by Jada Fisher
Awakened
The Brindle Dragon, Book 2
Jada Fisher
Fairfield Publishing
Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Contents
1. First Impressions
2. It Was Meant to Be
3. First Meal
4. Dark History
5. Five Claw Discount
6. Quiet in the Library
7. Repercussions
8. Breaking the Pattern
9. Beyond the Veil
10. A Healer’s Touch
11. The Forge of Desperation
12. The Nightmare After
Thank You
Bonus Content: Story Preview
1
First Impressions
Light refracted off the diamond-like eyes staring back at Eist, different colors shimmering within the depths. Onyx slit-pupils gazed at her, staring right through her and into her soul.
Her hands rose without her mind even giving the order, and she carefully pressed her fingertips to the tiny little snoot pushing past the shell of its previous home.
She touched the smooth yet pebble-like skin, and it was like lightning rushed through her. She felt her cheeks warm, her heart flutter, and it was almost impossible to even breathe. Her entire existence narrowed down to the sweet, reptilian face in front of her.
One of his front legs came out—so little, so adorable, and tipped with black claws. Her other hand reached for it, and Eist gently pressed her palm against the bottom, almost gill-like scales of the underside of its foot.
“Hello there,” she heard herself coo, her voice sounding high and lilting even to her. But she couldn’t help it. She was so full of happiness and affection, as well as so many things that she didn’t understand. All she knew was that this little beast in front of her was suddenly her whole world.
Its mouth finally opened, revealing pink gums and no teeth, before it let out the tiniest of chirps. The noise absolutely melted Eist’s heart, and she almost started crying then and there for absolutely no reason.
The dragon baby’s other leg came out and the weight of its body started to tip it forward. Eist hastily reached out for it, catching it in her arms as it finally broke free from its egg.
“Ah! You’re here! You’re really here!” Eist whispered excitedly to the baby, wiping little shell bits and sticky egg-fluid from its face.
The creature was beautiful. Stunningly beautiful and perfect in every way. Its head was triangular like a green dragon, but flatter and almost shovel-like, similar to red dragons. It had stocky legs similar to the bulldogs that the city guards loved so much, and its tail was as long as its whole body.
Perhaps its most breathtaking quality was its coloring. Its eyes reflected every single color of the rainbow depending on how the light hit it, and it was like staring at the borealis that hung in the heavens up north. But those light eyes just made the rest of its scaling stand out that much more. Instead of being one color, its base was a coppery, while small, irregular patches of black and dark caramel swirled all along its body. It was like an artist had painstakingly painted the reptile, and Eist didn’t think that he could have been any more beautiful.
“Wait, what’s wrong with your dragon?”
Eist looked up, expecting perhaps Ain or Athar, but instead she saw one of the other students that she wasn’t close with.
“What do you mean?” she asked defensively, raising her shoulders as if she was shielding her little baby from the negative words. “He’s perfect.”
“He’s the wrong color,” he continued, his brows drawn together in confusion. “And he’s so small!”
Eist looked down at the precious being in her arms then around at all the other dragons. She saw red, green, blue, purple, gold, silver, and even copper. But none that were…brindled, like her dragon. And all of them were about the size of a puppy that was a few months old or so. Meanwhile, her dragon was about the same size as a cat.
“There’s a lot of lightning damage here,” Dille said, walking up behind the other student. “Perhaps it was injured while in the egg? Maybe it’s a copper dragon that’s just been burned a bit and the black scales will fall off?”
The other student nodded. “I suppose so. How impressive, little guy. You’ve already been through some stuff, haven’t you?”
“And so have I,” Eist said in agreement, her heart filling with pride. Dille was probably right, her baby had emerged from an egg buried in ash. No doubt it had been exposed to high temperatures and trauma while in one of the most delicate stages of life. “We were meant for each other, weren’t we…” she trailed off, realizing she didn’t have a name for the little one. She didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl dragon—not that that really mattered. A boy dragon wouldn’t care if he was called Ethella and a girl dragon wouldn’t care if she was called Bael.
“I get the feeling that you’re my little man. Aren’t you?”
The dragon looked up at her, eyes sparkling, and it chirped again. Eist swore that she was going to just spontaneously combust if it kept making such adorable noises. But it wouldn’t do very well to just keel over in the middle of the egg keep, so she forced herself to get to her feet, still cuddling her little one to her chest.
“He’s really pretty,” Dille said, walking along beside her. Eist finally remembered that her best friend had a dragon of her own now, a portly red one that was clinging to her back like a pack, its head buried in her thick, curly hair. “I think mine’s a girl. Maybe they’ll fall in love when they’re older.”
Eist laughed quietly at that. “Isn’t it a little early to be matchmaking?”
