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CHAPTER 2

NEW BEGINNINGS AND AWAKENING

Janet awoke at the sound of something leathery brushing a stone floor. She could not see where she was... it was just too dark. From the slightly damp smell of the air, though, she thought she might be in some kind of cave... a very deep cave. This was not where the eighteen year-old orphan hoped to find herself.

"Welcome to our home," a voice called out of the darkness. "Can I get you anything? Make you comfortable in some way?"

"Well, you could start by showing yourself to me. It's not very fun when you can't see who you are talking to," Janet said.

"Would you like to see me, or would you, perhaps, prefer to see Me?" the voice asked. The capital of the second 'Me' was quite clearly audible.

"Both, I guess," Janet replied hesitantly.

"Well, then. Why don't you make yourself at home while I prepare myself for you?"

Janet looked around seeing nowhere to sit but the cold cave floor to sit on in the darkness. "Um... where do you want me to sit?" she asked cautiously.

"On the bed would be fine."

"On the bed?" Janet thinks, looking around again, only to find that one had appeared out of the darkness behind her. As she sat on it, she felt a slight breeze, a fairly cool draft. Looking down at herself, she suddenly realized she was completely naked, except for some light bandaging on her right shoulder. Strangely enough, however, she couldn't really seem to care.

All of a sudden, she saw the source of the sweet voice. Out of the shadows came a woman. One of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Still partially in darkness, more of a silhouette than actual sight, the woman looked exactly like Janet's mother, from the general shape of body, the contours of the face, to the silver and golden hints in seemingly raven black hair. "Mother?" the startled young woman asked faintly, as, once more, she fainted.

* * * * *

"I told you to stay out of my rooms, and to stay away from her, Anikathlianra Hai Draconia. It was for a very good reason." Janet heard a loud voice as she awoke for the second time that afternoon. "She has yet to go through her Awakening, let alone through Chrysalis. She cannot yet recognize the differences between our kind and the half-elvish, as her mother was. If I did not know for a fact that Samantha of the Halfbloods is dead, if I had not seen and buried her body myself, I could quite easily take you for her, Sister. Janet's Awakening is nearing fast. This is your last warning, Anika. Be very careful of your defiance, for next time I will make it a spellbound command, if I must. Please, stay away from her, at least for now. Understand?"

"Yes, Ellisanavriel." The voice from the first time Janet had woken up replied. "I understand perfectly. You want her all to yourself."

"Be quiet, Anika. You'll wake her. Do you know how rare it is for one of the Lost to be returned to us? If you frighten her away..." He was interrupted by a sob from the other side of the door, from inside his room.

Janet had finally become aware of how the voice sounded, had finally recognized it, after three years of missing the presence of the owner of that voice, believing it, and him, gone from this world.

Having found herself in the bed, under the blankets, she balled herself up against the headboards as she recognized Ellis' voice, crying desperately in fear, pain, and sorrow.

Pulling the door open just enough to pass his head so as to take a look inside, the man glanced worriedly at Janet, then muttered a curse. He turned back to the woman in the hallway. "Please, leave us, now. Janet is awake. This was going to be a stormy meeting, and I think she's recognized my voice, which will likely make things worse. I had intended to disguise myself, but I think that has now been rendered useless. Now go. I'm sure you have something better to do." With that, he turned, entered the room, and closed the door behind himself. Anika left, in a huff, hating the fact that she had angered her Brother.

* * * * *

"Hush, love," Ellis said as he sat on the bed beside Janet then pulled her onto his lap. With a muttered word and a wave of his hand over her body, a warm nightgown appeared out of thin air, clothing her.

"You were dead!" she cried, hitting his shoulder with a balled fist. "I saw it! You were dead! Have I gone crazy? You were dead... I know you were!"

"Hush, Janet-love. I was merely incapacitated by what wounds were dealt me. I went into a form of deep, healing hibernation. I had no control over it. You had already run away when I woke up, and those wolves of yours did a very good job of hiding your trail. I couldn't find you, and besides, the shock of seeing me right then would likely have been rather dangerous for your sanity."

"What are you? Mom never did say how she was different, she just showed me her ears and hair, and explained how she hid it. Just what are we?" She was starting to get a little hysterical.

