Dragon Born Series: Hidden

By R.D. Pearson

Emelias walked down the street surrounded by people going about their daily lives. The same life he was stuck in. He decided he didn't want to be stuck in it much longer; he didn't want to be stuck anywhere. Soon he would avenge the lives of all those killed; his family and species and he would start living the life he should be living. As a dragon!There was only one small obstacle; he had to kill the last three known living dragons, his brothers. Easy, right?
After that, he could make his world whatever he wanted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664184749

R.D. Pearson

R. D. Pearson, author of Dragon Born, was born and raised in a small town in Northern Nevada. The love of the outdoors and spending time with family, hiking and camping, has always been an important part of life. Throughout Pearson’s life, there has been a fascination with fantasy and all things make-believe, and writing this book has been a great way to express some of that intense imagination. This first book of the series, Dragon Born, is dedicated to Jesse, the best son anyone could ask for.

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Copyright © 2021 by R.D. Pearson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/20/2021

Xlibris

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Contents

Chapter 1: Emelias

Chapter 2: Tillios

Chapter 3: Carbus

Chapter 4: Verlas

Chapter 5: Emelias

Chapter 6: Tillios

Chapter 7: Carbus

Chapter 8: Verlas

Chapter 9: Emelias

Chapter 10: Verlas

Chapter 11: Carbus

Chapter 12: Tillios

Chapter 13: Verlas

Chapter 14: Emelias and Verlas

Chapter 15: Tillios, Carbus, and Verlas

Chapter 16: Tillios and Carbus

Chapter 17: Tillios

Chapter 18: Carbus

Chapter 19: Verlas

Chapter 20: Emelias

Chapter 21: Tillios, Carbus, and Verlas

Chapter 22: Emelias

Chapter 23: Verlas

Chapter 24: Emelias and Verlas

Chapter 25: Verlas

Chapter 26: Emelias

Chapter 27: Emelias

Chapter 28: Verlas

Chapter 29: Emelias

Chapter 30: Verlas

Chapter 31: Lilyan

Chapter 32: Emelias

Chapter 33: Shanara

Chapter 34: Emelias

Chapter 35: Lilyan

Chapter 36: Carbus

Chapter 37: Verlas

Chapter 38: Emelias

Chapter 39: Lilyan

Chapter 40: Carbus

Chapter 41: Emelias

Chapter 42: Lilyan

Chapter 43: Emelias

Chapter 44: Verlas

Chapter 45: Emelias

Chapter 46: Lilyan

Chapter 47: Emelias

Chapter 48: Verlas

Chapter 49: Verlas

Chapter 50: Tillios

Chapter 51: Carbus

Chapter 52: Emelias

Chapter 53: Carbus

Chapter 54: Emelias

Chapter 55: Carbus

Chapter 56: Emelias

Chapter 57: New Beginnings

NOTES:

Tillios – High dragon ruler (Human name: Tim)

Carbus – Second dragon in command (Human name: Carl)

Verlas – Third dragon in command (Human name: Vince)

Shanara – Verlas’s mate

Emelias – Human name: Eli

Zalurais – Father of the ruling dragons of the Malniick Clan

Nervasis – Mother of the ruling dragons of the Valkneras Clan

Zekka – Ancient dragon friend of Verlas (30,000 years old)

Lilyan – Spy for Verlas

Ramius – Spy for Verlas

Barikob – Spy for Verlas

Mr. Grabber, Anthony – Head of Tillios’s palace staff

Teetna – Ancient clan queen (New name: Malana)

Vurbalis – Uncle that killed Teetna’s clan

Chapter 1

EMELIAS

Emelias walked down the sidewalk, pushing and elbowing his way through the crowds. Every summer solstice had the streets and sidewalks busy, busier than normal. It almost felt as if there was a tidal wave overflowing onto a beach. Emelias noticed that every day, year after year, the people took longer to get to where they were going, whether it was to watch the summer solstice or to just go to work. People had grown lazy, or maybe complacent was the right word. It was as if nobody really wanted to reach their destination to see what the day would bring. People definitely didn’t seem to care, especially about the summer solstice celebration—oh, sorry, ceremony. Nobody was allowed to call it a celebration anymore. Tillios would not allow it. And if Emelias was being honest with himself, he didn’t see it as a celebration anymore anyway. Emelias knew that he didn’t really want to reach his destination either, watching the ceremony had grown tedious and sad. Disgraceful was the word that came to his mind. Maybe he was just assuming the rest of the world felt the same way he did, and maybe he just felt that way because it had been so long that he had endured watching them.

