Chapter 4

          Cody walked through the door into his house, and was quickly confronted by his father, who was seething with anger.

            “Where is my map!?”

            Cody thought about pretending that he didn’t know what map he was talking about, but decided to play it safe and say, “I thought I saw it on the floor, when mom must have swept it up or something.”

            Cody hated putting the anger on his mom, but as long as she was innocent, she would be alright. As his father stormed away angrily, Cody was able to make his way to his room without attracting attention to himself, and stashed himself in his bed under his sheets. He started when he saw the dragon crawl out from under his bed.

            “What are you doing under my bed, or in my room for that matter?” Cody asked.

            The dragon turned its head to the side slightly to stare at him with a single, ice-blue eye and replied, “Do you honestly think I would miss this? It’s better to learn with you, not from you, and I miss your company; you haven’t come to see me in a long while.”

            The dragon leapt up onto the bed, right over Cody, and settle down beside him. He gasped as he realized how much bigger it was. The dragon was now almost four and a half feet long from nose to tail-tip, when he was only two feet long before.

            “How did you grow so much in just a couple of days!?”

            The dragon looked at him again and said, “Dragons can grow to be extraordinarily large, so they need to grow quickly. At least, that’s what my mother said to me.”

            “Interesting,” Cody said as he pulled ‘Valor of the Dragon’ out of his shirt. “Should I read the book?”

            “Of course, look at the contents first though; look for things that might be more important at this moment.”

            Cody opened the giant book, and read the contents. His finger pointed to one that he found particularly interesting. He talked to the dragon about it.

            “Dragon Names, it says, on page 214. Perhaps we can figure out exactly what yours would be, because I’m sick of just referring to you as ‘Dragon’ when we talk. Or did your mother speak to you about that as well?” Cody said.

            “My mother mentioned nothing of names; I was hoping you would know more. By all means, I am sick of being simply ‘Dragon’ as well.”

            Cody opened the book and flipped through the pages until he reached the correct page. As he read, he relayed all of the information to the hatchling, with great surprise:

A dragon isn’t simply given a name; it is earned by their battle skill, cunning, strength, or any other strong points, at least with wild dragons. Dragons with riders, however, are given a name that its rider predicts will be an important role in their future, or perhaps their past. Cloud, a white dragon that was valued for her mother’s love of the sky, and she ended up being able to manipulate clouds with the strong beat of her wings, and practically change the weather at will..

Shadow, was a dragon that was hatched in the dead of night, without pupils, and ended up turning evil, and his rider was a necromancer. Many riders have claimed that the names just stuck to their dragons, and nearly all of them failed to recall exactly where the names came from, but the dragons always lived up to the names, and became well-known by them.

            “What do you think?” Cody asked the dragon.

            “As much as I hate to say it, I don’t want to read anymore right now. We should stick to one a day…or night, I suppose. Besides, I don’t want you to hastily think of my name; I want to have a mighty name that everyone will admire. You get a good night’s sleep, and think of it when you can.”

            Cody smiled as the dragon touched its nose to his head, but then he had another question, “Are you a boy or girl?”

            The hatchling was very confused and said, “I know of genders, but since my mother didn’t know mine yet, she never explained the difference to me. Perhaps we will figure it out again eventually.”

            Cody smiled, very reassured by the dragon’s words. He settled down, rested his head on his pillow and fell asleep.

            That night, Cody had another dream. This time, however, it was obvious that Argos and his rider didn’t send the image, it was his own. He was trapped in a forest, ablaze with bright, reddish-gold flames, and he could barely see the full moon far above him. Its watery color wouldn’t help him.

            Cody heard a thunderous male voice, powerful and strong, mighty and great, through his head, and he instantly knew it was the dragon. But he was still struggling to escape the inferno, though his skin was scorched, his breath was dry, and his clothes were singed. Then suddenly, with a mighty roar, the dragon flew through the flames, his scales glistening golden and scarlet as if he were blazing himself.

            He landed beside Cody and batted the flames away with his mighty black wings, and let out another roar of blind fury, letting loose fire himself. As the fire surrounded them, and closed in closer, he covered Cody completely with his body and wings, as the fiery storm overwhelmed them and flashed over his scales in a torrent of bloody light.

            “Inferno,” Cody said quietly, yet aloud, and plainly as he woke up early the next morning.

            “What?” The dragon asked as his eyes flickered open.

            Cody looked at him and stroked his black scales along his neck and side before saying to him mentally, “You are male, and I don’t know why, how, or what it means, but your name is destined to be Inferno.”

