by Ryan Johnson
Flarefur even saw the pictures with his Griffin eyes and he too was shocked by the ideal sketches. He saw a few pictures had featured Griffin wings, claws, and heads tied with on a Unicorn’s body with a Unicorn’s horn on a Griffin’s head. “I was told they used science to make weapons, not bringing dead, mutated creatures to life.”
They studied a few more creatures that closely resembled Vaeludar’s appearance: dragon wings, dragon legs in human standing position, a dragon tail, and an upper half body such as a Minotaur’s upper half or a Unicorn’s upper half that was just the Unicorn’s front body.
“It seems they were trying to create different types of hybrids composed from many dead creatures,” said Marina. She placed a finger on a corner, finally found small writing. “These notes say something about creating… hybrids.” She turned to Vaeludar who was looking at the empty jars on the bottom shelves.
“Hybrids?” said Geraldus. “Like Vaeludar? I didn’t see anything pictures using human corpses.”
Marina slowly flipped to the next page, and there were two pages fully written with notes and a few pictures of math angles and science that someone could learn in basic schooling. On the very top of the left page, Marina read “Project Hybrid of Centaur and Minotaur.” She continued to read of how to sew the body parts in the right places and using a certain DNA from something in the heart of a unicorn to make it come alive. An important noticed she read was something about “…using the DNA from the living and still active embryo we found in the dark, underground chamber and use it to bring this dead hybrid to life. And after it is active, we’ll see if it has humanity in it.”
After she read the first full page, Marina proceeded to the next page but only to see the entire page of notes crossed out and read at the top, “Project Failure: Soulless Beast” and those words were all what was written on the second page that weren’t crossed out. Marina turned the page to see the same formula being used “…DNA from the embryo in a glass jar found in the “underground, dark chamber” and also the title “Protect (of a random name)” and then reading the final title “Protect Failure: Soulless Beast!”
Marina kept turning the pages, reading everything that had written “Project Failure: Soulless Beast” and that was every single page, which meant every “Project “something” was deemed a failure by the means of use of the “…DNA from an embryo found underground.”
Geraldus, Flarefur, and Marina all skimmed through the pages and found all these Projects being failures. Every single page they skimmed and read around a few seconds before turning to the next page. The three of them saw these experiments written on the page and how they were meant to be carried out, and they had done so throughout the hundreds of pages filled with hundreds of failed projects.
Marina read that the “Soulless Beasts” coming to life end up being created to be ruthless, savaging mindless monsters. Dead creatures created from different body parts and limbs sewed into one unearthly, unnatural beasts.
And when the DNA of the embryo is poured into the sewed, bodily mutated corpse, the animal comes alive but ends up becoming a monster without a mind or a soul. “All these animals are being awakened by a blood DNA from this one embryo,” said Marina. “I’m curious to see what kind of DNA from this embryo they have found underground.”
“Maybe it’ll say in the last pages, but for now let’s keep browsing all these pages,” said Geraldus. “Even if it takes just a few hours or days.” Geraldus turned to see Vaeludar walking to the shelves close to the exploded holes.
Vaeludar saw that jars have been lightly scorched by the explosion but remained largely undamaged. Only black burnt marks and scorches but no cracks or dents had been made on the glass jars and within the jars were some type of liquid water filled to the glasses’ brim and the insides found only in animals.
He circled around half way around the lab room. Vaeludar saw only the broken tables and jars everywhere. Even if the lab was a large size to fit three Dragons, Vaeludar didn’t seem to be finding what he could be looking for with his eyes. His parents conducting experiments and were trying to bring them back from the dead using blood DNA from a single embryo was confusing his hybrid mind. “Where do I fit into all this?” he asked. “Did these experiments make them decide to come together in a union not for love but for experimentation?”
Marina sadly looked at Vaeludar trying to find if he was somehow connected between the experiments and Ralenskrit and Belverda. She looked back at the book and the pages she kept reading had all the same failed experiments. There was nothing new, just dead creatures mixed into a single monster.