Nobody else on the world had been going to the summer solstice ceremony for as many years as he had. Emelias pondered the fact that this year would be his three-hundredth birthday, the three-hundredth time he had entered the forum to watch the ceremony, the three-hundredth time he would be reminded of what he really was. A lot had changed in those years, so much so that sometimes he couldn’t remember if his recollections were a truth or a fantasy he had made up in his own mind.

He remembered the ceremony as a time of celebration, joy, and community. He remembered being surrounded by family and friends. Was it ever really like that, a celebration, or was it always a hard, dreadful day that all the populace worried and fretted over? Emelias figured he would never really know the answer to his question.

As he walked, Emelias recounted the ceremonies of old, when he was a boy and he went to them with his family, all twenty-seven of them flying in on breathes of warm air, glistening in the sun and causing rainbows of color to dance across the humans down below, his family all landing as one in the forum to stand front and center on the dais as the humans stared in awe. He didn’t know what the humans thought then, what was really on their minds, whether it was joy or fear because then he didn’t have to hide in the human form as one of them. He realized that when he was a boy, he never thought much at all about the joy or pain of human or their feelings. All those years ago, he didn’t have to pretend to be one of them. He was above them; at least that was what his species had believed then. But now . . .

Emelias had been hiding for over two hundred years, hiding as a man named Eli. To go by his given name, even among the humans, could give him away. He felt lonely when he thought of all he had lost and all he had to sacrifice over the long span of time, including his family, his loving, caring, and beautiful mother; his self-assured, strong, and fearless father; and his beautiful, funny, and carefree sister Serian; she was the closest sibling he had, had. He had twenty-four siblings in all, all gone, but three, Tillios, Carbus, and Verlas. But those three he didn’t call family anymore. His three ex-brothers were now his enemies, the cause of all the death and pain, the cause of why he was alone, living as a human to survive. Emelias hated them with a fire that burned within, and this was what caused him to keep moving forward.

Because of those three traders, nobody was older than him, nobody like him to share a life with, nobody that he could talk to about the good old days, nobody to speak of his family to, nobody to share the beautiful life he once had with, nobody to reminisce about his mother and father with, because nobody even remembered them. Nobody was allowed to remember the past, his family, the thousands of others of his species all gone. There was nobody to talk about the way things used to be, and it was all because of the three traders.

Tillios, the disowned brother, or at least one of the three disowned brothers, was the leader of the wretched and disowned. He didn’t want people to remember when he came into power or what he had done to get or keep that power. Tillios had burned all records, everything that was written before his reign, and forbade anyone to speak of it. Emelias hoped it was because what he had done made even him sick, but it was probably because of the image it created.

Emelias continued to push his way down the busy sidewalk. Could there really be no others of his species alive besides the four brothers? When he looked at all the people surrounding him, it broke his heart to think there were no others of his kind alive.

Emelias often liked to imagine that there may be others like him who were hiding in plain sight, hiding as a human just to stay alive; he hoped there were. He figured his hopes were useless; Tillios had been very thorough. Emelias himself had barely escaped a few times. Besides, all others of his kind hated to be in human form. It was beneath them, or at least that was what he was told his entire childhood by every member of his family. Would they lower themselves to be in human form if it meant their survival? Emelias didn’t know.

