The Angel Mirror

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

Dealing with dragons is a dangerous business.

Especially when you're an intern with almost no experience in handling them.He didn't know that much about the guy, who was in his early twenties and had only started a month ago, but he had been clearly struggling with trying to get a leash around a dragon who couldn't be more than a year old. Even then they were pretty dangerous, as they could still take a couple of fingers off or provide a nasty burn if the handler wasn't careful.

So Zilder decided to step in, and while the quick swap of handlers seemed to confused the dragon for a bit, he quickly recovered and started thrashing as soon as the boy was able to get his hands on him. He all but scrapped his hands on the dragonling's rough scales, but he managed to avoid the small puffs of flame until the leash clamped around its neck.

He hadn't really realized how dirty he'd gotten doing the deed until he handed the leash back to the intern. Letting out a sigh, he nodded to the intern's 'thank you' and dusted himself off. It was too early in the morning for this, he'd just woken up not too long ago. With that out of the way, though, Zilder could get some breakfast and decide how he was going to spend the rest of his day.

It would be a mix of physical and magical training, but his concern is how much of it would be outside. The fall weather had taken it's toll on the area, turning nearly all of the leaves on the trees around his estate into glorious shades of red, yellow, and orange. It looked fine, but there a reports of a storm coming soon, and the heavy clouds suggested it as well, but he wasn't sure how long he had until the rain began.

He didn't get ten steps into his home, however, when he nearly ran into his father.

"Ah, Zilder!" His voice boomed out from nowhere, actually Zilder hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings and hadn't seen him, but it still startled the hell out of him.

"O-oh, hey dad, what's up." He regained his composure from the jump rather quickly, that tone made it sound like his father was looking for him. He looked him over, he was a tall muscular man in his late forties, although the muscles couldn't be seen very well in the fitted grey suit he was wearing that went well with his chocolate-colored skin. He looked prim and proper for another meeting, which was all he had been doing lately despite how he loved to go headlong into the training of the dragons with all of the people that work for him. Something about the empire, from what he could tell.

He was in charge of a large workforce that paraded over raising dragons for combat and study for the empire of Titania. Being in charge of such a would surely give any family some merit with the king, and Zilder's family had been doing it for generations. The program was centralized in a city of Titania know as Wilde, along with the Dragomir family there were several other groups raising up more creatures within the city and it's general area. Along with his own family, Gale was the chief in charge of all of the others that raised animals in Wilde.

Zilder hoped that his dad wasn't about to ask him about breakfast, but apparently that wasn't the case. "If you couldn't tell, son, I'm dressed for another meeting, a couple, in fact, I have several minor appointments spread throughout the day as well."

"Yeah..." Zilder responded, where was he going with this?

"Well...I made a promise with the widewing hatchlings, a while ago in fact, that they could be taken out for a walk in the woods. There are five of them, and...you know how they are. One way or another if I take all of them out at once this suit is going to be ruined, so..."

"You want me to take them off your hands?" Ziler suggested.

"Thanks for volunteering! I knew you would." Gale beamed, clapping him on the back and walking to another part of the house.

"What? Dad, I was going to work on magic...like...all day today, I can't-"

"If you can get all of the widewings under control, then there will be plenty of time to work on your magical abilities in the woods while the dragons play and whatnot. It's called multitasking Zilder, if anyone can do it it's you." He said without turning around. "I'll be there to help if anything goes wrong, and speaking of magic this is the perfect opportunity for you to practice the tether spell.

Son of a....he hated when his father did that. Leave it to Zilder to be the only one in the house when his dad had errands to run. He sighed, then finally gave in. "Fine, fine, just give me a couple of minutes."

Zilder walked in front of the pen to the wide wings quite a few minutes later, he had changed from the clothes he woke up into a pair of jeans and a red shirt, and also combed his snow white shoulder length hair, which did nothing as it still looked as unkempt and disheveled as ever. It was an oddity among the rest of his family who had either pitch black or ruby red hair. His father told him it was a side effect of his mother working so close to dragons during the time she was pregnant with Zilder. She had to work closer to the dragons than she had with the rest of his siblings during their pregnancies, and his dad told him it was a side effect of their magic. Whatever that meant, it was responsible for his white hair along with the red eyes he had.

A regular person probably would have had some kind of protection. Maybe some full heavy fire resistant armor or something, but Zilder had been working with the dragons long enough that he didn't need them. He was still susceptible to fire but he had a higher heat tolerance than most and he could tell when a dragon was about to flame.

He was beginning to think he should have brought some sort of protection though. Widewings, living up to their name, had incredibly long wingspans compared to other dragons, even as hatchlings. This group, the newest crop of hatchlings for the particular breed, were a bunch of troublemakers. That's what his father had told him, but Zilder hadn't seen much of them since they hatched, which to him was a beautiful moment. The hatching of any dragons was.

His dad was there, waiting for him as he expected him to be. Gale turned when he saw his son approaching and grinned. "There you are, I was about to call five of the apprentices to handle this if you didn't show."

They didn't have that many apprentices, and even then they didn't really get to deal with the dragons themselves when they were past the 'just hatched' stage, only menial tasks like cleaning the pens. "You'd call five apprentices to do this job, but you're letting me do it alone." Definitely father of the year material.

"That just means you're worth at least five of them, and most of them are older than you so that's saying a lot." Definitely father of the year material. Zilder liked getting compliments like that, they made him feel special. "You really should comb your hair, even if it's probably going to be ruined within the next five minutes."

That didn't take away from what he was about to do, though. "I tried, dad, I really did." Zilder replied, smirking and throwing his arms up in a stretch. It was like they had that conversation every day. "Let's just get this over with." He bet the apprentices would be a little more than frightened if they had to take a dragon out for a walk. No matter what size they were dragons were pretty dangerous creatures when they wanted to be. They could snap someone's finger off it they weren't careful when handling them, not to mention the fire breath or whatever kind of magic the dragon had. He wasn't sure if was good or bad thing to say this, but it had become a regular thing for Zilder. A terribly dangerous regular thing.

"Alright." Gale nodded, grabbing the handle of the wide door that was the entrance to their pen. "Remember the tether spell, Zilder, it shouldn't be too hard to pull it off multiple times for you." The tether spell was what it sounded like, a tether. A rope made of magic that bound whatever it attached to to the user. It could be blocked of course, especially be creatures of magic like dragons. But with young dragons, it was unlikely. Using multiple times sounded like two or three, but his dad wanted him to use it five times and hit a dragon every time, something he hadn't tried at all or even knew if he could do. "Also, son," With a hefty pull, the door started to open. "Remember to watch the flames."