Beware of Propheci

by

Chapter 9

Parmon had taken his best shot to pick the top four most likely people to disappear next. Kitt and Wyldfyr had been given the name of a man who lived in the mid-city section to watch. They had chosen a location on a nearby rooftop where they could observe the area clearly.

“I don't know, Wyldfyr,” Kitt said with a bit of a sigh. “We've been out here for two nights now with nothing happening. I wonder if we're going to get anywhere with this.”

Wyldfyr gave a bit of a sigh herself and agreed with a short “rraah-uhh” sound, which Kitt knew was her dragon's best approximation of "uh-huh." There was little to do but wait, so Wyldfyr settled down and made herself comfortable next to Kitt where she could observe the area below.

They continued waiting. After a time, the man they were supposed to watch came out of the building and headed down the street away from their location.

“Looks like he's going to the market down at the corner again. Wait here while I follow him.”

The market wasn't far and it was less conspicuous if Kitt followed alone. Kitt made her way down to street level and kept the man in sight. She waited outside as the man went into the market as expected.

After waiting for some time, Kitt's wrist communicator started beeping. She hit the button to receive the call.

“Rraaah! Rraaah!” came Wyldfyr's excited voice over the line. Kitt had left the saddle's com-link set to automatically call her if activated. As with any gear, Wyldfyr could trigger the com-link on the saddle by applying a small amount of mag-energy to the appropriate point on the saddle.

“Something going on back there?” asked Kitt, recognizing something was up.

Wyldfyr answered with an affirmative “Rraah-uuh” sound.

“OK, sit tight. I'm on my way back.”

Kitt ran back towards the building where the man they were watching lived. As she rounded the corner and came into sight of the building, she saw another man moving away from the building as though he had just left. Kitt, speaking into her communicator said, “Is that man the reason you called me, Wyldfyr?”

Wyldfyr responded with another “Rraah-uuh.”

The man was moving away from the building in the opposite direction. Kitt slowed down and started following him from what she hoped was a discreet distance. This was a little difficult since it was getting late and there was hardly anyone else on the street at the moment and the few people who were there were riding dragons. The man and Kitt were the only ones on foot which made them both stand out.

The man cast a glance back and, noticing Kitt, started to move a little faster. Kitt picked up her pace as well in order to keep him in sight. The man looked back again and realized he was being followed. He started running. Kitt started running, too.

"Hold up! I just want to talk to you!" she called after him.

Wyldfyr saw Kitt running after him and wasted no time coming to help her. The dragon jumped from her rooftop position and ran towards Kitt. As she got close, she lifted Kitt up with a mag-energy stream and dropped her into the saddle.

"Thanks, Wyldfyr!" Kitt said. "OK, let's catch up to him now."

The man had turned down a twisting side street to try and loose them. Wyldfyr knew she didn't have to try very hard to catch up to him. No human could hope to outrun a dragon and she took it at an easy pace. She was almost within mag range, and if he didn't stop soon, Wyldfyr planned to simply pick him up and hold him with a mag energy stream. She knew it was considered improper for a dragon to mag a stranger like that, just as it was considered improper for a human to jump into the saddle of dragon they didn't know. But this wasn't the time to worry about the finer points of dragon-human etiquette, and she prepared herself for another mag burst.

As the distance narrowed, the man turned into a smaller side alley. Wyldfyr and Kitt rounded the corner themselves and, startled by what she saw, Wyldfyr skidded to a halt. Both were surprised, and she and Kitt gaped at an unexpected sight a short distance in front of them. There before them in the alley was an orange dragon. The dragon defiantly stood its ground and eyed them carefully, its teeth showing slightly. Surprisingly, the man they were chasing ran towards the dragon and as he approached it, the dragon crouched down to allow him onto the saddle.

"The Prophets?! Here in the city? Oh, brother. This can't be good," exclaimed Kitt, a bit distressed as the memories of their experience on the Track of Doom resurfaced. Wyldfyr was none too happy about this development either.

