• Chapter 1: Rayne
    Really, I didn’t even have to stop and think once they moved in front of Yuuko. I would rather die than let them have the satisfaction of killing a little boy with no chance of surviving a Dragon Trial. I moved to the gate myself and threw it open. Everyone flinched, temporarily blinded by light, and then the gates slammed shut, with me inside. There was a sliver of light coming from the gap between the doors, penetrating the absolute blackness further on.
    The Dragon Trial was two things. A way for them to legally kill non-violent prisoners, and a way to scare us into submission. Only one could undergo a Dragon Trial at a time. I’d just saved Yuuko from this fate for another month, and by then we –they- might be rescued.
    If one succeeded in a Dragon Trial, he or she would not only live, but be a Dragon Master. If one failed, he or she would be eaten by the dragons called to choose. The success rate was not high.
    I ran my hand down the slight opening, my fingers finding not a particle of dust on the old doors. There were dips and cracks in the wood, probably from the previous person to be pushed into this dark place.
    I turned from the light’s saving grace and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness before stepping forward. I got a few steps before something under my foot cracked. As hard as I tried not to, I looked down.
    How many people had died of starvation or killed themselves just inside this gate? I couldn’t count all the whole skeletons, let alone individual bones. The floor was made of them. They hadn’t even bothered to try. They just clung to the false hope the gate would reopen and let them out.
    I decided then not to join them. I was living on borrowed time from the instant I had passed the threshold. Like all borrowed things, I would have to give it back, and who better to give it to than its rightful owners? Better to have died trying than to die having given up.
    Even deciding this, it was hard to take those first few steps toward certain death. It became easier, though, the more I walked. Perhaps once you accepted death initially, the whole idea became easier to bear.
    I wasn’t walking too terribly long before I could see light again. The first trial perhaps?
    I suppose I must have been more excited than I realized, because unconsciously I doubled my speed. It wasn’t that I thought this light could save me. I just was excited to get to be able to see something other than bones before I died, though I’m not sure what made me think there wouldn’t be any more skeletons.
    The exit from the dark corridor was on my left, and from it came a red-orange light. The air heated as I approached it, and the corridor seemed to breathe when I got near enough to look inside.
    There were only a few skeletons. The rest must have fallen into the fiery pit of lava under the bridge reaching across the pool. I was about to step on that bridge when intuition stopped me.
    That was too obvious. Too easy. A trap no doubt. I backed up three steps and took a good look around the room. The walls were perfectly smooth, black decorated with odd red symbols I had never seen before. Every five feet or so there was a torch, obviously what lit the room. I couldn’t see the ceiling. It was too high for the light to reach. It struck me as odd that when the walls were so perfect, what I was standing on was no more than rock, as was the island.
    The drop-off into the lava was not the way to go, was my first thought after the bridge is bad.
    My second thought was where is the way out? Across the bridge, there was nothing besides an island in a sea of lava, though it did connect to a wall. There wasn’t so much as a crevice in the wall, never mind an opening big enough for a person to go through. Nor, at eye level, anywhere else on the walls except where I had come in.
    Was this why so many had quit?
    Half-heartedly, I looked up. I knew better. There was no way to go up, so why would the exit be there? Still, I looked just to be sure.
    Nothing.
    I walked to the edge of my little platform and, against every fiber of rational thought, allowed myself to slip down the edge. Involuntarily I closed my eyes.
    As I sped down, I realized something I’d missed before. Although the room was hot, it was no hotter when I’d approached the edge of the platform. Even now, as I sped toward what was supposedly lava, there was no searing heat.
    In fact, it was getting cooler.
    A second later I hit icy cold water. I pushed myself to the surface, thanking the gods I knew how to swim. The water was a dark purple, and I found as I looked up the torches’ fire had all turned blue. The cold reminded me to move, so I stopped gaping at the change and looked for and exit.
    It was a small indent in the wall, one I never would have seen from the entrance of the room, but was clearly visible here. I swam to it. Unfortunately, it was only the very top of the gap, one I couldn’t fit through and stay above water.
    I was starting to shiver. Time was not on my side. So I dunked, and opened my eyes under the water. It was crystal clear, if dark, and I could see the passage easily. It was perfect as the walls had been, and narrow. I came back up to get a lungful of air and set off.
    The walls around the tunnel were exactly as the room had been, save for the color. It was a dark purple with medium blue symbols. As the walls were without a flaw one, there wasn’t anywhere for me to pop up and get air.
    My chest was starting to burn when the passage sloped upward again. Eyes closed, I did nothing but breathe for a moment after surfacing. I was in an odd little grotto, but more importantly to me at that moment, just a few feet away there was a ledge for me to get out of the freezing water.
