by Ryan Johnson
“Make sure every single pile of plates is like mine,” said Vaeludar, pointed at his own made pile. He raised his hand and used a wind power to place his pile of plates on the same pile they fell off. His used his hand to create another wind power and turned all the lazy piles into nice piles.
In thirty seconds, every lazy-made pile of stacked plates was turned into a straight, vertical pile of plates.
“This is how each pile should be, stacked up straight and not in a lazy manner.” Vaeludar turned to leave and went upstairs. Around the corner, there was a long hallway with doors going into different rooms. He picked the one room that was his personal room.
Vaeludar placed his hand on the crystal doorknob and opened the door.
In his square room, it was completely empty. There was a clear, rectangle window on the opposite side of the room. Vaeludar walked over and leaned over the open window. He saw the village houses’ chimneys were puffing out smoke while the other houses were completely black.
The three moons shined brightly, at a very close range that it was an eye-popping view. Vaeludar saw the blacksmith forging horseshoes in the fireplace. In fact, it was in this spot Vaeludar had flown the fireball he lit earlier that day, from his window towards the blacksmith’s fireplace.
For most of his life, Vaeludar stood by this very window, watching the people of the village participating in their daily lives. He stood there day after day after day after day for many years of his life just watching while he stood or sat there all day and all night. He just simply had no life here. This was where he felt like he was an outsider to everyone.
But all of that was going to change. Tomorrow morning, he would leave the village and seek out where to go and what he was going to do. He never felt he belonged in the village but belonged someplace else. He felt of no use for this village.
After all, how useful could he be if the village was at peace? It was said there have been no great dangers for centuries and there were no evil animals lurking in the shadows of any tree. If there was no danger haunting anywhere on the island of Shimabellia, then it would be a good opportunity for Vaeludar to start a personal journey.
A gentle, soft knock stuck Vaeludar’s doorway. His ear flickered at the quiet knock coming from his bedroom door. “Come in,” he said. He heard the open while he was still gazing out the window.
“You awake?” said a girl’s voice.
Vaeludar turned to see Eliana, the eldest daughter of Geraldus, walking into his room. “Let me guess: you want to see me breathe fire from my mouth?”
“No, I haven’t come to see you play games,” said Eliana. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Talk to me? About what? I hope it wasn’t about playing dress-ups your younger sisters.”
“Would you comment on such little games for kids?” asked Eliana. “I wanted to talk about your departure.”
Vaeludar stood from the window to look at Eliana. She was as beautiful as tree leaves of in the season of autumn. Her long brown hair was tied in a ponytail and her brown eyes flickered from the light behind her from the doorway, but Vaeludar wasn’t leaning toward her. “You heard me conversing with Geraldus about my future, didn’t you?”
“You’ve lived here all your life, Vaeludar. My father gave you a home and a place to raise you when you were younger. My younger sisters played with you the most and they think of you as their best brother. We’ve been your family all your life when your parents dumped you here. Why must you leave us behind?”
“There is nothing else for me here. I feel I have no meaning in my life; the only things I’m good at keeping the blacksmith’s fireplace on fire, keeping the twin boys in check, and being stared at. No parents want to see their children near a human-dragon hybrid. And I don’t know who my parents are, let alone who I am supposed to be. I’ll be leaving sometime after dawn. I don’t know when, but I just want to leave.”
“Why must you leave father’s house?”
“Ever seen a hybrid composed of human and dragon flesh, Eliana? Have you ever seen a hybrid creature looking like me? Dragon wings with legs and a tail attached to a human body?”
“No.”
“And I am told I’m the first hybrid. I’ve never heard of any female human specimen and a male dragon coming into a strange union to produce a child of their own. I don’t know the chemistry of two different species, one that’s small as a house door and one large as a tree. I’m sure they found a way in the process.”
“How do you know that then?”
“Easy answer, Eliana: me. If I wasn’t born, then they wouldn’t have found a method to make a hybrid like me.”
