The Crystal Dragon Series Collection

by Katie Cherry

Growling, I abruptly stand. “He’s alive!” Pausing, I close my eyes as more tears gush forth. “…But if he isn’t, that Kronogrix is going to regret it ever screwed with us.” The guys smile and nod and continue grabbing equipment. Growing impatient, I remind them, “Seriously, though, we don’t have much time. Every second…”

  “We know, Crystal,” Aren softly says to me as he finishes strapping a giant harpoon to his back.

  It only takes a few more moments before we’re declared ready to go, but each second causes my stomach to clench in worry. Leaping in headfirst and swimming down as fast as I can, I lead the group back toward Nathan. Every one of my muscles scream at me with each stroke, but I refuse to stop. They’ll recover, they always do, but Nathan may not. Nathan needed every second I could give him, and I refused to make him wait. I would save him, or die beside him. That stupid, dinosaur-like creature would not get away with this.

  While I put every ounce of effort into swimming, the others chatter behind me.

  “Can you believe it? There’s something down there that’s bigger, faster, and stronger than the Kronogrix!”

  “No way, it’s not possible.”

  “Why would it attack it if it wasn’t at least as strong?” The first person argues back.

  “Okay, fair point… but the Kronogrix is nearly legend itself- how in all the waters, is there something stronger?”

  “…What if it goes after us when we get down there?”

  “Then we’ll kill it and have something to show from our years of searching! Can you imagine, coming back with the body of something greater than the Kronogrix? We’d become legend just for finding it!”

  “I bet we could at least get a lot of money for it…”

  After a while, Drake swims up beside me and looks at me comfortingly. “Hey…”

  “He’ll be okay.”

  Pausing, he slowly nods. “I’m sure he will be- you both were amazing in the Games. If anyone can survive a Kronogrix attack, it’s the two of you. …But, there’s always the possibility that he wouldn’t have.”

  Thinking back to the first Challenge when we were in the Games, I recall how Nathan had died temporarily, but the tears from my dragon eyes were able to bring him back thanks to my ancestor who was a natural-born healer. Steeling myself to come across his lifeless body, I give Drake a short nod and continue on focusing. Even if he didn’t make it, I might be able to heal him and bring him back.

  When we finally reach the bottom once more, the water is murky, but still. There seemed to be no sign of the Kronogrix, or what attacked it.

  “Nathan?!” I call, hearing my voice echo off into the darkness, ricocheting off of the rock walls of the chasm. “Nathan!” Desperation creeps into my voice as there’s no response to my second call. Quickly swimming over to one side of the chasm, I find that there are many huge holes carved into it- either from erosion or from creatures cutting into it. “Nathan…” Falling to my knees in the sand at one of the entrances, I choke back tears.

  How would I ever be able to find him in the vastness of this chasm? It went on far beyond the reach of the light from my ScubaSpec, and every second that passed, any trace of him or the Kronogrix is swept away by the current.

  Growling and summoning my strength, I get back to my feet, spinning around to face the others. They all look back at me with sympathy written all over their faces. I ignore it.

  “We are going to scour every last one of these tunnels until we find him,” I declare, looking up and down the chasm floor. “He’s not here, so he must have gone into one of these to hide from that creature.

  “However long it takes, we’re going to find him.”

  <<>>

  His head was pounding. That’s the first thing Nathan noticed. Grunting in pain, he lifts a hand to his head, annoyed by how sluggish his body felt. Keeping his eyes closed against the pain, he tries to remember what happened to him. Feeling the sand beneath him and the water around him, he slowly recalls his journey into the depths of the Quagon ocean before abruptly remembering his brief struggle with the Kronogrix before it had knocked him out cold. I must only still be alive because of whatever attacked it, he slowly realizes, struggling to sit up as it feels like his body was ignoring his commands.

  “Greetings, Dragonkin.”

  Suddenly sitting up was no problem. Shooting upright as his eyes rip open, Nathan pants and looks around him, spinning slightly from the force of his head whipping from side to side. “Who was that? Who’s there?” But all he could see was rock. He seemed to be in a tunnel that connected to a network of other tunnels.

