Dragon King Talon

Talon was being forced to wake up. It was as if someone was shaking him aggressively and slapping his cheeks, except that this was all taking place inside his head. At first, he heard faint murmurs, going in and out of his ear like annoying bugs. And then, there were the lights. They sparked, popped and throbbed at his lids. So he rose, and opened his eyes for the first time in five hundred years.

No, he didn't know how long he had slept. Not until later.

For now, he was feeling groggy, like a bottle lid that was twisted closed in the wrong way but still somehow managed to stick. In an instant, the lights attacked his vision, causing him to blink rapidly in order to adjust to them.

Since earlier, he had been having the sensation of floating, of being cast adrift and resurfacing at last. He tried to move his arms, and he found out that he was indeed literally floating. Talon looked around, finding himself in the middle of a small body of water. He knocked his head back, met by a hollowed and high ceiling made of black rocks. Violet crystals jutted from the same black walls, blooming like flowers in a garden. At the sight of them, he figured out where he was.

"Underground?" This was the first word he uttered. He was underneath Orion's palace. "The underground caverns."

When he gazed below, he saw his reflection in the water, staring at him with the red vertically slit pupils that he was used to. Except that he had found a most peculiar discovery. He looked as though he was ten centuries younger. If he were a human, he'd say he appeared at least nineteen, fresh and ripe at his youth.

He sighed, and murmured, "That bastard Raeltar, I bet he was messing with Freya's potions again. I can't believe I fell victim to his pranks…"

Talon frowned when he caught sight of three figures standing on the shore. It seemed like they were arguing. He squinted, trying to make out who they were. Two of them were women, and the other a man.

He recognized the women, they were his friends. One had golden hair, as bright as the sun. The second woman had brown hair, and that high, pointy nose he would not miss. Besides, they were wearing their usual clothes. That man, though, who could that be?

Talon was feeling woozy from having waken up suddenly, but he did his best to swim to shore. He was itching to ask Analin and Freya how they ended up here. And who was that man they were arguing with? Sounds like trouble.

Halfway there, Talon could hear snippets of their argument. The man's voice was especially concerning, laced with malice and contempt and mockery.

"…was a failure."

"No… there is always next time…"

"Just give it up…"

"…you asshole, you haven't proven a point yet…"

"The king will hear about this… the princess has gone mad…"

"What's going on here?" Talon was out of the water, walking up to them and drooping wet.

The man gasped audibly, turning pale. He was wearing the uniform of the Royal Guard, and judging from the quality of his armor, it seemed like he was a high-ranking official. This was weird, Talon hadn't seen his face here before.

The two women turned to him, and unlike the man, they were happy to see him. No, more than that, they were overjoyed. Talon's friends reacted like they hadn't seen him in hundreds of years.

"Analin, Freya, how did we end up here?" he asked, bewildered. "And who's that man?"

His questions were left unanswered. The three of them were stuck in their own varying reactions. Analin seemed like she was on cloud nine, Freya was more amazed than glad, and the man was outright about to piss his pants.

"I told you, General Franks," Analin said, her voice glazed with velvet. "The Dragon King exists, and he stands before us. Look at him."

"He's real." Freya was scanning him from head to toe. "By the Mother, he's freaking real."

Talon was in a severe state of confusion. What had gotten to his friends?

"Ah… a-ah!" General Franks staggered back, a scream stuck at his throat. Eventually, he ran, bringing his panic along with him.

Weird.

His friends, they were still staring at him with a profound wonder, and… was this reverence he's seeing? Impossible! The last thing Analin and Freya would do was worship and kneel at his knees.

Yet, it seemed like they were close to doing just that.

Very weird.

"Hey, what are you playing at? Stop it, you two." He turned to Freya, wearing her deep red half cloak, paired with a silver clasp formed into crescent moon, worn by the witches in the Blood Coven. "You, have you seen Raeltar?"

Freya blinked, like she had snapped from a trance. "What?"

"Drop the act, Freya, why isn't that idiot here?" This time, Talon twisted to Analin, who looked as dumbstruck as their witch friend. "Analin?"

"W-who?" She stuttered. "Your Supremeness, my Dark Sovereign Talon Frydenlund, are you perhaps mistaking us for some other people?"

Talon scowled. "Why are you calling me that, Analin? Call me Tal. Seriously, what's wrong with you two?"

"No," Freya stepped forward, trying to get a closer look at him. "We're the ones who should ask you that. What's wrong with 'you'?"

"Tynari!" Analin scolded.

"I had to ask him!" Freya replied. "Why don't you talk to him, then, Crystallis?"

Talon was utterly dumbfounded. Not only where they acting strangely, they also had different names.

Analin—no, Crystallis coughed intentionally, her blue eyes glowing like jewels. "Your Dark Holiness—I mean, Tal. I believe this is an effect of the casting, you may feel disoriented and your memories may be mixed up. It is quite understandable, but rest assured you will be back to normal in no time."

It struck to him. There was something wrong. There was something horribly wrong!

It only came to him now, that though despite how these two looked like his friends, there were actually minute differences! These people were not Analin and Freya, even with the uncanny resemblance.

Talon had finally realized. Analin wasn't this tall and delicate, and Freya wasn't this pale!

It was his turn to stagger backward a step. "Who are you?"

With an elegance he never saw in Analin, the blonde woman pinched one side of her skirt, bent one knee, and put one foot behind the other. "I am Crystallis Aldrich, current princess of Orion, and a mage of Illumina."

The Freya who was not Freya also curtsied, though without the elegance the princess had. "I am Tynari Eastwood, apprentice witch in the Blood Coven, also a companion of the princess."

Mother of All, these two even had the exact same classes of magic as Analin and Freya. What in the eight kingdoms was going on here?