The Missing Dragon

Author's Note: This is a fantasy story that builds up to a good deal of sexy fun. It starts out in our world and ends somewhere else entirely. Given the name I've chosen for it I feel the need to tell you that it has a disappointing lack of dragons. However I've attempted to make up for that with an abundance of boobs and a strapping young male protagonist. I hope you like it.

Gregory Hopkins had a missing dragon to deal with. He'd taken a different approach to the problem than he normally did, cutting through the park on his way home from school. Still, there was no doubt about it. He knew the first time he saw those beautiful green lawns. All that empty space was missing something and that something was possibly an army of elves or, more likely, a dragon.

Without weighing the risks of such an endeavour as finding a missing dragon upon a park lawn during the English summer; he sat down beneath a large oak tree, plucked his sketch pad out of his bag and got to work. Drawing what was already there was easy enough. The trees in the distance, the flower bed in the foreground and the small caretaker's house to the far left soon materialised upon his blank sheet of paper. Only then was the true challenge upon him.

The first order of business in finding a dragon in an empty field is to understand how such a creature might fall to rest there. The outline took shape as a long serpentine curve, basking in the late afternoon sunlight. Next were the details: the horns, the scales, the shadows beneath the relaxed folded wings. Finally the creature needed to be placed in the field and so came the tufts of grass around where its weight rested in the earth, then the scorch marks on the earth beneath its nostrils.

He sat there for a while, a young man with messy black hair that fell to his shoulders and deep blue eyes steeled with concentration. His face was a mix of a little Italian, a little Greek and a lot of English. A baggy sweater and equally baggy pants covered his frame as he sat beneath a tree looking at his disappointingly dragonless field.

It took him over half an hour to find and place the dragon there, then came the shading of its frame and finally the finished product. Unfortunately, Gregory didn't even so much as get to set his pencil down before the muddy football hit him squarely on the side of the face and smashed down into his sketch. Given the temperature the ball shouldn't have been muddy at all but summer had just begun and so had the storms that sometimes came along with it.

The impact left his right ear ringing and his right eye momentarily blinded by dirt. It took Gregory a full minute to adjust himself and realise the dragon in the field was ruined and that someone was stood beside him with a muddy football beneath his arm.

Freddie Lounds. What a complete and utter shitheel. Gregory glanced past him to where a group of his cronies stood in the football field across the way looking on with grim smirks on their faces. He'd heard them start up their game but in his concentration to capture his reptilian quarry he hadn't bothered to see who they were. If he had he might have just picked up his things and left the dragon to be forever lost.

"What' you doing?" Freddie asked.

"Windsurfing." Gregory replied calmly as he moved to slip his sketch book back into his bag.

Clearly Freddie didn't quite know what to do with this information. It certainly didn't

look

like Gregory had been windsurfing but then again Freddie wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the box and Gregory had spoken with a great deal of conviction. It took him a full fifteen seconds before he realised he was being mocked and his face tightened into a frown.

"Think you're a smart little shit don't you?" The football was smacked loudly against the ground as Freddie put his arms out in the classic 'let's kick the shit out of each other' pose he'd been fond of since primary school.

Gregory sighed inwardly. He'd had to put up with this idiot all through primary school during which time getting punched and shoved around the playground had been a part of his every day life. In high school Freddie still looked out for him despite being in different classes to each other. Any time he felt like shoving someone over or dumping the contents of their bag on the floor Gregory usually had landed square in the lunatic's crosshairs.

Of course much of this had stopped abruptly shortly after Gregory started taking some classes outside of school hours. The first time Freddie found a fist landing square in his face had been the last time he'd overtly tried to beat up Gregory. Still, he'd been a constant pain ever since. Then finally Freddie had left school and Gregory stayed on. School had gotten a lot better since then but they still lived in the same town and that town only had one park.

All in all, Freddie didn't bother Gregory that much anymore. What

did

bother him was currently walking towards them from the football field.

