Breath of Fire: Of Dragons and Fairies.

Chapter One: Dragon in Human Form.

“Time turns but the pain remains, the dragon tries but tries in vain...”

There was darkness everywhere and nothing made sense, everything was hazy and clouded … the darkness was black as ink and darker than death. There was no sound or light just a dull ache. Then a flash came, and with it a loud crack, it illuminated everything and pushed the darkness back to reveal a planet that was torn and breaking even further. Pain came then and after it grief, sorrow and finally rage. Words sounded in the dark, “I love you”. More pain… and then, laughter… but unlike the words, the laughter brought back the rage and the madness. Another flash of light and explosive crack, then the planet, growing ever smaller, was now in a hundred pieces. He roared, letting his anger spill out into the soundless void of space.
Another crash, but that of breaking glass, came from the world around him; it felt like another time and place. Muffled and irritated voices were heard and a silenced yelp woke him from his nightmares, but he lay in bed calming his racing heart and listened to the commotion in his room.
“BUT IT’S MINE!” yelled Fenraes, a small fairy, as she came crashing through the closed yet unlocked door. The fairy, as you might expect, was small, but not as small as you would think. If she could ever stand still long enough to show you, she would be about the size of your forearm, from your elbow to your outstretched fingers. She had long brown hair, the color of fresh plowed earth, smooth as a flat stone and with a slight curl to it. Her hair was long… well for her race at least, it went down almost to her hips, about six inches in length and was tied in a pony tail, she was quite proud of her long hair. She was just the right amount of skinny, for she loved to eat, however she was not close to being fat, and she disliked the taste of meat… she weighed about 7 pounds. She wore a very non- “traditional fairy” outfit, for you would think she would wear leaves or grass… but no, she wore a vest with a miniscule shirt underneath and long pants with a miniaturized skirt over them. They were colored browns and greens with gold highlights around the edges, she said it reminded her of home when the sun came up. On her hands and feet were gloves and boots, respectively placed of course, though she had been known to switch them from time to time. On her boots, gloves, shoulders and in the middle of her chest were gems, the gems on her shoulders connected to the gem on her chest by small golden chains. The gems looked white in light and black in dark, and when she moved the gems changed to every color that man can see… and even some they can’t. Her ears were long, about the size of half your pinky finger and they heard what she wanted them to hear and nothing else. Her eyes were just the right size; they were deep… deep and brown, like milk chocolate had been turned into a shiny metal then placed into her eyes. She had a playful demeanor, even while sad, scared or sorrowful, she was always playful. Unless she was in a battle or otherwise serious situation she was very hyperactive. But there were some things that she never got bored of, like flowers… and donuts, and also her friend Kaiser. She liked Kaiser, he was quiet, but not serious, just quiet and thoughtful; he liked to joke with Fen. In fact it was into Kaiser’s room that she crashed into… and she had a donut in her hand… actually it was in both of her hands because of her size. Mmm, donuts…. Kaiser and donuts, two of her favorite things in one room; today was going to be a good day. But there was something important… ah yes, she was being chased, she couldn’t figure out why though. The donut was hers, it didn’t matter if this person was holding the donut in their hand and about to take a bite out of it… she had wanted it, so she took it.

As she rammed the door opened she looked around for a place to hide, the door continued its uninterrupted course until it was rudely interrupted by the wall. The door hit the wall with a bang and knocked down a picture that was hanging on said rude wall. Fen startled at the noise and, once again forgetting her “being pursued” state of being, she fluttered down to the picture lying on the floor and looked at the people in the picture. In her head she thought of their names, there was friend-happy-Kaiser in the middle with a big smile on his face; he was laughing. To the left of him were friend-joyful-Thetz; she too was laughing, and friend-funny-Niloc; he was red in the face but quite obviously laughing. Perched on top of Kaiser’s head she saw herself-Fenraes; she never stopped laughing. And last on the right was friend-serious-Enof; … He was not laughing.

