An Earthbound Misfit - Chapter 3

A fatal attraction is holding me fast
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I.

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He awoke in the same room as the day before. This time hunger played no part, but the soft chirping of an alarm clock stirred him up. That soft chirping slowly grew into an annoying buzz, in turn metamorphosing into a deafening, maddening noise. He tried to sleep through it, but we all know how this will turn out. How the hell was it still getting louder?!
He opened his eye and the infrared world greeted him. Lifting his head, he looked around; the cave, with its bookshelf, light switch, mirror, bed, was still the same. Except for a damn digital clock sitting across the room. That wasn't there last night! He looked at the time it read, its small writing barely visible.
5:03 A.M.
No. No no no no no. Five in the morning is in no way a proper time to get up. Maybe he could sneak in a couple more hours of sleep.
beep… beep… beep… beep… Beep… BEEP… BEEEEP... BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
"Alright! I'm up!" he growled, shaking his head. He stood up, the warm air of the cave greeting his now-exposed underside, and walked down to the alarm clock. It was extremely small; he couldn't even see any buttons on it let alone turn it off. But it was connected to a wire running across the rock wall and down the tunnel connected to the room. With a flick oh his claw, the god-forsaken noise stopped. The dragon shook himself further awake before walking out of the room.
The main tunnel of the cave system, its ceiling high enough for the dragon to stand on its hind legs comfortably, was unlit. Walking to the massive entrance room, he found it too was dark, the massive hearth cold, except for another tunnel entrance on the other side of the fire-pit, from which a dim ray of light escaped. He never noticed that tunnel before; it must've been hiding in the shadows. Quietly, he walked down the tunnel.
He arrived at a small cave on his right, from which the light originated. Looking into the room, he noticed the source of the light, an old light bulb, lit dimly enough to see the filament glowing softly. He could see shelves of various things, food, equipment, junk, covering the rock walls. In the center of a room, a large stone table rest. On the opposite side of the room, another dragon, her gold and white scales shone beautifully while the red membranes of her wings ruffled as she walked about. "Morning, Kay."
The dragon visibly flinched, before chuckling a little when noticing the larger dragon in the tunnel. "Good morning Mick," she replied, before placing a metal device on the table. "Come in, come in."
"You never told me about this part of your cave," Mick said, as he ducked his head and stepped into the room. It was barely larger than his bedroom but its walls were overflowing with objects he couldn't recognize.
"We only use these rooms when hosting events, and other things. This is one of our storage rooms, if you didn't already guess," Kay said as she picked up another metallic device and laid it on the center table before scanning the shelves once more.
"Is that a phone?"
"We call it a 'Reefer' and you're actually not allowed to even touch one until you're registered by the D.I.A. So don't play with it," she said before looking back at Mick, who quickly put the little device back on the table.
"What's the D.I.A.?" Mick asked. It sounded familiar.
"It's the American version of the I.D.I. Oh, sorry, I forgot you're new."  The gold dragon threw a leather sack on the Reefer before leaning over the table. "Where to begin? Well, dragons aren't invisible. We're giant, scaled beasts that can be seen 20 miles away. Humans have known about us before they knew how to paint on their cave walls."
"Then why don't humans know about dragons now?"
"But they do. Just, of course, not everybody. If you were to go back in time, oh, three-thousand years, you would find that the dragon world had its doors open to anybody curious enough to look for them. All the dragons in the world lived in the high, forested areas of Asia, roaming freely, visiting any humans or countries they wished. If you visit Tibet today, you're bound to see more than one dragon flying about, but I diverge. It was only when you humans became religious fanatics did we start slowly fading away from human interaction. We didn't want to fight in a war every three or four years, so we secluded ourselves.
"Skip to the 19th century: dragons still take no part in the human world, but they don't worry about hiding themselves. Dragons still intermingled with humans, simply because humans really didn't pose a threat to dragonkind. Until some genius thought it would be a great idea to capture dragons and use them as weapons for humankind's wars."
"Wait. You're telling me dragons were the first… fighter planes?"
"Exactly. His name? Napoleon. You see, he was more of a military genius than you could've imagined; what's the only way to command the air? No I don't praise him; he was the devil to dragonkind. When he became emperor, he sent hundreds of expeditions into Tibet, Kokonur, Kakari, with the express purpose of capturing dragons and bringing them back to France. The small dragon populations in Europe at the time were completely driven off, some were even captured. Most expeditions failed, luckily, but his idea spread like a disease and soon every country had to get their hands on a dragon.
"So, imagine: you're living in a community of a thousand or so dragons and a hundred of them go missing. Chaos. Some dragons fled Asia, while others fought back. But, unfortunately, dragons aren't entirely bullet-proof. So they went into hiding. It wasn't that difficult; if you ever visit the Asian dragon states, you can see how uninhabited their territory actually is. But hiding from your problems doesn't solve them. Humans will always explore and conquer, technology will always get better and better, and some human will eventually take a picture of a dragon and yell out, 'Look!' That's where the I.D.I. comes in.
