Dragonfire prologue

   The clouds were dark and heavy above the once-thriving Chinese town. All the buildings but the smallest were in ruins, and even they were scorched and crippled, shadows of their former selves. The streets were full of rubble, and the market district was black and silent. The lanterns and torches that had once lit the place were strewn on the ground, over walls, and between the rocks. The rubble and debris that covered every square inch was littered with shattered vases and broken artwork.
   It was silent. There was no noise save for the soft patter of rain and the sighs of the wind. Everything was still. There were no cats picking their way through the ruins, no birds standing on the broken walls.  Even the fireflies were gone, leaving the town almost lightness. Nothing moved in the rubble.
   Suddenly, a small rock shifted, and a hand, streaked with dust and ash, thrusted its way out. Soon, another rock fell, and another, and another. A boy of about 16 or 17 pulled himself out of the opening that had formed between the rocks. He was tall and dark haired, and his clothes were so dirty that it was impossible to guess their original color.
   The boy ran to the tallest part of the pile of rocks and climbed what remained of the wall of a nearby building. He stood there for a few minutes, surveying what was left of his town. He could see that the destruction had extended to the fields of rice on the outskirts of the city, which were blackened and burned. The small pond to the east had completely dried up, and there was no life, or water, for a radius of a few miles from the center of the city.
   It was as if, the boy thought, the dragons had turned upon the city that gave birth to them and reduced it to a smoldering ruin.
   But that was impossible. The dragons wouldn't hurt the people that they had worked with since the first bond between dragons and men had formed, would they? If they had...
   The dragons.
   The boy suddenly lifted his head and turned to the south. Smoke was rising in lazy tendrils from a pit in the ground.
   The boy jumped of the wall and ran towards the pit. The pit was shaped like a crater, or like the inside of the bottom half of a giant egg. Normally, it was full of shining, multicolored eggs. But now it was full of ashes, and the remains of the eggs were lying, scattered, around the pit. Their shine was gone, and they looked hardly different from pieces of smooth, colored stone.
  There was no sign of the infants that had once occupied the eggs. They were gone. Dead. Murdered. This was a sure sign that dragons hadn't caused the destruction. Chinese Dragons, lòngs, never kill their young.
   The dead dragons meant that more was destroyed than that particular city. This was the only dragon hatching-ground in China. And it was the New Year. The one day of the year when all the adult dragons and their riders gathered together. Now, they were all buried under the rubble.
   In one terrible night, China's entire population of dragons was destroyed.
   Come dawn, no dragon would fly over the city again.

   The boy knelt in the pit of broken eggs, overwhelmed by the enormity of the disaster. He could have been sitting there for seconds, or minutes, or hours.
   He was finally roused by a shrill peeping and the scrabbling of small claws on stone. At first, he thought he was hallucinating, or that maybe he was hearing the ghosts of the dead baby dragons. But as the peeping got louder and more persistent, he realized that it was not in his head. The sounds were coming from a pile of stones and small rocks. A few pebbles rolled down its slope, but whatever was in there came no closer to getting out.
   One of the larger rocks in the pile began to wobble, as if something was pushing it. The boy quickly pulled it out, and a small, snake-like creature tumbled into his lap.
   The creature was smaller than the length of his arm from hand to elbow. It was a golden color, although some of its scales were tinged with red, orange, and yellow. When it moved, it looked like a stream of fire. It had large nostrils and a broad mouth, with a long pink tongue curled inside. Sprouting from its muzzle were two tendrils, proving it to be female. Males had four, although the bottom two were very small. She still hadn't developed a lion's mane, or grown feathers at the tip of her tail. She had four short legs, each tipped with five silver claws, marking her as an Imperial Luck Dragon, as opposed to the lesser three-or-four-clawed lòngs.
   Even among other dragons, she would have been considered as a prize and a champion. Now, that she was the last, she was doubly so.
   Slowly, hesitantly, the boy reached out and touched her on the head, where she would someday develop a red mane. The moment they touched, gold sparks fizzed around his hand, and a flower blossomed in his mind. He could sense her every feeling and thought.
   She was his dragon, and he was her rider. What only a few days ago he would have considered an enormous responsibility now felt like an impossible one. What others were taught, he would have to learn by himself. What was given to others he had to find.
   But he had to do it. The world needed the dragons.
   And she was the last one.