Aria
Golden Dragon Queen
John Arthur Betts
Copyright 2013 John Arthur Betts
Table of Content
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Aria, Golden Dragon Queen
Prologue
Ten Thousand Years Ago
For ten thousand years the Dragons had protected man and beast against predators and evil, their magical powers made this land a haven of happiness and contentment. The Golden Dragon, Aria, Queen of all dragons looked far into the future and saw the darkness approaching.
With only fifty years before the evil started to encroach on this Utopia she summoned her royal guard, this consisted of twelve blue dragons and their riders, the Elite and most experienced of all.
She divided the land into twelve areas and gave each rider a dragon’s egg to hide and protect with their lives until such time that it was safe to emerge again into the light.
Protected by its own magic, each blue dragon and rider left the Queen for their assigned area and disappeared.
The Queen built a chamber beneath the mountain that served as their home and over the next 20 years filled it with eggs, this she protected with a powerful enchantment.
The Queen knew that if she did not survive the battles to come, each dragon that hatched would instantly have the knowledge and history of all that had gone before, but for an egg to hatch it must have a human rider born at the same time, the rider would have an instant mind link and would also know all the knowledge of the dragon lore.
Finally the day arrived when the evil king Petska with his dark magic attacked the borders of this great land, squadron after squadron of the brave dragons were overwhelmed as his dark forces took town after town until the final battle, the golden dragon queen Aria was last seen sorely wounded, plunging into a deep lake, never to be seen again.
Legends say that both Queen and rider died on that fateful day.
Chapter 1
The darkness has ruled now for one thousand years, this once happy land shrouded in misery, the population treated like slaves with barely enough food to survive.
The families of the Dragon riders fled to the wastelands in the four corners of the kingdom but not before many were killed by the evil king.
The old king Petska long dead had passed the evil reign to his son, who was now succeeded by a pompous overweight and arrogant great grandson Gustav.
The dark magic although still strong had weakened through each reign as each son of the son considered himself more invulnerable than the last.
New wizards were trained every ten years by the old mage, nobody knows his age but they say he was old when he led the dark forces against the dragons always at the side of King Petska.
Chapter 2
Aria saw the last of her red warrior dragons destroyed as she was hit by a massive bolt of dark magic, her rider Jokim was unconscious, unable to maintain flight she shielded her rider and plummeted into the lake.
The ice cold water tore at her tattered wings as she sank to the bottom of the deep lake, struggling to breath she pushed off the rocky bottom towards a dark passage, with every ounce of remaining energy she clawed her way up the rocky tunnel, finally emerging in a large cavern, she heaved herself out of the water, not having much strength left she placed Jokim on a ledge shielded from the cold then collapsed.
The shield around Jokim would heal him and reduce but not stop the natural ageing process. but for every year that passed Jokim would only age one minute.
One hundred years passed, Aria slowly opened her eyes, her mind reached out and found Jokim, his body was restored to full health, she flexed her wings, stiff but repaired, the pain in her side where she was hit by the dark magic was healing slowly.
She was aware of the pain and misery on the surface of her land but the dark magic was far too strong, she reached further with her mind and checked all the eggs, they remained safe, stretching her mind to the edge of her kingdom she located the elite blue dragons, they were safe, one final thing she had to do, find the families of the riders, she found only half of them.
She listened and heard the stories her riders families told their children, they were frightened and poor but still spoke in the dragon tongue in the privacy of their own homes, these were in small villages scattered throughout the land.
Then it happened, an old lady sitting in a dark hovel called her family to her, “Aria is alive I feel her touch” a young boy, no more than twelve years old took her hand and said “I know great gran, I feel her also but she is in pain and in a dark place, her rider is in good health but in a deep sleep, she hears us”
The boy’s father shouted at the boy, “stop this nonsense boy get back to your chores” Aria gently caressed the boy’s mind and spoke slowly, “Ask your father to go to the root cellar and bring in what he finds, tell him it is from Aria to a family of the elite guard” this the boy did, his father’s mouth dropped open, “how do you know of the elite guard, it has never been mentioned” “Aria told me, please do as she asks father”
More to humour the boy than to belittle him, the father went to the root cellar knowing it was empty, he opened the door and was about to close it again when a sack caught his eye, in shock he entered the room and opened the sack, it was full of vegetables, he heaved it onto his shoulder and took it to the kitchen.
As his wife started to prepare a meal he returned to the boy and the old woman, “Thank Aria for all of us, what can we do” the boy closed his eyes and thanked Aria, then he listened, Aria said quietly ” pass on my thoughts to all the rider families but carefully and quietly, regain contact with all of those that survived the darkness, tell them that at the right time the dragons will awake, wait for a rider to call after the birth of a child, this time is a long way off but will come to pass”
The boy recounted what Aria had told him, the legend was born and the stories told to generation after generation of families.
Aria drew in her thoughts and then slept.
Two hundred years had now passed when Aria awoke, she was now fully healed, she laid her last two eggs and placed them safely in an alcove in the cavern, again she reached out with her mind, finding a mind that could hear her and she whispered “let all the families know that Aria’s gift is in the root cellar”.
She listened as the message was passed to all the families, each family found the gift and thanked her
Then she slept.
Every one hundred years this was repeated, after eight hundred years Aria awoke and felt a weakening of the darkness, when she passed on the gift this time all the families felt her warmth, word spread that the time for the dragons to emerge was drawing closer.