First Night in Helios
The room that Leon took me too was within a massive building behind the palace with a pretty view of the far off shore, the sound of the distant falls little more than a hum in my ears now that the hustle and bustle of the main palace wasn't drowning it out.
The building had to be made huge, given it was constructed for the sole purpose of housing visiting dragons.
According to Leon, this was made just for wild dragons, as the one bound to dragoons had their own places. This meant that Helios had to get its fair share of wild dragon visitors. Though, Leon told me that there were only four rooms, and all of them were usually empty.
"Normally they only get full in the early spring" He had told me as he lead me down a well maintained stone road toward the three story tall building with wide open archways rather than any kind of doors. "That is when many dragons migrate to the deserts to the north."
"Why there?" I had asked, enjoying the easy conversation after all the pomp and circumstance of greeting the king.
Leon looked surprised for a second, then he shoot his head with a smile.
I supposed that he remembered that I did not have much of a working knowledge of my own race.
"Dragons can breed any time of the year, but they tend to gather in the deserts in spring when they are actively looking for a mate.
It is wide open, hot, and the hunting is fun and challenging. "
Wait, so dragons had, like... desert mixers? Speed dating? Weird...
Well, then again. We were a solitary spices as a whole.
So I supposed that it would be hard to get a partner if you really wanted one, normally.
It was either wander aimlessly till you came across another dragon, hoped they were some one you even wanted to spend time with.
.. or invent a reason for dragons to gather.
Not long after leading me into a large, and mostly empty cavern of a room, Leon excused himself to go join his family, telling me that he would see me in the morning.
The room, if you could call it that, had only one piece of furniture: A bed.
A dragon bed that was. It was a depressed hole in the floor filled with various, heavy duty, pillows and cushions.
Settling into it, I looked out over the lake and sighed.
It was actually quite comfortable, and the lack of all the finery of the main palace, the wide openness, and the lack of heavy foot traffic made me feel better.
Given that it was made for wild dragons, it made sense that it wouldn't have the comforts of human living.
Why would a dragon want pretty wall paper, tables and chairs, or rugs, right?
As the day went on, I got a brief visit from Serenity, escorted by both Hannah and Leon.
She made a small apology for her mother, looking sad and awkward, and I made sure to change the topic swiftly.
They did not stay long, and Hannah ushered then out in less than an hour, Leon promising to see me in the morning once again.
As night started to fall, I curled up in my relatively comfortable bed and started thinking.
I was glad that I had reached Helios at last..
. But I still felt so far from my goal. At least I had the aid of a king now.
Surely he would have the resources to at least get me a general direction that I could then search.
It was also nice to think that Leon would be by my side as well.
It was true that we would not have the magical 'bond' that supposedly formed between a dragon and their chosen dragoon, but we did have a friendship.
Perhaps that would be enough for the young prince, though I didn't really know for sure.
Indeed, Leon was almost too nice.
Even before my offer to become his pseudo dragon, he was more than willing to go to great lengths to aid me on my quest. True, this kingdom seemed to revere dragons, but he could have just brought me here and handed me off to someone else that could lend me aid.
As a matter of fact, there were probably more qualified people here that could help me.
But, instead, he had gone out of his way to make me feel comfortable, and encouraged me so I would not loose heart.
Clearly Leon was just too nice. it almost made me annoyed, thinking that he was probably real easy to take advantage of.
Well that wouldn't do. Surely there must be some way that I could help him beyond arbitrarily inserting myself into his life for my own selfish reasons. But what could I do? Did I have some kind of talent, besides being a giant lizard, that could help him in some way?
Grumbling to myself, I rolled from one side to another, careful of my wings.
Even as a human, I was never a deep thinker.
I mean, I was essentially a friendless shut in with a penchant for an overly active imagination.
I was pretty sure that random fantasy novel scenarios played out in my head did not count as actual life experience.
.. Even in this world. And dragon self importance only carried me so far.
"Hmmm." I sighed, dumbing my claws on the stone floor. Nope, I couldn't think of any hidden talents. Heck, I couldn't even fly very well, and dragons are just supposed to know how to do that.
I mean, I could turn into a human-like shape? That wasn't common. But it wouldn't help Leon either. Besides, that and things like my earth magic were all magical skills, not actual talents.
Wait. Skills? Well, that was something I had a great deal of access to!
Since my first perusal, I hadn't yet looked through it all.
Maybe I could learn a skill that would let me do something for Leon.
Something like a power that gave my allies a temporary ability or something.
things like that happened in games... Sure, this wasn't a game.
But! If you give a girl a 'skill window' then she sure as heck was gonna start drawing similarities!
