by Amelia Jade
They winged westward, toward the mountains where he had found her. His plan was to set down near the hot springs and walk her out toward the border. His senses should be able to detect any of the Guardians before they got too close.
Hopefully.
It was all a big risk, but if she pretended to be lost, having been stranded and wandering around, the Guardian should hopefully point her in the right direction with nothing more than a scare.
As it happened, none of that mattered.
“Asher, I think I see something behind us,” Quinn said a bit nervously.
He craned his head around, and his eyes went wide.
A piercing screech split the sky as he passed over the hot springs, feeling the difference in air temperature in his wings.
“What was that?” Quinn asked.
Asher was already reacting, allowing the upward heat of the pools to act as a drag, pulling himself to the right.
The gryphon shot through the space he had just occupied, claws extended. It shrieked its anger and flapped mightily, struggling to regain ground as Asher’s brain snapped into combat mode. He pumped his own wings, the thermal air from the springs making his climb fast and effortless.
The gryphon was smaller though, and it rose even easier, angling for another dive on him.
“Hang on!” he shouted, hoping she heard him.
When the other shifter darted at him Asher charged head-on at it, ignoring the razor-sharp talons aiming for his head.
At the last second he dipped his head and brought his wings in closer. His body turned downward into a dive, avoiding the attack. His opponent, however, couldn’t react in time, and flew straight into the whip-motion path of Asher’s tail. The scale-covered appendage slammed against the gryphon’s head and the bird-like creature wailed its cry of pain, though it didn’t give up.
Brave of you, attacking me one on—
The second gryphon’s claws tore across his midsection as he leveled out, hitting him from nowhere.
Asher bellowed, the noise a mixture of pain and anger. He had known there was going to be at least a second one. Gryphons would never take on a dragon one on one. That was suicide. Two or more, however, suddenly made it a dangerous fight. Especially as he had Quinn on his back. The gryphons would never know she was a human, unless he landed. Dragons transporting other shifters was not unknown, and Asher knew he could pass it off as having been escorting a guardian out to the perimeter. That happened more frequently than anything.
But first he had to win this fight.
Aerial combat was not something one chose to engage in willingly. Even these gryphons must be extra pissed to come after him. All it would take is one mistake, or one good shot, and a combatant would tumble hundreds of feet to their death.
Asher gained height again, watching the two shifters as they eyed him warily. The tail to the face trick had to have hurt. Asher wasn’t sure where he’d come up with such an idea, but he was glad it worked. But his efforts of the past two days were starting to wear on him, and he could feel fatigue setting in already.
If only these buffoons didn’t have such an inbred hatred of us. I have no wish to fight them.
He knew that wasn’t his fault, however. The entire gryphon culture seemed to be centered around proving they were better than dragons. They didn’t seem to realize that such a singularly focused mindset effectively proved that they weren’t better. But that sort of logic wouldn’t work to stop the fight now. If the two of them brought him down, they would be endlessly lauded by their peers.
And he would both be dead and ridiculed.
Quinn would be dead too.
Asher’s vision suddenly snapped into an even sharper focus as that bomb exploded in his mind. There was no way he was letting these fools harm her.
Dragon lips peeled back into a tooth-filled visage that promised pain and death as he banked hard toward the gryphons. The smaller animals split to the sides, forcing him to pick one. Asher went after the trailer, the newcomer to the fight. His sudden change of stance, from defensive to offense, had caught them by surprise. The gryphon now dove frantically, the bigger, angrier, and faster-in-a-dive dragon on his tail.
Not for the first time Asher wished he could command his breath weapon powerfully enough to use it. The gryphon would be done for if that were the case, as he had the perfect angle to unleash a blast of Frostfire to send it tumbling from the sky.
“The other one is behind us!” Quinn shouted from her perch at the base of his neck.
“Hold tighter!” he shouted back, and tucked his wings in a little bit more as he gained on the lead gryphon.
On the ascent, the gryphons were lighter and smaller. They would beat him every time. But in a dive like the one his quarry was just now trying to pull out of, Asher would win.
The gryphon tried to pull up and away as the ground came closer, but it was too late. Asher pounced, using the smaller animal as a springboard. His talons dug deep into the muscles on either side of its back that controlled the wings, and as he grabbed hold he snapped his wings out wide and pushed off the gryphon.
With a powerful push from his wings he flung himself forward, hoping that the sudden change of motion would throw his pursuer off.
Something latched onto his tail, and Asher yelped as he was thrown into a spin. Looking behind him, he saw the second gryphon’s beak closed tightly around his tail.
“Let go you idiot!” he roared as they spun downward. “Let go or we both die!”
The gryphon simply held on tighter.
Below, Asher watched as the first gryphon crashed heavily in among the trees. It was likely badly wounded, perhaps even dead after such a crash. He would likely survive, and the idiot holding onto his tail probably would as well. But with the spin they had, there was no way Quinn would be able to hold on once they hit the trees.
Asher needed to do something, and do it quickly.
“How secure are you back there?” he asked, using his neck to get his head close to Quinn as they fell from the sky.