  “No need to be afraid,” the voice continues. Wait… is the voice in my head? Putting a hand to his head, Nathan fears for the state of his brain. If he was hearing voices, he must have been hit harder than he thought. “I am not a figment of your imagination,” the voice chuckles. “I was waiting out of sight for you to wake to avoid alarming you.”

  “Yeah, well, that didn’t work too well,” Nathan mutters in response, still utterly lost. What on earth was happening here?

  “I still believe you should prepare yourself. Few humans have ever seen my kind.”

  “Then why are you going to show yourself to me?”

  There’s a pause before the response comes. “I felt that you were in danger… you sent out a signal that only Dragonkin send when in danger. I saved you from the Kronogrix, but, I’m curious… why do you feel as though you are Dragonkin when you wear the form of a human?”

  Nathan’s head pounds harder as he takes in the words. “I… I’m not. You must have felt it from my friend. She’s the Dragongirl.”

  “That means nothing to me.”

  “What? She’s been prophesied for like, ever,” Nathan begins to reply before realizing they were in a different realm. “Oh… well, in Zilferia, at least.”

  “Zilferia… the name sounds familiar, though old, to me… It is one of the realms birthed from the separation of Aroidu, the original realm?”

  “Uh… yeah.”

  “It was created at the same time as Quagon, then. My kind have been here nearly since its birth and have little to no ties to any other realms.”

  “That would do it,” he mutters. “Okay, so I’m ready to see you.”

  “You have prepared yourself?”

  “Yes…” After he says this, a shadow near him moves. Nearly jumping out of his skin at the unexpectedly close movement, Nathan scolds himself and looks closer as the creature approached, his heart pounding in his chest.

  It was a dragon. Only… different. This dragon had short, thin wings that were obviously meant to aid in the water rather than hold them in the air. Blue closer to the body, they fade to green at the edges. Most of its scales are a dark blue, with the ones protecting its belly up to its head a light green. Its long tail has fins on it rather than spikes, though its legs and forelegs have spikes that look sharp, as well as the long ones on its face. Fins also accentuate its face, growing behind its jaw. Although smaller than the dragons from Zilferia, it looked just as deadly and powerful. …And oddly beautiful.

  “My name is Raziel,” she greets.

  “Y… you… um… wow. So… you’re a water dragon?” he asks lamely.

  “Indeed,” she replies, settling on the sand before him and laying her head on her forearms, assuming a non-threatening position. “As are you.”

  “No, I’m not a dragon, like I said, that’s my friend.”

  Pausing, Raziel looks him up and down before shaking her head. “No, the power I feel, it’s from you. You must not know it, somehow.” She continues to stare at him, and he groans and closes his eyes. I can’t be a dragon! I… I’m not. I can’t be. That’s who Crystal is. Raziel’s look tells him she’s just as bewildered at his human state as he is at the thought of being a dragon.

  “Think,” she finally urges. “I believe you will find it in yourself to believe it is true. You’ve always felt at home in the water, yes?”

  “Well… yeah, I
guess so. I could swim before I could even walk,” he slowly admits before recalling how every time he got in the water, he felt more rejuvenated than drained, like everyone else. After a while of thinking, he finally admits to himself that it is intriguing enough to at least try and see if what this dragon was telling him was true. Easily recalling Crystal telling him how she discovered her dragon side, he does as she did and tries to imagine being the creature before him. He imagined having the long neck, powerful legs and tail, all the fins, everything.

  The change is gradual and he has to keep focusing, but eventually he completes the transition. Shocked to his core, he confirms to himself that he hadn’t used his shape shifting Gift… then does it again. This shouldn’t be possible. Yet, here he was, a dragon, yet still him. Craning his long neck around to look at himself, he flutters his wings, which have the opposite coloring from Raziel- green to blue- and flicks his long, fin-covered tail. His scales are a rich green, with his underside scales turning more of a blue shade.

  He can now sense how pleased Raziel is to see him in his dragon form before she speaks. “There have been rumors, I’ll admit, of a dragon child among the humans, but over the centuries, the rumors had faded to a strange story to tell each new generation.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “Well, centuries ago, a traveler arrived from another land… bearing dragon attributes. This is likely what created the legend of the dragon child, but there was never a full dragon among the humans here until you.