"The dragons knew they couldn't hide themselves for long, they needed help. But who to help them? How about the humans themselves?" Kay was stopped by the sound of Zack's voice down the tunnel, asking where she was. "We're down here! Anyway, the Interi Dea Imoli was created, the 'I.D.I.'. It's basically an agreement saying no dragon communities will kill each other because they had a common enemy to worry about. With its creation, sort of 'emissary' dragons were sent to the world leaders to convince them to hide dragons. Whenever somebody spotted a dragon, the governments would quickly deny our presence, and that's essentially how it works up to this day."
"But wait," Mick said. "Why should anybody help keep dragons a secret? What did the humans get in return?"
Kay shrugged, a weird sight when done by a dragon, before saying, "Absolutely nothing. Except for the knowledge that we weren't going to kill them."
Mick barked out a laugh, before exclaiming, "Blackmail?" Kay nodded her head.
"Blackmail. If you don't help us, we might just stick a knife in your back. Who knows? Depends on if we like you or not. But how to convince the humans you're serious? The I.D.I. simply claimed responsibility for some 'mysterious' or 'unfortunate' deaths. The death of Perceval? I.D.I. Bathurst? I.D.I. Pius the Seventh? I.D.I. Devigan? I.D.I. Gifts and trading also helped, but in the end, it all worked! Every government in the world agreed to say we don't exist as long as we don't pose a threat. Every government except one.
"Doesn't take a genius to figure it out. The U.S. of A. The president at that time? Andrew Jackson, the ass. At the time, nobody in the Americas knew dragons existed; the only dragons in America were either two far away from humans or were well hidden. When we sent our emissary to Washington, he was captured and paraded around as the president's pet. If that's not an act of war, I don't know what is."
"That wasn't in any of the textbooks I've read," Mick joked.
"Neither is the fact that the assassination attempt on him was successful," Kay retorted. "Andrew Jackson was actually killed by a dragon."
"No he wasn't. If he was killed then why was he alive after the assassination?" Mick asked, before observing a grin wash over Kay's face. "It was somebody else?"
"You're quite smart for a human. Ex-human, my apologies. We just had another dragon make himself look like Andrew Jackson, sound like Andrew Jackson, and act like Andrew Jackson, and nobody noticed a difference. Even the failed assassination was a phony, all to cover us up. Too bad the dragon we put in was just as big an ass as the real Andrew Jackson and got himself discovered when his term ended."
"So why didn't dragons become public then?"
"Hmm?" Kay replied; she was scanning the shelves once more.
"They found out he was a fake; wouldn't they have been mad? Started a war with dragons or made them public just to piss them off?" Mick asked.
"Oh the government did declare war against the I.D.I. but they didn't make dragons public. Why? Think about it. If you've ever had a history class you would know that at that time the Americans had their heads so far up their asses they didn't want to admit any defeat, no matter how mundane that defeat actually was. They'd just challenged the British, the most powerful navy on Earth, to an arm-wrestling match and won. They had seen an economic boom and covered up their own government's corruption with bureaucratic whitewash. They were riding high on everything worth bragging about while sweeping anything depressing, embarrassing, or degrading under the carpet and out of mind. They weren't about to tell the world that they were humiliated by a pack of flying animals.
"So in response, they created the D.I.A.: the Dragon Integration Agency. Don't let the name fool you: their one-and-only intent was to kill every dragon they see. And that's exactly what they tried to do; they saw us as a threat, since we could fly, and tried to eliminate that threat. They weren't very successful; they couldn't even find this cave, let alone any other dragon homes. It was only when airplanes were becoming commonplace did they stop hunting us. Ironic: once they have the technology to drive us out, they don't see a reason. I don't know why they didn't make us public by then, but by the 1930s, the D.I.A. and the I.D.I. were at peace. Now the D.I.A.'s only focus is to keep us and any other magical occurrences quiet; they don't want to lose the public's trust."
"I still don't understand why anybody would keep dragons quiet now, let alone spend money to keep them quiet. Why not let dragons go public?"
"Imagine the hell that would turn up. Think about it: every religion on earth says that God, or Gods, made man intelligent and man alone. Then, oh hey!, there are also these flying animals that can talk and calculate and think. Chaos, maybe even a mass hunt for dragons. We dragons don't want to go public at all: humans are crazy and they have guns. They see a dragon, why not use it for target practice? So, among the most powerful countries is a simple agreement: nobody knows about dragons, nobody gets hurt." She sighed, before continuing, "But, we know the day will come when we have to go public, whether we like it or not."
"What about this 'war' I keep hearing about? Was it a war between different dragon countries, or groups, or something?" Mick asked.
"The war…" Kay started saying, before walking back to the table and scratching her muzzle. "We call it Bush's War, simply because it started during Bush's reign. It was simply the xenocide of every dragon in North America by the D.I.A., no declaration of war, no treaty violated. We still don't understand why the U.S. government wanted to kill us, maybe just paranoia, but they tried to kill every dragon they knew of." She leaned her head over the table, motioning Mick to do the same. "Quiet, Zack's coming," she whispered. "He grew up during the war, so the D.I.A. can be an emotional subject for him. Morning son, all cleaned up?"
The young dragon, his blue and grey scales gleaming in the light, his long wings folded over his back, walked slowly into the room. "Oh hey Mick, I didn't know you were in here. I see the alarm clock worked," he said with a malicious grin.