I shut my eyes, setting my head on my forepaws, and summoned the skill menu. "Hello skill window!" I thought, but the monotone 'Lottie-like' voice did not answer back. Not surprising, given it only sounded when I gained skill points and the like, and it had never answered before.
Now to do a more thorough search.
Scanning the massive list was quite the chore, but I didn't want to miss anything that might help.
Several skills caught my eye as being useful, and I might return to them again at some point, but nothing sounding like it could be used to aid Leon popped out.
There were a few buffing skills that would let me aid fighters and the like, that could be helpful.
.. But I was sort of hoping for something much more useful and dynamic then just letting Leon swing his sword better, or make it less likely that he would be hit by an enemies spell.
As I got farther and farther down the list I soon found myself in the ridiculously costly section.
By now, my hopes were not high, and to make matters worse, Most of the names of these skills just did not tell me what they were at all.
Like, what the heck was 'Blue Rain'? Was it a skill that made it rain? a weather skill? Why 'blue'?
Ugh.
I needed a skill that provided descriptions for the skills on the list.
"Hmm?" I was about to give up on the whole endeavor when a curiously named skill caught my eye. "Asteria's Divine Right?" What kind of pompous name is that? It didn't even sound like a skill at all.
Asteria? Well, if it is a 'divine' right, then that would mean that she (He?) must be one of the gods that Leon and the others had mentioned, the ones that dole out all of these skills. So they gave a skill such a gaudy name; a name that blatantly calls back to themselves.
Focusing on the skill brought up farther insight. "Oh! Its a branching skill tree?" Several skills worked this way, like the elemental magics.
My eyes widened in surprise as the list of available branches exploded before me.
A divine right indeed! The shear number of available skills was quite mind boggling.
What was most surprising was that, though I could not tell exactly what all the skills were on face value, I could see that they encompassed everything from magical abilities as well as combat skills.
As my eyes traveled of the skills I felt a sense of sadness. Whoever Asteria was, it was clear that they heavily leaned toward light and air magics... there were swordsmanship techniques, and even more aggravating, many healing and augmentation skills.
I growled and clicked my claws on the stones again, frustrated.
Why? Why was this skill bestowed upon me?
! This... This was everything that Leon had ever wanted!
It wasn't fair nor right. I was a damn dragon!
What the hell would I do with skills clearly geared toward various weapons?
I was hardly about to take a sword or lance into my paws, now was I?
Hurt and frustration welled up, almost bringing me to tears on my friend's behalf. Leon, for what ever crazy reason, had been forsaken by all of these gods, yet one decides to throw a skill at me that I can't even properly use. A skill that was perfect for the prince's dreams for his own future.
Aggravated, I exited the skill tree. I didn't want to look at it anymore. I was going to shut down the whole list and call it a night, but I saw that I was nearly at the end. Might as well finish it...
In the end, nothing else caught my eye. At least nothing that I could work out what it was they were. How was I to know what most of these crazily expensive skills were in the first place? Like: Vein Rush for sixty points. sixty?! Who would invest so much in an unknown skills? It was madness.
There were others like Volcanism, which made me think it may be any number of things, all of them violent and destructive.
Or Star Fall, which had me picturing meteors falling from the heavens!
What the heck were these gods putting into my paws!
? Did they want me to become some crazy evil extinction class monster?
If I were to go by these skills than it might mean they were hoping I would start summoning volcanoes and making it rain meteors.
No thank you!
"Ugh!" Then there was the last skill on the list: Bestowal... This stupid mystery skill cost a whopping five hundred points. There was no being in this world that could ever accumulate that number in even three life times. Even if they were battle crazy, collecting points left and right!
Though... then again... That was only a little more than a drop in the bucket for me. So I guess there was a being like that.
"Who the heck were you, Mother?" I found myself, asking myself, this question a lot these days.
How in the world had she accumulated so many skill points?
Even if she was old, she would have had to of gone on crazy killing sprees to get so many.
Her name would have been well known, yet Leon and the others had never heard of her.
So she clearly wasn't notorious for being an evil dragon.
Nor famous for being a hero dragon; if that was a thing outside of the dragoons.
Thinking about it all wasn't doing me any good right now.
I would just have to help Leon in the old fashion way: staying by his side and offering help when and where I could.
Clearly my seemingly bottomless skill options were not going to provide an easy solution.
Tomorrow I would meet the dragoon order and get an idea of what my foreseeable future would look like.
Rather than being frustrated over what i couldn't change, I should just focus on could do in the now.
Tucking my paws under my dragon self, wrapping my tail around my body and over my muzzle, I settled in for the night. The far off sounds of the falls provided the perfect white noise, lulling me into an easy and comfortable sleep.