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Description
Chapter 3:

Artha sat near the middle of the huge lecture hall, the place brimming with students, whole crews from many different cities, along with their dragons, separated slightly by the tiered amphitheater construction. Each level had plenty of room in it to allow the dragons to remain with their riders, as was the way here in the academy. Beau himself was curled up around the back of the chair Artha was sitting in as both of them tried to pay attention to the lecturer, an old veteran elite who was now teaching them tactical history from the original dragon human war, and how some of those tactics had developed into the modern day elite race and battle techniques. Important to know, since it helped build a foundation for knowing when to use it in reality.

Artha looked to his left. Kitt Wonn was sitting there, Wyldfyr crouched down next to her as both of them listened as well… but while Kitt’s eyes were focused and intense, Wyldfyr yawned. The whole ‘tactical’ aspect didn’t seem to suit him. His style had always been more of the ‘reflexive action’ type.

Then he looked to his left. Sitting there, jotting down nearly everything that was being said, was Parmon sean. If it was information of any kind, you could bet Parmon wasn’t going to let it slip past him. He’d probably be up past midnight tonight memorizing everything said today.

Sadly, this was the limit of the Penn crew that had been allowed to come to academy. Artha’s younger brother, Lance, and his dragon Fracshun had been deemed both ‘too young’ to attend. When he asked why, Sentrus had obligingly explained to the young boy and his dragon that Fracshun, while being a blue energy class dragon of perhaps the finest breeding she’d ever seen, was simply too young to endure the transformation that would happen during the academy training, unlike Beau, Wyldfyre, and Cyrano, who were fully mature adults.

Still, nothing had really changed yet. It’d been nothing but lectures, lectures, and more lectures for the past month since they’d arrived here in the academy. They were still taking lessons in the top levels, and it was all theory, history, and tactics. Enough book learning to make a normal person’s head spin. Kitt, as usual, was doing better with this than Artha, but Parmon? Parmon was making this whole thing look like a walk though sun city park; that is, way too easy. Cyrano, meanwhile, merely slumped his chin on the table next to Parmon and watched the front board where the teacher was speaking with slightly glassy eyes… he was just as uninterested in this as Wyldfyre.

Beau, however, was paying attention with a strange light in his eyes… Artha’d been curious about that the first day of history classes, and had called his father, who explained that Beau was probably having a lot of stored memories from his predecessor coming to the surface, triggered by the knowledge the professor was passing along.

“Huh? What?” Parmon suddenly said, looking around, shrugged, and went back to copying down his notes. A second later, Artha noticed something small, and white, sail through the air, lightly impact Parmon in the back of the neck, and fall to the floor, but not before making the very tan young man nearly jump out of his skin.

“Eyyahh! What was that?” Parmon yelped, jumping out of his chair.

“Is something the matter, mister Sean?” the teacher said, turning around and looking at the class for perhaps the first time in over an hour.

“Uh… I just, felt something touch my neck…” Parmon said, embarrassed at suddenly being the center of attention.

Artha raised an eyebrow and looked at the floor, scanning for the object he’d just seen.

“Probably your dragon, Mr. Sean. Please, sit down and do keep quiet, I still have half an hour left, and I plan to make the most of every second. Now where was I…” he said, turning back to the board.

Parmon blushed, cringed, and sat back down, trying to make himself as small as possible.

Artha, meanwhile, located the object, and stretched his foot out to gently nudge it over closer to his chair. It was very light, and rolled very easily… Beau’s concentration broken, looked down at what his rider was doing, and raised one of his eye ridges.

Keeping his eyes on the professor in the front of the room, artha leaned over until his face was half under the table, his arm reaching until his fingers met the tiny object, and picked it up, he looked at it closely…

“A paper ball?” he whispered. It was a tiny scrap of paper when he unfolded it. It had no writing on it, but it had been compressed tightly into a small rumpled sphere. Suddenly another one landed on the table between Artha and Parmon… followed by another. Artha looked up and behind them, along with Beau, just in time to see a student from a red draconium oriented crew from outside the city, tiered above them in the lecture hall, flick another paper ball randomly out into the open space in front of him… this one went flying to the left of them… and ended up landing… directly on top of Moordryd Paynn.

