by Simon Archer
“Blake, open your eyes and breathe!” she yelled, panic in her voice.
I opened my eyes, worried that she may be in some sort of trouble. When I caught her eye, all I saw was worry.
“Look at yourself,” she gasped. I looked down at my body.
Smoke was coming off the skin on my arms and out through my clothes. I took a step back, somehow thinking I could get away from it. When the initial shock wore off, and I didn’t see any flames, I realized that I didn’t even feel hot. I touched my arm, and my skin felt cool to the touch, even though it was emitting smoke. The smoke was quickly dissipating, however, and within a minute, it had stopped completely. I looked at Heather and smiled.
“I think I should try to create the fire next time,” I told her, certain I would be able to do it. She stared at me in disbelief.
“Only dragons can do that,” she whispered, unsure what to say.
“Well, maybe a Dragonmancer can do it too,” I replied. I would’ve gone ahead and tried it right then and there, but Heather’s concern and shock had effectively bumming me out. I wanted to be free to see what all I could do. After all, I thought that is what we were supposed to be doing, anyway.
“I understand that you want to keep going, but you have a lot to cover in a short period of time, and it would be best if Gale were here when you gave it another go,” Heather replied, still worried but offering sound logic.
“Alright, later it is,” I sighed. My frustration and resignation were short-lived as a light swirled around my arm. It was yellow and focused on the third circle up. The light shaped itself into a potion bottle and then faded, leaving behind a light yellow ring around the circle. I smiled up at Heather, satisfied that I was gaining skills in so many areas even if I couldn’t have my way about it all the time.
“What’s next?” I asked excitedly. Whatever it was, I planned on leveling up again. A slow smile crept across her face.
“It’s time for you to fly,” she said. “Deyla’s already waiting outside for you.”
26
I went straight from the testing room to the dragon circle outside the Academy where Deyla was indeed waiting for me. She had a Victoria with her as well as another dragon I didn’t recognize. The creature was blood red with scalloped wings and grey horns, and it looked like she would barbeque anyone who irritated her.
“Where’s Prenna?” I asked her as I approached.
“Prenna is a pure soul. Sure, she could battle if she needed to, but it’s not in her nature. This is Evie. She is a tactical flight dragon, and my personal favorite.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But don’t let the other dragons hear me say that!”
Deyla was in a particularly good mood, which was refreshing after so much intense, serious training the past day and a half. She mounted Evie and looked down at me as I walked to Victoria.
When I reached my dragon, I saw that she was outfitted with a harness and seat. It was made out of thick leather and padded with soft wool. The straps wrapped from the seat, around her underbelly, up her chest, and then around her shoulders back to the seat. There was a gold emblem in the middle of the chest piece that shone like it had been glazed. I inspected the seat which was tooled with an elaborate design of geometric shapes and swirls, and the thin stirrup straps that hung from it. They ended in gold buckles that matched the chest plate.
“This is a lot fancier than I expected a harness to be,” I called up to Deyla.
“It’s fitting for a Dragonmancer,” she replied, smiling at me.
Victoria stood tall and stretched out her wings while I admired her new adornments, obviously proud to be my dragon. When she finished, I mounted her and looked over at Deyla.
“What are we starting with?” I assumed there was some regular training place used for flight training.
“Speed is first, and then we’ll go from there,” she replied. Evie spread her wings and launched into the air, Deyla laughing as she rose to the sky. “try to keep up!”
Securing my feet in the stirrups, and adjusting myself in my seat, I grabbed the two gold handles that were mounted on the cross-strap in front of me. My legs were the only thing actually touching Victoria, and that is where I felt our connection begin. It spread throughout my body, and I could feel her excitement. A split second later, she spread her wings and launched us into the air as well. As soon as we were hovering next to Deyla, she leaned forward slightly, and she and Evie shot ahead. Reaching forward, I gave Victoria a pat on the neck and then leaned in. She took off after Deyla, and I could feel her competitive spirit soar.
Deyla led us to a piece of land, sandwiched between two hills, that was riddled with rock formations rising high into the sky from out of the ground. There were rock towers of all different heights. Some of the towers had flat tops, and others rose stick straight and ended in a point. It was the kind of formation that looked as though it could have been manmade, but there was something about it that told me it wasn’t.
When we reached the edge of the grouping, Deyla slowed to a hover while Victoria and I caught up. We came to a stop next to them, and I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the place. A field of wildflowers full of glowing colors lay at the bottom of the towers, and the hills on either side of us were so green with grass that they look landscaped.
“We’re starting with speed,” Deyla said. “Stay above the rocks and keep up.”
“Will I need to be doing anything different from normal in how I fly?” I asked, a bit surprised that it didn’t seem like she was going to give me special instruction.
“You need to figure it out, and then work it out with Victoria,” she replied. “Straight down and back… GO!” She and Evie took off in a blur.