Once seated, the man pulled on his helmet and the orange dragon quickly spun around and took off down the alley running away as fast as it could.

"Come'on Wyldfyr. We've got to find out what they're up to!"

Wyldfyr leapt into action to catch up to the other dragon. This wasn't easy since the Prophets were fast dragons as well. Wyldfyr gritted her teeth and poured on the speed. As she did so, the distance between them slowly narrowed. The rider on the orange dragon looked back and noticed the others were catching up to him. The orange dragon then began to glow with a mag-energy aura.

"Look out, Wyldfyr! They're going to mag-blast us!"

Wyldfyr slowed down a bit and prepared to dodge the blast. The orange dragon fired an intense mag-burst, but it wasn't aimed at Kitt or Wyldfyr. Instead, it shot nearly straight up and they both craned their necks to see where the energy stream was going. The mag-burst hit the main support column of a large overhead billboard, slicing it in two. The billboard collapsed and hit the ground with a thunderous crash, landing just behind the orange dragon and forming an insurmountable barrier blocking the alleyway. Wyldfyr turned herself sideways to brake and skidded to a halt in front of the wreckage of the sign. There was no way around it in the narrow alley. The Prophet and its rider had escaped.

"Scales! We'll never catch up to them now." Kitt shouted. With a sigh, she said “Let's head back, Wyldfyr,” feeling somewhat exasperated by what just happened. “The others are going to want to know about this.”

Chapter 10

A short time later in the subterranean chamber of the Prophets, Propheci was meeting with another dragon. More of the orange dragons around them had riders now.

“The scouts have done well,” said Propheci in a satisfied way as he looked about.

“Yes, indeed,” responded the dragon he was with. “However, one scout has reported that he was spotted and pursued by someone. More humans in the city are becoming aware of us. We can't wait much longer.”

“We won't have to,” assured Propheci. “The gear modifications are all complete. Begin moving our forces to the staging area at once.”

Chapter 11

“You saw an orange dragon in the city?” asked Mortis. "And it allowed the human you were following to ride it?" Mortis seemed somewhat surprised and took a few moments to ponder this. Kitt had called everyone to tell them what had happened and they all had returned to the Dragon Temple to plan their next move. Mortis continued, “This is most unexpected. The Prophets haven't been seen in Dragon City for centuries. In fact, it's been so long since they've been seen that I had my own doubts about the legend and their existence until you encountered them a few months ago. And now it appears they're involved with the missing humans in some way.” After a long pause, he said, “Artha, I think you and the others should pay a visit to the Prophets and find out what they're up to.”

All the heads in the room turned towards Mortis. The dragon and human faces reflected a mixture of emotions ranging from surprise to worry and fear. Artha felt a twinge of fear himself and asked, “Uh, do you really think that's such a good idea? They weren't exactly all that friendly when we saw them the last time.”

“Yeah,” agreed Parmon who was not even attempting to hide the fear in this voice. “In fact, they tried to kill us if I remember correctly.” Cyrano nodded agreement with that and grunted a sound that was as close to "yeah" as a dragon could get. Nearly getting crushed in the Track of Doom was something they both wished they could forget.

“But Propheci did let you all go after you saved his life,” countered Mortis. “He should be willing to at least talk to you.”

“Should?” asked Artha, casting a questioning look at the Dragon Priest. “You don't seem very sure.”

“We have no choice, Artha. Their presence in Dragon City can't be a coincidence. Going down there is the only way to find out what they want.”

Artha looked around at his friends. By their expressions, they didn't look too comfortable with the idea either, and even Beau looked worried. But they also seemed to have resigned themselves to the fact that this was their only option at the moment.

With a heavy sigh, Artha reluctantly said, “Alright. We'll go down there.” Looking over at their dragons, he continued, “We'll leave in the morning. It's a full day's journey to where the Prophets live and our dragons need to rest first. It's too far to travel there tonight, and we want to make sure they have lots of energy in case the Prophets don't exactly welcome us when we drop in.”