Startling her from her thoughts was a large man, for every man was large to Fen, who came skidding to a stop right outside the door. He had the angry look of someone who had just had their donut stolen from them would have. Fen took one look at his face and did what was natural; she called up vines through the floor board to wrap up his legs. How, you may ask, did she do this? Well then I ask you: How do you move your fingers or legs? How do you see or digest? You just do, so how do fairies control nature… they just do, and in fact, that’s exactly what she did. The vines came up through the floor board and twisted around his leg up to his knee at unnatural speed, thus locking him in place and making him unable to come closer to Fen. Fen jump flew up to Kaiser’s desk where she set the donut down and proceeded to stick her tongue out at the man at the door… Now that she got a good look at him she didn’t actually know who he was… however by the way he yelled at her she got the idea that this might not have been the first time she had pilfered his donut. Seeing he could not move, the nameless man took out a slingshot and, with inhuman speed, fired three shots at Fen. With a yelp of surprise, fen threw an energy shield in front of herself. If you had the eyes of a fairy you would have noticed that the energy barrier she put up was the exact same color and intensity of the life force of the nature around her, it was multicolored to match the different auras of reds, browns, greens, and blues that the trees, grass and wind all have. And much like the aura of nature; Fen’s energy projections (for she could also make a fairy blade as well) were always changing color and shifting and bending the light in strange yet beautiful ways. The steel balls careened at Fen but luckily she got her barrier up in time, and as each one hit the shield it flew off in a random direction; one decided to hit the monitor of Kaiser’s computer and send it crashing to the ground. The next felt like the window might be a fun place to fly and it went straight through, with the cliché and extremely loud sound of breaking glass. The last ball was nicer though and thought to just hit the wall with a thud so as not to be of any trouble. Fen dropped her shield and looked around at the destruction of Kaiser’s room and was quite scared, and it looked like the slingshot man also had a look of “oh crap, oh crap, let’s get the heck out of here” on his face. Kaiser yawned and stretched, and that’s when Fen panicked, she grabbed the donut and flew out of the room as quickly as she could, pausing only briefly to untie the man from his viney entrapment. The man shook loose the vines and closed the door with a loud slamming bang.

Kaiser chuckled to himself and ran his hand through his hair as he got up and sat on the edge of his bed, he then shook his head and slapped his face to dispel the last remnants of his recurring nightmare. This nightmare memory was one he had been having for as long as he could remember, though it didn’t come every night for he was usually very diligent in not recalling memories of his home world. But today was different, not really wanting to but not resisting he revisited some of the memories of himself when he was young.

Kaiser looked up at his mother, she was very pretty and always wore a flowing white dress, she had long hair that was also remarkably white and as long and free flowing as her dress. Her eyes were a beautiful light purple, just like his brother’s eyes, whereas Kaiser’s eyes where the deep sapphire blue that his father had. His mother didn’t look like Kaiser though, she had long arms and legs that were pale and smooth, she didn’t have scales like Kaiser and his brother Eldritch had. Father had scales though; his were a metallic silvery blue, lighter in shade though from his eyes. Father was also considerably larger than Mother almost ten times her size, and he had wings whereas Mother did not. He also had sharp teeth and mother had sort of flat teeth. She didn’t have claws or a tail or spines or spikes anywhere; in fact she didn’t look anything like Kaiser or Eldritch at all. Sometimes Kaiser had seen his Father become small and smooth like his Mother, but usually he chose to stay in his birth form. Kaiser’s mother (though he didn’t know it at the time) looked like we might think of as a human, though she was far more noble and majestic, as well as more powerful than any human could ever be. She was one of those beings that time and space themselves bowed down to. His mother picked Kaiser up and spun him around while laughing, when she laid him down on the ground he came about to her knee. His teeth and claws were not sharp yet, and they wouldn’t be for a long time. In truth he was a short chubby little dragon with stubby horns and a huge grin on his face. Kaiser looked around for his brother Eldy, Eldritch was some yards away stalking a grasshopper patiently, and Kaiser watched and watched and watched as Eldy just sat there waiting, waiting for the perfect time to pounce. Kaiser grew bored of the waiting and ran over as fast as his little chubby legs could take him and dove at the grasshopper, which seeing Kaiser’s waddling run, easily jumped out of the way. Kaiser giggled as he saw Eldy’s annoyed face, so he decided to pounce on him too. The two brothers wrestled and laughed at each other as they tried to bite each other’s knobby little horns with stubby little teeth while kicking each other with chubby little legs. Kaiser actually had other brothers and sisters, but none were alive. As was common for a litter of dragon pups, seven or eight would be born at once while only two or three would survive. Kaiser looked around again as Eldy ran off looking for the escaped grasshopper, he saw his father, Ladon, though he never called his father by his name. Laying down Ladon was as tall as the trees that surrounded the meadow they were in. Ladon had his head rested on the ground and watched Kaiser with his large penetrating blue eyes, his breathing was long and slow, taking several minutes to inhale and then several to exhale. Kaiser saw his mother kneeling beside his father with her hand on his neck and a gentle smile on her face. Ladon smiled and blew at Kaiser, the resulting gust of wind knocked Kaiser over and rolling back a few feet, Kaiser whelped with glee and waddled toward his father, and with much effort and struggle succeeded in climbing up his father’s lip and onto his head which was about three times the size of Kaiser. Kaiser wrestled with his father’s long sharp horns until he felt tired and dozed off on his father’s head, the last thing he could remember was his mother cradling him in her arms and humming quietly to him as he fell back to sleep.

