by Ramy Vance
Dragon Approved™ Book Five
Chapter One
It was Alex’s first weekend off since she became a dragonrider cadet. She was surprised the instructors cared enough to give any of them time off, although she was glad to have it. The events of the invasion of the Wasp’s Nest were still hard to deal with.
Alex was spending her Saturday staying in bed far later than she could have gotten away with at home. However, she did wake up early enough to snag breakfast before the rest of the cadets made their way to the mess hall.
Hot chocolate and cereal were all the breakfast she needed. Currently, Alex had all of her blankets over her and was propped up on her pillow, casually flipping through her HUD to see what textbooks had been loaded onto it.
Underneath the covers, it was cozy. It was familiar, even if the bed wasn’t hers, and she had no idea what the covers were made of. Something soft—that was the part that mattered.
Alex had found a book titled Advanced Tactics for Dragon Battle Groups of Ten or Larger and opened it. It was more than just trying to kill time; reading always kept her mind off things, and there was a lot Alex didn’t want to think about at the moment.
From the looks of it, the entire curriculum had already been uploaded onto Alex’s HUD. Every class’s books were open for her to read whenever she had time. Finding that out was a mistake, Alex thought to herself, fully aware she was going to have to stay on top of her reading. It really was easier reading letters than Braille. She was glad she had learned in Middang3ard VR.
Ever since she was a kid, Alex couldn’t pass up a book. It didn’t matter what kind of book it was. She didn’t care whether it was fiction or non-fiction, or if she liked the subject. If it was written and she could access it, she was going to read it like some kind of literature-craving hoarding-dragon.
Alex’s love of reading had definitely benefited her with a wide range of knowledge. Some facts were useful. Others, a large number of them, seemed as if they were far too specific to be useful. But, Alex thought, better to know than not, just in case.
The dorm room door opened and Jollies flitted into the room, holding a plate of food far too large for her. She set it down on Alex’s desk and then flew over to her own bed, which was across the room. “Still in bed, I see.”
Alex pushed her HUD down so she could see Jollies. “Hey, it’s been a long week,” she argued. “You can’t blame me for wanting to keep the day as simple as I can.”
Jollies sighed as she threw her arms up in exasperation, her color changing from a soft yellow glow to deep blue. “That’s exactly why we should be celebrating!” the pixie shouted. “We’re alive! We need to capture our lives, and truly use them! We can’t waste any time!”
Jollies zoomed around the room, doing a couple of laps before coming back to her chair and taking a seat. “I’m just saying, it’s kinda lame to stay in bed all day. Unless you’re hiding from something. I can’t see you hiding from anything, not after what you did. Talk about badass.”
Alex pulled her HUD back up and tried to ignore all the noise Jollies was making flying around the room and yelling. “I’m not hiding from anything,” Alex muttered under her breath.
Jollies flew toward Alex’s face, hovering below her nose. “Are you sure?” she inquired. “Are you telling me the whole truth or half a truth? Because I know something or someone you might want to hide from.”
“What are you talking about, Jollies?”
“Two young men were asking about your whereabouts this morning. Both of them seemed very disappointed that you had decided to stay in bed all day. You sure you don’t want to see them?”
And there it was, the thing Alex had spent her entire morning trying not to think about—Gill and Jim. Even when she had been running for her life, it had been hard not to stare at Gill’s butt. It looked so good in his armor, and he was unbelievably smart and levelheaded.
Jim was a whole other problem, one Alex had never thought she was going to have. She had been crushing on Jim ever since they’d started playing together in Middang3ard, but she had assumed she was just never going to meet him. People from VR hardly ever met in person.
Yet, here he was. He was even hotter than his avatar. His jawline was laughably chiseled for a teenager, and he looked like he played sports. Beyond that, Alex felt like she knew him. He was the only person she had ever felt close to in VR.
Staying in bed would be so much easier than running into either of them, especially since she knew she wasn’t going to talk to them. Yep, that was the best course of action.
