The Broken Scale (The Dragon Riders of Arvain) (50 page)

             
“Because I had to find the door; now follow me.” He started to climb the spiral staircase, being extra careful not to knock any of the random scrolls or artifacts that were lying around off. They had also learned that when it came to some of the things that Estraken did there was no explaining them.

             
Estraken led them to the top of the stairs which ended abruptly at a bookcase. He reached out and pulled the bookcase so that it swung on hinges just like a door. Hayden would have never have guessed that there was a secret passage way in Estraken’s library.

             
Behind the bookcase the passage way was a just a staircase going down, no decorations of any sort just stairs and more stairs. Estraken grabbed a torch that had been hanging on the wall by the bookcase and led the way down.

             
“How much further can it be?” Shane asked Hayden and Cass as they continued down what seemed to be a never ending staircase. They had been climbing down for a while now and Shane voiced what would be the first of many complaints.

             
“Well it would have to be a good ways down wouldn’t it, it is the lowest room in the pyramid after all,” Hayden responded.

             
Hayden had not thought about answering, but it seemed to just come out. Cass and Shane were both just as surprised to hear his voice. They did not want to badger him so they let his response go, but they did smile at each other.

             
They continued their dissent until the staircase opened up and they were at the top of a giant open room. This room was unlike anything Hayden had ever seen, it looked like it was made of black stone instead of metal.

             
The spiral staircase continued to wind down until it leveled out on the floor. The room was longer than it was wide and the ceiling was tall and rounded. The room was dark but there were five glowing orbs in the base pillars that grew almost to the ceiling.

             
There was a red and blue orb on the left side, white and black on the right, and a green orb on the far wall. Besides the torch that Estraken held and the five orbs there were no other lights in black room.

             
The five young riders stood in awe of the room, not knowing what its purpose was or what the orbs where, but not asking either questions. The rider’s barely moved off of the bottom stairs but Estraken continued walking to the center of the room.

             
Hayden watched as the torch was not bright enough to cast light on the walls so it encased Estraken in an orange glow as he made his way deeper into the darkness. He moved to the right of the room and held his torch as high as he could and touched the side of one of the pillars.

             
The flames from the torch licked the wall and shot to the top of pillar. The fire on the walls stayed lit momentarily but ignited a ring around the top of the pillar.
The fire continued to race around the room on tracks that seemed to be filled with oil. The fire went from pillar to pillar, igniting a ring around the top of each one.

             
Soon all five pillars were alight and a giant hanging chandelier that was hanging in the center of the room started to light up. The chandelier was made up of multiple metal tracks that looped in an out of each other. Each loop was now on fire and the room lit up.

             
Hayden followed the flames as much as he could, fascinated by the racing fire as it continued to grow. The last pillar to light on fire was the one that held the red orb. He watched as the ring of fire slowly lit around the top of the pillar and revealed a giant red dragon that had been lurking in the darkness of the unlit room.

             
Hayden reached for his sword that was not with him, he had left in his room. Draek was not going to be able to help him this deep underground. He heard all the others gasp and shout about dragons, but something was wrong.

             
“A green dragon, run!” Shane yelled.

             
“Look out ,it’s a blue dragon!” Cass screamed.

             
“Let me out of here, it’s a white dragon,” Sebastian yelled as he pushed Giles out of the way to run back up the steps.

             
“A black dragon,” Giles said calmly, almost in awe, as he stood back up after Sebastian pushed him.

             
“Please calm down, they will not hurt you,” Estraken said. He stood next to a giant round table that was actually a giant map. The hills and mountains rose off the table and the oceans and river had actual water.

             
Hayden couldn’t take his eyes off of the dragons. He stared at the red dragon, but the dragon did not move, it did not breathe.

             
“They’re not real,” Hayden said in wonder.

             
“Oh they are very much real, they are just very much dead,” Estraken said. He sat down on a chair and looked over the map.

             
“But, if they are dead, why do they have color and look so alive?” Hayden asked. He remembered the first time he had seen a dragon and how when it died all the color and shine left its scales as it turned to stone.

             
“Well, after the first war, some of the Metallic Riders thought that it would be a good idea to have some of the other dragons to study. So they went to all the places where they killed dragons and they took the best looking dragon body from each place.

             
“Once they picked which one they liked a group would go there and break the bodies up and transport them back here. Then they made this room and rebuilt each dragon and painted them up so they looked as real as possible.”

             
Hayden looked at each dragon and was amazed at the differences between each of them.

             
“To think that all these different creatures are called dragons,” he said out loud to himself.

             
“It’s amazing,” Cass responded to him.

             
Hayden looked back at the red dragon; it was very similar to Trohen, but this one was bigger, much bigger. Its horns were larger and there were patches all over it that looked to be pointed stone.

