Chapter 484: Not a Dragon  

After being near enough strangled to death, Harry no longer had hope that Gary, or Monk for that matter, were able to be swayed back over to their side. It was too risky and they were both adamant, too infected or influenced by the Shadow to care about the lives of their past friends.

Having left the room where the large pit was, Harry immediately felt a lot better. The Shadow and deep sick feeling he felt in his stomach had disappeared and the further he walked away from it the better he felt.

Right now, Harry was on a mission - to return to the Redwings and inform them of the fake surrender. A big weight was now on his shoulders.

'Wait they didn't tie me up when I got down here, so maybe they don't think I'm a prisoner, as long as I don't act suspicious I should be okay.' Harry thought.

In addition to looking inconspicuous, there were certain people he wished to avoid, Monk being one of them since he knew what had happened.

Walking through the tunnels and back through the main area, it looked like his plan had worked. He passed a few people on the way and none of them had questioned him. And those that did notice him from before didn't think he was a prisoner.

"Prepare for war any second now. With our new weapon we shall fight the Redwing army, and show that they are no match for us!" A voice could be heard coming down from one of the tunnels..

Harry recognised it well, and wished to avoid that path. It sounded like Monk was rallying up the troops. He had already scurried out of the room before Ray had arrived so he had no idea that Harry was possibly alive.

"Let's try to find another way." Harry said.

"Another way huh? And why would you need to do that?" A voice said from behind.

When Harry turned, he could see one of the only familiar faces he knew down here. It was one of the Dark Guild leaders, Mukdad, the man who had brought him here.

Harry gulped, worried he had been caught and what he was to do now.

"Here." Mukdad said, holding out two long items under a cloth and handing it to him. Nearly in an instant Harry recognised what they were. They were his two swords that he thought was lost in the snow.

"If you want to get out of here, take that tunnel over there and then the second one on the left. You should see some people starting to head to the surface from there. Just follow them and you will be fine." Mukdad said.

Taking the swords, Harry was a little hesitant. It could be a trap, but if so then Mukdad could have just killed him while he had no weapons, he wouldn't give him his old weapons to make it harder on himself.

"Why are you helping me?" Harry asked, taking the weapons.

"Maybe it's because I no longer believe in what we are doing, maybe it's because I think you're a good kid. Or that I don't like our current leader. He is far too connected to the Shadow, unlike our own Morfran.

Harry wanted to chuckle, to him, Morfran the Dark guild leader and the Shadow were just as bad. In the end Morfran was part of the shadow guard that worked and protected the Shadow but he stopped himself from saying anything to his unlikely saviour.

"Thank you." Harry replied, taking off. "I promise I will return the favour."

Before the beast had even been summoned and the light started to shine, the first thing Ray had noticed was a terrible stench had filled the room. It was as if something had been left to rot on a hot muggy day, the smell of something dead.

When Ray looked up at the beast, although Gary claimed it to be a dragon, this was no dragon Ray had ever seen before. It was holding a piece of its body together with shadow, wriggling around like it was a worm. The rest of its shape did resemble that of a dragon with its wings and the many spiked scales running down its back and tail. But looking at it, Ray almost felt like he was looking at death.

"What have you done!" Ray shouted in anger.

"Are you frightened, Ray? An ancient beast that hasn't been seen on this land in so many years has finally returned. At last the dragon can get its revenge for all the humans that killed it."

Ray looked into it's purple dark eyes. He didn't feel scared but instead he felt sorry. It was as if Gary had forcefully awakened a dragon from its slumber and forced it to fight for him even though it had passed on.

This was no dragon, at least not what Ray knew as a dragon. He started to look at it closer and noticed its scales were black in colour, quite rare for a dragon.

Suddenly, his head started to ring, he knelt down on one knee as he tried to stop the pain and images started to appear. The images in his head kept flickering between the two. It was the dragon settlement in the valleys, a hidden area away from the humans.

All of them looked so peaceful, but the next image was of all the Dragons dead. The exact events of what happened that day were unclear to Ray as it was so long ago. But he remembered that day, because after the dragon settlement was destroyed, that was the day Ray sought his revenge on all humans.

'Why am I seeing this now?' Ray thought.

When the image returned to the settlement before it was destroyed, he noticed a single lonely looking dragon. One that was black in colour, but he was merely a child compared to Ray.

The images had stopped appearing in Ray's head and so did the ringing. He didn't know why but looking at this black dragon had reminded him of that day once again. Right now, he had another matter to deal with. What happened to the settlement back then, his people and family, he wouldn't let that happen to his new home now.

"Gary I can't believe you've gone so low to lie to me like that." Ray said.

"Did it really come as that much of a surprise? You see Ray, why do you think this hero has the name Dragon in it? It was never because it was made of Dragon parts, it's because it has the power of dragons. These weapons were originally created by the humans and the dwarves for the gods to hunt the dragons and even the Divine being was in on it. The one you serve.

"You see, the gods felt like they were at the top of this world. Stronger than anything else but there was one being's power they feared more than anything and that was the dragons. So they gathered together to form a plan to get rid of them all. After all, the gods were actually considered weaker than the dragons, so they had to get the help of the humans by spreading lies and rumors of the dragon's evil deeds to them. In the end the dragon weapons were created and this is one of them.

"Oh how I would love to see the look on the Divine beings face, when she notices the very thing she created to get rid of the dragons is now being used against them."

Was it true, Ray thought. He always got the feeling that the Divine being was hiding something from her story. She seemed to try to link the Shadow as the reasons the dragons got killed. The Shadow after all only appeared once all the dragons had died.

But what if it wasn't the Shadow, if the gods really had gotten together to try get rid of the dragons? Something wasn't adding up in either of their stories because if they were true, what was the shadow? Was it not just some other god?

And how did Gary know all of this information, was it whatever was trapped inside the dragon hammer, or was it the shadow itself speaking to him telling him all of this?

"I can see you are nothing and there are no friends, Ray. Everyone around you has been lying to you. I am the only one who has been honest. Don't get in my way and let me finish them off for you." Gary said.

The dragon flapped its wings and started to hover in the air. It flew right past him and started to look upwards out of the pit, all while Ray stood there doing nothing. Ray was conflicted, unsure of what to do at this point in time.

Who to believe? Everyone was lying to him, or it certainly seemed that way.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a figure from the fog appeared, it started to walk towards Ray and he could finally see who it was. On his black chest piece he had the symbol of the eye.. The two of them had met before and had even fought to the death.

It was the dark guild leader. "Morfran, what do you want?" Ray asked.

*****

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