"Yeah about that: have you ever heard of the word 'sleep'?" Mick joked.
"Sleep? There's no such thing as 'sleep' on a Monday. Mom, it's 5:40; shouldn't we be going?"
"Oh we're late. Hurry up and grab you're reefer and bag," Key said before walking around Mick and into the tunnel. Mick looked at Zack, who began strapping the leather bag to his wing, before following the young dragon's mother. "Let's get you going, Mick," she said ahead of him. "You'll be flying to Antira, since Zyditus isn't allowed to meet you here until we finish some paperwork today. Oh, sorry; Antira is a small town twenty-or-so miles southwest of here. Never heard of it? Good, only dragons live there, so you won't have to worry about hiding yourself while flying."
They arrived at the entrance cave and Kay walked over to the fire pit, above which two large hogs were hanging off the wall. "Breakfast," she said as she handed one of them to Mick and the other to Zack, who walked into the room. "Now we'll go along with you until you reach Antira, but the rest of the day we'll be in New York. Let me go get my stuff," she said before turning and walking down the main tunnel. By the time she returned, Mick and Zack had already finished their meal and were ready to leave.
As they turned to depart, Mick heard Zack's voice, telling him to hold still. Mick felt Zack connect a metal device to his right horn, covering the small hole that served as his ear. "Testing, testing, testing," the young dragon next to spoke into his own little gadget. The device echoed his words as clear as day.
"Zack, the D.I.A. won't be happy if they find Mick wearing a reefer," Kay expressed.
The young dragon smiled, before replying, "Good."

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The flight to Antira, whatever this small town was, was short and uneventful. The forest-covered hills, maybe a thousand feet below where the dragons flew, flowed softly under their wings. After twenty minutes or so, they arrived at a sleepy town yet untouched by the tenderly rising sun. It looked like any other town.
"How do you know this is Antira?" Mick asked.
"See that hillside next to the town?" the reefer in his ear replied. He looked over to the young dragon gliding a hundred yards away from him, steam coming from his muzzle when he talked, his long wings almost grazing Mick's own. The dragon pointed to the hillside to their right. Drawn in stone rocks on a field was a triangle with a circle in it, just large enough to be discerned from the air. "That's the I.D.I. emblem. It means this town is for dragons only."
"But why are there normal houses here?"
"They aren't completely normal. See how spaced out each house is? Each one of them connects to a cave system under the town or to individual caves throughout the hillside. The outside may look like a house, but the inside may be one large room with a hole in the floor. We have one up by our cave, have you seen it yet?"
"Mick," Kay piped in, ending the conversation. "Do you see that field in the center of town? That's where we drop you off." The field was large, with a couple of sports fields making up half of it. It was surrounded by trees on three sides, but one side was bordered by a couple of tennis courts and a parking lot. It was completely empty. "When you land, turn off the reefer; there's a little red button on the bottom. We'll be back in about eight hours. See you then."
With that, Kay turned southwards. Zack nodded at Mick before turning after her, leaving Mick alone over the town. He cautiously descended; it was harder than it looked, before coming in for a crash landing. His aim was perfect, but the actual landing couldn't be farther from the truth. With a groan, he separated his muzzle from the cold grass and spat out some dirt, glad nobody saw him.
Sitting up, he fought to get the reefer off his horn and turned the device off. He shivered. The sun was still behind the distant hilltops. It's fricking cold. His snout, still frozen from the flight, bellowed out steam with Mick's every breath. He curled up into a ball, using his aching wings as a canopy, and tried to sleep. He could only manage to close his eyes. Reopening them, he noticed his scales were reflecting a yellow light. He stopped breathing, and they returned to their natural, infrared colors. He exhaled again, and the scales again glowed an ominous yellow, as if the light was coming from… his mouth. He was breathing fire! He completely forgot dragons could do that! He breathed again and again and again and with each breath, his mouth glowed menacingly. He didn't feel any different; his mouth wasn't burning, when he inhaled, his lungs didn't catch fire, he didn't taste anything peculiar. But he was… breathing… fire!
He looked up to see the first beams of sunlight breaking through his wings, instantly warming up his body. He peaked his head outside of his little shelter to see the sunrise peaking over the treetops and quickly lighting up the still-empty field. Nothing stirred, the town, nor the trees, the clouds at rest as well. Mick, now comfortable and the only thing awake at such an early time, curled back up and quickly dozed off.
He was roused by the sound of two voices, not for the first time lately. He looked up at the sun; maybe he only slept for an hour? He looked to his left and noticed two humans kicking a football on a near field. They looked like two young men, maybe college students. They were only a hundred yards away, they knew he was there, yet they didn't pay him any mind. He looked around, there was nobody else there, and tried to fall back asleep. The two voices slowly hushed away…
Thud. Mick snapped his eyes open. Something hit his wing, something small, round. Maybe it was a bird. It must be nothing, as he slowly closed his eyes once-
Thud. There it is again! Same thing! Mick waited for the next one to come and, sure as rain, he felt the small, annoying object bounce off his left wing. Sticking his head out from his little shelter, he quickly found the source of his irritation. The two humans stood in front of him, no less than half-a-dozen feet away. They were both young men, one of them with light skin and black hair, the other, shorter, maybe Hispanic, with brown hair and no shirt on. The larger man was holding a football.
