“It is similar to using magic,” Mournful explained, expecting them to know what it was like to use magic. “Just take deep, calming breaths, and imagine the house.”

            Cody lay on his back between Omen and Aval, Autumn on the other side of her brother while the dragons and Ashheart lay around them in a weirdly-shaped circle. Mournful was half-asleep at their feet as she explained how they would get to the Realm of Mortals as she called it, which was really Semiones. As far as she explained, they were each supposed to imagine the entire group appearing in one place in Semiones that the humans had all been to before. Their destination: Cody’s old house, since no one lived there any longer and it wasn’t overly far from the main town.

            They all tried desperately to do it, all of them imagining the old house and focusing every thought on it, with little success for at least ten minutes. Then Cody remembered a time when he had fallen asleep and felt his mind wandering around. Perhaps he was supposed to fall asleep for it to work? But he was too excited to fall asleep. He kept imagining his town, whenever Avalsmokes and Autumn would visit and how the town would react to him and his friends. Then he felt something at the back of his mind, a sort of hidden strength almost.

            “I suppose if this is your first time going on your own, we might not be able t make it at all. It could take hours,” Mournful said with a sigh.

            But then Cody felt the power course through his veins and along every part of his body, traveling like oxygen through his blood. Then he thought about the cave that he, Inferno, and Omen had explored part of when Inferno was younger. The cave had deep claw marks in the sides, carving it out further. Were those dragon claw-marks? Suddenly, everything went dark, and he could hear Mournful gasp in surprise.

            “What happened?” Autumn asked seriously, standing to touch the wall.

            Cody looked around and gasped himself. They weren’t in the cave in Mrana Akano Furista anymore, but they certainly weren’t at his house. He stood slowly and walked a few feet. His foot suddenly caught on Micah’s tail and he pitched forward when the dragon growled ferociously in anger. The rider’s helmet smashed against something metallic, making an impossibly loud noise. His left hand rose to his left ear and he forced his other ear against his shoulder in an attempt to stop the infernal sound, but he used his good arm to feel the thing he had hit. It was a torch!

            “Omen, this is the cave that we explored with Inferno all that time ago,” Cody explained, fingering the metal with interest.

            There was an appreciative whistle from somewhere in the tunnel before Omen answered, “Sure is! I never thought I’d be here again…but how are we here?”

            A voice sounded next to Cody, “Were you all thinking of this place instead?” It was Mournful.

            “Avalsmokes and Autumn never even knew about it,” Inferno commented with similar interest as his rider.

            “I never had the slightest thought of it either, it must have been Cody,” Omen explained with awe in his voice.

            The gryphon sounded almost angry, “Don’t be silly, one man can’t have the power teleport a whole group of people, and certainly not if you were all thinking of a different place. But this cave seems familiar….”

            “The power!” announced Cody suddenly, his eyes growing wide and glowing ever-so-slightly in the darkness. It was enough to see the curious glances from his friends, but Inferno jumped to the same conclusion.

            “Of course…” the dragon said, a purr beginning to rumble in his chest.

            Autumn instantly spoke up irritably, “What are you talking about?”

            Cody would have laughed if he didn’t feel so overjoyed. “That is our power! Micah can grow and shrink, Argos can heal, Destiny can turn into a human…and I can teleport! Inferno, do you think you could?”

            Everyone else was silent as Inferno replied for them all to hear, “I suppose I could try it sometime.”

            “Try it now,” Mournful said a bit more urgently. “You have been to Cody’s house before; you try to bring us there now.”

            Instantly everyone was silent again, the only noise coming from dripping water somewhere far in the recesses of the cave. Everything was completely still and everyone watched with baited breath for something to happen.

            “I suppose only dragon or rider can have a skill,” Cody said with the slightest trace of sorrow in his voice, but his mind was abuzz with exhilaration.

            But suddenly, Cody forced his eyes shut against a blinding light. He fell on his butt as the light shone brightly through his eyelids and he was temporarily blinded. He put his head close to the ground to make it a bit darker for his eyes to recover slowly. And then he slowly opened them, revealing the rough, gravel trail that ran from his house to the town. He forced his head up and saw that all of the others had had similar reactions, and only he and Ashheart the wolf had recovered so far. But he was thoroughly amazed at what he saw for several reasons.

            Right in front of him was the house he had lived in all his life, meaning that Inferno had succeeded somehow and brought all of them there. And the rider simply couldn’t believe it. He and his dragon could both teleport themselves and others…and better yet, they were the very best at it, if Heyrone was right. But the next most surprising thing of all was the house itself. It looked in good repair for an old farm house.

A pile of firewood was stacked neatly on the porch, which was something he and his parents had never done, and puffs of dark smoke came out of the chimney. Having never owned a chicken, he was both surprised and immensely humored when one that was black and gray climbed up Inferno’s tail, somehow thinking he was a large rock, and pecked at one of his spikes curiously.

Inferno whipped his head around to glare at the chicken furiously before snatching it in his jaws. In a flurry of feathers and one big gulp, the chicken was gone, leaving only a muddle of feathers on the dragon’s snarling lips.

“What? Did the wittle bitty chicken hurt the big bad dwagon?” Cody asked in amusement.

Inferno suddenly became grumpy and turned away from his rider in a huff, “Stupid flightless bird deserved to die.”

“She just wanted a ride; can you blame her after she spends all her life on the ground?” Cody asked good-naturedly, his excitement putting him in a weird mood.

