User blog:ChaosWyvern-i/Dragon's Return II

'''Disclaimer: This story contains elements from Dragon's Dogma, though no relation to its plot. Dragon's Dogma is property of Capcom just as much as Brave Frontier is property of Alim/Gumi.'''

The dragon was not amused. It was content with children playing on its mostly immobile form, but tying the accessible parts of its mane into braids and putting various wreaths around its horns was pushing it*. It let forth a deep rumble mixed with a slight whine, causing the children to scatter and clamber off its still form. It huffed lightly before closing an eye** and began to doze off.

"Was that entirely necessary, Lavi*? They were having fun." The dragon opened its eye, recognizing the voice of the now grown village chief's daughter.

Laura.

"Not in the mood today, I assume?" The young woman put a hand on her hip.

Tired...

Laura was going to say something, but the dragon's ancient sounding response changed her mind.

"Huh, you really are getting old. It's hard to believe seven and ten years have passed." Lavi knew Laura thought age was the cause for its increasing lethargy, something it was content with her believing. In truth, had that been the case, the dragon would live at least four centuries longer, but that was about as possible as goblins slaying it.

''Lamenting is not for you, Laura. You are with child, do not stress.'' "I know, I know, but it feels like I'm losing an old friend..." The woman sat at the dragon's flank as she usually did, it was as routine for her as hunting, herding and farming was for some of the other villagers. Today she did not bring her lyre, but a small story book.

Until I finally pass on, I shall protect you. The dragon focused on Laura. ''You understand my vow."

"Lavi..." The woman opened the book and began reading aloud. It was a sad tale, one about a princess with too open a heart and a knight who vowed to protect her at any cost. The princess lived in a tiny kingdom, one that would later be the target of the gods in their war against humans, while the knight came from a small village and had lived a carefree life. When the attack came, the knight fled with the princess, but was fatally wounded in the process, leaving the princess alone in a great forest...

Faris and Lario. The dragon spoke after some time. The wielder of the verdant sword and father of the Falcon Bow.

"The story is familiar to you, then?" Laura looked up. "I had no idea."

You never read to me before this day, that is understandable.

"Then you know of what happened next?"

Aye, I was there, an ally to those who stood as a beacon of hope.

"Is that why you remain trapped under that stone?"

''Aye and not at the same time. This stone is... Important, as is my position under it.''

"But does that not cause you discomfort?"

To fulfill a promise and do what is right in one's own eyes, comfort is not needed. The dragon's tone ended the conversation there. It was tired and it knew on a scale beyond precognition that soon it would fulfill its vow- that soon it would disappear from the world in order to protect those under its watch. It hadn't expected that the fateful day would be the following day.

The summoner had been given one job, one that he failed rather spectacularly. Of course he didn't recognize that truth until he was on the receiving end of a sealed, wounded and very, very, VERY angry dragon's wrath and all of the destruction that came with it. He had been following orders from the Summoner's Hall as usual, hunting down a dangerous beast in the form of a dragon in this case. He'd glossed over the report as usual*, about as concerned by the details as a Harpy was a Merman, then set out with his trusty Lore Book**, traveler's pack and short sword. He was sure this would be a quick mission, he'd fought the beast before and wounded it greatly on his own, having chosen to not rely on his book that time around.

Thus, the summoner arrived in a tiny village, barely a thousandth the size of the Imperial Capital, if that. It seemed like a homely place, a nice place like the village he hailed from, if less well off. He would have taken the time to give the one overseeing the village a serious talking to, had there not been a band of Red Caps aided by Cyclopes attacking*. Wasting no time, the summoner drew his book and flipped to the back pages. Finding what he was looking for, he recanted a short phrase and imbued the book with some of his energy, creating an elliptical array of pale blue light around himself before closing the book in the direction of several Redcaps and a Cyclops.

