Riding My Dragons (The Dragons Of Tellus #1)

CHAPTER 18

Jenna

Everyone I could see out the window was a dragon.

There was one big window in the locked room where I woke up, and it didn’t look out onto any place outdoors.Instead, the view outside was of a huge, vast, cavernous underground space.It was lit by large floating globes whose glow must have been from the Ambience, and by Ambience light posts and torches and fire pits along the cavern floor.It was enormous enough to contain a whole village—and that’s exactly what it held.There was a community in this cavern, carved into the walls and constructed into the stone at the bottom of it, where I could see homes, apartments, shops, parks, walkways and streets, recreation areas, what looked like a school, even a couple of artificial lakes.Vehicles skimmed along the roadways or glided through the air the same as they would do in a town on the surface.It was incredible.And everywhere were Scalers in dragon form, going here and there about their business, some flying and some on foot, and some just resting and basking.I looked hard to see whether there were any humans, or Scalers in human shape, and couldn’t find any.It was some underground village of the dragons.I had never seen anything like it.

More than that, though, it seemed as if there were a celebration going on out there.Glowing balloons floated all over the place, and what looked like balls of light went flying and looping along like overgrown fireflies, leaving trails of glittering particles behind them.In the parks, bands were playing; and dragon people were dancing, an almost comical sight.From my vantage point over the cavern floor, through the window of wherever I was, I could make out sounds of dragon voices singing and laughing.Well, okay, I thought, this is Reconciliation Week; it makes sense for people to be celebrating.But where exactly is this and what am I doing here?

I felt a twinge on my neck and touched the spot where I suddenly remembered being stuck with some kind of claw-like dart, and my fascination turned to a sharp, piercing fright.As mysterious as it was to find myself here, the last moments I could recall before waking up in this place were terrifying.My thoughts had just melted away before I blacked out.I’d been drugged!Drugged, and brought to some place I didn’t recognize!I looked at my inner surroundings.I was in a bedroom.There was a comfortable bed where I’d woken up, and there were nice furnishings—a table, chairs, a dresser, a sofa, a closet, a bed where I’d woken up and a nightstand beside it—like you would find in a hotel suite.Wherever this was, it was livable and cozy enough.But the door was locked, and I couldn’t get out.

In a place like this, I could have been a guest.But I was obviously not a guest, but a captive.Someone’s captive—but whose?

From outside the window, voices rose up from dragons flying nearby.I turned in that direction and watched them flapping past, and heard them calling out, “Happy Reaffirmation!”

At this, I wrinkled my brow.This week was supposed to be Reconciliation.But I had distinctly heard them calling out something else.What was “Reaffirmation?”

No sooner did the question cross my mind than I heard a click at the door.Gasping in surprise and a pang of fear of the unknown, I whirled around to see the door opening—and through it, a large, dark reptilian figure stepping inside.

He was a big, black-scaled dragon man; bigger than Elliot was when he morphed.The light in the room shone and glistened on his scales the way the light would play on a big, black snake right after he’d shed his skin.He had patterns of blue and gold lacing over his scales.He was dressed only in dark fabric leggings and leather boots, and a sleeveless top that fastened around his neck and his lower back.He was the most muscular figure of a Scaler that I’d ever seen.If he’d been a wrestler like Elliot, he would have been an intimidating opponent.

My visitor’s huge, leathery, black wings flexed slightly as he closed the door behind him and looked at me with golden eyes.He made no threatening gesture, just stepped calmly into the room and fixed those eyes on me.In a deep, rasping voice that was typical of male Scalers, the black dragon man said my name.“Jenna Callaway.I hope you’re well.Are you hungry?Thirsty?I can have anything you need brought to you.”

Surprised at my courage in speaking up, I said, “You can ‘bring’ me some answers, if you want, to what I’m doing here and what this place is.And who you are.”

He exhaled heavily, his breathing mixed with a reptile hiss, and made a nodding gesture with the horned dragon head on his long dragon neck.“Of course, you’re confused and frightened under the circumstances of your being here.I am called Nidaag.Think of me as your host.”

”My ‘host’?I was at school, and someone drugged me and carried me off.‘Confused and frightened’?What would you expect?Who are you?What do you want with me?”

”Not to harm you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Nidaag.Gesturing past me to the window, he said, “This is Reptos, a habitation of dragons.Humans may visit here, but it is a home only to the family of scales, horns, and wings—my kind.”

I glanced back at the view of Reptos but didn’t want to turn my back on this Nidaag completely.I wondered aloud, “An underground city of Scalers?”I looked back at him.“Nidaag?That’s your name?Your real name?Really?”

It was hard to read the expression on a dragon face, but the way he nodded, I could almost sense that he was smiling.“You’re a bright human girl,” he said.“Nidaag is not my born name.It is an ancient name from the mytho-history of my species.Humans have their mythologies.We have our own.Nidaag was the name of a Scaler warrior king whose story is part legend and part fact.There are such figures in human history as well as in ours.”

