Dragon Bound

A roundtable meeting had been ongoing for a long while now, about five days to be precise, in actual settings, in normal settings, that was a lot of time to have been at a meeting, discussing, deliberating, arguing, coming to conclusions and later turning those conclusions unconcluded only to deliberate some more. But time wasn’t an issue to be worried about with these folks, they are dragon kind, and their kind is patient, forbearing and adaptive. They have survived horrors, outlived tyrants and overcame tribulations after tribulations, this right here, that brought them to the point of this meeting was just one of those situations. Seated at the table were elder dragons, they held posts of commanders, generals, ministers and advisors, those known to have lived for centuries on end, some with scars to show for their gruesome experiences, both in battle and of nature. Also seated were the protégés, prospects and legacies of these elder dragons, they weren’t there to contribute but rather to learn from the wisdom of their elders and predecessors. All present were in humanoid form, but the hall was actually huge enough to contain all those present even if they were in their dragon forms, the hall is called the great dragon hall for that very reason. Most importantly though, seated at the table, on the most elegant chair and looking kindly on everyone is the benevolent dragon queen, her ever flowing dark hair highlighted with grey at the end proclaimed her dominant dark froth dragon breed. Everyone here knows of her kind heart though, despite being one of the toughest and brutal breed of dragons, sometimes her own people tend to forget her breed and often argue amongst themselves of her actual breed. It is for this reason, her extreme gentility, that she has this flock of a round table of men and women who are tougher and can help with the tougher decisions making as well, one of which they were gathered here till this instant. Humans “I will keep saying it, we have chosen to be hidden and remain so for a particular reason, granted we failed at keeping ourselves hidden for as long as we wished, but still yet, that is not enough reason to grant ‘them' allowance into our existence, humans can’t be trusted with the knowledge of our existence not to talk of the in-depth knowledge of our very being” an elderly minister said almost spitting the words to show his frustration, in his human form he looked like a man in his late forties but by actual age this elder dragon was over four centuries old, give or take a few decades. “Agreed, the war exposed us for just a short while, then 'they' came, and what did they say they wanted? Admittance into our part of the world, preposterous, if you ask me” another elder general said, he looked older in human form but he was just around the same age as the first speaker. “You all seem to forget that we have our own people in their own part of the world, heck we have people all over the earth in every continent, and wherever we are located predominantly, we claim it by either making it too hot or too cold or unbreathable for them to venture into the area as they wish, all they are asking is a bit of ours in return” a younger looking woman said, she is as well younger in age compared to the other two speakers, just a little over three centuries. “Whatever we have claimed that you call part of their world is not theirs for claiming to start with, besides, we all couldn’t possible have remained here, after all we are multiplying as well even if it is a whole lot slower in rate than their rabbit pace, but do tell me, how should we have done it then rather than moving to occupy different sections of the world where they can’t just venture into?” the second elder speaker retorted. “Oh just open your eyes, you old fool, it’s the new world, things are changing, even if the war hadn’t exposed us to them, then their technology would have, I believe it is better to open our arms and lands to them even if it won’t be absolute, so as to save ourselves the trouble of possible conflicts in the future" the woman said in serious spite. “Please, please, wise ones, do not fight, I can’t bear to see that happening” the dragon queen said in a silky voice although it has a bit of a coarse feel to it, after all she is an ash breather by breed. “Oh, what do we do about these people, they actually seem really nice y’know, wearing those white suits and garments, they couldn’t be more beautiful, I am of a mind to give them the benefit of the doubt, they might be different from their ancestors” the queen stated. The dragon queen had lived almost a millennia and for half of that her lifespan, she had been queen. “Might I remind you, your eminence, that two times now, they have been tested with the knowledge of our existence and being, and those two time they have failed, the first time they couldn’t even comprehend and waged war on us, turning against us and the second time caused a world war amongst them, it made them turn against themselves for crying out loud, I for one do not think a third time is a charm” a new speaker said, he is an elder dragon as well, just as old as the queen, he held the post of a commander and a thin but clear battle scar ran from his face down to his torso. “Well, you are quite right, but then, you have to realize that they are the only intelligent enough beings that we share this world with, the age of the dinosaurs came by and went along, we didn’t even get along with them far enough, and what wiped them out gave us our own supremacy and abilities, I would like us all to please think about giving them one more chance, I am sure they will come through this time around” the dragon queen pleaded. Everyone got silent again, most protégés that were there were just wondering why the queen kept pleading when she could just declare that it be done, but then doing that would betray the purpose of the round table elders wouldn’t it. By the seventh day of this meeting, it was put to vote if the dragons should open their borders to the humans who came to learn about them. Majority voted no, but then, the dragon queen through her soft heart allowed for a clause, that the scientists and researchers only be allowed to an extent to learn about them, so that they can prepare the whole human populace about the existence of the elder race, the Eldrians. * “Is it ready?” A man in