Dracoville

Ruby, Dragon of Fire

Coming to a stop at the dragon centre, Arian, Kat and Opal all hopped off Arian's bike and started walking towards the dragon centre, before Kat pushed open the glass doors and all three of them walked towards the counter in the middle of the room. 'Hey Kat, Arian, what are you two here for today?' The receptionist asked, followed by Opal jumping onto the counter which shocked the receptionist a bit. 'We want to see Ruby, is he here?' Kat asked, as the receptionist calmed down. 'Yeah, he should be on the sixth floor, anything else?' She said, pointing down the hallway to the left of her, before Kat thanked her followed by Opal jumping off the counter and gliding down to the floor. The three of them then entered the elevator and pushed the sixth floor button, followed by the metallic doors closing behind them as they rose up to the sixth floor, which was another room that Arian had never visited.

The doors opened to reveal a large hall with desks scattered around the room in rows with people at them working on various tasks, and not one of them looked up to greet the visitors to the floor. 'What do they do on this floor?' Arian inquired, looking around at the various things the workers were doing, before his eyes caught onto a small object that appeared to be perpetually spinning, before snapping back to in front of him to make sure he didn't run into anything. 'This room is mainly used for research in magical items, but it is also where the current elemental dragon of the province is staged.' Kat explained, as it took Arian a moment to realise she was talking about Ruby.

The sound of pens on paper and the other miscellaneous noises was suddenly interrupted by a large bang to the left of Arian, followed by a large jet of flame coming from a bottle on a desk, which almost burnt off the face of the person who was looking at the bottle, before he closed the bottle and took a moment to calm down, before he continued writing. 'At least he didn't have the entire left side of his hair burnt off.' Arian mumbled, absentmindedly running his hand through his hair as he remembered the first time he left Opal on his couch by himself. Arian suddenly came back to attention as he realised he was at the other side of the room in front of a pair of large stone doors, followed by Kat pushing them open with what seemed like little effort.

When he stepped through the doors, Arian was not expecting what he saw. Through the doors was a room with no walls, completely open to the outside elements with rows of large stone pillars with intricate designs etched into them, looking as if they were spirals of grey fire coming from the ground and leading up. It was then that Arian also realised that they were covered in red and orange lights, placed in a way to make the pillars look as if they were made of actual fire. Entranced in the architecture of this strange room, Arian didn't notice the giant throne at the rear of the room. Being almost half the size of the room, the stone throne was also covered in more of the red and orange lights with the throne being large enough that a large dragon could easily lie in it and still have a large amount of room left on the throne, and that was exactly what Ruby was doing. Jogging a bit to catch up to Kat and Opal, Arian walked up to the throne where Ruby was watching the three of them with one eye. It was then that Arian noticed that something was off with Ruby, as if this wasn't the same dragon that he had first met in the training room. As the group of three stopped before the giant dragon, Arian realised that Ruby was way bigger then he was then when he met him, almost twice his size then when he met him. With his large, red eye, looking directly at Arian, with Arian being barely taller than the diameter of the eye.

Looking into his eye, it almost looked like Kat and Ruby were talking without words as Ruby watched her intensely, before Arian heard a voice in his head

I see, greetings Arian, Opal. Kat was just telling me about your...predicament.

Ruby said in Arian and Opal's mind, as it looked like Kat relayed more information to him.
Hmm, this is definitely strange indeed.
Ruby said to him, sounding genuinely curious.
Very strange indeed.

He repeated, thinking about the problem over and over, before finally talking again. 'Yes, I think... I think that we should... speed up your training' Ruby said, sounding almost lost for words as he looked deep in thought. 'Why? Why do we have to speed up my training, and why am I training in the first place?' Arian questioned followed by a swift nod by Opal who had climbed up onto his shoulder. The last comment apparently surprised Ruby a bit, as he appeared to cast a what looked like a nervous glance at Kat as his head raised off of the side of the throne where it was previously resting.

After finishing talking to Kat, Ruby swung his massive head around so that he was looking down his nose at Arian and Opal with both his eyes. Upon seeing his left eye, Arian saw what appeared to be a large claw mark, still fresh, but slightly faded, looking as if something had attempted to gauge out Ruby's eye. Which Arian could have sworn wasn't there last time they met. 'Tell me, Arian.' Ruby said, interrupting Arian's train of thought. 'What is your reason for joining the dragon centre, in both work, and for receiving Opal?'