<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/jjCig7W.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Destrian Brand (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=341089.msg16149670#msg16149670)<br/><strong>Dragon Type:</strong>Fire<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>His Dragon Slayer Armor<br/><strong>Date/Time:</strong>1 April 2050, Midnight.<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Rust and Ruckus, Warehouse District, Raven City<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Jake (NPC)<br/><strong>Word Count:</strong>2,091 (Complete)<br/><hr/><br/>It was nighttime and Jake<em>probably</em>shouldn’t have been out this late. Raven City was a dangerous place, and while he grew up here all eighteen years of his life, he still felt a little nervous being out at night by himself. He knew the blocks to avoid, and he didn’t take the metro or bus this late. The last thing he wanted was for some Skulls member trying to recruit him. He rode his bike, which had seemed like a safer way to get to work.<br/><br/>The city had been strangely quiet. A breeze blew through his short blond layers, while his half-lidded blue eyes tried to stay focused on the road. He was tired, but the owner of the Escalade they had at the shop wanted the body repaired pronto. The crew at the shop had told him that they could have fixed it tomorrow, but Jake anticipated more work coming in. Besides, it was finally his chance to work without his hand being held. He might have been an apprentice, but he had been at the shop for three months! He was convinced that he had seen everything. If he completed this job, then the crew wouldn’t treat him like a novice anymore.<br/><br/>Jake turned down the street Rust and Ruckus was on, and as he neared the garage, he heard loud clattering. It sounded like the shop was being robbed. The teen stopped, dropping his feet from his pedals to the road. His eyes were wide with alarm and his heart was pounding rapidly.<br/><br/><em>Oh shit; oh shit!</em>he thought. Was it Skulls? What if they were trying to steal parts from the Escalade?<em>Oh shit!</em><br/><br/>He had to call the cops. He reached into his pocket and removed his cellphone. As he tapped in the first digit, his whole body froze. In the same second, a dinosaur-like creature burst through the shop door. Wait. A dinosaur? But it had wings? The teen was transfixed—lips agape incredulously. He watched as it sniffed the air, a second one emerging behind it and raising on its hind legs to stretch out its leathery wings. No; not a dinosaur. They looked like dragons—actual dragons!<br/><br/><div class="floatright">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ba/0e/b9/ba0eb94cb7768e2cf0f82b0d316780b9.jpg)</div><br/>The first wyvern turned its head toward the scent it detected. It smelled meat, and its fiery, orange eyes locked onto a lone biped standing in the road. Its knife-like teeth parted as its throat flexed with a short, shrill scream. The second wyvern looked toward Jake, and it lowered onto all-fours as it barked back its own screech as though it had been communicating with the first.<br/><br/>“Fuck this!” Jake finally exclaimed. He grasped the handles of his bike and felt his cellphone slip from his hand to clatter on the asphalt. “Shit!”<br/><br/>Naturally, his hand reached down in an attempt to snatch it back up, and in that same moment, his mind chastised him for even going for it rather than leaving. In his panic and indecisiveness, he returned to grasping the handlebars of his bike, and the creature was upon him in a blur. The beast sprung, using its wings to help it soar over the short distance. Its hind legs swung forward and talons snagged his bike like clenched fists. The weight of the creature caused Jake to collapse. Trapped beneath his bike, Jake did his best to keep the aluminum between him and the razor sharp teeth that shredded pieces of his bike in its desperation to taste flesh.<br/><br/>“Aah! Get away; get away!” Jake screamed. The second wyvern had flown over and snagged the rear tire of his bike, immediately deflating it before ripping it from the rim. He was dead. He was fucking dead! He felt the creature’s rank breath blasting his face with humidity. He should have never ventured outside at night!<br/><br/>What happened next, happened so quick that Jake wasn’t sure what he had even seen. Fire passed above him, whipping about an outstretched leg. A boot struck the first wyvern in the snout with enough force to drive its head into its chest. The force from the rocket kick propelled the wyvern back several feet. It struck the hard street and rolled backwards, while through stunned eyes, Jake gazed at the back of a man in armor. Armor? What the hell was going on?<br/><br/>The second wyvern cast the tire aside and its jaws spread as it whipped its head toward the armored man.<br/><br/>“Look out!” Jake warned.<br/><br/>Without even turning his head to regard the creature, the knight’s left arm crossed his chest, thrusting the end of a spear so swiftly through the wyvern’s skull that all Jake saw was a blur. The second wyvern flopped dead across Jake and his bike. Its dark sanguine blood oozed from the hole in its skull. Terrified, Jake squirmed and pushed his way out from under the creature and his bike.<br/><br/>The first wyvern screamed angrily at the armored stranger until its eyes gleamed and an orange blaze swirled in its throat. Jake brought his arm protectively before his face as a stream of fire left the wyvern’s mouth. From behind his forearm, Jake watched the knight step into the stream, blocking it with his body. He marched toward the creature as its flames caused his armor to glow a bright red from the heat. Wisps of fire passed over his shoulders and passed his hips, but the stream was mostly blocked. The spear was swung upward. The spearhead pierced through its neck and emerged out the top of the wyvern’s skull. The beast’s eyes lost their glow and with the remaining flames escaping on its last breath, it flopped over onto the ground.<br/><br/>The knight stepped on the dragon’s neck and jerked his spear free. From behind smoking wrappings, brown and white eyes thoughtfully stared at the carcass.