The poor goblins didn't see it coming. In one moment they were raiding the frontier village for resources, but in the very next they were hundreds of feet in the air with crushed bones and a severe cold permeating their bodies. The pain was short lived, as when they hit the ground each of them dissolved into spheres of light. The same could not be said about the Cyclops. It noticed the red symbols flowing around it and made an attempt to avoid the signs it instinctively knew were dangerous, but it soon found itself in the air as well when a great pillar of ice erupted from the ground beneath it. Though not hurt to the extent that the Red Caps had been, it had the luck of landing on a house and collapsing the structure with a stricken bellow. The summoner made note of this as he recited another verse, surrounding himself with a bright orange ring of light as the Cyclops and several Red Caps charged at him in their fury. None of them were expecting a wall of bright flames to explode into existence before them, the spontaneous appearance stopping the monsters in their tracks. Not even the summoner was expecting the second explosion caused by the wall of fire destroying a small granary within the village, an explosion that quickly resulted in the death of several more goblins. The summoner winced and shook his head, that hadn't been in the plan** in the least. He flipped a page in his book and read off another spell, this one aligned with ice and water judging by the cyan circle around the summoner. Several seconds passed with no reaction on either side, until the goblins charged at the summoner once more, heralded by the roar of the Cyclopses. A giant winding spear of ice met them head on, ending the remaining goblins and wounded Cyclops in a single shot, but now the summoner was exhausted from using several powerful magicks in quick succession. This became very clear to him when he barely avoided a fairly slow smash from one of the remaining Cyclopses and blindly cast two spells at another charging beast. The first, a sickly green and brown cloud, sent the creature into a pained frenzy as it howled from contact with the tainted air. The second detonated the cloud as fireball after fireball flew from the book's pages and hit the beast with deadly force. The Cyclops fell in a charred heap, allowing the summoner to quickly remove, unstopper and take a swig of a curative before his world turned white and his body exploded with pain from a sudden blow to his side. His vision was impeded by black spots and he was sure that several ribs had been broken by the blow at the very least, not to mention him skipping across the ground like a rock thrown across a lake. Coppery red filled his mouth and he could barely stand, let alone use the sword he had neglected to draw the entire time, yet he picked himself up and made a stand.

The summoner quivered like a leaf as he opened his Lore Book to a far page. The cyclopses that had attacked him charged from his sides. He stuttered as he muttered a spell with chattering teeth. The cyclopses readied their clubs and bellowed deafeningly. A wavering grey ellipse formed around the summoner as his vision faded. The cyclopses swung down the bludgeons they held. The ring vanished and...

The summoner woke up in an unfamiliar bed sometime later. His entire body was sore, but he couldn't complain. It was his fault for being overly reliant on magic and not his sword or army hidden within the pages of his book and putting himself in a dangerous position. Speaking of which, he could feel neither tool on his person, only an itchy fabric across his chest. Rising slowly, he checked himself and found his chest bandaged, but no other signs of damage. He looked around the place he was in and found his book and sword leaning on a simple stand within arm's reach of himself. Taking the book first, he turned to the very last page and quietly read the script there, surrounding himself in a green nucleus of light and began to restore his strength and mend the damage he had taken in the attack, albeit slowly. Once he felt ready enough, he climbed out of bed and grabbed his sword, then opened his book to the first page and summoned his normal attire from it. Quickly, though not without some pain, the summoner donned his usual attire before slipping out of the room, he couldn't impose on whom ever had aided him while he was out of it for any longer.

Outside of the room was dead silence, excluding the faint snoring of someone in another room. The summoner crept by, quickly reaching the exit of the small home and making his way outside, but not before dropping a large sack of Zel at the doorstep. The village was beyond damaged from what the summoner could see. His eyes shifted downward as he moved swiftly and silently through the barely together place, the fact that he was the cause of some of the damage despite holding back weighing heavily on his conscience. Before long, he was striding through the forest, looking for signs of the beast he had been sent after. It wasn't long before he found tracks, familiar tracks, that bore deeply into the earth. Not much further ahead was a faint light, one that grew stronger as he approached as all faint lights should. When he finally arrived at the source of the light, the summoner was stunned.

Before him was the ashen form of the beast he had been chasing. He recognized the vestigial wing structure, the jagged brutal horns growing from the smooth, eyeless head and the split tail with blade like spines and, most of all, the deep wound in its flank from where his sword had pierced with the aid of magic, strategy and luck. What he didn't recognize was why its ebony and violet hide was completely grey, even its metallic looking teeth and spines were the same color. It wasn't until the beast dissolved into a storm of heated ash that the summoner realized that someone or something else had slain the creature. That was when his eyes travelled to the source of the light.