Just as she turned to the last few pages near the back of the book, there were notes regarding the embryo Ralenskrit and Belverda found in this dark, underground chamber. The letters, like most of the other words in the book, had been flared and Marina’s fishy eyes could easily see what had been written there. She read a few lines in her mind, and instead of reading out loud, she decided to point to important facts she was finding interesting.
She loudly spoke so Vaeludar could hear: “The embryo found seemed have been very old like ancient old.” Her face showed a large interest of the embryo. “This embryo, according to Ralenskrit and Belverda, is tens of thousands of years old. The location they found it in was in a mountain, a lone mountain they state, close to these three hills right by this lab, and on the mountain’s top is a ruined fortress that is also tens of thousands of years old.” Marina seemed very excited to read that this thing Ralenskrit and Belverda found was very ancient and yet found it reading, “The embryo is still alive and well, despite being trapped underground for thousands of years. The dark chamber, which they found the embryo, looked more like a tomb with a memorial picture of what the embryo must have looked like.”
“What else did Ralenskrit and Belverda say in their notes about this embryo they found?” asked Vaeludar, now studying the hole.
Marina read into the next page and she then lost her excitement. “Let me recap first. The two scientists found a millennia old embryo in a dark chamber that was placed on an altar and a picture painted behind the embryo. Then they took the embryo from the chamber where they wanted to use its blood to bring mutated-bodied creatures to life.
“Okay, they theorized of how the ‘living being’ was before the person or creature was turned back into an embryo. They think that the person used some kind of time control power on his or her body and made the body grow from older to younger so that the person would grow up again and live a second life. They lastly state whoever this living being was had to be incredible powerful to do a time control power on his or her own body.
“And… by the great goddess Adelpha, they also theorizing the man has to be a demigod, the child of… of the Crystal Dragon.”
Marina reading the book stopped and looked at Vaeludar and gazed at his dragon wings, legs, and tail. Geraldus and Flarefur also turned from the book and turned to see Vaeludar looking at the hole. “Could it possibly… him?” Marina asked herself. “Is it possible the scientists could have…”
Marina shook her head and paid more attention to what other things the embryo was involved in. Then she turned to the next page, which happened to be the one of two last pages of the book of experiments and read something quite shockingly that could cause her to die of an immediate heart attack.
Geraldus saw the great shock in Marina’s eyes and decided to read what was left. There were only four pages left the two currently opened and the last two that remained folded and hidden and the pages weren’t burnt. The words in Geraldus’s eyes were small to read, but he could it make those letters out. He also read the first line even he grew shock too, but his mind couldn’t believe it and read out the title: “Project… Vaeludar!”
Vaeludar was glaring outside the hole in anger. “Project Vaeludar?” he muttered. “They exterminated on me?”
Geraldus read: “Ralenskrit and I are naming the ancient old embryo Vaeludar. The DNA we used from this embryo and
inserting into the animal experiments is not working. The animals did come to life as we had expected, but they aren’t showing human intelligence; they are wild beats. So, we both have decided to use the DNA from the creatures to insert them into the embryo. A Unicorn’s DNA from a horn and fur DNA of a Minotaur’s hide it uses as its armor.
“These two DNAs would be just a small fridge on what we’ll plan on doing; we’ll be inserting all magic DNA from all the mythical creatures into the one embryo. And so when the embryo awakens from its slumber, it will have power greater than any living creature and man; it will become a god of this island, if we can just keep it under control, the possibilities of the awakened embryo.”
Geraldus spiraled through the next few lines before turning to the next page. He another title that was took shocking: “Project Failure.” It seemed Ralenskrit and Belverda had deemed this project (maybe the last one they ever did since Geraldus was on the last two pages of the book) a complete and utter failure.
