Chapter 5

            “What is going on!?” Cody faintly heard Autumn suddenly ask, very confused and somewhat afraid.

            Inferno, who was still lying on his side and slowly beginning to recover from the arrow wound, lifted his head and lightly nudged Cody with his nose. The rider rubbed his scaly head, somewhat trying to explain some of it to Autumn and Aval with a gesture. Unfortunately, Autumn was still very much confused, so he decided to tell her.

            “This is Inferno, my dragon, and I am his rider.”

            There was a long pause, during which no one dared to utter a sound or make any movement whatsoever. Autumn suddenly glared at Cody through resentful yet still curious eyes, tightening her grip on her bow. She took a step closer, obviously about to say something hateful, or ask another question through gritted teeth, when a low growl from Inferno stopped her.

            “What are you doing?” Cody asked his dragon.

            “She shot me! I know she’s a friend of yours, but it doesn’t take a psychic to tell that she is fearful of things she doesn’t understand, like many of your race. I have no doubt that her wariness could prove dangerous to us, and I won’t have her anywhere near you or myself until she is unarmed, and even then I don’t want her closer than a few feet.”

            Cody reluctantly agreed, “Perhaps, now that I’m a rider, I should be more cautious myself. Ancient stories told that the riders were immensely wise, even though some of them could have been fools before their dragons. I need to make an attempt to amount to them, especially if we are supposed to be the only dragon and rider anyone has seen for many years; that seems to place tremendous responsibility on our heads.”

            After their somewhat long conversation to each other, Cody pulled from their thoughts and said to Autumn, “I will tell you just about everything you want to know, but first I need to know that you won’t share this information with any other. I need to trust you, and you need to trust me, or else I can’t let you near us, or our secrets.”

            Autumn’s gaze intensified even more, if that was possible as she replied in a highly hostile tone, “Trust you, or you won’t let me near you. How do you suppose you’ll do it?”

            Cody failed to answer, and Aval stepped forward slightly to stand by his sister, his right hand on his left sword which was now sheathed, but Cody had a feeling it wouldn’t be for long. As he grew more nervous, Inferno rolled onto his feet and stood next to his rider, reassuring him, but Autumn kept her stare steady.

            “How’s your leg?” Cody asked Inferno as he returned Autumn’s hostility.

            Inferno put weight on it, before making that hissing noise on a very small degree, almost inaudible, and replied, “It doesn’t hurt much anymore, luckily, but it does hurt, nevertheless”

            “Could you fight if you had to?” Cody asked worriedly.

            In reply, Inferno reared onto his hind legs, flapped his massive black wings wildly, and roared loudly at Autumn and Aval. When he did this, he stood slightly taller than them all, about six feet tall. With his wings outstretched at their farthest, he looked far more gigantic, however, which seemed to startle Autumn, but only slightly.

            Cody put on a brave face as he asked, “Can we trust you?”

            Inferno landed back on all fours, but kept growling loudly, and held his eyes on them. Autumn decided, after a long while, that it wouldn’t be wise to challenge him; either she would be injured or killed, or the only dragon whose existence was proven would. She reluctantly placed her bow on the grass in front of her, and took her quiver off of her shoulders to do the same. Avalsmokes unsheathed both swords and dropped them on the ground as well, before stuffing his hands in his pockets nervously.

            Inferno carefully laid down onto his scaly stomach peacefully as Cody asked Autumn and Aval, “What do you want to learn about us?”

            Autumn sounded more disappointed than angry as she said, “I want to know how this happened, why it happened, what’s going to happen, and…why you’re acting so mature and formal all of a sudden.”

            Since Cody couldn’t exactly find an answer, he never replied to her, but just gave her a look of sympathy, which surprised him.

            Cody shrugged and began to explain, “That stone I found turned out to be a dragon egg. Me and my dragon have found out that we’re supposed to meet Argos and his rider, and learn the ways of the riders and their dragons. Ever since I found out, I feel more responsible, and I feel like I have to act more mature, but we still have no idea why it happened or what it means for our future.”

            “So you’re just going to sit here and exist?” Aval asked. “When do you actually go to meet Argos?”

            Cody was surprised that he wasn’t even remotely curious about why he was going to meet the only other dragon and rider in existence, let alone that there was another rider.