"Are you waiting for somebody," he, the tall one, said. They must be dragons; a normal human wouldn't have the cojones to wake up a sleeping dragon, let alone stand there as it woke up.
Mick looked down at the young man's face, maybe four feet below his, and yawned. "Yes, actually. Do you know a 'Zyditus'?"
"You're here to see Zyd?" the shorter one asked, to which Mick nodded. "Oh, okay, you must be Mick. I'm Darius and this is Zeppy."
"Zephyr!" the other one exclaimed, before throwing the football at his laughing compatriot. "Call me Zep. We're friends of Zyd, who will be here… sometime… anywho, we're here to answer any questions you might have. So ask away, we can't hide anything."
"I can ask anything?" Mick asked with a grin, to which Zep responded, "Sure, why not." "Okay then," Mick continued. "Are you dragons."
"Kay was right, you are a smart one," Darius replied after gathering himself together. "Yeah, we're dragons."
"Show me."
The two men looked at each other, before Zep answered, "Alright." He stepped back while Darius quickly strode away from him. Zep, seeing Darius step far enough away, started changing. He transformed fast! What took Mick minutes, God-forsaken, excruciating, unbearable minutes, and Zack maybe half a minute, Zep did in a matter of seconds. His body expanded unbelievably fast as new appendages formed and reshaped into his wings and tail. As he landed on all fours, his neck lengthened and his face pushed forward, numerous horns growing grotesquely from the back of his head. An endless amount of pops, much louder than anything Mick had heard from his or Zack's transformation, could be heard throughout the transformation.
Everything happened so quickly, Mick almost gagged at the sight. But what interested him the most were Zep's clothes: they didn't rip or shred apart as Zep grew. They instead morphed with his rapidly growing skin. They were part of Zep! That skin quickly started forming into the familiar scales and took on a golden color, much like Kay's scales. As Zep further transformed, he quickly grew into Mick's size before surpassing it, and kept growing! With the sound of a loud pop, Zep inhaled and opened his eyes, a complete five feet above Mick's own.
He looked a lot like Kay, just, much bigger. Whereas Kay had white marking covering her head, neck, and body, Zep had tints of dark red on various parts of his form. His huge membranes, which he was folding up onto his back, were a lighter shade of gold.
"Ta-dah," the large dragon said. "Your turn," he said to Darius, who, with a chuckle, started to transform. His transformation was just as short, loud, and sickening to watch. His clothes were also absorbed into his skin as he grew, like Zep. The scales that quickly covered his body, however, turned a deep pink color as he finished his transformation, just short of Mick's height. What interested Mick, though, was that feathers had grown on the top of Darius's head and neck. Feathers! Bright-yellow and neon-green, they stood upright when he flexed his neck. Mick also noticed the tail didn't end with a tapered end but instead a spade-shaped object, before the new dragon stretched out and walked over to Zep. "Well, here we are," he said.
"Wow." Mick couldn't keep his mouth closed. Even though he had only seen two other dragons before meeting Zep and Darius, the new forms in front of him were completely different. But the sight of their clothes being absorbed into their skin was nagging at Mick; what kind of sorcery was this?! "What happened to your clothes?"
Darius smiled, replying, "You've never seen that before? Think about it: the clothes absorbed into our skin, turned into our skin, were part of our skin. So, there…"
"…were no clothes to begin with," Mick finished him off.
"Yep. The clothes were simply a part of us; we were actually completely naked the entire time, he-he. But it takes a lot of practice to replicate clothing, not many can do it."
"You look a lot like Kay," Mick commented, looking at Zep.
"Well that's because we're both Aurums," Zep replied. Mick's face was plastered over. "Aurums, the type of dragon we are…" Still nothing. "Our race."
"There are dragon races?" Mick asked.
"Well sure," the large dragon replied. "Just like with humans, dragons evolved in different parts of the world, different habitats, and evolved differently. Kay and I are both 'Aurums', whose ancestors hail from Europe and Russia. Zack's an Aurum too."
"But wait, Zack doesn't have gold scales," Mick pointed out.
"Not all dragons of the same race have the same color of scales," Darius piped in. "I'm an 'Igo Mantra', who's scales are usually red or orange. Oh the feathers? Pure Igo Mantra as well. Races can differ extremely from other races. Some can't even mate with others. Like yours for example."
"My race?"
"You're a 'Kiros', which, if you want to feel special, is pretty damn rare," Darius continued. "You fellows are so different you can't mate with half the other dragon races. Hell, even your color is unique: only Kiros dragons can have green scales. You're also the only race that can see infrared light."
"Really?"
"Excluding water dragons, but those don't count," Zep said. Darius chuckled a little bit, before coughing. After a few wheezes, a small flame exited his mouth, immediately dissipating in the air. It reminded Mick of what he witnessed a couple hours earlier.
"How did you do that," he asked.
"What?" Darius replied, still coughing. "Coughing? First you catch a cold…"
"No, I mean, how did you breathe fire?"