The man continued reading: “We don’t know what went wrong! Ralenskrit and I, Belverda, dripped two blood drops from the Griffin’s wing and a small fragment of a Dragon’s scale less than a tenth of an inch. And suddenly exploded! The embryo exploded and it seemed we have killed it and our possibilities of mind-control. We placed in many magical abilities from Gorgon’s stoning and Unicorn’s healing magic into the embryo, and everything was in complete balance, but the embryo just exploded.
“So this was a complete failure. But after the explosion we hear a crying sound: a baby crying sound. We peeped where the explosion happened and went to look. What we discovered we couldn’t believe: the embryo was alive and well, in the form of a human baby.
“A human baby had been born! Instead of finding the embryo, we found a baby alive and crying. This is something Ralenskrit and I did not expect.
“We thought the embryo should have been destroyed in the explosion, but it was alive. It was a human baby we were suddenly seeing, but the baby match in appearance as the picture we found in the underground chamber. This human baby had wings, legs, and a tail of a dragon, which meant it parents, whoever they were so long ago, were a dragon and a human.
“And it is meant this embryo is indeed Valverno, the son of the god the Crystal Dragon and a Pangaean: a human dragon hybrid demigod. This is something we never expected to see, but it just happened. We have awoken the demigod son of the King of the Three Gods, and Ralenskrit and I couldn’t risk being parents. What kind of child would want to be raised by two scientists who tried to use this one as a lab rat?”
Geraldus went to last lines of the last page and read: “This is the last entry in this book. Ralenskrit has committed suicide; he turned into to stone. He was so filled with so many regrets of these failed experiments we did, so he concealed himself for stone for all time to come. Instead of living the dead in peace, we decided to play ‘gods’ and tried to bring the dead, and the dead become zombies, bloodthirsty monsters Ralenskrit and I created.
“Before Ralenskrit turned himself to stone and after the baby was born, the baby we’re naming Vaeludar we’re giving to Geraldus. The baby is belter off at but we know he’ll be an outcast; a hybrid living upon humans. I know Geraldus is an honorable man and will raise Vaeludar.
“I just hope these things Ralenskrit and I have done was worth our effects. Otherwise, it would have been for nothing, and Lusìvar will rule us all, and this hybrid, this demigod is the only hope for our future, because his real father was the one who defeated the Shadow King long ago.”
Geraldus remained silent. After he read the last few notes written on the page, he closed the book. He couldn’t believe what his ears had heard; Vaeludar wasn’t the son of Ralenskrit the dragon and Belverda the witch.
He was a thousand year old embryo in a dark cave and was condoned as a lab rat in a science experiment. And to think of Vaeludar being a science excitement was an act of trying to play a god.
And to make matters worse; Vaeludar was Valverno, the son of a god! The Crystal Dragon was a god and the true father of Vaeludar, and that god was Ruler of the Three Gods. He turned to see Vaeludar standing by the hole.
Vaeludar was standing still for a few moments. Suddenly, the hybrid smelt his scent coming from the exploded hole. As he took a step forward, a dragon foot stepped on a two-piece, broken flask bottle. He could smell his scent coming from that bottle.
He picked up the broken bottle and sniffed it closer to his nose. The bottle did smell the same like Vaeludar’s skin; this was the bottle he was inside as an embryo. He was coming to realize he isn’t the son of the two scientists who owned the lab. Then he turned to Geraldus.
“Parents are supposed to tell their children they are special people in a special world,” he said. “Be there to teach them, protect them, love them, nurture them, and always be there for them.
“But mine? They were never there for me, because they were never my real parents in the first place. They were scientists who found me under the island’s surface, in a dark underground chamber. They used my blood on experiments they tried to create as weapons but turned into soulless beasts. Ralenskrit and Belverda experimented on dead creatures they tried to bring to life with my blood and inserted my blood into the multiple dead bodies of mythical creatures they mutated into monsters.