  “You are our prophesied one.”

  <<>>

  “Well, what do you want to know?” Angela laughs. Chet looks back at her, a soft smile on his lips. He and Angela had made an effort to just hang out today, and they’re still getting caught up. Thus, his question about what First Earth was like.

  “I don’t even know,” he chuckles. “I don’t even know enough to ask a proper question. What did you do every day? What did you do for fun, that is- I don’t want to know about how amazing it was to spy on Nathan,” he adds with a wink, dodging the smack he knew was coming.

  Smirking at him, she puts her arms behind her on the blanket and relaxes, letting them hold her weight for a while. She stares up at the blue, cloudless sky for a moment before replying. “It’s kind of funny. Everyone there is so… fat, yet they have a strange focus on health for everyone but the adults- who need it the most. They have so many activities to strengthen your body. They call them ‘sports.’ I dabbled in a lot of them. Apparently I was a natural! I quickly became noticed for being so good at these ‘sports.’ At first, it was really strange, but I quickly came to like it. It felt amazing to finally be good at something. I guess that’s the main downside of being Giftless in a world of Gifts… you’re just not good at anything.”

  “Hey, don’t say that,” Chet immediately tries to console her, but she just gives him a look.

  “Chet, you have a Gift. Even if it’s just one, that makes you fit in, even if you don’t stand out. Me… I have nothing.” Suddenly leaping to her feet, she sticks a hand out to him. “But, I’m a Goddess at Sports!”

  Laughing, Chet allows her to pull him up and follows after her as she begins hunting for something. “What are you looking for?”

  “Find a ball, I’ll find the rest,” she simply replies, her back turned to him as she digs through a small pile of trash beside a house near their picnic area.

  Rolling his eyes, but chuckling just the same, he begins scouting. After a few minutes, he finds an abandoned dog toy. It was a ball, but it was flat and covered in grime. Grimacing, he picks it up and wipes off the worst of it, thinking about the dog it had belonged to. The only dogs in Zilferia were sheepherders- so there weren’t many. He’d only seen one in passing, before his recruitment to the Dragon Hunters.

  Trudging back to his sister, he chokes back a laugh seeing her trying to wrangle a wire around a small square of wood. “Here, let me help,” he offers. She allows him to take over, instructing him to make a loop with it. He does so and presents it to her, eyebrows furrowed in curiosity and bewilderment.

  “This is called basketball,” she begins, placing the wood and wire into a nearby tree. It stood precariously over a small knob in the bark. Taking the sad, deflated ball from Chet, she proceeds to do a weird dance toward the tree, sticking her butt and arms out while pretending to bounce the ball on the ground. Tears well up in Chet’s eyes as he watches, determined to not laugh at his sister. She was, supposedly, a goddess at this, after all. “The goal is to get the ball through the hoop, and not let the other team do the same,” she explains, dropping the ball through the wire hoop. It lands in the grass with a sad plop, the grass bending to get out of the way before leaning back and caressing the sides of the unexpected new item.

  “I… see,” he chokes, biting at his lips to keep his laughter from spilling out.

  Glaring at him, Angela crosses back over to the blanket, falling onto it with a pout. “I don’t have any of the right stuff for it, alright?”

  “Okay,” he nods, not daring to say anything else as he sits back down beside her.

  After a few minutes of his mirth simmering down, she looks at him seriously through her eyelashes. “…What about you?”

  Chet immediately tenses at the question. “What about me?”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t need you to go into detail about everything that happened with the Dragon Hunters. I just… I need to know… if you heard anything about… about Dad?”

  Keeping perfectly still, Chet stares at her, wondering how to put it into words. Finally, he responds, “The one time I’d dared to ask where our fa-” he chokes and starts again. “Where Ian went, I was harshly told that he was gone forever. I can only assume that they killed him. He was always trying to get away… to get back to you, in the beginning.”

