This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL
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“Eh??? R-Rambo?!!!”
The creature in front of me was different from what Rambo looked like before, but the way he spoke to me was simply too familiar for me not to recognize him. This beautiful young dragon was without a doubt Rambo, but why the change in appearance? Feeling a mix of powerful emotions invading me, tears began to flow down my cheeks as I looked at him.
“M-my baby boy... Sob*” I lowered my weapon and slowly walked toward him, overwhelmed by happiness. “Fawwwtarrrrr” The little dragon then began to run in my direction which prompted me to run toward him faster. We eventually collided with each other and collapsed to the ground, each holding a firm grip on the other.
Rambo was as strong and sturdy as ever which forced me to use dokari to avoid being ripped to pieces by his powerful claws. We were rolling on the ground, hugging and showing how we missed each other while crying like babies. My son had returned. He hadn't abandoned me.
“Rambo! I thought I would never see you again. Sniff*” I said, barely able to articulate. “Rambo never abandon Fawtar!” He then said. Hearing these words made me even more emotional. “How come you grew new limbs? Are you a tadpole or something? How did you find me? Have you been to where the others are? How are they doing? They probably didn't recognized you right? Hehehe”
I had tons of questions, but I was also curious to know if the others were still alright. “Hmm Rambo worry. Rambo go to Fawtar's home but find nobody there. Only monsters there now.” He then answered with a puzzled voice. “What? There was nobody? Wait.. The thing we were building, is it still at the hospital?”
There was the possibility that they were already gone to the dokari vortex which would explain why nobody was at the hospital. “The house thing, still there. Not finished and not moved. Also forest burning, mountains spewing liquid fire and sky covered with smoke. Rambo and the others forced to fly away somewhere else, but Rambo eventually felt Fawtar's energy and followed it.”
No way, were they dead? The smoke clouds I had been seeing these last days were coming from these lands after all. It sounded a lot like volcanic activity. Was it the cause of the monster invasion to the north I had heard about? Had the others died due to that natural disaster? No, I couldn't assume them to be dead just yet. They might have fled somewhere to escape this natural phenomenon, but if they had ventured into the jungle, their chances of survival seemed very slim.
I needed to leave now. I had wasted enough time taking vacations here. “Rambo, you're too small to fly me back home but are the others around as well? Could Big Boy fly me back home?” I anxiously asked. Even if I could walk back home, doing the travel by foot would most likely take me more than a month, so the option of riding one of them back home seemed to be the obvious solution to the problem at hand.
Rambo tilted his head a bit before answering. “Hmm sure, but... Who's that? Fawtar got another female?” He inquired while staring at the small purple woman, sitting awkwardly on the ground not far behind us. In the heat of the moment, I had totally forgotten about her. I turned around to make sure she was alright but was met with the weirdest eyes I had ever seen.
She was sitting on the ground, her eyes wide opened, agape mouth, and a facial expression that couldn't be comprehended. Her facial expression gave me the impression of being one I would make if I ever saw a UFO fighting an alien unicorn in the sky. It was a face of complete confusion and astonishment.
I quickly took my homemade 'Duliptani' dictionary and assembled a sentence to calm her down before she had a panic attack. “My.Child.No.Danger.” I eventually managed to laboriously say. “W-w-w-what? Y-you.. You have a d-dragon child?” She blabbered while still looking terrified. I answered her by nodding and giving her a warm smile as I patted Rambo's head. I had missed him so much that I couldn't stop touching and petting him.
“Arh tunak Akdarokhar darumy gavoor ir tirium tum dinaiya.” Said Rambo.
Duliptani to English:
“My name is Akdarokhar, happy to meet Father's new female.”
Urgg.. What the hell? Rambo could speak Duliptani perfectly. His childish way of speaking English was only because he had yet to master the language after all. This also meant that Rambo could play the role of interpret between me and these people. But after hearing what he had just said, another question kept bothering me.
“Rambo, from now on, you can speak the language you are the most familiar with. I should be able to understand you. But, you said your name was Akdarokhar? Where does that name come from?” The obvious assumption would be that dragons were born with a name or something like that. Had I been wrong to call him Rambo all this time ? “Rambo is Rambo. Akdarokhar is the name given to me by the others of my kind.”