    I crawled out onto it and was surprised to find myself instantly dry. I shrugged the change off. It was the Dragon’s Gate. Strange things were supposed to happen here. My feet found the floor after a moment of warming up and I looked in front of me. There was another oddly perfect room, this time white in color with odd yellow symbols. No torches, but the room was somehow lit.
    There was no exit on the walls, though I could see handholds where one would climb up. The light was coming from the ceiling, and it was too bright for me to search there for an exit. The message was clear: Look when you get up here.
    So I walked to the nearest one, and hauled myself up. Every three or four handholds, I would have to go down a bit and to the side, because there was no straight way up. Every time I reached such a spot, I would turn and look around, as well as look down. The ground pulled away more and more, but there was still nothing to suggest an exit.
    Even once I got to the top, there was nothing. No opening, no door. However, just out of my reach, there was a chain with a bar attached, where one could hang onto it. There were several, spiraling around the ceiling with a large one with a platform was in the middle.
    I would have to jump off to grab it. Then I would have to swing and jump from one to the other. There was nothing else I could do, nowhere else to go but down.
    There was a terrifying moment when my left hand missed and the bar tipped, making my sweaty hand nearly slip off and drop me into the abyss to crash on the floor far below. I kicked my feet and put my other arm up to grab the bar on the back swing. The bar stabilized as slowly as the chain did, but soon enough I was still in the air, hanging precariously.
    I turned as well as I could and swung my feet so I could jump to the next one. I counted every time I jumped, though I couldn’t remember the number as soon as I hit the last one. I swung off this one, but this time, there was nothing for me to grab. I landed roughly on the small circular platform, and nearly got tipped off as my weight pulled it down. I looped my elbow around the chain holding it up and evened out my weight as best I could.
    I’d made it to the middle, but still there was no exit. Instead there was a lever for me to pull, as soon as I climbed up the chain enough to reach it.
    Oh why bother? Tears stung my eyes. All this, and still no end in sight. I sat on the platform. So many others had given up. Why didn’t I? What insanity made me try to do this impossible thing?
    I was afraid. I was more scared than I had ever been. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be lost in this place, where no one even knew what had really happened to me; where they would never know I hadn’t just given up. But what was the point? I was going to die anyway, and nobody would ever know. They would assume I was just another who didn’t even try.
    But wasn’t that what I was doing now? Giving up? I had kept moving this long, though nothing really pushed me to go except that there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t go back.
    Yuuko. How ever would he fare without me? The boy was only six years old, and I’d always been there to take care of him. He thought the world of me. He thought I could do anything, and I was never scared. Oh, if only I could really be what he thought I was.
    So I pulled myself to my feet on the wiggly platform and started up the chain. I pulled the lever and waited to see what would happen. A loud grinding sounded from far below me. The floor of the room was opening up so one could drop through.
    Stupid. Now I had to climb all the way down. But there was no way. I was too tired for that. My arms would give out before I was halfway to the wall. I started down back to the platform, and the chain cracked.
    I froze. I could see where it was breaking. It cracked a second time, and the chain was halfway broken.
    I jumped. The fall was terrifying. It seemed to last forever. I couldn’t get myself to twist to look down as I fell, so the landing came as a complete surprise.
    It didn’t hurt much. I landed in something thick and soft, that gave when I hit it. I sat up and looked at it in the green light. A soft, mossy plant carpeted the ground everywhere in my vision. Or it was the ground. Depending on how one looked at it.
    I stood up. The room was dim, but I could see that the walls were dark brown with medium green symbols on them. Now what?
    I attempted to take a step toward the nearest wall, but I found my feet had been sucked down too far into the greenery and fell forward. Catching myself on my hands, I was startled to see them begin to sink as well.
    Were these plants trying to eat me? I yanked my hands back, and they came out with a slurping sound, as if I’d pulled them from mud. There was nothing for me to grip to get my feet free, though, so I had to settle for shoving one deeper into the greenery to free the other.
    Again I attempted to take a step but this time I was restrained by the plants shooting out vines to wrap around my ankle. I fell forward again, this time sinking entirely into the mossy plants. As much as I twisted and turned, I couldn’t free myself, but I did manage to get a hand up to pry the greenery away from my face so I could breathe.
    What exactly was I expected to do here? Thankfully plants produced air instead of restricting it like water or I would have suffocated already. Still, I could barely move and I most certainly couldn’t get free.
    What did I know about any of this? What would dragons want me to do here anyways? Back up to Yuuko’s history lessons. These rooms seemed to be tests, not surprisingly, each with its own specific element.
