But he was immense. He dwarfed all of the smaller dragons, including Paxala. He was a thing out of legend. A nightmare of a forgotten past that was somehow still alive in the world.
“Seven dragons?” My mind caught up with my horror. I counted again. Yes, there were Morax and Socolia (I would recognize them anywhere) and there too were the other single-rider dragons of Veserpal, Haxar, Zhukis, Varo, and Tchakka. I watched as they each swarmed and mobbed their tyrant dragon like diving crows – swooping in fast turns to slash at the bull’s wings, back, or belly. The bull shuddered in his flight and flared his great wings every now and again, but it was clear that he could withstand a lot of scrapes from these smaller creatures.
“Where are Jhokar and Siuella?” I said to no one in particular, too shocked to keep my thoughts to myself as I recalled the Green and the Blue who had accompanied us. What had been their riders’ names? I remembered a quiet girl, a warlord’s second daughter, as well as an athletic young man with blond hair, old to be a Draconis Order student perhaps, but still friendly and serious-natured. How could I remember their dragons’ names and not theirs?
“Yes, Neill. They have fallen fighting my father. We dragons sensed their blood,” Paxala informed me in my mind, and I could feel her rage; it echoed my own.
“Torvald!” It was the prince, already ahead of me and wheeling his stallion around towards where Zaxx appeared about to land, right in front of the academy gates. “You said I was a coward, and only killing that beast and the monster it carries would end this darkness. Well, we shall see about that – no one shall steal my kingdom away from me!”
I watched as Prince Vincent turned his stallion and spurred him towards the monastery, armed with nothing more than his sword and shield.
He’s gone crazy, I thought as the small figure accelerated up the slope and the gigantic Zaxx thundered to halt, crashing into the gatehouse walls with his bulk and shaking Char, Jodreth and the other magical students from their ritual. Almost immediately the storm winds lessened and started to subside, as the dark shadow army coalesced once more.
“Char!” I called, urging my own steed into a gallop after the prince.
“I see it. I will save her,” Paxala said, her thoughts as fast as lightning as I saw, up ahead, a glimmer of red in the dark skies.
Please, be quick Pax, be quick… I gasped, watching as Zaxx settled on his haunches and a clacking, guttural roar escaped his maw. He was laughing.
“Come closer, little prince!” Zaxx boomed at the charging Prince Vincent, and, to his credit, Vincent didn’t hesitate. He charged on his steed straight at the monster, his sword held high—
With a roar, the golden bull lashed out with a paw, seeking to dash him and his steed to pieces. But the bull wasn’t as quick a beast as Paxala was, and Vincent threw his horse into a kicking swerve so that Zaxx’s talons only scored their deep furrows into the earth.
“Pax?” I shouted desperately on my own charge to the gates.
“Char is safe. I have her,” came the Crimson Red’s reply, and a moment later, she leapt into the air from behind the walls, to wheel over her father. The sudden appearance of his daughter drew the bull’s attention and Prince Vincent capitalized on the opportunity, darting forward to swipe his sword at the bull’s shoulder.
There was a metallic clank and screech, and I swore sparks flew, but no damage was done.
“Daughter. I should have crushed your egg when I had the chance, just as I killed your mother,” the golden bull said clearly in my mind, and it seemed the prince also could hear the dragon, for he glanced upward briefly.
It was the wrong move for the prince. With a sudden snarl, Zaxx lashed his tail—a tail that was thicker than an oak tree—across the rocky ground, and I heard a whump as it hit both rider and horse.
Is he dead? I wondered for a moment, watching both bodies tumble aside to the rocks – but no time to check as now it was me, on a steed, before the Gold bull. The Dark Prince had given me a sword, which I hefted in my grip before the King of Dragons. It was a well-made blade, serviceable and sharp, not the thin finery of the prince’s own.
Maybe I can distract him. Give Pax a chance to attack… “Zaxx!” I shouted, spurring my steed into a leap over the tip of the Gold’s tail as I leaned down.
Clang! I swiped as hard as I could at the beasts’ forked tail, and heard a crunch as one of the aging scales was barely dented. What good was a sword against a beast of his size?
