Chapter 0 – Prologue

It was a rainy night. Big drops of water were escaping the heaven and falling on the world.

There was no sound except of the splashing water. A man slowly wandered through the streets, wearing a black coat. He was already soaked, but he didn’t seem to care about it at all.

His eyes were dead. This man was Drake, a former soldier who returned to his country after a long war. After the war he didn’t really find back into the normal life of a citizen.

He just couldn’t after the things that happened. Originally he had 3 good friends, you could say they were brothers. All of them were young and wanted to see the world, so they signed up voluntarily to go to war. It seemed like a good idea to them, they thirsted for adventure and action. They completed their military training and went to war. Everything went fine, they fought for their country and killed soldiers of the enemy nations. They felt like heroes and Drake even got a medal for his services. But it came the day when everything was destined to end.

It was supposed to be an abandoned village without any enemy activities and at first sight that seemed to be true. Drake, who was the leader of his squad, decided to simply walk into the village, because he thought it was save and after lots of long hard missions with blood he wanted to give him and his squad a pause. As they went into the village, suddenly a loud shout could be heard! Everywhere around them were soldiers jumping out of holes and standing up on rooftops. They all pointed their weapons at them and started to fire their guns.

Bullets were flying faster then the eye could see and explosions could be seen behind them, cutting off their retreat. Two of Drakes brothers instantly got riddled with bullets, until you couldn’t even recognize them anymore and fell to the ground screaming. Drake reacted fast and jumped behind a wall and tried to return fire, but his last remaining brother got lacerated with a grenade. Drake stopped firing his gun and just started lifelessly on the spot where his first brother turned into pieces. He was done…he couldn’t fight anymore…he just wanted to die. So he stood up and walked around the corner, into the bullet rain….and was hit by three bullets. He dropped to the ground, thinking that he would see his brothers again soon, and everything went black.

After that you might think that he died, but he didn’t. The soldiers who attacked him found him barely alive and decided to take him with them to interrogate.

The treated his injuries just as much that he wouldn’t die and locked him into a prison. Everytime when he would wake up, a special soldier, a torturer would come and torture him until his voice was gone and he couldn’t speak anymore. He forgot how to form words, he couldn’t point his finger anymore and he forgot most of his memories. That continued for over 3 years and after that his whole body was full of scars and open wounds. He was so thin that he could fit between the cellbars, but his mind was broken. He didn’t even think of escaping and even if he did he was too weak to even walk 5 meters. Someday the enemy union which he was a prisoner from got annihilated from another country and all the prisoners were freed. That included him and he got transported with the others to the winning country. He didn’t even know which one it was, but it was not important. He couldn’t really think…only feel and the pain stopped. At least the pain on his body, but the pain in his heart stayed. You could say that he became crazy. That was a year ago.

He now looked like an old man, even though he was just 24 years old. He would just wander through the streets everyday like he did now. He didn’t have a purpose in his life anymore and his thinking was limited to things like “where can I get food” or “which people are dangerous”. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t kill himself long ago, but something seemed to not let him go. The only thing that he would have pleasure in was watching people getting tattooed. He didn’t know why he did this but his subconscious seemed to consider it important. The

Tattoo artist was a good man and let him watch as much as he wanted. He even showed Drake how to tattoo, if he had the time to do it. Drake didn’t understand or memory anything of the things that happened around him…he was just like a puppet who gets control by strings of an almighty being.

In this night he had walked into an area where he didn’t belong to. All the buildings were luxurious and expensive cars were standing on the sides of the roads. He didn’t realize where he was and even if he did, it probably wouldn’t mean anything to him. Suddenly a whisper could be heard first silent but becoming louder and louder until it was almost like the roar of a mighty lion. No one could hear this sound except of Drake…but he didn’t care, nothing was important anymore in this world. The roar grew louder and somehow managed to break into his head. Drake started screaming! It was like something was trying to split his head into pieces! He threw his hands against his head and pressed as hard as he could but it didn’t help. The pain was getting terribly hard to bear and he collapsed on the ground, still screaming. No one seemed to care about his screams, every house kept being dark. Drake lost consciousness.

It was like he was in a dream…no black, no grey. There were colours again and he could see something huge in the distant, which looked like a dragon. As he tried to look harder at it to confirm his idea, the being opened a giant eye and stared directly into Drakes eyes. Drake felt like he was being stabbed by a sword out of ice. The Dragon looked at him and said with a majestic but calm voice:

“It is time…!”

