• Firestone's amber eyes snapped open in the darkness of his cave. All around him it was silent, save for the sounds of the night that echoed outside. Still, he was anxious, waking from a dream he still couldn't get out of his mind. A message from his Ancestors that he had yet to unravel. His red-orange scales glinted even in the darkness of the cave as he silently got to his feet and made his way out of the cave to the edge of the cliff that looked over the entire valley. His blood burned with the memory of what had plagued his sleeping hours for almost a fortnight. He couldn't decipher what the ancient ones were trying to show him through the images, but he knew that they foretold a great change was fast approaching.
    The moon illuminated all that was the Southern Valley; the Valley of Fire. All that was, supposedly, his to maintain and to watch over. But the days when that was true had long since ended, now he was forced to live a life of hiding with his herd. He stared out into the vast territory that made up the land and knew what creatures dwelled there that kept him and his herd running. Humans. It wouldn't seem that the humans would be much threat to Firestone or his large family. Scrawny little things they were, no taller than the oldest of hatchlings at full height. They possessed no fangs or claws, nor did they wield the different breath abilities that had graced dragons since the dawn of their existence. They didn't seem to be very intelligent either, yet they had gained an advantage over the dragons that none of them had counted on. Firestone had always wondered how they got their hold over the dragons. In his youth he had heard rumors and stories but no one had ever been able to give him a straight answer about that.
    The humans did not live as long as dragons, not even close! Their short life in the living realm was like that of a blink in a dragon's lifetime, which could span over the centuries. But though the humans' time was short, they obviously could learn. How else could they have forced the dragons into the state they were in. Constantly sticking to the shadows and avoiding the two-legged creatures like a wave of ash breath. The humans were no real threat to the dragons, at least not by themselves, but if the two legged creatures learned of the dragons' presence amongst them they would call others. Special ones, whose skin gleamed in the bright sun like the calm surface of a lake and sticks of seemingly the same make which the humans called “swords”. Firestone had never understood what the word meant nor had he cared when he was young and inexperienced, but he soon learned that the humans' sticks-called-swords were dangerous weapons. One swipe of its gleaming blade could easily sever a leg or cut a wing so that it would never again be used in flight, the sharpness of the blade seemed to mirror that of the blade the Fire dragons possessed on the ends of their tails. A retractable blade that curved around the end of their tail in an oval shape. Sharpened on the stones of the caves, these tail blades served as one of the dragons' many forms of defense. The dragons were graced with many features that made them both deadly predators and fierce opponents. The one most responsible for protecting them were the brightly colored scales that covered them all from head to tail. But not even the dragons' thick scales could always protect them from the sword's bite. The humans, known now as Dragon Slayers, killed dragons mercilessly for countless years after that. Firestone had watched throughout his young life as slowly one event at a time the dragons were slowly driven into hiding merely to stay alive. How many lives had been lost when the dragons finally gave up and fled? Too many to think about, it was painful to consider that which they had once shared with man to have been stolen right out from under their paws.
    That had been many years ago, almost three decades ago precisely but only an instant to a dragon whose age seemed to be that of the earth itself. They had been there when the human race first stumbled into the plane of existence and Firestone, as well as the other dragons, were determined to be there when they finally crawled back to the pit they came from. Yet time passes, spirits fall, the young turn old and dreams fade into the Abyss. It was getting to a point where the only proof that the dragons had once roamed without fear or question were the stories the older dragons told the younger generations. Firestone had been at the brink of the end, as a young dragon himself. He knew the days that they knew no predator and were as much kings of the land as well as the skies. He was a hatchling in those times. Learning and living his life under the careful watch of his herd mates, the times before the human race had started to destroy them. Such times were hardly forgotten, but the new blood in the Fire herd was experiencing it as only a fairy tale. Born into a world of hiding, shadows and skulking about to make an existence in a world they used to roam freely.
    Gazing at the forests that blanketed his territory, he had yet to refer to their current location as a home and it would seem he would never have the opportunity, he could see that the humans were inching ever closer to their hide away every passing day. With each setting of the sun the humans inched more towards discovering Firestone and his herd. As the Elder it was his duty to protect every single member of his herd with his life, sacrificing himself to save the others if the need arose. IF it came down to that he would gladly pay the price to save those he had called his family since the day of his birth.
    His keen hearing caught the distinct sounds of the night creatures feeding, they had nothing to fear. They hunted under the cover of night, as they had done for centuries, while the moon watched over them just as it had at the beginning of time. Firestone wondered how many changes its pale glowing face had watched as it hung there in the sky and what changes would now face the land with the humans treading the earth. The spirits of the dragons long dead, his Ancestors, whose very essence seemed to fill the night sky as the millions of glittering stars, seemed to believe that a great change was on its way. They were using his dreams to warn him but hard as the Fire Elder tried he could not fully understand the message they were sending, for they made little sense to him. Every time he closed his eyes and drifted, the same images filled his mind. Jumbled voices he could never completely understand, flashes of battles between dragons and humans; but that was to be expected in these times. The one image that made the least sense to him was the one that always came just as he awakened. A dragon, small....a hatchling it seemed to him, and a human standing side by side with no hostility between them. The two figures' features were never revealed in his dreams, thus their identity was unknown to him. But their presence seemed to cause an outward ripple in all that was what they knew to be. As four colored orbs of light surrounded the pair and circled them, the dream always came to an abrupt halt and blackness made Firestone come free of his stupor and ponder what he had just seen. It was the same routine every night and it was starting to wear on Firestone.
