Prince of Dragons

Chapter Twenty-Six

My heart was frantically beating in my chest, but my face remained passive as the tall red dragon slowly approached, his pale hands up. However, despite him trying to appear nonchalant, I barely noticed one of his crew grabbing some kind of hand-held metallic object that I figured was some kind of weapon.

Once I caught that, I glanced over at Alaban, trying to emulate that something was about to go down and hoping he caught it enough to be ready for when the first attack hit. Thankfully, it seemed he fully understood my cryptic glance, as his entire posture straightened—amber eyes hardening.

"Look, we just want to be on our way," I spoke, causing the "leader"—I suppose—to glance towards me. "we're not set up to get through this upcoming storm, so we would be exceptionally grateful if we could be on our way."

"Oh I don't know about that," the bearded dragon spoke, dark eyes glittering, "we want some company for a few minutes. Ain't nothing wrong with that." He then reached behind him and pulled out a similar metallic weapon to his comrade's, aiming it right at us. The moment he pulled that out, the rest of his crew pulled out their own weapons, dark grins pulling at their lips as they began to surround us. "Get off the horses real slow like." The man flicked back a lever piece on the back of his weapon.

Face hardening, I peered over to Alaban, who gave me a slow nod and held his hands up, before slowly climbing off of his horse. I held my breath, giving Narvi's arms a pat before I swung my leg over my horse and stepped off. I then helped Narvi off the horse, and once our feet were on solid ground, those metallic weapons were immediately trained on us, enticing me to hold my hands in the air in surrender.

"Please, we don't want any trouble." I said, keeping close to Narvi.

The red dragon snorted and stepped closer to me—the other man a couple inches taller. "Oh, don't worry. We won't give you no trouble." He grinned and shrugged his shoulders, waving his weapon around. "Ah, well, as long as y'all comply, anyway." His chuckle was dark, causing a shiver to crawl up my spine.

The man placed a hand on his hip and peered at Alaban. "I want anything y'all got that'll bring me a pretty penny. Place it there," he gestured to a crate, "and no funny business, else my boys put a bullet through y'all."

Alaban narrowed his eyes. "Look, we don't have much,"

"Did I ask if y'all had much?" The man stalked up to Alaban and placed the chamber of that strange weapon under the sun-dragon's chin. Alaban didn't back down, however, and even seemed to lean into the weapon—amber eyes hard as he stared daggers at the red dragon.

This caused him to narrow his dark eyes, and after a moment, he stepped back with an annoyed frown on his face. One of his party then stepped up, whispering something to him that caused him to perk up and slide that intense gaze towards me. Immediately, a chill crawled up my spine and I tensed as a dark grin formed on their leader's face.

He nodded towards his comrade and stepped away from Alaban to address the rest of his troop. "Looks like the gods have smiled upon us on this day, my friends!" He cackled and turned towards me, hands slowly extending as if to present me to the group. "This handsome individual right here is none other than the prince of our lovely land! All here, and alone with no royal guards to protect him! We're about due for a pay day, ladies and gentlemen!"

His friends all snickered and laughed—some even cheering as the red dragon pointed his weapon back towards me. "Tie him up. Kill the dark one with the smart mouth, and," he tilted his head, his gaze leering at Narvi, "let's keep this one for ourselves. Him's a pretty little thing."

And that was the last straw. As one of the bandits came towards me with a wad of rope in her hands, I launched forward and shoulder-checked her to the ground, before I spun around and kicked another of his crew down. Seeing that we were now fighting, Alaban grabbed Narvi's hand and shoved him into the treeline, before his gaze flung towards me—silently telling me to run his way.