“I’m not matchmaking,” she objected, a smile on her face. “Just saying, it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“I never took you for a romantic.”
Dille stuck out her tongue, for once looking her fourteen years of age. “Can’t a mama daydream about her baby living happily ever after?”
“Fair enough.”
They reached the front of the keep where nearly everyone else was standing or crouching, absorbed in their new companion for life. The whole room was filled with the excitement and wonder, and Eist couldn’t help but smile at the display.
This was what she had been waiting for. After fifteen years, she finally had her dragon.
“Hey there!” Yacrist said, his tone stressed as his purple dragon clambered all over his body, its two long necks accidentally getting caught or wrapping around things they shouldn’t, causing the older boy to constantly untangle them. Eist remembered her mother telling her how ungainly purple dragons were for their first few months, so the young man certainly had some challenges ahead of him.
“Oh! You have your dragon! What kind did you end up with?”
Eist smiled up at her taller friend. “We’re not sure. We think he may be a copper dragon, but the lightning attack might have burned him a bit.”
“I see, that would explain the coloring. But I’ve never seen a dragon with crystal-colored eyes. They’re rather captivating, aren’t they?”
Before Eist could answer, there was a snort and a sharp laugh from behind Yacrist. He turned so she could see who made the sound, and unsurprisingly, it was none other than Ain.
“Trust the deformed girl to get the deformed dragon. How are you going to defend the realm with a runt that’s been burnt and shriveled up in a fire?”
It would
n’t have been that bad if it was just him laughing. Ain was a bit like a rooster, always crowing for attention—annoying, but without much of an effect on anything otherwise. But then several others snickered around her, and for a moment, she felt terribly self-conscious. As idiotic as Ain’s determination to bring her down was, he certainly knew how to echo the darker thoughts within her head.
“I’m not deformed,” Eist replied evenly. “I lost some hearing to a fever and I’ve made it just as far as you anyway.”
“Yeah, but how much of that was from pity? You look at people with that witch’s eye and they feel bad that you’ll never amount to much.” He continued to say something else, but suddenly, Dille was rushing forward and in his face. Well…as in his face as the short young woman could be considering there was about a foot difference between them.
“You know, you’re so obsessed with Eist, it almost makes me wonder if you subconsciously have feelings for her,” she said, her teeth bared as she hissed out her words. They were so quiet that Eist could barely hear them, but she didn’t miss how the dragon on the girl’s back sensed her anger, its little wings flaring out and its head rising from her dark, dark hair. “It would almost be cute if you weren’t so annoyingly persistent in always trying to get her attention.”
“What? You’re ridiculous!” Now the golden dragon perched on his shoulder was also flaring its wings, its little mouth opening to breath little chirping sounds at Dille’s dragon. As much as Eist would love to see the thin girl trounce Ain, she could see Athar quickly closing in from across the room.
Besides, today was supposed to be a joyous day where they were all meeting their new soulmates. She didn’t want to muck it up with a stupid fight with an even stupider bully.
“Never mind him,” Eist said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s just go.”
She turned away and walked toward the outside. The dragon in her arms wiggled a bit, almost as if to ask if she was alright.
It was strange. Its mouth didn’t make words, and it wasn’t like its voice spoke in her head, but nevertheless, she knew exactly what it was asking. Was she just projecting her own thoughts onto it, or was this the bond that her parents had told her so much about?
She didn’t know, but all thoughts of Ain and his teasing fell away as she looked down into those beautiful, reflective eyes.
“I’m alright,” she said, cooing at the thing. “As long as you’re here, I’ll always be alright. We’re going to have some crazy adventures together, you know that?”
It let out a longer warble as if agreeing wholeheartedly, and Eist smiled more broadly than she had in goodness knew how long. Cradling her new best friend to her, she exited the outer house before the egg cavern, taking her first step into the world with her dragon.
The first of many, of course. Their journey was just beginning, and she couldn’t wait to find out everything she could about her new best friend.
2
It Was Meant to Be
Eist gently bounced her little dragon in her arms, her gaze locked with his. She swore that every second she looked at him, she saw something new about him. He was just so interesting! She didn’t think she could ever tire of looking at him.
“You’d think that they would have more than three healers available for hatching day,” Yacrist said, looking utterly exhausted as he unwrapped his dragon’s necks from around his own for the fifth time since they had been waiting.
“Really?” Dille asked from where she was sitting in the floor with her dragon clinging to her front. “From what I know, it takes years to learn how to properly treat dragons, much more than humans, so having three in one place is actually pretty impressive.”
“Don’t ruin my complaining with your logic,” he retorted, sliding down the wall to sit next to her. “Is this what having a child feels like? Because I’m too young to be a father.”