            “That’s basically it. We don’t know how, when, or why we’re supposed to meet them, we just cling t the fact that we’ll know everything in time,” Cody explained.

            Just then Inferno broke into his thoughts, “He has a point, when will we go to meet them? We’re supposed to wait for them to tell us, but we don’t know how long that will be.”

            “I am well aware. Can you help me think of something to get rid of them though? Perhaps what Argos and his rider are waiting for is you being able to fly and fight, and we can’t or at least shouldn’t practice in front of Aval and Autumn.”

            Inferno gave him a strange glare before replying, “And why not? You have already told them a lot, which makes them even more curious, not to mention Autumn is very skeptical of everything it seems, no doubt she’ll at least watch us anyway.”

            “Then what should I do? There is no way that I am going to help you train in front of them. And I don’t want you to be on your own, especially since she shot you.”

            Inferno twisted his mouth into a sort of smile, giving Cody the impression that he had an idea. Cody watched him as he growled loudly at Avalsmokes and Autumn and very slowly stepped around them on his apparently nimble and flexible legs. He sent a brief glance towards his rider as well as a faint mental message, and Cody instantly knew what to do.

            Cody quietly crept away when Aval and Autumn had their full attention on Inferno, but they were very bored just watching Cody and Inferno talking, when the dragon suddenly growled at them, so they were very fascinated about what was going on. Luckily, he was able to get away and race through the bushes and trees. He left the other three far behind him as he searched for a well-hidden place for Inferno and him to practice everything that they needed to, without being found out by anyone else.

            Occasionally, Inferno sent him images through his eyes of what was happening. Cody saw that Autumn had turned around and noticed he was gone, and pointed it out to her brother, and that was when the dragon raced away towards the edge of the forest. Unfortunately, Autumn quickly notice and took off after him, leaving Aval clueless in the dust behind them. Cody had read a small bit of the book again when he was only half-awake in the morning, and saw that dragons could run surprisingly fast for their average size, but Inferno was still very small, thus Autumn was running much quicker than him.

            After a very short time, Autumn came within thirty feet of him, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to escape. So, Inferno quickly turned around and growled at Autumn again, baring his pristine white fangs that shone golden in the light from the afternoon sun. The girl, despite facing a dragon, wasn’t afraid at all, which made Cody think that she was very good at gauging an opponent’s strength; she knew that Inferno was a mere hatchling, and could be stopped.

            She took her bow from her shoulders and took an arrow from the sheath before knocking it. Inferno was caught off guard, thinking she would frighten at him turning to fight, but she instead matched his move, stunning him. After a long pause, during which she tried to guess his next move, Autumn shot an arrow in his direction, but he was suddenly pulled out of his trance and just barely managed to dodge it, as he barreled towards her.

            Cody knew he didn’t intend to hurt her, and Autumn felt the same way towards the dragon, at least to some extent, but the girl knocked another arrow and aimed for Inferno’s chest, just before he crashed into her stomach head-first. He bowled her over, and she lay sprawled out on the grass for a few moments before clambering to her feet, dropping her bow and the arrow that was now snapped in half despite its amazing strength and durability, and grabbing a knife that was strapped to her waist, that Cody had just noticed.

            Autumn twirled the knife along her fingers as Inferno stood back a few yards or so. She clutched her stomach with her other arm and quickly removed it as Inferno moved again. He jumped forward about a foot, having her dive forward to tackle him but missing by a long shot and landing on her knees. Then, knowing she would get up quickly, and seeing Aval running towards them in the distance, Inferno made a desperate move and twisted around quickly, whipping Autumn in the face with his heavily-armored tail. She collapsed onto the grass and the left side of her face, the side that had been hit, faced upwards towards the sun, revealing a patch of crimson blood leaking down her neck, and showing both Inferno and Cody a gash from her left eyebrow to her jaw.

            The dragon raced away silent as if he were a shadow, and Cody knew he was feeling very bad about hurting her, but Inferno said with a menacing, hurting tone of voice, “She spilled my blood, and I spilled hers.”

            Soon afterwards Inferno caught up to Cody and they reluctantly continued the search for a safe training camp. They searched only a short while before Cody began to grow concerned about Autumn and Aval.

            After his part in the searching was becoming very distracted, he finally asked the dragon aloud, “Can you go check on her? Neither of us knows whether she’ll even survive from that, and I’m sure you can be stealthier than me.”

