Axel snapped awake suddenly, the bright sun still leaving imprints in his eyes, replaced quickly by a small lantern floating in the air below a stone roof. The blood rushed to Axel's head, making him dizzy and blurring his vision as he glanced around, scanning his surroundings.
Axel suddenly doubled over and groaned when pain flashed through his head and side. Something warm and wet was trickling down his midriff, spreading a sharp metal smell in the air, worsening the headache that forced his eyes closed.
"Lie back down," a small voice said from next to him. "You sat up too fast."
Axel slowly let his upper body fall onto the leafy surface he was lying on, feeling the pain in his side slowly diminish. He edged his eyes open to look at his benefactor.
A small black dragon, whose height would barely reach Axel's stomach when he stood, was gently wiping blood off of Axel's exposed midriff with leaves. His face was covered by a smooth plate of dark gray metal, leaving only the tip of his snout, the back of his head, his dark gray horns, his lower jaw, and two massive curved gray fangs sticking down from his upper jaw uncovered. The dragon's small black body was perched in the middle of a round stone room, with corners covered in leaves, except for in front of a small, dark tunnel leading out of the room.
"You fell asleep in the middle of the forest, and you had this funny looking thing growing on your stomach," the dragon said in a childish voice. "I got curious so I pulled it off, but then you started bleeding."
The dragon scraped the blood-soaked leaves into a pile and pulled more leaves from the surroundings while he continued rambling.
"I kinda panicked, so I pulled you back here. I hope that thing on your stomach wasn't important."
Axel stared blankly at the dragon. The dragon shifted nervously, then reached over behind Axel and held up a discordant mess of black tendrils.
"You can have it back if you want," he said, offering it to Axel.
Axel got over his confusion enough to shake his head.
"Oh," the dragon said, tossing the clump into a corner. "Mine now, I guess."
Many questions were swirling around Axel's head, but the biggest and most glaring one made Axel curse aloud with a raspy voice, startling the dragon.
"What is it?" he asked curiously.
"Nothing," Axel said through gritted teeth.
I didn't know I could've just pulled the thing off, Axel grumbled inwardly, cursing his lack of intellect.
"I don't know healing magic, so the best I can do is make it stop bleeding," the dragon said again. He had stopped wiping blood away with leaves and was now wiping something cold and smooth over Axel's wound. "Don't sit up too fast, this stuff needs to set."
"What's that?" Axel asked.
The dragon held up a clump of clay. "This stuff hardens after a while, so I thought I might put it on you."
Axel groaned. "That's just gonna make it worse. Get it off."
"Oh," the dragon said, seeming disappointed. Axel felt the dragon's slightly blunt claws move deftly across his torso, removing the clay and exposing Axel's raw skin to the open air with a painful sting.
"How'd you get that thing, anyways?" the dragon asked, looking at the pulsing mass in the corner.
"I don't remember," Axel said, gritting his teeth against the pain.
"It seems like Ido's magic." The dragon seemed to get lost in thought for a moment.
"Ido?" Axel asked.
"Actually, that all makes sense," the dragon said after a moment, nodding his head in satisfaction. "You were at odds with the guy, anyways. He sure did a number on you at that last encounter."
"Who's Ido?" Axel asked.
The dragon blinked. "You… don't remember?"
Axel shook his head.
"How did that even happen?"
"I don't remember."
"That's rather unfortunate."
The dragon paused, glancing at the black mass in the corner. "Well, he was a wizard, and a powerful one at that. One you were fighting pretty hard against. It was pretty fun to watch, to be honest."
Axel winced as he waved his hand. "Hang on, back up. What are you talking about?"
The dragon leaned in closer, his eerily smooth mask dimly reflecting Axel's confused face in the firelight. "You really don't remember, do you?"
Axel shook his head.
"Well," the dragon said, thinking for a moment, "you were fighting on behalf of the kingdom for a while, and Ido was the one you were trying to defeat. You got into a duel with him, and he hit you pretty hard. Trapped you into a pocket dimension, and I didn't see you again after that."
