Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2)

by Travis Simmons

  “She’s found me,” Wylan said. “It was just a ruse to get me to touch the wand so she could find me.”

  “And you played your part wonderfully,” a wicked, crooked voice echoed from the depths of the shadows as they merged into the lumbering giant hag, Baba Yaga. She wore the shadows like a robe, her hooked nose peeking out from within the folds of her hood, her ghostly hair trailing across the shadows like moonlight in the early reaches of night.

  Wylan cast her eyes to the sky, wondering if the dragons that had been following them all this time would unsuspectingly save them from the hag, but if there were any dragons nearby, they were staying well away from the hag and her malicious power.

  “Give me the wand!” she thundered, her gnarled hand reaching down to Wylan.

  “Give her the wand and she will go!” Geffrey tugged at Wylan’s trousers, urging her to action.

  “No she won’t,” Wylan said. “Giving her this wand is worse than death. The things she’d be able to do with it…” Wylan shuddered.

  A shiver ran through the air, and something popped with a resounding crunch of stone that made Geffrey cry out. He collapsed, clutching his head, whimpering with pain.

  “Geffrey?” Wylan asked, flickering her eyes toward the prone boy on the ground beside her. There was power in the air that had nothing to do with Baba Yaga. It whispered along Wylan’s skin and chilled her to the bone. Somehow, she could hear the words over and over that Leaghan had been muttering as she rocked, and while it didn’t make sense, it spoke to her of darkness building…the same darkness she felt stirring in the magic that surrounded her.

  “I will have it one way or another,” the hag said, ignoring the shiver on the air and the suctioning feeling of energy being drawn. Lifting her giant foot, she brought it down toward Wylan. Wylan dove out of the way, barely pulling Geffrey with her as the foot came down where they’d been moments before.

  Leaghan stepped out of the shadows, her violet eyes full of menace, her blond hair streaming around her, radiating the power that raged through her. She lifted her hand and muttered a word in some spidery language.

  A sliver of light lanced through the darkness, piercing through the hag’s head. Baba Yaga roared, and the shadows blew apart, scattering bits of the hag everywhere. They faded into the sand, the shadows skirting back to the darkest recesses of the ruins. In moments the hag was gone.

  Whether she’d channeled too much energy, or if that was all the power she had in her, Leaghan collapsed to the sand, once more consumed by the nightmare of her mind and unable to actualize it in the physical world.

  The night plunged into painful silence. Even the debris and sand that rained back to the ground in the absence of the hag’s power that had drawn it from its slumber made no sound as it landed. If it did make sound, Wylan couldn’t hear it over the ringing in her ears.

  Geffrey fumbled, clawing at the sand, trying to get to the elf. Wylan placed a hand on him to keep him still. Something had happened to him, some kind of backlash of power when the elf had broken his wards. Was he hurt too bad to move? Shouldn’t he stay still?

  “We have to put her ward in place again,” Geffrey mumbled, trying to stand. He fumbled and collapsed to the ground once more. “It keeps breaking.”

  Millie landed beside them, merged with her human soul, and held out her hand to Geffrey. “Take it slow,” Millie said. “It’s like working a muscle. You’re not hurt beyond repair, but you’re right, we have to ward her. I will heal you as you work, that should give you more power.”

  “Let’s get some sleep, they could be at it for a while,” Josef said, taking Wylan’s hand.

  They trudged back to the camp and settled down in the sand, but she couldn’t find the restfulness of dreams again that night.

  “Good dragons!” Geffrey stressed. “I didn’t say dragons came for me in my dream, but good dragons came for me and kept me safe.”

  “Now that is a dream,” Josef said.

  Millie laughed at him. Despite the upset of the night before, all of them seemed well rested except Wylan who’s stomach had been too upset to eat that morning, and who Lissandra seemed to be ignoring because she didn’t accept her help with the barghest.

  During the night, they must have gotten the wards working on Leaghan again, because the elf followed in their wake in the same dreamy state that she had before.

  “There will be some dreams you have that are just dreams,” Millie said.