            Inferno gave him a look of sympathy and replied, “You shouldn’t underestimate your abilities so severely, and you may find that you’re much more athletic day after day. But if it concerns you so much I will go back and send you word of her health if you will continue searching.”

            Cody smiled and nodded as Inferno took off. The dragon leapt up into a tree, climbed the rest off the way up, and hopped along the treetops quietly. The human smiled once more and continued to probe the forest for some sort of clearing. He paused occasionally to watch as Inferno tried to glide and make his landings and takeoffs quieter and quicker. It wasn’t long before Inferno got to the spot where he fought Autumn.

            “She’s gone,” He said. “There are two sets of human footprints, so they probably walked off, I’m sure she’s fine.”

            Cody told him to come back, but was stopped in the middle of his thoughts as he saw a small hole in the ground. He carefully walked towards it, and saw that it was extremely large, just well-hidden by bushes and trees and rocks. He briefly told Inferno, who soon agreed to sit right outside the hole while Cody went in to explore.

            He slipped into the hole and walked along a side of it in the dark, but as he walked along he saw that it got bigger and bigger until he could walk 20 paces to the opposite side of the cave and had absolutely no idea how high it went. The ceiling seemed to loom above him quite a ways though, and he grabbed a rock and threw it up to try to gauge the distance between him and the ceiling. He had thrown it with just enough strength that it went twenty feet up, but never even touched the top of the cave.

            “Is it safe?” Cody felt Inferno nervously ask as he stuck his nose down the hole.

            “I think so,” he called out, just to hear his echo sound throughout the cavern. “I want to bring some torches in here to maybe brighten it up, then we might be able to see how far up it goes, as well as how deep it goes into the ground. But it seems to be sloping downward very slightly.”

            Inferno thought for a moment before saying, “We should go back to your home to look for something we can use for torches.”

            Trying to avoid sending another echo through the cave, Cody said mentally, “All I really need is some steel, flint, and some cloth, then maybe I can put it in a sort of steel base. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I can think of that would work for a torch, and we don’t have any steel base to use, nor can we make one.”

            “Doesn’t your town have a sort of blacksmith that can make torches himself, completely from scratch?”

            Cody knew what he was talking about, since the thoughts were going through his own mind at the time. “The only problem with that plan is that we have no way to pay for his services, especially for how many torches that we’re going to need.”

            Inferno snorted, sending a thunderous din through the cavern before saying, “Not true. You have two of my scales from the arrow-wound, and if dragons are as endangered as you say, no doubt two hatchling scales could get quite a bounty of money, more than enough for some torches.”

            Cody knew he was right, but he really felt good carrying scales around, even if he had only done it for a few hours, “I’ll do it, but I don’t want to. The only reason I’m agreeing is that this cave makes me feel like a dragon rider, the stuff of legend. I have a feeling this is going to be your home as well as the place we’ll train together. I could keep the book here, the map, some sheets and pillows, and I could easily come and visit. Perhaps I could spend the night here every once in a while so we can grow closer.”

            “Sounds like a good idea to me, but it’s getting dark now and you had better get back to your home until morning. Then we can bring things from your home over here as well as get at least a couple torches.”

            “Are you kidding?” Cody asked as he began walking out of the cave with a laugh. “I feel too excited to sleep now, and I have a few hours to get to town before the blacksmith sleeps.”

            Inferno sighed, if dragons could sigh, as Cody clambered out of the tunnel into the open air. Cody noticed that the sun was really low in the sky, and had nearly disappeared behind the trees as it shot crimson and golden beams of light throughout the sky.

            “I have to be quick though, it seems even later than you said it was,” Cody told Inferno as he began to run in the direction of the meadow.

            Cody knew it would take longer, but he didn’t know how to get to his house from the cave yet, and didn’t have time to figure it out. It took about an hour for him to find the meadow again, and from there he raced off in the direction of his house. Inferno had gotten to the edge of the forest by his house first, since he probably took a shorter path, and he had the time to waste in searching for such a path.

            “I’ll be back in a few hours,” Cody told him. “I’ll try to keep you updated.”

            “I’ll be here, but as soon as you get back, it would be in your best interest if you went straight to bed.”