Kaiser snapped out of his reminiscence and got up to get ready for the new day. He smiled to himself as he remembered what he was like as a pup. Kaiser threw on a plain white shirt and changed out of his shorts and into a pair of long loose black pants, after that he put on his breastplate and over that his long black sleeveless vest. And last he donned his gauntlets, shin guards and shoes. He looked at himself in the full length mirror, he was not a huge man but neither was he small, he stood at about six feet five inches tall. He had white blonde hair, though not nearly as white as his mother’s hair. He was strong and defined from years of practice and battle, yet even after so many years the sight of his bright blue eyes still surprised him because they looked so much like his fathers. He took one look back at the wreckage in his room and shrugged deciding he’d worry about it later; he stopped only to pick the picture up of the floor and place it on his desk before he left the room. Kaiser’s room was on the top floor of “Pandora’s Mansion”, a large ten level building that housed hundreds of beings, some were human, though most were not. After closing his door he leaned on the railing outside his room and looked down all the way to the bottom floor. He could see many of the buildings occupants around the huge living room, in one corner he saw Enof leaning back on the couch by himself reading a book. He also saw Fen zigzagging here and there with a donut in her hand, though as far as he could see, she was no longer being pursued. Kaiser looked around and laughed at the layout of the building, for it was rather strange. The building resembled a giant shopping mall in the way it looked, there was the bottom floor which had no rooms on it, and it was just a huge open area with four “pits” one in each corner of the room. Each pit had a huge flat screen T.V. and three large sofas that could sit about eight people on each one. In one end of the room were the front doors, and on the other end was entrance to the ginormous kitchen that lay in the back. On each side of the front doors were a set of stairs that went all the way up to the top floor, the rooms started on the second floor and wound all the way around the building, sometimes there were walkways spanning over the open area of each level and connecting the two sides. On the wall opposite Kaiser’s room, in between the two far pits on the ground floor was an elevator. Starting on the third floor and going up to the sixth floor on the side above the kitchen doors was an extended balcony type protrusion, it extended about a third of the way into the open space in the middle of the building and was completely covered in plants. Three story tall trees surrounded this indoor natural haven and even a small waterfall spilled in between two of the large trees and over the edge down to where it magically disappeared around the second level. That was where Fen lived, as well as many of the other habitants of Pandora’s Mansion who were more accustomed to the safety of nature versus a walled in room.

Today would be a rather different day, for he had received a letter from Pandora (He had yet to actually meet her), the letter said that a new person would be arriving at the mansion this morning and that he should give her a tour of the grounds so she could get used to it. The letter also said that she was a “Wyndian Princess,” though he had no idea where Wyndia was. Kaiser yawned on last time and looked over the edge to see that no one was in his way, he liked living on the top floor for one reason in particular: he smirked as he placed one foot on the railing and vaulted over the edge.