Dracoville

Twisting Fires

'Wh-what just happened?' Arian had sleepily said, as he was opening up his eyes and starting to push himself off the floor, before he noticed a slightly ruffled-up Opal crawling out of a potato sack on the floor. 'Are you all right, bud?' Arian asked with a degree of concern in his voice as he quickly walked over to where Opal was now laying. 'I think so, but who was that?' Opal replied, before shaking his body to re-align some of his scales that appeared to have moved, before he started to climb up Arian's leg and back onto his shoulder. 'We should probably get out of these training dummies.' Arian stated as he started to walk towards the entrance of the room which he could now see, before remembering the potato sack that the man had left behind. 'We should probably take the sack, we could use it as evidence.' Arian told Opal as he grabbed the sack off the ground before continuing on towards the elevator.

Just as Arian was walking out of the ring of dummies into the blank space in front of the elevator, the elevator doors opened and out stepped Kat with a large duff bag and what looked like two quivers of arrows. 'Why would she need two quivers?' Arian thought to himself, knowing that Opal could probably hear his thoughts. Crossing the distance between him and Kat, Arian was quickly startled by a large red dragon jumping through the dragon-hole at the side of the room, before realising that it was just Ruby and he calmed down. 'Hey Kat, hey Ruby.' Arian had nonchalantly greeted the two dragon rider trainers as best as he could.
'Greetings, Arian.' Ruby had replied simply, in his overly deep voice. 'So, what will we be doing today?' Arian asked, directing the question at Kat, who appeared to be eyeing Opal, who was staring back at her. Seeming as if she hadn't even heard Arian, she asked. 'Is there something different with Opal?' Before Opal jumped down from Arian's shoulder.
'Yea, I think there I grew a couple of sizes overnight.' Opal had said with what sounded like a slight laugh, as he knew that him speaking would shock the trainers.
'H-how?' Kat had simply asked as she stood there in shock, in which Arian only replied with a slight shrug of his shoulder. 'This is truly an odd occurrence.' Ruby said, with what sounded like a slight tinge shock in his voice. 'I have no idea, I just got home yesterday, and he just started talking.' Arian explained to both the trainers whilst shrugging, to show that he know no more on the subject. 'Well, I think this takes precedence over archery lessons.' Ruby stated, with a grim look on his face. 'What I don't understand is how he talked openly, how does he do it?' Kat asked, directing the question at Arian as if she didn't want to hear Opal talk. 'That's easy.' Opal butted in, this time being careful to talk in the minds of everyone in the room. 'I simply project my thoughts onto the air around me, creating a ripple in the air, kinda like how you guys talk, but with my mind.' Opal explained, sounding as if it made perfect sense to everyone in the room. 'But then, how do you breath fire?' Arian asked Opal, remembering the patch of hair that Opal burnt off. 'It's pretty much the same way I talk, I don't actually breath the fire itself, but I spin the air in front of me with my thoughts at a high enough speed, open my mouth to heat the air, and presto! You have fire burning your hair off.' He explained again, poking fun at the burnt patch on the right side of Arian's head.

'Do you think...that you could show us how you use this fire?' Kat cautiously asked, sounding like if she said one wrong word she would spontaneously combust. 'Sure, what do I burn?' Opal said excitedly, opening his jaw in the process to what looked like a large grin. 'Umm...oh! I know what you can burn! Just wait here one second!' Kat said, before quickly running off to a small storage closet near the back of the room, before trying the door and finding it's locked. Not wasting a second, she quickly lifted her foot and jabbed it at the door handle, which caused a large chunk of the door to go flying into the storage closet and the door to swing violently open. Arian could barely hear her murmur something alone the lines of 'fix it later.' Before she walked into the room as if she hadn't just kicked a door open. A few minutes later, after a couple of minutes and sounds of metal object being moved around, Kat walked out of the room holding a large object, before she walked over to where Opal stood and dropped it in front of him, slightly startling him. 'What's that?' Arian asked, noticing the long grooves that circled the object, which looked like a small pillar. 'This' Kat said, pointing at the strangely grooved stone, 'will be your target, it's known as a brisingr sternr in the ancient language and a fire stone in ours. Now the trick is to start a small fire at this point.' Kat pointed at what looked like a small sphere on the groove. 'And to hold the fire there for as long as possible, think you can do that?' Kat asked Opal, finishing her explanation. 'Yeah, I think I can' Opal said, giving a slight nod before walking around the stone to face the small circle. Opal stood there for a couple of seconds, as if he was preparing to breath fire, before a slight vortex of air started to form in front of Opal's mouth, barely noticeable at first, it grew in size until the vortex of air was barely touching the small circle on the statue. At this point, the air coming from the vortex would be able to be felt from most of the large room, with one of the more outer training dummies even falling over, before Opal opened his mouth and the slight gale that was blowing around the room suddenly changed to a vortex, almost causing Arian and Kat to fall over, and the visible vortex started to take on a golden and silver sheen, as if there were two separate fires entwining themselves around each other.

The golden and silver fire twisted at a surprising speed up the vortex, creating more and more suction towards the vortex of flame until it reached the small circle, at which point the entire stone pillar instantly lit up in golden and silver flames, and it spread in a semi-spiral pattern until it reached the bottom of the pillar and ended by circling itself off. What first looked like a myriad of carvings suddenly took shape as the flaming lines appeared to shift in shape, changing directions all over until it seemed to decide on a set shape. Arian gasped as the lines stopped moving, as it appeared to show a mural of some kind, almost exactly in the same style of the mural that disappeared in the room where he found Opal's egg, but showing a different picture. It was at this that Arian gasped, for on the statue, was an almost exact recreation of him, right down to the the burnt hair. 'Is that...me?' Arian said with pure surprise in his voice, before noticing the other details on the stone, such as a dragon flying above him with what looked like rays of sunshine coming out of it, which was amplified by the golden fire that was being expelled by Opal. It was at this moment that the fire dissipated, but only for a moment as Opal closed his mouth for a second then opened it again, letting the vortex of air catch on fire again. This time, Arian focused on the silver sides of the fire, which depicted a similar likeness of the mural of him, but something felt...wrong. 'What is that!?' Arian startlingly asked, as Kat came over to his side of the stone he was looking at. 'What are you talking about? Kat questioned as if she couldn't see anything. 'It's just the same markings as the rest of the stone, why? What do you see?' Kat asked Arian, as more and more confusion grew on his face, before the flames flickered for a second again as Opal took another deep breath. 'It's me, but it's...not me, if that makes sense? It almost feels...evil, in a way.' As Arian said those last words, the flames finally flickered out for the last time, and Opal looked like he was about to fall over from exhaustion. 'Opal!' Arian shouted, diving for his small, falling body, catching him before his head hit the ground.