Axel blinked. His mind, which would normally bring up random words and events from his past whether he liked it or not, remained stubbornly blank.
"He must've left that thing on you with that hit," the dragon continued, gesturing at the black squirming growth that was sitting in the corner. "It was pretty sad, though. Your kingdom fell pretty soon after you were defeated."
Axel shook his head in confusion.
"I don't know much else," the dragon said. "I wasn't paying too close attention."
Axel sighed. He didn't understand much of what the dragon mentioned.
"You're bleeding again," the dragon said, pointing at Axel's side. Axel looked down and noticed an excess of blood dripping down onto the floor. He wouldn't be able to hold the wound closed on his own.
A brief flash crossed his mind, an idea from Axel's memory that made him sit up straighter despite the pain.
"Do you have any cloth?" Axel asked.
"What's cloth?"
"Like… the shirt I was wearing?" Axel said hesitantly. He wasn't sure how to describe it.
"You mean this stuff?" the dragon asked, holding up Axel's shirt.
"Yeah- what? Why do you have that?"
"I removed it."
"That's not- whatever. Cut it into some strips that I can make bandages."
The dragon looked confused. "You mean this isn't your shed skin?"
"My WHAT?"
Axel sighed and hurriedly explained the concept of clothes to the dragon while generously bleeding all over the floor.
"That explains a lot," the dragon said. "We dragons don't wear clothes so I wouldn't know."
"Now can you tear it into long strips?"
"Don't you need this?"
Axel groaned. "I'll make do.
"Can I also make strips with this?" the dragon asked, tugging at Axel's pants.
"NO!"
"Why?"
"I need that."
"And you don't need this?" the dragon asked, holding up his tattered black shirt.
"I need it less."
The dragon shook his head in confusion, beginning to tear the shirt into one long strip about one claw's width across. "This is more confusing than making scythes."
The dragon handed one long cloth strip to Axel. Despite the dragon's confusion, he had made essentially the perfect bandage. Axel continued trying to explain the concept of clothes to the dragon while he wrapped himself with the bandage, covering the scar shaped like the top-down view of a spindly leafless tree gradually as the black bandages wrapped around and around.
By the time Axel had finished securing the slightly bloody black cloth bandage around his thankfully tendril-less torso, the dragon had understood that creatures like Axel needed to cover themselves with cloth to not be cold and Axel had just about given up explaining anything more.
"Interesting. Maybe I should start wearing clothes instead of heating myself up with fire all the time," the dragon mumbled.
"Don't do that," Axel groaned. "It won't work very well for dragons."
"Then why does it work for you?"
Axel decided it was time to change the subject. "By the way, I didn't catch your name."
"It's Draiken," the dragon said.
"Nice to meet you," Axel said, reaching out a hand. "I'm Axel."
Draiken stared at Axel blankly. Axel quickly retracted it, deciding that dragons probably didn't shake hands as a greeting.
"So what's with the metal thing on your face?" Axel asked. "Did you hurt yourself or something?"
Draiken snapped out of his trance and hesitated. "Well…"
"You don't have to explain if you don't want to," Axel said abruptly.
Draiken smiled under his mask. "Thanks."
"So what are you doing all alone here?" Axel asked.
Draiken's smile grew wider. "Making weapons."
Axel blinked. "Why?"
"Why not?"
Axel blinked again. "Are they for someone?"
"Not really."
"So you're just making them for fun?"
"Pretty much. I actually finished making a scythe recently. I haven't made a scythe before, and the only reference I had was the memory of Kovo's weapon, so it was super hard!" Draiken suddenly seemed filled with so much energy that it was hard for Axel to deny that Draiken loved what he did. "I failed so many times, though. I'm gonna need to melt down the metal later and reuse it for something else."
Axel chuckled. "Can I see it?"
"Sure! Don't touch anything, though."
Draiken opened up a smoky black circle in the air and stepped through it. Axel hauled himself to his feet and looked at it in confusion.
Draiken's head poked through it. "Oh, sorry. Is it too small? I'll make it bigger."
