HuoJi, the little fire-dragon, Saves the Stolen Man’s Life
With all of them glancing up at the falls from time-to-time, and Esau and Tarik regaling the rapt young ladies about the drumming adventure at the Plaza-of-the-Forbidden-Gate, Conrad’s keen hunter’s eyes were the first to notice the fire-dragon swooping past the limb of the moon again. He pointed and shouted, “Look! ‘Tis the fire-dragon I saw!”
Esau shouted, “I see it!”
With all of them searching the sky for the errant dragon, one of Ruby’s daughters shouted, “The falls!”
Bright azure light cascaded over the crest as if the water had somehow changed into the stuff of rainbow-hued moonlight. Running incredibly fast, azure light scintillated down the falls, through the mist surging down the river faster past them faster than a running horse.
Gazing up again, Conrad pointed and shouted, “There! A body!”
Clearly framed against the glowing waters, an inert and helplessly tumbling human plunged unmoving over the crest and fell toward the misty, boulder-strewn base like a tangle of flotsam.
Tarik shouted, “The dragon!”
Roaring as it swooped in, the fire-dragon flew in a curve, the apex of which created an arc so close to the cliffs it merged with the deluge. Making an outlined shadow in the glowing waters, it deftly plucked the naked, unconscious human form from the torrent like some great bird of prey then burst from the other side with the body held tight to its chest. Forced to complete the inward arc, it whipped the misty air hard to regain controlled flight, and soared over them so low they got soaked by the glowing waters and were forced to scatter across the savannah like panicked sheep.
With a great roar and graceful swoop, it regained level flight, curved back around a mere 10-meters above the park pumping its wings, and swooped past the bonfire making embers and cinders shoot into the sky everywhere. Once past the blaze, the dragon gingerly beat the night air in the direction of the coast. After stomping out the embers, Tarik and Esau rebuilt the fire, and all the witnesses gathered by the fire to warm and dry themselves and talk about the night’s eerie events.
Conrad shook his head, “I’d bet a week’s toil that was the same fire-dragon who flamed us at The-Forbidden-Gate.”
Tarik nodded, “Looked the same to me.”
Esau waxed philosophical, “My friends, I fear our lives, as we know them now, will soon be a much-wished-for past,” and he shook his head.
Conrad said, “I’ll wager that same week’s toil that was the stolen-man comin’ over the crest.”
HuoJi and Elijah eventually become the best of friends.
Guardian of the West, Bo YouYong — a sea-dragon
The Guardian of the West, Bo YouYong, was on the hunt for rare and delicious bio-luminescent angler-fish several klicks deep and very far out from her home on the western shore of Aryavartha. Her underwater lair was the Sentinel’s Watch of the West. The actual tip of her keep was deep beneath the ocean at the end of the great sandbar of the LungHuo River where it emptied into the ShenLan Sea adjacent on the south to a huge headland known as the Cape of Orion.
The Guardian of the West’s green, eel-like body had the proportionately large scales of a carp. Her sharp feelers were like the barbels of a catfish. A large dorsal fin, like that of a moray eel that ran the entire length of her body. Her elk-like horns always had pieces of seaweed dangling. Her otter-like hands had a strong thumb while all of her digits ended with sharp, fixed claws for gripping fish with webbed fingers for swimming beneath the sea.
As she silently hunted in the dark depths, words-of-power in the Long Shai smashed into her mind like storm waves crashing on the rocky shore. Several heartbeats passed before memory informed her that only two adepts in the Huan Long Shui Sisteren knew the ancient language of the Elder Dragons. Others might have been taught in the 40-years since last she saw High Priestess Lilith, but she would know.
Inevitably in such a teaching, words-of-power would have to be spoken many times over to get them right. Such utterances spoken aloud would then carry across the aether. By now, Lilith would be an old crone, too weak and spent to command such raw power—this was not her. Having been in telempathic communion with Lilith’s Named-One when the young initiate struck for the 1st Circle beneath the Great Lowers Doors of The-Sleeping-City, Bo knew who it must be.
Up and out of the deeps the great water-dragon swam till her sinuous body slipped from beneath the tall waves amidst a sheet of shining water that shattered into strings of pearls in the shimmering, reddening moonbeams. Immediately, Bo realized she had forgotten that tonight was the Dragon’s Blood Moon. If channeled properly, carmine moon-source can power the Pillars-of-Thoth without the help of we dragons. A chill foreboding ran along her spine as she levitated into the evening sky. From so far away, it would be early morning before she reached the Huan Long Shui Cavern Keep.
Guardian of the East, Meili Chuan — an air-dragon
Meili is an air-dragon, also known as a long-dragon.
Far across the island continent of Aryavartha on the eastern coast of the Huan Long Shui Dominion, an air-dragon some 5-meters long named Meili Chuan lay coiled and meditating atop a tower of solid basalt jutting from the sandy beach of the stormy ShenLan Sea. This was the tip of the Eastern Sentinel’s Watch. She had a long tubular body with light-blue feather-like scales. On each of her four hands were three fingers and a long thumb, all of which ended in eagle-like talons. Her antlers were like those of a deer, while her mane and beard were of the purest white. Her vertical tail was as the tip of a huge peacock feather with similar iridescent coloration.
Meili raised her great head up in alarm. Frightening words-of-power stung her mind like swarming wasps. As she extended her senses, the compulsion to soar in the direction of the Huan Long Shui Cavern Keep hit her as a solemn injunction. Several heartbeats passed before she realized what was happening. Unheard of! Some upstart sings a summoning in the Long Shai!
She levitated into the evening air grumbling aloud to herself, “Never in all my life have I been summoned in such a manner!” Still muttering, she undulated through the dusky sky flying fast for the Huan Long Shui Cavern Keep. Her limbs were tucked in tight like a giant flowing snake writhing through the clear night air. The flight would take the entire night.
Guardian of the Void, Yuliang Nushen — a star-dragon
YueLiang Nushen is also the Star Dragon Moon Goddess to the Technisans of Ta Shemau.
From the heart of a high-tech, ancient-alien outpost inside the hollow interior of the Riven Moon, now becoming unto a Dragon’s Blood Moon, words-of-power rang in the mind of a very ancient long-dragon. Dimly aware of the syzygy as if from a dream, YueLiang Nushen slowly opened her sticky, bleary eyes. The stygian darkness of her techno-den was broken only by the red glow of her vision, for she was of the 5th Kind—a star-dragon.
Since this was a specific invocation of her and her powers over the void, it penetrated the time-stasis she had reposed in for over 50-centuries. Following the Rebellion-of-the-Slaves, before taking herself into the self-imposed time-stasis beyond the flow of time altogether, she had created a synchroneity with an ancient-alien artificial-intelligence—more specifically to the quantum states-of-consciousness it was able to occupy. In concert with the invocation, those states-of-consciousness were now in flux.
As one of only two surviving Elder Dragons of Orion, she had once been a classic imperial long-dragon but had sacrificed her corporeal self to become a star-dragon. Such was the strength of her organic dragon-magic and powers over the threads-of-time and dimensional folds-of-space, there could only ever be a solitary one. Because of the fragility of time and dimension, a primal singularity could ripple throughout eternity creating a new super-expansion of all times, all spaces, and all dimensions. It was her lot to ensure that this never happened again, for all beings everywhere and every-when would be annihilated in a single instant.