Touched By A Dragon

Chapter 39: Is He Though?

Stryker threw Mike back his sword as he rolled and hit the monster with spears made of darkness, the monster absorbed the darkness and grew bigger.
“Brother! Stop hitting it with your dark magic! It feeds off it!” Mike yelled.
“What else am I supposed to do? Let it eat me?” Stryker yelled back. 
Mike blasted it with fragments of light and the monster cowered, growing a little bit smaller.
“Take my sword!” 
“I don't know how to use it!” 
“Oh for Ethereal’s sake! You two boys just stop yelling and start fighting!” Their mother yelled.
“Fine, toss me the sword!” Stryker exclaimed.
Mike threw the sword to his brother and Stryker caught it by the hilt in mid air. 
The creature looked like a huge blob of moving link with small, red eyes and a huge mouth filled with sharp teeth, dripping with black goo. 
“This thing looks like it's made of darkness, can't you control it?” Mike asked.
“If I could would I still be fighting it? I lived in the darkness and became apart of it, I have no control over it, in a way it controlled me,” Stryker hissed.
Mike dodged the monster as it shot a peice of its self at him. Then he threw more light at it. The monster shrunk a little bit more. 
“Mother, can you keep it distracted I think I can finish this.” 
Their mother nodded and started yelling at the monster.  It tuned towards her and slowly crept closer. Mike pressed his hands together and squeezed his eyes shut. The monster came closer and closer to their mother, it slowly reached out an inky tentile towards her.  Stryker knew that it would reach her before Mike could finish preparing his spell, he knew that its touch would melt her like acid and he knew that his powers could do nothing but make it stronger. The sword was useless against it, his mother bore no weapon  that could match its powers. He knew that his mother would die if he did nothing. The world seemed to slow as he called forth all of his courage and speed, he raced toward his mother and ran in front of her. His brother still had his eyes tightly closed as Stryker jumped at the monster and covered it with darkness and teleported it away. Mike heard the soft ‘woosh’ of the teleport and his eyes opened. He dropped the ball of light and it exploded then faded into the darkness. Mike looked around for the monster, he couldn’t see it, or his brother. Then the world stopped all together as he fell to the floor, tears running down his face. He looked up at his mother who just stood there, shocked, unable to move apart from the shaking as tears started forming in her eyes. Mike looked back to the ground,  on this very spot his brother had stood by his just moments ago, this very spot. He scooped up the dirt and clutched it in his hand, trying to hold on. The grainy soil slowly slipped in between his fingers and spilled back to where it came from. He offered a hit of a small smile at the irony then he noticed something in the dirt. He picked it up and admired it. It was a small glass vile, circular in shape and filled with white and black liquid that stayed on different sides, there was a little bit of white in black and a little bit of black in while. Curious, Mike shook it, the substances sworled but didnt mix. He held it up and a light shone through it, a picture of Stryker and Mike was projected onto the ground, Mike on the white and Stryker on the black. Mike bliked and took a deep breath, he looked at his mother, she had seen nothing. Mike slipped it into his pocket and stood back up.
“...Mum?” He whispered, looking at her frozen face. 
“He's gone agian,” she whispered to herself, eyes empty, “After all this time I had him in my arms again…Now he's gone agian.” 
Mike did not know what to say, or what to do. He placed her hand in his and brought them back home. A soft glowing, white light covered them and when it vanished agian they where standing outside their house. Mike tried to let go of his mother's hand but she held on tighter. Mike looked at her and she look back with grief stricken face. 
“I'm not loosening you too. Not agian,” 
“Don't worry, mum. I'm not going anywhere, not anytime soon, not after that. I need to write a letter. I'll be right back,” 
His mother noded. 
Mike entered the house and went into his shared room. He opened the drawer and took out a piece of parchment, some ink and a feather. He wrote his letter and called Flame. The dragon sensed his riders sadness and didn't scoff at being used as a messenger bird, instead he took it and took to the skies, feeling a piece of him fade as he got further and further away. 
Flame followed Justice's sent and eventually found the ship. He saw the dragons chained to the mast. His keen eyes focused and he saw Justice chained to the ship, he saw the riders working the ship and he sensed Lillianna locked in a small room. He heard a pirate giving the riders orders. He didn't know how this happened, but he knew enough to come to his own conclusion. These pirates had kidnapped the princess and the riders. They had chained up the dragons and made slaves of the people. Now they would burn. First the mast, the dragons would great free and help their riders escape, then the rest of the boat. 
He remained hidden by the clouds and blew out a column of twisting fire, then paused and took a breath,  ready to send the rest of the boat up in flames. But before the fire reached the mast, a column of ice fire shot at it, it turned to water and fell into the ocean. Confused, Flame looked at Star, the only dragon in the group that had ice fire, and tilted his head. Star squinted his eyes and shook his head. 
“Star, I’m trying to help you,” Flame hurred. 
“You are going to blow our cover!” He hissed.
“What? What’s going on? Where’s Peter?”
“Jewel is our new Alpha, Peter is the leader of the humans.”
Flame looked at Jewel and she had glittering, golden scales, she carried herself with poise and dignity. She felt like an Alpha. Flame bowed at Star and flew over to Jewel. He bowed to her, mid flight.
“I am ready to accept any judgement or position that the new alpha will bestow upon me,” He muttered.
Jewel bowed her head to flame.
“Judgement and positioning can wait until we are back home. For now you can take rank with Emerald.”
“Thank you, I have a letter for Peter.”
“Go to the front of the boat and give it to Justice, then go to your rider.”
 Flame did as Jewel had instructed and flew off back to Mike. Justice got the attention of Clover who called Peter when Lydia wasn’t looking.
“What’s wrong girl?” Peter asked Justice.
“I have a note from Flame, I think something is wrong.”
Shakily, Peter took the note, he didn’t need any more bad news, not for him, and not for Kelly. He unrolled the parchment and read what was  written on it, and in Mikes handwriting was this message:

“Caught the thing,
Opened a portal,
Mother is ok, 
Everything is fine.

Nevertheless, I will not be returning soon.
Overloaded with work. Sorry.
Wait for me to come back before you make dock.”
Peter sighed and lowered the note, thankful that it wasn’t more bad news. He then walked over to Kelly and handed he note to her, she quickly read through it and her face turned pale, she folded the note, dropped it and ran for where Justice was tied up. Confused, Peter picked up the note, it was folded so that only the first word of every line was visible, it read: ‘COME NOW.’  Peter sighed in anger and dropped the note, he ran after Kelly but when he got there, she was gone.