"Oh," he replied, before coughing a bit more. "Well, it's simple- wait, no it isn't. Sniff the air. Do you smell the sulfur? Normal dragons need to consume the stuff for, oh I can't remember, but as a byproduct, it also aides in breathing fire. You, freak, he-he, on the other hand, can breathe fire naturally as your body can store methane gas; you can breathe fire almost limitlessly and at any time. Lucky bastard, he-he. Oh yeah, I can teach you. Come here."
Darius motioned for Mick to come to him, which he did. "Now, Kiros dragons and some other dragons have a sort-of third lung, which sits at the top of their throat. It holds methane gas that is produced by your body, but a downside is if I clutch your throat," he said as he pinched the lower part of Mick's throat where it connected to his skull. "You can feel it huh?" Mick nodded stiffly, his throat pinched shut while his neck sent unrelenting warning signals to his brain. "When I let go, don't breathe in, okay? Good job.
"What happens is when I pinched it, it pushed the methane into your throat; you don't want to breathe that stuff in so your lungs close off and the methane eventually leaves through your mouth. When it's let go, you'll instinctively want to breathe in… don't! You'll just breathe in whatever methane left in your throat, which is bad. Now that you've learned the disclaimer, let's actually breathe fire. At the base of your head, there are two, rocks, things, that grind together and make a spark. You've probably figured out how to grind them together?"
"Well, this morning," Mick answered. "When I was cold, every time I exhaled, my mouth lit up."
"As if there was a Bunsen Burner in your mouth, right? Did you know how to start the fire? Damn. Okay, it's simple: force your lower jaw as far back as you can. Or is it forward… oh, what the hell, as far back as you can. Then, snap it forward. You heard it, the stones grinding together? So you've got the spark. Now, clench your neck. Tighter. Tighter. You felt it, as if there was a gas leak in your throat? Good, you now know how to release methane without using your ass! See how simple this is?! Now to breathe fire, simply exhale, clench your neck, and grind the stones together at the same time! Simple!"
Mick looked at Darius as if he were a madman. He started wondering if the dragon was actually mad. He looked over at Zep, who was strapping a leather bag to the base of his wing. Okay, why not, and he tried to do as he was told. The first few attempts produced nothing. When he finally breathed fire, an extreme bellowing of heat escaping his jaws, he accidentally breathed back in, causing him to cough violently.
"You did it!" the pink, damned dragon exclaimed. "That's good enough, good enough." After a copious amount of nasty coughs, Mick could finally breathe normally. Well, some- somewhat normally. "He-he, good show. Now remember when we were talking about dragon races and we mentioned water dragons?"
"Yeah, you said they don't count." He looked up at the two dragons in front of him. Did he say something wrong? With each passing word the two dragons' eyes grew wide, glaring holes through Mick, before Zep glanced behind Mick's shoulder.
"They don't count?" a voice behind him asked. Mick turned around and looked at the dragon sitting behind him, folding its wings on its back. How did that dragon get there? He didn't hear anything, let alone feel it landing! The dragon had deep-blue, iridescent scales covering its entire body, excluding its underside, which was a lighter shade of blue. A large fin ran down the dragon's spine, ending in a huge, collapsible fan at the end of the tail. Only a single pair of horns protruded from the back of its head, but below the horns, a pair of fins ran down the back of its jawline. The dragon's claws were also different: there was webbing in between the claws. So that's a water dragon…
Mick actually had to look down at the dragon; it was smaller than Darius, smaller than Zack! It couldn't have been more than fifteen feet tall! But it's wings, on the other hand, a completely different story: they rivaled Zep's wings in size. They were different also. Where Mick's wings or anybody else's wings had membranes only between the fingers, this dragon had huge membranes running from the wing and down its back, like a bat. Even though it was a water dragon, this dragon was built for flying. Mick could even see the almost-grotesque muscles running along the dragon's shoulders and back.
The dragon stared at Zep and Darius, a serious look plastered on its face. "Don't count? I can't believe you idiots said that…" the water dragon said, before chuckling a little. The dragon's voice, it sounded more natural to Mick. It almost sounded human, maybe because of its small size.
"Hey! Zep said it, not me!"
"Why you little-!"
"Don't you two have to be somewhere?" the water dragon said to the two dragons behind Mick, tapping a very large wrist-watch on its forearm.
"All ready to go. Was nice meeting you, Mick, but we have a meeting to attend. I'll see you around," Zep said before leaping into the air. Mick could swear, the dragon moved the ground as it leaped, and each wing stroke literally blew the air around Mick. He could see the full extent of the dragon's wings, great, colossal wings as the dragon gained altitude. Darius soon flew after the large dragon, the both of them flying south, leaving Mick and this new dragon alone.
"Zyditus?" Mick asked.
The dragon stared at him before standing up, bowing his head, and partially opening his wings. "At your service. Please, call me Zyd. If I may ask: who are you?"
"Mick Jackson." Zyd's eyes shot open when Mick said this, but the dragon shrugged whatever thought he had off.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mick. You probably know why we are here."
"So you can teach me stuff while Zack is busy?"