            “Are you sure?” the scaly beast asked. “It’s a little sudden, and doesn’t seem to fit me very well.”

            But even as he said it, both he and Cody knew it, his name was going to be Inferno, and it somehow fit him so extraordinarily well. They didn’t know how, because it didn’t really match his scales, or his personality, but they just knew it was meant to be.

            “How long do you think will it be until I will be able to ride you?” Cody asked.

            The dragon pushed the book forward with his nose and said, “Only the book will tell us, I don’t know for sure if it will be a few days, or a few years before you ride me.”

            Cody sighed and opened the book, and looked through the contents again. Upon seeing the chapter title they were looking for, they both agreed to turn to that page; 437. And the page read:

Dragon Growth

When a dragon hatches, it is anywhere between a foot long, and four feet long, but it really isn’t important how large they are when they are born. But, since they are usually born with unusually large wings, they can support large amounts of weight very quickly. A dragon can easily support a riderpartially about five days after it is hatched, and can completely support about any weight of a human at only a week of age. They usually start flying three days after hatching, and can fly with a rider in about two weeks, although it is very low, slow, and short flight periods at this time. The more they fly, the better they get at it.

In about a month, the dragon begins to develop a sort of sack at the back of the throat, which releases a chemical that reacts with the air to produce extremely hot fire. At first, the hatchling can only make sparks, smoke, and steam, but as the sack gets stronger, the chemical is more concentrated, and the flame becomes stronger and more powerful. It is difficult for newborns to control the chemicals, and sometimes breathe really hard trying to blow them out, but as they learn more about it, they can actually feel and control the sack at will.

            Cody looked at Inferno and said aloud, “We learned even more than we expected from this book.”

            “Obviously it will prove extremely useful to us in the near future. But I haven’t tried flying yet; I’ve flapped my wings on occasion, trying to gauge when I might be able to fly, but I still haven’t done it.”

            “Have you tried gliding, or using your wings to help you jump a little higher?” Cody asked.

            Inferno looked at him with his icy eyes and said, “Not in the slightest.”

            Cody closed the book and placed it on the table by his bed before saying, “Let’s go out into the forest and try to get you to fly. Perhaps we can make you an amazing flier before Argos and his rider talk to us next.”

            The black dragon gave him a very skeptical look, even more so than when they had first seen each other, and he said, “This book says I should start flying about this time, that doesn’t mean I will, or that I need your help to do so.”

            Despite his words, Cody could see that Inferno wanted him to go along anyway and help. The human helped him out the window, even though he seemed to be a little too big for it with his wings, and he jumped outside with a powerful spring from his strong back legs. Cody told him to go ahead, because he wanted to go out the front door so that he could avoid suspicion from his parents if they came in and found him missing, even though they probably wouldn’t go into his room.

            Cody passed by his parents, who were arguing about the map, and seemed to attract no unwanted attention. He easily slipped on his shoes, coat, and left without being stopped by any words, movements, or anything really. So without any delay, he raced off into the woods for about ten minutes before he caught sight of Inferno, just sitting and watching the clouds go by.

            “You ready?” Cody asked aloud as he made it to him.

            “As I’ll ever be,” Inferno replied, though he was clearly very anxious to try to fly. “So, do you have any ideas how I might be able to start?”

            Cody had long earlier decided to speak aloud during their forest visits, and said, “I would suggest that you start out just by flapping your wings, and getting used to the air currents underneath them. Try to sort of imitate a bird, you know.”

            Inferno quickly agreed and began flapping his wings furiously, his wings flailing about aimlessly. Cody stopped him and suggested that he start out slowly and focus on positioning his wings in the perfect place, so that they can catch the wind better. After about an hour of trying various positions, they managed to find ones that could be used well in several situations, and the dragon was swirling the air around them to make a somewhat large wind.

            “Now you should try gliding,” Cody said. “Climb that tree in the middle of the meadow, stretch out your wings, look for a good air current, and glide down to me.”

            They were both confused about why Cody was the instructor for Inferno’s flight, but it seemed to be working so far, so they went along with it. Inferno climbed up into the tree Cody had described, spread his wings, and soared down. He was going very slowly, against a strong headwind, so he decided to turn slightly, even though he hadn’t figured it out how yet.

            Inferno turned his tail to the left, and suddenly spiraled almost completely around counterclockwise. He turned his tail again, at a fraction of the amount he did earlier, and faced Cody again, before he finished the glide with a pretty uncoordinated landing. He landed on his left legs and fell to the side, in fact.