“Depends on what you have in mind,” she shouted back, eyes wide and knuckles white from where her hands were holding onto him for dear life.
“Nothing I want to do. But we might go upside down for a moment.”
If anything her eyes grew wider. But to her credit, he saw her adjust her feet, and her hands. Then she nodded. “Okay. Just try not to jolt me when we do.”
Asher nodded. He couldn’t promise that, but he would try.
There wasn’t much time left now as the ground grew closer. With a quick surge of hope, he drew his wings in close to him and stopped fighting both the spin and the fall.
The trio dropped like a stone, their rate of descent rapidly increasing. All of a sudden, they were the ones pulling the gryphon down, and it was trying to stop them. The motion pulled his tail upward slightly, and threatened to spill them upside down, despite his best efforts. But it meant he could stop the spin, and did so relatively easily without the gryphon dragging him around.
Now the painful part.
With a wince of apology to himself, Asher flung his wings out as wide as they would go, pulling out of the dive.
The gryphon went flying past them, and Asher trumpeted in pain as the beak slid down his tail, pulling scale after scale off as it went, until the two parts clacked together as it ran out of tail. The half-lion, half-eagle creature slammed into the forest below as Asher glided above it, no more than ten, fifteen feet from the tips of the trees.
He set down in a nearby clearing to examine his tail.
“Asher are you okay?” Quinn asked as she slid from his neck to go inspect the damage herself.
“Umm, I will be?” he said through the pain, the words sounding extra sibilant as he tried to push it away. The scales would regrow, and he would stop bleeding shortly. But for a few days, it was going to be rather tender.
“Oh shit,” he said aloud as something else clued in.
“What?” Quinn asked, loo
king up as if she was scared she’d done something wrong.
“We need to go,” he told her. “Now.”
“Why? You’re hurt. You should rest.”
“Border guards will have heard all this,” he said. “Nothing we can do now except get you back to my house as fast as we can.”
The human looked up at him from where she was crouched by his tail, examining the wound. “So we did all this for nothing?”
Despite himself, Asher grinned. “Well, you did get to experience aerial combat on a dragon’s back. That’s something not many other humans can say.”
She smiled. “Point taken. Are you going to be okay to fly back?” she asked, pointing at his tail.
He nodded. “It hurts like blazes, but that’s about it. It won’t actually hinder me.” He looked up, scanning the sky. “But seriously, we need to go. Now. We can try another day, perhaps.”
Quinn got up, casting one last look at his tail. Asher tried not to shiver as she walked toward his neck, dragging one hand along his scales. He liked the way she touched him. It was…genuine? Was that the word he was looking for? Asher wasn’t sure, but he did know he wasn’t completely distraught that she was sticking around.
Perhaps he would get enough time to just hang out with her one of these days. To sit back, and get to know the real Quinn…
He frowned.
“Quinn?” he asked as she climbed back onto his neck.
“Yes?” she asked, her fingers finding their hold.
“What is your last name?” he asked.
“Bryant. Why?”
He tilted his head, the dragon equivalent of a shrug. “Just curious, really.”
She laughed, a melodic sound that soothed his soul with its gentleness. “You’re an interesting one, Asher, the white dragon.”
You have no idea.
***
Asher followed the others out onto the flat, hard-packed grounds behind the Academy building. They crossed over many of the stone circles until they reached the outer perimeter.
There he realized three large standing stones had been erected at some point in the past few hours. Each was at least three feet by five feet wide.
“Today,” Rhynne said to the three cadets, as they’d begun to think of themselves. “We’re going to work on your breath weapons.”
He stood up a little straighter. The strength, coordination, and aerial skills they’d been practicing for the past week had been helping immensely. He was already a better flyer, and was improving every day. Even his nightly sojourns out to see Quinn hadn’t slowed him down too much. Asher thought he might have been slightly ahead of his fellow classmates Zeke and Dominick if he hadn’t been, but it still would have been close. Now they were generally considered to be progressing equally.
Yet despite all that, each time he learned a lesson, or thought he improved, the instructors showed him just how far he had to come. Today though, was the first time they were learning something entirely new. Asher knew no matter how pathetic he might seem today, it wouldn’t matter. Because this was what every dragon dreamed of. It was the skill that set them completely apart from any other shifter species out there. To master one’s breath was the ultimate sign of skill.
“So, before we begin, have any of you managed to master this on your own?”
Asher looked to either side of him at Zeke and then Dom, both shaking their heads like he was.
“I’ve tried,” Zeke said. “But master it? No.”
“Very well then,” Rhynne said. She raised a hand, and snapped her fingers. Sparks appeared as she did, and they grew to envelop her in smoke and flame until it dissipated, leaving her ruby-colored dragon there in her place.
Asher still couldn’t help but be awed with how easy it was for her to shift, and how she could make the flames appear from her fingertips. That was for show, he knew, but the fact that she could do it at all was amazing. He wondered if he could do the same: create an icicle on command as he shifted.
“This is closely guarded knowledge, so I would have been surprised if any of you could.”
