Gatekeepers Book 2: Galeforce

Gasping for breath, Draycos gazed at the massive black and yellow dragon that laid on the ground before him. Balara laid motionless, completely unconscious.

I...I finally did it. Draycos fell to his knees and looked up at the sky, eyes closed. I actually won. I can’t believe it.

A fresh wave of pain radiated from his left shoulder. Draycos grimaced and grabbed the open wound from cutting his whole arm off with his right hand in an attempt to slow the blood loss. It wasn’t until then that Draycos noticed the alarmingly large pool of blood that surrounded him. He felt lightheaded.

Crap. I should have done something about the injury as soon as I had the opportunity. I think I’ve lost too much blood.

Just then, Draycos felt a frigid chill creep up his legs. He glanced down and saw that light blue frost had covered the ground around him, freezing the blood instantly as the frost grew thicker. The chill continued to crawl up his left side, and he watched as the frost ascended his body until it reached his left shoulder. There was a flash of intense pain that momentarily blinded Draycos, but it faded away after a few seconds. When Draycos looked at his left shoulder, the open wound was encased in a thick layer of ice.

Three large cracks suddenly rang out. Draycos looked up and saw that Theravor, Reothad, and Damrabe had all landed on the frozen ground a few yards away, cracking the thick frost and frozen blood. Theravor walked over to Draycos, cracking sounds accompanying each step he took until he stopped just before Draycos. An unreadable expression sat on his face as he looked down at Draycos.

Draycos cracked a small grin, leaning backwards until he landed on his butt with his one arm propping him up. “Well, I did what you all told me to do,” he panted, looking up at the king. “Time for you guys to do the same.”

A big grin brightened Theravor’s expression. He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s what you have to say after winning? Unbelievable. Do you honestly think the Dragon Council and myself would go back on our word at this point?”

“You never know,” Draycos replied. “You could just throw me back into the prison and let me rot.”

Theravor snorted. “Honestly, I thought you’d think better of us than that.” He took a quick glance around. “Anyways, can’t you hear them?”

“Huh?” Draycos looked around, but he didn’t hear or see anyone other than the dragons in the arena. “Hear who?”

“I mean the audience,” Theravor sighed.

Draycos looked up. Every single creature in the stands were on their feet, and it wasn’t until he saw this that Draycos finally noticed the ridiculously loud noise bearing down on his eardrums. Many different voices filled the air, congratulating Draycos and thanking him for the entertaining fight, amid many other things. The crowd was cheering so loudly that he could feel the ground shaking slightly under his right hand.

“Geez, can’t they shut up?” Draycos groaned, sitting up and putting his right hand over his right ear. “I’m in enough pain as it is; I don’t need a headache on top of a missing arm.”

Theravor laughed. “Sorry, Draycos, but this is a pain that you’re going to need to deal with, so just bear with it a little while longer. We can’t very well tell the stadium to be quiet now; we have the first-ever non-dragon winner of the games. They’re bound to be excited.”

“Not like they know about dragons being the only winners ’till now,” Draycos retorted.

Theravor’s tail twitched. “You may be right, but events at a scale such as these games are dealt with a little differently with the Metra Anomaly.” Theravor bent over and pinched the collar of Draycos’s jacket before lifting him high up into the air so the entire coliseum could see him, much to Draycos’s annoyance.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the winner of this year’s annual Prisoners’ Games tournament: Draycos!” he announced with a loud roar. The spectators grew even more frenzied.

Draycos suddenly went limp in Theravor’s grasp, and Theravor realized the young man had passed out.

It’s about time the kid passed out. He lost too much blood for that not to happen. Theravor lowered Draycos and motioned Damrabe forward with a small flick of his tail.

“Do what needs to be done,” he told Damrabe, passing off the unconscious Draycos to the blood dragon half-breed. Damrabe merely gave a slight nod before unfurling his wings and taking to the skys without so much as a word.

“I’m going to follow him,” a voice from behind Theravor said. The Dragon King glanced over his shoulder just in time to witness a humanoid silhouette vanish before he could see any details of the creature. Reothad made a small, displeased grunting sound.

“It looks like our guest of honor we invited today took the initiative without waiting for your approval,” he commented.

“It’s fine,” Theravor responded dismissively, unperturbed. “He’s the one who’s taking Draycos down to the surface to search for the orb. Not to mention, we finally came up with a solid lead yesterday thanks to his hard work.”

Reothad sighed, rubbing his forehead with his right hand, eyes closed. “Is it really okay for the Gatemaster to take such actions on his own, though?”

“Of course it is. He’s the one running the Gatekeepers group; he’s more than capable.”

“That’s not what I mean, Theravor,” Reothad sighed, rubbing his forehead even harder.

A sharp jolt of pain interrupted Draycos’s sleep, and he woke up instantly. He tried to sit up, but something heavy that covered his entire torso prevented him from doing so. A low growl suddenly filled the air. It sounded like the source was directly next to Draycos’s ear.

“You woke up at a bad time,” a familiar voice said. Draycos turned his head and saw a massive red dragon head with black hair mere inches away. He panicked for an instant before realizing it was Damrabe. Damrabe’s left hand was on top of Draycos’s torso, holding him in place as Damrabe delicately worked on the already-closed wound on Draycos’s left shoulder. It was kind of creepy how a stump was attached to his body where an arm had been less than a day ago.