Drake woke up immediately and screamed out of horror. He was still lying on the ground where he collapsed, the rain was dropping and the houses were still dark. Everything seemed unchanged, but there was actually a really big change. Drake could think again…something broke his depressive lethargic trauma and pulled him back into the world. As Drake realized that he heard a voice inside his head: “…follow the silence”. These words were almost whispered but he could still understand them and he immediately recognized the voice. “ You are the Monster that awakened me..!! Who are…forget it WHAT are you??!”.

Silence.

“Of course ... so how am I supposed to follow the silence…its not like I can see it…” he muttered and started walking in a random direction. He hadn’t walked long when he felt that something was not right. He turned around and tried to go in another direction but the feeling was still there. “Strange” he thought. He turned to the 2 other directions and felt the same…this was not the right way it seemed. “It can’t be right? No that’s impossible…” he said and watched carefully up into the rainy heavens. Still the feeling of being on the wrong path, as if he forgot something. “Thought so…” he sighed. His hope was that the being was god and he was a chosen one, but that was obviously false. He started to think that he might be hallucinating, but that wouldn’t explain how he could get a clear head again. He tried to feel inside his body, tried to get the feeling to tell him where to go. Somehow he managed to activate something and the feeling turned down to the ground. “Nah…I don’t want to go to hell thanks” he muttered and started going away. “I don’t care about this voice anymore” he thought. As he walked for ten minutes he found himself exactly on the same spot where he left from. “Impossible…what is this? Magic? I refuse..!” Drake said loudly and again prepared to walk away. To his dismay he couldn’t move.

“What the hell is-..?! he started shouting but the ground opened up beneath him swallowed him into the depths of the earth and closed right after as if nothing happened. Drake screamed in terror and his only thought was that he didn’t want to go to hell after all the things he went through. “How did I deserve this??!” he screamed as he was sinking deeper and deeper into the planet.

All of a sudden everything stopped. Drake looked carefully around, but couldn’t see anything except of an orange glow in the distance. He seemed to be in a cave. “Well whatever its not like I can go back up on my own anyway…you got me hell…but you cant surprise me anymore!!” he thought and walked closer to the orange glow. He stepped around an edge and before him presented itself a giant lava sea with bubbles of lava flowing up. A giant heat wave hit him and burned his entire hair. His skin turned red. “Holy shit!!” he shouted and tried to hide behind the wall again. He turned around and walked straight back…into a wall. The path where he came from wasn’t there anymore, and it seemed like the wall was getting closer and closer. “…does everything want me dead? What is wrong with this world?” The walls were getting closer and the only thing he could do was going near the lava sea. Every step he took brought him closer to the edge of the sea and every time more of his skin started to burn. “WHY DOES THIS WORLD WANT TO KILL ME WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE ALL THIS????!!!” He screamed while walking forward. “If I have to die here, I swear to all the gods if I reincarnate I will kill, kill, KILL EVERYTHING THAT’S IN MY WAY!! NO ONE WILL HAVE THE STRENGHT TO FIGHT AGAINST ME, I WILL BE A GOD RULING OVER EVERYTHING!!!”

With these words he jumped straight into the sea of lava not even hesitating a little bit…his whole life was a failure and he wasn’t really alive for a long time now. Drake splashed into the lava and sank down, first slow then faster. His skin and flesh was burned to nothingness his eyes melted his blood evaporated and mixed with the lava. Only his skeleton and his brain remained intact as if a magic shield was protecting them.