“Fool.” The dragon spoke once more, although I didn’t know if it was to me or the prince or Pax. He lifted his tail to swipe at me as he had at the prince, but before he could, there was a scream from the Crimson Red above our heads.
Defiant and angry, Pax shot down like a hunting hawk, scraping her claws across her father’s snout.
He shouted in pain, and gouts of thick, dark dragon blood spattered onto the ground. His attention turned to the more dangerous daughter, leaving me free to leap from my saddle, rolling on the ground before the beast. I’d not take my steed with me to death, and, at the sudden loss of its rider, the horse galloped down the slope, and hopefully to some form of safety – although with the Darkening cloud spreading up the slopes of Mount Hammal, I knew that might even be short-lived.
Paxala was swooping up, turning in her flight as Zaxx suddenly reached up, standing on hind legs to bat at her like an angry cat.
He missed. Paxala – with Char riding on her back – performed a whisper-quick aerial maneuver to dance out of the way of those dangerous claws.
Now was my chance. I ran to the bull’s feet, leaped, and, with my sword in one hand seized onto his scaly leg. I clung on as the dragon shifted and moved, reaching to bat at the dancing Paxala above him. Zaxx was too busy fending off his daughter to notice me as I climbed. I could smell the heavy, bitter tones of soot and smoke pouring from the bull’s mouth as he prepared his dragon flame against his daughter.
But there was one adversary who I had forgotten. The Abbot Ansall, himself clinging atop the monstrous Gold.
“Torvald?” he snarled from above me. I craned my neck to see the ancient looking man, still wearing his tattered Draconis Order black robes, barely clutching onto the tines of Zaxx’s back. He did not have the harnesses and saddles that we Dragon Riders did, and instead was clinging on haphazardly as he tried to lower his staff in my direction.
“Sckreyargh!” Paxala’s screech distracted both the Abbot and me, as the dragon dove once more, straight at Zaxx’s snout. Zaxx’s neck inflated horribly, and he roared his flame.
Pax! Char! I thought in terror, but I should have known better. The Crimson Red pirouetted on one wing tip avoiding the flame by the neatest of margins as the fire burst against the front gate of the academy, and shot hundreds of feet into the air behind her. Zaxx lunged after Pax, the sudden movement dislodging Ansall, and the bolt of purple-dark energy that he shot from his staff flashed over my shoulder to hit the ground in a sizzling display of destruction.
I climbed as fast and as high as I dared, clutching the spines of Zaxx’s back as I moved. I didn’t think, I didn’t plan, but reacted on instinct when the Abbot lifted his staff in my direction once more. I swung around the spine one-handed, as another bolt of purple energy burst across the air where I had been.
“Dislodge this gnat, great Zaxx!” Ansall shouted as I climbed closer, but I was far more practiced in the art of dragon riding than the Abbot and the great beast had problems of his own. He turned to keep an eye on his daughter already wheeling back around for another attack, just as there was a cry from the ground.
“My kingdom! MINE!” It was Prince Vincent. Remarkably, he had survived the crushing tail blow and had done as I had, racing under the bulk of the golden bull while Zaxx was distracted with Paxala. As I watched, Prince Vincent leapt from where he had climbed up the foot of the beast, fine blade outstretched, to plunge it between the softer, smaller scales of the dragon’s lower neck, where the strange, inflatable organs of the dragon’s flame
s were. I hadn’t thought Vincent knew much about dragons, but aside from the eye or the mouth, the magical, chemical organs of the lower neck were probably the most damaging a target as could be found on an adult dragon.
Zaxx made an awful gurgling groaning sound as he suddenly convulsed, shaking his neck and head, sending Vincent, who had been hanging from his sword, flying to the floor, and shaking Ansall as the older man clutched onto the bull’s shoulders. I only managed to stay aboard the dragon’s back because I was already clinging to one of his spines with all my might.
Vincent hit the dirt, crying out as his leg collapsed beneath him, breaking at an unnatural angle, and sending the prince tumbling across the clearing in front of the gate.
Zaxx landed with both paws heavily on the ground, holding his neck crookedly, the handle of the blade, sticking from the side of the bull’s neck. It looked deeply embedded, but too small to ever kill such a massive foe. Both Ansall and I were still on the dragon’s shoulders, but only just.
