The Tenth Dragon: Death Of A Youngling

Chapter 7: New Fear Of The Deep

“Actually I do.  By the way, here put these on before you go.”

He created a pair of what looked like black spandex pants out of thin air and threw them to Jesse.

“How do you do that?  And what are these?”

“I’ll teach you later.  These are pants that adjust to your body and won’t tear when you shift into a Draco-human.  They are also destruction proof, not burning or cutting, but if you go full dragon you will tear them.”

“Why would I need those, my clothes never tear on me.”

“At some point in time they will.  And unlike other animals, our genitalia doesn’t go inside of us when we shift.  I doubt you would want the women seeing your dangling dragon bits.”

“How about you never use that phrase again and we can move on from there.”

“Works for me.”

Just like that Origin had vanished and Jesse was left alone in the elevator.  He looked around to make sure there weren’t any camera’s in the elevator before putting the pants on over his boxers.  After putting on his pants again, he picked up the sweater Origin gave him and looked it over.  There were little silver spikes running along the hood.  He couldn’t help but wonder if Origin thought he was being cute.  He put the sweater on and pulled the hood over his head, hiding his eyes.  The elevator doors opened and showed a long hallway leading out to the new world.  Even from a distance, Jesse could see the depression of the city.  There was a gray hue over the city, maybe not literally, but he could feel the sadness from the citizens.

As he starred out past the doors, he heard the elevator land behind him and the doors opened.  Rydar slowly walked up behind him and set her hand on his back.

“Are you going to be okay baby?”

“Tell me something.  Was Jak the only one?”

Rydar was shocked and pulled back at the question.  Her emotions became clouded and hard to interpret.

“Please be honest with me,” begged Jesse, still looking at the city.

“No,” whispered Rydar.

Jesse felt like someone had just grabbed his heart and was trying to pull it out.  The lights dimmed and Jesse heard the power to the elevator shut off.  Rydar reached up but Jesse stepped forward.

“You knew I was alive.  Why would you do it?”

“I was confused.  I didn’t know if you were going to make it out or not.  I just . . .”

“You were getting even with me.”

Even Jesse was shocked at that statement.  They hadn’t talked about his past infidelity in a long time and Rydar had said she’d forgiven him for it, but now he wasn’t sure.  The emotions coming off of her made him feel even worse about his questioning

“Did you love him?”

Rydar stayed quiet.

”Do you love me?”

Still silence.

“Until you figure that out, maybe you should just worry about yourself.”

With that Jesse reached up and scratched through his butterfly tattoo.  

Even in his depressed state of mind, Jesse was still in awe of how amazing this part of the city looked.  The buildings were tall and very well built.  Although most of them were just condos, there were a few that looked like rich businesses.  From the looks of it though, there were no grocery stores, no clothing stores, not even a fast food restaurant.  How did these people get food, clothes, anything for that matter.