This time, Rambo answered me in a language identified by the nanites as being 'dragon tongue'. Rambo suddenly sounded a lot more mature and well spoken. So the other dragons had given him a name, most likely given during the period of their life when they grow those front limbs and become fully fledged dragons. “Does your name have a specific signification or something?” I asked.
“Yes, the old ones said that it meant ' Son of man'. But I refused the name. Rambo is Rambo.” Firmly stated Rambo with a voice filled with pride. While Rambo and I were catching up with each other, Kuyani remained frozen in place, looking like a statue staring blankly at us.
A red blooded human, aka dragonkin, was happily chatting with a young dragon who called him Father. Nothing in the world could have prepared her to witness such an unbelievable scene. “So dragonkin truly do give birth to dragons and vice-versa.” Whispered Kuyani to herself.
I was over the mood after finally being reunited with Rambo but I still couldn't shake my worries for the others I had unwillingly left behind and couldn't wait to get back to. “How long would it take for you to bring Big Boy here? We need to get back to town as fast as possible in case something bad happened to them.”
“They follow me everywhere so the others are nearby. The one you call Big Boy could be here in only a few kilps.” This was exactly what I had hoped to hear. (Assuming kilps were something similar to minutes...) As much as I had dreaded this moment before, I wasn't feeling guilty for leaving Kuyani behind anymore. The thought of the others being in danger was all I could think about at that moment.
“Rambo, can you translate this for me please. 'I have been very happy to meet you Kuyani, but now I need to go back to where I'm from. Sorry but I can't marry you since I already have a women waiting for me elsewhere.'” This wasn't exactly the truth, but if she thought I already had a woman, it would probably be easier for her to let go.
It would also prevent her from feeling rejected since that way, the problem wasn't her but the fact that I was already taken. Hearing this, Kuyani didn't react the way I was expecting her to. Strangely, I could have sworn her expression had turned to anger for a second there. “N-Nathan's woman... Is she a dragon? Is she this young dragon's mother?” She asked with a complicated expression on her face.
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“Err... Well.. She's... A red blooded human like me...Not a dragon..” I awkwardly answered with Rambo translating everything on my behalf, but also adding some unwanted stuff here and there. “It's Nwela!!! Rambo's mom and Father's favourite female is Nwela! But Father also has two more females he hangs with, Cami and Annie... Ha! There's one more, but I don't think Father likes the fat one.” Energetically added Rambo.
Since I was going to leave soon anyway, I didn't even feel the need to correct him on his mistakes. Kuyani responded with a shocked expression and a slight look of anger on her face. After somehow managing to explain that I needed to leave immediately and that I couldn't become her husband, her behaviour had subtly changed. Somehow though, I had the feeling she still hadn't given up.
“Y-you can't! I mean... We were bringing Nehobian sacrifices for you from very far away.” She desperately pleaded. Finally able to communicate, I instantly took the opportunity to clear the misunderstanding. “I have no need for any sacrifices. I actually believe that human lives shouldn't be taken so lightly. It is by creating a peaceful nation which respects other lives, that your race will grow stronger and advance.”
My words seemed to leave her puzzled and filled with questions for a while, but she eventually shook her head and counterattacked. “T-Then, you at least have to accept to come to a farewell feast tonight at our village before you leave. You should at least allow us to bid you farewell properly...” She finally said with a timid and saddened voice.
Well it wasn't like staying a few more hours would change anything anyway, so I accepted her invitation. As soon as I did so, she stood up and said that she needed to go tell the others before taking off running back to her village. I wondered why she seemed to be in such a hurry.
I hoped that she wasn't going to pull off a weird stunt like bringing her luggage and saying something like 'I'm coming with you'. That would be very awkward if it happened. Then it hit me. Rambo had more or less told her that I had 3 or even 4 women. So maybe she had assumed that she could be number 4 or 5 as long as she was ready to leave her people and follow me.
