Chapter 5 – Ashes

'18/07/1958, he'll be turning twenty-three, seeing such a large number, you must realise the little kid kind of acts like an old geezer now. So I do wish you could witness it with your own eyes.' Max had written in his letter to me.

Remembering that paragraph, I crack up a little, yet again.

"Hey you, share that joke," Sams says.

"Nah…"

We walk the large floor of the insides of 'The Factory', the ex-base and storage place of jets, for the military. After not being used anymore, these doors weren't even locked anymore now.

What a waste.

"Star… that's rude you know. You need to let your friends laugh a little too," Sams says, but her expression changes, seeing mine change – with realisation and embarrassment of how I had treated them all this time… for being humans. "I mean… it is up to you."

"I'll be sure to spend more time with you guys," I say. "I promise."

"Star… I didn't mean it you know. I… we all, understand."

Max and Rus nod in agreement.

We reach in front of a door to some enclosed room.

"What matters is you are here now. Open that door, Rusty. And you better keep up with that promise," Max says. "As much and progressively, slowly."

"I will… especially for the birthday boy," I say.

Max gives me a questioning look, but as Rus opens the door, the sprinkles of confetti after the blast of something, takes our attention there, and we scream, "Happy birthday, Rusty!" Which of course I say not so loudly as the other two.

'Also, make sure you add exactly twenty-three candles to the cake. So in which case… I know that even if you are late… you will be there. In which case… I'll save some part for when you arrive.'

And I had done that. So me and Max nod to each other, after he seems to count it down.

The cake of course had a glass jar upon it. So, after Rus opens it, and we light all the candles up, which, infuriating enough, takes a sum of time to do. Perhaps twenty-three was… too much of a number.

Rus cuts through the vanilla, and honey layers of the cake, and all of us enjoy the juicy and tasty cake.

"I hope you liked the gift," Sams says.

"Yeah. I loved it. Tasty."

"Hey-hey-hey, you really think THAT was the gift?" Max asks.

Rus just stays silent, with his lips pursed, as Max gets up to grab the gift from his bag, which was alongside the others' bags, in the corner. And Max walks up to us, with a little box in hand, which he hands to Rus.

"Open it, open it!" Sams says.

Rus opens the poorly packed gift box, which just is a little, plain box, with no covering or locking of any sorts, just by picking up the upper part of the box, off of the lower one, which it was sitting on.

A pendant lies in there. A pendant with a silver, circular, coin-like piece attached into its lace.

Rus picks it out of the box, with a little confusion in his face, maybe of how to react. He smiles, and as the pendant is out, I see that the coin is… huge, and it had some things behind it, as if there were… it was surely something more than it looked like.

Rus finds it too, and pushes the insides of it outside, and three coin-like pieces move out, which Rus pushes side-by-side, to see what they hold above them, and they sure did hold something.

"That is neat," Rus laughs lightly, that was a good sign of him liking it. "I'll be wearing your photos and carry them along."

"Why… do you seem like, you already regret-" Max says, and stops, as Rus turns away, with tears in his eyes. "Hey man, what's wrong, does it hurt?"

I see flashes of brown light glow upon the parallel wall to Rus.

"No I… just…" Rus looks at me. "I think I have something to show… to all three of you."

Max and Sams look at me, but I don't give any expression, and act unknown.

"What is it?"

Rus forms a gap in his shirt, to show me his dragon-gem, and I just lift my eyebrow.

"That is a simple expression for such a thing," Max says.

"It is surprising but… what is it? Do you even know what it is?" I ask.

"Well-"

"I do, I think," Rus says. "Let me show it. It'll be simpler."

We walk outside, without exchanging a word, and walk up the stairs, to the first floor's open balcony, like Rus points us to do. Whilst Rus goes towards the far-end of the lower floor, almost up to the faraway entrance, from where we couldn't exactly hear him from, probably.

At least the humans couldn't.

We three don't say a word, just stand there and watch Rus.

A brown light, arising from Rus' chest, blinds us from seeing him. And something else, something bigger, takes his place, slowly originating from its shrunk form, enlarging from where Rus was standing.

A brown dragon, larger than they come, stands with its neck extending upwards, as if to try to enlarge more, but stands in the size of a huge jet.

"So he is a dragon-dragon?" Max asks.

"You guys already knew a bit about it?" I ask, as they both hit the floor.

"Sam! Max!" Rus screams, and runs on his four legs, towards us.

I move closer to the grill's very edge, and keep my hand forward, towards the huge dragon-face nearing me.

Rus shows his huge fangs, as if warning me about the danger which would come to me, for knocking the two out.

I sigh.

Flames start out as sparkles, and then like a torch holding a huge flame upon it, my extended hand holds one, and fills the gape forming in between the jaws of the dragon, in front of me, with flames.

Rus transforms back, coughing, and looks at me with wide-open eyes, while holding his chest, and visibly choking a bit. After which, he falls down too.

At his last gasp, little smoke escapes through his gaping mouth, as he lies that way, on the ground.