”So is that what you are?” I asked.“Some kind of dragon king?”

He made a rasping hiss that reminded me of a laugh.It didn’t sound menacing, but it was unnerving.“We have no kings.You must know that since the time of Reconciliation, my kind and yours have lived in much the same way.That is something that some of my kind have set about to change.”

That was even more unnerving.“Change how?” I asked.Remembering what I heard before he came in, I asked further, “What is Reaffirmation?What does that mean?”

”Our cause—my cause and that of those who follow me,” said Nidaag, “is to reaffirm another way of life, a way of life long gone into history.There is a natural order of things in this world, Jenna, an order that has been ignored, neglected, forgotten, for longer than anyone has been alive.Our cause is to reaffirm the natural order and make it what it was meant to be, the right and proper way of life in this world.”

Hearing him say this made my mind flash back just a few days to an evening when I stood in front of another window looking out on another view with dragons flying by.I remembered that night in Elliot’s apartment, and something we’d talked about before Elliot changed my life.He’d said something about some of his relatives, and things they believed about Scalers and humans.In my mind’s ear I heard Elliot say, …I never accepted that old idea about Scalers being the superior species because we have more than one body.And I had a sudden, awful suspicion.

“You’re not talking about…,” for a second the words caught in my throat, “Scaler supremacy?”

”I’m referring to the rightful order,” said Nidaag.“I mean only the place for which nature selected my kind.”

Surprising myself with how ready I was to argue with this intimidating being, I spoke like the scientist that I was learning how to be.“What I know about natural selection says every species is selected for its own niche in the environment.Some species thrive because they have an advantage over other species, and they’re selected to be dominant.”

”That’s exactly correct,” Nidaag said.“My species has an advantage, the advantage of two physical forms, one of them more powerful than the other—and more powerful than the physical forms of other species.Nature selected my kind for dominance.”

”Intelligence is an advantage too,” I argued.“Scalers aren’t the only intelligent species.”

”No, we’re not,” said Nidaag.“But we are the only species with two intelligent forms.”He spread his wings proudly.“Here in Reptos, we live only in our stronger, more powerful bodies—the bodies of the natural rulers of Tellus.”

Again, I stole a glance outside, then faced him again.“All of you who live here, or come here to visit—you stay in your dragon bodies all the time and don’t become human?”

”Correct.In Reptos we celebrate our dragon nature and put away our weaker, human shapes.We live as dragons only, as a reminder that we are the true masters of this world.”

Now all my earlier fears were forgotten.This was all so familiar.Nidaag was so much like some people back on Earth.Until now it had made me curious and fascinated that Tellus and my own world were so much alike.Now it just made me angry.But I had still better be careful about showing it.As a human girl in this place, I couldn’t have been more vulnerable.So, I minded my tone when I said to Nidaag, “It’s a dragon world and everyone else just lives in it.”

”That’s an interesting turn of phrase,” he said, folding his wings again, “but from our perspective, it’s correct.”

Carefully I asked, “So what’s my part in this?”

“Our cause, Jenna—our mission, if you will—is to correct the order of the world, to put things right,” Nidaag replied.“Your being here with us as our guest is our way of ensuring that we can accomplish that.”

”How?I’m just a human girl.You don’t think people like me should be running things.What am I meant to do for you and your cause?”

“There is an item that we’ve paid certain parties to procure for us,” said Nidaag.“Once we have that item, we can step up our plans and move forward.You are here, Jenna, to ensure that the item is delivered to us quickly.I hadn’t wanted to take measures like this, but some of my followers are restless and impatient.And I must admit, I find it appealing to act sooner rather than later.Once the item is in our hands, we’ll release you.”

”Use me to bargain with, but don’t hurt me,” I said, frowning at him, burning inside at being used this way.If I’d been a mythical dragon like the kind in stories back home, I would have liked to breathe out my fire right on him.

“If you’d like to think of it that way, yes.”

”And once you ‘move forward’ with your plans, as you put it…that’s when people will start to get hurt.”

”Some things,” said Nidaag, “can’t be avoided.”He actually seemed a little sad to admit that.But at the moment I wasn’t impressed with his sadness.I was seeing now what was really going on here.

”There’s a friend of mine,” I said, “that the authorities here are looking for.They want him because he went to the University, to my school, and took something from the warehouse.What he took—that’s the thing you want, isn’t it?You took me as insurance that my friend brings you whatever it was he stole for you.”

Nidaag said, “That’s correct.”

My need to know more, just like a scientist, began to replace all my other feelings.There would be plenty of time to be scared and angry later, and I was sure I would be.But for this moment I needed to know more.I asked him, “This is about your religion, isn’t it?”

The dragon being said simply, “We have a faith.”

”Right,” I said.“A faith that says what?Let me guess.Your faith, which you probably have written down in a book of old scriptures, says there’s a supernatural, magical dragon spirit who made your kind and gave you two bodies.And the leaders of your faith—you may even be one of them—say the Scalers are the favorites of the magical dragon spirit, that it likes your kind better than plain one-bodied humans.And they—or you—say that’s the reason why you should be the rulers of the world and plain, one-bodied humans should be under you.Am I getting that right?”

