“You found out more about him?”
It all came spilling out of me then, and it felt good to say.
“I’ve only been able to get pieces,” I started. “When I went to the library, all his pages from the yearbooks were ripped out. Then, I found a book that had all his records, including the log of his death. That’s where it got weird.”
They hung on to every word I said.
“What was weird about it?”
“They were shot down in enemy territory,” No matter how many times I said it, the stab of pain didn’t get any easier to deal with. “Everyone on their mission was killed, except one soldier and his dragon,” I paused, squeezing my eyes shut. “The Headmaster.”
Solra gasped. Irikai’s eyes widened.
“They were teammates?” he asked.
“Probably,” I shrugged. “They graduated in the same cohort. When I left our village, my adopted father gave me a letter that my father had written to me just before he died. I read it before I found the death log. In the letter, my father seemed like he knew he was going to die. He said he would probably become the next Headmaster.”
Irikai’s jaw slacked.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Solra said glumly. “But, Headmaster Archer couldn’t...right?”
She sounded like she didn’t believe her words. Talking about it seemed unbelievable. That sort of thing couldn’t be covered up so easily, right? How could he get away with killing his entire team?
“The forest has ears,” Irikai’s voice was stern, pinning us both with serious looks.
If the wrong person heard us, we’d be joining Janshaik wherever he was if we were lucky. My skin prickled at the thought of what they would do to Ignimitra.
“We can get to the bottom of this after the Mid-year Test,” Solra said. “Maybe there’s more information that makes sense.”
More information that didn’t implicate the second most powerful man in Pyralis in a murder.
“That part I can agree with,” Irikai said.
I nodded.
The three of us joined hands.
My load didn’t feel as heavy now. I had two other people to help me carry it. It felt light enough for me to focus on other things—like the fact that whatever this mysterious test was, we had to ace it.
I believed we could.
Chapter 12
Dong, dong.
The sound of a bell filtered into my consciousness. It reverberated in my chest.
My eyes were pasted shut. When I opened them, the world was still dark. Had the sound been a dream?
Dong, dong, dong.
The assembly bell.
At this hour?
I sat up, reaching for the curtains. Outside was still dark. The first signs of light had only just begun to break over the hills. The bell’s toll was urgent—longer than I’d ever heard it before. My heartbeat quickened. What if we were under attack?
I stumbled into my cadet gear, strapping my blade firmly to my thigh. Ignimitra crossed my mind, but I couldn’t get her. She’d be okay until I learned what was happening. The caves were treacherous to the unfamiliar.
My feet were lead as I joined the stream of cadets running towards the assembly hall. The bell was still tolling when I sprinted in.
Inside didn’t look like a dispatching post.
It looked like the first assembly we had on our first evening at the academy. The Headmaster was on the stage, flanked by two soldiers.
My heart relaxed. We probably weren’t being summoned for military action. But what was so important that we all had to be summoned by the Headmaster? Did it have anything to do with his recent trip to the Mainland? This was bad.
“Cadets!” He boomed when the room had filled. “This assembly is a test of your responsiveness,” He laughed loudly, as if he took pleasure in our struggle.
He frightened us out of bed as a test?
“Don’t look so glum,” My eyes snapped back to his. He was talking to me. “I’m the bearer of good news!”
You could’ve heard a pin drop in the room. Even the howling of the wind outside had ceased. It was like the entire world had frozen on the Headmaster’s account, and the thought of it made me sick.
“Following my audience with the Fire Drakken, the decision was made to accelerate your training. Your Mid-Year test will be held soon.”
The room got quieter. I didn’t even trust myself to breathe.
He moved away from the podium and began pacing the platform with his hands behind his back. It added an air of power to him, like a cheetah prowling before a fatal strike. He seemed taller and stronger.
“This Mid-Year test will be the difference between graduating this year, or losing your dragon.” Losing your life, he meant. He never had to fully intimate his threats for everyone to understand what he meant. “This test will evaluate if you have what it takes to serve in His Majesty’s Dragon Guard.” He held up a black-gloved hand. “Your swordsmanship, your ability to keep your dragons in a vital formation, your dragon’s speed and tenacity, and your teamwork.”
His last words stabbed me deep in my core.
He knew nothing of teamwork.
There was wonderment on the faces of the cadets around me.
“This test will stimulate the bond between rider and dragon,” He paused. “Without it, you will never become a Dragon Guard soldier.”
I thought of Ignimitra and our bond. We were closer now than before. She felt like my partner. We were fine.
“To end the suspense, I will tell you about it.” He had made it back to the podium. “You will be split into teams of three. I have been gracious enough to allow you to choose your teams.” It was silver-lining. I could be on the same team as Irikai and Solra. “Each team will be given two sunsets to return with the tine of a Firesabre dragon.”
My heart fell to my soles.
The same wild dragon that Irikai’s father had told us about? The same dragon that was so vicious that in all our existence as humans we had been unable to tame them. Did I mishear?
“Firesabre dragons run wild in the Firesabre Mountains on the north of this island,” he said with a mirthless grin. “It’s half a day’s flight.”