“Don’t joke around. I’m being serious.”
Vaeludar tilted his head away to look outside once again. “So was I. And anyway, I have my own life that I need to live, and I feel like my obsession of living in this village is starting to wither like a leaf in the autumn.” Vaeludar sat on the windowsill and looked outside again.
“So in the morning, I’m going to be leaving this nice village I’ve lived in my whole life and depart into the great unknown. I need to find answers as to why my parents left me here in the first place, where they may be hiding, and why I had to be left behind.”
“You must stay because this place is your home.” Eliana quickly walked closer to Vaeludar and gently grabbed his hand. “This is your home, and we’re your family.”
Vaeludar felt his hand being grabbed by Eliana and holding his hand close to her cheek. He softly grunted and just let Eliana hold his hand for a while. “I’m a hybrid; I do not have a home. I don’t belong anywhere, and I certainly don’t belong here. I’ve already made my decision, Eliana. I am leaving tomorrow and that is final.”
Then Vaeludar removed his hand from Eliana’s grip, stood back up, and jumped down from the window. He landed on the ground, with his wings spread wide open. He knew Eliana wouldn’t follow him if he jumped out the window. Humans would easily crack their bones if they made a man jump from a window from a great height.
His legs felt fine after he brushed off some dirt. He knew Eliana would come running after him, so Vaeludar widened his wings and with one flap he rose into the air. He floated several feet from the ground as he kept his wings flapping heavy beats.
Vaeludar had his sights on the watchtower, which was located on the north-eastern border of the village. It was a secondary place for him and he would usually use it as he main hideout to escape the dozens of glaring eyes of strangers. It was like a real home to him where he could go and not worry about the people staring at him all day and night.
At a soft speed, Vaeludar headed toward the direction of the watchtower. Upon its view, the watchtower was big and wide built with cement of stones and heavy bricks. It had a wooden roof built over the tower’s top. Several flat platforms stretched out across the main upper levels. The top level was built to post archers to fire their arrows at unwanted intruders.
Vaeludar soared into the air and tilted his wings to maneuver in the air with great ease. He rose high above the tower and landed on one of the platforms built around the top level. He quickly walked through a man-sized entry.
Inside the top level of the watchtower, a wide empty room with bows lay on the walls and quivers of arrows laid in rows beneath the bows. The ceiling was dome-shaped as the layout of the room was rounded, able to fit about thirty men. There was enough space for a squad of elite soldiers to fire their arrows from this towering position.
In one spot, Vaeludar saw an unlit fireplace with very dried logs ready for burning. Next to the fireplace were a few more bundles of logs ready for burning at any time. He inhaled a lot of air and spat out a blazing fireball to the fireplace.
Might as well as make this my sleeping place tonight, thought Vaeludar. I just hope sleeping here makes me feel a bit better in the morning.
The hybrid knelt with the joints of his legs bending and his wings covered the most of his human skin. His e
yes paid attention to the ground, as his vision went blank his eyes stayed wide open.
A SUDDEN ATTACK
V
aeludar was awoken by an annoying fly buzzing around his eyelids. He lay against the wall while seeing to the fly flying around his eyes. Then he exhaled a gush of wind, blowing the fly toward the ceiling and then he spat a small fire spark toward the fly, burning it to ashes.
“Flies,” said Vaeludar, disgusted. “If these insects learn not to bug me, then I won’t burn them.” Vaeludar pushed himself up from the wall using his wings and hands. His hind, curved legs flung him straight up.
It was the fresh scent of the first day of autumn. Leaves turned golden yellow, crimson ruby, and bright brown. The breeze was cool, and the air was scented with freshness of the pine trees. The breeze he was feeling in the dim coldness like a cold lake. The hotness of summer of yesterday had changed within a whole night. It seemed time to turn over a new leaf of a new day.
And the day could not have started any better: he looked into the distant horizon of the eastern skies. There was a little pink mist glimmering low altitude. The sky paled a slight of the shadowy night, and it was slowly beginning to brighten by a slow rising sun.
