Book 3 Side Story 1 (1/2)
A silver dragon hummed to himself while drawing a symbol on the ground with his claw. He was in a cave, brightly lit by sunlight streaming in through the ceiling. His tail scraped the walls as he turned around to draw a perfect circle. Then he brought his paw close to his chest and spun around again, drawing a smaller circle inside the first one.
There was a knocking sound, followed by a voice coming from the other side of the cave wall, “Luke? Are you planning on sneaking out again? If Mom finds out, she’ll murder you.”
“If you tell Mom, Lulu, I swear on your left pinky toe that I’ll forget to bring you back a present,” the silver dragon said. “How did you even know I was going to?”
“There’s always a scraping sound before you leave,” a different voice said from the wall opposite Lulu’s.
Luke furrowed his brow and tucked his tail under himself before spinning again, drawing a third concentric circle. “Look, today is a day called Valentine’s Day. It’s something the cephaloids came up with to celebrate love, and Teana is really into it, and I think I’d be ruining everything that I have with her if I don’t show up to the dinner she has planned.”
“Why don’t you tell that to Mom?” Lulu asked.
“Because she wouldn’t understand,” Luke said, a hint of a grumble in his voice. “She still thinks I’m a child that needs to be chaperoned.”
“Here’s an idea,” Leo said. “Why don’t you bring Mom with you to see your girlfriend? If she thinks you need to be chaperoned, then let her chaperone you. That way, you won’t get in trouble when Leila inevitably tattles on you again.”
“Why is that an inevitability!?”
“You know how Leila is.”
Luke sighed. “Ever since she met that cursed dragon….” He clicked his tongue and shook his head, tracing diagonal patterns within the circle. “No, maybe she was like that before she met him, and the only reason they work so well together is because she’s the way that she is.” He stopped drawing and stood up, taking a few steps back from the circle. “And no, I’m not going to tell Mom.”
“Not going to tell me what?” Kondra’s head poked into Luke’s cave.
Luke stiffened and fell onto his side, attempting to block the magic circle on the ground from Kondra’s view. “Mom! A little privacy!?”
“You’re still a child, what do you need privacy for?” Kondra lumbered into the room and peered over her son at the magic circle on the ground. Her eyes widened. “So this is the magical imprint you use to trick me when you sneak out. Were you planning on sneaking out just now?”
Luke bit his lower lip. “N-no.”
Kondra raised her eyebrow. “Then what’s this circle for?”
Cold shivers ran down Luke’s spine. He opened his mouth, and a whisper came out, “Uh…, Leo was going to sneak out, and he wanted me to draw this circle for him so you wouldn’t notice. Don’t tell him that I told you though.”
Kondra’s eyes opened even wider. “He what!?” She dashed out of Luke’s cave while roaring, “Leo!?”
Luke took one glance at the broken rocks his mother left behind while charging through the passage before taking in a deep breath. He swept his tail over the magic circle, activating it. Then he leapt into the air and out of the hole in the ceiling of his room. There was a translucent barrier covering it, but after sneaking out so many times, he had already created another passage to bypass it. Once he was outside in the snowy frostlands, he swallowed and looked down at the ground. There were no hints of a cave being underneath. “Oh man,” Luke said and swallowed again. “Mom’s really going to kill me this time.”