It already seemed impossible.
“Each group only needs to collect one tine. Fail to bring one back on time, and the entire team fails.”
He was silent for a few heartbeats, watching us with his predatory eyes.
“You have two days to prepare.”
Then, he turned on his heel and left, accompanied by his soldiers.
This Mid-year Test could erode all our progress.
Ignimitra was still growing too fast for a saddle, Zelkor wasn’t that fast and Titan’s aerial maneuverability is horrendous. The dragons we were up against were huge, fast and breathed fire.
He was sending us into their habitat, wanting us to get close enough to remove a tine.
Suddenly, I understood his opener. This test was the difference between graduating and losing our dragon. If we failed, we died.
My eyes burned, and my hands felt numb.
How were we going to do this?
WHEN I FOUND SOLRA and Irikai after the assembly meeting—they were sitting on the dormitory steps that led out to the woodland—they shared my reservations.
“It’s completely crazy,” Irikai said. “Those dragons can’t think like the domesticated ones. We’ll just be a set of snacks walking into their homes.”
I buried my face in my hands.
“Even if we do manage to overpower one, how will we get its tine? How can we hold a dragon down long enough to break it off?” Solra asked.
Out of the three of us, she was the best composed. I didn’t know what gave her hope.
“Our swords are poisonous to dragons,” I shrugged.
My words brought back memories of what happened to Janshaik’s dragon. Killed with a single strike. But killing a dragon...that was wrong. We were the ones going into its territory.
&nb
sp; What if we had to do it?
“It won’t have to come to that,” Irikai said.
“If we don’t do it, we’ll be led off like Janshaik, and our dragons—” I said urgently, finally voicing my concerns.
Irikai cut me off.
“Like I said, it won’t come to that.” This time, his voice was louder.
We both looked at him.
“The only way we can do this is with knowledge,” He stood up, balling his fists. “After classes today, let’s meet up to research as much information about those dragons as we can. Every dragon has a weakness.”
I nodded, feeling his infectious spirit.
“It’ll be hard, but not impossible,” Solra said.
I nodded, but didn’t believe her words.
HAVING SOLRA AND IRIKAI on my team made the Mid-year Test seem a bit more manageable. I didn’t want to be paired with anyone else. If we were going to die in those mountains, it was the best-case scenario to die with them.
Still, the Test seemed crazy. I needed to know if the other soldiers had done this too, and there was only one person I could think of to ask.
Avek.
I had been planning to find Betheka for another pass—crossing my fingers that she wouldn’t be tired of me—but on my way there I spotted Nurik flying down towards one of the clearings in our District. Dragon Guard soldiers only ever came to our clearings for training.
I wanted to catch him before he began.
It was a refreshing run to get to the clearing.
Thankfully, it was just Avek and Nurik. I would’ve had a hard time explaining to anyone else what I was doing there.
“Avek!” I called as I jogged over.
They were in the middle of the clearing, Nurik carrying what looked like a trunk strapped to his underbelly. Avek was busy loosening it.
He turned around, and our eyes met.
My stomach was in knots, remnants from our trip that night. I bit my lip to stop the stupid smile. He had returned to removing Nurik’s cargo when I made it over to him.
“Kaos,” he said.
He didn’t turn around to look at me.
“Avek, you’re probably about to train, and I don’t mean to bother you—”
“You are.”
His curt response caught me off guard.
“What?” I was disbelieving. Did I mishear?
He turned around then, wearing an expression that I’d never seen on him before. He was still handsome—his dark blue hair was done up in a top knot, and he wore a casual uniform that showed off his muscular frame—but his eyes, they were hard. Like cold steel, piercing through me.
It felt like I didn’t know him at all.
“Leave me alone, Kaos.” There wasn't even the hint of a joke in his tone. “Get out of here.”
My words left me. A flush of heat snaked up the back of my neck, my vision spotting.
I had made a huge mistake.
Backing away from him quickly, I stumbled over my feet.
How could I have been so stupid? Flashes of all our interactions filtered through my mind. Had I missed something?
Avek looked at me for a minute longer, then turned to Nurik.
I looked up at the dragon, who had been a silent party to our exchange. He gazed at me intently, tail swishing about.
The entire run back to my dorm, I cursed myself for how foolish I had been.
Clearly, Avek was only being nice to me. I had witnessed him act the same way with Jules. All the time we had spent together was out of necessity—we met in the library by coincidence, and he had only taken me to the Records Hall to help me find closure.
Why did I think that there was enough between us for me to approach him?
If the Headmaster had asked me to fly with the other Dragon Guard soldier who had accompanied him to my village, would I feel comfortable talking to him the way I did Avek? The bond I thought we had didn’t exist.
He was an enlisted Dragon Guard soldier, and I was a first-year cadet on the brink of dying in her first Mid-year Test.
We were not the same.
Just because we had shared a hug in a moment of vulnerability for us both didn’t make us anything more than acquaintances. He was still my superior officer.