  After hesitating, Angela looks at him, her eyes dark despite the sun shining into them. “When I was on First Earth… I had a brief run-in with… with a man who looked similar to how I imagine Dad… Ian… would look now. He- he had the same blue eyes,” she finally manages to finish. “…But he was a Dragon Hunter, so I… I don’t…” Her voice trails off uncertainly.

  Tilting his head curiously, Chet’s mind races. “I mean… the man never actually said that Ian was killed. He could have been brainwashed or something, or escaped to First Earth? He could have just been kept separate from the main Zilferian faction… and that’s why I’ve never seen him…”

  After staring at each other, the wondering thick in the air between them, Angela suddenly shakes her head, putting an end to their thoughts. “No, it’s too far-fetched. Dad’s dead, and he has been for a long time.”

  <<>>

  “Your move.”

  Hunter watches as Scourge once again instinctively lifts his right hand before stopping and using his left to move the bishop instead. He was still trying to retrain his brain, and it seemed to be the little things that are the hardest to battle his right-handed instincts. Thanks to the rapid healing from some medicine from First Earth, the bandages from his hand had been removed. Seeing the stumps saddens Hunter. Though Scourge could technically play their game of chess with his right hand since he still had most of his pointer finger and all of his thumb, it was more an exercise of training his brain to stop relying so heavily on it. They’re both too aware of what that would mean for him. Instincts meant everything for survival in Zilferia, let alone while they were at war.

  Moving his rook, Hunter thinks about the war he was supposed to be waging. He hadn’t ordered any attacks yet, and he could feel everyone’s nerves… and their judgment. If the Prince of the Dragon Hunters wasn’t continuing the war, what were his motives? Would Dexter replace him even faster than Patrick was replaced? Were they gearing up for a huge push?

  Did the boy, younger than the vast majority of Dragon Hunters, even know how to wage war?

  “You’re doing it again,” Scourge chuckles, drawing Hunter’s gaze.

  “D
oing what?”

  “You know what. You have that brooding look on your face again. I swear, you’re going to get lines on your face before the next year if you keep that up,” he teases, poking Hunter between his eyebrows. He notices Scourged used his left hand to do so.

  Grinning in response, Hunter shakes his head and lets out a sigh. “Scourge, you know the burden I’m under.”

  “Can it not wait for one game of chess?” When Hunter doesn’t reply, he swipes the board away. “Alright, then. Let’s do it.”

  “…Do what?”

  Rolling his eyes at his friend, Scourge leans over and grabs Hunter’s pad of paper and a pencil, handing it to him. “Plan your next move. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? Since Dravyn is having Dexter watch your every move?”

  “I need to be the best leader possible,” Hunter mutters, fidgeting with the pencil in his hand. “I have to lead the Dragon Hunters to greatness.”

  “Then do something,” Scourge groans. “What’s our first move? Wipe out the rest of the mermaids? Shouldn’t be hard since they’re- forgive the pun- sitting ducks. Or,” he continues, eyes gleaming, “We could take out those pesky werewolves.”

  Looking at Scourge in surprise, Hunter hesitates, eyes flicking over to his friend’s ruined hand. Hardening his resolve, he looks back into Scourge’s dark eyes and nods decisively. “Absolutely. Let’s make those wolves howl in pain.”

  “That was awful and you know it,” Scourge laughs before happily turning the discussion to forming a plan of attack.

  <<>>

  Dexter sits patiently in Hunter’s first meeting, taking in the announcements without comment. He sits with his back straight and his shoulders back, which encourages those around him to do the same. He doesn’t particularly care about Hunter’s wish to attack the werewolves- they were a nuisance, at the very least, and there wasn’t much concern about leaving themselves vulnerable to attack from the King’s Villagers, thanks to the reinforcements Astrid had sent with him when he was sent to babysit the Dragon boy.

  He is, however, a little concerned about what Astrid would have to say about the decision. In his eyes, the boy was doing well. He took everything seriously- even down to the annoying habit of taking notes during meetings. If nothing else, he was desperate to prove himself. That, in and of itself, made him useful. He could, however, see how Astrid would be impatient with the boy. He hadn’t done anything with the Dragon Hunters yet, despite being their leader for about a month. Now, his first decision had nothing to do with Dravyn’s greater interests.