I had never seen a dragon gain speed so quickly. I knew that they could get up to extremely high speeds, but Deyla’s takeoff was extraordinarily fast.
Once again, I patted Victoria’s neck, only this time I did my best to communicate the image in my mind of the two of us flying so fast from the starting line that we ended up passing Deyla and Evie. Victoria flapped her wings in response, telling me that she was ready.
I sat up straight and focused on Deyla, who was rapidly disappearing in the distance, before leaning forward and tightening the grip I had on Victoria with my legs.
My dragon flew forward so fast that I nearly fell backward off my seat. It only took me a few seconds to get my positioning reset, and when I did, I felt a thrill like none other. The wind was whirring into my face so hard it was almost difficult to breathe, and the grass on the hills next to me blurred as we gained speed.
Victoria’s muscles contracted and expanded under my legs as she flapped her wings at an incredible pace. I still wanted more speed, however. I leaned forward even more until my face was mere inches from her back and communicated my desire to go faster. She was more than happy to oblige. She flapped her wings once more and suddenly tucked them away behind her. My best guess was that she was taking advantage of making herself more aerodynamic, but she was somehow gaining speed without flapping her wings.
The rock formations under us began to blur as we went continually faster. She would pull her wings out every so often and give them one huge flap before tucking them away again and shooting ahead.
In no time at all, Deyla and Evie were getting larger instead of smaller within our view. The closer we got to them, the more my body started to buzz at a cellular level, and the faster Victoria flew. My vision became tunnel-like, seeing only directly in front of me while my peripheral was whited out. At first, the vision change concerned me, so I consciously tried to change it so I could see my surroundings and was happy to find out that I had full control of what I saw. In battle, I would need my peripheral vision, but for travel, I didn’t. Therefore, I let my sights be set on catching up to Deyla and Evie.
Only a few moments passed before Victoria and I were side by side with them. Deyla looked over, shocked to see me. She apparently didn’t think I’d be able to match her abilit
y to command a dragon. She nodded her head at me, and I knew she wanted me to observe what she did next and copy it. Then she, and Evie veered off to the right at nearly a ninety-degree angle, headed straight for the hill. When they reached it, they shot straight up into the air just inches before a collision. They flew in a huge arch overhead, turning upside down at one point, and came down on the other side of us.
I opened my vision up and looked to my right. I pictured myself repeating Deyla’s motions, and then I tightened up my grip on both my handle grips and stirrups. It took the slightest lean to the right, and a little communication between Victoria and me for her to switch directions almost instantly. She unfolded her wings and flapped twice very quickly.
In under a second, we were facing the side of the hill, and I had to pull up. She responded enthusiastically by whipping her head and neck up and tucked her wings behind her again. When she tucked them that time, however, she pulled them forward just far enough to lock my legs against her. As we shot into the sky, glorious adrenaline flowed through every vein in my body. She began to arch, knowing what I needed her to do. As we turned completely upside down, crossing to the other side of the ravine, she held my legs tight to her side as I held an iron grip on my harness handles. I felt that she had me so secure that I could’ve let go and still not fallen off. I trusted her completely as we made it to the other side.
Deyla and Evie had moved over to allow room for us to return to a straight path beside them. As Victoria and I returned upright and fell into pace beside them, Deyla looked over and shook her head in amazement. She most certainly hadn’t expected me to pull off that move. A glimmer popped up in her eye, and she grinned, nodding once more for me to pay attention. I nodded back, raising a brow as if to challenge her to make the next task a little more difficult. I felt like I could do anything asked of me while riding my dragon.
Next, Deyla and Evie dipped down and weaved in and out of the stone towers below. They weren’t just flying from side to side, however. They would head to the side of a tower, wait until it was dead in front of them, and then the two of them would roll to the side in a speedy twist, just missing the impending collision. Tower after tower, they repeated the move, spinning to the left and right while never losing speed. About twenty towers later, they flew back to my side. The look in Deyla’s eyes told me it was my turn, and excitement lit through me.
Victoria and I dove into the depths of the ravine like a hawk divebombed its prey. When we leveled out, I had her head directly for a giant tower directly in our path. She had her wings out and was expertly using them to steady us in our flight. When it came time to roll the first tower, she once again tucked them around my legs.
I leaned forward and to the side, flattening myself against her body as she started to rotate. We actually gained speed as Victoria made herself as thin as possible, and we went into a twist at breakneck speed. We missed the tower by less than an inch as we passed, and then we straightened ourselves out again. Weaving to the other side of the ravine, through the rocks, we found another tower to spin by, and then another.
In no time at all, we were not only maneuvering expertly through, we were doing it even faster than Deyla had. We put twenty towers under our belts before returning to fly beside Deyla. I felt even more power than before. It filled every cell and every artery just as I saw a bright purple flash of light come from the underside of my forearm. I tipped it sideways to see what was happening, and that faded into a flying dragon symbol. The symbol didn’t morph to blacken in the circle like my other advancements, however. The flying dragon stayed, which for some reason, I was happy about since flying was by far my favorite thing to do so far.