<br/><br/>Jake frantically looked about for more of them and not seeing anymore, he quickly rose to his feet. His heart was racing. “What the fuck!” he exclaimed.<br/><br/>The knight turned his head to regard him.<br/><br/>Jake was staring at his destroyed bike and the dead wyvern laying on it. “This isn’t real! Dragons don’t exist! What is going on here? Is this some secret government shit?” He grasped his head and turned his attention to the knight.<br/><br/>“Are you with the NIF?” he asked, and then stared at his getup. He looked like a LARPer! There was no way he was NIF. “Seriously, why are you dressed like that?”<br/><br/>The knight silently stared at the boy as he deciphered his language. It was similar to common tongue in Avantasia but the dialect was strange. Slowly, the knight turned and started walking away.<br/><br/>“Wait! Where are you going? What if there are more dragons or whatever these things are!?” Jake yelled. He quickly stepped over to his bike to grab his cellphone off the ground and backed away just in time before the wyvern combusted. “Shit!”<br/><br/>He looked between the two wyverns and saw their bodies engulfed in flames. The knight was facing him with his arm extended.<br/><br/>“You almost burned me! Fuck, my bike!”<br/><br/>His aluminum bike was melting beneath the blaze. “Hey! You can’t leave me alone. You melted my bike. How am I supposed to get home?”<br/><br/>Jake ran over to the knight. “Where are you going? Do you have some secret buddies around who could give me a ride home?” Being that close to the stranger allowed Jake to see some burn scarring on his face. He didn’t answer, and it wasn’t because he was ignoring him. Jake figured it was because he didn’t know where he was. “Okay, look. If it’s classified or something…”<br/><br/>Jake glanced about at his surroundings as though the world were spying on them. “We can go into that shop over there. I work there. It’s better than being out in the open, and what if there’s more of those things inside?”<br/><br/>Jake’s concern about the dragons seemed to spur some curiosity and determination in the knight. He immediately turned and headed for Rust and Ruckus to inspect it. Jake followed the knight inside—allowing him to go first of course. He closed the door behind them and saw tools and other objects on the floor. He sighed in relief when he saw that the Escalade was fine…on first glance. When he inspected it closer, he saw the teeth marks in the tires. It had to have been that one dragon who seemed to like chewing on rubber.<br/><br/>“Aw man!” he fussed. “Fuck. This was supposed to be finished by tomorrow! How am I gonna explain this?”<br/><br/>He gazed over at the knight, watching as he checked behind the clerk counter. “All right; I promise I won’t tell anyone. What the fuck is going on here?”<br/><br/>This time. The knight was ignoring him. “Dude, do you talk? Are you a mute? I don’t know much ASL…”<br/><br/>“You are irritating,” the knight finally spoke.<br/><br/>“So you do talk!” Jake excitedly replied. “Who are you? Were those dragons or some crazy experiment?”<br/><br/>“I am a Dragon Slayer. I am from Avantasia. There was a clash of magic that tore a hole in reality and brought me and others here. It also brought the dragons here.”<br/><br/>Jake was silent, which had been so unlike him up to this point that even the knight had to turn around and check if he was still alive. He saw the teenager staring at him with large, blank eyes.<br/><br/>“AAAH!” Jake cheered.<br/><br/>It had been so sudden that the knight defensively raised his spear. It was his turn to wear a blank stare as he watched Jake pump his fists and shout yes to the gods.<br/><br/>“I can’t believe this is happening! This is some movie shit! Finally, something cool has happened!” Jake exclaimed. “Wooo~! This is so sick!”<br/><br/>Jake raced over to him and seemed to become more annoying. “Holy shit; holy shit! There’s more of you? And there’s dragons here. Shit! People are in danger. We have to stop them!”<br/><br/>“We? Not we,” the knight corrected.<br/><br/>Jake was adamant. “But shit I’m not even done with high school. My parents would get mad if they knew I was fighting dragons. Hell, they wouldn’t even believe me. I still have to come up with a story to explain what happened to the Escalade. Wait!”<br/><br/>The boy’s mind was moving so quickly that the knight was finding it difficult to understand what he was saying. “You can help me. We can fix this. We can fix everything before morning…” Jake thoughtfully frowned at the floor. “You have fire powers! Yes! You can melt shit. You can just seal those holes in the tires and help me with the chassis. We can have this whole thing finished before any of the crew gets here.”<br/><br/>“That sounds like your problem,” the knight said dismissively.<br/><br/>“Wait! I know somebody who might be able to help you. She lives alone so you might be able to stay at her place. You have to have a place to stay if you’re planning to survive here. She’s pretty cool, so if we tell her about your mission…well…she’ll have to believe it. I mean seriously, look at what you’re wearing? That’s hard not to believe.”<br/><br/>The knight glanced down at his armor. He didn’t understand why it was so strange.<br/><br/>“Look, you help me, and I’ll help you. Deal? You’ll survive a lot easier if you learn to blend in.”<br/><br/>Jake offered his hand to the knight, and the knight gazed at it with reluctance. He made no motion to take it, but Jake didn’t seem like he was going to lower it until he did. An exasperated sigh left the knight as he took Jake’s hand in a firm shake. He didn’t know how vast this world was, and he agreed with Jake that he would need to rest and eat eventually.<br/><br/>Jake grinned and exclaimed, “Awesome! Come on, let’s get started. The faster we finish, then the sooner we can sleep. If you’ve never slept in an Escalade before…oh shit, you probably don’t even know what an Escalade is.”<br/><br/>The apprentice walked over to the SUV and rested a hand on the hood. The knight regarded it obliviously. “It’s an iron carriage,” he guessed.<br/><br/>Jake laughed at his description. “Iron carriage; I love it. Yeah, and the horses are inside.”<br/><br/>The knight gave the boy a stunned look, which made him laugh more. “Come on, I’ll show you how it works.”