    The first had clearly been fire, the element associated with courage. I guessed I’d passed that one by slipping down to the “lava.” Next was water. What was it again..? Wisdom. Well, it was certainly wise to get out of the water, and to follow the airless tunnel apparently. If this room was earth, as it so clearly was, then room number three had been air. Thought. Well I’d certainly done a lot of thinking there.
    So what was earth associated with? That was what I had to do, whatever it was. What quality was earth supposed to be though?
    Patience. My heart sank. So I was just supposed to wait down here for something to happen? It couldn’t hurt I supposed. I’d discovered by the age of eight when my mother died that patience was not so much your ability to wait for something as it was your ability to keep yourself entertained while you waited, so I started playing a word game in my head.
    I guess about ten minutes later the plants began to move. I couldn’t really tell which direction I was going until they completely disappeared from under me. Unlike my last fall, this time I landed on hard floor with a loud thunk. I was surprised. To test my patience I thought they would make me wait longer than that.
    Although, realize, when I tell you a guessed amount of time, I am almost always wrong. My sense of time is thoroughly warped. So the fact I think this happened ten minutes later could mean anywhere from five minutes to an hour.
    When I got over my indignation about the fact the stupid plants had just unceremoniously dropped me on hard floor, I looked around. I was in a hallway, thankfully not decorated as the last had been. Apparently those who made it this far didn’t die in the hallway.
    I pressed forward, my footsteps echoing in that empty hall. Torches lit themselves as I passed them.
    Whispers filled my ears, so many at once I could only pick out a few choice words. Most of them were warnings or threats of imminent death. I wasn’t worried about death. If I was to die here, then so be it. I did, however, pay heed to the words. Perhaps they could tell me what was coming.
    Either they could not tell me, or they didn’t know because not a single hint was dropped.
    The corridor opened into a circular, fire lit room. Statues of dragons lined the walls, each unique. In the center of the room was a pedestal.
    Before going to it, I circled the room, letting my hand hover near each dragon as I passed, though until about halfway through I did not touch a single one. One however, drew my hand to it. Resisting would have been as hard as defying gravity in midair.
    It was a relatively small, snakelike dragon with silvery-grey scales and piercing ice-blue eyes. My hand found its muzzle, and I stroked upward toward its eyes gently. The pools of ice snapped to attention, staring straight at me, and I yanked my hand back.
    Although I know full well the floor stayed where it was supposed to be, the room seemed to be moving. I whirled as I heard a groan and saw the dragons coming awake. I fell unceremoniously onto my bottom in shock.
    “Well, I must say, it has been ages since a candidate has made it into this room. Amazing that it would be one who is completely untrained.” A blue dragon commended me.
    “This gate has only been used for massacre!” another retorted.
    “Please, please.” A white dragon called in a decidedly feminine voice. “Use manners in front of a guest.” She turned to me. “Miss Rayne, how nice of you to join us. You may call me Celia. Might you tell us why you are here?”
    I was startled. The dragons’ brilliance had effectively cleared my mind. Why was I here in this room? I scrambled for the answer I had come up with at the very beginning. “To give you back what I borrowed.”
    She seemed pleased by my answer. “And, if I may, how do you intend to give us back our time?”
    “I thought you would know,” I admitted, feeling decidedly foolish.
    “Rayne. We tested you as harshly as we would someone who had trained for years for this. You exhibited courage, wisdom, thought, and patience better than many of those candidates. You accepted your own mortality, and showed us all deference and respect.”
    What was she trying to tell me? “I-.”
    “You are not strong.” She stated bluntly. “You are not fast, nor are you learned. Your magical abilities leave much to be desired. As you are, you would be useless in battle.”
    “Battle? I did not come here to fight!” I protested. “I came to save Yuuko!”
    “The child. Yes you entered our gate to save him, but that is surely not why you came this far.”
    “I was not going to wait by those doors to die.” I told her stubbornly before I realized exactly what tone I was using. I clapped a hand over my errant mouth.
    “We are proud of that.” She stated. “You may not be able to lift a cow, but your heart is strong. You may not be able to outrun a cheetah, but your courage is fast. You may not have the knowledge of an owl, but you intuition and logic are potent and powerful.”
    “But I didn’t try to complete the trial. I just-.” I argued before stopping myself. Was I insane? Here she was telling me I had passed and I sat there like a fool arguing that I should have failed. Did I want to die?
    “You tried to get here, and exhibited almost every trait we look for in a Master.” She told me flatly. I just nodded in acceptance. Pleased that she had finally convinced me, she nudged me toward the pedestal. “Korisu, greet your Mistress.”
    I turned to see who she was talking to, and found the silver-grey dragon from before. It came toward me slowly. “Looks like you and I were destined. I must say, it has been centuries since I last had a Master.” She touched her muzzle to my chest.
    First came a light burning sensation. Then came the blinding pain.