The Dragon's Claws

Prologue- The Tutorial

I dodged an uppercut, rolled away from a kick, and protected Fafnir's back as we fought off hordes of enemy soldiers. We had been fighting since we were ambushed by the priest's men. But let's rewind, to before we started getting our limbs almost severed.

My partner, Fafnir, and I had been flying through a storm on our way to visit my old friend when we heard a strange voice in the wind. Out of the rain came a voice, rich with sorrow, calling for vengeance. Fafnir, being a dragon, heard it first. 

Yeah, you read right, Fafnir's a dragon. They're not as rare as they once were, but not many choose to bond with the people of Eldara. I was the first Bonded in more than three hundred years, so I only had one teacher, whose name is hard to spell and even harder to pronounce, and his dragon, Rane. Fafnir and I have been training for about fifty years. That may seem a while, but I happen to be an elf, and our average lifespan goes well beyond three hundred years. Our job? Keep Eldara safe, for the most part.

Eldara is a land full of myths and legends. Living in (somewhat) harmony are the Elves and Humans. I say somewhat because we elves think humans are, to put bluntly, dumb. They don't live long enough to gain sufficient knowledge, and most of them do not care to gain said knowledge. Humans prefer to eat and drink their life away while doing nothing but rotting. Some few pursue knowledge and are on friendly terms with elves, but most keep to themselves. Elves, the noble race, have great power and knowledge and are well respected outside of our forest home. We walk with purpose anywhere we go.

Dragons were once hunted to near extinction over 3,000 years ago. The only reason they survived is because they taught themselves magic somehow, which is a mystery elves have been trying to solve for millennia. With magic, they could defend themselves against the humans that hunted them and conceal themselves against the spellweavers that wanted them for numerous purposes. Dragon scales, blood, bones, and teeth have many properties, including healing and temporary strength and speed boosts when ground up and put in a brew. They can also be burned or boiled and added to a potion to create invisibility or flight. There are many different dragons worldwide, but the most common in Eldara are Sparks, a small but insanely fast dragon known to electrocute its prey, and Karyon, which come in many different colors. They are about a foot long when they hatch, but they grow quickly. Within the first month, they may be more than five feet long and up to a grown man's shoulders, and by a year, a healthy Karyon will be the size of a small house. After their first year, growth slows, but never fully stops.

Fafnir happens to be a Karyon, with pitch-black scales. Fafnir hatched for me when I was eight, which also makes me the youngest Bonded in recorded history. He's been my best friend for the past fifty years, and we've traveled almost everywhere in Eldara, from the Nara Ocean far to the west to the Fairy Hills over in the east.

Eldara isn't all races living in peace though. There are dark mountains in the Southeast in which the orks take refuge. Long, long ago, according to our records, when the elfin race was young, a few elves left the forest to explore the land. This was before Humans found Eldara and before Dragons knew of our existence on the opposite side of their home. Those elves found a monstrous race called Orks.

Orks, it seemed, had never heard of personal hygiene. They had a foul odor and rotten teeth. They were thieves who took whatever they could get their grubby little hands on. It wasn't so bad until humans came and became the biggest target for orks. Elven patrols would find a village ransacked and all the occupants burning in a pile. So we did the reasonable thing, hunted and killed them. Every last one, or so we thought. The last hundred years or so have reported sightings of them, though few confirmed.

But enough overview, let's get back to the story!

Fafnir heard the voice before I did, and I noticed he was distracted by something.

"You okay? What's wrong?"

"I hear a voice," he replied, "It speaks of a murder."

I strained my elven hearing to its limit and, barely, over the pounding of the rain, I heard it.