The Dragon's Revolution

by Cody Goggins

Overview

All it takes is a spark to burn empires to the ground, a spark ignited by Bryce. Bryce's only goal was to finally go home after years away but now the peace he sought there is gone. And with the peace he hoped to find gone, the only way to survive is to be more lethal than the soldiers he grew up believing in. Bryce knows how to be lethal through years of sacrifice and hard decisions and now he must lead others to peace. Peace is not given, it is earned and to survive, Bryce and those that follow him must earn it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954168213
Publisher:	Chapters Media and Advertising, LLC
Publication date:	01/08/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	648
File size:	871 KB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Same dream. Same one for the umpteenth day in a row. Me just floating in a sea of absolute nothingness for hours until a gigantic pearly-white dragon appears out of nowhere. With it a sense that I should — no, needed to — ask a question, but I wake up every time before it can be asked. This time was no different. After shooting up in my bed, it took me a second to relax, get up, and get ready for the day.

I went to the bathroom, started the shower, and brushed my teeth while the water heated up. The hotel room that my airline had provided me for canceling my flight was terrible, but it was better than nothing. I showered quickly after brushing my teeth. Once done, I grabbed the clothes from yesterday — a plain white T-shirt and jeans — and put them on. Doing a once-over in the mirror, I didn't look too bad. With short brownish hair with a fade up and brown eyes, I could pull off almost anything. It helped that I had a well-built body and what my mom said was the face of a hard worker. I could wear generic clothes, but I was anything but generic.

Being a mixed martial artist since the age of ten already put me far beyond generic. Then came the work ethic people described as near suicidal. Finally came what was inside of me — not some indomitable will or great leadership that could lead a nation but what was in less than one-billionth of the world's population. It was magic. And because of my stardom, my magic powers were well known. The amount of magic inside me would be able to power the entirety of the world for well over a million years. I don't know how I've been able to control it my entire life, but I've kept it in check the entire time. Losing control of it all has been only one minor slipup away. With one stray emotion, everyone dies — not just everyone around me either. Everyone in the world goes. And people wondered why I stayed away from girls.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I began to scroll through my phone. Time passed so fast that I had only ten minutes to get to my gate. Grabbing my earbuds, phone, and wallet, I ran out of the room and made my way to my gate. Thankfully, the hotel was inside the airport, so that made getting to the gate easy. When I got there, they were already in the process of boarding, so I just got into the line, scanned my ticket without the stewardess noticing, and boarded the plane. It took me less than two minutes to fall asleep after getting to my seat. I didn't wake up until we landed, and some old lady woke me up with a smile on her face. I got off the plane and made my way to luggage claim to get my bags. That's when something started to not feel right.

Every single person was giving me a wide berth, as if I were poison to them. Looking around, I saw people eyeing me with immense suspicion. A cold chill went up my spine, but nothing immediately happened. Looking around once again, I caught a couple of soldiers dressed in full tactical gear looking at me, one of whom was talking into his radio. Not taking any chances, I headed toward the closest exit and walked out to see two soldiers waiting for me with their guns raised.

It was a split-second decision by them, but it cost them. One of the two soldiers fired his rifle at me, and it got caught by my scale-covered hand. Looking at the soldiers now, I made up my mind and attacked. Both my hands went clean through their chests before they could even react. I pulled out my hands, which were more like claws with scales, out of their backs, and they fell flat on their faces dead. Killing them didn't really affect me, to my surprise. I had no remorse or sympathy. They had tried to kill me. But I realized that if they were attacking me, then something big was going down, and it wasn't just me.

I made the decision to go to my parents' house. Whatever was going on, they would know, and they should be safe. The run would be about three miles to their house — nothing special, but I'd have to go undetected, and that wouldn't be easy in any way, especially with the soldiers crawling around.

Here's a little update on what exactly is going on here. Some background information is needed. In my world, there are people born with magic powers. These special people didn't appear until about eighty years ago. For close to fifty years there was no hate or prejudice. People with magic developed higher IQs than most people because they were given a unique education, and as a result every single one of them was either a prodigy or a master. This gained them a lot of popularity around the world. Most of them became high-ranking people in the world. Some even became politicians, and they controlled a lot of the world — that is, until twenty-seven years ago.