“You dare to attack the Dragon God!?” Ansall screamed at Prince Vincent, hysterical in anger as he thrust the staff down at the earth.
Hsss! With a burst of purple and dark energy, the Abbot’s foul magic hit the prince square on, washing him in waves of strange, glowing flame.
Prince Vincent shrieked as the flames overtook him, turning his once fine and handsome form dark, insubstantial, tattering away into the dark shadows. For a moment I thought I saw an impression of shadow and smoke, a figure of the Dark Prince trying to maintain his old form, as the shadow-thing whispered, “My kingdom, miiiine,” before dispersing.
It was a gruesome sight, but a moment I couldn’t afford to waste. As the Abbot was busy, I clambered across the back of the beast, nearing the jubilant Ansall—
“I dare,” I snarled, striking out with my blade at the Abbot’s outstretched hand and staff.
“Urk!” My blow hit the old man’s arm squarely, but there was a sudden crack as the sword splintered as if it had struck diamond. It might not have wounded him, but the blow was heavy enough to knock the Abbot’s arm away, releasing his staff to spin and clatter to the ground below.
The Abbot fell back among the tines of his god, hissing at me like a, well, like a dragon. “You ingrate. You inferior little bastard!” he spat at me, and I could see from this close distance that the Abbot really was different. His brow was heavily scaled, and his eyes flashed a golden-orange, just like the dragon beneath us.
“What have you done?” I breathed, seeing for the first time the way the man’s arms extended into talons.
“I have joined with the dragon,” the Abbot sneered at me from where he still stood on Zaxx’s back, proud of the fear that he was causing. “It started with the baby dragon bones, giving me magic, but Zaxx brought me wild dragon blood and flesh. I am becoming one of them. I, too, am a God!” Abbot thundered, striking forward to swipe at me with blackened claws.
I did only what I was trained to do, by my father, and at the academy. I fought the draconian abbot, using my broken sword to desperately parry and riposte the Abbot’s slashing attacks, but every blow that I landed only skittered across the man’s magical hide. His scales must be as hard as the dragon’s underneath us!
“Ha! Little human. You cannot defeat a god!” Ansall laughed, kicking down at me from his shoulder-perch to catch me on the side. I lost my footing on the thrashing shoulders of Zaxx and fell, scrabbling on the scales as I clutched my arm around the bull’s neck.
There! My fingers found the hilt of the Prince Vincent’s sword, still embedded in Zaxx’s neck. I hung from it as above me Ansall stepped forward, right to the edge of Zaxx’s shoulder as the golden bull huffed and wheezed.
My hands started to slip, so I gripped tighter, only for the blade itself to move, horribly, in the flesh of the Gold bull. The wound pulled and tore, and thick, strangely green ichor seeped from the wound, covering me and the bull’s neck both.
“Prepare to die, Torvald,” Ansall crowed with laughter, reaching down ready to slash at me with his claws.
“Neill. Jump!” It was Paxala in my mind, her own mind feeling focused and fraught with tension.
“I might not be able to defeat you,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I have friends who can!” I jack-knifed, pulling on the blade as I did so and kicking out against the neck of the spluttering Zaxx with my feet as I sprang – pulling the blade free from the golden monster’s neck. With it came a spout of the green ichor, and then I was falling to what would be the death of me if I hit the hardpacked earth at the monastery gate.
As I fell, I was dimly aware of Zaxx howling in agony, as he writhed in pain from the gaping tear in his flesh, and the Abbot losing his footing, tumbling head over heels after me, but what I held to in the forefront of my mind was the glimmer of hope that Pax had not told me to jump only for me die at the same instant I defeated my foes.
Just as I thought all might be lost, that Paxala had commanded I jump only because she saw the opportunity to topple both Zaxx and the Abbot, there was a shriek of wind and a sudden knock as talons grabbed around my body, and a lurch as I was hauled into the air. Paxala had swept under the bull’s head and neck – straight through the jaws of hell itself – to seize me before I was dashed to the floor. As she flew, Char shouted, “Now!”