He had always felt differently. Human form wasn’t so bad as far as he was concerned. Emelias had discovered very early on that there was freedom and safety in being in human form. Not that he didn’t love being himself because he did; flying was the best. It was just that he had spent as much time in human form as he did in his real form when he was a child. And now it was what had saved his life when all but three others of his kind had been exterminated by Tillios. He doubted that Tillios even remembered who he was, and he was grateful for that. It meant he was not looked for. He and Tillios had never been close and had never spent time together, even as hatchlings. They were only together when it was a family event, and then they were only in the same place as a formality, never doing anything together. Tillios had been cruel, sneaky, and a liar. Emelias had avoided him every chance he got.

From the day that Tillios, Emelias, Carbus, Verlas, and twenty-one others had hatched, all brought into the world by Zalurais and Nervasis, Emelias had stayed away from Tillios. Most of Emelias’s siblings had also stayed away from him. His parents had believed that they could see good in Tillios, and they wanted everyone to see that good. Even though the good they believed they saw was few and far between. Tillios really only acted good for his parents’ benefit. They were not benefitted very often.

The reason Nervasis and Zalurais wanted the world to see the good in Tillios was because he was the first hatchling and, therefore, would become the next ruler. Emelias and the three traders were all born of Zalurais and Nervasis, who were the two high rulers of all the dragons and humans on the planet.

The dragons were the royalty of all living things. Zalurais and Nervasis were the royalty or high rulers of all the dragons. They were responsible for the well-being of all living things on the planet. When their children were born, the first to hatch would become the next high ruler in the far future. The first hatchling, whether female or male, would have a mate found for them, just as it had been for their parents. This was the way dragons had chosen to exist after they had nearly destroyed the planet.

The high rulers were the dragons in charge of looking over all other dragons and people alike. The hopes were that Tillios would carry that torch once they reached their ends and moved onto the summer lands. Emelias’s parents, Zalurais, son of Marcuvias and Sherbena, and Nervasis, daughter of Berfema and Beladova, had been the high rulers for almost three millennium. They both had been alive for over five millennium. Zalurais and Nervasis had joined two rival clans and brought peace to a world that had barely withstood the ravages of the dragon wars. These were wars that had raged on for countless centuries and devastated dragons, humans, and the planet itself. Old times that were lost to the ravages of war with nothing remaining to remember them.

The two most powerful clans had decided that if there was to be a world left, they would have to put their hatred aside and try to save it. The Valkneras Clan had come forward and pleaded with the Malniick Clan, offering their oldest, most powerful, smartest, and most beautiful daughter, Nervasis, to join with a son of their own choice. Zalurais, who was the oldest, most powerful, wisest, and most magnificent son of their clan, was chosen.

Negotiations had taken years, years that the wars had stopped and life started to return to the world. Those peaceful years, during the negotiations, where there was no fighting, bloodshed, burning, had the world returning to life. Plants, animals, humans, and dragons alike all thrived. This was all the proof needed to show the elders from all the dragon clans that peace was an option for survival, probably the only option. The beauty that began to grow on a barren earth had finally been what forced Nervasis’s hand; she did not want to be forced into a union with the Malniick Clan, but even she could not deny the changes and hope that had sprouted on the world. Nervasis consented to join Zalurais, never believing that the joining would be anything other than a necessity for survival, just a tool she would use to save the world. The love that grew between Nervasis and Zalurais was so much more than Nervasis or any of the clans could hope for. Nervasis and Zalurais’s love changed the world and saved dragon and humankind. Their love would be what the legends would write about. It would not be the wars, the hatreds, the devastation that was written about, but their love that had brought about life, a life that nobody would ever forget.

At least that is what Emelias had been taught, what all dragons and humans had been taught for centuries. It was the truth, a beautiful truth, a truth that had the world celebrating every summer solstice, a truth that brought dragons and mankind together to flourish.

