Nemesis a riders dragon, p.1
Nemesis: A Rider's Dragon, page 1
Nemesis
A Rider's Dragon
Deacon Frost
Obsidian Tome LLC
Copyright © [Year of First Publication] by [Author or Pen Name]
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Act 2: Companion
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
41. Epilogue
42. Afterword
Chapter one
His awareness of the world began in a warm place, confined and unable to move. He didn’t care for how tight the walls of his existence were. Struggling gave him some hope, for he felt the prison encasing him flex when he moved his body. It was hard to develop the proper leverage to escape—mostly because he had somehow ended up with the majority of his body above his head. His neck was bent at an awkward angle and his legs were trapped against the curving barrier that held him trapped.
Without any recourse, the prisoner began to violently thrash as best he could within his prison. The entire structure wobbled around him, making him fear he would tip over. Falling was a definite worry, as he had no idea what the world beyond his prison was like… was there a world beyond his prison?
He almost paused his attempts to break free when the question stirred in his mind, yet his need to be out of his confinement proved greater than his curiosity. He felt a crack, and then one of his legs burst through the barrier. The air outside was cold, and the edges that pressed against his body felt sharp, but he drew his foot in to begin kicking at the wall. The first break was the hardest, but soon he had a great break traveling down the length of the curved wall. His mass ground against it, and then the majority of the white obstacle broke free. The shadow of the wall collapsed over his head and prevented him from seeing the world. He attempted to yell in his outrage—that instant, a cloying fluid filled his lungs and his mouth. He hacked several times as he straightened his neck, then spat a wad of some disgusting mucus to the sandy floor of the wider room he found himself in.
He vigorously shook his body and the remnants of the egg fell away. The inside was a white-pink, yet he found the outside was black with silver streaks. Instinct had him open his mouth and bite the shell. He began to chew and swallow each piece while trying to blink the liquid off his eyes so he could see. An itching sensation ran from the base of his skull down his body, and he was forced to roll himself in the sand to try and clean off the fluid. The abrasive granules did the job, and soon he found he was able to spread his wings—the gumming muck had been trapping them to his body.
With the itching gone, he found he was able to take a moment and assess his form, to sate some of the curiosity burning inside him. He twisted his neck and found that he had four legs and a tail, though his body seemed squat. A pair of wings emerged from a secondary pair of shoulders above his front legs, and the gray, leathery flesh ran back to just behind his rear hips. He extended the wings as far as they would go and tried to flap, though he lacked coordination. Something inside told him he was far too weak right now to manage flight. Satisfied he understood what his own dark body looked like, the newly born hatchling turned in a circle and tried to examine where his egg had rested.
The sand was hot under his feet, though his claws enjoyed sinking in among the grains. He found the walls sloped up, and when he followed them with his gaze, he noticed a sand mound that made it seem like he was at the bottom of a pit. Curiosity had him scaling those walls, trying to find out what was at the top. His wings flailed and his ascent was interrupted when a pair of calloused hands grasped the back of his neck and his torso and heaved him into the air.
“This runt must be defective—never seen a dragon with such puny scales,” muttered the beast that had hoisted him in the air. He lashed his tail and attempted to bite the creature. The pink-skinned man yelled in pain when the teeth clamped down on his forearm. The dragon reveled in the taste of blood in his mouth, though his joy changed to fear as he was lifted high into the air.
“Woah! Jonah! Don’t damage the merchandise!” yelled another of the beings. The hatchling had trouble telling them apart. Both had some kind of brown fur on their heads, and both wore brown wrappings around their bodies. His attempts to inspect them faded away as he caught sight of a huge shape behind them. He felt his eyes widen as he took in the massive form and recognized it as being like him. Yet the other didn’t move. His nostrils twitched, and he became aware of the scent he now recognized as blood—the smell filled the space around him.
He squirmed in protest, trying to get down as the pink shapes shoved him into some kind of scratchy bag. They were still talking, though the hatchling couldn’t focus. He tried to understand why the dark shape didn’t move… and why the sandy ground beneath it looked more like rusty mud and smelled of blood. Then they tied the sack closed and the dragon found himself once more trapped inside a round container.
This time, he was able to puncture the sides easily with his claws. He wondered if the sand had made them sharper. His attempts to rip free of the trap he’d been pushed into was met with smacks from the outside. Each time he punched a claw through the fabric, something slapped his prison. The hatchling let out squeals of discomfort, especially when a blow struck his sensitive wings. He finally ceased trying to hatch from the sack, though he wasn’t happy. The bag moved, allowing him to catch a glimpse of the world through one of the holes he had made.
The pink things were taking him… somewhere.
