Gatekeepers Book 1: Darkness

“You mean the prison warden himself is going to be keeping me under surveillance? What can this old dragon do?”

Smack. For the second time today, Draycos was slapped across the face by Vertex’s tail. Vertex grabbed the stunned Draycos and shook him roughly.

“I realize that respect isn’t a strong suit of yours but watch your mouth when you speak of Poseidon like that,” Vertex hissed in Draycos’ face. “Despite his appearance, Poseidon is a master of water magic and is one of the strongest dragons around. He demands respect.” Vertex faced Poseidon and deeply bowed. “I apologize for this brat’s rudeness. Please forgive him.”

Poseidon sighed and lightly tapped his desk with a talon. “Honestly, Vertex. You need to relax some more. You’re too serious all the time.”

Vertex flinched. A vein visibly pulsed in his forehead while Draycos laughed.

“What the matter?” Poseidon questioned, confused.

“Theravor said something very similar to him ear--gack!” Draycos’s sentence was cut off as Vertex tightened his grip around Draycos’s body, squeezing the breath out of him.

“How do you even know that when it was said while you were unconscious?” Vertex growled, apparently not in a pleasant mood.

“Vertex...please, air....” Draycos struggled to spit out. Vertex abruptly dropped Draycos altogether, and Draycos landed on the ground ungracefully. The chain and collar attached to Draycos’s neck, as well as the bindings holding his arms hostage, disintegrated while he laid on his back, struggling to get some air back into his lungs. Vertex turned around and opened the door.

“I’ll be leaving now, Poseidon,” he said. “Take care of the prisoner for the time being.”

“Tell Damrabe that I need to speak to him when you see him next!” Poseidon called after Vertex as the door closed. Poseidon looked down at Draycos, who was still laying on the floor panting. “How are you feeling right now, Draycos?”

“I feel like an abused rag doll,” Draycos sputtered as he sat up. He winced and rubbed his ribs with a hand. “Damn Vertex. I think I got a few bruised ribs after that fit of his.”

Poseidon laughed. “Humans aren’t the most durable species, it seems.” He lifted something off his desk that glittered from the firelight. With a start, Draycos saw that it was the pendant Iris had given him just yesterday. He was so caught up with all that was going on that it completely slipped his mind.

“Why do you have that?” Draycos demanded. “Give it back!”

“Relax, that’s what I’m doing right now.” Using his tail, Poseidon swiftly placed the pendant back around Draycos’s neck. “I figured that the pendant would be something you normally won’t go anywhere without, so I thought it would make the perfect surveillance ward for you,” he explained, stroking his beard. “While you were unconscious and at the trial, I had some magic worked into it, so now, as long as you wear it, we’ll be able to discern your location and observe your actions. It’ll also restrain you if you do something that goes against any orders or rules you’re supposed to follow, so unless you like been rendered unconscious through suffocation, I’d advise you to listen to us.”

“So this thing has magic in it now, huh?” Draycos looked down at the pendant resting on his chest. A thought crossed his mind, and he looked up at Poseidon. “Wait, so you were working on this while I was unconscious and at the trial? Does that mean...?”

Poseidon grinned and gave a small applause. “Wow, you really do have sharp ears. Yes, you’re right. The outcome of the trial was already set in stone well before it even started. You were going to come to me to begin with.”

“...So then, was there any point to that trial at all?”

“Nope. It was nothing but a formality for the public and Dragon Council,” Poseidon answered simply.

Damn that Vertex for hitting me like that for no reason.

At that moment, a sound akin to a dinner bell ringing rang out through the room.

“Oh, it’s apparently time for lunch already,” Poseidon commented, pulling out a boxed lunch wrapped in a green cloth from underneath his desk.

A boxed lunch? Seriously? Draycos watched in silence as the warden unwrapped his lunch. Poseidon glanced at Draycos.

“I imagine you’re quite hungry right now, right?” he asked. Draycos’s stomach growled loudly in response. Draycos realized how hungry he was; he hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning before the talent show.

Poseidon grunted. “Well, some prison guards should be bringing some lunch in for the prisoners right now,” he told Draycos. “You’ll have to go back to the cavern to get some food.”

“On my own?” Draycos questioned.

“I’m not here to hold your hand the whole time your here,” Poseidon snorted. “Yes, go get your own food.”

“But we’re at least a hundred yards up from the ground right now. How am I supposed to get down there to get food?”

“Better start climbing,” Poseidon responded. “Better hurry, or else there’ll be nothing left when you get there.”

“Damn it all,” Draycos groaned as he got to his feet and walked out the door. At the edge of the cave, he peered over the edge as he looked down. It was indeed at least a hundred yards to the bottom of the cavern. Hearing the flapping of wings, Draycos looked up to see about two hundred or so pairs of prison guards flying into the cave through the huge opening, each pair carrying a large metal vat of something between the two. Each vat was about the size of one of those oversized beach balls one would sometimes see at parties. As they placed the vats on the ground close to the edge of the cavern, the vats were swarmed by the prisoners. Apparently, each of the dragon prisoners got their own vat, as each one of them took a vat and either sat down close by to devour their meal or climbed up the rock walls to their own cave to eat in peace. After all was said and done, there were two vats left for the non-dragon prisoners to share. A couple of the guards remained to scoop up the contents of the vats into bowls and handed them out to the lined-up prisoners.