"Please, my love, calm down. We happen to be Dragons. Not those poor creatures that are currently termed as such. They are slightly deformed, due to the lack of magic at the time of their births. They have grown rather dull in the wits, over the last few millennia, especially with the rise of science and technology, but, what with the cataclysm that destroyed that way of life, magic has recently taken the ascendant again. So we are being reborn. Slowly... too slowly for some of us, but the rebirth had to begin with the lesser immortal races first. The Dwarves, the Elves, the Gnomes, all had to return for us to be able to as well.

"Unfortunately, some fear the return of the immortal races. We represent the higher magics. The magic of the elements is mainly all the human races can use right now, and very few of them can master this. They fear that we will attempt to enslave them. We intend no such thing, but we will stop those who would use magic for the Dark. But they refuse to believe our emissaries. So they try to prevent our Awakening. The reason your mother's elvish blood was so apparent was because hers was very near to pure. Likely, before Science took ascendance, there were many elves among her ancestors. Your father was a reborn Elf... a pureblood. All elves have some dragon's blood in them. If just a slight trace. That is what renders them immortal, rather than just long lived. They actually leave this plane of existence when they reach something like the age of a couple of thousands of years, or whenever they wish, for some of them... they do not die of old age. They can be killed, if the proper spells or chemicals are used to prevent their regeneration. The same goes for us. Father had some elvish blood in him, but not enough to Awaken. My mother was very like yours, but she never went through her Awakening... someone had found her when she was too young to understand, and made her believe that it would be evil to go through it. Her belief was strong enough to prevent it. Nobody did the same for your mother, thank the Gods.

"I went through my Awakening the night before those Pure Humanity cultists attacked. A good thing you weren't there, that you were tending to your animal friends. They didn't know about me, so didn't cast their elemental magics on me, merely cut me down. You see, immortal blood doesn't have as immediate an outward effect on appearance in males as it does in females.

"It'll be your nineteenth birthday in a couple of weeks, won't it? You should be going through your own Awakening soon, then. It can be painful... but I'll be right beside you all along, Janet. It's taken me this long to find you, and I don't intend to lose you again... if you wish to stay, of course. Your little defender is next door, in a temporary infirmary. As are the rest of your friends. Once they are well, those who want to leave will be taken back to that cove of yours."

Janet looked up, suddenly ashamed for having forgotten those who depended on her. "Guardian? He's alright? And Kimber and her pack? The Mynkathi wolves have kept me safe these past three and a half years. Just where are we, anyway? You talk as if we were on some isolated island or some such."

"I knew mention of your animal pals and your patients would break through. As for where we are, welcome to the Isle of Eyrie Draconis. How would you like to see the beauty and wonder of our people, Janet?"

"I'd like that, but how?"

"We fly. Haven't you wondered why the room is so big? Partially due to rank. But a couple of weeks after Awakening, those of us destined to be of Dragonkind go through what we call Chrysalis. We assume our true form. You'll see what I mean soon enough. Come to the balcony with me." He got up off the bed, holding out his hand to her.

She took it and got up rather hesitantly. "If we're going out, what about my clothes?"

"Oops. Sorry about that." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a strange locket, seemingly made of equal proportions of gold, silver, and a strange metal the black of a raven's feathers. It would have matched her mother's hair, had she been there to compare it to. Gazing into a nearby mirror, she realized that, but for the proportions of the mix, it matched her own hair. "This was your mother's. It will only work for one of her bloodline." As she took it, a new color slowly crept into the metal. When the transformation was complete, the majority of the locket was now the bright, shiny white color of pure platinum, and the black was almost nonexistent. "Well, looks like you may be a very powerful force, in a month or so. Platinum was associated with the strongest and rarest in our legends. We may have to bring you to the Elders" attention before long. Hopefully not before your Awakening, as it is against their edicts to bring anyone here before then, but I couldn't leave you there anymore. That magic user was in contact with his master, before I attacked.

"Put the locket on. It will provide any kind of clothes you need. Now, please, don't be frightened by what I'm about to do, okay?" With that, his form, the outlines of his body, became blurry, insubstantial, seeming to stretch and change shape entirely.

When he appeared solid again, instead of a human, there was a dragon of incredible beauty standing there. His scales were a mix of gold, silver, and steel. He was fairly large, having suddenly taken up nearly half the room in front of the wide and tall balcony doors Ellis had revealed when he'd drawn the curtains open.