***

Darkness… and voices -mumbles. At least I'm not dead. Unless it wasn't the real world, maybe the afterlife or something.

I could feel the ground below me… more like cold flat-floor tiles. I feel relaxed, even when my head hurts a bit, because of the hard-but-soft floor, because the buzzing in my head seemed to be receiding, as I calmed here.

No intention to wake up… what day was it? Did I have any work? I wish not.

Maybe I should consider meeting Rusty and Sam if- wait, they are the last people I was with before…

I open my eyes instantly, and see the brown tiles beneath me, extending into the space in front of me, until it got stopped by a creamy wall, right as everything comes into a proper picture.

How did I end up here? Where even was here?

Think… so, Rusty wanted to show us… oh, he became a dragon, a brown one! Damn, did I just dream or imagine that, thinking that's what he could turn into? But even then… I don't remember such tiles at my home, or Rusty's.

As I feel the buzz in my head fading, I put my energy and some effort to my body above, sitting on the floor.

"He's awake," somebody says, in a whispering way.

I look towards the distorting voice, and find a person holding a sword loosely. And one of the wildest ideas passes my mind, at the face of a possible threat here.

I lower my head a bit, and rush up, even when my mind blanks out, but still successfully move towards that person, and grab the sword in their hand, while pushing them to the ground.

I hear a few gasps, and a louder, yet unclear voice, addressing me.

"Chill the hell up," I look towards this voice, a Red dragon at a distance, at the far end of this huge room. A dragon smaller than how big Rusty, which was not a dream now, was. "Or I'll burn your ashes down."

There were people around the dragon, probably they were dragons too, just in their human forms. It was hard to know if they were males or females, like I was unclear about the person I just pushed, whom I couldn't look at now, as it'd distract me from a bigger threat.

I shake off a little dizziness and speak up. "So dragons can talk. That clears one of many questions. But to have a lighter exchange; where the hell are my friends? Let's start there."

It feels a bit hard to keep my legs stiffly rooted to the floor, as they feel like jelly, like my head does. Yet I grip the sword in my hand, ahead of me.

Few more features of the dragon get clearer to me, like the sharp fangs, bearing out of its mouth. Crown-like, set of horns above its head, extending in a curve, backwards.

I also realise that the sword felt… wooden. I surely hope that's only the case for the grip of the sword.

"How dare you disrespect our leader by a mere threat, using a silver-coated wooden sword?" somebody by the Red-dragon asks, and a little part of my heart sinks. "You really think you can manage to best a dragon this way?"

"Clearly a death wish."

"A death wish? So what if the sword is wooden? I can defeat at the least one of you, so how about I start with your leader here?"

Before they can counter again with their words, I aim to the dragon's head, and quickly toss the sword towards it. But it instantly knocks the sword away, making it crash into the wall nearby and break.

"Okay. The little game ends, Maths."

"Aster?" I ask, as the voice and words finally seem to make sense and create a logical conclusion in my mind.

As the sight clears more, and I hear the person on the ground move away, I see a smirk light up Aster's dragon-face. The smirk becomes more clearer, thanks to the flame building up in the gaping mouth.

Before I knew it, the fire came right to my face, and time stopped.

So Aster knocked us out, was a dragon, and had kidnapped us? And I was about to die, by burning to crisps, because of a huge lizard, of everything. I had to die before I could know any of the explanation: of what in the world this was, what was about dragons, and if Sam and Rus-

"Max!" I hear Sam's voice, and take a moment to understand that it wasn't time which had stopped, but the flame in front of me.

"Aster, what the hell is this?" Rusty asks.

"I-I don't know," Aster says.

Her voice sounded a bit different than normal. Not because of the cracking or my head's buzz… maybe just a dragon-voice thing?

I curiously and without any caution, move my finger-tips towards the flame in front of me, which was spread-up to a good length, ready to engulf me, before stopping. And right as I reach it, I feels tickles, as the flame spreads as an outline, and races above my hand, and covers me completely, finally engulfing me.

It doesn't feel hot. It wasn't even touching me.

But I hate the feeling and try to push it away, only to be lifted off the ground, and the fire moving further away from my skin, and form a circle around me, while sizzling.

I look at Aster, and she looks a bit shook-up, by it. Even Sam and Rusty, whom I can barely see. Aster was alone now, the people had moved away from her.

My hands naturally move and point forward, towards Aster. As if accepting the command, the fire instantly reaches her, pushing her away into the wall, making a huge bang.

Rusty seems to be covering Sam. But right as the dust clears, Sam moves towards Aster, but some other girl reaches there faster.

"Lady Aster!" the girl begs for Aster to say something, to confirm that she wasn't dead.

"That was marvellous," Aster coughs, and I finally see her back in her human-form. "Let's never do that again, please."

"Are you alright?"

"I just got beat up, my dear Fara. Never been better," Aster smiles.

"Of course," Fara says and sighs, lending a hand to Aster.