Draycos looked down at the rock wall blocking his path to a meal. While in Vertex’s grip when he flew up here a few minutes ago, Draycos thought that the walls were completely smooth, but upon closer inspection, the walls were actually pretty rough and craggy, providing plenty of footholds to climb on. Stomach growling, Draycos climbed over the edge and began to descend as quickly as he dared. He made surprisingly quick progress due to the plethora of footholds; five minutes in and he only had ten yards to go. But his foot slipped as he tried to pick up the pace, and he lost his grip on the wall.

“Crap,” Draycos muttered. He hit the ground hard, sending a large cloud of dust flying as he laid on his stomach, the wind knocked out of him. He heard a few prisoners laughing at him as he struggled back to his feet. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, but it certainly didn’t feel good at all. Draycos staggered over to the line of prisoners waiting to get their food and got in the very back. After a few minutes of waiting, he finally got to the front.

The prisoner in front of him received a bowl filled to the brim of some unappetizing-looking meaty mush and walked off. Draycos stepped forward, and the guard serving the food silently glared at him as he handed Draycos a bowl only filled up halfway. It was much to the guard’s shock and surprise as Draycos turned around and walked off without a complaint. He had been expecting this discrimination; after all, publicly, he was supposed to be involved in the theft of the dragons’ most sacred treasure.

Draycos was planning to just eat in peace at the foot of the wall beneath Poseidon’s cave, but someone threw an empty bowl at him, which shattered at his feet, Whatever chatter had been going on quickly died off as Draycos looked up at the person responsible for the broken bowl. Sitting at a table set up nearby was a creature that was mostly human in appearance, but it was much taller than a human and had light-blue skin covering its overly muscular body. He wore a pair of brown animal fur pants, and his red eyes sneered at Draycos as he picked his teeth with a fork, bare feet up on the table.

“Hey, newbie, I’m still hungry,” he said, his lower canine teeth jutting out past his lips. “Gimme your food.”

Draycos said nothing and stepped over the broken bowl as he continued to his destination. Not liking the cold shoulder he had received, the creature slammed his feet on the floor and stood up, at least a head and shoulders higher than a basketball player. With large strides, he quickly caught up to Draycos and put a large hand on his shoulder, preventing Draycos from leaving.

“Did you not hear me?” he growled. “I told you to give me your food.”

Irritated, Draycos smacked the hand on his shoulder and backed off, glaring at the oppressive creature before him. He could understand why the dragons were discriminating against him, but he was not in the mood to deal with crap from people for no reason. Draycos slowly and deliberately took a forkful of the mush and shoved it into his mouth. It was actually pretty good. He slowly chewed and swallowed the food as the blue thug looked on with growing agitation.

“I heard you, but I don’t care,” Draycos told him as he quickly finished off his food and licked his fingers. It was pretty satisfying to get on this guy’s nerves so easily. He put the bowl on the ground and turned around to return to Poseidon’s office.

“Stupid brat; I’ll teach to you ignore me!” Draycos heard heavy footsteps behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the thug winding his fist back to deliver a heavy punch. Relying on pure reflex, Draycos ducked under the surprise blow, the fist grazing her hair. Pumped full of adrenaline, Draycos straightened up and dealt a quick, hard counter strike to the thug’s nose. He felt it crack under his fist, and the thug backed up, howling in pain as he covered his bloodied nose with both hands.

“Brock!” some of the people who were sitting at the thug’s table called his name as Brock took his blood-covered hands away from his face. Blood dripped onto his chest as he glared at Draycos, panting.

“I’m really not in the mood to play right now,” Draycos warned him, staring at Brock with full intensity. “Don’t bother me.”

Brock backed off from Draycos’s stare, breaking into a cold sweat. Regardless, he didn’t heed Draycos’s warning and put both hands together in a giant fist and raised it over his head. With a yell, he brought it down on Draycos. Draycos jumped to the side and avoided it easily, and the fist cracked the ground where he had stood.

A kick came flying out of nowhere. Surprised, Draycos was unable to avoid or block the kick and got hit right in the stomach. Draycos felt at least three of his ribs cracked as he vomited a combination of the mush and blood, and he was sent flying over to the open end of the cavern. He hit the ground and rolled, stopping just short of the edge. He clutched his stomach as he curled up in pain, unable to breathe.

“That’s what you get, stupid kid,” he heard Brock say, laughing. The laughing was suddenly cut off, and there were quite a few gasps of surprise. Draycos looked up and saw Poseidon hovering in the air above, glaring coldly at Brock, who was trapped in what appeared to be an orb of water suspended in the air.