            Cody told him to try again and again until he could land and turn pretty well, but then he had to try to take off from the bottom branch and actually fly down. The dragon clawed his way up the trunk, and quickly took off from the branch, and his clumsy flapping brought him to the ground in about ten seconds.

            “Try to find the right position again, and don’t focus on repeating the same strokes of your wings, focus on adapting the strokes to the different winds, so you can fly better,” Cody suggested as he came a little closer to the tree.

            “I have an idea,” Inferno said.

            Without explaining, he climbed back onto the branch and dove off with his wings spread wide, and he glided down again, occasionally flapping his wings so he glided about ten feet before landing almost perfectly upon the ground just in front of Cody. Without a word, he raced back over to the tree, climbed up to a branch about halfway up the tree, and took off again, gliding, or flying, at least fifty feet to the edge of the forest.

            “That was amazing!” Cody exclaimed.

            “Cody!?” he heard Aval shouting very loudly somewhere in the forest.

            “Quick, run off and hide in a tree where they can’t hear you, I’ll keep you updated on what happens,” Cody told Inferno through their special mind-link, and the shadow dragon ran away, flapping his wings as he did, which quickened his pace slightly.

            “Cody?” Autumn asked as she burst from the undergrowth long after Inferno was gone. “We came to see if you were doing alright after last night, and your mum told us you were in the woods. We came to look for you, and then we heard you yell something and we came to see if you were alright…again.”

            “I’m fine,” Cody said with a smile that he couldn’t get rid of, a smile of pride towards his dragon for finally flying somewhat.

            Aval popped through the bushes soon after, gasping for air, and after he managed to get some of it back, and take a look around, “Why aren’t you armed? You know there are a bunch of dangers around here like wolves or bears. And it looks like something has been rolling around here not to long ago.”

            As Aval pointed, Cody turned around and realized that Inferno had left a big reminder of his existence. All around the tree there were spots where he had failed to land well, and tumbled through the foot-long grass, leaving prints almost like crop circles spiraling through the grass.

            Cody tried to cover it up and replied, “Whatever it is, doesn’t look more than a few feet long, and wolves and bears that size are too afraid of us to attack. Besides, where’s your weapon?”

            Autumn looked at him with a very unimpressed expression as she pulled her bow off of her shoulders, over her quiver. She was very skilled with a bow, although Cody had somehow forgotten over the excitement of the past few days.

            Then Cody saw Aval take his dual swords out of their respective sheaths at his waist and held them out towards him.

            He quickly put them back and continued jokingly, “I suppose having a weapon wouldn’t do you much good anyway.”

            Although it was sort of funny, it was true; Cody didn’t specialize in any weapon. He couldn’t throw darts, knives, or spears, was only decent at archery, and couldn’t get his hands on any other weapons. Avalsmokes once let him try to use the two swords, but it just led Cody to discover that he wasn’t very good at controlling both at once, so he wasn’t much for Aval’s swords.

            Cody yearned to get his hand on a good sword, axe, or maybe even a mace, but such things were so expensive and rare in their little village.

            “Well,” Cody began, “You both know now that I am perfectly well, not to mention very safe on my own.”

            “Uh-uh,” Aval argued. “We know you aren’t sick, physically. But for whatever reason you are out here, you can’t be safe all alone without a weapon. You didn’t even bring your bow, or a knife for that matter. Why?”

            Cody averted his eyes for a moment while he conversed with Inferno, “I felt perfectly safe with you, but what should I use as an excuse?”

            “Just say that you know this area very well, and you wanted to come just a short distance from your dwelling, to a place that you know to be completely predator free, and therefore you didn’t need a weapon.”

            Cody relayed his words to the very letter, but Autumn quickly asked, “If this meadow is predator free, why are there giant dents in the grass that are very clearly made from some sort of predator? And one that I haven’t seen at all before, for that matter.”

            “I don’t doubt that,” Inferno joked, making Cody laugh, and he soon realized how awkward it must have been for Autumn and Aval.

            “Why are you laughing?” Aval asked.

            Cody quickly thought of an excuse, “Just thought of a joke I heard a while ago, sort of tied into our situation.”

            “Can we hear it?” Autumn asked.

            Cody sighed, realizing that Autumn was really trying to discover something, when he suddenly felt himself tap into her mind like he did with Inferno, and heard her thoughts, “He has been acting so strangely for a while now, right around the time he lost the stone.”

