The thundering sky grumbled softly along with dull flashes hidden behind the thick blanket of cloud cover. The air around them alive and filling their lungs with the strong presence of petrichor and ozone as Alex and Lyrus stared blankly at each other for what had felt like ten minutes of still silence.
He couldn’t believe what he had heard from the dragon ‘fix you’? What could possibly be needed to fix he would think aggressively to himself. The thundering activity in the sky above them became more active; the sound of thunder had gone from a low grumble to sudden cracks of electrical energy cutting through the air while the dull flashes infrequently lit up the entire landscape. A single bolt of lightning struck the ground far away from the two commanders yet the boom it made rippled around them and just as it had started the thunder subsided to its fading state that it was before.
What was all that about? He wondered to himself.
“You should probably relax your mind, Captain Rowan.” Armadra said softly. “This landscape is a reflection of your emotions. You don’t have to say anything for me to know what you are thinking.”
Alex took a deep breath in and then let it go after a moment. The landscape around him responded by calming down to quietly muffled booms in the distance and the flashes soon disappeared.
“So this place reflects whatever I am thinking, yes?” Alex asked hesitantly and Armadra nodded. “So why does this all look depressing?”
“I told you, it’s a reflection of your emotive state. I am no expert but at a glance I would dare say something deep inside is troubling you. From what I have heard about your experiences I am not surprised you keep buried secrets.” Armadra speculated.
Alex had to keep his facial muscles in check to avoid revealing how shocked he was at how close Armadra was. Was he reading his mind in this telepathic meditative session, if Alex focused on Armadra could he read the dragon's mind? Perhaps he was lucky in his guess.
Armadra grumbled something to himself as he circled around Alex, he didn’t seem to be scanning him or looking for anything in particular before he then stood in front of Alex and looked down at him with sympathetic eyes and a warm smile. Alex looked up at him and realised that his dark blue scales shifted tones to a brighter colour.
“Hmm.. perhaps I might be able to better assist you. Hold on for a moment.” The dragon said.
Then he closed his eyes and the dragon’s body started changing which was when Alex realised that Lyrus was Transmutating to a human form. It surprised him to see the tall proud dragon’s armour suddenly merge with his body and dramatically shift tones until it became a single layer of skin and his wings folded in on themselves, merging and shrinking until the once mighty, defining characteristic of the dragon had been reduced to small nub poking out of his back and then they were gone for good. More and more the dragon shifted and shrank until eventually he looked more like a human being that was over two metres tall and in need of a nail trim on his hands and feet.
Finally, he stopped shrinking and Armadra opened his blue eyes to see the shocked and amazed expression on Alex’s face only to then roll his head on his neck which responded with a chorus of wet muffled cracks, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Ugh, you cannot believe how much I don’t miss being in this body;” Lyrus said exasperatingly. “No tail to counterbalance, no wings to fly across vast distances and… so many unnecessary organs. I mean the appendix alone, heavens above!”
“You can’t TM into a human, this might be your ship but it's still illegal in Dragon Territory.” Alex angrily shouted. But instead Lyrus laughed.
“Oh no no, Rowan. This does not count. I assure you my body is still very much my dragon form. This is merely changing my appearance to my desire to better help you out. Even though it looks and feels real, I assure you it isn’t.” The now humanised dragon spoke with hazel brown hair.
His skin looked weathered and the vessel emblem tattooed on his foreleg was now present near his shoulder, he looked to be in his early forties. However, Alex found it hard to continue to make eye contact with the naked human form of Lyrus Armadra in front of him. It didn’t take long for Armadra to realise this and groaned with frustration as he summoned clothes with a snap of his fingers and his body partially consumed in blue flames that swirled and enveloped him until the blue flame dissipated to reveal a two-toned robe loosely fitting over the former dragon’s body. He cocked both eye brows and wore a sarcastic smile as if to say ‘Happy now?’
Alex looked amazed as he got closer to the dragon, studying every detail. “Wait,” he said with a sudden realisation. “You said you don’t miss being human. When were you human?”
