The Silver Dragon (Unpublished, unedited version)

Chapter 27: The Search

With a thump Raize slammed Gravon into the rocks below, causing a few bones to break in the rarer dragon's wings and back. He roared out in pain, before falling limp against the rock. Suddenly worried Raize checked to see if he was still breathing, and let out sigh of relief when he was.

He took a step back from the broken dragon and snorted his contempt, before going to fly off again when another voice stopped him.

"Hey, you there!" cried an older earth dragon who had seen the whole thing.

Raize growled in annoyance and turned towards the dragon, "You may want to get him to a life dragon. He's badly injured."

"Oh, I'm taking him to a life dragon alright, and you as well," the earth dragon snarled.

He landed next to them and scooped up Gravon's broken form. The drake groaned, but stayed unconscious. The earth dragon looked at Raize angrily, as if it was his fault that this happened. The fire dragon snorted. He could just fly away if he wanted, but he knew that as soon as he did that the alarm would be raised and every dragon in Sky Mountain would be looking for him. He couldn't afford that. Best to go along quietly and hope they believed his side of the story.

The earth dragon took off and Raize followed.

* * *

Iraliene looked at the large screen set in front of her, worry hard on her chest. The screen showed a map of the mountain range stretching through western China. Upon the screen were hundreds of tiny dots, all moving in a jittery fashion toward their very location. Every one of those dots represented a machine or dragon from A.O.D.H. But from all her resources she knew that they didn't know where Sky Mountain was, unless they had just found the general location and were now searching through the mountain range for them.

She turned from the screen and began to pace. This wasn't good, not at all. While Sky Mountain was well defended against any attack even loosing a couple of dragons to them was something she couldn't risk. They already had minimal numbers and A.O.D.H had nearly twenty thousand dragons under their command. It was something she couldn't allow.

"Laang," she said, speaking in mandarin to a human that was working at a desk in the cave, "Call the Chinese government. We need as much help as they can give us."

"Yes Elder," he said, reaching to a phone on his desk.

With a sigh Iraliene looked back at the screen. If this was going to be a fight then they were going to have to fight with their utmost power. It was time to test the true capabilities of Sky Mountain. She turned and began to walk out of the cave, ready to give the order to lock down the mountain.

However she was stopped when an earth dragon landed at the entrance of the cave, accompanied by a fire dragon. He seemed surprised to see her, and bowed before laying something at her feet. Her eyes widened in surprise. It was her son, Gravon, badly injured.

Gathering her power in her maw she quickly breathed green energy over the gravity drake, healing all his wounds with the ease of centuries. She stepped back, worried as Gravon slowly regained consciousness. He jumped up suddenly, snarling. The fire dragon growled back.

"Who did this?" snarled Iraliene.

"He did!" Gravon accused, looking at Raize with red anger in his eyes.

The life dragoness turned toward the red dragon and narrowed her eyes. Raize took a small step back, a little intimidated by the giant dragon that was in front of him.

"I'm sorry Elder Iraliene," he said, bowing his head, "But he attacked me first. I merely defended myself."

"Lies!" snarled Gravon, taking a step forward.