A Fire
Cyro
Few things would drive a dragon to leave its resting place. Even fewer would cause an ice dragon to leave the safety of its home in the middle of summer.
Cyro didn’t know what caught his attention on one fateful and hot morning. He’d been sleeping soundly when he jerked awake. For a moment, he thought he’d fallen terribly ill. As the drowsiness faded, he realized it was something more. His heart was pounded loud and long in his chest as though desperately trying to claw threw his ribcage. His breaths were short and fast, each sound ragged.
He didn’t remember having been dreaming. He wanted to figure out what had him so riled up, but he couldn’t think straight. The walls were closing in on him, and dread filled him through every vessel in his blood.
He had to get out of here.
Cyro took to the skies, leaving his one safe place behind him. He hoped the scent of the air and the caress of the breeze would help shake the cobwebs.
The glowing scarlet of active fires caught Cyro’s silvery gaze as he flew through the skies. It wasn’t until he drew nearer that he could hear the screams. The city had been set ablaze, and Cyro counted at least fourteen buildings caught up in the flames. The local fire department tried desperately to douse the wicked heat, but the fire spread faster than they could keep up with.
Cyro angled his large, leathery wings and spiraled quickly towards the ground watching as the people below him started to scramble. As he drew nearer, he picked out people among the crowds.
A father protected his wife and daughter as the flames took their home.
A brave canine companion comforted his trembling owner on the edge of the street.
A fair-haired young woman, still in her nightwear, burst into a burning building while several children behind her cried out for her.
A small grain of responsibility nagged in the back of Cyro’s brain. Perhaps, as a creature of greater power, he needed to intervene. Perhaps he felt pity for the woman, who was either brave or reckless, who appeared to be risking her life for someone else. Perhaps it was something even deeper within him, something he didn’t understand yet.
Whatever it was, Cyro wasn’t going to stand idly by.
Cyro took a deep breath, his lungs filling with air, and roared. The sound shook the earth, but his icy breath brought with it the cold of ice. The air filled with snowflakes, the sky darkening with large clouds.
What was left of the sun glinted off Cyro’s ebony scales as his large dragon claws smashed into the ground, cracking it underneath him. There were some who began to scream, turning away and fleeing. Others watched with mouths agape, their eyes wide at the sight of the rare dragon from the northern mountains.
Cyro paid them no mind. Instead, he closed his eyes and focused on manipulating his body. His bones began to crack and shift.
There was a time where the shift was excruciating, when the breaking of his bones and rearranging of his organs was more akin to torture. Now, it was exhilarating.
The rush of his blood in his veins slowed, every pump of his heart so undeniably powerful as it fueled the change of his appearance. His scales rippled to skin, his horns relaxed into dark locks of hair, and his entire body manipulated itself into the shape of a man.
It felt like time slowed, but the process finished in mere seconds.
Cyro stood in what was his own reptilian footprint in the asphalt, his thick hair wafting in the wind as fire and ice fought all around him.
His piercing blue eyes did not move from the fire before him, the one the fair-haired woman had disappeared into and not yet returned.
If he wanted to spare her life, he needed to act fast.
Snow formed under his boots as Cyro walked forward, his stride smooth and calm. The children, with their tear stained faces, watched soundlessly as Cyron entered the building without so much as a glance backward.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was scolding himself. It was unlike the grand breed of dragons to interfere with the livelihood of the lowly human, particularly without a price. Even more so, it was a crime to step foot into the territory of another dragon. Both of which Cyro was doing.
Whatever made Cyro act was pushing him forward. He acted on instinct alone, unable to find any sense of reason within each movement.
Icicles danced around his black trenchcoat. Even the brilliant heat of the flames could not melt them.
Cyro’s pearly eyes scanned the splintering building as he moved through it quietly. Somewhere within the blaze, he heard the distant sound of crying, and then the soft murmurs of a woman’s voice. He followed it, his heartbeat steady.
The beams had started to give away, and the path had become treacherous. Rubble littered the ground as the flames attacked full force. The building was weakening rapidly. While Cyro was protected from the heat of the fire by his own ice magic, there was little he could do if the building should fall and crush them all.
He entered a room full of bunks beds. The roof had caved in, and what was left was being held up by the shimmering metal rod of the beds. He stepped in, the ice reaching out from every step as he drew closer. He found himself holding his breath as their voices became clearer.
Each step was agonizing as he drew nearer.
He had found them.
What he witnessed made his solemn heart skip a beat.
