What a Fire Dragon is

As Elin approached where Jonas, Kim, Guy, and Lance waited, she couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. She wasn't sure why she and Elmo had been pulled back from colleting firewood, just that it had sounded urget, but as she looked at Kim and Jonas, it didn't feel like it was something that would be urgent. Almost like something that could have waited. At least as far as Elin could tell.

While she set the armload of branches she'd been able to collect, where others had place the wood they'd gathered, she tried to think of every possibility that there was about why they'd have needed to see her and Elmo so urgently. Especially with how didn't seem that urget.

All that came up in her mind was that she'd done something, sometime that she wasn't aware of. Or in other words, she'd screwed something up. She was certain of that. The only problem was the fact that she couldn't think what that might have been.

Glancing at Elmo, she briefly considered the possibility that he'd screwed something up, but nothing came to her mind about that either. Not even a simple thing that could have ben even skewed as his fault.

Which served to only make her more nervous. She breifly considered the benefits running away would have, but given the fact that Jonas, Guy, Lance, and especially Kim, had seen her, she knew that meant she wouldn't be able to get far if she did tried running now.

Maybe she should have tried that when she was first informed that Jonas and Kim wanted to see her, but it was too late to do anything about that now. Just as it was too late to do anything about whatever it was that she'd screwed up.

So, all she could do was approach and see what it was that they had called both her and Elmo for. She just wished she didn't feel like she was in deeper trouble than she'd even been in, in her life.

As she sat down, she was doing her bets to not react to her sense of impending doom, but no one asked her about any odd behavior, so she thought that maybe she wasn't letting it show, although she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. All she could say for sure was the fact that it wasn't making it easier for her.

"Alright, since we're all here, we should get started," Jonas said calmly.

Here it comes, Elin said to herself, as she braced for what she knew was coming. Even though she didn't know what exactly it was going to be about.

Jonas then turned to Lance. "Go ahead."

"Well, it's not like we have an extensive knowledge of them," Lance said, sounding like he was making a disclaimer to Elin before he said whatever it was that he was about to discuss. "It's just what we know about fire dragons."

Elin blinked. What did fire dragons have to do with whatever it was that she had done? she couldn't help but wonder. Was there something that she was supposed to have done about them?

Lance sighed. "Anyway, we know they're a very rare kind of dragon that appears about maybe once every hundred years or so," he continued, pulling Elin out of her thoughts. "First, when they appear, it's considered a sign of an impending disaster. They're almost like a wildfire that has intelligence and chooses which direction they burn in."

Kim sighed in annoyance. "Enough with the trivial stuff. Tell us what you know about the fire dragons themselves," she snapped, her words making Elin suddenly realize that this might not actually have been about something she had done herself.

Lance nodded. "Well, first the fire dragon is just that. A dragon composed entirely of flames. Unlike other dragons with scales, most of which breathe fire, a fire dragon can't be killed so easily. We don't know if swords and arrows have any effect on them, but typically when one is brought down, it takes an army itself rather than just a few strong people," Lance said, then paused as he took a drink of water.

"How have they killed fire dragons in the past?" Elmo asked in the meantime.

When Lance finished taking a drink, he shook his head. "They don't really say how they get brought down," he admitted. " Just that they were stopped." Lance then looked of into the distance, into the failing light of the day.

"I can't say if I've ever heard of what has been done to kill them, just that if they step into a river or lake, the water will start to boil a minute or two after, before it starts to evaporate and disappear, leaving the fire dragon unharmed."

Lance stopped talking for a couple minutes, his eyes going somewhere far away, while they waited for him to continue. Elin then looked at the others, not sure if this was all that there was for him to say or if she should just wait patiently with them.

"So, is that it?" Kim said, sounding like her time was being wasted with this. "While it's good to know, it really doesn't tell us much else about them."

Lance jumped at Kim's voice, apparently startled at the sound.

"Sorry," he said, looking like he'd forgotten that he'd been talking a minute ago. "Well, the fire dragons, as I said, are composed entirely of flames. The strength of the dragon is determined by the color of its flames. Red, orange, and yellow flames are the weakest, just as those are the coolest colors of any fire. Blue and purple flames are the next strongest level, although you can have one with all five colors, but that's when its getting ready to move on to being just blue and purple flames. There are legends of white fire dragons from long, long ago, but its hard to say if that's true or not. All I know for certain about them is that there was one that appeared ten years ago."

Lance then looked at Kim, his eyes blazing with bottled up emotions, almost like he was challenging Kim either for something or about something, Elin couldn't decide.

"I couldn't do anything about it then, but I will never forget the terror that I felt seeing it. It was only red and orange flames at that time, but it nearly destroyed the home my family had at that time," Lance said his voice firm and steady, despite the emotions that Elin could see swirling in his eyes. "I don't know what happened to that dragon, but I haven't heard about it since. All I know for certain is that it didn't even seem to pay any attention to those who were trying to chase it off."

Lance suddenly looked at his lap, looking almost lost now. "I don't know if it was after something or why it turned away from my family's lands, but it just wandered off and I haven't heard anything about it since. Not that it was defeated or that it's reappeared. All I can say for sure is that if we find it, we might not be enough to stop it at all."

When he stopped talking this time, Elin was pretty sure that he was done. Though, she wasn't sure what to say herself about this. Part of it wasn't like anything she'd ever heard about before, but at the same time, it certainly sounded like something those in charge of this stupid competition would think to have them do.

"So, you said that it's composed of flames, right?" Jonas asked, pulling Elin out of her thoughts. "Is there anything that can be seen of the body, under the flames?"

Lance looked like he'd been stunned and Elin wasn't sure if he had an answer for that or not.

"The best I can say is that there is a kind of core to the dragon, but no one's ever been able to get a clear look at it," Guy suddenly said, pulling everyone's attention to him. "My great-grandfather told be about it once. Inside the flames there's either a shadow or a darkness that seems to be the body of the dragon. Though, it's supposed to merely look like a dragon, but only in its form. When it dies, even the core disappears with the flames. So, no one has been able to tell whether it really has a body or not."

"Well that complicates things," Jonas merely said, sounding like he was disappointed in the response, "but I guess it wouldn't be much of a challenge if there was an easy way out of this."

"Wait, you're still going forward with this?" Lance asked, sounding surprised.

"Of course we are," Elmo said as if there shouldn't have been any doubt. "We'll defeat it if we can find it, no matter how strong it is."

Land and Guy looked at them like they were seeing them for the first time, and were scared of what they were seeing. "You're not scared of them?" Guy ventured.

"Oh, we're scared of them," Jonas replied. "We just have to get through them if we want any hope of seeing where we came from again."

This seemed to settle their fears, even though it also clearly made them a little confused. Which Elin supposed was understandable, since she wasn't sure that she even wanted to try and explain how they were from other worlds and even how they had ended up getting here in the first place. She wasn't sure she'd believe herself if she hadn't experienced what she had so far.

"It doesn't matter," Kim said, clearly wanting to keep them from asking more about it. "Just know that if anyone doesn't want to join us in the fight, we won't hold it against them. Even if it's just us four, we're going to put an end to the fire dragon. No matter what."