"Sort-of. Yes, I'm here in place of Zack, but I'll be honest with you: I don't want Zack to be your mentor. He's far too young to be a mentor. An inexperienced mind will become lost even with a map in his hands."
"To be honest, sir – Zyd – I don't care who my mentor or whatever is. I just want to get back to my life."
"You mean your human life?" the small dragon asked, walking over and lying down next to Mick. "I'm sorry to tell you this, Mick, but you're not a human anymore."
"But I can change back, I can go back!"
"But you're still a dragon. Yes you can transform back to a human but don't treat it as a superpower. It's not! There's always a catch, always something wrong. Also in this day and age, there are rules; you follow the rules, your safe. You don't, hell, will, happen! You can't just walk willy-nilly into a shopping mall displaying your scales." The dragon sighed, clawing the dirt in front of him with his talons. "I'm sorry; I've been having an arduous morning. I shouldn't take it out on you. Lots of things on my mind. Anything on your mind?"
Mick, calming himself down, thought for a moment, before replying, "Yes, actually. Am I Zack's first changeling?"
"No, you're his second."
"I heard you knew his first."
Zyd looked up at Mick with a smile on his face. "Fun lad, looked a lot like you actually. Why do you ask?"
"I think he might actually be my father." The dragon stopped clawing at the dirt and stared at Mick, mumbling a soft "No." Mick continued, "My dad disappeared five years ago, and, five years ago, Zack transforms his first human who happens to end up looking exactly like me? It doesn't take a genius to see the connection."
"But then again, there are few Kirosians here; Kay and Zack might simply have been a little racist. Either way, he was an interest guy. Called himself 'Arrow'…
"My dad's name was Aaron."
"…called himself 'Arrow', but he also had monostaticism. Crazy fellow, he wasn't properly mentored and didn't react too well to his new form. That's why I don't want Zack to be your mentor."
"No offense, but every dragon I've met so far has been crazy. What happened to him?"
"Well, he couldn't resume his old life, so we took to have him registered at the Organ Mountain Retreat, a dragon city in New Mexico. Start a new life, help in the war. Flew off one night and never came back. We think he was captured by a Mexican cartel."
"Mexican cartel?"
"Sounds stupid, doesn't it? But we think he's now a drug-lord's pet."
"And you did nothing?"
"What could we do? Usually, the captured dragon just changes back to human and escapes. But… yeah. We still haven't been able to find him. But let me tell you this: don't immediately assume Arrow was your father. He never mentioned anything about having children. And, anyways, you two don't look exactly alike."
Mick looked down, but his mind was already made up: it's just too big a coincidence. "So what now?" he asked Zyd.
"Now, because you're so keen on returning to your normal life, I'll try to teach you how to transform back to human. But I can't transform for you, I can only guide you. Tell me, what did it feel like when you turned into a dragon?"
"It was more painful than anything on Earth. But I don't understand how Zack or Zep or Darius changed without showing any pain."
"It's quite simple: when you changed, you were forced to. El Agua Azul is what we call an 'Intrusion', a weird magical phenomenon. An intrusion is a congregation of virtually limitless magic in some small region, always underground; in the case of El Agua Azul, that collection contaminates the water running through the rocks. Then, for some reason, when a nonmagical or weakly-magical creature contacts the Intrusion-polluted water, i.e. a human, you, they receive the exact amount of magic required to transform into a dragon. But, your body doesn't want to be a dragon and you impulsively fight back, producing, well, pain."
"What happens if a dragon touches it?"
"If they're in their human form, they simply turn into a dragon as if they transformed themselves. As a dragon, nothing."
"Is there only one intrusion-thing?"
"The one in Kay's cave? No, there are dozens throughout the world, seven here in North America. Most are in the form of El Agua Azul, the Intrusion contaminates nearby ground water. An intrusion in Canada, though, contaminates a magma pool in a volcano. One actually contaminated a crystal cave in Argentina, its crystals made famous for turning anybody who touches them into dragons. But we're diverging.
"Your first transformation was excruciating because your natural form was human. A dragon has two natural forms, dragon and man, unless you're a freak like me and have tennorism, but no more diverging. Dragon is our more favored natural form; a dragon relaxing too much in his human form will start changing back without him knowing. Because of this, we can change into dragons naturally and easily, which is why Zep or Zack showed no pain. Turning into human can be a little difficult. However, as for all dragons, the first change into human has to be, well, forced, because human is not our most favored form."
"But it was for mine. Shouldn't I just be able to revert back?"
"Keyword: was; it's not anymore. When you touched the Intrusion, dragon became your natural form. But with some meditation and rest, you'll be able to wiggle your way into your human form, which is what you want, yes? But of course, because it'll be forced, it'll be just as excruciating as your first change." The dragon jumped up. "Are you ready to start?"
"Yes, as much as I'll ever be. But one thing: how do we know if I have monosta-thing? Monostaticism?" Mick asked, standing up as well.
The small dragon sighed and began clawing at the dirt once more. "The only problem is, well, monostaticism is hereditary. It can be passed down."

--------------------

Mick slumped on the rock floor with a groan, before looking up at the projector screen. His wings hurt; his head hurt; his legs hurt; he hurt. Seven straight days of trying to change back and no such luck. And it was painful.
