Guys, Just remember, this is my first book but I'm still quite proud of it.
Also, I just had to enlarge the scale of 'scavenger'(for those who haven't read Wings of Fire scavengers=humans) so that now the tallest ninja are as big as Moon's shoulder. Also, I also changed the way humans are treated, so instead of treating them as food and pets, they're also treated as slaves. This way, my writers block doesn't come back as quickly.
I'm very sorry,
Hope you like it!
:)
Lloyd woke up, head hurting and aching.
His green shirt and armour was covered with sand, sliding off like dewdrops of a leaf. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, and his soft blond curls shaking and rustling. A low, painful moan, from a nearby, tattered but colourful, lump in the dunes, announced that his friends were alive.
Which was good.
The Green Ninja groaned when he stood up, spitting out coarse sand, but slowly moved toward the rest, which were beginning to stir and wake.
"Jay," The hoarse voice sounded like a very, very grumpy Kai. "Get your stinky, blue butt out of my face."
Lloyd sighed, and trudged over to help move Jay away from Kai, but before he could do that, there was an angry roar made by Kai, who shoved Jay off with such force that, Jay, yelping with surprise, flew across the mound. Jay landed on a very prickly cactus, the razor like spikes tearing easily through the sleeves of Jay's gi.
"Yaaaahhh!!! Dude, what was THAT for?!" The blue ninja screamed, electric blue eyes sparking.
"Pfft. You should not have-"
"Kai, TMI. Stop talking." grumbled Cole, who bent over to stand up, clamping his hand over Kai's mouth.
Zane stood up, knocking over both Kai and Cole, and replied, "I don't get it."
"Sure Zane, we don't get it either." Lloyd said, looking around, waving his hands at the sand dunes all around them. "It could be the Desert of Despair, but there are scarcely any rock spires."
Zane shook his head. "The sand dunes does not have the same red colour pigment," He said, then pointed at a tall mountain range in the distance. "They could possibly be the Wailing Alps, but back in Ninjago, the Wailing Alps and the Desert is practically so far apart you shouldn't be able to see the peaks from here."
"Then WHERE THE F*** ARE wE!?" Kai yelled.
"Kai, SHHHH!" Cole said, "Was that just me?" he whispered.
"What do you mea-" Lloyd started.
Then he felt it. A slow, low rumbling, a slight quivering. Everyone stopped moving, except Jay, who was too high up in the cactus to feel the ground. Jay yanked and pulled at the cactus, but nothing happened. He twisted his head around to find out that the spikes were barbed.
Just my luck, Jay muttered. Now I'm stuck up here unless I want my gi to rip off to an embarrassing amount.
The rumbling came closer.
"Everybody JUMP!" Cole yelled. Everyone jumped backwards, well, everyone besides Jay, who yipped and shrank back like a puppy.
The sand beneath them erupted, and a dragon leaped out, yanking on the cactus so hard that the thick roots easily gave way. Roaring out with triumph, the dragon set the cactus back on the ground, gently, and began to examine the cactus.
Lloyd, hiding behind a convenient boulder, had time to examine the dragon.
It didn't look like one of the dragons back in the First Realm. It had sandy yellow scales, with a long, slender snout. A splash of dark brown scales freckled its face. Then Lloyd shifted his gaze to its tail, curved dangerously and held poised in the air, with a tip like a scorpion's.
Then, he saw shadows, shadows of huge shapes circling in the sky.
The first dragon spotted Jay.
It bent down, slowly, tentatively bending down to sniff. He reared, then, landing heavily on the dune, then let out a short roar toward the sky. Four more dragons, all different colours and sizes, landed. An ice white one stomped toward Jay, who started shrieking, loud and clear. The Ice white dragon barked something at a drooping, sea green one, then tilted his head. The green dragon shrugged, and growled something softly to the Ice white dragon, which bristled its spikes. The green one let out a short shriek and bowed its head, pulling out a small, bright red piece of coral. It began to mutter in a strange, hypnotic way.
A dragon with jet back scales, silver scales scattered across the underside of its wings like stars on a moonless night -very beautiful, but possibly dangerous, Lloyd thought- moved closer to Jay, who was trying hard to untangle himself, and gently wrapped her claws around him, then jerked him out... unscathed, except for two small holes where the thorns had pierced them.
The sea green dragon finished muttering.
Lloyd shifted uncomfortably behind the dune, his head racing with thoughts like: We have to get Jay outta there. But how? The dragons are smaller than I thought they were. Where are we?
Kai signalled toward Jay, who the Ice white dragon had took from the kind black dragon. Jay rolled his eyes.
Lloyd had just developed a partly stupid plan to dash out, cut open the dragon with his katana, then run off, when all of a sudden, what he thought was air rippled with colour and, faster than he could move, claws lashed out and tackled him to the sand. He let out a scream, but the dragon, smaller than the others, turned her chameleon-like scales into a happy yellow colour, and shrieked, "Guys! I found ANOTHERRRRR ONE!! This cute little guy was just hiding behind the dunes!"
Lloyd was too shocked to speak. They TALK?
Cole ran forward, hammer swinging, to help his friend, when suddenly, the tail of Lloyd's kidnapper swung around and wrapped around his body, trapping him.
"Hey GUYS! I think he has a friend!" she yelped, and the rest of the dragons lumbered over.
"GETOFFA ME." Lloyd growled, attempting with no avail to try and shove the dragon away. The dragon's eyes grew wide, really wide, and she squeaked. in a high, feminine voice: "Turtle! The spell...it worked!! He can talk now! Wait, I have to try this-"
She leaned down, so close that Lloyd could smell her sweet breath, and said, very slowly, syllable by syllable, like he was some other stupid animal: "H-I, I'm KINK-A-JOU."
Lloyd growled, "Hi, I'm Lloyd and can you PLEASE GET OFF OF ME?!"
"OH!" hollered Kinkajou. "He does understand! I'll get off,"
Lloyd stood up wearily, rubbing his shoulder. "This is Cole, Jay, Kai, and Zane."
The sandy dragon took a step forward. "I'm Qibli, that's Moon-" he pointed at the dark-coloured she-dragon,
"That's Kinkajou-" he waved at the hyper multicoloured dragon, who began to bounce up and down;
"That's Turtle, the animus-" Qibli nodded the sea green dragon, who anxiously nodded back and rubbed at a strange gold armband studded with reddish rocks;
"And that's Prince Grumpy." He pointed at the glaring Ice white dragon, who bristled the spikes on his neck and roared, "I AM NOT GRUMPY!"
"Right, right," Qibli said nervously, "I forgot. Your'e Prince Winter, I'm quite sorry, your Majesty, ehehe,"
"Move it," Winter growled back. He was holding Jay, who was shivering in his cold grasp. Kai, who by then decided to jump out from behind the boulder, cried, "Let go of my friend!"
Winter hissed, his icy breath leaving trails of frost in its wake, "Friends? You are all Friends? Pshaw. Ha, scavengers, friends? I thought that scavengers had no minds to have friends. You little things are only slaves, anyway." With that, he dropped Jay, who ducked and rolled at the very last second.
"Don't mind him," Qibli said as Winter stomped off. Lloyd looked up and saw his face and saw the large, zigzagging scar that raked across his snout. "He's very grumpy in the Sand Kingdom, where the heat is, for him, unbearable. You should see him near the Ice border, where everything is so freaking cold, but he likes it there."
"Sure," Lloyd replied. "Uh, we crash landed here during a fight back in our realm, but we don't know where we are."
Qibli let out a soft chuckle. "Welcome to Pyrrhia,"