Jollies poked Alex’s nose. “Hey! Aren’t you even going to ask me about it?”
Alex laughed as she tried to look Jollies in the eye. “No, I’m not since I don’t care which boy was asking about me.”
Jollies grasped her heart and mimed dying and falling out of the air. She lay crumpled on Alex’s lap. “How could you not care?” she squeaked. “Two boys are madly in love with you, and you don’t care who they are?”
“Nope. Not even a little bit.”
“You’re no fun,” the pixie said as she walked down the length of Alex’s leg. “Also, I noticed you haven’t put your blindfold back on. And Manny’s nowhere around. You’re getting better at using your eyes, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, a lot better. I’m not getting headaches anymore. Sometimes there’s still too much detail, and my brain gets kinda wonky, and everything goes fuzzy. And I still don’t know how to do any of the crazy stuff that dragons do with their eyes. But it’s loads better.”
Alex’s HUD pinged, indicating she had received a message. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized it was probably her parents responding to her. “Hold on, Jollies, I think my parents just messaged me.”
But it wasn’t them.
Alex opened the message, and her heart sank—not because she was disappointed that it wasn’t from her parents, but because it was from Jim.
The message read, What are you up to today?
Alex wasn’t certain how to reply. On the one hand, she wanted to see Jim more than she had let on since Myrddin had suddenly introduced him from out of nowhere. On the other, Alex was terrified of sitting down and talking with him.
After taking much longer than she thought reasonable to respond, she texted, Nothing much. How about u?
Jim texted back. Just going for a walk in the field after breakfast. Want to come with?
Now Alex had to think.
A walk sounded nice.
It also sounded awful.
So much could go wrong. What if she said something stupid or blurted something that made Jim uncomfortable? Why was all this so hard?
Yeah, a walk sounds good.
Jim sent a smiley face and responded, Cool. I’ll see you at the field at a quarter past twelve.
Alex’s heart skipped a beat. Not only was he hot, smart, and capable, but he was also considerate about time, one of Alex’s biggest pet peeves. This was definitely not a good idea.
Jollies looked at Alex, a grin on her face. “Why do you look so worried all of a sudden?”
Alex cast a disapproving look at Jollies. “What did you tell Jim?”
“Just that you would be spending all day in bed. And that you were dying for some company.”
Alex instantly regretted having spoken to her roommate about how weird it was to see Jim again. She hadn’t considered that the pixie was empathetic, and she’d completely forgotten what Jollies had said about pixies and their feelings.
Alex picked up her pillow and swatted at Jollies as the pixie shrieked with laughter and flew away. “I also told him you were madly in love with him.” She cackled as she flew around Alex’s head.
“Are you serious? Why would you do that?” Alex buried her head in her pillow and shook it. “That is not a cool thing to tell humans,” she whined. “He probably thinks I’m out of my mind and wants to hang out to tell me not to be such a creep.”
“Or maybe he’s going to declare his undying lo
ve for you!”
Alex got off the bed and chased Jollies, who shrieked again. Her skin glowed bright pink as she zoomed around the room. “I’m going to kill you, Jollies,” Alex shouted.
Jollies easily evaded Alex. She was just too fast. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Jollies said after she stopped zipping around. “I might be a pixie, but I’m not tone-deaf. I wasn’t trying to make things more complicated for you. Just a little complicated.”
“Well, you succeeded.”
“When are you guys supposed to hang out?”
Alex looked at her dragon anchor to see the time. “In a few hours,” she said. “And you and I are not on speaking terms right now.”
Jollies flew to Alex’s face and kissed her on the nose. “Hardly,” she said. “We’re on even better speaking terms. I want all the juice on this kid, and when you get back, you’re telling me everything.”
Alex sighed as she collapsed onto her bed. “All right, fine. But you have to promise not to be weird.”
“Promise on my first set of wings,” Jollies agreed as she held her hand behind her back, her fingers crossed.