“Captain Rowan, I may not look old to you but I have lived a very long life. I was there when Robert McKenzie made a spectacle of himself in front of the General Assembly, I was there when we first discovered Össträrite as a source for Faster than light travel.”
“You-… you’re five hundred years old?” Alex stammered.
“Five hundred!? Geez, just back the bus over me, why don’t you?” Armadra said in a light-hearted expression of shock. “No, I’m only four hundred and twenty-two years old… Five hundred, psshhh!”
The shocked expression on his face came as no surprise to the dragon captain who stood still as Alex paced from side to side as if he was trying to gauge some kind of visual confirmation of Lyrus’ true age. But instead he looked no different from a natural born and raised human being with some mild wrinkles showing along his pronounced cheek bones and neck. It left Alex stunned and with both hands he had run his fingers through his short hair all the way to the back of his head.
“You know, despite it being nearly three hundred and ninety years since I was last human I truly do miss the stupendously shocked and impressed expression humans get when they see me Transmutate.” Armadra said smiling. “I remember this one girl, a human one, that I dated for a while and her reaction to seeing me as a dragon had stunned her so much that she fainted. Ahaha, it was hilarious.”
After a short moment of silence between the two, Lyrus was the first to speak up, dropping his smile and wearing a neutral expression that oddly looked like he was mildly disappointed. “If you are done gawking, perhaps I could try and help you?”
“Right, yes!” Alex said, shaking himself out of his stupor. “Umm… so how do you plan on trying to fix me because I am fine. Nothing to fix, can’t really improve upon perfection.”
The humour fell on deaf ears as Armadra merely raised an eyebrow questioningly at Alex.
“Typical human denial. It's amazing you made it this far neglecting your souls.”
“Do you believe we have souls?”
Alex posed the question in an effort to buy him some time to try and focus on everything around him. Was there really an afterlife waiting for him or was he destined to exist in a void of nonexistence for all eternity once his heart stopped beating; all the bodies he’s seen, all the death made him question if there was a paradise waiting for those who perished horribly.
“Of course, I believe we have souls.” Armadra answered quickly. “Its an amazing thing to see such a complicated network of neurons no more complicated than a potato battery and yet here you and I are, standing here in this place able to detect a vast spectrum of vibrations in the air, conceptualise complex concepts in a spoken language. And despite all this there’s only one thing that separates us from feral beasts.”
“What?”
“Empathy. Love. The ability to know right from wrong.”
“If that’s the case,” Alex said, his expression turning sour as the blanket of clouds darkened with occasional droplets of rain hitting them and exaggerating the smell of petrichor. “Then I was raised by animals.”
Alex sat down on his rear, uncertain of what he was sitting on. Armadra knelt down near him and with a snap of his fingers he made a large flat boulder appear behind him as he lowered his backside onto the rocks pale yellow surface.
“What do you mean?”
“Love, empathy… it doesn’t separate us from the animals, I would know. It just separates us from monsters.”
“Do you know of any monsters?”
“…My father.” Alex uttered gloomily.
Armadra was still easily visible despite the lack of light coming through the cloud cover above them, almost as if another source of light was there with them and between the clouds. But instead, the droplets continued to fall. Alex looked up with weary eyes to the humanised dragon and steadily recounted his recollection of his childhood to Armadra. The dragon stood still and hadn’t spoken a word to Alex as he went on. Occasionally he stopped for a moment to take a deep breath and continue onward with the story, eventually tying them to the nightmares he would experience infrequently. All the while, Lyrus looked at Alex with indifference and no judgement throughout the story, it was when he arrived at the part of the story where he was forced to attack his brother that truly elicited a response from the Dragon. He tried his best to hide his horrified look, but still an open mouth and subtly wide eyes painted themselves on his face at the horror for what had seemed like a minute before he collected himself and returned his face to its neutral look.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“…From there on, Tyler never spoke to me again. We grew apart and while he never did anything that explicitly said ‘I hate you, never speak to me again’ it was the look he had in his eyes whenever he didn’t immediately turn away from me. To my dad, he thought his method worked with resounding success” Alex emphasised with a grandiose tone. “Because all he saw was that my brother became nothing more than a soulless drone who obeyed my father without question and his grades suddenly became much more… acceptable to him.”