             
The blue dragon was longer than the other dragons and much skinnier, but its wings were amazingly large. It had a long neck, and the spikes down its back looked like fins. It had one claw outstretched and Hayden could barely see that it was webbed. It also had two fins on the end of its tail that reminded Hayden of a fish’s tail.

             
The white dragon looked like it had been carved out of ice. It had very few scales and almost no spikes on its body. Hayden was surprised to see it with so few defenses, but he was sure that it was not easily defeated. It did have a pair of horns that jutted out of the back of its head that looked a lot like the horns that were growing out of Draek.

             
The black dragon frightened Hayden the most because if he looked right at it the dragon seemed to disappear into the darkness around it. The dragon did not have four limbs and a pair of wings like all the other dragons; it had two hind legs and it had claws coming out of the wings like a bat. The beast was thin enough to see the outline of its ribs. The horns that grew out of its head actually grew down around its head, meeting in front of its mouth.

             
The last dragon was the green dragon. It looked like it was a forest on its own. The horns on its head looked like they were tree trunks. It was larger than the blue dragon but smaller then the red, falling somewhere in between those two.

             
It had vines growing down under its chin, and its wings did not look like the normal membrane on a metallic dragon’s wings, but looked more like leaves on a tree. Its mouth came to a point and it had slanted eyes like a lizard. Its talons were very curved and looked like they almost touched the point where they grew out of.

             
All the dragons had two things in common; they were each a lighter shade of their color on their stomachs and their colors grew darker as it came around their backs. And they all looked to be ferocious.

             
“I don’t know about their methods, but the dragons do look good above the eggs,” Estraken said.

             
“Eggs? What eggs?” Shane asked.

             
“The eggs underneath the dragons.” Estraken pointed at the blue dragon that was over a glowing blue orb.

             
Hayden realized that he was looking at dragon eggs from each of the earth dragons. He walked over to the red dragon egg, and as he got closer he knew that Estraken was telling the truth.

             
It had the same shape that Draek’s egg had, but instead of it being a solid color it looked the molten rock. Hayden remembered working with the blacksmith when he would poor out the liquid metal and it would glow from the darkest red to an almost white yellow, just like the egg.

             
He moved on to the blue egg and examined it. It was darker blue, almost black at the bottom, and grew lighter as it made its way to the top of the egg, just like when Hayden had opened his eyes under water in the river by his village.

             
The inside of the egg seamed to flow like moving water, it gave Hayden the sense that he was moving but the egg was standing still on its stone stand.

             
The green egg was every color green that Hayden could imagine, and they all were interwoven like vines and plants growing on top of each other. He got lost trying to trace one color strand, trying to find where it stopped or started.

             
The black egg was the next one Hayden walked to, it was a whirlwind of grey and black sand with a light glowing from the center. Hayden tried to look into it but the storm inside the egg was too strong to see anything through.

             
The last egg was the white egg. It looked like it was made out of frozen water. It was clear in some parts and cloudy in others. Hayden reached out and touched it and it felt like ice under his hand.

             
He turned back to Estraken, who was watching as the riders moved from egg to egg in their own pattern. He was looking at him when Hayden turned around.

             
“Are they … are they still in their?” he asked.

             
“The dragons? Yes the eggs are still good, they could still hatch,” he answered.

             
“I don’t understand though, you said that the different races keep their eggs hidden and that the Metallic Riders had been searching for them but they had never found them. How did these get here then?” Cass asked as she gently reached out and touched the blue egg. Hayden wasn’t sure, but it looked like the water rippled at her touch.

             
“That’s right, we have been searching for many years for their eggs, but we have never found their hiding spots. You see, these eggs weren’t found, they were given to us by the leader of each race.” Estraken leaned back in his chair and motioned for the riders to come and join him around the map table.

             
He then told them about their last lesson, underneath the watchful gaze of the five stone dragons and the un-hatched eggs.

Chapter 25

            
 
So then each race gave the Metallic Riders one of their dragon eggs, to show that they would not rise up against them,
Hayden explained to Draek.

             
They had flown together and found a small clearing full of fresh snow; they had landed to take a rest away from the world. Hayden had told him everything he had learned the day before with Estraken.

             
Draek had been very interested in the eggs and what the other dragons looked like. He was just as surprised as Hayden had been to find out that each dragon had looked no similar to each other than two people did.

             
Hayden had learned more about the other races and just what their dragons could do. The blue dragons stayed in the water almost as much as they did in the air. They could hold their breath for long periods of time and they could swim faster than a ship could sail.

             
Estraken had told them that they did not breath fire either, he had said that they breathed boiling water and steam instead of flames. Hayden had stuck his hands in boiling water when he was a child and he remembered the pain all too well.

             
Hayden already knew a lot about the red dragons since he had met a live one. He did learn that the boulders and stones that grew over their bodies came from them smashing into stone and the stone embedding in their scales and skin.