"That's not… whatever," Axel muttered, deciding not to say anything.
The smoky circle became larger. Axel carefully stepped through it. An eerie cold feeling settled on his skin as soon as he left the warmly lit room and entered a dark, smoky expanse of nothingness. The ground seemed to be made of a smooth yet solid material that was shrouded up to Axel's ankles in thick black smoke that gently swirled around his feet. Axel glanced back at the entrance. Like a white ink blot on black paper, a fuzzy-edged circular hole was floating in the air through which Axel could see the room he just left. Axel turned back and found Draiken, a barely visible black smudge in the darkness, dim ghostly light seeming to come from nowhere at all glinting off of his mask.
"Welcome to my storage dimension!" Draiken said cheerfully.
Axel trailed after Draiken slowly, glancing around at the foggy dark void that stretched infinitely in all directions before noticing that he was suddenly walking among tall metal shelves atop which various weapons and pieces of armor were placed evenly and uniformly. Isolated on pedestals scattered between each shelf were more pieces of armor and weapons. Axel recognized only a few of the items; some swords, a shield, a mace, and gauntlets were a few, but many of them were completely unknown to him. There was one that looked like a one-sided blade bent into a ring and connected back to its handle, and another that looked like a massive handleless jagged blade and a set of small dragon claws detached from wherever they came from. However, the one thing that all of the items shared was the aura they emanated. No matter how intricately or simply designed, they all gave off a slight glow of light that was evidence of the magic imbued within it.
Draiken led Axel to the far end of the arrangement of shelves, to where a curved scythe floated atop a pedestal. It gave off a brilliant golden glow from the wickedly sharp tip of its massive, segmented blade to the base of the long, curved, elegantly designed handle taller than Axel, crafted expertly out of metal to provide a firm grip wherever you held it. Axel let out a low, awe-spired whistle.
"I think I did a pretty good job," Draiken said, looking at a pile of several dozen other scythes in the distance, clearly discarded products.
Axel had to tear his eyes away from the scythe before the urge to learn how to use a scythe properly in order to wield the magnificent weapon overcame him. He instead focused on the few empty display stands scattered among the shelves and pedestals.
"What are those empty stands for?" he asked.
Draiken glanced up at Axel. "You're asking me?"
Axel looked at Draiken.
Draiken was pointing at Axel's sword.
"What?"
"I left a few weapons around the place by accident."
Axel pulled his sword out of his belt. In contrast to the various perfectly designed weapons around him oozing auras of power, his seemed glaringly plain. He could only barely detect the light gray light shining from it in the midst of the bright glows of Draiken's masterpieces. However, something within him compelled him to not look at his sword in disappointment. Something told him his sword was just as strong as any other weapon Draiken made and proudly displayed.
"Relax," Draiken said. "I don't want it back. It's actually really nice to see the weapons I made in use."
"So all of those empty stands are weapons you left around?"
"Not all of them," Draiken said. "I only left five. The others are for weapons I will make in the future."
"What are the other four weapons?" Axel asked.
Axel was inwardly hoping that the others were as plain as his own.
"Hmm," Draiken said, falling into thought. "If I remember correctly, the other four are both sets of two. One is a pair of daggers. It was pretty hard making those all fancy and glowy. Almost as hard as putting the enchantments on it."
Axel's spirits fell a bit.
"And the last one is a gauntlet and sword pair. I had a lot of fun with those!" Draiken started getting excited. "Get this! The swords can duplicate!"
"Duplicate?"
"Yeah! The gauntlet controls them so they can fly around, and it can even disappear! Making those enchantments was so fun!"
Axel somehow became both disappointed and curious at the same time.
"Those sound like Qassot's weapons," Axel said.
"Oh, you know Qassot? She's using them pretty well, isn't she!"
Axel gently ran a finger down the length of his sword, feeling a bit sad that his sword was the plainest of all of the weapons Draiken left around, both in appearance since the daggers seemed to be much more elaborate, and in power since Qassot's swords could duplicate and fly around.