By now, Armadra was hunched closer to Alex from his rock, his hand supporting his chin held up by his knee. Similarly, his eyes contained a small trace of sadness to him that Alex couldn’t help but find out of character for a dragon. Since all they cared about was honour and discipline, Alex for sure was certain that his father’s cruelty would have seemed trivial to the Draconic father in his presence.
“But that was all my father cared about,” Alex continued. “He only cared about the results. Not the methods, not the side effects and not about anything else. I bet if we lied on our exams to get a top score and didn’t hide it he wouldn’t have cared that much… Or maybe he would have. I am not sure. But if I had tried to talk to Tyler then maybe I could have saved him.”
“Saved… him? From what, your father again?” Armadra said cautiously.
“No. From himself. You see, Ship Master Lyrus Armadra, three years later I am in my Ninth year in high school, Tyler was in his seventh. Father had gone away on some business trip in London or New Berlin or whatever city and our mother was hungover from yet another wine binge so it was up to me to get myself and Tyler ready for school. I was dressed up in my uniform and had my parka on and I called up the stairs telling him to hurry to eat his breakfast so we could leave on time. He didn't respond the first time and thought nothing of it, given the uhh… reasons why. Ten minutes go by and I call out to him again. The third time, I climbed up the stairs and banged against his door and called out for him or else I was going to drag him out of his room. So I go and open the door and… I see him… He had built a crude staircase using his desk chair and books to elevate himself high enough to the exposed wooden beam that ran across the roof.”
Alex sighed wearily while a lump suddenly formed in his throat which he had struggled to suppress. He knew his attempts at hiding his sadness from the dragon were proving futile, he could see it in his blue eyes that he was telling him to stop if Alex could no longer keep going. Perhaps out of a deep desire to share with someone or he had already told most of the story and didn’t want to cut it off so suddenly, Alex continued onwards as painful as it had become.
“He… uhmm… he tied some clothes together to make a makeshift noose and somehow was able to secure it to the wooden beam. He climbed up the chair and the pile of books and then kicked the chair over, at least that’s what I could tell from what I saw. Because all I could really focus on was his pale body limply suspended in the centre of the room. No suicide note, no apology video explaining his reasons, nothing. The coroner said he had been dead for three hours before the paramedics arrived to cut him down.”
“God, were charges pressed against your dad? Surely the teachers at your school would have noticed something was off.” Armadra spoke.
“The teachers brought up the odd behaviour to our dad, but he insisted that everything was fine, that he ‘finally learnt his lesson and started being respectful’ even after the suicide, there wasn’t anything to directly indicate my father. Shortly after, my mother left him and didn’t bother to take me with her so I was stuck with him until I could enter the military. I just kept my head down and tried to forget it as best I could.”
“That’s horrible!” Armadra said aghast at what he heard.
“Yeah… And here we are.”
The duo sat for what had felt like ten minutes, bathing in the heavy compounding silence save for the occasional clapping of thunder that echoed throughout the air. Armadra had been staring at the ground speechless. Alex on the other hand, had nothing left to add on to the story and chose the silence himself, yet, he could not resist the nagging inquiry at the back of his mind about the dragon’s response.
“I’m surprised you are so shocked, I thought dragons were all about disciplining their children. Are you telling me you never laid your hands on them?” Alex asked.
Repulsed, Armadra jerked his upper body away from Alex and looked at him with eyes of hurt. “Of course, we discipline our hatchlings, but we never ever lay our claws on them, nor do we pit them against each other to do our bidding, that’s just evil.”
Armadra quickly shot up and the rock that he sat on dematerialised as he walked five feet away. Then he turned back around and crouched next to Alex.
“See, I knew there was a reason I wanted to help you. When I saw you the first time I could sense you were troubled but I had no idea it was this bad.”
“So how do you plan to help me?” Alex said, pushing back the sadness that had slowly crept in his voice. But when he had looked up to see the human Armadra staring down at him it became clear that he failed and it was evident in his eyes.
