A Throne of Flames || COMPLETED

Chapter 8

After the woman had left, I could see what was behind her more clearly. The ornate structure intrigued me: why was it here? What did it mean?

I drew closer, the force in me compelling me to walk. I obeyed. Suddenly my surroundings seemed to change, the air grew warmer. The green grass changed to black rock, the water to slow-moving, bubbling magma. The closer I got to the cage, the more it seemed to glow with golden light. It seemed as if it itself was emitting light. It grew brighter and brighter. I stretched my fingers out to tough it and felt the soft, cold metal before it illuminated with a light so intense that I had to look away. The light died down and I gasped in wonder.

A Dragon's egg. A real dragon's egg. I ran my fingers down the shell, feeling the smooth warm scales. It was such a surreal feeling. The egg was white, not a blemish or imperfection in sight.

There were supposed to be non left in this world. In any world. The glow from inside seemed to throb when I touched it. Hearing a crack, I looked closer and saw a line marrying the perfect symmetry. It was hatching.

The cracks started to become more frequent, spider webbing along the shell. Then a tiny snout poked through, followed by its head. It was alive. Bit by bit, it chipped away at the shell, pieces falling around it. Finally, it would get out. It stretched its wings, whining, and the dragon stared directly at me. It had gold and lack scaled weaving a snaking pattern down its back. Its belly seemed to glow slightly, as if there were glowing embers inside its stomach. A fire dragon, I remembered from my childhood, and a rare one.

The dragon was so small: it could easily curl up in my palm, if he wanted. His wings were tipped with red, fading to black at the tops, his scales were scorched and ashy, the egg now lying in smoldering embers around him. I moved closer and it jumped up onto my hand, emitting a small cloud of smoke from its nostrils. I lifted it higher, and it hopped onto my shoulder, rubbing its smooth, scaly head against my cheek.

I turned to look at it. "Hey there, little one. what's your name?"

It nudged me again, squealing.
"You want me to choose?" It looked at me with those large dark eyes. "OK. What about Latvian?" The dragon huffed indignantly. "Varil?"

It looked at me again, and bobbed it's head. He wanted that.

"Are you a boy or a girl, Varil?" As soon as the word boy left my lips, it streaked out its wings, and nudged me again. A boy. He was a boy.

He leapt off my shoulder and stretched out his wings. They shook with the effort of keeping him aloft, but he glided around the space nevertheless, and landed back on my shoulder, looking smug.

Could a dragon look smug?

Looking at that little face, I decided that they definitely could.

"You want to get out?" he soared into the air again. Well, that was a yes. I laughed.  "You seem to know the way, go on."

He landed on my shoulder again, and gave me a look that seemed to say silly human.
"All right, I'll carry you." He curled his tail around my neck, talons diding into my shoulder, making sure he would be safe for the ride. I looked around and realised that I didn’t actually know the way out. Well, I knew the way I came in, but I didn’t want to go back that way, and I didn’t think that I would be able to fly that way again. Come to think of it, I was not actually sure that I did fly. I had blacked out: maybe that had all happened in my head.

I looked around the room and saw something. The sunlight. Wherever it was coming from, it had to be outside. Surely. And I was right. I stood on the pedestal and looked up. I could see the sky, a tiny pinprick of blue light above me. Vines climbed up the hole, anchoring themselves in between the cracked bricks. I pulled on one, wrapping my hands around and lifting my feet off the floor. I touched my feet back down and let out a breath. It held.

Planting my feet in between the twisting metal surrounding me, I pushed up, grabbing the vines and started climbing. My arms burned as I hauled my body upwards. A vine snapped beneath my hand. I cried out in spuried as I was left hanging by one hand, dangling precariously above the far away ground. Gritting my teeth, I swung my other arm up, securing my unstable hold. I scrambled for foothold, eventually finding them, and jammed the toes of my boots into the wall. Clinging on for my life, I tried to calm my breathing. I was fine. I was alive. I looked over to my shoulder, seeing Varil still sitting there. He looked at me, lazily blinking. I started my ascent again.

Reaching the top, I pulled myself onto my belly, Varil hopping off onto the stone. Sitting at the edge of the hole, I surveyed my surroundings. I was on top of a mountain, the statue at the entrance stood in front of me. I had made it.

I turned around, looking back at the endless expanse of the desert stretching out behind me. The world looked so peaceful from up here. And it was hard to imagine that below me sat a glade filled with bountiful life, where hardly anything seemed to grow in this wasteland. How could something like this have survived the scorching fires? The droughts? The world itself shaking and trembling with fear? The Atrix had purged all the sacred places in the world, razed the temples, the shrines, the kingdoms that had stood tall and proud in the eyes of the gods. They had all fallen, so how had this survived?

Hello! It's me again, your dragon obsessed writer! What do you think of Varil? And i wonder where these other monuments could be! As always, feel free to comment, and if you enjoyed this chapter pleas consider giving it a vote!

Freja:)

Also thaks to BookQueen200 for helping edit and DreamlandCommunity for all the support and feedback from the members in Dreamland Rush!