As he sank deeper the unimaginably hot magma turned colder and colder. Slowly red light started to gather around Drake’s skeleton. The light grew brighter and covered all of his bones. After several hours of time the bones started to turn silver coloured as if they got strengthened by the red bright light. Even his brain started to glow lightly in a golden colour and this light too, changed the thing it was surrounding. His brain turned from light pink into pure white. Drake didn’t feel any of this because he lost consciousness the moment he jumped into the sea of molten stone. If he was awake he wouldn’t believe any of the things happening. After all of the bones turned silvery a green light replaced the red and flesh, muscles and skin started to grow on the skeleton. The flesh was looking exactly like a normal humans flesh, only if you would watch extremely closely you would see small silvery layers engrave themselves into the flesh. The muscles were shot with long strings of silvery threads. His skin was forming over these two things and its colour was bright silver, it looked a little bit like scales. Soon the whole body was covered in skin, flesh and muscles and Drakes body colour returned from silver to normal. If you would look closely you would notice an inconspicuous silver layer over the skin which was almost invisible. The body wasn’t overly muscular but a normal person could not compare to it. Next the face and other important things were built. The green light formed two eyes that were small, a little skew, spaced evenly apart and sword like eyebrows above it. A straight nose grew out of the middle of his face, and a sharp mouth formed underneath it. A sturdy jaw line formed underneath his skin as his bones moved. He had a prominent chin, which let him look determined and a little bit arrogant. He had normal ears they were a little bit pointed at the end. His face looked handsome with a touch of a wild look, as if he wasn’t entirely human, but the mix of two different races. Long black hair sprouted on his head and was flowing down his back until it reached the lower half of it. His whole body got even taller then it was before and he was now almost 2 meter big. As the last change on his body was finished, the light slowly faded away. Suddenly there were distortions in the unnatural cold lava around him and a bright red light flashed. A portal looking just like the gate to hell opened up underneath his body and he was transported out of the sea into a cave again.

Drake couldn’t see anything…everything was black around him and no sound no smell nothing was reaching him. It was like he was dead. It seemed like an eternity in which he just floated in the darkness and think nothing. Then a voice called out to him: “Wake up….” the voice said. Drake didn’t react. “WAKE UP DRAKE!!!” the voice roared inside his head “I haven’t much time left..!”

Still, no reaction at all. For a while nothing happened, but suddenly accompanied by a deafening roar a red thunderbolt flashed inside Drakes body and he was jolted awake. His eyes opened abruptly and you could see that they were ice-blue with a faint touch of red around the pupil.

“…where…where am I….what….why am I alive?” he coughed trying to get air into his lungs. The first thing he noticed as he looked around was that he was totally naked, the second thing that he had no scars, no wounds and overall a completely different looking body. He felt like he could break stone with his bare hands. All of a sudden he heard the voice again. “Come……” the voice whispered. “ Lets see who did this to me….” He said and stood up. As he stood up he realized that his body was unbelievably strong compared to his old one. Even when he was still a soldier his body wasn’t nearly as strong as it was now.

“Unbelievable….what happened?” he thought when the voice once again sounded in his head “Come….I will explain”. Drake started walking in the direction his ominous feeling was telling him to go.

He walked nearly an hour and started wondering how huge this cave must be, because he could still see no end, when suddenly after a turning the tunnel ended. He was standing on the edge of a giant crater which was filled to the brim with flames.

“As if I would go into that…” he muttered and turned back, but once again a wall appeared behind him. “…I should start thinking and not walk in every dumb trap there is…” he thought upset. “Don’t worry….” The voice said.

“How the hell am I supposed to not worry if there are flames all around me…you do know that I am human right?? Humans catch fire fairly easily!” He shouted. A deep growl could be heard and suddenly a giant wave of flames flew in the direction of Drake, surrounding him. “Wait...NO!!” he screamed and tried to duck away but here was no escape and the flames ate him whole. Drake started screaming and hitting all over his body to put out the flames but they wouldn’t go out. “Dumb Human…” sighed the voice “Can’t you see that the flames aren’t hurting you?” The voice seemed to be a little upset. Drake felt around his body and, really he wasn’t in pain at all. “How is this possible…?” he asked with a shaking voice “How are any of the things that happened so far possible?? What are you? Why am I here? And why the hell do I have a new body…although I have to admit that I like it…”

“Breathe in the flames boy…you will understand and all your questions will be answered…trust me” the voice said with a calm tone. Drake noticed that he could hear the voice for real now, not only in his head. “You are here, show yourself!! I at least want to know with who I am talking!” he shouted.

A sigh could be heard and the voice answered “alright…”

Suddenly a lot of the flames from the surroundings were absorbed in the middle of the crater which was not visible for Drake before. A flapping sound could be heard and a big golden shadow leaped out of the burning flames towards the place where Drake was standing. Drake couldn’t even react, so fast was the golden shadow and from one moment on another he was standing face to face with a gigantic golden Dragon, which was breathing flames out of a dangerous looking mouth full of sharp teeth.

“Satisfied…?”

END OF THE PROLOG

If you liked it i would love to see your comments on this, as i am a really new writer and this is my first try :) Criticism please always constructiv, otherwise it doesnt help me. CptGrim