            His eyes grew wide as he discovered that he could read minds, even though he was only a novice dragon rider, and could hardly speak to Inferno. Nevertheless, he had obviously read Autumn’s thoughts, and it was clearly going to be difficult hiding his secret from them. He ached to tell them; he had never kept secrets from them, but there wasn’t much wiggle room in this situation.

            “Listen,” Cody said sadly, and pleaded with them. “I cannot tell you exactly how or why, but I promise that I will be safe. You have to trust me. I know it’s not very reliable, but you need to realize that I wouldn’t dare keep a secret from you two, unless it was absolutely necessary.”

            After much hesitation, the two agreed, and slowly stepped away and into the brush once more. Once Cody was pretty sure that they were gone, he called for Inferno out loud with merely a whistle, which Inferno wouldn’t have understood without words sent telepathically explaining it anyway.

            Then up in the tree in the meadow, where Inferno had apparently gone to hide in more openly than Cody had hoped, though it was still near impossible to see him, there was a rustle of leaves as though he were about to jump and glide down, but he stopped. Cody could sense him concentrating really hard on something.

            “What’s wrong?” Cody asked him.

            Inferno simply stated in their mind-link, “They are watching us.”

            Cody was about to ask how he knew, when an arrow suddenly shot into the tree only inches away from the young dragon, who now sat even more still than before. But Cody grew absolutely furious, and was about to roar in anger until he realized that he wasn’t a dragon himself.

            Instead, the human yelled, “What are you Doing!?”

            Autumn remained completely still for a moment, as if debating whether to show herself or not, but finally made up her mind and crawled out with a shameful yet curious look on her face, “I thought there was something in that tree trying to get you.”

            “It…must have been the wind,” Cody explained hastily, quite probably ruining the illusion that he tried to create about him being entirely honest.

            Aval rustled the leaves a bit around where he was, just trying to prove that he was there, at the same time Inferno slipped slightly and did similar.

            Autumn glared at him and said, “That’s no wind! What are you hiding!?”

            Just then, Avalsmokes launched from his shelter and raced towards the tree as fast as he could. Cody jumped forward, but Autumn was in front of him in less than a second, barring his path.

            “What should I do!?” Inferno panicked.

            Cody thought for a moment before replying, “Jump from the branches and glide down towards Aval, the man you see running towards you. Maybe try to scare them, but be sure not to hurt them.”

            Inferno barely responded to him before carrying out their plan. With a ferocious roar, at least for a baby dragon, he leapt from the tree and soared just above Aval’s head. Aval toppled over and smacked his head on the ground, only catching a small glimpse of darkness pass over him.

            The dragon finally reached the bottom only ten feet from Cody and Autumn, which was actually his new record, and Autumn had shot a couple arrows in his direction. Inferno roared once more before leaping into her, and knocking her over.

            “Improvise,” Cody told him, suddenly noticing that that was the end of their plan.

            Inferno suddenly glared at him then turned back to Autumn and darted towards her once more. Suddenly, she quickly knocked an arrow and sent in flying in the dragon’s direction.

            Cody howled in anger and rage, before he tackled Autumn, and Inferno roared in pain as he crashed to the ground and flapped his wings about wildly. The rider got up and raced over to his side.

            “Where were you hit!?” Cody screamed silently.

            Inferno rolled onto his side, exposing his stomach, and showing the beautiful arrow lodged in the right side of his neck, by his upper chest and right foreleg, basically right at the base of his leg. At this point, Aval and Autumn were many times more confused than they were earlier, and were together about 15 feet away, just watching.

            Cody ignored them and tenderly wrapped his hand around the shaft of the arrow and pulled on it slightly, seeing exactly how bad it was, and Inferno answered him with a short hiss-like sound, like rocks rolling along a hillside full of snakes.

            “Just pull it out, I know it has to come out, and It isn’t a very sensitive part of my body,” Inferno said with the hissing noise still erupting from his jaws.

            Cody tore a piece of fabric from his worn-out shirt, just in case he had to stop the bleeding quickly. He then grabbed hold of the shaft once more, and quickly pulled as hard as he could on the arrow, yanking it free of the dragon’s thick hide. Warm, scarlet blood oozed from the wound onto the long green grass. Cody covered the wound with his cloth, and held it there until it was finished.

            He looked down at the arrow that was seated beside Inferno, and saw beside it, two coal-black scales identical to one another. He picked them up, put them in his pocket, and stretched his hand out to his dragon, caressing his smooth scales with one hand.

            “Are you alright, Inferno?” Cody asked aloud, holding his breath as he hoped for a good reply.

            “I’m fine.”