Janette Riley was a gorgeous redhead with long toned legs, curvy round breasts and quite possibly the cutest ass in the known universe. She'd been dating Freddie since they were sixteen. They were now both eighteen with Freddie soon looking at being nineteen and Gregory having just had his eighteenth birthday two weeks before. Seeing a girl like Janette with a guy like him was just plain depressing. Freddie wasn't even what a reasonable person would call attractive. Shaven head, pinched looking slightly inbred look, pug nose and a constant expression akin to someone smelling a particularly nasty pile of shit was pretty much all he had to offer the world.

Gregory had been single all through high school, partly due to his reputation as a bit of a loner and partly because he had other things to worry about. Seeing a girl like Janette with a guy like Freddie wasn't exactly the greatest advertisement for the guys who stay in school getting all the good stuff once they're in the real world. If it wasn't for the fact that Janette was what civilized society referred to as a 'total bitch' then it would have been downright soul destroying to see them together.

"Come back to the game." She reached out to Freddie's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. This wasn't the first time she'd had to try and dissolve a potential night in jail for her boyfriend.

"Shithead's been smart." The thug curled his lip and took a step towards Gregory.

Slowly, the boy who had been looking for dragons shifted his weight and placed his left foot further behind him. If this was going to happen then it was going to happen very fast, very hard and it was going to result in a very large headache for Freddie.

"Ignore him babe, he's nothing. C'mon...if you win I'll give you a prize." Janette smoothly slipped herself between them both as if knowing it would be difficult for Freddie to concentrate on two things at once.

He stalled a moment and then Gregory was suddenly watching a harsh kiss of pressure whitened lips and the noise of Freddie jamming his tongue into Janette's mouth. It was worse than being kicked in the gut. A guy behaves like a rabid monkey, starts a fight, ruins a sketch and it's

him

who gets the girl? It was enough to turn Gregory's stomach.

As he was walking away from them he heard their voices carry through the air. This time he heard the ball being kicked and being kicked hard. Reacting without much thought to the matter, Gregory felt his legs tense and then propel him up into the air, spinning sideways and swinging his leg outwards. He saw the ball blasting toward where the back of his head had been moments before. It took him an instant to re-adjust the swing of his foot and slam the football in a perfect volley that sent it hurtling back toward Freddie's face.

The noise of his foot hitting the ball was only outmatched by the noise of the ball connecting directly with Freddie's nose. Unlike Gregory, he hadn't been expecting the sudden return and soon found himself sprawling backwards into the grass. Even Gregory himself stood there dumbfounded for a few moments since even he hadn't expected his kick to work that well. Then came the sudden shouts of Freddie's friends on the field and he saw seven guys running toward him with angry looks on their faces. Brilliant.

Taking off into a run, he immediately broke for the gates to the park. With no one else around he sure as hell didn't want Freddie's cronies to get their hands on him. It didn't take him long to work out that they were going to get to the entrance before he was. One he could have handled, two or three even but there were going to be at least five or six of them there before he was and he had no chance with those odds. The high fences around the park's perimeter meant that he wasn't getting out any other way, certainly not whilst being chased. So Gregory quickly took a sharp turn and ran toward a smaller brick wall that he quickly vaulted over in order to land in the enclosed gardens of the park. It was a place large enough to get lost in and had plenty of hiding spots.

Apparently none of Freddie's friends had it in them to vault the wall in the way Gregory had done which bought him some time. He carefully slid under a thorny layer of bushes, not without a good degree of pain in the process, and then settled to silence. Footsteps soon followed as did voices.

"Freddie for fuck sake put that away! Come back to the game, he's..." Janette's voice.

"Shut the fuck up! That little prick's not gonna be able to kick anythin' again!" Freddie screamed.

Gregory shifted slightly through the bushes to glimpse through a small gap. What he saw made his heart almost fall into his stomach. Freddie had a knife.

He'd always seemed unstable but a fucking knife!? That definitely took this from the 'not wanting a wedgie' scenario it would have been three years ago and gave it some underwear staining new possibilities. Gregory checked his hiding place and let out a silent breath. At least he'd picked a reasonably good spot to keep away from these lunatics.