“No,” Armadra said lowly. “Now is not the best time, you can hide it but you are too emotional for me to assist you properly, the scars run deep and you never gave yourself a chance to heal.”
“So what do you want me to do? I don’t know how to fix myself.”
But the human Armadra said nothing, instead he stood silently as the world around them slowly faded into darkness, the smell of ozone and petrichor vanished and instead a pleasant scent replaced it. Alex opened his eyes and he found himself back in the private chambers of the Ship master. He looked around to see Armadra held up by his hind legs as his body remained erect in its upright posture. His wings still outstretched and his body covered in illuminated blood vessels flowing with potent Magia slowly grew dimmer as Armadra opened his eyes to look at Alex.
“Glad to see you came back okay.” Armadra said with a sympathetic tone.
Alex had quickly raised his upper body off the ground while his head spun, he was still seeing double and strange little flashes floated over his retina, making it hard for him to focus. The headache slowly eased itself and the loud thumping of his own heart pulsing through his temples subsided, from his perspective of the floaters and the double vision slowly faded until his vision had returned to normal. The tender flesh inside his mouth along with his tongue felt numb to any new sensations leaving a dull taste in Alex’s mouth as he began to swish saliva around trying to wash out the last of the metallic taste that still lingered inside.
Then he groaned as he got up on his legs; pins and needles permeated his entire left leg and nearly threw him off balance. With a low growl and scowl on his face, he looked at the dragon.
“Next time… I would very much appreciate a heads up if you were lacing anything with narcotics.” He said begrudgingly.
Armadra chuckled lightly. “In case it didn’t work, I had the drug aerosolized and placed in the ventilation.”
“Yeah, very funny.”
Armadra shuffled his limbs until he was on all four legs again, giving his whole body a shake starting from his rear and working it up to his head, he reminded Alex a lot of a dog that had just came out of the ocean or a bath and started to shake the moisture out of its fur. The dragon walked past Alex with his wings partially extended and a satisfied grumble vibrating throughout his barrelled chest. Alex reached out to grab hold of the toned wing arm to stop the dragon and he had, as expected, turned around suddenly to see the human holding on. Even Alex realised just how punitive he looked compared to the Dragon, whose very wing was bigger than his own apartment.
“Hold on, you still never told me how I am meant to fix myself.”
“Have a good night’s rest, Captain. Sleep and focus on your breathing. I shall summon you when I am ready to try this again.” Armadra said serenely as he tapped on the wall panel releasing a hiss of compressed air opening a door. A draconic marine entered into view and Armadra spoke in Draconic to it before they both turned to face Alex.
“My second lieutenant here,” Armadra gestured to the Marine. “Will be escorting you to your accommodations.”
The marine turned around and walked through the large cavernous corridors of the Galaxius, frequently turning its head to glance behind it to check if Alex was still following it. He wondered if this was still Ortiss or a different marine. Between the fully enclosed suit and the vocal modulator it was difficult to determine if it was the same dragon. Three decks below, they came across a large hollowed tubular corridor that looked smaller than the more open corridors everywhere else. Along the floor ran a lone beam that hummed with a force of energy far greater than the gravity plates beneath him yet its purpose didn’t seem to be all too dissimilar. The Dragon soldier walked up to a terminal near the rail and it beeped rhythmically, only stopping to allow the pre-recorded voice speak in draconic and then the terminal resumed its beeping. A gentle breeze kissed his cheeks as Alex saw a moving capsule arrive out of the tunnel and opened its side to the duo.
The tram whooshed through the closed tube network that ran through the Galaxius. Above the sliding door, proudly displayed was a printed-out sheet of the ship’s interior tram network illuminated from behind. The written language, came as no surprise to Alex, was written in clawscript. He cursed under his breath for something to be written in the roman alphabet so he could at least guess where he was.
Only he and his marine escort occupied the tram pod. Alex looked over and asked. “Ortiss?”