By god, it was painful.
He once heard Zyd talking with Kay when they thought they were alone. "He won't be able to change back." "When do you want me to stop?" "If he doesn't transform by Monday, it's official." "Poor soul." Piss-taker! No fair! "Hopefully, we're wrong." There's that word again: hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. The word that sparks optimism only to smash it to pieces and grind them on the rock floor.
He must change back. He will change back.
Each day, the same routine: wake up, meditation, transform, rest, mediation, transform, rest, sleep. Repeat! It was beyond grueling; all the agonies of his first transformation returning, but this time lasting for hours! Only to exhaust his energy and try again. And again. And again. He didn't even have enough energy to go flying, which turned out to be his favorite activity. The feeling of flying. My god. It almost made up for having his old life ripped away. Almost.
During his resting, he would ask questions, to Zyd or Zack, whoever was kind enough to listen. "How can we tell if I can change back?"
"You make it beyond half dragon-half man, called the horizon, the most painful part of the transformation."
"But I can see myself transforming? Isn't that a sign?"
"If you don't pass the horizon, you don't change back; you just revert back to dragon form. If you do pass the horizon, then your body will want to change into its nearest natural form, human."
"Are there other magical creatures?"
"Humans are magical, but only a hundred thousand or so have enough magic to do stuff with it. Those are called 'Ultras'. Then there are 'Weres', which have two natural forms like dragons but instead turn into less complicated animals. A were could maybe turn into a wolf, a 'werewolf'. Then there are unintelligent magical creatures: wyverns, basilisks, hippocampi, and etcetera."
"Who would win a fight? A dragon or an ultra?"
"Depends on the ultra. Magic powers don't interact with other magic powers. An ultra can't force a dragon into his human form and kill him like that. Or if the dragon has some magic power, he can't transform the ultra into a cockroach. But magic can alter non-magical objects or weakly-magical objects, such as a normal human. If the ultra was powerful enough, he could throw something large enough at the dragon's head, and K.O."
"What can weres turn into?"
"Almost any non-magical animal. A shark, a dog, a hawk, and even some magical creatures, like wyverns or basilisks."
"Is there a dragon sport?"
"Portale."
"Are their dragon countries?" That question lead him to where he was now, sitting in a hall-like room, filled with columns and stalactites, with Zyd. They called it the "Lecture Room" and inside it were two objects Mick never expected to find in a dragon's cave: a computer and a projector. Zack turned on the computer, a new laptop, connected to a dragon-sized keyboard, while the projector booted up, filling the room with the blue light of the loading screen.
"Okay, so you know the I.D.I?" Zack asked behind him.
"An agreement between dragon countries?" Mick answered.
"That's part of it. The I.D.I. is like the European Union of dragons: it's a country made up of smaller countries. Like in the E.U., none of these countries can fight each other, dispute territory, and etcetera."
"Are all dragon countries part of the I.D.I?"
"The significant ones, yes. And we call them 'States'. Let's pop open Wikipedia. In-ter-i de-a i-mol-i."
"What does it mean?"
"'Collection of Dragons'. Here it is: Interi Dea Imoli. Their emblem, representatives, history, that's not what we're looking for."
"This is on Wikipedia? Won't humans be able to see this?"
"Not if they don't enter a few passwords only known to the magic world… ah here it is: the map of dragon states and independent communities."
The cursor clicked on a small grey-and-white map of the world. On it were different shaded regions of different colors spread throughout the world, mainly in China and Russia. But most of the map, almost all of the map, in fact, was unshaded. "I think the colors are according to population. There they are; the ten dragon states. The big three are Kokonur, Tibet, and Kakari, as that's where the first dragons originated. Most of the other shaded regions were colonization by Kakari."
"What are the green areas?" Green spots randomly covered parts of the map, especially in North America.
"Those are independent communities, they aren't part of the states but are still part of the I.D.I. Land is 'owned' by dragons if it is within 20 miles of a dragon community or cave, so those green patches may only be a dozen or so dragons living together."
"Does this map cover every dragon?"
"No, only those which are registered by the I.D.I. But that does include almost every dragon on Earth."
"What are the black dots?"
"State capitals. Our capital is Cyril, in Maine, home to a thousand or so dragons. Zumeri, or the western-U.S. dragons, have the Organ Mountain Retreat as their capital; that's where Zyd is from. Funny, it's only five or so miles away from a rather large human city. Now you see that black dot in the middle of China? It's not in any state. It's the I.D.I. capital, where the big dragons meet for politics and other baloney. Oh hey, its page pops up when I click on it."
"All of this is on Wikipedia…" Mick mumbled, trying to absorb everything on the screen.
"Not only Wikipedia. Let's go to YouTube."
"There are dragon videos on YouTube?"
"And a million other sites for dragons, or ultras, or weres," Zack answered as his YouTube home page popped up. "Let's search… Portale championship final-"
"Wait! Go back. What's that first video there?" Zack closed the search bar and clicked on the first video link: "Zyditus Aronicus 502 km/h". "Is that Zyd? Five-hundred kilometers per hour? That's a typo, right?"