            Cody agreed as he went to a small corral where the two horses were grazing contentedly. He hopped onto Skeletar’s bare back and raced away towards the town. He felt around in his trouser pocket to make sure he had the scales, before grasping the ghostly white horse’s mane once more and continuing the long ride.

            Then, despite his hurry, Cody began to relax a bit more, and sat back so he could slow the horse down slightly. He looked to his left and saw that the sun had disappeared, but he knew that the blacksmith stayed up pretty late anyways, so he had some time to spare. He galloped along at a steady pace and began contemplating exactly what he would say to Omen, the blacksmith.

            The rider knew that suddenly owning two dragon scales would be very difficult to explain, especially since they were practically extinct. He took one of the scales out of his pocket and studied it: it was about an inch long and a third of an inch across, and almost paper-thin. But Cody knew enough from stories to know that it was the hardest substance man has ever known, and couldn’t be penetrated by anything discovered. Therefore, one can’t hurt a dragon’s scaly body unless they get under the scales somehow.

            Autumn’s arrow had hit right in between the two scales Cody had, which was what knocked them loose. Before Cody could continue his investigation on the scales and what he would say to the blacksmith, he had reached the edge of the village. He slowed Skeletar down to a walk and began his short search through the town for the blacksmith. He never had a pressing need to go to the blacksmith for anything, and didn’t explore the town much, so he had no idea where it was.

            There were one or two lights blazing in some of the windows, but Cody still couldn’t find Omen’s home, or forge for that matter. But, as he continued his search, soon enough he saw a rather large building at the edge of the town, slightly hidden in the forest by some trees and bushes, probably so the forge wouldn’t disturb others.

            There was grey smoke pouring out of a chimney-like hole in the roof that glistened in the light of the night. There was a rather large door in the opposite side of the shop that stood wide open to the forest.

            Cody quietly and nervously got off Skeletar and let him roam, before he went around to the open side and rapped on the wall, hurting his knuckles a bit but making the noise he desired. There was a man sitting in a wooden chair by a furnace with a hammer placed on an anvil not far away. The man looked up at Cody and smiled at him with both surprise and delight.

            “Cody!” Omen then howled with complete delight as he got up and walked over to him. “You’ve never come to visit me at the forge, and I haven’t seen you at all in a few weeks, what’s new?

            Cody beamed at his old friend, a 30 year-old man in perfect health that he had known well since childhood. He was a strong, energetic man that was friendly to anyone and everyone he met, as well as helpful, kind, and generous. His one flaw was that even though most men his age were beginning to grow wiser and more intelligent, he was still very clueless about so many things and didn’t know much about the world outside his home and forge.

            “I was actually wondering if you could help me out with something,” Cody said.

            Omen quickly asked, with his face still filled with glee, “Are you looking for a favor or an order? I’d be more than happy to do either; I haven’t had many orders lately.”

            “Sort of both,” Cody explained vaguely as he tried to figure out how he was going to explain it, and decided to reveal everything that didn’t expose Inferno.

            “Do tell.”

            Cody cleared his throat and said, “I was out in the forest, just exploring and hunting a little bit if I came across a game trail, when I found a cave. I went into the cave and tried to determine how big it was, but I couldn’t see at all. So I was wondering if you could make some torches to make it brighter. As you probably know, my family isn’t very rich and can’t afford things like this, but I brought something as a sort of trade.”

            Omen was watching him carefully, very fascinated in his story, and became very confused when Cody took out the scales. He picked one up off of his hand and observed it closely, very curious and clueless about what it was.

            He turned it over a bit and held it closely to his eye before asking, “Is that…blood on it? What is it?”

            “It’s a dragon scale.”

            Omen started and looked at him questioningly. “How did you come across dragon scales? No one has seen a dragon, alive or dead, for hundreds of years.”

            “Apparently one of my ancestors preserved some scales to pass on to future generations, and now I’m going to give them to you to make me some torches,” Cody half lied.

            “How many torches do you need for your exploration?”

            Cody thought hard for a moment before replying, “At least a dozen, but it could be a hundred for all I know, it seems to go on forever.”

            Omen pulled up a chair from the side of his forge and sat in it, folded his hands together, and thought a long while before responding, “I honestly have no clue how much dragon scales would sell for, if these are the scales of a dragon. But I will agree to make as many torches as you need, and more, if you will give those to me and allow me to explore the cave with you.”