The sandy area gave way to a dark substance that looked harder. The dragon noticed the pink thing’s feet didn’t sink into this new material. The gray stuff went on for a while, until eventually they came out into a place that hurt his eyes. There was a silvery light that gleamed everywhere he could see through the holes in his bag, and it forced him to squint until his eyes adjusted. He was confused that the ground was a mix of small gray shapes and wavy green… things. At first, he thought the green was like the fur on the pink being’s head, but it smelled very different. Soon, brown and green shapes were towering over them and he noted the silver light dimmed when his captors went between them.
The return of the comfortable dark gave him courage, and the hatchling began trying to rip open his trap once more—this time doing his best to ignore the slaps that shook his body. Twice he managed to slash one of the pink limbs that smacked his prison. The pink thing called Jonah cursed several times, and eventually the other took the bag from him. Just when the dragon thought he might finally free himself, they arrived at something new. It was a brown shape that smelled like the towers, though it was drier, and on its back was a black object that seemed to be made of thin pieces. The pink thing shoved the bag into the black object, then slammed a piece of it over the opening. The dragon growled, sensing he was in a new trap.
Enraged at being trapped again, he ripped the bag to pieces and finally emerged from its tattered fragments. He found this black prison was much stronger than the bag had been. His claws hurt when he tried to rip it, as did his teeth when he attempted to bite his way free. He let out a huff and on instinct attempted to smash it with his tail—that brought only pain. Whatever the thing was, it was harder than his scales and heavier than his body. He flopped onto his belly and tried to formulate a new plan. As though the act of lying down were the trigger, the dragon felt a gnawing pain inside him. Eating his eggshell had alleviated some of the discomfort, but all his unleashed ferocity had caused it to return with a vengeance.
The dragon licked the blood on his teeth and narrowed his eyes while he tried to spot where the pink things had gone. The one called Jonah had tasted good. He wanted a new piece to chew on. Suddenly, interrupting his thoughts, they did something to the back of the brown floor his prison was sitting on and it folded to become a wall. The hatchling let out an unhappy growl as he realized he had yet another barrier between himself and something to sate the ache in his stomach. With nothing to do, he took stock of what he understood of the world.
He had hatched from an egg in a sandpit. The pink things had been waiting for him and had stolen him away. A shape that resembled him, but much larger, had been lying still in a pool of blood. He had been carried away from the sandpit and taken to a place with a terrible silver light, then encased in a prison too powerful to break. Non e of his life experiences gave him joy—except biting the pink thing called Jonah. He wasn’t sure how he understood the sounds they had made, but he understood that Jonah did not like him, and that the other pink thing felt like capturing him would earn them some great… something.
The dragon huffed in frustration, then closed his eyes and attempted to shut out the world. He did not wish to look at the brown walls around him, nor the black thing that kept him trapped. They made him angry. Being angry caused a strange sensation to form in his chest. The pressure built, starting in front of his stomach but behind his throat. An acrid smell filled his nostrils, and before he knew what was happening, he had opened his mouth and belched a green liquid onto the black shapes in front of his muzzle. His eyes widened when he saw the smoke wafting up from the material. He stared in wonder as the brown material beyond the bars seemed to shrivel and rot. He had damaged his trap! He lifted himself up and opened his jaws in excitement.
The hatchling readied himself to try and spit more of the green liquid, yet for all his attempts he failed to produce any. The pressure in his chest had vanished after he’d coughed up the unknown substance, and its absence left him feeling even more drained. His moment of excitement faded with each failed attempt to produce more. Eventually, the hatchling dropped back onto his stomach as frustration welled inside him. Even his disgruntled emotions couldn’t seem to summon the pressure back, though it did sour his appetite. He tried to distract himself by flapping his wings, but they couldn’t stretch out because of the black frame he was stuck inside. He let out a yelp when the soft, leathery skin struck the dark material. After that, he folded his wings in tight and wrapped his tail around his torso. Curling into a ball seemed the wisest course of action.
At some point he must have drifted to sleep, as the next thing he was aware of was the pink things cursing as they wrestled the trap holding him off the brown platform. They kept their arms extended to make it hard for him to slash them with his claws—he still tried several times. They carried his prison into a huge cavern made of red, rectangular shapes. Then they set him down on an elevated surface, allowing him to see that there were many creatures imprisoned in the dark cages. He spotted two other dragons, though one was green and the other was silver. They stared at him with wide eyes and he had trouble looking away from them.
He didn’t have names for the variety of beasts around him. The scents were overwhelming, and he couldn’t prevent several sneezes from shaking his squat body. The pink things took advantage of his distraction and stuffed a furry shape through the spaces in his trap. He spotted the move just in time to slash the one called Jonah with a clawed foot—sadly, the creature got away.
“Hah, Jonah I swear that thing is your own personal nemesis,” the other pink being said. Jonah responded by using a thin, brown shape to jab the hatchling in the ribs. The small dragon squealed in rage. Unable to attack Jonah directly, he went after the small, furry shape the other figure had shoved into his cage while he was distracted. His teeth and claws swiftly ended its life.
