Dragons of War - Rising Storm

Chapter 27 (1/2)

My eyes shot open and I jerked upright. A cloth fell from my chest, and my hands braced against a smooth dirt floor below me. As my mind returned to me, I saw the room I was in.

The walls were twigs. The floor, smooth dirt. There was a raised platform of smooth dirt along the side of the small space, and at the end, was a stone pit with the smell of burning coals within.

My head drifted down to the cloth that fell from me and I saw that it was a brown jacket, something I would be all too familiar with because of the countless times I'd cleaned it.

It was Lewis's.

My heart jumped in my chest and I turned over to rise to my feet but then the world around me spun and I crashed to the ground again. The pain in my head returned full force and my breath came out in ragged gasps. Then I felt it. Like a shape had entered into my mind, I felt Lewis.

His steps entered into the corner of my eye, and I heard him settle down next to the raised platform next to me. He remained completely silent and, after a moment, the pain eased and I raised my head.

He watched me with a smile, but I didn't need to see his face to feel the joy that radiated from his 'shape'.

"I heard you last night, crying out in the woods. It scared the living shit out of me, but once I recognized the voice, I almost couldn't believe it." Lewis spoke. His voice was soft, but the words that entered my head were like spears of fire.

Why hadn't I thought ahead and brought those pills with me? I demanded within my mind.

"You were out cold by the time I found you, but that was to be expected." Lewis went on. "This is the first time, isn't it?"

My eyes rose to meet his again, but I hardly had the energy to reply through the thickness in my mind. Yet, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Yet, despite the pills being out of your system, you're still alive aren't you?" His smile deepened.

"It hurts," I managed to gasp out.

"Well, it only hurts because you're rejecting it." Lewis replied.

I narrowed my eyes and stared at him. Rejecting what?

"You don't realize it yet, do you?" He asked, the smile fading to that of a smirk.

I shook my head and sat up to lean against the twig wall next to me. It was solid enough for me to lean against and I heaved out a sigh.

"I don't know what you're on about Lewis, but the colony needs your help," I forced the words through gritted teeth. "The cabal is attacking and the Order is going to abandon the caverns! We need you."

"Me? Why would they need me when they have you?" He asked.

"I'm not powerful Lewis!" I cried out, my anger rising. He had so many expectations of me, but they were wrong. They were lies. Why was he trying to make me believe a lie?

"I am one dragon against an army that can take down a hundred in a single strike," I went on, my voice ragged and shaking. "How could you expect so much from me!?"

Lewis's gaze dropped from mine and he fiddled with a leaf in his hands.

"Do you know how the Dragon Warriors work?" Lewis asked me, his tone changed.

I reeled backward, the anger in my chest still hot but the question had come out of nowhere.

No one knew anything about the Dragon Warriors, and Lewis had worked very hard to keep it that way.

"Why would I?" I questioned.

"Because you were in that machine and there are those, albeit very few, who remember their time in 'that place'." He replied.

"What are you talking about?" I narrowed my eyes.

Lewis looked back up at me and his smile returned.

"It may seem like I am the answer to all of the problems in this world, but it took me a very long time to realize that it is not the responsibility of a single man to save this world. Or a single girl." He replied.

"But..." I began his words a contradiction.

"Why are you the answer then? Well Jaya, I will answer quite simply. When the Dragon Warriors first began the world was filled with a rare element; hope. As the project went on, that hope faded, but then something happened that changed the war, for the first time." Lewis told me.

"Connor was the first ever Dragon Warrior to not only transform in under a minute, but he also had the rarest ability found in any Warrior. He could breathe fire."

The words he told me felt like a child's tale, but by the tone of his voice, and something else within me, I could feel the power he felt in his own words. He wasn't telling me a story, he was recalling memories.

"There had never been so many won battles as when Connor was alive, and that was the highest the colony had ever been. But he was not my masterpiece. When the Cabal created a machine, that worked despite the radiation in the air, with a single strike our great Warrior had fallen, along with the hundreds of Warriors who fought with him. It was the greatest loss we'd ever experienced, and the beginning of the Fall of the Dragon Warriors. Half the army was gone in a moment, and few Original Warriors remain. "

"With the transformation rate so low, and growing lower with every batch of Warriors, it became shockingly obvious the project had failed. But I just couldn't understand WHY. The answer, it seemed, relied on that very first big Hope the colony had. Connor."

"You see, Jaya, you don't need to single handily bring the Cabal to its knees. No one could. All you need to do, is be strong enough to lead the charge, and the colony will follow in your wake." Lewis finished.

"... It'll never work," I replied.