With a pass of a clawed forelimb, the doors slid open, and then the dragon indicated she should climb on his back with a look and some gentle hand motions.

Shrugging, barely scared at all, she put the locket on. The nightgown Ellis had conjured suddenly changed into riding clothes. She then climbed up onto his neck.

When she was aboard, seated between two of the neck ridges, Ellis walked out, then jumped off over the edge of the balcony, spreading large shining wings to catch an updraft.

Janet barely felt the passage of the air as he soared up, and she realized the dragon's magic was protecting her, holding her in place so she wouldn't accidentally fall off, and shielding her from the air currents of his flight and that stirred up by his wings.

Moments later, Janet forced herself to look down. They were flying miles high, above a mountainous island. An island with no beaches, or ports... the entire island was bordered by steep, seemingly unassailable cliffs. There was only one way to get on it: flight. Unless you counted magic, in which case, from Ellis' explanations, Janet believed the island inaccessible to human magic-users. She then saw the great sprawl of a city below her. It as directly at the center of the isle, and it was huge.

That's when she realized a few facts about the Eyrie. First, she now thought the isle itself must once have been a gigantic volcano. Second, the city covered the entire crater, except for a large lake and a forest around the lakeshore... the volcano's crater was nearly twenty-five miles wide! And finally, she realized there seemed to be a magical shield over the entire island.

When they returned to the room Janet had awoken in earlier, after perhaps another hour and a half aloft, she was extremely thrilled and excited, not too saddened at having left her southern seashore cove. She suddenly began feeling extremely nervous and restless. Then she collapsed, literally knocked down by sudden cramps and spasms of most of her voluntary muscular system, not to mention the burning liquid pain that also suddenly replaced the blood in her veins. Had Ellis not caught her, she would have crashed to the stone floor.

"Janet? Can you hear me, Janet?" At her strained nod, he continued. "It's the Awakening. Sooner than I expected, but then, none of us go through it at the same point in our lives. I'll be right here with you, love. Don't fear, just let what happens happen. Don't fight against it.

"When we happen by someone going through Awakening outside, it is permitted for us to help him or her endure the pain, by spelling him or her to sleep. Do you want me to do this for you?"

She shook her head roughly. "Won't... take... easy... way... out." She had to force the words past clenched teeth.

He held her tightly. "That's my Janet. Knew you wouldn't say yes, but it's common courtesy to ask. This may seem like a never-ending few hours, these that are coming, but hang in there. I won't leave you." He uttered a word of power, and all the lanterns blew out. He then lay on the bed, with his lover in his arms.

What moonlight came through the curtains, which he'd left ajar on purpose, let him see that her body was apparently stiff, but he could feel her shaking, wracked by an unbelievable pain he could clearly remember, having gone through the same over three years before.

"I'm sorry, love," he whispered into her hair. "I didn't expect it to come so soon. I thought I would have time to prepare you for this."

* * * * *

Nearly seven hours later, he sighed with relief as, suddenly relaxed, Janet stopped shaking, and slipped into a deep, restorative sleep. "Sleep well, my love," he whispered into her hair again, as he himself finally fell asleep as well.

* * * * *

A startled gasp woke him, at noon the next day. Janet was sitting at the foot of the bed, naked, looking at herself in the wall length mirror opposite, examining her altered features by touch, feeling her ears, her face, looking at her hands. Not having noticed his waking, she suddenly got up, swaying and dancing gracefully around the room.

"Well, good morning to you, my beauty!" he said. She came to a complete stop, turning to face him.

Her eyes startled him, being a bottomless black with seemingly silver speck floating in them. On closer observation, as she came into his arms, he saw that the specks were really the same platinum color of her locket.

Her hair was the same, platinum colored for the most part, with a few locks each of gold and silver, and one lock, at the front, of raven black, which did not seem to want to stay in place, as she pushed it back behind her right ear.

All her features had taken an elvish cast to them. However, the strength and power emanating from her had nothing to do with Elves. They were definitely draconic.

"I think those bandits would be in for a surprise should they attack you again. How's your shoulder, love?"

She looked startled, bringing a hand up to the place where the arrow had wounded her. The bandage was gone, as was the wound itself, not even leaving a scar. "S-s-so mu-much has changed. I wish I cou-could do th-this for my f-friends!" she stuttered, tears suddenly springing to her eyes.