"Funny story, actually. So I found this random kid dragon hanging out in the river as soon as I arrived, right? It was my first time back on Falnear after I ran to the Beyond so it was kinda a big moment for me. I was feeling pretty happy, and that dragon looked kinda lonely, so I thought I might give her a few gifts! Isn't that nice?"
Axel shook the thoughts in his head free. The brief snippets of memories he saw had shown him that his sword had helped him emerge alive from numerous battles. Who was he to be disappointed in such a trusty weapon?
"Turns out that was a great choice! Qassot seems to like using them every time I watch her. Same with Kyle! You did too, before you went and disappeared on me. So I've been thinking, maybe I should leave a few more weapons around. What do you think?"
Nodding in satisfaction, Axel finished his thoughts and turned to Draiken.
"Glad you agree! Now then, it's your turn. How did you get back on Argean?" Draiken asked, completely oblivious to the fact that Axel hadn't paid attention to anything Draiken said.
"Argean?"
"Yeah, it's this whole island place," Draiken replied before he kept chattering on. "You left so suddenly that I thought you learned portal magic all of a sudden. What happened? I thought you were going to avenge your kingdom."
"Slow down," Axel interrupted. He was having so much trouble keeping up with what Draiken was rambling about that he was starting to get a headache. "Too much information."
"Oops," Draiken said. "Sorry about that."
"It's fine," Axel sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"You did get defeated, so I thought you ran away. You seemed a very determined to get your vengeance once you escaped that pocket dimension thingy Ido trapped you in, so I thought you saw how hopeless it was to fight all three of the wizard dudes."
Draiken demonstrated his remorse for giving Axel too much information by continuing to overload Axel with information.
"They're very strong, but I bet you and Kyle could beat them pretty easily if you worked together. Well, as long as you don't fight them all at once. You'd be toast. Especially if you give Ido prep time. The stuff he makes is scary."
Axel decided to ignore Draiken. He sat down on the ethereal ground and began to clean the blade of his bloodied and dirtied sword on the loose end of the bandage wrapping around his body. As he carefully wiped the debris off of the smooth dark metal and polished it to a shine, his mind began to wander. Maybe it was Draiken's wandering rambling manner of speech, or maybe it was the odd feeling the dark void of Draiken's storage dimension gave off that made Axel want to fall asleep and never wake up. Either way, Axel soon found his surroundings becoming bathed in warm golden light.
The darkness above him shifted blue and became a clear sky lit with the midday sun. The dark smoke around him changed color into a light film of dust that the soldiers around Axel kicked up as they trained. The flat dark ground became a gravelly surface which crunched underfoot. The tall metal shelves and pedestals that held masterpieces turned into wooden stands holding training swords and straw dummies in various states of deterioration.
Axel kept polishing his sword as he sat on the ground, watching the soldiers spar with wooden swords, headless spears, and practice with bows and wooden arrows. Axel couldn't make out any of their faces or features. Only their full body plate armor shining brightly in the sun emblazoned with the kingdom's crest - a white sun setting over a field of gold - stood out to Axel. Next to Axel, wearing only a leather shirt and pants, stood a tall person playfully spinning two wickedly curved, jagged-edged daggers shimmering with an ethereal blue light. The person standing next to Axel was talking on and on about how much they hated political talk while Axel tried desperately to ignore the person's wandering talk by focusing on his sword.
Axel eventually got annoyed and, shaking his head and sheathing his sword, stood up and began to walk away, across the training grounds towards the town where he wanted to find something to eat.
"Where are you going?"
Draiken's voice snapped Axel out of his trance. He had gotten up in the middle of Draiken's ramblings and had started walking back towards the entrance to the storage dimension.
"Was it something I said?"
"No," Axel mumbled, suddenly embarrassed to admit that he hadn't been paying attention. "I just think I need to get going."
"Are you that worried about finding survivors?"
Axel didn't know what Draiken was talking about, but nodded anyway.
"I see," Draiken looked a little disappointed, but he sauntered over to Axel anyways and said. "Let me show you out."
Axel smiled at the sight of the small dragon wandering away into the darkness and followed.