It bounced off the top of his head, and onto the desk infront of him. He’d been paying almost as close attention to this lecture as Kitt… a real intense guy, that one. But suddenly, with the tiny impact on his head, and seeing the object land in front of him on the table, he suddenly got angry.

“Okay!” he said, standing and holding the paper ball up. “Who threw this at me!?”

The silence that followed that outburst was palpable, and the professor turned. “Mister Paynn?” He said slowly.

“Someone threw a piece of paper at me!” he said. “What is this, grade school!?” he shouted at the rest of the room.

Artha glanced briefly up at the person he’d seen flicking the paper balls out. The other teen was looking decidedly guilty and trying to make himself smaller.

“If someone has been throwing paper or blowing spitwads, I will handle it, young Mr. Paynn. Though I do admit, I’d prefer to see a modicum of maturity amongst my students.” The professor said gravely. “Now if everyone will please remain focused. I plan on delivering my full lecture, regardless of how long we have to take beyond scheduled class time.” He said, which elicited a groan from more than half the assembled class.

<<>>

“That really scrapes my scales! This is the academy, and someone in there was acting like a worse child than… than…” Parmon said, flustered. His penmanship the rest of the lecture had been below his usual caliber due to his frustration at the realization that someone had been flicking paper, at him, in an academy lecture class.

“Lance, right?” Artha ventured.

“Yes!” Parmon said, throwing his hands up in the air in disgust.

“Nah, Lance is more mature than that, at least.” Kitt said.

The group of six, three humans and three dragons, walked along one of the grand corridors in the academy, heading to the cafeteria, possibly one of the few modernized parts of the place. The riders saw their dragons to feed stations and walked over to the beginning of the line where they grabbed a tray each.

“I wonder what the little guy’s been up to.” Artha mused.

“Probably getting himself into trouble, as always.” Kitt said.

“Yeah, and I’m not there to bail him out if he gets in over his head.” Artha replied.

“Oh don’t worry Artha, your father’s a responsible one. I’m sure he can keep things together without us.”

<<>>

“Lance?” Connor said into the near silence of the newly rebuilt penthouse atop the Penn racing stables building, the corner structure of the very private stables of the Penn family and their closest friends. “Lance, where are you? If I find you playing battleground dragon with your homework not done…” he said, opening up the door to the young boy’s room, and was confronted by a strange sight. Lance’s backpack was lying lopsided on top of his bed where it had apparently been tossed, and on the dresser next to it was the vid-game unit. It was inactive, but had a small blinking light to indicate that there were stored messages. Curious, Connor picked it up and activated it. The holographic screen snapped into view, and on it was a window that said ‘56 unread messages’. That was highly unusual, considering how often Lance used this.

Sighing, Connor turned the thing off and replaced it where he’d found it, then walked downstairs and out the front door, where he saw that Fracshun’s stall door was open. Going to investigate, Connor saw also that the stall that held most of the stable’s gear was also open, and some of the white aero, red boost, and blue balance gear were out.

“Lance!?” Connor shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. He didn’t receive an answer, but did hear something… the sudden sound of red booster pods activating somewhere out on the private track that Connor used in training his dragons. Turning and sprinting out, Connor saw his young son on the back of his dragon, racing around the track at top speed.

Connor grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked out… Lance’s face was set in intense focus as he sped along on Fracshun, the dragon in question looking somewhat worn out, but giving everything he could.

“Lance! Lance!” Connor shouted, then grabbed a megaphone. “LANCE!” he yelled into the thing, making the young boy suddenly pull his dragon up, the young creature coming to a screeching halt that left small claw marks in the blue metal of the track.

“What are you doing?” Connor said a minute later as Lance walked Fracshun over. The young dragon was panting, catching his breath after what had apparently been a hard workout.

“Training.” Lance said, evasively.

“By yourself?” Connor said. “Lance, if you wanted to work with Fracshun you should’ve told me.”

“You told me that blue dragons are good at working with their riders, that they learn together well.”

“I did, yes.” Connor said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe for you to be out here unsupervised.”