“I could do this all day,” I yelled to Deyla as we sped along over the rocks.
“You don’t have time to do so, unfortunately,” she yelled back. “We need to get you back to the school. The sun is going down.”
I hadn’t noticed that the sky around us had started to get darker. I felt as though I could’ve flown through the night and still had energy to burn.
“A little longer won’t hurt. I want to explore, and I have the ability to do it very quickly!” I yelled.
I leaned forward and down, and Victoria dove under Evie, and we came up on the other side of her but were headed for the hill. The communication between my dragon and me was impeccable. She moved exactly where I wanted her to go so well that eventually, I didn’t even have to issue any sort of command through our connection. We flew up over the hill and took off. There was a wide space before us that nothing but flat land, but in the far distance, a giant mountain stood tall and inviting. I decided to make that my destination. Deyla was at our side in mere moments, and I winked at her.
“I’ll race you!” I told her, nodding towards the mountain.
“We really should go back,” she protested.
Victoria and I had already launched forward, though. It was the longest stretch that we’d flown, and I wanted to see just how fast she could really go. She was all for the challenge too. She modified her wing pattern so that she would flap six times and then fold her wings back to shoot through the air. We kept gaining speed well after I thought we would’ve topped out. Deyla and Evie were able to keep up for a good distance, but then they started to fall behind slightly. I wasn’t willing to slow my pace for her, though.
We were halfway to the mountain which, from what I could tell, was at least forty miles away before Victoria finally reached top speed. She was being fueled by our connection, plus she was extremely powerful on her own. We were flying so quickly that the surrounding landscape blurred. I had to keep my head down so that her neck would break the wind just enough for me to take a decent breath.
We covered the remaining distance in a matter of minutes and had to start slowing down so I could see the mountain face clearly in order to determine what I wanted to explore first. Deyla had fallen behind a significant distance, so Victoria and I flew in a small circle for a few minutes until she caught up. When they joined us in circling, Deyla’s eyes were wide with shock.
“How did you get her to go that fast?” she asked, amazed.
“It’s our connection. It just is pure, radiating energy,” I told her. There was great satisfaction in beating her and Evie that I couldn’t explain to myself.
27
As we turned in the circle and I was facing the mountain, I noticed a section missing from the top. It looked as though someone had simply carved a chunk out.
“What is up on that flat area on the top of the mountain?” I hollered over to Deyla. She glanced up, and her face went blank.
“Nothing, really. Just a weird formation is all,” she replied. I knew instantly she was lying.
Instead of urging her to tell me the truth, I simply pulled Victoria around and headed towards the formation. We flew close and tight to the mountain, and straight-up as we approached. We left Deyla behind us, protesting. We shot up over the edge and straightened out to take a better look at what was in front of us.
The cutout spot in the mountain was much larger the further we flew into it. The piece visible from the front was just the opening. As we flew over the area, I noticed a circle of trees that nearly surrounded the entire perimeter. There was only one spot on one side where they weren’t growing.
They were placed in such a symmetrical way that it looked as if someone had planted them purposefully. The space in the middle of the circle was completely empty and covered with dirt that was uniform across the area as though sprinkled there.
In front of the side bare of trees, there was a long table-looking structure. I couldn’t tell what was on it, but it confirmed that the area definitely wasn’t just left to nature. Humans had been there, and I wanted to see what they’d left behind, so I brought Victoria down, and we landed in the middle of the open space.
I was getting off my dragon when Deyla and Evie landed across the way. She was on the ground in a flash and running towards me. She was definitely unhappy about s
omething, and when she made it to me, she scowled up at me as though she was about to scold a toddler. She opened her mouth to say something, but then thought better of it for a moment. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, let it out, and then looked at me with a softer expression.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she started. “It’s not safe.”
Just then, a bright silver light radiated from the level circle on Victoria directly to one of the circles on my arm. I felt our connection without even touching her. The light didn’t last long, but when it disappeared, the circle it had connected with completely filled in with black. I had just leveled up again even though it had been different from the other times. Victoria’s circle had an additional ring around it at that point as well. My dragon and I looked at each other with mutual respect in celebration of our accomplishment. Excitement welled up at the idea that, with as amazing a job as Victoria had done with everything I’d commanded of her, she just leveled up and would be even more powerful. Then I noticed Deyla was still standing next to me, staring at me.
“What is unsafe about it?” I looked over to the table structure several yards away. I just had to know what was on it.
“That is what is unsafe,” she said. She lifted her arm to point just above where the table stood.
It amazed me that I’d missed what she was directing me to look at. Behind the table, about ten yards away, the mouth to a massive cave opened out of the mountain. The sunlight at the time was waning, so there was no way to see beyond a couple of feet from the opening.
“What is unsafe about it?” I asked her as I walked towards it.