Now this was a very bad situation and I was mad at myself for not thinking about the possibility of this happening while she was still here a moment ago. I scratched my head in annoyance while wondering what I should do if such a situation truly happened. “Rambo was wondering... Why is Father so far from home? What happened and where are the others? And how come Father can now understand dragon tongue?” Suddenly inquired my baby boy, preventing me from overthinking things too much.
His questions made me remember just how much we had to talk about. Since we didn't have to go to the village before nightfall, we luckily had a lot of time to catch up. We sat next to each other, then I began to recall the events since the day he had left, while affectionately petting his head. How I ended up stranded here because of Marc's betrayal, my experiences with the locals and my meeting with a powerful and mysterious benefactor.
Hearing my story, Rambo became angry and agitated. After arguing for a while on who between us should have the honour of killing Marc, Rambo then finally began to recall what happened to him during his time away from me. His story was very difficult to understand since Rambo himself didn't really understand all of it, but what I understood could be resumed like this;
Dragons were not a specific species, and only a few of them had the potential to become dragons. Even if they were born as something looking like a wyvern, some of them were special since birth and wouldn't follow the same life cycle. In their first stage of life, these juvenile dragons would remain smaller compared to the others. Other wyverns would also naturally gather around them, forming something like a pack or a flock.
Then, once every 70 cycles, the oldest dragons in the world would migrate and gather to a certain mountain range near the area where we used to live. They would then send powerful signals, having for effect attracting all the young dragons and their wyvern followers with them to the said area.
When they arrived at the migrating area, the young dragons would then do the eye contact thing to all of their wyvern followers, assimilating all of their knowledge and experiences in the process. All this knowledge would then become their strength for the final contest, in which they had to do the eye contact thingy again, but this time against other juvenile dragons.
From what I understood, when two dragons entered such a contest, the one with the most knowledge and experience would end up overpowering the other. The winner would gain the loser's knowledge, while the loser would lose his life. From what Rambo said, he had undergone this mental battle with 20 young dragons and won them all.
Apparently, having absorbed the knowledge of the monstrous, demon, king dra- wyvern back then had given him an edge over the others. He also added that this king-wyvern wasn't a normal wyvern, but was what they called an aberration. This basically meant that it was a mutant that could have potentially started a new race of dragons if it had survived long enough.
Having won all of his 'mental contests', Rambo was therefore allowed to grow into adulthood by the other dragons. This is where his story became weird. Rambo spoke about a cocoon, and a hole filled with dragon spit, in which he slept for weeks. When he woke up, his appearance had changed and two new limbs had grown. This reminded me of a tadpole growing limbs, losing its tail and becoming a frog.
Pretty bizarre for a dragon if you asked me, but then again, it wasn't like I knew anything about dragons to begin with. We ended up talking about many things and eventually lost track of time but seeing daylight rapidly fading, Rambo and I decided to go to our farewell party and get a move on. Finding the other survivors needed to be placed as a top priority as soon as this 'party' was over.
The sky had been covered with smoke clouds for days now, and ashes were still falling from the sky, blanketing everything around us in a thin layer of white ash. The plants, the ground, even the rivers were slowly turning grey and murky. The wind was also blowing more energetically than usual, but for someone from earth like me, it was still nothing more than a strong breeze.
We quickly walked down the beach and eventually reached the village as night fell. Upon our arrival, more than a thousand little purple humans rushed toward us and stared at us in silence. They were all lined up in a way that formed a path going toward the village entrance for us. They all looked strangely friendly and passive for some reason.
Seeing them act so timidly made me wonder what Kuyani had exactly told them. “Hmm Father, I don't like this. The look in their eyes is creeping me out.” Worryingly said Rambo. Before I had the time to respond to him, Kuyani came running toward us as we were about to enter the village. “Nathan and Wambo, you are just in time. Come with me.” She said while waving us to follow her.
The inside of the village was filled with little people who cheered for us as we walked in. Some of them seemed very happy to see us, and most of them had radiant smiles on their faces, but somehow, something felt off. Seeing Rambo acting strangely, I knew I wasn't the only one to feel that way.