“Everyone thinks I’m too young to do anything!” Lance said, angrily.

“Lance, is this about what Sentrus said?” Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“No!” Lance said, then added a moment later under his breath. “Maybe.”

Connor looked over the pair. Lance was young, and Sentrus couldn’t allow him into the academy along with the rest of the crew for very obvious reasons, but that didn’t make it any easier for the boy to accept. Not least of which Fracshun felt just as abandoned by the rest of the Penn racing team as his rider apparently did. Lance had been stoic following the departure of Artha, Parmon and Kitt, along with their dragons, but Beau in particular had treated Fracshun almost the same way Artha treated Lance, like a beloved little brother. Suddenly finding himself alone in the empty stable had driven Fracshun into a depression, and he’d been despondent for days.

“Look, Lance… Fracshun, I know you two feel left out, but wearing yourself out on the practice track like this isn’t going to reunite you with them any faster.”

“This isn’t about that!” lance said. “If Artha and Beau are training, then I’m going to train too, and so is Fracshun!”

Connor nodded. “I suppose it is time then.” He said.

“Time for what?” Lance asked, confused.

“We’ll discuss this later… just give Fracshun a rest and see to your homework for now, ok?”

“Fine…” Lance said, urging Fracshun on gently with the controls. While still breathing heavily, Fracshun walked past Connor and back to his stall.

Connor watched the young dragon walk past. Fracshun was the result of one of the lines of dragons he’d bred in the creation of Beau, and was a fine specimen, if a little young. Aside from the unusually large amount of bright orangey yellow color over most of his body, he showed champion lines for his breed; he had a thick, barrel chest that sometimes looked to be too big for the rest of him, which meant he had a great deal of lung capacity. His long, slim legs gave him a very long stride and powerful spring in his step, and those heavy fused middleclaws gave him great grip for cornering. When he grew to full maturity, he might be faster than Beau… well, by that time, hopefully, Beau would have undergone the transformation into a full sized elite class dragon, and would be a towering force, and very fast considering his stride. Still, Fracshun had some of the finest lines of a running dragon for a quadruped he’d seen since Beau himself.

Later that evening, after Lance had done his homework, shared a rather silent dinner with his father, and helped his father load the dishes into the washer, Conner turned to Lance, drying his hands on a paper towel.

“Ok Lance, follow me.” He said.

“Uh… ok.” The boy said, confused again.

Connor led Lance out to Fracshun’s stall, opened it, and went inside. Fracshun was asleep, but woke almost as soon as the door opened. He lifted his head, then stood, shook himself a little, and trotted over.

“Lance, Fracshun.” Connor said, sitting down and crossing his legs on the stall’s floor. “I know it’s been hard for you, not being able to go to the academy with Artha, Beau and the others.”

“It’s not fair! I wanna learn that stuff too! We’re being left behind while Artha, Kitt and even Parmon go off to become big heroes. We were with them through everything, we should be there too!” Lance said. Fracshun nodded his head emphatically in agreement.

“You earned your place alongside them before, I know.” Connor said, knowing full well how several times lance had been the savior, through direct action or otherwise. “But that was different, what your brother and the others are going through now is a totally different league… one you’re just not ready for.”

“And how will I ever be ready for it? It feels like I’m going to be stuck like this forever!” Lance said, tears welling up in his eyes.

“And you want to train to change that then?” Connor asked.

“Yes!” Lance blurted out.

Connor smiled. “I’ve known other youngsters, some smaller than you, who felt like that. Worked with them too. And you’ve got a fire in you as bright as any I’ve seen.” Connor said, watching both the young boy and his dragon’s heads raise at his words.

“You mean…?” Lance said.

“I’ll work with you, both of you, if you’re really set on this.” Connor said.

“Yeah!” Lance cried out, throwing his arms around his dad’s neck and hugging him, Fracshun even came over and started licking Connor’s face on the other side of lance’s head.

“Hey! Give an old man some space to breathe!” Connor said laughing. A moment later the two youths backed off.

“So, you’ll teach me like you taught Artha? With the obstacle course and all?” Lance asked.