white suit, white shoes, white framed glasses and white hair asked his team of scientists who were working on a project. “Almost Sir, tweaking the frost technology of the Eldrians is near impossible, but we have succeeded in making a prototype from what our spies have learnt about the original that is located at the heart of the Eldrian continent” the lead scientist answered. “And what will a prototype achieve in a situation like this?” the man asked getting irritated. “From what we have studied Sir, we discovered that the frost tech is adaptive and corrective, so any sabotage done to it will be self rectified, but if we induce a different atmospheric condition it will indeed adjust to do exactly what we want” the lead scientist replied quickly but confidently. The man removed his glasses and brought out a soft piece of white cloth to gently clean its lens, then he replaced both items. “Fine, so long as hell freezes over” he said and picked up his white walking stick and left the team of all white wearing scientists alone to do their work, or rather, his work. * “What have you done!” the dragon queen asked the man in white as she watched in horror as her continent and kingdom of dragons started freezing over. The ice ran across the whole expanse of land as if it was in a contest against time, within moments, everything and everyone therein had been frozen solid. “We built a copy of your frost technology, the very technology that had kept you hidden from the world, then we made ours to give yours a nudge to get even colder by making it feel an all too hot atmosphere, and it worked like a charm” the man replied. “But why? What have we done to you?” the dragon queen asked, she was horrified and devastated. The man took off his glasses and brought out a soft piece of white cloth to gently clean its lenses, “You know, I had thought Antarctica was the coldest continent, but then, what the world now calls ‘the glitch' happened and exposed your continent right above Antarctica, a place thought too cold for human or any life to survive” he said to the queen. Then he placed his glasses back on his face after returning the piece of cloth, “Even though the glitch only happened for a brief three days, it was enough for us to detect what the whole world missed, the Eldrians, the elder race, dragons with shifting abilities, all on their own, in their very own continent that is the size of Russia or even bigger” the man said as if still in awe. “What now took the crown was the fact that it was you Eldrians that caused the glitch, the phenomenon thought to be alien in origin, that caused major shifts in climate and weather conditions, Africa saw snowstorms and heatstrokes almost wiped out Europe, I mean, that was just something unacceptable, how could the activities or a particular race cause such immense unbalancing, so I immediately knew we had to get on the inside as soon as possible" the man continued, cruelly explaining his evil actions. “And many thanks to you, oh great and benevolent queen, you granted us access even against the wishes of your advisors all, that is actually the reason why I called you away, so you could see for yourself, what your kind heart and actions brought upon your race and entire kingdom” the man said with a sinister demeanor. The dragon queen in all her over nine hundred years of existence had never felt such regret or such anger, she boiled and roared and started to shift, determined to wipe out the evil right before her. But halfway through her transformation, she felt lightning strike her, over and over again as the surge of excess electricity ran into her half transformed body, stopping her from finishing the transformation and bringing her a whole world of pain. “Sir” a scientist ran forth breathing hard and bowed before the white man, “Tthe ice Sir, iit’s alive” he said with a shaky voice. “What?! What the hell do you mean by that?” the man asked the scientist and unconsciously removed his thumb from the button he had pressed down which was causing the electrocution of the dragon queen. “The ice that froze the whole continent Sir, from the frost technology, it is, well alive in the sense that all it froze are only being suspended in the very state they are, they are not dying” the scientist answered. The man took a step towards the scientist and with one hand he took him by the collar of his white lab coat, “That is unacceptable, the Eldrians have to be wiped out, all of them killed at once, I have spent trillions and I'm willing to spend more, tweak it again, nudge it again, do whatever you will and make it kill them all” he said with venom in his voice. “That is impossible Sir, both the frost technology and our own copy of the technology are right in the center of the continent which is now impossible to get into because anything that steps on the continent gets frozen solid, not killed but suspended forever alive is that frozen state” the scientist replied with a strain. The man released the scientist and began to laugh, harder and harder he laughed, “That is even better, forever alive and frozen, suspended in the same state to remain like that, conscious in the subconscious, that is just perfect” the man said and laughed some more. “What did we ever do to you?” the dragon queen asked again this time weakly. The man turned his attention to her as if he had forgotten that she was there. “We are the WIC Inc, let it not be heard that there is a race more superior than us, we have grown past being human and have succeeded in dominating them all from behind the curtain, now we find out that there is an even more superior race? Never can it be allowed to be, we can’t dominate your lot, but we can wipe you out, hence that is the solution we have chosen” the man said. With the last of her strength, the dragon queen roared and breathed flaming ashes at the man, he didn’t see it coming, but somehow he dodged enough of it not to be killed by it. Partly, one side of his face got burned along with the arm on that side of his body, his team of followers brought down the dragon queen and some other came with extinguishers and packs of ice and first aid to treat him. “What great power though” the man said smiling thoughtfully through the burning pain and the last thing the trusting and kind hearted dragon queen saw before drifting off to unconsciousness was the partly burned face of her betrayer.