Gates to Infinity The Novel Series Ash and The Night Fury

chapter 16 Epilogue

9 weeks later after the battle against The Red Death

Ash groaned softly as he woke up to soft breath on his face – by the smell of the breath, he knew that it was his dragon Brother, Shadow. He felt a bit weak and lethargy, and from his past experience, he knew that he had slept on for a bit

When Ash finally opened his eyes, it took a few seconds for him to register that he was in his house's living room – seemed like his bed was moved downstairs. He frowned then, wondering what had happened this time to cause him to oversleep

Flashback

Using the cover of the dark clouds, Ash and Shadow shot a plasma blast after plasma blast onto the monster's wings, all the while making sure that they wouldn't get caught in one of the monster's attack. Everything had gone nicely, until the monster get annoyed too much and shot its fire everywhere.

"Look out!" Ash gasped as he and Shadow avoided the sea of flame within the clouds, and he inhaled shakily when he noticed that Shadow's tail fin was caught on fire. "By the gods no!" He Said in Horror, knowing that his chance of coming out of this battle alive had become smaller and smaller. "Time's Up, Shadow." He said to his dragon, "Let's move to the last step of the plan".

Shadow looked up at him and cooed softly, but Ash could see the determination in his eyes. Ash nodded his head, with his own eyes filled with determination. As one, they cried out insult towards the monster before diving, with the monster hot on their tails. Ash listened carefully until he heard the sign of the monster preparing to fire, before turning Shadow around. Shadow – who had prepared his own plasma blast – then shot straight towards the monster's open jaws, lighting up the gas within the monster and making it being burned from the inside. After that, As soon as they saw the ground fast approaching ahead of them, they pulled out of the dive – avoiding the monster's jaws as they did so.

They heard an explosion, and knew that the monster had hit the ground right away. They couldn't celebrate yet though, for they had to get out of the fire of the explosion while avoiding the monster's back spikes first. They had managed it so far, but Ash's heart stopped beating when his pedal go dead. He looked back and saw that the prosthetic tail fin had completely burned away, causing his eyes to widen in fright.

"No …" He breathed out before looking forward, only to get even more frightened when he saw that they were about to crash to the monster's club-like tail. "No!" He cried out just before they crashed with the tail.

Everything was a blur after that. Ash could only feel a sharp pain on his left Arm, a weightless sensation as he was falling off of Shadow's back, and the heat behind his back as he was quickly approaching the fire from the explosion. He faintly saw his dragon dove after him, before his consciousness left him and everything went black.

Present

'Right …' Ash thought as he opened his eyes again. I fell off of Shadow after crashing onto the tail. He looked aside and saw his dragon Brother looked relieved and happy. "Hi, Shadow." He greeted the dragon with a smile as he reached out a hand, which was nuzzled excitedly by the dragon. "I guess you have saved my life again. Thank you, Brother".

Shadow seemed to be unable to contain his excitement anymore, for he decided to jump all over the room and knocked against everything, causing Ash to chuckle Bitterly at his dragon Brother's antics. 

Ash shook his head fondly before sitting up, trying to get out of the bed. It was then that he felt it, a strange feeling at his lower left Arm. Dread filled him as he remembered that he had felt a great deal of pain coming from his left Arm after tha crash, and he didn't know whether he wanted to find out what had caused it or not. Still, his curiosity got the better of him, and he steeled his nerve as he Look on his left Arm.