Everyone felt a bit uneasy, but started getting ready to feed their dragons and bed them down for the night. It was unlikely that any of them would sleep well tonight.

Chapter 12

After the long journey to the Prophets lair, Artha and his friends approached the entrance.

“Well, there doesn't seem to be much happening out here,” said Parmon.

“Then let's head inside,” said Artha knowing he had a job to do.

Everything seemed quiet as they made their way inside. There was no one around to stop them. They followed the passageway in from the entrance and this brought them to the central chamber. More passageways branched off from here. All was quiet.

“There's nobody here!” said Lance, quite surprised and feeling somewhat relieved.

"This is very strange," said Parmon.

“I guess we better look around,” offered Kitt.

“Yeah,” said Artha as he hopped off his saddle. “Let's split up and see if we can find anything to tell us where the Prophets went or what's going on. Beau and I will go this way,” as Artha pointed to indicate a passageway to an adjoining chamber.

The others dismounted as well so they could get a better look at things as they explored and everyone moved off with their dragons in separate directions.

Lance and Fracshun headed down a passageway to the right of where Artha had gone. The passageway winded its way for a short distance and opened into another smaller chamber. There wasn't much there to see. Just the usual stone support columns decorated with the Prophet's crew symbol and several doorways to other rooms scattered about the walls of the chamber.

“We'd better check all these rooms, too,” said Lance. “Fracshun, why don't you start at that end and I'll start over here. Call me if you find anything.” Fracshun chattered an “uh-huh” to acknowledge Lance and they moved off.

The rooms where fairly large themselves, having been designed for dragon proportions, and it took a while to explore each one. Lance was checking through some storage bins in the third room after having found nothing of interest in the previous two when Fracshun appeared in the doorway and began making excited noises and jumped about a bit to get Lance's attention.

Lance looked up, "Find something, Fracshun?"

"Uh-huh," his dragon replied, nodding vigorously.

"Great! Let's go see!"

Lance ran after Fracshun as he led the way. The dragon brought Lance to an enormous pile of discarded gear nearly filling one of the rooms.

"Wow! Look at all the gear!" Lance exclaimed. Lance activated his wrist communicator to call the others. “Hey guys! We found something over here!”

The others hurried over to see what Lance and Fracshun had found. When Parmon got there, he picked up a piece of gear and started examining it. After studying it for a time he said, “Do you know what this is?” while holding the gear out for the others to see.

“No, but I think you're about to tell us,” replied Artha as he crossed his arms.

“This is part of the gear the Prophets use to control their human riders. But look here. It's been taken apart and gutted. See? The main components that make it function are missing.”

The others picked up pieces of the gear from the pile to examine themselves. “This one's been taken apart, too,” said Kitt.

“And so has this one,” said Artha.

“Why would they take apart their own gear?” questioned Lance as he turned over and examined the piece of gear he had picked up while Fracshun looked over his shoulder.

"And how are they controlling their riders now?" Artha added.

“I can't be sure of course, but maybe they used the parts to make something else,” speculated Parmon with some trepidation in his voice.

“Whatever they're doing, we didn't miss them by much,” added Kitt. “I found a food storage room and there was still food there. And none of it was spoiled.”

“Something's up. That's for sure,” said Artha. “We'd better head back and tell Mortis what we found. There doesn't seem to be much else to see here and we've got a long way to go.”

It was a long way back to the Dragon Temple and it took their dragons all night to carry them the distance. Everyone was exhausted when they finally arrived. Kitt and Parmon went straight home to bed their dragons down for the night. Lance took care of Fracshun and Beau while Artha took the elevator down to the Dragon Temple to fill Mortis in on what they had found. It had been a long day and they would have to think of what their next move should be, especially since the Prophets hadn't left any clues as to where they had gone.

Stay tuned! More chapters on their way. Be sure to check back.

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