“Well, I think it’s a little early for that level.” Connor said, and saw the two of them frown again. “But we can definitely work towards it.” He continued, and watched the smiles return instantly.

“Thanks dad!” Lance said emphatically. Fracshun made a happy purring noise.

<<>>

Compashun sat, leaning right up against the door of her stall. The stylized grate in the door was uniform on all the stall doors here, which allowed the dragonesses to talk to each other sometimes, even though they couldn’t see each other unless they were across from each other.

“I’m telling you, something happened in my stall last night, and it showed me things!” she said in a series of growls and ‘barks’. The dragonesses on either side of her and across the aisle were listening to her.

“And you say it just ‘came out of the wall?” another dragoness replied, skeptically. “I’ve never seen anything like that happen.”

“I have.” Said a voice across the aisle and down a few stalls. “Once, one of the keepers pressed something and made it appear, then he put something into the hole in the wall and it started making noises and moving images. The keeper said it was… what did he say? A ‘recording’?”

“What was on this… recording?” yet another dragoness, another one with an actual name, Tendyr, asked.

“Well…” said the other one who had just confirmed some of Compashun’s story. “When the keeper did it, it was a lot of humans talking and doing things in places I’ve never seen before. He said something about… ‘missing it’ the night before, so he wanted to ‘watch’ it here. He sat with me while doing it.”

“So, it’s real then. Are you telling us that’s why you snapped at Banten earlier?” The skeptical dragoness asked.

“Yeah, that wasn’t nice. He came with a bag full of Draconie-yum bars and you went and snarled at him!” said yet another dragoness.

“I’m not taking any more ‘treats’ from that human!” Compashun said in a low roar.

“Look, a little broken sleep is a bit much to get your tail bent out of shape over Compashun.” Said the skeptic. “Aren’t you blowing this whole thing out of proportion?”

“You wouldn’t think that if you saw what I saw.” Compashun growled.

“Yes, yes, what did you see anyway?” Tendyr asked, sounding very curious.

“That… ‘recording’… it showed me what those things that come out of us are.” Compashun said, slowly, and quietly.

Silence fell for almost a full minute, before every single dragon within earshot was speaking, demanding to know more.

“Shutup in there!” A human shouted down into the aisle, banging a bucket against the wall several times till the dragonesses quieted down again. “Bloody dragons. Guy can’t even get a nap in...”

After a few minutes of silence, one of the dragonesses whispered, barely audible, over to Compashun. “What did it say?” she asked.

“Yes, please tell us… we’ll try to stay quiet, but we really want to know.” The formerly skeptical dragoness implored, her voice a low, urgent grunt.

Compashun was silent for a minute, looking at the ground. She closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh. “They’re called ‘eggs’. And they’re very, very important, to the humans, yes, but they should be very important to us, too.”

“Important?” Tendyr said confused. “Why?”

“They don’t look particularly useful. What do they do?” the skeptic asked.

“They hold… tiny dragons.” Compashun said, very quietly.

“W… What was that?” Tendyr asked.

“You know how you sniff them, and they smell like you, but different? It’s because they’re a part of you. Made from our flesh…” Compashun said. “New life. Young dragons come from eggs… and eggs come from us.”

Despite their claims at being able to keep quiet, this revelation, delivered so bluntly, instantly had all the dragonesses in earshot in a complete uproar. It lasted for several minutes, and the keepers had to come into the aisle and try to calm the dragonesses down personally. One of the keepers, Banten, found it odd that Compashun, who was acting oddly aggressive that morning, was the only dragoness not working herself into a near frenzy in her stall, though she did growl low at him when he tried to come over near her, so he backpedaled and left her alone.

It took nearly an hour for everything to quiet down again. Even then, the keepers were very wary about not watching the dragonesses, so they kept patrolling, up and down the aisle, for the rest of the day, precluding any further discussion amongst the females of that corridor.

Sometime after the lights went out, and the keepers mostly left for the day, Compashun heard a gentle hiss coming from outside her stall door, so she walked over.

“Please… tell us more?” a new, very timid female voice said, quietly, across the aisle, and several stalls down, but she heard her.

“Very well.” Compashun said, sighing.

