actually made the whole setting creepier, the way the white just sat there, not bothering to reclaim the flames.

A little blue spark flew from the fire and hit Cody, just left of his chest, followed by a yellow one. Both the sparks burned through his clothes and began to burn his skin, but he brushed them away. When he looked up, the black in the fire was gone, replaced completely by the white again, as a little gold flame suddenly appeared around the edges. Cody got a strange feeling that the white wasn’t the good color in the fire, it was bad. But instead of enveloping the yellow flame along it, the yellow slowly grew lighter until it joined the white on its own.

“Fascinating.”

Cody was so startled by the sudden voice that he fell backwards, tipping over the chair with him. He slowed his heart down again as he picked himself and the chair up, and he sat back down. He turned his attention to where the voice had come from, a little ways to his left. There, stood a woman, with lengthy black hair and a flowing red dress that closely resembled the color of blood.

He didn’t know how long she had been there, but she seemed very interested in the flames, never taking her eyes off them for a second. But she slowly made her way to a chair opposite of Cody and sat with incredible ease. From then on, the fire remained white, so she lost interest and looked at Cody for the first time.

“I sense magic in you,” the woman said, curiosity laced in her voice.

Clearly she didn’t know that Cody was a rider, yet, but she clearly knew that he was special, so he asked, “Did you know I was coming? What do you mean that you sense magic in me?”

“The flames. They never change color unless someone is approaching. When it is a normal human who approaches, it turns to water. When a dwarf is near, it becomes ice, and when an elf draws near to my home, it will evaporate completely. Only powerful magic users can make it fire and only a dragon rider has such a troubled heart.”

Her response raised more questions for Cody than it did answers. “How did you know I was a rider, my heart isn’t troubled. I can’t even use magic yet, so why is this happening? How do you read the flames like that?”

Myra glared at him and said, “A dragon rider has a troubled spirit, whether he knows it or not. But the magic is already inside you and you just don’t know how to use it. Lastly, I can tell by the flame that you and your dragon are very important. You will fight with your friends and they will not fully accept you until their dragon is equal to yours.”