Confrontation/Chapter 1

A stone hit me in the head and I reached up and felt the blood seeping through, matting my fur and adding an odd sheen to my scales. I could not understand the malice that the others felt for me. For likely the millionth time, I wondered in sadness what I had done to wrong them, why I deserved to be the subject of their hostility and mockery.

In my youth, I actually bothered to try to ask once, but my nervousness and reserve would not allow me to wait for the answer, if indeed any was given. I did not ask any more. The others disliked me; that was enough. That I had done nothing to earn their dislike hardly mattered in the face of their great disgust. I had once thought it just the cruelty of youth, but it persisted. That I was Kruath

"Get out of our way, useless one,” said Dargar. He was a servant of the Fire Temple and his temperament fit his element. How I wished that I had the belonging of communicancy. If I was a temple servitor, then at least the fellowship of that community would be opened to me, but the temple process had found me lacking. I had been rejected first in the Water Temple and then in the Wind Temple. The Ice Temple and the Energy Temple found me equally unacceptable. The elite warriors of the Light Temple were so incomprehensible to me that I had no desire to even apply.

My last hope was with the Temple of Darkness, but just this morning I had learned of their rejection of my application. It was coming from them that I had first been pelted with stones. The youth had pursued me through the city, but the adults did nothing to help either. They were mostly like Dargar: they pushed me aside as worthless. The temple had rejected me, and my demeanor, typically reserved, made me unacceptable for the military. What good could I offer them?

Weary of the abuse, I fled the city into the wilderness and came to a shadowy cove. I should have known by the silence of the place, by the absence in midsummer of animals of any sort, even the tiniest insects, that something majestic would happen here. What I did not realize was that here, I, Xilar son of Xilan, would meet my destiny...