Dawn was approaching and Vaeludar was awakened at the right time to see a new, bright dawn. After Vaeludar spent several minutes waiting, the blazing sun rose. Its pink haze doused through the dark blue sky and the horizon with its spectacular yellowness spreading across the eastern sky.
He gave a deep breathe at this sight and his lungs were filled with a lot of air.
After seeing the rising dawn, Vaeludar heard the sound of marching peasants going out to the cornfields. Sounds of cutting and picking the corn from the plants echoed in his ears. Vaeludar rose from his strange, kneeling-sleeping position and stretched out his wings wide to get his blood flowing. He stayed that way all night long: kneeling while sleeping with his eyes open. It was a strange standard of sleeping, but it managed to work for him.
Vaeludar walked toward an open window and saw the people pacing themselves throughout the entire village. Many were carrying farming tools in their bare hands and many carried sacks of flour; these people were getting ready for winter. When the first day of autumn dawns, winter was right around the corner, and no plants would grow in the middle of winter.
Heavy snowfalls would bury the plants and the trees would wilt during the midseason of autumn. Autumn was the time that everyone had to work hard to get whatever they can from wheat flower and put their food into storage before the plants began to wilt when the cold weather comes.
Vaeludar once helped out with storing food. When he was eight years old, he alone ran fast from here, there, and everywhere. He trimmed the flower seeds from the wheat plants and grinded them into flower dust, the flower was used to make bread. What could have been done in hours Vaeludar did in minutes. His ability to breathe fire was extraordinary.
This caused some great concern for the village around that time; they thought Vaeludar was trying to steal the seeds for himself, but Geraldus convinced the village the hybrid was only helping out with the villagers. Geraldus said to the village, “He was trying to help out. Judge not by his appearance but by his actions and you will see this person is someone who does have meaning in his inexperienced life” and very few people listened to him.
The villagers didn’t want their duties being taken away by a single hybrid; it was a tradition for these people to grow and crop their own crops that they were trained to harvest. They were not accustomed to having a hybrid doing their own work for them. They spend all day harvesting their own crops and their muscles grow used to pulling and scavenging for weeds.
Vaeludar felt pressure of people growing mad at him and decided to quit and let the farmers do their work without him interfering. Ever since the unhappy event, Vaeludar kept his distance from society and concealed his presence to Geraldus’s house or in the watchtower, which was rarely occupied.
Now, Vaeludar was old enough to walk on his own and find his own path and not worry about any more disasters for the village. He wanted to walk his own path and never again interfere with the daily life of this big village again. Today was the day for him to disappear from the village and search for true meaning in his life.
Before he could guess where to go first, sounds of footsteps were banging from a hole on the ground behind the hybrid. Vaeludar listened but decided not to pay attention to who was coming up. He needed to keep his focus on where to go first, and he had four choices: north, south, east, and west.
When the banging ended, Vaeludar knew there was someone or a group of soldiers in the watchtower with him.
“I thought you would be gone by now,” said a male voice.
“I’m thinking of where to start when I leave, Flavius,” said Vaeludar, smiling. “I can’t start my long journey without a plan, can I? I need to take some time to think before I do something reckless.”
Flavius walked closely to Vaeludar. Flavius was watchful of Vaeludar’s waving tail on the ground. “Vaeludar, this is the first time you seem to be happy about something,” said Flavius.
“I know I no longer want to stay, Flavius. I have decided it is time for me to go find my own life beyond this village. For the first time in my life, I’m going to the borders of this village to find my own place in life. There are questions about my past I want answered. Where are my parents? Why did they leave me behind? Why am I not wanted by them? I need to discover the truth about them.”
“Everyone had family issues. Why not just stay and forget about them? Geraldus is our father more than being left behind by a strange pair of human and dragon.”