I should have known that. Now, I would never forget it.
Looking at the sun sinking below the horizon, I reckoned that it was time for our meet up to research the Firesabre dragons. I ran all the way over to Irikai’s room, happy that the wind streaming past my face dried the tears that had been flowing.
I had been silly.
But I was seventeen, and he was the first boy that I had ever felt something like that for. I was allowed to be silly. If even just this once.
I FOUND SOLRA AND IRIKAI sitting on the rug in Irikai’s room, books and papers scattered around them. Irikai’s room was exactly like mine, just with earth-colored bedding. They had coconut water and round cakes waiting for me. It was like a salve for my broken heart.
“It’s about time you got here,” Solra joked, handing me the cup.
“Sorry, had to check on Ignimitra,” I lied.
But the boy I had a crush on just broke my heart didn’t sound any better. If anything, it would’ve opened a can of worms that I didn’t want to get into.
Irikai cleared his throat.
“We’ve been busy looking for their weaknesses,” he said, throwing a book my way.
“Any luck?”
“A bit!” Solra piped up, her voice bright. “Apparently, they have low intelligence,”
I took a slurp of water.
“That doesn’t seem like news, I thought we already discovered that they’ll only think about killing us.”
“Yes, but.” Irikai produced a sheet of paper filled with handwritten notes. He pointed to one, “We can find one, and successfully confuse it long enough to take a tine.”
“If all they think about is fighting, they’ll only be able to focus on the one of us that fights with them,” Solra said.
I wasn’t totally convinced.
“And what if a swarm of them attacks us?” Swarm. What did you even call a pack of wild dragons?
“From what we read, they’re hugely territorial even though they’re all the same breed. So, they’ll typically hang out in groups of twos or threes at most,”
“We can separate them in the mountains—they don’t have good maneuvering ability—then, we can corner one and take its tine.”
“Easy!” Solra clasped her hands in delight.
They really seemed to believe in this plan, so I figured that I should too. After what happened with Avek, I couldn’t trust my emotions.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
We spent the rest of the evening choosing our roles and ironing out the plan.
Chapter 13
I spent the night before the test in Ignimitra’s cave.
When we had come back from Port-of-Pyr, I had told her of Irikai’s father and what he had told us about the Firesabre dragons. At the time, she was thrilled and wide-eyed.
Now that she would be facing the monsters, she was reserved.
Anxiety was heavy on my chest the entire night.
This would be the defining moment of our journey at the Academy. We either passed or lost our lives. I liked to think that I knew which one we both preferred.
We got ready, packed our supplies and grabbed breakfast with the rest of Team Sigma—Solra elected herself team leader and had given us the name. Then, we flew to the rendezvous point.
The morning was beautiful. A cloudless sky, nice temperature and a strong wind that carried us along without much effort. Yet, I barely had the presence of mind to enjoy it. It was a complex cocktail of emotions—Avek, the rawness of the new details surrounding my father’s death, and even my mother’s abandonment. It was hard work to stuff them away in the crevice of my mind.
My best was essential now. One misstep would spell disaster.
As if sensing my feelings, Ig
nimitra looked at me. She bared her teeth in a smile. She looked so fierce that it would have scared a fair many people. I could feel that she was just trying to help me.
And she did.
The rendezvous point was a familiar cliff.
The same cliff that I had met Avek that night, the one that Janshaik’s dragon had taken his last breath on. My heart ached.
Sergeant Vera and Slade were already there, along with some of our cohort.
“Your time starts at sundown today, cadets!” She said. “It’s half a day’s flight. Setting off now gives you time to fly to the mountains and set up camp.”
I exchanged glances with Solra and Irikai.
“Good luck!”
With those words, she left us, disappearing in a racket of dragon wings. We were officially on our own.
“Let’s go, Team Sigma!”
Solra was pumped. Her dragon was just as excited, swishing his tail excitedly. It was as if they were two halves of the same whole. She moved her right arm; he moved his right leg. She straightened herself in the saddle, and the dragon shook in a similar way.
It was crazy, but they even seemed to resemble each other.
“Solra, you and Zelkor—” I began, as we were going through our take off paces. She cut me off, a grin on her face.
“Is it that obvious?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You two seem different,” Irikai said.
She nodded excitedly.
“It’s the most amazing thing,” she began. “This morning when I went out to feed him, Zelkor spoke to me.”
My mouth fell open.
“Spoke?” I asked.
“I heard his voice!” She said. “At first, I thought I was just hallucinating, but it’s true.”
It seemed impossible.
“What does he sound like?” Irikai ventured.
She put a hand to her chin. “He’s got a deep voice that mingles with my thoughts.”
Then she giggled even though none of us gave a joke, “He says that the looks on your faces are amusing.”
My eyes flicked to Zelkor, who was staring between Irikai and I.
The idea was cool, but Solra could’ve just been pulling our legs. She loved getting a rise out of us, especially Irikai. Another well-rehearsed practical joke, that neither of us could verify. I didn’t want to waste my time on it, especially hours before something so important.
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