The Nine Dragons The Serpent Dragon Part Two

 Village Life 

Loc woke up in a bed. It was cold with a thin sheet and an uncomfortable mattress made of a thin layer of animal hide. She felt clean, yet her body felt like lead. She still felt tired and her head still ached. She tried to remember what had happened the day before that would cause this sense of exhaustion. Then she noticed the wooden roof. Then she remembered that she had beaten Wolf Raven and after that she remembered seeing the portal then she remembered leaning in those barrels of vegetables and fighting those strange serpent humanoid creatures.

I guess that yesterday did happen.

Seems so.

Oh!

Well this is definitely not my world. Unless something strange happened but I don’t think that Ringer or the rest of T.O.O.T.R.O.E. would have let that happen. Nah! They would have done something.

Which means that I need to find out if this world has a piece of one of the three Reality Spheres. Hope it’s the same as this one. She thought, fondling the pendant.

Anyway…too tired to think about that.

Need to get my bearings…need to find the stronghold of this world.

I think that I just did.

Nah! They were just the foot soldiers.

She closed her eyes and had a dream of nine shadows. All of them looked either like dragons or dragon-like. Some were big and others bigger. Yet some of them did not look like the dragons that she had back in her home world. There was one in the far distance that seemed to eclipse the shadows in front.

Then she heard a voice sing. In her ear.

“Nine Dragons,

Three armies each,

Only one can take them down,

Born beyond their reach!”

She groaned as she turned around and hit her head as she rolled out of bed.

“Aw!”

“So, you’re awake?”

Loc looked up to see an old man. He had marrow blue pupiless eyes. He had pale wrinkled skin and hair like white cotton.

“Who are you?”

“Ken Tengo.”

“Loc.”

He nodded.

“Not from around here, are you?”

“No.”

“So you know nothing about dragons?”

“Yes, from my home world. Why? What do you know?”

“We have been the slaves of them, nine of them, for generations. We don’t know how long ago it was, but one day they all appeared and conquered our lands with their armies.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

She nodded.

“Right.”

Then her stomach growled.

“How long was I out?”

“Two and a half days.”

She nodded.

“Hungry?”

“Yes.”

He chuckled as he took a scythe and pointed it to her.

“Too bad. If you do not work then you will not get food.”

So that’s how it is?

“What do I do?”

“Follow me.”

They walked into a field with pants the size of two men! They were as gold as the sun.

“Alright. Do as I do.”

He pulled the scythe back and cut down one group. Then she did the same. They  did this again and again and again. Until a row of the plants had been cut.

“Now we can stop. Help me pick this up!”

She nodded as she did all that Kan did. They both brought it into a basket. She helped carry the basket to the hut, where she placed it down.

“Come, on! Tone to eat!”

They walked to his hut and he cooked a stew with purple, green and maroon vegetables in a greyish brown liquid with blue balls like English dumplings and a well done food like beacon. He put down a wooden spoon and she noticed that the bowl was also wood.

“Thank you!”

She took a sip and noticed that it tasted like gravy and she tasted the food and noticed that it tasted like carrots, parsnips, cabbage broccoli and gamon.

When was it that I tasted something like this before?

It would be back in my home world.

She smiled as she ate it.

“It’s good!”

“Yes. Well my wife, before she died, trained me well!”

She let out a chuckle. Then, for the next seven days, she worked for him which gave her both her full strength and rest.