That was before Tillios. Tillios had ended that peace, that beauty. Yes, the world still grew and lived, but the love that was forged by Zalurais and Nervasis was lost. The peace that brought the two species together was gone. Before Tillios had become the high ruler, he killed off every dragon, including all his brothers, sisters, and parents. He had moved slowly at first so no one would notice what he was doing. But after a few decades, he killed his own kind, down to the last three. In his killing, he killed all the dragons that were loyal to him, except for two of his brothers, Carbus and Verlas. Emelias assumed it was from fear of being overturned himself. Once thousands of dragons had lived, and now only four remained. Tillios had only spared the lives of his brothers Carbus and Verlas because they had helped him in his coo and stayed very far away, only showing their faces when Tillios demanded it. They ruled as Tillios’s underlings at the far reaches of the earth where Tillios could not and did not want to watch himself.

Of course, Emelias was the fourth dragon alive, but that was only because he hid as a human and Tillios had long forgotten his existence.

As Emelias neared the forum and the start of the ceremony, he pulled his thoughts to the present. He did not dare continue his reminiscences for fear that Tillios would notice him. Dragons could sense when other dragons were near; it was a sense that grew stronger with age. And they could sense them even in human form. Again, with age came the power to mask your senses from other dragons, but that too only grew stronger as a dragon got older. Emelias and Tillios were the same age, so Emelias did not know if his ability to mask his presence was stronger than Tillios’s ability to sense him. It was a question Emelias had had ever since he went into hiding, another question he would not get an answer to. He always felt better if he just concentrated on hiding and stayed safe, and hopefully, this ceremony would be as short lived and uneventful as the last two decades’ worth had been.

Chapter 2

TILLIOS

Tillios lounged in his bed long after he really felt like he needed sleep. He had found it more and more difficult to get up and move these last several years. He had grown fat and complacent; of course, he’d never admit out loud to it. He would also never admit to the fact that he spent most of his time in human form now because he could project what he wanted to look like in human form, and that was what he was. In dragon form, he had to accept that he was a couple thousand pounds overweight, he had lost his luster in his scales, and he found it hard to even move around his palace.

Damn, he hated that there were no more wars and killing to help him keep in shape. When he was young and practiced in war, he could eat what he wanted and sleep for days, and still he stayed fit. Now his regime had left him less than desirable. Of course, he also would love a female company, a female dragon’s company. He had human women all the time, but they could not hold his interest. They were boring and weak to him. When he was feeling melancholy, he would ask himself, Why didn’t I keep a few females alive? and then he would remind himself that he had done what was necessary, necessary for the dragons to remain the ruling class, necessary for humans to fear dragons, and necessary for dragon survival. He told his brothers the same thing anytime they asked him. He didn’t think they believed him any more than he believed himself. A female would have been great. Truth was he had tried to turn a few to his cause before he had exterminated them, but none were interested. A few had even taken their own lives rather than be a part of his plan. He could not understand why his brethren had preferred a life of idol instead of fighting, peace instead of war, humans as friends instead of slaves. He had killed them all because of their idleness.

Tillios rolled over and looked at his clock, a beautiful golden piece inlaid with gemstones, a gift from his subjects over a hundred years ago, and pondered the fact that the ceremony would be starting in less than two hours. He knew it would only take him five minutes to reach the forum, but he would have to be in his dragon form obviously. He just didn’t feel like being in his dragon form these days. He missed the feeling he got early on before he had killed all his idol subjects, when he would fly into the forum surrounded by his family and fifty guards. He loved how all of them gleamed in the sun, the beautiful light that reflected off them onto the world below. Then he would land, with thousands of slave eyes watching him and hundreds of dragons perched atop the forum watching him as well. Still hundreds more dragons circled the sky above because there was no more room to land, and he could watch their colors flash over the crowd during his entire speech. The memory brought a tear to his eyes. He couldn’t understand why his brethren had become so weak. He should just show up as a dragon and then switch to man and see what kind of reaction that would get from the slaves. He was so bored, he bet a few people might recognize him and the rest would faint. That would be fun, but he would not do it though; he would never allow the slaves to see him in his weaker form, at least not where they knew it was him. And he would not let his brothers see him as anything but stronger and confident. He would have to make do with the slaves just how they were.