  “I know that,” Geffrey said, crossing his arms petulantly over his tiny chest. “But I know how the other dreams feel, and it felt like one of my other dreams.”

  Millie frowned, but didn’t argue with the boy.

  Wylan thought Josef was right. It sounded too good to be true. Good dragons that protected humans and wyvern? All the evidence Wylan had seen up to that point had pointed to dragons being nothing more than a menace that needed to be put down.

  :Family,: Lissandra grumbled.

  :Yea, yea, you say that a lot, but you don’t say what is family.:

  Lissandra harrumphed and went back to ignoring her.

  “And these good dragons, did they take you for a nice ride and feed you all kinds of delicacies they enjoy, like roasted human, or wyvern cutlets?” Josef poked Geffrey in the shoulder.

  Geffrey scowled but wouldn’t answer him.

  “Oh, come on, it was a joke!”

  Millie intervened, “what else did you see in your dream.” She didn’t sound so sure of her previous assessment now that it had just been a dream.

  Geffrey didn’t answer right away, but finally he sighed, uncrossed his arms and started his story. “It was a strange dream. I was in this city that had been blasted apart, but still stood. It felt like tons of battles had taken place there, but people still lived. I was on this path in the mountains. Behind me were lots of doorways that led into rooms within the mountain. These dragons were circling overhead, shooting lightning, and fire, and ice down on the city, but there were other dragons as well. There were good dragons!” He shot a cold look at Josef.

  Millie’s face had lost all traces of a smile and she stared straight ahead as if seeing something none of the others could, like she was staring through the veil of waking and sleeping to see the dream Geffrey painted for them.

  “And the good dragons were at the base of the mountains, in the city streets staring up at me, or at the mountain, and then they just took flight. There was a huge battle in the skies, and the good dragons chased away the bad dragons.”

  He was silent for several moments. “Was that all?” Millie asked.

  “All?!” he trumpeted. “You want more?”

  Josef chuckled.

  “That’s where the dream ended?” Millie asked.

  Geffrey nodded.

  “And you believe it was a foretelling?” Millie asked.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  “Interesting.”

  There was little training for Wylan that day. She was beginning to think all of her training was done until Lissandra made it clear what here terms were for allowing Wylan to shift. The general mood of the company seemed to be contemplation, but Wylan was just trying to keep from falling asleep.

  As the day wore on, dragons returned to the skies, but this time they were higher up. Even if Kira wasn’t shielding them, as she suspected, the dragons were likely too high up to see them. Wylan watched the sun shimmer off scales, casting rainbow light around the clouds. Their bodies moved so gracefully, their forms like ghosts among the clouds. Wylan allowed herself to get wrapped up in the fantasy Geffrey had woven for them.

  What if there really were good dragons? What if there was more to the life they’d been living, and dragons weren’t all bad and bent on destroying humanity? It seemed a fantasy to be sure, one that she couldn’t hope would come true because if she hoped for it, she would likely be let down.

  :Family,: Lissandra said.

  Wylan ignored her this time.

  As the day wound to a clo
se, more dragons filled the sky above, all seemingly headed in the same direction as the group. There was a sense of foreboding seeing such an army of dragons headed the same way as they were. Wylan touched the hilt of her sword for reassurance, hoping that the sword would help them fight dragons.

  She couldn’t allow herself that hope, but she did wonder if the blue dragon who destroyed her home was among the beasts winging through the skies above. The dragons were so dense that the stars were all but blocked from sight.

  There wasn’t much in the way of dinner that night. Millie was unsure if the dragons could sense if they shifted, so she hadn’t wanted to risk it. In the end, Josef shifted without her permission and hunted for all of them. Wylan was so tired that she barely registered when Josef returned and she’d eaten her dinner.

  She was lying down to sleep when the last of the dragons flew overhead and the stars winked down on her. The moon was full making the sand around them glow as if by a dim sun.

  When sleep came, it was fast. She wasn’t even sure if they’d decided on a watch or not.

