Gatekeepers Book 1: Darkness
Trial?!

Draycos opened his eyes. Or he thought he did. When he opened them, the darkness in his vision didn’t change at all whether his eyes were open or not. Blinking a few times, his eyes slightly adjusted to his surroundings.

It was still dark, but he could at least tell that his surroundings were not something that should normally be possible. Draycos was standing/floating in a dark void, his surroundings changing from pitch black to dark grey at random, like being in the middle of a plume of black smoke. He turned in a full circle to see if there was anything else, but there was nothing else as far as he could see.

Where am I?

“So, you’ve finally made it this far, huh?” a monotonic voice called from the abyss. Draycos spun around to face the direction where the voice came from. But there wasn’t anyone there. No, wait, something was floating not too far from him. He could see the figure’s static black outline set against the dynamic background of blacks and greys, but he couldn’t tell who or what it was.

“Who are you?” Draycos asked, unnerved that he was unable to identify the shadowy figure.

“You’ve finally made it to this brink, or rather, this barrier,” the voice continued in its monotone, completely ignoring Draycos’s question. “But you won’t advance any farther until you can pass this brink. Do so on your own; I will not interfere if I can help it. But try not to die from here on out; it’ll throw a wrench in my plans if you do.”

“Like I care what your plans are!” Draycos retorted, agitated. “Who the hell are you?”

“Go,” the voice answered simply, still ignoring Draycos. After a few seconds, Draycos sighed.

“Guess I won’t be getting any info outta ya,” he grunted, scratching the back of his head. “But just lemme ask you this: how should I proceed with passing this ‘brink’? I can only imagine that there’s more than one way.”

There was a pause, and Draycos could get the sense that the figure was pleasantly surprised. “Good question,” it responded with a little less monotone in its voice than before, acknowledging Draycos’ presence for the first time. “But go and replace out that answer for yourself.” With that, the silhouette began to fade into the background.

“Wait!” Draycos shouted, reaching out with his hand in an attempt to catch that shadow. But he had lost his footing somehow and began to fall...and fall...and fall...

Crash!

With a start, Draycos awoke. He immediately began to cringe from the pain that ran across his entire body. He realized that he was standing on his feet. After a moment or two had passed, his eyes adjusted to the light, allowing him to take in his surroundings.

The first thing Draycos noticed was that he was chained up; there were cuffs around his ankles that were chained to the ground, and his arms were hanging in front of him, bound together in metal bindings attached to the ground via chains. There was another cuff around his neck, and the chain for that came down from the ceiling. It was apparently that chain that kept him standing while he was unconscious. Right next to his feet were several large fragments of stone; the crash that woke him up must have been a rock shattering when it hit the ground.

As confusing as Draycos’s current predicament was, the room he was chained up in was even more bizarre. He was in an extraordinarily large cave, though the ceiling wasn’t very high. It looked like the flat faces of two different rocks had been placed very close together, only being kept apart by the hundred or so evenly spaced stone pillars around the outside. Draycos appeared to be placed on a stone stand near the middle of the grotto, and the stand grew wider as it went down, looking like a giant staircase on four sides leading up to a single point. At the bottom of this, it proceeded to ascend once more, and the whole structure of it reminded Draycos of this game he used to play where you could build almost anything using large cubes of various materials. What was sitting on each of these outer steps, however, caused Draycos’s heart to skip a beat.

Dragons. There were hundreds of dragons surrounding Draycos. All of them were different sizes and colors; there were even some dragons whose colors Draycos had never even seen before. Some of them were standing on four legs, while others were on two legs and walked around as if they were human. They were standing on the giant steps enclosing Draycos, hissing and snarling to one another as they all glared at him. For a moment, Draycos was excited; it had been a childhood dream of his to one day meet and befriend a real dragon. But the excitement quickly faded away, replaced by confusion and anxiety. Where am I now? What’s going on?

Suddenly, all the dragons in the area fell silent and looked in the direction that Draycos’ body was facing. Draycos followed their gaze and his whole body went stiff, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

Flying between two of the stone pillars was a massive figure, certainly larger than any of the dragons currently present at Draycos’ location. Close behind the figure followed two more, slightly smaller than the first, one on the right and the other on the left. As the figures approached the thunder of dragons already gathered, they began to lower their altitude until they landed on the very edge of the topmost outer ring of steps.

They were dragons, but very different from most of the dragons Draycos had seen thus far. The most prominent difference was their size; unlike most of the other dragons in the crowd, who all stood about three to almost four times Draycos’ height, they were somewhat bigger. The one in the middle was about five times as tall as Draycos, while the two behind him were about four and a half. Draycos could also get the feeling that these three were very powerful; the whole crowd of dragons grew quiet as they approached.

A humanoid dragon flew out of the crowd of dragons gathered and landed in front of the bigger one of the three before falling to one knee and bowing. It spoke in a series of low growls and hisses.

Great. How are we gonna get anything accomplished if I can’t even understand what they’re saying?

Right on que, Draycos felt a sharp object poke him in the back of the head, right where the lump from falling down the maintenance hatch in Atlantis City was. He flinched in pain, but the chains binding him held him still. He heard some hisses and growls from behind him, so he could only guess that another dragon was standing right there. The hissing behind him came to an end, and his vision suddenly flashed. Dazed, Draycos went limp in his chains. The dragons surrounding him began hissing and growling again, but for some reason, Draycos could understand what they were saying this time.

“So, the king actually showed up for this trial,” one voice whispered.

“Of course he did,” another responded. “The treasure of our kind has been stolen. That brat’s the only lead we have on anything; the king would have to show up for this.”

“I really don’t care if the king came or not,” a third voice hissed. “I’m so angry about the Orb getting stolen; it has never happened before. I hope we get to roast the brat and have him for lunch.”

What? What the hell is going on here? Trial? Stolen orbs? Did I do something?

“You can understand us now, correct?” a voice asked behind him. Draycos attempted to turn his head and found that the chains allowed that, so he looked over his shoulder and saw a small dark grey humanoid dragon towering over him from behind, gazing at Draycos with sky blue eyes. It had apparently stooped down to touch the back of Draycos’ head with one of its claws.

“I just cast some communication magic on you,” it continued. “You should be able to understand what I’m saying right now, right?”

Magic? For real?​ Draycos shook his head and looked up at the dragon’s face. The dragon was just as large as the other dragons that had just arrived. “Y-yes, I can understand what you’re saying,” Draycos managed to spit out after a second. “Where am I? And what’s going on?”

The dark grey dragon looked at Draycos with something akin to pity before sighing and covering its face with a clawed hand. “Do you honestly not understand what’s going on?” it questioned in a stressed voice.

“Nope,” Draycos answered simply and honestly. “I have no clue what’s going on or why I’m chained up like this.”

The dragon took a deep breath before uncovering his face and looking at Draycos once more. “You’re on trial for assisting in the theft of the Orb of the First King, dragonkind’s most revered treasure,” he explained. “You could very well end up being killed if things do not go well for you. At best, you’ll probably spend fifty years in a top-security prison.”