That was when MO showed up. No one knew where they came from or whether it was a group or just one person. Either way they destroyed ten military bases, along with anything in their way in between the bases. There was total chaos, and no one knows why they started their rampage, but it had severe ramifications. Once their rampage was over, they disappeared into the wind, and there hasn't been a single peep out of them since. It didn't help that absolutely no one knew what they looked like. This left everyone taking out their fear on every magic user out there. We went from loved to hated and despised within a month. It was worse for me, specifically, because I had the same type of power as MO, called Devil's Anger.

Devil's Anger was the strongest type of magic out there. It was volatile and dangerous to everyone around when activated. Not only was I covered in impenetrable scales, but I radiated heat like none other. As a comparison, when I killed those soldiers, the air around me became superheated to about one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Thankfully it was so quick that it didn't destroy my clothes, as it usually did. Still, because I had Devil's Anger magic, I was in the top 1 percent of all magic users in the world in terms of power. There's no doubt in my mind that no one is stronger than me. However, strength and power don't matter if you don't have control over them, and control has never been my strong suit. My record for controlling power for over five minutes was 1.0 x 10-500 percent of what was available in me. That little amount was enough for me to run at speeds far exceeding supersonic and to be able to punch with enough force and precision to put a clean hole through a mountain. I really wonder what I could do at 100 percent.

But it wasn't like that was going to happen anytime soon, especially considering that my entire town was crawling with soldiers. I don't know why, but they were looking for me. Fortunately, living in the same town all my life helped me learn every corner of the area. That's what my parents taught me to do. It sure as hell helped now. Especially in the city, the soldiers had no choice but to go street by street, and it was easy to avoid them. Still I didn't know why they were here or what they were doing, but it couldn't be good. The only reason I could think of was that they were coming after magic users.

It didn't take long to get out of the city and to my house in the suburbs. That was when it started to get tricky; the soldiers there had trackers. Those things always found me no matter the circumstances. Deciding to just fight them instead, I walked outside and stood in the middle of the street for them to see. It wasn't just them there. Turning the corner four Humvees screeched to a halt, all with .50-caliber machine guns on them. The soldiers and I looked at each other for what seemed like forever, but the moment ended when they opened fire. The caliber of the gun didn't matter, as it wasn't going to be enough to hurt me with scales on. While they were firing at me, a soldier picked up a rocket launcher and fired it at me. Catching the rocket before it hit me, I squeezed it in my hand, causing it to explode, creating a smoke screen. Through that smoke screen I exploded, easily killing each and every soldier in an assortment of ways. I finished that up, sprinted to my house, and saw that the front was suspiciously empty of all soldiers, but that didn't matter to me. I ran into the house after breaking down the door and yelled for my parents, but no response came. Running to the backyard, I saw my parents on their knees with their hands behind their heads. That's when all the soldiers appeared. I never thought the rumors were true about someone being able to cloak others, but it looked to be true. I was about to move to kill all the soldiers, but I was hit with something from behind, and all my energy was sapped from me.

Falling to the ground on my hands and knees, I was furious. I turned around, and my scaled hand ripped right through the soldier's chest. A few more soldiers fell to the same fate before they could subdue me. I don't know how, but my energy was being absolutely sapped, and that's how they were able to subdue me. It wasn't pleasant. Plenty of rifle butts, along with batons, slammed against my body. I kind of had it coming, though, so I just dealt with it. When the soldiers were done, they dragged me up to look at my parents.

"Bryce, become their leader. They will need one, and you can do it." Those were the last words my mom ever said to me.

As soon as the bullets went through their heads, I lost control. At least a fiftieth of my power came out before I got it back under control, but it was far too late by that time. All the soldiers were incinerated by the pure heat that came off me, as a result of my power.

The next thing I knew, hundreds of soldiers and close to a hundred attack helicopters were surrounding me. I felt like my head was being hit with a jackhammer as they surrounded me. My vision started to fade until I couldn't see anything. The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was going onto all fours and growing.

I woke up with chains around my wrists and ankles that connected to walls close to fifty feet away from me. The chains had me spread eagle in midair, and I was left in only my underwear. I couldn't believe this was happening to me. I had gotten careless and let my power take over, causing me to go on a rampage and be as vulnerable as a newborn baby. It was probably why I was tied up right now too, with no access to my powers. I looked about the room and saw a man dressed in all black walk into the room. He was followed by a TV on a roller, similar to what you would see in a classroom. The man didn't say anything but took the controller for the TV, turned it on, and turned it to one of the many news channels. What was on the TV horrified me. It was a bird's-eye view of my city from a helicopter. It was completely in ruins, and the headline on the TV was "Omaha Devastated." The news anchor began to speak, and the news was worse than I could've ever expected.

