"So," a familiar singsong voice exclaims,"You were the Chosen One all along."
Princess Aliya and Geoffery are approaching you. Both of them have a look of shock
on their faces and are regarding you much differently. Geoffery especially seems more
submissive and gets on one knee, bowing his head.
"My liege," he addresses you formally,"Please forgive my gross assumption that you
were not trustworthy. I was paranoid of spies and did not make a good judgement. I
am sorry."
"Yeah," you say, still shocked,"I forgive you."
"Terel told us of your duty," Aliya informed you,"We are to guide you to our troops and
you will command them to victory over Ulnok. But, as I mentioned, we were hoping to
talk to Prince Leoric. Would you mind the detour?"
"Uh, no, not at all."
Your strange trio of anthro raccoons walked quitely through the woods. You knew it
was dark long ago, but you could see as clearly as if it were day. You smelled
everything, even Aliya's oddly minty breath five yards ahead of you. You heard every
noise around you, every cricket, every breath of wind. All your new senses were
making you dizzy. You tried to take your mind off of these new sensations by
practicing with your powers again. You enlisted Geoffery to throw rocks randomly at
you. You never felt a single one, but you could hear them hit behind you, and by the
direction of the sound, you knew he hadn't missed. However, when Geoffery sent a
quite large stone through your already queesy gut, you decided that was enough. You
had definitely felt it slide through you. It was as if someone had pushed it through one
side and out the other, though it was not painful, just extremely weird. You pulled on
your fingers to pop them and found your left thumb in your right hand. There was no
blood, no pain, and you could still control it. You replaced your thumb and tried your
entire left arm. Though his fur was a dark chesnut, you could have sworn he turned
white when you crawled your severed arm onto Geoffery's shoulder. He shook it off
and you collapsed in laughter, your ghost arm pounding on the ground. You could see
that Aliya was disturbed too, but she couldn't help but stop and laugh at the look of
terror on Geoffery's face. You brought your arm back and reattached it, still in a fit of
giggling.
"Consider that payback for scaring the shit out of me."
"Fair enough," he agreed, still stricken.
Poor Geoffery had suffered enough so you moved on to teleporting. The feeling is that
of being forcefully pulled and becoming a smoky vapor before rematerializing and
coming to a sudden halt. You teleport between Geoffery and Aliya, playing the child's
trick of tapping them on one side then teleporting to the other. You move from ground
to tree branch to ditch to log to stump and back to the group. Feeling comfortable with
that, you practiced shapeshifting. First a bush, then a boulder; next Geoffery, finally
Aliya. The emptiness between your legs and the weight on your chest was not as
weird as you thought it should have been. Finally, you change back into yourself and
practice with fire. The producing of the flames was not hard, but controlling them was.
You nearly set the forest ablaze three times before grasping the concept. You found
you could mix teleporting with fire and leave a flaming trail between your origin and
destination.
"Sorry if I'm annoying you," you apologize after the fourth brush fire put out,"But this is
amazing!"
You hadn't tried possessing anyone yet, but you didn't want to bother Geoffery or
Aliya.
After hours of walking, Aliya turned and said,"Up ahead is the Castle Drakken, home
of Prince Leoric Flamewind, ruler of the dragons."
"He is our current military leader," Geoffery informed you,"But he will happily answer to
the Chosen One."
You weren't sure that a powerful dragon would want to give up his rank to an
inexperienced raccoon, but you did not voice your doubts. Instead, you asked,"Not to
be ignorant, but if you have dragons as allies, why are you still being oppressed by
Ulnok?"
"He is not stupid," Aliya answered,"He attacked the dragons first, and by surprise,
killing or injuring a lot of their warriors. There are maybe 50 adult dragons left and only
about half of them are able to fight."
"Oh," you remark, feeling stupid.
The castle is huge and formidable, a collosal fort of power and protection. As you
approach, an anthro bronze dragon guard hails you in an Old English accent,"Who
approacheth the gate of Castle Drakken?"
"Princess Aliya of the Lotors, I seek an audience with Prince Leoric of the Eudracons."
"Ah," the gaurd said in a flirting voice,"the masked mistress, always a pleasure
m'lady."
Geoffery growled a warning at the overstepping gaurd.
"Unless you want your wings as my boots, I'd suggest you watch your tone," he
threatened.
"Temper, temper," the gaurd teased,"You are permitted to enter."
"Thank you, kind dragon," Aliya responded,"And calm yourself, Geoffery."
He merely growled again.
Inside, they entered a long hall lit by inviting candelabras. A large throne upon which
an even larger anthro dragon was seated sat in the middle of the far end. The dragon
was unmistakeably Prince Leoric. His midnight black body was enourmous and rippled
with muscles. His blue robes and tunic showed a small patch of his orange chest
scales the same color as his leathery wings. His clubbed and spiked tail hung beside
him and swung lazily back and forth. His serpentine head was crowned by three ivory
horns as well as the gold headpiece.
"Welcome, Princess Aliya," he asked in a deep, gravelly, yet rich voice,"What can I do
for you?"
"We had come to ask for passage to the main camp," she began.
"But?" Leoric questioned.
"We came acrossn one other than the Chosen One!" You stepped forward to show
yourself. Leoric immediately stood up to see for himself. He was even more imposing
while standing.
"You're sure he is the Chosen One?"
"Yes," Aliya confirmed,"Terel told us himself and we saw his transformation."
Leoric then did as Geoffery did earlier, dropping to one knee and bowing his head.
"My liege, I am Prince Leoric Flamewind of the Eudracons at your service, Sir..."
"Kristofer Wolfsbane," you say immediately. Wait, that wasn't right. But Terel's voice
echoes in your head,{I thought that would be a more appropriate last name.} You
actually kind of liked it, so you went along with it.
"Well, Sir Wolfsbane, I am honored to meet you."
"Please," you say,"Call me Kris."
"Yes, Sir Kris." Not what you had meant, but oh well. "Well, it is late, I was just
heading to bed myself. I shall have the guest rooms made and we shall talk in the
morning, if that's all right with you."
You all agreed and were shown to three sepereate suites all next to each other. First
Aliya, then Geoffery, then yours. It was not very big, but it was lavishly decorated and
it had its own bathroom. You washed up and headed for bed. You usually slept in the
nude, but decided to leave your underwear on. After all the recent events, you quickly
fell asleep on the plushy bed.