“Take a good look at me,” said Vaeludar, turning his gaze away and widen his arms, legs, and wings. “What do you see in front of you?”
Flavius observed Vaeludar’s body: his scaly, curved, hind legs, his bare upper body and arms, his red-blood-veined wings, and his human head with covered with dragon ears and a pair of horns.
“I see a fighter for a greater future of human and dragon kind,” answered Flavius.
Vaeludar turned his gaze back to the noises of the village. “What I see is a hybrid who will always be an outsider and a no good hybrid. I have no life here. I have questions about my past and by living here among humans, I won’t have answered questions. The Dragons are the only creatures in this island who can answer who I really am, where I can from, and what I was born to be. And I will–”
Suddenly Vaeludar heard a hard ruffle of a leaf from a tree swirling half a mile away. His hearing goes above the average human, but dragons’ ears were much like an elephant’s ear, being able to hear a cry from miles away. Since he was a hybrid, his hearing could even pick up a soft kitten meowing.
He then turned away from the direction he was facing to that of the dangerous forest: the Greenwood Forest. In a short moment, Vaeludar gazed at the trees of the bordering forest, while its green leaves remained still. Vaeludar’s eyes studied the trees closely that suddenly moved.
It was very typical thing for branches of trees to move and be blown against the softness or roughness of a weak breeze or a powerful windstorm. The strange part was Vaeludar couldn’t pick up any windy breeze powerful enough to blow against the branches of the trees. In fact, Vaeludar couldn’t feel wind or breeze being blown at the moment.
Flavius joined with Vaeludar at looking at the Greenwood Forest. “What is it, Vaeludar? What’s wrong?”
“Tell me: do you feel a wind blowing on your skin? Or any wind blowing right now?” asked Vaeludar.
Flavius raised a hand in the high. “I’m not feeling any wind blowing up here.”
“Then why are the trees of the Greenwood Forest blowing as if there is a hurricane? It doesn’t seem natural for trees blowing if there is no wind.”
“It’s the Greenwood Forest; it’s always unnatural for the trees to move without any blowing wind gushing.”
Then Vaeludar s
niffed a scent; fur.
“You smell something?” asked Vaeludar. “Hair of some kind?”
“Yes,” said Flavius. “I smell horse hair.”
The hybrid looked at Flavius with an awkward face. “It’s not that I smell,” stated Vaeludar. “I smell the scent of a big creature with black fur. Some creature is watching us. I can feel it in my feet.” From the dark trees, Vaeludar saw the twin boys Arron and Nerio dashing out.
“Nerio and Arron?” yelled Vaeludar.
“My brothers?” exclaimed Flavius.
“Yes, your brothers are coming out of the forest, Flavius. Just what were they thinking? Going into the forest and running out? Why, someone stupid would do something… like… that—”
The roar of a bull howled and echoed in the air. Suddenly, the village was in complete silence. The people stopped walking when they heard the loud roar roaming around the village.
Vaeludar saw several people standing like statues. Then a second roar howled the air but louder. “Flavius! Call the soldiers! Blow the horn!”
“Is it a a rouge Centaur?” asked Flavius, seeing his foster brother flying out the window.
“No worse: a Minotaur!” Vaeludar poked his head out a window and yelled out: “Get to safety!”
Another, louder roar of a bull vibrated and hooves thundered across the ground.
There was now a crowd of panicking people. People were running over each other. Flavius was blowing the horn, warning the soldiers of a raging, menacing dark creature coming: a Minotaur.
A Minotaur was said to be a bull capable of walking like a human. It would basically be like Vaeludar: half bull half human, but not exactly human. An evil bull that was capable of walking and fighting like a human with black fur, bull horns, and a size of seven feet high.
Vaeludar jumped out of the window, flapped his wings to rise high into the air to get a good lookout, and looked towards the forest and saw a black furred, bull-headed, two-legged, and axe wielding monster: a Minotaur. He saw the large black furred beast coming out of the forest, ramming down a few trees in its path.