Description
Chapter 3:

Artha sat near the middle of the huge lecture hall, the place brimming with students, whole crews from many different cities, along with their dragons, separated slightly by the tiered amphitheater construction. Each level had plenty of room in it to allow the dragons to remain with their riders, as was the way here in the academy. Beau himself was curled up around the back of the chair Artha was sitting in as both of them tried to pay attention to the lecturer, an old veteran elite who was now teaching them tactical history from the original dragon human war, and how some of those tactics had developed into the modern day elite race and battle techniques. Important to know, since it helped build a foundation for knowing when to use it in reality.

Artha looked to his left. Kitt Wonn was sitting there, Wyldfyr crouched down next to her as both of them listened as well… but while Kitt’s eyes were focused and intense, Wyldfyr yawned. The whole ‘tactical’ aspect didn’t seem to suit him. His style had always been more of the ‘reflexive action’ type.

Then he looked to his left. Sitting there, jotting down nearly everything that was being said, was Parmon sean. If it was information of any kind, you could bet Parmon wasn’t going to let it slip past him. He’d probably be up past midnight tonight memorizing everything said today.

Sadly, this was the limit of the Penn crew that had been allowed to come to academy. Artha’s younger brother, Lance, and his dragon Fracshun had been deemed both ‘too young’ to attend. When he asked why, Sentrus had obligingly explained to the young boy and his dragon that Fracshun, while being a blue energy class dragon of perhaps the finest breeding she’d ever seen, was simply too young to endure the transformation that would happen during the academy training, unlike Beau, Wyldfyre, and Cyrano, who were fully mature adults.

Still, nothing had really changed yet. It’d been nothing but lectures, lectures, and more lectures for the past month since they’d arrived here in the academy. They were still taking lessons in the top levels, and it was all theory, history, and tactics. Enough book learning to make a normal person’s head spin. Kitt, as usual, was doing better with this than Artha, but Parmon? Parmon was making this whole thing look like a walk though sun city park; that is, way too easy. Cyrano, meanwhile, merely slumped his chin on the table next to Parmon and watched the front board where the teacher was speaking with slightly glassy eyes… he was just as uninterested in this as Wyldfyre.

Beau, however, was paying attention with a strange light in his eyes… Artha’d been curious about that the first day of history classes, and had called his father, who explained that Beau was probably having a lot of stored memories from his predecessor coming to the surface, triggered by the knowledge the professor was passing along.

“Huh? What?” Parmon suddenly said, looking around, shrugged, and went back to copying down his notes. A second later, Artha noticed something small, and white, sail through the air, lightly impact Parmon in the back of the neck, and fall to the floor, but not before making the very tan young man nearly jump out of his skin.

“Eyyahh! What was that?” Parmon yelped, jumping out of his chair.

“Is something the matter, mister Sean?” the teacher said, turning around and looking at the class for perhaps the first time in over an hour.

“Uh… I just, felt something touch my neck…” Parmon said, embarrassed at suddenly being the center of attention.

Artha raised an eyebrow and looked at the floor, scanning for the object he’d just seen.

“Probably your dragon, Mr. Sean. Please, sit down and do keep quiet, I still have half an hour left, and I plan to make the most of every second. Now where was I…” he said, turning back to the board.

Parmon blushed, cringed, and sat back down, trying to make himself as small as possible.

Artha, meanwhile, located the object, and stretched his foot out to gently nudge it over closer to his chair. It was very light, and rolled very easily… Beau’s concentration broken, looked down at what his rider was doing, and raised one of his eye ridges.

Keeping his eyes on the professor in the front of the room, artha leaned over until his face was half under the table, his arm reaching until his fingers met the tiny object, and picked it up, he looked at it closely…

“A paper ball?” he whispered. It was a tiny scrap of paper when he unfolded it. It had no writing on it, but it had been compressed tightly into a small rumpled sphere. Suddenly another one landed on the table between Artha and Parmon… followed by another. Artha looked up and behind them, along with Beau, just in time to see a student from a red draconium oriented crew from outside the city, tiered above them in the lecture hall, flick another paper ball randomly out into the open space in front of him… this one went flying to the left of them… and ended up landing… directly on top of Moordryd Paynn.