"Find him for me!" Freddie's voice again, closer this time.

"Fred, mate, he's..." One of the others, unsure of where this was heading.

"I said

find him!

" Definitely unhinged.

What followed was the most tense and terrifying half hour of Gregory's life. It hadn't taken them long to start snooping around his hiding place but thankfully the two who had come looking didn't particularly want to get sliced up by thorn bushes for Freddie's grudge. They didn't get near enough to spot him. After a while the sound of footsteps had died down and the sky had begun to grow dark.

Gregory thought it was time to move and quietly began to shuffle toward the gap in the bushes where he could stand up without hurting himself too badly. That was when he felt the earth beneath his hand give way to something cold, smooth and small. At first he flinched thinking that perhaps he'd just picked up a slug or a worm but as he turned his head to glance down along his right side he saw the tiny shard of metal gleaming in the dirt. Curious, he plucked it between his fingers again and pulled gently to reveal a small silver ring. It took him a while to shuffle over to the gap in the bushes but when he did he sat up and lifted himself into a crouch to examine the thing. It was smooth on the outside with an intricate pattern etched onto the metal on the inner part of the band. It definitely appeared to be silver and it was quite a pretty thing to behold. In fact it was so distracting that as he stepped out of the shrubs and onto the path of the gardens he didn't notice Freddie creep up behind him with his knife held out and a look of pure madness in his eyes.

"Got you now you little fucker!" The harsh whisper was spoken in Gregory's ear soon after he felt the painfully sharp edge of the knife on his throat.

"Freddie please stop it! You'll go to prison!" Janette's voice was now quivering with the nerves of someone who was evidently in way over their head.

"No I won't you stupid slut. Just gonna teach this little bitch a lesson. What's that you got there queer boy?" Freddie snatched the ring from Gregory's fingers and looked at it.

After deciding it wasn't worth a whole lot he flicked it towards Janette who fumbled and then let it drop on the path at her feet.

"There, take that and shut up." Freddie growled at the girl in a way that scared her so much that she moved forwards and picked up the ring.

Gregory noticed the shimmer of tears in her eyes. Oh yeah, it was always the pretty ones that went for the raging crazies.

"Well put it on then you silly cow. Lets show queer boy here how nice his new ring looks on you before I pop one of his ear drums then make him beg not to do the same with the other." The knife lifted from Gregory's throat and he felt it graze along his cheek. Any move and the thing would probably rip off half his face. He took a long deep breath.

With trembling hands, Janette took the ring and slipped it onto her finger.

Then the entire world fell into darkness.

- - - - -

Gregory awoke to the taste of dirt in his mouth. He tried to lift his head and felt the tangle of shrubs and vines above him holding him in place. With a few splutters and an audible cough he opened his eyes and blinked them a few times. He was back under the bushes!? Had he fallen asleep? Maybe he'd gotten tired or passed out and dreamt everything?

He moved his mouth and felt the cut in his cheek sting sharply. Had Freddie done something and left him there? He checked his extremities for further injuries. Two eyes. Check. Eight fingers. Check. Two thumbs. Check. Ten toes. Check. Cock and two balls. Check. Thank fuck. In fact he felt fine despite some aches and the cut in his cheek that was little more than a shaving accident.

What was troubling was the sudden dawning realisation that he wasn't under the park's bushes any longer. These weren't the thin branches and thorny brambles of his former hiding spot. These were large leaves, thick vines and long limbs of plants that didn't look like they belonged in a well tended garden. A little wiggling and he'd freed his arm, a little more after that and he could sit up.

He was sat in the middle of a forest. It seemed like he'd rolled there from a few feet away which would certainly explain why he was covered in shrubs and vines. Maybe he'd passed out and Freddie had decided to take him out and dump him in the middle of nowhere.

Then again surely he'd have left a trail. Despite the obvious signs of where he'd rolled there was no evidence of anything disturbing the surrounding flora. He'd been camping a few times when he was young. He knew what to look for. The complete absence of any trails was actually quite disturbing. It seemed like he'd just fallen out of the sky.