“I was about to start on getting your left arm to regenerate when you woke up,” Damrabe explained, answering Draycos’s question as Draycos opened his mouth. “It’s a little more complicated than simply flicking my blood on you. It will hurt, so do you want me to knock you out before I do anything else?”

Draycos thought about it for a moment. “Nah, I’ll be fine,” he answered. “I already fought with an arm missing; how much can having it grow back hurt?”

Damrabe raised an eyebrow before letting out a sigh. “Alright, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ll start now.” Without hesitating, Damrabe jabbed his right index talon directly into the stump of flesh on Draycos’s left shoulder.

“OW!!” Draycos reflexively screamed, twisting in pain as he tried to pull away. Damrabe’s hand held fast, and Draycos didn’t budge an inch.

“I warned you,” Damrabe reminded him, cool as a cucumber as his finger dug deeper into Draycos’s flesh. “Is this your first time being stabbed?”

“Yes, it is! Now stop it!”

“Hold on for just a few more seconds. I’ll be done shortly.”

From his left shoulder, Draycos suddenly felt something hot slowly flow into his body. It continued to circulate in the area around his left shoulder, growing hotter all the while. Damrabe pulled his talon out of the stump, a few drops of blood dripping from his talon and the hole it had made. When the temperature hit its peak, the flesh on Draycos’s left shoulder suddenly shot out away from his body, as if it had a will of its own. Draycos observed in half-fascination, half-horror as his flesh quickly took on the shape of an arm. It was just like when Damrabe’s wings shot out or retracted from his back. After about thirty seconds or so, the flesh ceased moving, leaving a perfectly normal-looking arm attached to Draycos’s shoulder. It looked no different from the arm before.

Damrabe lifted his hand off of Draycos, allowing the patient to sit up and examine his arm. Draycos flexed it a few times before letting it flop down onto the bed, a satisfied expression on his face. He looked at Damrabe and bowed his head.

“I really do owe you for the new arm. Thank you.”

Damrabe snorted. “Just don’t go and make a habit of cutting off limbs,” he said, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his massive chest. He stroked his beard. “It’s as much of a pain to me as it is for you to help someone regenerate a missing body part. I have to inject quite a bit of my own blood in a patient to do that.”

“Does that mean I have dragon blood in my veins now?” Draycos asked, a somewhat hopeful look in his eyes.

Damrabe chuckled. “Sorry, but no. I need my blood to live too, you know? I retracted my blood before removing my finger from your shoulder. Once the regeneration process reaches a certain point, my blood’s no longer needed as a catalyst.”

“Aww.” Growing serious again, Draycos glanced around. He found himself in Dragonspire Castle’s infirmary for the third time. There has been no change to the room since his last visit. “So what’s next?”

“You really don’t like wasting time, do you?” a voice said. “You don’t want to revel in your victory in the games at all?”

Draycos snapped his head to the right and saw an unfamiliar figure sitting at the foot of his bed, looking straight ahead instead of at Draycos. The person appeared to be a human male, but Draycos spotted a pointy ear sticking out from under the gold shoulder-length hair, just like what the elves had. However, the tip of the ear wasn’t as pointed as the ears of the handful of elves Draycos briefly saw on his first day at the prison; it was much more rounded. The figure wore a shiny tuxedo the same color as his hair, and a wooden shepherd’s cane was propped up against the bed.

“Who are you?” Draycos questioned. “And how long have you been sitting there?” The bed hadn’t shifted since Draycos came to, and it definitely felt like no one was sitting at the end of the bed.

The creature sighed. “I’ve been sitting here since before you woke up. You just didn’t notice me until I spoke up.” He turned to face Draycos. The rest of his body came into view, and Draycos saw that the left half of the creature’s entire body was in completely different colors than his right half. On the left side of the fringe in his hair, the creature’s hair was a metallic silver, tied in a braid that hung in front of his left ear, and the left half of his tuxedo was also the same color, giving his appearance quite the colorful look. The tie under the vest was silver and gold striped, and a plain white button-up could be seen behind it. A blood-red scarf hung out from the front of the collar. The man wore fancy white gloves, and Draycos could see a golden top hat with a thin silver stripe running around the base sitting next to the man. A pair of glasses with overly-large lenses sat on the rim of the top hat, even the frames split between gold and silver. Deep blue eyes locked with Draycos stare.

“Umm, the 1920′s called,” Draycos said. “Broadway wants their stage outfit back.”

“Huh?” The elvish man and Damrabe cocked their heads to the side in unison with each other, not understanding what Draycos had said. Draycos couldn’t help blurting that out, though; the man’s outfit put the mantle-made-jacket Theravor designed for Draycos to shame in terms of how bizarre it was.

“Nevermind, it’s nothing,” Draycos told them, shaking his head. “Anyways, who are you?”

The man cracked a smile and stood up, picking up the cane with one hand and placing the hat atop his head all in one elegant motion. He stuck a pose that looked exactly like one would use in movie scenes about ballroom dances with that outfit.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Draycos,” he said, pushing his hat up with one finger as he looked down at Draycos. “I’m the current Gatemaster. The name’s Galán Deáta."