It bounced off the top of his head, and onto the desk infront of him. He’d been paying almost as close attention to this lecture as Kitt… a real intense guy, that one. But suddenly, with the tiny impact on his head, and seeing the object land in front of him on the table, he suddenly got angry.

“Okay!” he said, standing and holding the paper ball up. “Who threw this at me!?”

The silence that followed that outburst was palpable, and the professor turned. “Mister Paynn?” He said slowly.

“Someone threw a piece of paper at me!” he said. “What is this, grade school!?” he shouted at the rest of the room.

Artha glanced briefly up at the person he’d seen flicking the paper balls out. The other teen was looking decidedly guilty and trying to make himself smaller.

“If someone has been throwing paper or blowing spitwads, I will handle it, young Mr. Paynn. Though I do admit, I’d prefer to see a modicum of maturity amongst my students.” The professor said gravely. “Now if everyone will please remain focused. I plan on delivering my full lecture, regardless of how long we have to take beyond scheduled class time.” He said, which elicited a groan from more than half the assembled class.

<<>>

“That really scrapes my scales! This is the academy, and someone in there was acting like a worse child than… than…” Parmon said, flustered. His penmanship the rest of the lecture had been below his usual caliber due to his frustration at the realization that someone had been flicking paper, at him, in an academy lecture class.

“Lance, right?” Artha ventured.

“Yes!” Parmon said, throwing his hands up in the air in disgust.

“Nah, Lance is more mature than that, at least.” Kitt said.

The group of six, three humans and three dragons, walked along one of the grand corridors in the academy, heading to the cafeteria, possibly one of the few modernized parts of the place. The riders saw their dragons to feed stations and walked over to the beginning of the line where they grabbed a tray each.

“I wonder what the little guy’s been up to.” Artha mused.

“Probably getting himself into trouble, as always.” Kitt said.

“Yeah, and I’m not there to bail him out if he gets in over his head.” Artha replied.

“Oh don’t worry Artha, your father’s a responsible one. I’m sure he can keep things together without us.”

<<>>

“Lance?” Connor said into the near silence of the newly rebuilt penthouse atop the Penn racing stables building, the corner structure of the very private stables of the Penn family and their closest friends. “Lance, where are you? If I find you playing battleground dragon with your homework not done…” he said, opening up the door to the young boy’s room, and was confronted by a strange sight. Lance’s backpack was lying lopsided on top of his bed where it had apparently been tossed, and on the dresser next to it was the vid-game unit. It was inactive, but had a small blinking light to indicate that there were stored messages. Curious, Connor picked it up and activated it. The holographic screen snapped into view, and on it was a window that said ‘56 unread messages’. That was highly unusual, considering how often Lance used this.

Sighing, Connor turned the thing off and replaced it where he’d found it, then walked downstairs and out the front door, where he saw that Fracshun’s stall door was open. Going to investigate, Connor saw also that the stall that held most of the stable’s gear was also open, and some of the white aero, red boost, and blue balance gear were out.

“Lance!?” Connor shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. He didn’t receive an answer, but did hear something… the sudden sound of red booster pods activating somewhere out on the private track that Connor used in training his dragons. Turning and sprinting out, Connor saw his young son on the back of his dragon, racing around the track at top speed.

Connor grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked out… Lance’s face was set in intense focus as he sped along on Fracshun, the dragon in question looking somewhat worn out, but giving everything he could.

“Lance! Lance!” Connor shouted, then grabbed a megaphone. “LANCE!” he yelled into the thing, making the young boy suddenly pull his dragon up, the young creature coming to a screeching halt that left small claw marks in the blue metal of the track.

“What are you doing?” Connor said a minute later as Lance walked Fracshun over. The young dragon was panting, catching his breath after what had apparently been a hard workout.

“Training.” Lance said, evasively.

“By yourself?” Connor said. “Lance, if you wanted to work with Fracshun you should’ve told me.”

“You told me that blue dragons are good at working with their riders, that they learn together well.”

“I did, yes.” Connor said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe for you to be out here unsupervised.”