Alex walked out onto the field. It was a beautiful day. The sky hardly had any clouds in it, and the sun was beaming down. It wasn’t too cool or too warm. This was the kind of day to be outdoors. She wondered if she could take Chine out, or if there was some kind of paperwork that needed to be filled out first.
The time Chine and Alex had spent together so far had been training-related, except the battle they had narrowly won. It couldn’t be weird for Chine and Alex to hang out, though. They were bound together, after all.
Jim was sitting under a tree in the part of the field where it met the forest. Alex wondered if the forest was also part of the Nest. She hadn’t seen it before except from dragonback.
Alex waved at him as she approached, and Jim stood up to greet her. “Hey, Jaws,” she said, trying to sound as casual as possible. Jim extended his hand to her. “Nice to meet you in person. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.” He smiled shyly as Alex took his hand, and they shook.
“Yeah, I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you when you first showed up.”
Jim pointed to the forest. “I wanted to check this out. I haven’t seen a proper forest before, being a city boy and all that.”
“Sure, and I’m pretty certain everyone playing VR games is a city person. Would you be playing video games if you had anything interesting around?”
Alex and Jim left the field behind. The forest was ominously dark, the trees growing thickly everywhere except on the walking path. “I highly doubt it. One of my favorite parts about VR was how much nature was everywhere. Even in the village.”
“Do you remember that one elf village we went to? The one in the trees? That was wild.”
Jim stared up at the canopy, nodding. “Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I wonder if real elf cities are like that. It would be amazing to see them. You know, in real life. I would never have thought they were real.”
“Yeah, and what about the dragons?”
Jim turned to Alex, grinning. “Wouldn’t have ever thought those were real either,” he agreed. “I still haven’t met a dragon, but then again, I’m not a rider, not like you. I’m part of the mech program under Roy. My dragon is metal.“
“So, I’m still the only human rider,” Alex muttered to herself.
“Excuse me?”
“Ahh, sorry. It’s just that when Myrddin recruited me, he said I was the first human rider. Then you showed up, and I was kind of like, guess that didn’t last long. But you’re in the mech program, and, well, I wonder what’s up with that?”
“Yeah, I hear that. I asked to be a rider, but I was turned down flat. Something about reaction times and not having a magical nature.”
Alex sighed. “Too bad. You are an incredible rider.”
“VR rider,” Jim countered.
“Rider,” Alex corrected. An awkward silence fell between them, and suddenly Alex just wanted to run. That wasn’t an option, so she took another tack. “How did you get into the program? Did you beat the raid?”
Jim laughed and shook his head. “No, I failed every time after you got in. I couldn’t even get into the bee vortex without you. No one would even listen to me when I told them how to get past the bees. Now I see why you didn’t bother explaining and just did it.”
“Yeah, sometimes people aren’t going to listen to you. But you didn’t tell me how you got in, you just told me how you didn’t.”
“Oh, yeah, that. Well, my dad is in the military, some really upper-level stuff. He’s not even allowed to talk to us about it. But I figured, why not ask? If the VR game was a recruitment tool like everyone was saying, it would make sense that the military knew about it.”
“Yeah, it would.”
“So, I asked my dad, and he didn’t want to tell me anything, but I kept after him. I showed him the game, all my stats and everything. He didn’t say anything at first, but the next day there was this military guy in the living room. He asked me all sorts of weird questions, and then out of nowhere, he handed me an application.”
Alex almost didn’t believe what she was hearing. “Wait, you got into the program just by applying?” she asked.
“Not quite. Turns out, my dad has been working for the mech department of the dragonriders, doing a lot of organization. He told me that when I showed him my stats, he couldn’t in good conscience fail to pass my information along.”
“He didn’t have a problem with his son going to war? He did know that it’s a for-real war, right?”
“Of course, he did. He works for the military, remember? We had a long talk about it. He said it was my decision to make, and he knew I’d find a way eventually if I wanted. So, I filled out the application, and he got it to the right people.”