"Oh, Zyd never mentioned anything about this?" Zack asked, before clicking the link. As the video loaded, he continued, "I would be bragging about this at every chance I got. Anyway, humans have the Olympics right? Well dragons have the Interi Argone, 'Dragon Sports'. Happens every four years, same idea, but each state also has their own little 'Olympics', which happens every four years as well. This is Zumeri's championship, which happened last September. And like humans, there are a various number of competitions: weight-lifting, long-distance, racing, you name it. One of them is called the 'Death Plunge'…"
The video finished loading, revealing a sunny day in maybe a desert. In the background, two voices spoke in some weird language, as various clips of dragons talking popped up. The next clip was of a dragon, covered in gold scales, its wings partially open, racing along the top of some lake. After a couple of seconds, it opened its wings and lifted up into the air. A bar along the bottom read "457 km/h".
"Himaichus, from Oregon; he placed third."
Zyd now showed on the screen, placing some sort of metallic goggles over his eyes and earholes, standing on a platform over the lake's edge. Speed to beat: 463 km/h. After a few seconds he opened his wings, ready to lift off. With the sound of a buzzer, he jumped up into the air, quickly gaining altitude.
"The goal of Death Plunge is, simply, to travel half a kilometer in the least amount of time. The fastest dragon wins."
"Why is it called the 'Death plunge'?"
"Watch," the young dragon answered. Zyd, by this time, was only a dot in the sky and was still gaining altitude. "The dragon has five minutes to travel between the markers, spaced half a kilometer away from each other." Mick could see two large yellow buoys on the lake's surface. "In that time, he'll climb about twenty thousand feet and, simply put, close his wings." The camera zoomed in on the small dragon, which stopped climbing, circled for a bit, and nosedived.
He quickly gained speed. As he descended, he flapped every once in a while to gain ever more momentum. After only half a minute or so, he was face-to-face with the surface of the lake. But before his plummet proved to be suicidal, he partially opened his wings, leveling out a mere meter over the water's surface and racing by the two markers. He opened his wings and lifted off the lake surface before flying over to some dragons on the lake's edge. An announcer read his speed, 502 km/h, and the small dragon fell in the lake in disbelief.
"Weird little dragon," Zack said, as replays of Zyd leveling out appeared on the screen. "No, it's not a record, 508 km/h is the fastest any dragon's ever gone, but it won him the championship and qualified him for the Interi Argone next year. But, again, Zyd's a weird little dragon. Not many water dragons."
"Why's that?"
"Water dragons are the result of a birth defect. It causes them to revert to the form of some of our ancestors, the water dragon. Zyd not only has lungs but also gills, he can't breathe fire, his scales actually dry out over time, he can see infrared light, and other weird things. Almost all water dragons die before they are even born, they're so bizarre. He also has 'tennorism'."
"He told me that too, but he didn't tell me what it does."
"It makes it almost impossible for him to transform into human. Instead, his second natural state is sort of like a bipedal lizard, which makes it hard for him to go out in public. Oh he can turn into human, just not for very long. I'll repeat: weird little dragon. He-he."
"Zack, Mick! Dinner's ready!" Kay yelled from down the tunnel behind Zack.
"Come on, let's eat." The dragon shut down the computer and projector before following Mick to the entrance cave. While the dragons were eating, Zyd walked into the cave, his wings too long for him to fly through the cave mouth, with the same metallic goggles hung around his horns.

--------------------

The next few days, the same routine: meditate, transform, rest, meditate, transform, rest. Mick was making some progress, shrinking his form to the size of Zack, but could never go any further.
He was quickly running out of time. Before he knew it, it was Sunday, the day before his classes started and work called him back. "Remember, don't force it, let it go on its own. Feed the energy from your body, but don't push it. Set it in the right direction." Mick looked up at the small dragon standing above him. Why was it speaking gibberish? They were on top of the hill over the cave mouth, Zyd watching the last rays of sunlight reflect off the low clouds.
Mick pushed his transformation a little further, and his eyes grew unable to see infrared light. The small dragon, once glowing red, turned invisible. He shrunk a little, before screaming out in pain. Something in his tail produced a sickening pop. He relaxed, freezing in this weird, grotesque form.
The small dragon sighed. "Let's go back in, call it a day," he said, before walking down the gradually-sloping hillside.
Pop! Mick screamed out in pain again, he didn't even try to transform anymore! More pops, more pain, more screams. Zyd ran back up to him, screaming worried obscenities. Mick opened his eyes; in the cool colors of twilight, he saw it. His body, it was shrinking! With ever more nauseating pops, his frame continued to contract. His wings and tail sluggishly shriveled and sank into nothingness. His claws shortened back into hands and feet, the large black talons being swapped for fingers. His neck shortening while his skull reshaped, producing the most immense headache ever felt. His scales lost color and softened before returning to his familiar, sunburned skin.
With a loud snap, his skull bent forward, finishing the transformation. Lying on his back, he shut his eyes. Starting to lose consciousness. Every pain, resonating over and over and over and over again. The last thing he heard would implant itself in his memory for years to come.
"Mick, my good human," echoed Zyd's voice. "Welcome back."
"Welcome back."
Welcome back.