I Guess I'm a Dragon Now (Part 1)

Ghost of the Mountains

There it was again, howling into the night as if calling out to the stars themselves... It was the howling that kept both Rae and Ergen awake every night that they were in the mountains, though thankfully it sounded farther and farther away every time they heard it.  Whatever the creature was, it sounded as if it were the king of these mountains, and Ergen was glad that he most likely wasn't going to have to face it.  Rae seemed to worried about it as well, but that didn't stop her from wanting to save her friend which Ergen couldn't necessarily blame her for seeing as the unknown threat seemed to be leaving. He hoped that it was anyway.

"I wish there was some way that we could talk." Rea sighed suddenly from on top of Ergen's head as they started travelling again that morning. "I mean, dragons are supposed to only be in the Land of Legends, so how'd you get to Ligan anyway?"

Even if Ergen could answer her, he wouldn't even know where to begin. He hadn't even known what either continents were called in the first placed, but even now he still thought that it had been a miracle that he'd survived his journey. He'd faced hardships that he never would have even dreamed about in his past life, but he'd somehow managed to survive until this point so he supposed that he was doing fairly well thus far, even though he accounted many of his successes to luck.

Thinking about the Land of Legends, which Ergen supposed was where he'd come from, he definitely preferred Ligan. There were no giant snake or cats, behemoth eels or armies of poisonous insects, and nothing other than what was making that howling sound at night even bothered him that much. Yes, Ergen much preferred Ligan to the Land of Legends, and if he ever could figure out how to communicate, then oh boy would he have a story to tell.

"It looks like it's about to snow again..." Rea stated the obvious as the clouds gathering overhead were even darker than the ones that had been there before. The wind around them was beginning to pick up as well, and Rea was taking cover in the small hut she'd built in Ergen's horns while he was forced to stay out in the open, not that he minded as he guessed that the small fairy would have been blown away long ago otherwise.

Once the snow started falling, the wind immediately became a blizzard and Ergen suddenly felt jealous of the fairy who had insulated her little hut on his head, though he admitted that she needed it as he doubted that she was immune to such cold conditions like he was. However, even though he was perfectly fine as far as the temperature went, Ergen still had to slow down as the storm had all but blinded him. And without being able to see, one misstep off of one of the many peaks they were travelling across could spell both of their deaths.

Almost tiptoeing as he was forced to travel on narrow ridges due to the terrain, Ergen moved at a crawling pace as he had to attempt to stay away from any cliffs as the fierce wind attempted to push him off of them. At this point, Ergen was well past the point in losing the leafy scent that he'd been following, and the only thing that he could do now was travel in the general direction of where it had been coming from. Though as the storm continued to grow worse and worse, he started thinking that it would be best to find shelter sooner rather than later as he would lose his bearings otherwise.

After finding no refuge on the ridges, Ergen walked up onto a rounded peak in hopes of finding a rock formation where he could wait out the storm. However, as he reached the top he encountered an open area and nothing more. Though that wasn't quite true as when he was about to start descending down the other side, something made him stop and pause as he looked through the storm. Everything was white all around him as the wind blew both the snow and hail through the air in spontaneous flurries. Everything seemed the same as it had been for the past few days... so what was this feeling of anticipation?

It started with just some disturbed snow at first, with some of the spontaneous gusts of wind blowing snow in their normal fashion. However, some of the snow seemed strange, and it bothered Ergen as he couldn't figure out the problem. A disturbance in the snow here, an abnormal howling of the wind in his blind spot... several  occurrences all happening in the span of a few seconds as Ergen frantically scanned the area around him.

"What's wrong?" Rea asked, sticking her head out of her hut as Ergen let low instinctive growl, and that growl was instantly echoed by an enormously loud snarl that seemed directly pierce Ergen's spine. "What was that?!"

In answer, Ergen was completely taken by surprise as something seemed to materialize out of thin-air beside him and he felt that something smash into his side. Whatever it was, it was large enough to throw him meters into the air before Ergen crashed down on the snow, letting out a furious roar as something had his neck in it's jaws and was shaking him violently in an attempt to snap his spine. Thankfully however, Ergen's scales blocked most of the damage and he managed to turn his head enough to release a stream of frost breath  at the rear legs of whatever was attacking him. Though, as soon as he tried the creature mysteriously vanished just as it had appeared, bursting into a cloud of fast moving snow as it darted away and joined the raging storm around them.

Getting back to his feet, Ergen shook his head in an attempt regain some of the feeling in his neck as it had become numb momentarily. Already he could feel where some of the creature's teeth had managed to make it through his scales, and he quickly spun around in place now as he searched for it, knowing that something that could ambush him this easily wound't let go of it's quarry now that it had tasted blood.  And as he did, a sudden ear-piercing howl deafened the immediate area, sending the same chills down his spine that Ergen had felt before. Somehow, the monster that had been getting farther away each night had circled back and found them, and now Ergen would have to face it if he wanted to survive. Though he didn't have any idea what that monster was until it appeared in front of him again, snarling as it started circling him just before the edge of Ergen's vision in the blizzard.

Ergen now stood facing a gigantic arctic wolf with pure-white fur that almost seemed like camouflage on the snowy mountaintop. However, not all of it was white as it bared it's long blood-red fangs at him with it's eyes seeming to be as black as the abyss. Somehow, parts of the wolf actually seemed to be mixing in with the snow around them with parts of it blowing away before more snow from the storm would come down and take the previous snow's place. It looked almost like a ghost, but the pain in Ergen's neck told him that this new threat was all to real.