Fan Fiction ❯ A Dragon was lost ❯ Prologue: Trouble of the interdimensional variety. ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: This is not fanfiction and as such, I own the characters and settings used in this piece of fiction, please do not use them without prior authorisation.

 

Author Notes: I created the main character of this story a year ago and he has been floating around my head since then. Here he is, released at last.

 

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A Dragon was Lost

Prologue: Trouble of the interdimensional variety.

By The Hunterminator

 

Blue eyes roamed left and right, peering at the depths of a cave. The size, the stream flowing down a side, the high cliff it was located on, everything about it said dragon heaven. Except that, for some reason, there was none. There were even a few items that had been left behind as if the owner had just vanished.

 

*All the better for me then.* With a satisfied sigh, Frozenscales entered his new home. He really should have known better than to go to the wedding between Talwynn and Fainthyr. He might have been invited but by the time he came back to the dragon world, his territory had been taken by a hatchling.

 

Ordinarily, he'd just have killed him and taken back his possession but damn it, he had talked with enough humans to actually develop a bloody sense of ethics. Heck, they had even managed to get into his head that he should actually RAISE his next hatchlings. He'd have to convince his next mate to give him the eggs instead of hiding them and leaving.

 

Anyway, to make a long story short, he had now been flying around for a few months, trying to find himself a new territory and now, deep into the rainbow plains, named thus because all kinds of dragons lived there though he was the first frost dragon in a few centuries. He had finally found a place to settle down.

 

There was even a nice forest close so that if prey got scarce, he could simply flash freeze a tree and eat it. Eons of living in the very far north had given frost dragons the ability to eat absolutely anything.

 

Having now diligently cleaned his new home up, Frozenscales walked back out, stretched his massive wings and took to the air. A few hours of flying and he found the perfect prey, a blade beast. He had heard that it was a pretty tough predator but to the dragon, it was the same as every other prey.

 

One low pass spouting a stream of intense cold and the beast was flash frozen, just like Frozenscales liked it. His meal was consumed in an instant and, satiated, he flew home. Once there, a quick check of what he had to do showed nothing undone and thus, satisfied, the dragon laid down and slept the sleep that only those finally resting after many days of travel could.

 

***

 

A few days later, Frozenscales was finalizing the official annexation of his new territory and he had already had a few fights with his new neighbors. He just HAD to choose a territory close to a bloody red dragon, he could still feel his right wing aching from the burn it had gotten. Besides him, there was a green dragon, a yellow dragon and a sea dragon lived in the bay that touched a corner of his territory.

 

At least, greens stayed underground and the sea dragon stayed under water so there had barely been anything more than an exchange of threats. And the yellow dragon was a nice fellow by the name of Shocktalon who would probably become one of Frozenscales best friends.

 

Apart from that, the territory was not too big but contained so much prey that the blue dragon's ice desert honed senses were almost overwhelmed. On top of that, there was the forest in case times got tough, and the cave stayed cool most of the day though still too hot for the arctic dragon. He was pretty sure that the desert on the southern edge would get nicely (extremely) cold during the winter.

 

All in all, it was a rather nice territory and he hadn't even explored it all yet, which is why he was doing some hunting in unexplored parts. Suddenly, he felt it - some sort of hole into his perceptions, a place where neither sounds nor smells seemed to come from. As he approached, he vaguely smelt the track of a shelled hound.

 

As he followed, he saw the tracks ending abruptly in the middle of the zone from which nothing came. Even the light was hazy, showing that it had trouble passing through. Hell, the ground even sloped toward it, which hinted that the ground itself had a tendency to go… somewhere and not come back.

 

Had that last fact triggered the dragon's usually sharp sense of carefulness, what happened next might have been avoidable. But it didn't, and thus, he stepped forward to look closer and his heavy weight caused the ground to shift. Thus ensued a rather powerful landslide and before he even knew what happened, he had rolled down.

 

He didn't roll much mind you, but it seemed to be enough for, as his head entered the rather hard to define zone of nothingness. It seemed to pull at him, or more specifically his head and, as more entered the `neutral zone', the parts in it were pulled, bringing with them the rest of his body and, before you knew it, he was unceremoniously dumped into a space that, especially for a 17 meters long lizard, felt horribly cramped.

 

Reflexes honed by a year of having the ability to make oneself smaller triggered a shift that, by now, was mostly effortless for him. In the span of 5 minutes, a huge dragon shifted, morphed, changed and became what, to all but the closest of examination, was a human being.

 

Groaning a bit, Frozenscales sat up. Oh wait, the name he used as an human was Silverman though, it was a traditional thing really. The human form was usually used to pass less noticed amongst humans and as such, most dragon names would be an unwanted source of attention.

 

Anyway, he sat up and looked around himself, and gaped. He could smell home, see and feel rocks and soil from home and faintly see a view from home but he wasn't home. Oh, he had seen old brick, pavement, cement and iron before but only in a few of the `techeno logikal' human worlds he had seen. Now that he thought of it, the smell was quite reminiscent. The scent from humans was barely tolerable and underlain by a mix of far too many unidentifiable smells.

 

Visually, it wasn't much better. The dirty alley would be dark if it wasn't for the light filtering in from home. With a shrug, Silverman walked towards the light and stepped in. Or rather, he tried. He stepped through instead and growled once it was clear that whatever he had stepped through had been one way only.

 

The `man' stepped up to one of the alley's walls and proceeded to do the nicely therapeutic exercise of hitting your head till you felt better or passed out, whichever came first. Once he was done, he sat down to think. Well… actually, he rubbed his head in pain first but it is a given.

 

Anyway, he pondered, he pondered hard, and he came to the conclusion that, until he found a way back home, he'd have to find yet another place to live. And there was one thing Silverman knew about human worlds - nothing came free, either you bought it, you fought for it, or you find some other way to get it.

 

One other thing he had learned when stuck in one of those once was that the area called slums was pretty much ruled the same way as the dragon world was, though there was more cooperation sometimes. So all he had to do was to find an abandoned place to sleep, defend it when needed and he'd be perfectly fine.

 

Oh, sure, finding suitable prey might be rough, but a quick sniff showed that a strange number of creatures had crossed in from home. This fact also had another advantage though Silverman didn't know it, the sightings of strange monsters meant the region was scarcely populated. Only this explains why it was possible to find a never recently inhabited building to live in so fast and easily.

 

Once that was done, he resumed what he had been doing until interrupted, that is, he hunted and explored at once. The track of the shelled hound that had originally brought him here were still fresh and thus, the insect like herbivore was quickly found munching on some local weeds. A hammer like blow backed by inhuman strength was all it took to kill the dumb animal and the lucky hunter brought it `home'.

 

Sure, he was lost in an unknown land, but he had food and lodging and thus it was with a satisfied sigh that Silverman sat on the ground and proceed to rip the shell off, it never became inedible and would thus be kept for harsher days.

 

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Author Notes: Yes, it ends here. It's a prologue so I have to stop before moving to the development part of the story. That and I like to divide my story in many small parts.