The Zodiac Spirit Guardians

Lightning and Ice

The stone wall in front of me explodes into shards as a brilliant white dragon crashes through it. I stumble backward and almost trip over myself, too stunned to speak. Before my eyes, the magical and majestic beast stretches to an extreme height and glorious size.

Another ear piercing roar slices the air from the opposite side of the room. A solid black dragon bursts through the far side wall and the stone and concrete breaks apart and flies through the room, smashing and destroying everything they hit. Giant holes are ripped open in the walls to expose the outside environment and rough wind. Massive boulders of what used to be the wall lay spread out across the room, thrown to the ground with the old broken glass. The room becomes a battlefield before our eyes.

The dragons' four legs are massive, long, and scaled, and each one, extended, reaches the height of the first floor itself. Their enormous legs resemble a Komodo dragon's. Their toes sprout talons as sharp as diamond blades, three on each foot. The profile of their bodies curves in a dull S. Their elongated tails make them appear to be serpentine and poisonous like Scorpions. The black dragon's wings look like upside down Vs, while the white dragon's look more like a vicious butterfly's.

They are breathtakingly beautiful and tremendously terrifying.

My blood boils and my body freezes on the grey stone floor as I watch Ezra and Kappie, back to back, move in a cautious circle waiting for the dragons to initiate a fight. Their faces hold a resolve that--I can only imagine--has been drilled into them from a lifetime of training.

While they remain calm, cool, and collected, I sit here panicking at the possibility of watching these two people die right before my eyes in an attempt to protect my life. Plus, I honestly have no idea how to fight dragons. Only seconds ago, they just lived in my imagination.

A wave of guilt creeps through my nerves, growing a flower of anxiety inside of my stomach. I'm not the kind of girl to sit back and do nothing, even when I don't know what's going on.

The fight initiates when the white dragon spews ice down at Kappie. The wind blows the frosted vapor in my direction, and it numbs my skin with its dramatically low temperature. After feeling this tingling sensation just from the chilled air alone, it's difficult to convince myself to get off my butt. I'm terrified. And if the vapor from this dragon is cold enough to numb my nerves, this ice must be colder than solid carbon dioxide. Even though the white dragon seems to have the upper hand with the incredibly destructive ice, Kappie manages to slide out of the way just in time before the frigid and deadly permafrost hits him.

The black dragon roars ferociously and spits out lightning that cracks with an electric snap. The flash of light, from the strikes that leave the mouth of the beast, only reaffirm the assumption I've made about the black dragon's power. It resembles and crackles like a shortage in a breaker box, but the damage it does is much greater. The wicked eggplant colored lightning annihilates and demolishes any solid foundation it strikes. The light that emanates from the shocks are blindingly brilliant.

Ezra jumps in the air, mirroring the moves of a springing cat, to dodge the attacks. My anxiety kicks in, sitting on the ground in awe, observing the brothers fight for their lives. Blackened purple lightning and white hyperboreal ice demolish and devastate the entire room yet avoid me altogether.

The brothers sprint from place to place as if in ultra inhuman speed. I realize in their movements that they're not only trained in self defense, they also must've sharpened and honed their fighting skills much more than I initially believed.

They slash the dragons with hasty blades the second a weak spot is seen. Their moves are practically choreographed, they dance around the attacks in perfect synch with one another. A white dragon arm swings toward Kappie, readily curling its claws to rip him apart. At the same time, the black dragon ejects electricity at Ezra in a sharp snap. The twins somersault out of the way, kick themselves off the ground, and grasp their katanas above their heads like axes.