“They’ll stop almost strangling themselves after a week or two, but you have to be careful until they’re a few months old,” Eist said absently, stroking the top of her dragon’s head.
“Are you kidding? Months of worrying that they’re going to kill themselves with their own clumsiness?” Yacrist sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. “When I dreamed of being a dragon rider, this was not how I imagined it starting.”
“No one ever does,” Eist said with a grin, her eyes only for her dragon. “But you gotta have them as little bitty babies before they can be big, strong protectors of the realm.”
“Huh, I gotta say, before today, I would have said that you were one of the least maternal people I knew, but you seem to be taking to this whole caretaker thing really well.”
“We’ve only had the dragons for about thirty minutes,” Eist said, letting the comment about her maternal instincts go. She knew that she could present herself as…cold, so she couldn’t blame him for having that impression of her.
“Yeah, but still. You know how you can kinda just tell that someone’s gonna be a great parent? I can definitely tell that with you.”
Dille said something as well, but it was too low for Eist to catch. Before she could ask the smaller girl to repeat herself, the door to the infirmary opened and the healer called her in, leaving just Yacrist, Eist, and ten other students behind them.
Eist couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if there had been the whole hundred plus students like there had originally been in their class before the lightning incident. They would have been stuck in line, waiting for an attendant for ages.
Granted, it wasn’t as if she was bored. No, in fact, she was quite the opposite. She was so utterly enraptured by her new little dragon that she could have sat there for hours. It helped that he wasn’t quite as wiggly as everyone else’s dragons. It seemed that she and Dille had ended up with some relatively calm babies, and Eist certainly wasn’t complaining.
Eventually the door opened again, and she headed in. She saw they were in a large side-room to the main healing hall she knew quite well from all of her time with her grandfather. Judging by the equipment and supplies within, it was specifically for dragon care. That was interesting. One would think that her teachers would have told them about it on the tour of the academy. Then again, there was so much to the massive facility, she had no doubt that she would have been well and truly overwhelmed if they tried to show her every nook and cranny.
“Ah, go ahead and put your little one on the table,” the healer said, a blue band around the middle of her waist seeming to signify that she was different from the other workers.
Eist did so, and the dragon let out several warbles, clinging to the front of her tunic.
“It’s alright,” she cooed, gently pulling his dark claws from her shirt. “It’ll just be a few moments, okay?”
The healer smiled and approached him only to stop short, giving him a puzzled look. Eist watched her face carefully, trying to make sure that she didn’t miss anything the woman might say.
“That’s an…unusual color there,” she said slowly, as if she was trying to think of the politest way to express her surprise.
“Yeah, we think that the lightning strike might have burned his egg a bit. I found him in a pile of ash.”
“A him? You seem sure of his sex.”
Eist shrugged. “I dunno. It just seemed like that’s what he is. Why, am I wrong?” Eist didn’t care if her dragon was male or female. The only thing that mattered was if it were healthy.
“I’ll have to check. Give me one moment.”
She left the room, going out a different door, and Eist busied herself with standing beside the table and looking at her little friend. He was curled in a ball on the table, looking up at her with a curious expression.
“Hey little friend, what do you think of this big, crazy world we’ve got here?”
He didn’t answer, but his mouth opened and closed several times in what looked like an agreement to her. She smiled, leaning forward to gaze even more closely at him, only for him to stand up and bump the t
op of his lightly rounded head into her forehead.
Eist laughed, feeling her heart surge again. “Is that your version of a handshake?” she asked, even though she knew he couldn’t quite answer her.
She felt movement behind her and craned her neck to see that the healer was walking back in and had brought another with her. He was taller and older but wore the same blue belt that she did.
Just like her, he stopped short and looked curiously at the baby dragon. “Oh.”
“Exactly!”
“Something amiss?” Eist asked, noting their curious behavior.
“No, not at all,” the original woman said. “I’ve just grown a bit tired and wanted to make sure I performed his examination correctly.”
“…I see.”
The woman approached the brindled dragon almost reverently, offering her hands for him to smell. He looked back at Eist, almost as if to ask if he should trust the stranger, so she nodded slightly.
He chirped and settled down, allowing the healer to slide her hands along his scales. She turned him this way and that, before lifting his tail. She gave it the slightest tug and he let out a tiny, almost bark-like noise.
“He doesn’t like that,” Eist said quickly.
“Most don’t. But you were right, he is indeed a he.” Next her hands went up to his cheeks, where her fingers pressed into a spot on either side of his jaws, and his mouth flopped open. From there, she slid her thumb in and glided along his gums.
It was a bit of a curious action, but Eist was distracted from inquiring further when she felt eyes on her. Turning, she saw that two more healers were peeking in the door, watching intently.