“Everyone thinks I’m too young to do anything!” Lance said, angrily.

“Lance, is this about what Sentrus said?” Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“No!” Lance said, then added a moment later under his breath. “Maybe.”

Connor looked over the pair. Lance was young, and Sentrus couldn’t allow him into the academy along with the rest of the crew for very obvious reasons, but that didn’t make it any easier for the boy to accept. Not least of which Fracshun felt just as abandoned by the rest of the Penn racing team as his rider apparently did. Lance had been stoic following the departure of Artha, Parmon and Kitt, along with their dragons, but Beau in particular had treated Fracshun almost the same way Artha treated Lance, like a beloved little brother. Suddenly finding himself alone in the empty stable had driven Fracshun into a depression, and he’d been despondent for days.

“Look, Lance… Fracshun, I know you two feel left out, but wearing yourself out on the practice track like this isn’t going to reunite you with them any faster.”

“This isn’t about that!” lance said. “If Artha and Beau are training, then I’m going to train too, and so is Fracshun!”

Connor nodded. “I suppose it is time then.” He said.

“Time for what?” Lance asked, confused.

“We’ll discuss this later… just give Fracshun a rest and see to your homework for now, ok?”

“Fine…” Lance said, urging Fracshun on gently with the controls. While still breathing heavily, Fracshun walked past Connor and back to his stall.

Connor watched the young dragon walk past. Fracshun was the result of one of the lines of dragons he’d bred in the creation of Beau, and was a fine specimen, if a little young. Aside from the unusually large amount of bright orangey yellow color over most of his body, he showed champion lines for his breed; he had a thick, barrel chest that sometimes looked to be too big for the rest of him, which meant he had a great deal of lung capacity. His long, slim legs gave him a very long stride and powerful spring in his step, and those heavy fused middleclaws gave him great grip for cornering. When he grew to full maturity, he might be faster than Beau… well, by that time, hopefully, Beau would have undergone the transformation into a full sized elite class dragon, and would be a towering force, and very fast considering his stride. Still, Fracshun had some of the finest lines of a running dragon for a quadruped he’d seen since Beau himself.

Later that evening, after Lance had done his homework, shared a rather silent dinner with his father, and helped his father load the dishes into the washer, Conner turned to Lance, drying his hands on a paper towel.

“Ok Lance, follow me.” He said.

“Uh… ok.” The boy said, confused again.

Connor led Lance out to Fracshun’s stall, opened it, and went inside. Fracshun was asleep, but woke almost as soon as the door opened. He lifted his head, then stood, shook himself a little, and trotted over.

“Lance, Fracshun.” Connor said, sitting down and crossing his legs on the stall’s floor. “I know it’s been hard for you, not being able to go to the academy with Artha, Beau and the others.”

“It’s not fair! I wanna learn that stuff too! We’re being left behind while Artha, Kitt and even Parmon go off to become big heroes. We were with them through everything, we should be there too!” Lance said. Fracshun nodded his head emphatically in agreement.

“You earned your place alongside them before, I know.” Connor said, knowing full well how several times lance had been the savior, through direct action or otherwise. “But that was different, what your brother and the others are going through now is a totally different league… one you’re just not ready for.”

“And how will I ever be ready for it? It feels like I’m going to be stuck like this forever!” Lance said, tears welling up in his eyes.

“And you want to train to change that then?” Connor asked.

“Yes!” Lance blurted out.

Connor smiled. “I’ve known other youngsters, some smaller than you, who felt like that. Worked with them too. And you’ve got a fire in you as bright as any I’ve seen.” Connor said, watching both the young boy and his dragon’s heads raise at his words.

“You mean…?” Lance said.

“I’ll work with you, both of you, if you’re really set on this.” Connor said.

“Yeah!” Lance cried out, throwing his arms around his dad’s neck and hugging him, Fracshun even came over and started licking Connor’s face on the other side of lance’s head.

“Hey! Give an old man some space to breathe!” Connor said laughing. A moment later the two youths backed off.

“So, you’ll teach me like you taught Artha? With the obstacle course and all?” Lance asked.

