Kallore
His eyes blinked open slowly, peeling the gummy feeling away from the lids as they receded into his skull, revealing the gray-walled room around him. Everything was gray, including the ceiling he was staring at.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Something about the male voice sounded familiar. A slight turn of his head revealed the owner of it. A warm face with curious whiskey-brown eyes that were tinged with high amounts of orange flecks stared back at him. Silver hair bounced slightly as the head bobbed up and down.
“This is a nightmare,” he muttered as he finally recalled who the features belonged to.
Kyen, an old dragon, and an oddity as far as their kind were concerned.
“What’s a nightmare?”
“You.” Kallore groaned and closed his eyes, willing the face away. But when he opened them, it was still there off to the side, surrounded by gray everything. “This is the worst kind of nightmare.”
“There are different kinds? What makes this one so bad?”
“This one is real.”
The other dragon laughed. “Oh come now, Kallore, it can’t be that bad.”
“Kyen, I don’t know what’s going on, but you are the last face I wanted to wake up to.” He opened his eyes, taking in the gray-walled room again, this time also noticing the metal bars behind Kyen that seemed to be containing them inside. “Where am I? What’s going on? Why am I awake?”
Everything was kind of foggy. He vaguely recalled himself falling into a darkness after—
He slammed the door closed on that thought. Not right now. Figure out what was going on, where he was. Those were the important things.
“Well, Kyen?”
Another voice spoke. A female voice, in a tongue he didn’t understand. Kallore sat up, trying to locate the source of the voice.
“Ooooh,” he groaned as the world spun around him.
“Easy Kal, easy. Take your time,” Kyen urged, reaching out one hand to steady him.
“I’m fine,” he snarled, ashamed at having shown any weakness. “What is she saying?” he asked, finally locating the voice. It was coming from outside the cell, the owner blocked by Kyen’s large mass.
“Her name is Lianna, she’s a scientist here and my assistant. She’s asking how you are doing.”
“Why can’t I understand her? What language is she speaking?”
“English.” Kyen turned and said something quickly to the human woman in her own language before turning back to him.
“What is going on here?” he asked, getting more frustrated as his confusion increased instead of the opposite.
“Relax,” Kyen urged. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise. But it’s a long story, and first I need to make sure that you’re okay. How do you feel?”
“Mostly fine. My head is dizzy, but it’s subsiding now.” He frowned. “Why?”
“Well, you’d been asleep so long that you’d turned to stone, my friend. We had to use an innovative process to awaken you, and truthfully, we had no idea how well it would work.”
Kallore’s mouth opened, then closed. “To stone?” he asked softly.
“Yes. But everything seems to have worked out okay. Even your memory is here. You remember me.”
“Barely. It’s been decades since I last saw you.” He paused. “Plus whatever time has passed since I was last awake.”
“A lot,” Kyen informed him. “Can you stand?”
He rose to his feet easily, the spinning in his head almost completely passed by now. “I’m fine, I told you.”
“I can see that. But we didn’t know. Had to make sure. Standard procedure and all that,” Kyen said with a smile, sitting up straight and pushing his hair back behind his ears. Almost immediately it fell forward again, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“What’s with the white coat?” he asked.
“Standard scientific wear, or so Lianna has told me.”
“Lianna.” Kallore repeated the name, looking over at the human woman who was making marks on a hard tablet sort of thing. “What is she doing?”
“Writing observations, I would presume.”
“About me?”
“Well of course. We have nothing else to go on, you see. You’re the first.”
Kallore wasn’t sure he liked where this was going. “The first what, Kyen?”
“The first dragon to be awakened of course!”
“Kyen, maybe your memory is failing you or something. But unless I’m mistaken, you are a dragon too. A wuss, perhaps, but you’re still a dragon, and you are definitely awake.”
The silver-haired man just grinned at the jab. It was a well-known fact in their world that he was an extreme oddity. A pacifist, he was an oxymoron to the core. A dragon who wouldn’t fight. Nobody knew why, but he was vehement about the fact. Over time people had come to accept it, though none understood it, and Kyen never gave a reason.
“Ah, but you see, I never went to sleep!” He shrugged. “But I’ve been trying to convince them to awaken others for years now. It seems they finally changed their minds and listened to me. Unfortunately, they chose you first.”
Kallore laughed, a loud barking sound that filled the little chamber. It helped to push away the guilt that was resurfacing. The guilt that had been too much for him to stand, that had sent him into the deep sleep in the first place. Memories started to awaken within him, and he fought them down. He’d slept for too long already it seemed. Now was not the time for more.
“Why am I awake?” He finally asked the question that had been bothering him since it became obvious he’d not awoken of his own actions, but rather forcefully at the hands of Kyen and Lianna.
The pacifist dragon sobered immediately. “Because you are needed.”
“For what?”
Kyen ignored the question. “You’re going to go through some lessons. Mostly mental, though we will need to ensure that you regain your strength as well. They will bring you up to speed with humanity.” The silver-haired dragon paused. “There have been…a few…changes, since you were last awake, my friend.”
He wasn’t totally sure the two of them were friends, but he doubted they were enemies either. Kallore looked around his cell. The walls were of an odd material, but the floor was rock, the bed made of wood and straw, and the bars made of steel.
“Really?” he asked. “It looks like what I might expect.”
“We did this to make you feel at ease. This is considered ancient and old-fashioned now.” A thick hand clapped him on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay though.”
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”
Kyen nodded. “Yes. We will, in time. But I don’t want to cause an unnecessary shock to your system.”
“I can handle it,” he boasted.
“Perhaps. But show me first that you’re ready to learn.”
Kallore wasn’t sure he liked the way Kyen acted as if he were the leader, but he decided to go along with it for now, until he knew more of what was going on.
“What do you have planned first?”
The other dragon pulled open the door and walked out to stand next to Lianna, the pair of them obviously comfortable around each other. Kallore’s eyes narrowed. Could they be…? He tested the air. No, they weren’t mates. Still, she was cute, he thought, following the other dragon out of his cell. He’d been asleep a long time, maybe she and he could—
The metal door clanged in his face as Kyen shut it.
“What the hell?” he snapped, stopping suddenly, his passage cut off as abruptly as his thoughts. “Let me out.”
“Not yet. Not until you can speak their language.”
He put his hands on the door and flexed his arms, expecting the material to give way. Instead it barely budged. Kallore heaved and grunted, his mighty arms flexing with the strain, but whatever it was made of, it wasn’t the shitty stuff he was used to.
“What is this?”
Kyen smiled. “I told you there had been some changes. This is one of them.”
The pair of them started walking down the corridor, white coats swishing back and forth as they did.
“That’s it? You just wake me up and leave me here?” he shouted.
“Quit being so dramatic. I’m going to get devices to help you learn the language.”
Lianna said something he didn’t understand.
“She says to lie back and relax. You’re going to need to focus.”
Kallore stood, stunned as they disappeared around a corner, talking excitedly to each other. He thought about getting angry, maybe trying to melt the bars so that he could get out, but decided against it. Kyen wouldn’t have awoken him if he didn’t have a reason for it. Whatever it was, it had to be serious, despite his attempts to keep the mood light.
Walking back to the straw bed, he sank down into it.
Just what had he gotten himself into?