Dragons of War - Rising Storm

Chapter 6 (2/3)

The first level of the Caverns were used only by the army. In a daze, I passed people in uniform like they were ghosts. Something I thought I had been trained out of in my first month as a soldier. I ran as fast as my pounding heart allowed, like that would change anything that was happening.

It couldn't be her.

I ran across the first floor and entered a new stairwell. This one was three times as long and once I'd reached the bottom there was a short hall that lead out into the main cavern. Around a corner, I went again and a hole opened up that lead into the infirmary cave. I slid to a stop in the entrance. There was row after row of beds. Most of them were empty, but far in the back, three rows across from where I stood, there was a small gathering of people. One of them, I recognized immediately.

Her short blonde hair was tied up in a perfect bun. The glasses on her face were half off her nose, her face directed down at a clipboard in front of her. The white coat she wore was like the new costume of a Grim Reaper. Her name was Clare. All the Dragon Warriors knew her by a different name though, The she-devil.

The man who had first come to get me ran up beside me and bend over with a gasping breath.

"I was supposed to escort you here!" he managed to gasp out through a lungful. "The girl – Jaya as you call her, was submitted last night. It took us this long to find anyone she knew."

"More like it took you this long to care to," I snapped under my breath.

The mans head raised with my words and he had a wide-eyed look on his face but I didn't take another moment standing there. The feeling in my legs was almost gone but I pushed forward anyway and walked toward the group of people ahead.

Once I was close enough, my eyes drifted toward the bed they surrounded, and with horror, I realized that it was Jaya. Long brown hair. Pale smooth skin. She had the soft features of a child yet to grow into herself. Her sleeping form looked peaceful lying there, and it was probably the deepest sleep that she had ever had but I only wondered what had happened before that sleep to get her there.

"Are you Aaron Danish?" A man standing at the foot of Jaya's bed asked me and I nodded, my gaze locked in place. He wore medals and colors of a high ranked man, but I hardly cared.

"You're probably in sho-" He began but another man cut him short.

"What do you know about this girl's connection to Doctor Lewis?" Another man asked and I recognized his voice. I looked up with a start and realized it was Gernard, one of the head generals of the Order. Was this that important? But why?

"Uh," I began but the words were lost in my minds confusion. "All I know is that he helped her survive when she was younger." I finally replied.

"Do you know him at all?" Gernard pushed.

"Wh-why?" I blinked at him.

"The fine doctor won't talk to us and there is something wrong with this girl. She isn't showing the same signs as other Dragon Warriors." Gernard replied.

My heart seemed to pause in my chest with his words.

Dragon Warrior? It isn't possible! She was just a child?

Images flashed through my mind in a split second. Ripping flesh, teeth slicing through skin. Bombs exploding all around. Every horror that I had seen, been a part of, and felt first hand flooded through my mind. A hand rose to my mouth and I hardly recognized it was my own.

What had I suffered through if not to save those things from you? The words echoed so loudly in my mind I almost thought I'd spoken them aloud.

I couldn't handle the surge of emotion that came from the thoughts anymore and I turned away from Jaya's bed.

"Aaron," Gernard walked over to me and I tried to shift my attention to him. "I want you to speak to Lewis and see if you can get him to talk. We need something or this girl might die."

I nodded my head slowly, only partly hearing what he had said.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"This happened last night and as far as I know, no other subject came out in a coma." He replied.

Coma. She might never wake up coma.

I wanted to say something, a head general was not someone you wanted to lose your composure around, but all I could manage was a nod and he shook his head in reply.

I followed them to the cells in a daze. I remembered Jaya telling me time after time how she wanted to become a Dragon Warrior, but I knew this wasn't what she wanted. I knew because I was one and it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare.

As I walked I recalled all the horrors that I now knew and the ones that she would soon too. If she woke up.

The bodies. The blood. The noises that pierced your very soul. Every time I went into battle a piece of me died, with every Warrior that had.

How could she do that to herself? How could she do that to me?

I hardly noticed the trip. The general took me to a part of the Caverns that I was not familiar with, the abandoned wing, and we entered a cave that opened up so far on the inside, I could not see the ceiling.

We walked all the way to the back, passing many different cells carved out of the walls on both sides that were all full of at least one person. I knew many of them were harmless offenders, instigated by the lack of food, but some of them took advantage of the state of the world and the people in it. Others were war prisoners, from the Cabal. Some of them I helped hunt down.

As we walked past the cells I made eye contact with a few and it was enough to knock me from my other thoughts.

Some of these people I had tried to kill.

At the back of the cave was another, smaller cave used as an office. We walked past it, to a set of stairs that lead the whole way up the cavern wall, stopping at each level and then continuing on.

We went up five levels before the general stepped off and walked along the thin path, a sheer drop down on the one side and cells full of angry men on the other.

I walked quickly after him, despite the comfort of more Warriors behind me.

Gernard stopped in front of one cell, in the middle of the level, and crossed his arms. I slowed to a stop next to him and looked inside.

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