"As you can see, the city of Omaha has been completely devastated by a Devil's Anger user named Bryce Ceribri, who as a lot of people know was an MMA prodigy. Out of the 3.2 million people here in Omaha, there have been no reported survivors. It is still possible that there are survivors out here, but out of the 3.2 million, 2.9 have been confirmed dead. This is possibly the greatest tragedy to happen to the world since the MO attacks. This is but a prime example of why the law banning magic and condemning anyone who uses it is possibly the best law passed in the last one hundred years."

The man in black shut off the TV and looked at me. He didn't say anything as he left the way he'd come. A couple of minutes later, another man in a tailored suit came in with an assortment of tools on a roller table. On the roller table were a scalpel, a spiked whip, salt, alcohol, a jagged knife, and a blowtorch. That was all that I saw before he blindfolded me. There I heard even more roller tables rolling in after that. After a couple of minutes and countless roller tables, the sound stopped and the door closed.

"You obviously know why you're here, but here's a little extra. You officially don't exist in the real world. The only people who even know you're alive are me, my superiors, and the other prisoners. That means that until you die, you will become someone who will be used as a scapegoat to destroy the hope of all magic users. This isn't meant to get you to cooperate or to get any information out of you. It is meant to kill you in the most painful and slowest way possible."

What was he saying? Was I basically his guinea pig until death? Just what exactly was going on here? Were they going to torture me until they killed me? I had so many questions, and I planned on getting them answered, but my power wouldn't come out. I looked around to determine how this was possible. A blue substance was being pumped into me. My best guess was that was the cause. All my questions were answered as the man cut two one-inch cuts on my left pec and then made a long cut from the base of my hip on the right all the way to my kneecap. Then he put the scalpel back and grabbed another object. He put what felt like a serrated knife on my left shoulder blade. There he made a zigzag pattern with it all the way to my butt, continuing over my butt and all the way down to my calf. It hurt like you wouldn't believe, but I refused to yell or cry in pain. Just because they held me prisoner didn't mean that I had to act like one.

Then one of them doused me in water and began to electrically shock me with jumper cables for a solid hour. Once they were done, they again took the scalpel and cut me, but this time they started it from my elbow and went along the inside of my arm to my armpit and all the way down to my hip. They did this on both sides. After that, they took a whip and began to furiously beat me with it until most of my body was cut open. This went on for hours, and just when I thought it would be endless, they stopped, removed the blindfold, and then put an IV for a blood transfusion into my arm. They left the room, and as soon as they did, the room got ice-cold. I heard a song playing above me. It was one of those Russian techno songs that was just one beat, and it kept going the entire night. Sleep was nonexistent, and I'm not ashamed to say I cried that night.

After almost twelve hours of the song, it ended, but as soon as it was over, the door opened. It started the same way it had yesterday, but they put in the IV first. They reopened the two cuts on my chest and made two new ones right next to them. Then they reopened every cut they made yesterday. Afterward, they took salt and poured it into every cut and then doused all the cuts in alcohol and blasted the wounds with a high-powered hose of water, opening the cuts even farther.

Once they were done with all that, they started up a blowtorch, pointed it at the bottom of my feet, and used it to the point where blisters started to form — not enough to destroy the nerves, making it as painful as possible. As the blisters finished forming, they popped every one of them, and they again threw salt into them. Then they took close to one hundred short nails and stuck them two centimeters into my legs, arms, shoulders, calves, and forearms. As soon as all the nails were in, they turned each of them ninety degrees and then pulled them all out, leaving one hundred small holes all over my body.

After pulling out all the nails, they told me to turn my scales, which I did but that's all the power that was available to me otherwise they would be dead. They then started hitting me all over with what felt like baseball bats. This went on for what felt like an eternity. Once they were done, they told me to take off my scales, which I did. As that happened, there was a collective "Huh" from everyone in front of me, followed by the scratch of pen on paper. That was it for the day too, as they took the blindfold off, left, and turned on the same music they had played yesterday.

Looking down at myself after they left, I realized their "Huh" was well earned. There was no blood on me even though they had reopened all my cuts, and they were all healed — not completely, but they all had scabs. It looked as if my scales increased the natural healing of my body. That wasn't the only note I had made from today's torture. My power was still there, but it was being suppressed by something unknown to me, probably the blue stuff. Eventually my immunity would build to the point where it wouldn't work anymore. Now it was all about making it to that milestone.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Dragon's Revolution"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Cody Goggins.
Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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