    Frustrated and concerned, he pleaded with the ancient spirits to help him understand what they wanted to tell him. But alas, every night yielded the same answers from the glittering spirits that filled the sky and silence was his only comfort. As the winds caressed his scales, he sensed the changing of the seasons. It would be getting cold with the coming of the fall winds, soon after winter would set in and finding enough food for the many hungry mouths of his herd while still remaining hidden from the humans would become more of a challenge for the hunters of his herd.
    Flametail, one of his best hunters was even now starting to find it difficult to hunt without his trail crossing that of a human hunter and Firestone knew that Flametail was a dragon who remembered the old days. He knew of the hunter's frustration and rage at being forced to live the life of a skulking rogue to scrap up a meager existence for himself and his family. Still he wasn't worried about Flametail attacking anyone, as a new father he had to ensure that the land was safe for his mate and their coming hatchling. Those facts alone kept Flametail in check and made him change his course when hunting even after the choicest of prey. The risks were just too great, and he knew that. But that didn't stop the existence they went through daily to wear thin on all of the dragons. Within the other herds the humans had already been, unknowingly, gaining a worse reputation and some dragons were not as lenient as Flametail was. But they too were in the same state as Firestone and his herd. His last gathering with the Elders at the Peak of the Stars had not gone well. Hunting had been getting worse with the dragons having to share their prey with the human hunters who seemed to kill as much as the dragons did for a smaller family group. Whirlwind, the Elder of the Wind herd and much older than Firestone was deeply concerned with the way things were turning out. He had seen many years and most of them as an Elder, but he seemed stumped for an answer of what to do about the growing human population. They multiplied like rabbits, every day there were more of them. More humans that required more space and food to survive on a slowly depleting land. He had told Firestone that some of his herd had suggested fighting against the humans.
    Firestone recalled his reaction perfectly, one of mutual understanding as well as shock, they had taken that road before. It had led to an all out war between the two races. Dragon and Humans fighting one another. At first it seemed that the dragons had nothing to worry about. Firestone himself had been part of it for some time. Before he became an Elder he was just a mentor, young and ready to defend his homeland from the two legged creatures. At the tender age of thirty-four, Firestone fought as bravely as any of the dragons among him, taking down swarms of humans with his fiery breath. Slowly they were winning back what had been theirs for centuries. But that all changed when the knights appeared. The precursors as well as the source of the Dragon Slayers of this day, the knights wore their gleaming skin and wielding their swords burts forth into the battle killing dragons as the dragons had done onto them. Glancing back at his right flank, Firestone recalled a fight he had shared with a young knight. How the tiny creature had galloped towards him on the back of the rat humans called horses, brandishing his sword high above his head as though the gods themselves would give him the strength to kill Firestone. Firestone remembered his overconfidence as he allowed the human to get close to him, believing that on the horse the human would be at a disadvantage to he who was already on the ground and still towered over the man on his beast. Every sensation of the memory washed over him as he recalled swiping his tail blade towards the knight to win. But the human showed an agility that surprised Firestone and ducked as his tail went sailing over his head. The human recovered faster than Firestone and galloped alongside his flank and sinking his sword deep into his flesh, trailing it through as he rode past. Firestone had managed to pull away from the painful thorn before it severed his hind leg from the rest of his body. His reward was a huge scar that ran the length of his flank and served as a reminder of what the humans were capable of doing.
    That scar left him feeling incredibly stupid and he had always tried to keep a level head on the battlefield ever since. Needless to say once the knights made themselves known and began to take in apprentices in the art of dragon slaying, the dragons soon found themselves in a snare. The hatchling count had drastically been reduced from the war and many ambushes the humans had performed against them. The dragons were forced to flee into hiding and wait, constantly moving to avoid the humans and make them believe that they had all died out. It had taken many years for the knights to finally lose interest in chasing something that was so obviously gone from the world. But as they had given up their apprentices persevered in chasing after the dragons, merely because they enjoyed killing the mightiest of all creatures. So,even long after the Dragon/Human War had supposedly ended, the Dragon Slayers still hunted for them.
    The war had been a devastating loss for them back then, to think that a dragon would suggest doing it again when there were more humans than before simply angered and confused Firestone. Yet he could understand the dragons' feelings. He longed to once again fly without worry that his herd would not be there when he returned. But war was a path they could no longer take, not again.
    Firestone was brought out of his thoughts by a rustling sound behind him, back in his cave a smaller dragon slept. Even in the darkness he could see her clearly as if she were bathed in sunlight. His niece, Jamie, slept peacefully in the cool darkness of the cave. But she was moving about where she slept as if she were looking for something.
    “She must realize I'm not there.” he chuckled to himself. A great yawn escaped his jaws and he realized just how exhausted he was. The moon was high in the sky and Firestone could tell by the stars that he had a few hours of night left before the sun arose. With one last glance at the souls of his ancestors Firestone made his way back into the darkness of his cave. He curled his massive form around his sleeping niece and she settled back into an air of peace and serenity. Comforted from the harsh world by her dreams and from the warmth that Firestone provided curled around her. Her body, cool to the touch as it always had been, snuggled up closer to Firestone's. Firestone smiled down at his niece and gently nuzzled her as if she were his own daughter.
    His eyelids drooped and he soon found himself drifting off to sleep, hoping that his dreams would make sense to him before too long. The last coherent thought that skipped through his mind was of Jamie and the great change that would soon befall them.