  Wylan stood on a pathway cut out of the rock face of a mountain. She looked behind her, only to see doorways clogged with children and the elderly, held up by canes. Their eyes were turned up, their mouths open, looks of terror on their faces. More than one child clung to the adults, sobbing into their clothing.

  Wylan looked up as well. High above was a storm of dragons. Wings flapped and the multitude of dragons blocked out the sun. An unnatural night fell over the city as the first bolt of purple lightning smashed into a tower. The brick and mortar exploded outwards, raining down on the city streets in heavy, deadly clumps.

  People screamed out and fled.

  A small hand took hers and she looked down to see Geffrey staring up at her.

  “This is what I saw,” he told her. “All these dragons.”

  The air stirred violently as wings beat down at the city. Dragons streaked out of the sky and hapless humans were plucked from towers, streets, and parapets to die, screaming as they fell, to the city below. Their bodies smashed like rotten fruit among the paths and buildings.

  A thunder of power rippled out of the mountain behind her, and Wylan turned, sure that a dragon was laying the mountain to ruin. That wasn’t the case. Rainbow light shown through the openings of doorways. The humans didn’t seem to see it, but the people who were wyvern turned, just as Wylan did, and stared at the light entranced.

  Hundreds of dragons fluttered to the ground, to the tops of buildings, and beside humans on the parapets. The humans fled from the wyrms, but the dragons paid them no mind—their attention was all for the rainbow light.

  Kira, Wylan thought.

  “It’s the dragon tamer,” Geffrey said.

  Tamer, Wylan thought. She’d heard of tamers in stories of old. Just as so many things they thought were myth, so were tamers. Creatures, human or otherwise, with the ability to control certain creatures. It was said there used to be dragon tamers who could bend the will of a dragon to do their bidding. The mind of a tamer had to be strong enough to fight the will of the beast it influenced. To call so many dragons to them, the tamer had to be terrifyingly powerful.

  Wings thundered powerfully, kicking up a gale. Wylan turned, terrified that the crouching dragons were about to strike, and they were, but their targets were not the humans or the city—their targets were the other dragons.

  Wylan gasped awake.

  “It’s real!” She said.

  “What?” Millie groaned, rubbing her face where Wylan had knocked her with her elbow.

  “Those dragons we’ve seen. Their attacking Darubai.”

  “How do you know it’s Darubai?” Millie asked.

  “Come on, Millie,” Josef cut in, “dragons have attacked us enough that it’s second nature now. What other populated city do you know?”

  Millie didn’t answer.

  “Pair that with all the dragons that have been flying over lately, I thought it was obvious it was Darubai,” Wylan told her.

  “We need to shift, and we need to get there now,” Millie said. “Lissandra, it’s Millie speaking. You need to work with us. Wylan, talk to her.”

  :Lissandra, this is important. Will you help us?:

  :Unity.:

  :Yes, we need to unite against the dragons.: Wylan waited a breathless moment while the wyvern soul unfurled and pulsed against her insides, as if she were seeking something, some answer to a question Wylan didn’t know.

  “What about the dragons?” Josef asked, shucking his clothes.

  Millie shook her head. “Likely storming the city. Even so, it’s a risk we will have to take.” She turned to Wylan. “Lissandra, help us.”

  :Unity,: the wyvern grumbled and swam up to the surface of Wylan’s mind so fast it was all Wylan could do to keep her at bay long enough to get undressed. She shifted as soon as the last bit of trouser had left her foot.

  The other’s shifted around her and she was dimly aware of hearing Millie speak to Geffrey. “When we get to the city, you need to get Leaghan into the infirmary as fast as you can. Tell them she needs a yellow to ward her. Make sure to give Kira to someone as well. Keep them safe.”

  Wylan clasped her belongings in her talons and winged into the air. They flew at breakneck speed for Darubai, Leaghan on the back of Millie, Kira wrapped in clothes and clasped in Josef’s talons. Wylan figured it would take them several hours to reach the city. They’d said just a couple days ago that it would take four days from the ruins, one by wyvern.

