Code Name: Draconis [Ace Draconis - ON HOLD; see my updated profile for info!]

Chapter 7: Mysteries and Moonlight

Chapter 7: Mysteries and Moonlight

When I came too, I was lying in a huge bed in a large antique-looking room with a fireplace, plush carpet, and various assorted pieces of furniture. Groggily, I climbed out of bed and realized someone had bandaged my shoulder, and dressed any other wounds I had. Whoever that someone was, they'd also removed my gear, leaving me in my jeans and shirt.

"Took you long enough, freak."

I yawned and lazily inclined my head to Damian, who was seated on an expensive-looking chair. "What'd you want, mate?"

"Nothing; John sent me to watch you, that's all."

"Well I'm awake, so you can sod off now."

"I wish I could, but I'm supposed to baby-sit you until John gets in here."

A thought probed my mind as my brain started up again.

"Damian, I saw you breathe fire, and fly off before...a few weeks ago. You're a dragon too, are you not?"

"What's it to you?"

"Why didn't John just send you to go get that crystal? Why me?"

Damian narrowed his eyes and glared at me; he opened his mouth and looked as though he was going to say something unpleasant, when John waltzed into the room.

"Glad to see you're awake, Ace. Damian, you may leave."

Damian got to his feet and glided out of the room, but not before giving me a rude gesture when John wasn't looking.

John looked as though he was about to say something, but I didn't give him the chance. "John, Damian's a dragon too...so, why didn't you just send him to get that crystal?"

Looking apprehensive, John replied, "In a certain sense, Damian is a dragon...but, he's an artificial dragon."

"A what?"

"A few years ago, my team and I stumbled across a dragon fossil. Somehow, some dragon DNA and energy was still active in it. We debated what to do with it for a long time, and then we decided on an experiment. We wanted to create our own human-dragon hybrids. For weeks we tried to create a few super-humans, but our tests failed countless times.

"We'd almost given up when this kid who'd apparently been in trouble for messing up some government documents, and who was supposed to go to jail, got handed over to us. We were supposed to run some tests about his genetic make-up, because apparently he wouldn't tell anyone who his family was. Once we'd gotten some DNA we were supposed to run it through our data base and see if there was a match, and if there wasn't, ship him back to the authorities.

"Anyway, while we were conducting these tests, we found an odd gene in Damian's blood that we hadn't noticed in anyone before. It was an enigma to us, and when we looked at our dragon DNA, the organism was of similar context. We talked to this kid, who had recently turned 18, and he admitted he had no family. Legally, he could do whatever he wished by law. So, we arranged a deal; we wouldn't send him back to the authorities, whom he was apparently in a lot of trouble with, if he agreed to let us test our last vial of dragon DNA on him. He agreed, almost happily, and we proceeded with the test.

"To our shock, it worked, and the dragon DNA coupled with the kid's and he developed some dragon attributes. Although he'll never be as strong as a real dragon, he is definitely a force to be reckoned with. That kid was Damian."

I sat there for a moment, taking this in, "So... he couldn't go into the volcano because...?"

"Although Damian is stronger than most humans, and has the advantage of breathing fire and flying, but he can't morph into a full-dragon form, he can only grow wings...and he'd never win in a fight against a real dragon. We also don't know what too much exertion of these special powers would do to him exactly... He's around to help us locate dragons, as for obvious reasons, he's better suited to the job than any human."