Inferno grunted his affirmation but continued to look away. Meanwhile, the rest of the group was beginning to recover from the sudden, blinding light and stood cautiously. Micah spat some leaves from his mouth and stood, shaking his body vigorously for a moment. Destiny looked at Inferno with intense interest for a moment, then padded to her rider and shifted into her little girl form halfway to him. Omen was getting up with Ashheart’s help, and Autumn and Mournful were already looking at Cody’s old house in realization.

“Looks like someone decided to move in,” Aval commented after a few moments, wrapping his arm around his dragon. “And thank you Inferno, that was really amazing.”

Inferno reluctantly drew his head out of his shelter of hurt pride and stood to join his rider, the chicken quickly forgotten as they looked uncertainly at the billowing smoke as it poured endlessly from the chimney.

The gryphon shook her head and sighed, “We’ll have to start here. I suppose you assumed the house was unoccupied? The last thing we’d want is to scare some child into having nightmares for the rest of his or her life.”

Though there was the slightest bit of scorn in her voice for everyone, Cody sensed that she would really feel terrible if she scared someone, regardless of their age. But it was too late. A man walked out of the forest, one about Omen’s age, dragging a small log with one arm and holding a large axe over his shoulder with the other. To him, only Inferno and Cody’s masked face would be visible to him.

“D-d-demon!” the man, Dalton was his name, cried out in fear.

In an instant Inferno was upon him, crushing him into the dirt to force him to stop crying out. He looked deeply into the man’s eyes, and Dalton was instantly mesmerized by the dragon’s icy blue ones. Though he was still deathly afraid, he didn’t dare make so much as a squeak. Cody started when he saw Autumn glare at him before going to Dalton’s side, yanking her snow-white helmet off and tossing it carelessly to the side.

“Dalton, it’s okay,” she soothed and Inferno removed his paw slowly.

The man was confused for a minute, “Autumn? But what about the-”

“He’s a dragon, not a demon, trust me. Why are you living in Cody’s house?” Autumn asked, keeping up her soothing voice.

Dalton slowly sat up and reluctantly stood, cringing under Inferno’s hard stare. “Faltanar just up and left one day and it unsettled the whole town. After Cody and his family died, we decided to settle here, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think I’m dead,” Cody said as he took off his own helmet, put it under his arm, and walked cautiously up to the man.

“Cody!” he pretty much jumped out of his skin in a mixture of surprise, glee, and shame. “I’m so sorry, we thought you were dead!”

Cody waved it off with his free hand, despite his curiosity, and answered, “It’s fine Dalton, I live somewhere else now. You have my word; this house is yours if you’ll let us visit occasionally. And if you apologize to Inferno.”

“Inferno?”

Autumn nodded her head towards the dragon, who lay down slowly beside the man and stretched out his muzzle to sniff his hair. Dalton froze, but Cody walked up to Inferno and rubbed his forehead affectionately, just to show him that the dragon wasn’t really dangerous. Seeing that he wasn’t going to do anything, Cody slowly grabbed his hand and brought it to Inferno’s cheek. Hands stiff with fear, he began to rub Inferno’s cheek, despite the obvious displeasure it brought him.

“Inferno is my dragon,” Cody crowed.

“Y-yours?”

Autumn chuckled and Micah padded up behind her before nudging the man’s back. He turned around and jumped, making Autumn explain, “Aval and I also have dragons. This is Micah.”

Then he fell.

“Help me bring him to the house, maybe without the dragons he might handle the news better,” Autumn said.

Cody agreed silently and grabbed Dalton’s feet while Autumn put her arms under his shoulders and they pulled him along. Halfway there, Omen and Avalsmokes supported his back and they made it the rest of the way faster. At the door, Omen and Aval took off their helmets and Mournful knocked. It opened, revealing Dalton’s wife Ashley and their two year-old son Drake, oddly enough. Without a word they were let in and they rested Dalton’s body on the sofa that Cody used to know all too well. After a moment, he began to stir and Ashley let out a breath before actually paying attention to the visitors.

“I can’t believe you all came back, we thought Cody was dead!” she exclaimed in amazement.

“Who told you that?” Cody asked.

Ashley shrugged, “It’s just the news around town. And Autumn and Aval, your mother has been so sad, she misses you!”

“That’s actually what we came for,” Cody said. “We have a new home now. We’re dragon riders.”

“Dragon riders?” she asked skeptically, as though she was about to laugh.

Destiny had followed her rider inside and after hearing Ashley’s disbelief, she shifted into her beautiful golden dragon form. Then Inferno and Micah pulled their heads up to the window for the woman to see. Drake just looked at Destiny and laughed, that silly laugh all children have, as he poked at her scales. If they both stood, they were pretty close to each other in height, but Destiny only made her soft draconic laugh. Ashley apparently hadn’t noticed the other two, but after seeing that the golden one wasn’t attacking her son, she seemed pretty mellow about it.

“You all have dragons?”

“Actually, I ride a wolf,” Omen said, pointing to the wolf that had apparently followed them in also.

They all nodded and Autumn grabbed her hand, leading her outside. Micah immediately shrunk himself and leaped onto his rider’s shoulders to his favorite position to look at the human proudly. But she only had eyes for Inferno. The larger dragon lowered his big head to her height and watched her curiously, his eyes glowing.

“Whose is that?” Ashley asked in amazement.

Cody stepped in, “No one owns him, he is my dragon companion, Inferno. We’re supposed to go to town and visit everyone…I don’t know exactly why, but it would be nice to finally show them what we are.”

Ashley nodded dumbly, “They will be quite surprised, I’m sure.”