The dragon looked at him with its head cocked to the side while it shifted its legs to a slightly wider stance. Alex assumed that it was confused given the lacklustre expression behind the helmet with only the thin strips of green light along the upper armour plate of the helmet and the small navigation light fixtures along the central strut that supported both upper and lower helmet plating.
“Are you Lieutenant Ortiss?” He asked again.
“No,” Said the armoured dragon shaking its head. Just like Ortiss before, their voice was modulated beyond the point of any recognition to make it difficult to even grasp the sex of the speaker.
Alex then took two steps closer to the Dragon who carefully studied his motions, possibly waiting to see if he was going to try anything against it.
“So what do I call you?” Alex then asked. “And please, would it be too much to ask for you to take off your helmet?”
“Why would I do that?” It asked with a hint of genuine curiosity that still came through the synthetic speaker.
“Because I would like to see who I’m speaking to. Must be a human thing to want to see the face of those we speak to.” Alex said, wearing a cheeky grin.
The dragon marine made grunt sound, muffled from the suit and brought up its right front claws over to its front left leg and tapped on the wristpad. After a series of short beeps Alex heard a sharp hiss followed by a small click sound and he watched as the helmet came apart. Each component split itself from its other components and the upper helmet plate swung up and backwards to reveal the face of the Dragon underneath; Its dark grey scales gently reflected light as though they had been polished thoroughly and yet its deep lush green eyes resembled sapphires glinting in its head. For a moment Alex was mesmerised to see such exquisite details in the soldier.
Then Alex smiled a little and asked. “So what do I call you?”
“Second Lieutenant Zhira, sir.” It spoke with a gruff feminine expression.
“Nice to meet you, Zhira.” Alex nodded.
As Alex had said that he heard the hydraulics pull the door open behind him and a similar looking corridor to the one he was in before extended out. Zhira escorted him down the length of the corridor after her head was concealed behind her helmet. They walked down a much narrower corridor that looked too small for fully grown dragons to traverse unhindered. Lining both sides of the narrower corridor aside from the decorative wall light fixtures were rows of heavy duty looking doors all sealed up. A touch screen terminal was mounted next to each door as some had a red light at the top of the screen while others were green. Alex assumed the green ones meant they were vacant and he was proven right as Zhira cleared her throat from behind him and Alex turned around to see that she had opened one such door that he had walked past. After exchanging glances and a nod Alex closed the door behind him as he began to examine the room; cool lighting filled the room with a pale blue glow coming from an enclosed recess in the wall. Behind the glass barrier of the alcove rested lush and vibrant plants and succulents, droplets of water crowned many of their green appendages as a fine mist descended upon them from a grate in the ceiling above them. Small ferns and aloe vera plants were the only ones Alex recognised at a glance and many others were probably from Dragon planets. Alex then looked back at the rest of the room bathing in its cool gentle lighting and saw a small desk right next to the bed.
It didn’t take much for the captain to want to lie down on the neatly folded bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress as he unclipped his helmet ring and ripped the Velcro patches apart with a loud SSHHRRPP! Soon Alex stepped out from the leggings of his suit and was only wearing his navy issued boxers and thermoregulated shirt. With his suit sitting deflated by the side of the bed and comfortably tucked beneath the sheets, Alex was ready to get some sleep. And yet, he couldn’t help but remember the Ship Master’s final words repeating themselves in the back of his mind on a loop. “Have a good night’s rest.” Perhaps he was simply wishing him a restful sleep but it was the tone that which he delivered it with that confused him; perhaps he meant it in a well wishes manner or was he suggesting some more soul care for Alex to practise in solitude.
With his body underneath the sheets shortly after, his eyes gazing blankly at the riveted ceiling panels Alex slowly pulled his eyelids closer together and focused on his lungs as he drew his breath in and felt as his organs slowly expanded and thus raised his stomach before slowly letting it out. Occasionally his thoughts would dare to ruin his concentration as he began to focus more on his own breathing; slowly drawing air in and focusing on what he was feeling from the smell of the air touching his olfactory senses to the feeling of something slowly removing itself from his body as he gently pushed the air out while sleep calmly reached out to his mind and gently brought his senses into its gentle embrace.