Chapter 1

Pound. A hammer split the harmony of a sea’s ruffling breeze like a ringing gong. A rolling fog passed into the bay on silent wings while moist air chugged from it’s mouth, casting the village of Nebey into yet another gray morning. The sentries and fishers had left long ago at dawn’s first light to search for schools of shimmering weev, angi, and buriss.
The hammer’s owner continued to pound the crystal slab that was for her latest client. He didn’t mention his name, only his order on request of a small messager. The child seemed far too young to be delievering important notices from one valloian to another, but the cheerful male didn’t seem to mind. She mearly took the note with a look of worry.
Ever since, the young dragon continued to work on previously assigned requests, too occupied to think about the little kid working alone.
Another thud of the hammer echoed through her cave and exited the mouth to the outside world, where rose-winged butterflies fluttered about like gull feathers on the gray fog’s dissolving breath. A swift wingbeat scattered the petal delicate insects away. The newcomer flew into the short passage in the side of the steep cliff. The joyful ring of a chain of bells signaling the arrival of the stranger brought the working dragon from the slab of precious material.
“May I assist you in anyway?” The crystalsmith asked. She remembered him vaugly. The unmistakable odor of coal hung in the air.
The blue and green quills of the dragon opposite her rattled ever so slightly, releasing small particles of black dust into the crowded workshop. “I placed an order not too long ago, a fortnight I believe.” From a tightly woven pocket hung around his neck he brought out a thin, small slab of rock with arrow-like markings etched into it’s surface and showed it to her. “The note you gave me when I made my request implies that the chandeler would be finished by today.”
Yes, she did remember him coming some time before. “I can only work so fast. Sometimes I don’t make my appointments on the dot. Unlike most traniees, I don’t get much help.” Again with the same excuse. Every time it was the same thing, the same words spoken to each client.
“I understand that your ma is uncapable of assiting in her present condition but you have a need of a companion or mentor!”
My ma is my mentor. I have no need of another, she barked back in her head. “Mh-hm. I will get your chandeler done as soon as my hands will allow. I have previous requests of higher importance but I will finish it. Count on it.” She would have waited for the scarlet skinned male to respond but the thought that she should know him from somewhere else itched her brain more than garden of nettles. “So... who is the chandeler for?”
Her client accpeted this change in subject. The spikes on his back flattened ever so slightly. “My grandmother refuses to move into her new cavern unless she aqquires something to ‘catch the rays of the sun that shone so much more spectacularly in my perch under Heann’s Cradle than in these black-choked caves under the ground.”
“Your grandmother is the respected Etura Bey?” The dragon said with surprise. She had heard from her mother, Yonash, that Etura was ill and moving from the specially built palace that housed her large family at the pinnacle north of the cliffs to a more secluded cliff cave for her to recover where the moist sea air could reach dry lungs. She never thought the relative of a Bey would come to her for such a project.
The dragon had racked her brain trying to make it for the past week! It lay somewhere in another chamber deeper in the side of the mountain.
“Etura’s blood indeed runs through my veins.” A smile crinkled on his young face as he ruffled his wings a bit. The stench of deep earth metals again burned in her lungs. “I’m sure you will complete you’re task soon enough Demiri.” He turned gracefully and opened his wings in a leathery canopy. He departed as quickly as he came, leaving a fading tinkle of bells.
Demiri stood silent. Her blue jaw opened, but no words came out. A mix of azure, poppy orange, and sun yellow quills quivered. She had been examining the color of her visitor’s quills in order to identify him. Only when he smiled did she notice it. Black colored irises surrounded by milk white. Eyes like spherical orbs of coal encircled by diamonds. The Beys held the pride of upholding the only blood line with midnight green eyes. Who was he?
Thuack! “YAAAAAA!” The sounds of quarrel tore Demiri from her pondering. She sighed and growled angerly, fully knowing what was happening. A loud yawn exited from a tunnel in the back of the workshop, where a pretty sappire eyed creature blinked with equally hued spikes and skin, besides the sand-washed belly that all dragons of the blue type had.
"Mother, will Klydin ever be himself again?"
The retired crystalsmith walked over to the table where an assortment of tools and other little projects laid. Yonash picked up a deep green sphere with her one good hand. "I will never know until it happens dear. All we can do is what we've been doing." As she spoke these words she slipped on a glove to cover the clawed hand holding the orb the color of a Bey's eye.
demiri sighed with sorrow but such emotions had to wait. Klydin was in a rage again and someone had to stop him. Yonash departed from the chamber with a quick clapping of wings against the smoke-dried air. There was no joyful sound of the bells as Yonash passed through the passage with urgency and stealth. Her daughter remained behind to watch the events unfold as the history of the last couple of weeks repeated itself from the sanctuary of the cave's mouth.
At the bottom of the cliff face on the shallow beaches two blue forms wrestled about like a furious whirlpool. A slightly smaller one with burnt colors on the tips of his quills had a larger, paler foe in a headlock. Yonash descended as quietly as a thundra bat and rubbed the viridian object in her hand until it sparked with blue and purple electricity, popping off like pond fish jumping out of water in arches to catch flies. Hovering above the frothing mouths and waves of sand being kicked up, she dropped the sphere as it sizzled and crackled like frying depel strips as it fell through the air.
it hit the smaller dragon with simple thud. He gave a sharp gasp and collapsed while his body jerked and twitched. As soon as Klydin was down Demiri fluttered to the bottom to join her mother. The paler dragon sat on His haunches and breathed in deep.
"No good kid is as worse as his grandfather! Little imp should learn to control his temper," he muttered while his chest heaved. Yonash helped the older dragon get to his feet.
"He has no excuse. We will be sure to talk to his father," she replied. Demiri fetched the green shocker from the outgoing tide, the dark eye no longer alight with deadly life. Holding on to it, she walked over to Klydin, a semi-conscious lump of wing and tail, blood and sea. His eyes the color of a mountain tiger's dirt brown fur flickered with angry light. Red drool dripped from from his maw and stained the sand. Demiri sighed and picked up the stunned dragon from the ground.
The fighter still fully awake growled with fury. "I will address his parents myself, and the authorities while I'm at it! I know I wasn't the first to get into a scuffle with this ruffian and it won't be the last unless someone teaches this boy a lesson!"
"please sir, he will not do this again, I assure you!" Yonash begged.
"You would cover for this monster? He had no right to attack me as such and I will not stand for it!" With that he pushed Yonash away and sprung into the air until he was out of sight, somewhere north to the nearest sentry post.
Demiri held a quivering valloian on her shoulders. "You really did it this time you guto..."