“Well, I think it’s a little early for that level.” Connor said, and saw the two of them frown again. “But we can definitely work towards it.” He continued, and watched the smiles return instantly.

“Thanks dad!” Lance said emphatically. Fracshun made a happy purring noise.

<<>>

Compashun sat, leaning right up against the door of her stall. The stylized grate in the door was uniform on all the stall doors here, which allowed the dragonesses to talk to each other sometimes, even though they couldn’t see each other unless they were across from each other.

“I’m telling you, something happened in my stall last night, and it showed me things!” she said in a series of growls and ‘barks’. The dragonesses on either side of her and across the aisle were listening to her.

“And you say it just ‘came out of the wall?” another dragoness replied, skeptically. “I’ve never seen anything like that happen.”

“I have.” Said a voice across the aisle and down a few stalls. “Once, one of the keepers pressed something and made it appear, then he put something into the hole in the wall and it started making noises and moving images. The keeper said it was… what did he say? A ‘recording’?”

“What was on this… recording?” yet another dragoness, another one with an actual name, Tendyr, asked.

“Well…” said the other one who had just confirmed some of Compashun’s story. “When the keeper did it, it was a lot of humans talking and doing things in places I’ve never seen before. He said something about… ‘missing it’ the night before, so he wanted to ‘watch’ it here. He sat with me while doing it.”

“So, it’s real then. Are you telling us that’s why you snapped at Banten earlier?” The skeptical dragoness asked.

“Yeah, that wasn’t nice. He came with a bag full of Draconie-yum bars and you went and snarled at him!” said yet another dragoness.

“I’m not taking any more ‘treats’ from that human!” Compashun said in a low roar.

“Look, a little broken sleep is a bit much to get your tail bent out of shape over Compashun.” Said the skeptic. “Aren’t you blowing this whole thing out of proportion?”

“You wouldn’t think that if you saw what I saw.” Compashun growled.

“Yes, yes, what did you see anyway?” Tendyr asked, sounding very curious.

“That… ‘recording’… it showed me what those things that come out of us are.” Compashun said, slowly, and quietly.

Silence fell for almost a full minute, before every single dragon within earshot was speaking, demanding to know more.

“Shutup in there!” A human shouted down into the aisle, banging a bucket against the wall several times till the dragonesses quieted down again. “Bloody dragons. Guy can’t even get a nap in...”

After a few minutes of silence, one of the dragonesses whispered, barely audible, over to Compashun. “What did it say?” she asked.

“Yes, please tell us… we’ll try to stay quiet, but we really want to know.” The formerly skeptical dragoness implored, her voice a low, urgent grunt.

Compashun was silent for a minute, looking at the ground. She closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh. “They’re called ‘eggs’. And they’re very, very important, to the humans, yes, but they should be very important to us, too.”

“Important?” Tendyr said confused. “Why?”

“They don’t look particularly useful. What do they do?” the skeptic asked.

“They hold… tiny dragons.” Compashun said, very quietly.

“W… What was that?” Tendyr asked.

“You know how you sniff them, and they smell like you, but different? It’s because they’re a part of you. Made from our flesh…” Compashun said. “New life. Young dragons come from eggs… and eggs come from us.”

Despite their claims at being able to keep quiet, this revelation, delivered so bluntly, instantly had all the dragonesses in earshot in a complete uproar. It lasted for several minutes, and the keepers had to come into the aisle and try to calm the dragonesses down personally. One of the keepers, Banten, found it odd that Compashun, who was acting oddly aggressive that morning, was the only dragoness not working herself into a near frenzy in her stall, though she did growl low at him when he tried to come over near her, so he backpedaled and left her alone.

It took nearly an hour for everything to quiet down again. Even then, the keepers were very wary about not watching the dragonesses, so they kept patrolling, up and down the aisle, for the rest of the day, precluding any further discussion amongst the females of that corridor.

Sometime after the lights went out, and the keepers mostly left for the day, Compashun heard a gentle hiss coming from outside her stall door, so she walked over.

“Please… tell us more?” a new, very timid female voice said, quietly, across the aisle, and several stalls down, but she heard her.

“Very well.” Compashun said, sighing.