Ironically, the furry thing was filled with blood and meat. The famished dragon began to rip into it with his claws, then quickly swallowed chunks of the meat within. One of the pink things muttered something, but the dragon was engrossed in his feasting. Almost before he knew it, he was gnawing at the bones, desperate to get the marrow he smelled within. His small stomach felt distended and he had trouble stopping a yawn from escaping him. Gorging himself had made him… tired. His scaly eyes closed and he slumped among the bones of his meal.
For several days this pattern repeated. The dragon would wake when a new morsel was shoved into his cage. Each time he would go after the pink things, which he came to learn were called humans—at least the one named Jonah was. The other, Caleb, was an elf. The dragon never managed to slash or bite Caleb. Jonah, on the other hand, was an easy mark, being neither fast nor cautious. He was constantly angry, however, and his retaliation left the dragon aching from being prodded with the brown shape. The hatchling had trouble staying awake after he ate, yet he was always hungry. Being hungry simply made his temper worse, as did aching from all of Jonah’s blows.
After a week had passed, he was able to stay awake long enough to observe what the pair actually did within this strange red cavern. They fed the other beasts, and by observing their rounds, the dragon came to grasp that some of the trapped animals were kept as food for others. He also learned that the object Jonah struck him with was called a stick, or a cane. Jonah seemed to favor calling him a ‘piece of shit,’ so the hatchling assumed that was his name—yet the moment he realized the same word applied to animal waste, he rejected the name. Instead, he accepted the name given to him by Caleb.
Caleb taunted Jonah with the dragon’s name each time the hatchling managed to bite or scratch the human. The dragon could only assume that being someone’s nemesis was a mark of distinction. In the end, he claimed it for himself.
His name was Nemesis.
Chapter two
After the first week, Nemesis observed that Jonah and Caleb weren’t the only ones taking care of the caged creatures. One being in particular, he came to enjoy. The first thing he noticed about her was she had long black hair… he liked it because it matched his scales. She was also smaller than the others. They called her Harper, and he soon grasped that she wasn’t fully grown, like him. Her ears weren’t as pointy as Caleb’s, so he wasn’t sure if she was human or elf.
This Harper being was shorter than they were by at least a head, and skinny. He noted that she tended to wear a scratchy covering that hung to her knees. It seemed to be made from the same material as the sack he had been stuffed into. Over the month she tended him, the girl grew progressively bolder in trying to befriend him. He resisted at first, but in contrast to Jonah hitting him with a stick, she offered him scraps of meat and tried to bribe him with warm oil to soothe his itching scales. Almost against himself, Nemesis eventually let his guard down around her.
Where the other two-legs radiated emotions he found unpleasant, Harper was always filled with joy when she came to visit him. She brought him food and cleaned his cage… and she spoke to him. He could understand her words, though it took time for him to begin understanding their true meanings. She was the one who taught him that he was in a cage and had been taken by smugglers. He also learned that the metal collar around her neck signified she was a slave. It took Nemesis some time to grasp that being a slave was like being in a cage… while being able to move around.
Nemesis’ hatred of Jonah grew by leaps and bounds when he saw the human strike Harper as often as he attacked the dragon. The man took to avoiding the area around Nemesis’ cage roughly the same day the dragon learned he could spit the acid he produced. He couldn’t do it often, but he chose to save it for when Jonah was nearby. Harper had taught him the word for acid as well. His connection to the girl slowly deepened to the point where he allowed her to oil his scales—which was when he learned he was different from the other hatchlings the smugglers had captured.
“Your scales are really soft for a dragon,” Harper said as she rubbed oil into one of the joints where his wing met his flank. “They’re not soft, soft, but for a dragon they’re not as hard as the others. I think that’s why Jonah claims you’re a runt…”
Nemesis hissed at the mention of Jonah’s name, though he remained still. He enjoyed the rubdowns far too much to risk scaring Harper off. She was a useful creature, even if he hadn’t figured out how to properly communicate with her yet.
“Caleb claims you’re some rare breed. You aren’t quite the same shape as the others… so I think he might be right. Your body is thicker, but you’re not as long,” she said. Nemesis wasn’t sure if she realized he could understand her, or if she was just speaking to him because she was lonely. He could feel a longing for companionship radiating off of her, as well as sadness. The sensation resonated with him. He hated his captivity. He turned his head and rubbed his skull against her side.
She responded by scratching her fingers behind the small horns on his skull. He let out a satisfied grumble, and a moment later she went back to massaging the oil into his scales. “Caleb said your mother had been killed by something before they arrived, but they always say that. I think it’s weird that they always seem to find clutches of dragon eggs right after a matriarch dies… but I also don’t think they’re strong enough to kill a grown dragon.”