Lying before him was a dragon unlike any he had seen before. It had a crystalline body, each scale refracting dozens of colors without a light source and a sleek head that mixed serpentine features with toned down draconic features. It had branching silver horns akin to antlers and an iridescent mane of hair with various braids tied into it. Had the beast not been releasing a savage pressure and not been trapped under a large stone glowing with azure writs of sealing, the summoner would have left it be. Had its eyes not been literally burning with bright orange flames and its many pearly teeth not bared menacingly, he wouldn't have started casting a violet hued spell in its direction. And had he noticed the blonde woman spreading her arms to protect the beast in probable vain effort a moment sooner, he would have never loosed the spell.

The bolt of lightning flew from the summoner as he was wreathed in a violet field of light. He barely managed to redirect it so that it wouldn't strike the woman head on, but the damage was done. The woman cried out as the bolt grazed her side, the dragon's eyes flared even brighter as flame engulfed its body and the summoner knew he had just made the worst mistake in his entire life up to that point. In less than a second, a barrier had formed around the woman and the dragon released a mighty roar that split the ground and blew the summoner away along with many trees and stones in the area. Landing hard hundreds of meters away, he could only watch as the stone sealing the dragon crumbled and it ascended in its brilliant glory like a star returning to the heavens. Wings that hadn't been seen before unfurled and turned the night sky into one of brilliant white as the dragon grew brighter and brighter. The summoner felt utterly paralyzed in both awe and fear, similarly to when he had encountered Noel's mock unit of the Beast God, Alfa Dillith, at its estimated full power, but on a far greater scale. He knew that this dragon was well beyond him, well beyond even the summoner whose footsteps he followed, well beyond anything this world or any other could throw at it. And he knew any effort at defending himself was utterly pointless before it.

And then there was white, followed by heat, pressure and the roar of something that far exceeded his own comprehension. Feeling faded first, then smell, taste, hearing and finally sight as he was engulfed by what his brain could register as fire before his conscious was swept away and he was sent into a world unlike his own, yet similar. He missed the dragon diving and blocking the immense wave of raw power it had fired so that it wouldn't destroy the village. He missed the light that had once been the dragon fade away in particles of light. And, most of all, he missed the passing of a great evil into his world from one of the myriad worlds connected to his.


 * Besides, the children pulled its hair much too hard. While normally this was less than bothersome, occasionally it winced in pain because one of the little ones would pull a root or nerve with their rough handling. It didn't mind the wreaths as much, but it was definitely sure that someone was using Dragonsbane or Wyrmfell in theirs. How else could it explain the itching and prickly sensation across its scalp?


 * It's other two eyes had since crystallized, a testament to the dragon's waning life energy. It wasn't going to let the villager's know that though, especially not Laura, it had already caused them enough trouble by cutting their food supply.


 * A name given by Laura to the dragon. The young woman did not comprehend the power of names and thus did not realize that by naming the dragon, she had bound them for eternity. It was like marriage or a long lasting business relationship in a sense, only without death as the ending and nothing to do with money.


 * He didn't sweat the small stuff. Some of his peers got on his case about that or insulted his intelligence. Said peers also had a 3:15 Win-Lose ratio to him in combat, wins coming from the two that chose not to insult him in any way, shape or form. In actuality he was quite smart, if a quite heavily on the dense side.


 * A book given to all Summoners at the start of their journey along with a pack and a miscellaneous tool of their choice. Most other summoners would fill all of the pages with summoning circles, but he chose to invest in the vastly useful magic circles and bestiary. If had cost him a few million Zel and several dozen Gems, but he did not regret his choice.


 * A very challenging day for the village indeed. It was a good thing they had many, many healing remedies or things could have gotten nasty very quickly.


 * The summoner was beginning to think that fighting in a populated area with magic was far more of a hassle than he had expected. He didn't have to worry about collateral damage when he was fighting in abandoned settlements or nature.

'''A/N: So this chapter's tone was vastly different from the prior's, but it builds some context for the world's ongoings, namely about summoners. Summoners in this world are similar in nature to that of those in the game, but are given more options aside from just using units to fight for them, though many do that still. Summoners who use magic are rare, but aren't the rarest, and are generally pretty skilled. The summoner in this chapter would have been around Lv 250 in game, but that's neither here nor there as level means nothing in this story.'''

'''Names are very powerful in this story, so much so that knowing something's name is the difference between a dull sword and realizing the entire time Dandelga, Urias or Batootha was in your possesion for years. How this will be used is yet to be seen, but a glimpse was seen from "Lavi's" perspective.'''

'''Other than that, the next chapter will introduce the story's protagonist. Until then!'''