”You don’t appear to hold faith in very high regard,” he said.

”I’m studying to be a scientist,” I told him.“Science and faith don’t always get along.”

”Yes, that’s true.That seems to be true everywhere.Even…”And he stretched out his dragon neck towards me and fixed the gold eyes in his horned dragon head that much more closely on me.“Even…where you come from.”

A sudden shock of surprise flashed inside me, hearing him say that.Inhaling sharply, I took an instinctive step backwards from Nidaag, feeling as if he were looking right into me.“What do you mean, ‘where I come from’?”

Nidaag drew back his neck and stood straighter, making himself even more imposing in the confines of the room.He flexed his wings again.“There are others that we know of.And there are stories we’ve heard, tales of another world very much like our own—except that no beings of our kind live there.A world of only humans—and no Scalers.Those stories are very disturbing to members of my faith.Many of us deny them.And many of us would not respond well to any such stories being proven true.”

Hearing this from him, I felt wrapped up in reptile coils of dread.Nidaag was talking around something.I didn’t like what he was implying.“What do you mean, ‘others that you know of’?”

Nidaag said, “Have you heard of a group of misguided people called ‘the Intercross’?They are a group of social and cultural outliers, a fringe element of our world, who believe there is a world such as I’ve just described.Some of them claim to have visited such a world.And some even say that people from that other world, the world without dragons, have come here.What do you think of that, Jenna?”

Frozen in place, not daring to show any more of a reaction than was absolutely necessary, I said, “It sounds like a legend.”

”And you don’t believe in legends?”

”I believe in things that can be proven,” I said.

“Yes,” said Nidaag.“A scientist always searches.What they’ve learned can never suffice.But when you have faith, Jenna, what you believe is enough.”

“Faith.Belief,” I repeated his words.“People will do the most awful things for what they believe.They’ll kill and destroy.They’ll fight wars.That’s always been true, hasn’t it?”

“People will do what they feel they must for what they believe.And they’ll do what they feel they must to protect their beliefs.”

I asked him bluntly, “Nidaag, when you have what my friend stole for you, will you really let me go like you said you will?”

”Why would we reverse ourselves?” he asked back.

“Because of what you just said about what people will do to protect their beliefs.When something or someone could prove someone’s beliefs wrong, they’d do just about anything to stop it, wouldn’t they?”

”We are not monsters, Jenna,” said Nidaag.“We’re just protectors of our faith.And we are creatures of our word.We honor what we say.”

Somehow, his words didn’t reassure me.I sensed there was a trick or a deception in there somewhere; it just wasn’t obvious.So, I gave him another blunt question.“Do you know for sure that there’s anyone from that other place in this world right now?Has anyone shown you that there’s some human here who comes from over there?”

At that, Nidaag reared up his mighty, horned dragon head on his long, thick reptilian neck.He spread his wings and opened his dragon mouth wide, showing his rows of sharp, curved teeth.He took a step towards me, and another, hissing from that gaping reptile mouth.Sudden terror whipped me as if it were his curling dragon tail.I backed up, whimpering, into a corner by the big window as he loomed over me.Gazing up fearfully at him, I braced myself for the worst.

Then, just as suddenly, Nidaag calmed himself.He folded his wings, drew back his neck, and closed his jaws.He stepped back to where he’d been, and I stood frozen in the corner, my breath speeded up from my abrupt fright at his reaction.

“We have no reason to believe that any such being is abroad in this world,” said Nidaag.“Any such claim would be subject to proof.And proof is what science holds most dear, isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer him.I just stared at him, relieved that he’d stepped back from his wrath.

“No such other world exists,” said Nidaag.“There is only Tellus.And Tellus is rightfully the domain of dragons.The exchange of you and the item that we need will take place soon.I’ll have someone bring you food and something to drink now.You’re safe, Jenna.”

Without another word, Nidaag turned and exited with a twist and curl of his tail.He shut the door behind him.I heard the click of the lock.And only then did I relax—a little.

I put a hand to my chest to feel the rapid, frightened beating of my heart.I felt something else beneath my top and reached under my collar to take it out and look at it.On its chain, the sensor jewel flashed yellow at me, which I took as its reading of my physical response to my terror from being loomed over by a big, black, hissing, two-legged dragon.Just a short time ago, my gift from Byron had been responding to things much, much more pleasing.

Calming my pounding heart and my ragged breaths, I turned and stepped to one side to look out again at the underground village of Reptos.I had indirectly asked Nidaag if he knew anything about my father and where he might be.From the way he reacted to my question, he must have known something, and it seemed to alarm him that I would come that close to the truth.I still sensed some trick on the dragon leader’s part.And it made me wonder if my coming here to find my father would come to nothing.Would I really go free?Would I ever see him again?Would I ever see Byron and Elliot and Cade again?Really?

Just now, I couldn’t be sure of anything.