  It was several hours of sand passing underneath them as if nothing was happening in the city. Several hours of Wylan alone with her thoughts and her fears. Dragons weren’t far away, and she could barely hold her form at the best of times, what would happen when the fighting started? Sure, she was big for a wyvern, but dragons were easily four times her size. Was she heading into a slaughter?

  She hoped that the dream was right, that the rainbow light was the power of a dragon tamer and they were about to get help from other dragons, but she couldn’t be sure. So much had gone wrong of late, and so many things were resurfacing that text said was long dead. It was beyond her hoping or wildest fantasy that they faced anything other than imminent death when they reached the imperial city.

  When they finally arrived, Darubai was in shambles. A storm of dragons swarmed through the clouds above seemingly without order.

  Fire spouted down from the sky, buildings kindled as if they weren’t brick and instead the driest tinder. A roof exploded and shrapnel flew in all directions cutting down blue wyverns that hovered low, their watery powers trying to quench the flames.

  Purple lightning lanced out catching more wyverns and those guards that stood upon the parapets. Wylan saw one unlucky guard tumble from the wall to land, blackened and burning, on the sand below.

  Snow as she’d never seen before hammered the city, white and pure, but with an icy bite that could burn the skin as surely as any fire. The bricks of attacked buildings groaned and popped with a resounding snap as the cold from a large white dragon sunk in. The buildings rumbled and crumbled as though they were nothing more than sand.

  :Follow me,: Millie commanded.

  Wylan joined the other three wyverns as they slunk low over the sand, only turning up when they approached the wall that was supposed to provide safety from attack. They glided over the wall and cut low through the streets.

  Wylan’s mind wasn’t on the attack above any longer, it took all of her skill to navigate through the rising dust and through falling bricks and streaking lightning. When Millie landed, Wylan was more than happy to land beside her.

  Millie sat Leaghan down on the walkway and shifted. She took Kira from Josef while Geffrey merged with his human soul. She pressed the baby into the boy’s hands as dragons cried out in the sky, lancing lightning down on buildings around them. A haze of rain misted over them as a giant orb of water burst against a nearby building, washing soldiers out of the upper reaches of a tower. T
hey tumbled from their perches, their screams ending abruptly when they struck the cobbles of the street.

  “Remember, get Kira to a nurse as soon as you can,” Millie instructed the boy. She nudged him toward an opening in the cave, and steered Leaghan in behind him. “And make sure the nurses know Leaghan needs heavy wardings. They will take it from there.”

  Wylan hadn’t shifted back and neither had Josef. They stared around them at the destruction. She couldn’t believe the amount of dragons that swarmed the sky, or how many were landing on surrounding buildings, taking up a post as if they were waiting for the humans to make a strike at them.

  Torrents of wyverns took to the sky, several of them taking on one dragon. There weren’t many wyverns compared to dragons, but by the time the dragons realized the wyverns were causing a stir, taking down a dragon or two wherever they swarmed the larger wyrms, they turned their focus to the wyverns.

  Their size worked against them. Wyverns were able to zip around the dragon attacks much faster than the dragons were able to refocus their attempts at killing a wyvern. Several more dragons were taken down, plummeting to the city streets, laying waste to buildings as they crashed into them, sending up great plumes of debris into the air, making it hard to see.

  As Wylan was getting ready to launch herself into the fray, a piercing cry resounded over the top of the mountain face. She cast her eyes up in time to see a great beast streak over the top of the mountains. It had the head of a giant cat, with the feathered body of a rapturous bird. It was larger than Josef in his wyvern shape, but not as large as she. The dragons nearby halted their attacks, and watched as the beast drew near.

  Upon its back rode an elf in gray armor, her pointed ears bare to the sunlight, her black hair streaming out behind her. She wore roses in her hair. One hand gripped the reins of the beast, while the other held a giant spear.

  :What’s happening?: Wylan asked.

  :I’m unsure. The elves come with the gryphons,: he told her.

  More followed over the top of the mountain. The gryphons didn’t all look the same. Some had the heads of giant birds, the bodies of a predator cat with great feathery wings sprouting from their back and a long, plumed tail. Others were all bird save for their feet that ended in great clawed paws.