She inhaled sharply, turned to an empty patch of ground to the left of the standing stones, and unleashed hell. Red-orange flames erupted from her mouth in a concentrated stream of intense fire that blasted across the ground. Heat washed back over the recruits with such fury that Asher and Dominick were forced to throw up an arm over their faces. Zeke, as a fire dragon himself, wasn’t bothered by it.
Abruptly the cone of flame ceased. The earth was seared, scorched black from the heat.
“So, you see now why learning this is necessary for any graduate of Top Scale, yes?” Rhynne said, bits of smoke emerging from her snout.
The three nodded.
“Now let me show you what you will truly learn.”
She sucked in another breath and aimed at the same patch.
Asher went scrambling backward as blue-white flame snapped out and across the ground, the hotter flame burning so brightly he had to shield his eyes as he backed away, Dominick at his side. As a Frost Dragon, intense heat was something he was not designed for. The sun’s light was one thing, but something like Dragonfire was not nice.
After several moments Rhynne stopped, and Asher stood up. The entire area she had been blasting was melted into a liquid that cooled rapidly.
“She turned it into glass,” Dominick said a little unsteadily from his side. “I don’t believe it. I didn’t know that was even possible!”
“Can all fire dragons do that?” Zeke asked as the others crept closer, still partially shielding themselves from the heat that reflected up from the ground. “Or is the intense heat something that only you can do?”
Rhynne, still in dragon form, looked at him. “All fire dragons can do it. It simply requires training and concentration.”
The three cadets stared in amazement. The knowledge of a dragon’s breath was so heavily guarded that they had never heard of such a thing before. Asher wondered if his Frost Dragons could do something similar. Could all colors of dragons perform a feat like that with their respective weapons?
“Okay, let’s see what you’ve got. Pick a stone,” Rhynne said, gesturing with a talon to the three standing stones. “Asher, you can go first.”
He slumped slightly as he walked toward his chosen stone, the farthest from the glassy sand. Great. Another chance to embarrass himself first.
Reaching an appropriate distance, he closed his eyes and pulled his dragon out. To his left Dominick threw up a hand to ward off the crystalline shards they had all come to expect with his transformation.
“Okay Asher, hit the target with whatever you have.”
He looked at her skeptically, then inhaled. At the back of his throat he felt the icy tingle that he knew had something to do with his breath. He tried to flex it at the same time he exhaled the stored air in his lungs. A white mist emerged from his mouth, forming a cloud several feet in diameter before dissipating.
The other recruits laughed as he hung his head in shame. It was right there; he could feel it. But Asher had no idea how to control it.
“Okay Dominick, your turn,” Rhynne snapped, and the other dragon shut up immediately, his jaw closing fast enough to click audibly.
Asher watched from his position as the young Electro Dragon went through his change. Instead of flying icicles, small bolts of electricity skittered through a cloud of dark gray that enveloped him and spread out across the stones underneath. One reached far enough to hit Asher in a claw and he yanked it back, shaking it at the slight tingle it left.
Dominick shrugged apologetically, and then proceeded to fail as miserably as Asher. He managed to create electricity that did nothing but run back and forth between his teeth, irritating the blue dragon.
Zeke didn’t fare any better, prompting Blaine and Zander to join the group, the three instructors berating their charges as they tried to educate them on how to use their breath properly.
Asher, paired with Blaine, felt he got the
brunt of it.
“My granny’s farts had more ice in them than your coughs, Owens!” he said disparagingly, just another in a long line of comments.
Asher snarled and tried again, but nothing different happened.
Blaine sighed in exasperation. “Okay, let’s try something different here. When you inhale, you feel it at the back of your throat? It would be an icy, tingling feeling for you.”
“Yes,” he said angrily. Most of the ire was directed at himself. He hated feeling feeble.
“When you exhale, you want to force that out at the same time. Mix it with the air to create your Frostfire.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” he griped. “I push on it, and push on it, and nothing happens.”
Blaine stared at him. “Owens, are you really that stupid, or is this all just some act? Am I on a secret TV show? Listen to what I said, you feeble-brained moron! Push it out. Not push on it.”
Asher reared back at the tirade of insults, but through them all, he realized what Blaine was trying to tell him.
Sucking in a huge breath, he felt the tingle, and as he exhaled he tried to force the tingling with it. Closing his eyes, he focused on it intently.
A glob of ice spat from his mouth. He felt it happen!
“I did it!” he cried, opening his eyes. “Did you see that?”
Asher sobered immediately. Standing there in front of him, Blaine was quickly becoming ensconced in a cloud of green mist. It eclipsed him, but not before Asher saw a chunk of rapidly melting ice drip from his face.
Asher looked frantically around. He had turned to face his stone. Hadn’t he?
“Owens!” a massive green dragon bellowed.
Uh-oh. This is going to hurt.
It did.
Chapter Six
Quinn
Four days after the aborted attempt to sneak her out of Cadia, everything changed. She was, to her own complete surprise, going through a mild stretching routine in the middle of a cleared space in the floor. Her days were endlessly dull, though she had snuck out here and there, but only into the backyard to get some sunlight and fresh air. She didn’t tell Asher about her excursions, and made sure she backtracked all her steps exactly, never leaving something out of place that might give her away.