“And what was I in the eyes of these two? Was I a son seen before that dragon and that witch? Were they natural parents to this embryo they were looking after? No, they were not parents from the beginning, and they were never mine. As for me, I am nothing more than a failed science experiment, a dead specimen, a lab rat! And the worst of it: I am the demigod Valverno, the son of a god!”
Vaeludar threw down the bottle and pulled out the Crystal Sword. Suddenly, the blue cloud glowing within the blade had turned from its usual blue color to a red color.
Geraldus knew what was going through his foster son’s mind and reacted quickly to get Marina and the Griffin out of the laboratory. He grabbed Marina by her arm and said, “We have to get out of here.”
Marina resisted at first. Being a beloved wife, she didn’t want to leave Vaeludar’s side. “I am not going anywhere,” she said. “I need stick with him.”
Then Vaeludar gave a howling cry. He swiped the sword he was holding and slashed it against the walls, against the glass jars filled with insides and the heads on the high shelves. His tail grabbed several broken jars and broke them even more into small chunks of glass dust. He growled fiercely and loudly that could grip fear in the hearts of a full grown dragon.
Geraldus saw Vaeludar now losing control and going into a madding mode of a Dragon, completely giving into a great anger of this news Vaeludar heard with his ears. Geraldus gripped Marina’s arm and he had to forcefully run her out the building before Vaeludar would tear the laboratory down with the sword he turned into red. “We are going, Marina,” he said.
Geraldus held his hand firmly on Marina’s arm and he forced her out the front door, which was also in ruins. Geraldus, with great ease, kicked down the door and he ran, still holding Marina.
Flarefur ran behind Geraldus and Marina, and this was all just in time so they could get out. Lots of sparks of fire and walls exploded more.
Vaeludar alone was in the ruined laboratory. After hearing for what he was only used for, before he was somehow “awakened” from an embryo, he was a science experiment used for bringing mutated animals back from the dead.
Then he became a science experiment, with magical abilities that resides in different creatures like turning people to stone was from Gorgons and healing from Unicorns. And more shocking to him, the two scientists weren’t his parents, but the son of a god. This shocking news had anger him to his bone and a draconic hatred within his body was awakening greatly and destroying his humanity.
He growled loudly, angrily, hatefully, and disgustfully. With a great rift in his erupting personality, he swung the Crystal Sword to and fro all around the walls. His tail whipped with great anger ag
ainst the filled glass jars. His wings waved hard winds against all the body parts in the glass jars. With many breaths of heating fire, he smoldered his dragon fire against the far walls and every square inch around the ruined laboratory. Vaeludar was bringing the laboratory to ruin.
Vaeludar was using his dragon might of his tail, wings, and mouth to bring the entire building crumbling down the ground. He used the Crystal Sword to slash and break all and everything inside the laboratory, in which he was he re-created through experimentation. The blade easily cut through the walls and the glass.
He was going all in, showing a small percentage of his strength in tearing down the building. Vaeludar wanted to bring down the entire place until there was nothing felt of it, only dust and ashes like the lands which he walked in where the lab was built in. And there was no stopping his rampage.
After many slashes of the sword, whips of his tail and his wings, and the fire-breathing from his mouth, Vaeludar threw the sword down and placed his hand together and a small red smoky sphere grew in his hands. “I will finish what should have been finished long ago,” he shouted. “This building will come crashing down, if it had ever exited or have been built here.” He clapped his hands, enclosing the glowing sphere inside his palms and casting out tons of blue sparks across the lab room.
The sparks went to the walls and exploded at the speed of light. Faster than a diving falcon, each spark blew right through the walls. The bricks and stones flung out and many more holes were being created.
Soon enough, the small explosions blowing all the walls and the ceiling; the building came crumbling down.
Vaeludar grabbed the Crystal Sword and the book of experiments, and he flew through the ceiling of the crumbling building. As he flew out of there, he saw the building fall completely to the ground as smoke rose and dust were flung; the Secret Laboratory had been destroyed and it was all crumps of dust and rocks.