They were, after all, his slaves; he could do with them as he wanted. As he grew lonelier, he realized he enjoyed being human and interacting in public more than he should. He hated himself for it, but he was just too lonely these days not to. He would never tell his sniveling brothers how he felt though. They would look at it as a weakness and probably try to overthrow him. He wondered if they would have the nerve to try and take him out. Were they that stupid? He didn’t think so, but he just didn’t know. For now, he would keep Carbus and Verlas in their own little worlds. They were happy there serving him, and he would never let them see the weakness he felt growing in himself. He was going to change that weakness starting tomorrow after the ceremony. If he kept the pretense up that he was happy, they would continue to lick his feet and be loyal little servants. That’s all he wanted from them and expected from them.

Time had gotten away from Tillios in his pondering. He only had forty-five minutes to prepare for the ceremony. He had to come up with something creative this year. The last few years had been bland and boring. As he thought about it, he realized it was more like the last few decades. He hadn’t made any new demands or set any stricter rules. He had just shown up, stood there, and let the slaves enjoy his gloriousness and then told them he was the high ruler and they must obey. What in the hell had he been thinking? He really did have a lot of work to do. This year, he would come up with something great, something awe-inspiring and hopefully terrifying.

He kept his mind on ideas that he could throw at his slaves while he prepared. He would use a chest full of gems that he had received as a gift on his coming-of-age day, the day he had become high ruler in training in front of all his family and the world, the day that started the rest and best of his life. He would place the gems on his scales to add shine when he flew through the sky, and it would help his scales appear to have luster again, not to mention help him appear less pathetic.

As he placed the last of the gems on his chest, a great idea finally came to him. It was the perfect plan to make the ceremony fun again and get a rise out of the slaves. This plan would definitely have the slaves enthralled. This year, he would demand that a sacrifice would be paid as a tribute to him. Each country that he ruled over, which was over one hundred countries, would have a pageant involving the most beautiful, most elegant, and smartest women. They would compete for a chance to be his. The slaves would have one year to carry out this competition and then present the winners from each country to him. The next ceremony, on summer solstice, would be the competition. He would then get to choose his favorites. He’d probably choose twenty-five or probably closer to fifty women that he liked the best; he didn’t want to shortchange himself.

He would pick the most beautiful, most elegant, and most importantly, most intelligent women. He’d make sure to specify in the decree this year just how important intelligence was. He needed to have some decent conversation.

These women would be his personal slaves. They would live with him, or at least in the dungeon, where he had easy access to them. Perhaps he could find a smart enough one to keep on hand and do his bidding. And maybe just to give extra excitement to the slaves, he would tell them that he was going to eat them when he was done with them or if they displeased him. Of course, he would end up killing all of them eventually, but he doubted he would eat them; humans tasted disgusting. That would keep them in fear at all times though. He would at least tell everyone at the ceremony that he intended to eat them. Of course, that info would not be shared until next year after he got the best pick. He would not let the slaves try to trick him out of what they owed him. He knew they would doctor the results if they thought their beautiful precious best were going to be eaten. So he would excite them this year and terrify them next year.

One thing Tillios knew for sure, he was going to get the most out of the slaves that he could. Maybe, just maybe, he could find some happiness and interest in his otherwise boring, sad life.

This year, the ceremony held a new interest for Tillios. He was actually looking forward to it. He was looking forward to the future. For a very long time, this was the first time he had felt excited about anything.

Chapter 3

CARBUS

Carbus sat on his dais and schemed. He watched his human servants prepare for another ceremony. Maybe this ceremony was not as grand as the traditional one held by the high ruler in the forum, but he rather enjoyed it; he certainly did a better job than Tillios.

Another year had come to an end, and Carbus was closer to fruition on his plan. He knew that Tillios was growing weak and lazy. And because of Tillios’s weakness, he would soon be celebrating the summer solstice in the capitol. He would be high ruler someday.

Carbus had started to travel to the capital on his own at random times during the year, not just during summer solstice. He had started several decades ago.