Frustrated, Gregory moved his free arms to untangle his legs from the plants and vines before lifting himself to his feet. A quick glance around revealed a nearby tree that he was able to climb to get a better view of his surroundings. He found no signs of any trails around where he'd woken up but he did notice something else in the distance.

He began to turn to climb down when one of the vines that had been wrapped in the tree came loose in his hand. The sudden loosening almost made him fall from his perch but he managed to balance himself rather than returning to earth much sooner than he'd have liked. He looked at the vine, tugged on it and found it latched to a branch higher up. Now having been raised on a series of fantasy novels, movies, computer games and comic books Gregory understood that chances such as these were made to be taken. He tugged on the vine again to make sure it was firmly rooted in the tree limb above and then allowed himself a small grin before dropping from the branch and holding on for dear life.

The rush of air was felt immediately as he swung on the vine directly toward his point of interest. Shortly before he managed to get there the vine snagged in another branch above him and swung him hard to the right to slam his body straight into the unyielding trunk of a large tree. Pain shot through his wrist where he tried to brace himself and he swore aloud to the nothingness that surrounded him. A large bump on his forehead would also likely be swelling up to high heaven in no time at all as a result of his quick tete-a-tete with the hard wood.

All in all it could have been worse and the pain seemed to subside when he saw what he'd been looking at. The forest floor was clearly pushed aside and there were notable tracks in the dirt beneath his feet. Large footprints, flat with no treads or heels which was an oddity in this day and age and long thin trails indicating something with wheels had passed through the area. It seemed to be some kind of road.

Gregory let out a breath of relief and started to walk. Roads had to lead somewhere. Hopefully they'd lead somewhere with a phone. Thinking back on his situation he considered that maybe swinging on the vines had been how he'd gotten laid up in the ground in the first place. It seemed a viable explanation for how he seemed to have dropped out of nowhere. Maybe Freddie had drugged him or something and let him loose in the forest? No, that sounded more like a Bond Villain than Freddie.

What's more this forest didn't exactly scream English countryside at him either. Vines on trees? Did they even have vines in English woods? He sure as hell hadn't seen any. The trees were wrong too. He knew what trees looked like and even what they were called in most cases but he saw no oaks, willows, alders, ashes, pines or anything remotely familiar. Some had needles like pine trees but the wrong structure, some wilted like Willows but didn't have the right branches. Many were beautiful to behold with one in particular bearing vines that were in the midst of flowering along with the tree itself. He didn't recognise any of the flowers.

This was getting eerie. Since the gap in the road sometimes allowed the trees above to part he saw the sky and figured the sun wasn't even at its peak yet. It was late morning, not late afternoon. He'd been out cold for an entire day?

That was when he met Algra for the first time. It was certainly one of the more interesting meetings of his life. This was largely because she introduced herself with a deafening scream of a battle cry and then burst out from behind a tree in front of him wielding a very large club she'd made from a fallen tree branch.

It was perhaps doubly or even triply startling for Gregory because Algra was, quite unmistakably, an orc. You see despite the many attempts of humans to dress up as magical creatures throughout the ages of earth the sad fact is that no matter how close your attention to detail and how brilliant your costume might be, no man or woman can quite manage to look like an orc.

The first thing that startled Gregory when he looked upon Algra was her size. As with most females, she was smaller than an average male by about twelve inches. This put her squarely at six and a half feet in height. Orc females are also considered equal to the tasks of orc males and so Algra was incredibly fit. Her muscles were defined and taut and her body was lean and capable of easily overpowering most human men. During that first meeting Algra also happened to be wearing relatively little. A few thick leather straps were wrapped around the generously proportioned curves of her breasts and a sash made of animal hide hung over her hips. The small garments, despite showing off her incredibly powerful musculature and undeniably feminine curves also gave Gregory a view of her skin. He had never in all his life seen such a rich shade of green. In places it was marred by dirt and he saw some evidence in of various wounds that had long since healed up but generally she seemed to match the colour of the finest emeralds.