Alex stared at the shadows moving throughout the trees. “That’s pretty cool,” she finally said. “I had to fight my mom and dad. They didn’t let me go until I showed them what the VR world was like. I think they kinda forgot about the whole ‘fighting the Dark One’ part after that.”
“Or maybe they thought you could handle yourself. That’s what my dad told me. And most of the trust he has in me is because of you.”
Alex looked away from the trees and met Jim’s eyes. “What do you mean?”
Jim sat down on a tree stump and sighed as he clasped his hands together. “You’re amazing on a dragon,” he explained. “From the first time I saw you, I knew you were special. I always watched you closely. A lot of what I do when I’m in the air is because I saw you do it.”
Alex blushed and turned to hide her face. As she turned, she saw Gill and Brath walking through the forest along the same path, heading right toward them. Damn it, Alex thought.
Gill waved amicably at Alex and Jim. “Greetings,” he called. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Jim rose and reached out to shake Gill’s hand, who took it heartily. “I’ve heard a lot about you from the instructors. You and Alex handled yourselves pretty well when the orcs came through.”
Gill nodded, his face betraying no expression. “Thank you. Alex was invaluable to our defense. I’ve heard good things about you as well, Jaws, is it?”
“That’s my call name, but yeah, Jaws.”
“Myrddin seems particularly excited to have you riding with us. I hope you’re a good fit for us cadets.”
Jim smiled widely. Alex’d had no idea Gill could be so friendly. It made her wonder why he had seemed so cold to her.
“What are you guys doing out here?” Jim asked.
Gill pointed down the path. “There’s a spot up ahead where I like to meditate. I was going to try to teach Brath how to calm his spirit and see deeper into his center.”
Jim got down on one knee so he could be face-to-face with Brath. “I don’t think I’ve met you yet either. My name’s Jim, but my friends call me Jaws.”
Brath slapped away Jim’s hand and
spat on the ground. “Three things. One, don’t ever kneel to look a gnome in the eye. It’s rude. We know we’re shorter than you. Two, we aren’t friends, human. I can hardly tolerate your kind. Three, you keep trying that nice human crap, I’m going to knock that smile off your face, you got me?”
Jim stood up, looking like he had just bitten into a lemon. “Okay, I guess. Nice to meet you, too,” he muttered.
Brath pushed past Jim and walked past Alex, stopping for a moment. “Good to see you too, Boundless. Hope you two had a good walk, but a word of advice. You two probably shouldn’t mate. You would have hideous children. I’m talking goblin-ugly.”
Gill shook his head as he walked after Brath. “I don’t believe in apologizing for friends, but I think we can all see that Brath might benefit from meditating. It was nice running into you two. See you around.”
Gill and Brath disappeared into the forest, leaving Alex and Jim standing in awkward silence. There was a lot for Alex to take in. The easiest one was Brath’s change of attitude to her. He didn’t seem friendly in the least, but he did seem like he respected her. She could say the same about him.
Next was Gill. He was so cordial and outgoing to Jim. Did he suspect something? Was there a reason for him to, or had he just started to come out of his shell a little bit? Alex didn’t know anything about drow or their personalities, and she did very much want to get to know Gill.
Which brought her to the next point, rounding out the topics she could obsess over for the next few days—Jim. Not the baby part. She couldn’t care less what their kids would look like. She was more concerned with what their faces would look like if they were mashed together.
Jim cleared his throat as he awkwardly kicked a rock next to him. “What’re you thinking about?” he asked.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just lunch. Getting kinda hungry, right? I think I’m going to head back. All this exercise has got me famished. I’ll catch you around.”
Alex headed back toward the Nest as fast as she could, only realizing later how rude she must have seemed, running away from Jim after he’d asked her to go on a walk. It didn’t matter, though. She knew things were going to get weirder soon enough. Might as well be the one to get it started.
