The Dragon of Charred Scales

Reality

Oculeera
Two Weeks Later

     I feel awake, but when I opened my eyes, I see not my room in Hasinji, but the grey of the spirit world.

     A blue spirit, a former spirit dragon, rushes towards me from far away, flapping its wings even though such a motion does nothing. I know because I have tried when Master Wukro first made me reach this plane with my own magic.

     "Degirak nalr!" The spirit exclaimed, pointing a wing at the ground as it stopped before me. "Degirak nalr!"

     I shook my head and started to speak but I saw Wyrmic symbols rise from the nothingness between us. What did the spirit say? What do the symbols mean?

     The glyphs faded away too quickly for me to understand, replaced my new ones. A few stuck out, easily translated. Conjurer, the Curse, the Joining, cave, Wyrmic, war, and confusion. The rest, like the words spoken, are lost to me.

     "I really do not understand..." I tell the spirit.

     "Degirak nal...ugh..." Another spirit, a purple swift dragon, tackled the first. A third spirit, a fortune dragon, approached from another direction, blocking my view and directing me away.

     "What's going on?" I ask.

     In an older tongue but closer to modern Draconian than the previous dragon's words, it said, "ignore the speechless dragon's delusions."

     "What speechless dragon? It spoke."

     "Leave. Go. Return to yourself. Great dangers approach rapidly. Watch yourself and Novayar."

     Before I could ask what it meant, grey became black, and consciousness slipped away.

     "Wake up," someone hissed, their rather large paw shaking my shoulder. If I were in my human form, their claws would probably be puncturing me with the urgency of the shaking.

     "What's going on?" I ask, yawning.

     "Attack."

     A low boom reverberated through the walls, jolting me fully awake. A fortune dragon, the one who woke me, stands in my room alone.

     The dragon put its snout next to my ear. In broken English it said, "speak not, stay scaled, obey. No magic unless life depends. Climb."

     My heart races. This could be bad.

     As soon as I had settled on the back of this dragon, we turned invisible. An explosion lit up the window of my room as we left it. The building shook with the shockwave.

     Attack. The words of many dragons prior ring in my head. Danger to us as the duo in the prophecy. Maybe the darkness of the prophecy has struck. Fear begins to grip me. What fate faces us? Why now?

     I felt the presence of Novayar and another dragon behind us as the fortune dragon carried me down the hallway. A swift dragon and a spirit dragon stood on the balcony ahead, not yet invisible.

     Closer to the outside, my ears picked up on voices and chaos. Shouts to contain the attackers, chants for spells that I could not decipher, even words of languages I have never heard of. Jets of flames and flashes of magic light the darkness, but not unveiling invisible attackers.

     The fortune dragon returns me to visibility and the swift dragon lifts me onto his back. The spirit dragon uses a spell to hold me down with a rope, then does the same for Novayar behind me.

     "Go fast and north. I will guard," the spirit dragon tells the swift dragon in Draconian. He nods, then we all turn invisible.

     Just as the swift dragon jumps off the balcony, I hear a deafening crash. Through the dim light, I see a smaller building nearby implode in a cloud of dust. My heart sank at the possibility of death. Magic or not, a dragon cannot survive some situations.