There was a whoosh from behind me as some other of the crater dragons roared dragon flame at their tyrant. My stomach lurched with the quick aerial ascent, and everything was moving so fast as to make it difficult to see what was happening, but I felt heat against my back and my legs, and a deafening roar, which could only have been Zaxx. The bull’s ichor, I thought. If the younger dragons had even set a spark of their own flames to it, then the whole messy lot would catch fire. It had been pouring out of the Gold dragon, and he would be lighting up like a fuse set to an oil barrel…
“Fly, Pax, fly!” Char called, and we shot upwards, upwards into the colder night air to wheel and turn high over the scene of devastation.
The dark cloud, is it still coming? I was thinking. “We have to save the people,” I gasped from my ragdoll position in Pax’s strong talons, meaning everyone: the academy students, the prince’s soldiers, citizens in all Three Kingdoms had to flee before the evil that the Abbot Ansall had created.
“We did save them, look, Neill, look!” Char was shouting joyously as we circled high above Mount Hammal.
Down below, the scene was one of utter chaos and destruction; there were bodies on the floor, there were rivers of the prince’s soldiers fleeing down the slopes of the mountain. The front gates of the academy had fallen, as had the back wall where last Zaxx had attacked. Worst still, a great purple, green, and orange firestorm was raging at the foot of the destroyed gates, a dark shadow of a titanic form in the middle of the flames – Zaxx.
I had been right. The dragon flame ignited Zaxx’s own ichor, I thought with a shiver. The Gold tyrant had been destroyed by his own venom.
Around the firestorm flew the other crater dragons—Morax and Socolia, Verserpal and the others. The giant White dragon Paxala had called Zenema was already cooing and calling to the younger flying dragons, keeping them away from the chaos.
The mountain looked to be as close to a vision of destruction as I had ever seen it, but amazingly the main hall of the academy still stood, and the dragon crater was still safe.
“We’ve done it,” I said, a little deliriously. “The Abbot, Zaxx, the rebel armies…” They were all gone. All of those who had threatened the dragon crater were dead. Even the Prince Vincent is no more, the thought hit me. He had shown courage at the end. But what would happen to the Middle Kingdom now that it had no prince to lead it?
“Neill. You look so worried – but we’ve won. We did it together,” Char said. “The dragons can have a future now. A real future.”
Epilogue
Torvald, A New Era
Even though the enemies of the Dragon Academy had been vanquished in one terrible night, the fall of Za
xx, the Abbot, and Prince Vincent, all still left me with unsettling questions. Despite our attempts to quell the flames, the unnatural fire before the gates of the Dragon Academy raged for three days and nights; a great bonfire that I thought must be seen clear to the Eastern Marches and even to the edge of the Northlander Princedom itself.
“It’s like the bonfires of old,” Maxal Ganna, the owlish dragon student and now the Master of Magics confided in me, as we sat on the second fiery evening atop the high walls of the academy, watching the smoldering ruins. “Versi talks about them, how dragons used to work with humans to set ceremonial bonfires.”
“Really?” I asked. “That’s strange–why would the dragons do that?”
“The dragons would use them when they chose their dragon friends. It was called the Choosing Ceremony,” Maxal said, and I nodded as Maxal’s explanation seemed to fit. The bonfire below was a symbol of the edge of the old era, and the choosing of a new. Of humans and dragons working, training together in this new thing that we were going to create.
The Dragon Academy.
But my mind snagged on something— “The Choosing Ceremony? What’s that?” I asked.
“I’ve got to do more research, but it seems to be the ritual that held the dragons and the humans together, that allowed them to act as one,” Maxal said, and I filed that tidbit away as something to return to later, once we’d restored some sense of order.
In the days that followed, a strange sort of peace settled on the mountain. I think that it must have been the destruction and disappearance of the rebel army – turned to shadow and then dissipated when Ansall fell into the flames – and then the subsequent loss of Prince Vincent to the same foul magic, that made travelers wary of approaching the sacred mountain.
“The villagers below know you will do right by them, as I and my boys have told them just what sort of man you are, Neill, and what sort of woman Char is, and the rest of you pups up here. But the traders? The merchants?” Nan Barrow confided in me on the third evening of the burning Zaxx. Her large, sprawling family lived in the tiny scratch of a village around the southern slopes of the mountain, so she had a finger on the pulse of the community in the way we on the mountain did not. “They are scared of what evil is going to be born here next.”
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