Chapter 15: Flight (Final Chapter)
Then the mother shadow-crawler landed beside him in a spray of ice and shadow with a thunderous howl.
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Soft scales slid past his arm sending the hairs on his neck standing up., but hopefully she saved Vi from this hold. And, yet, anymoreconnection.glowing, purple gaze of the . ,’re or pain. Nothing. as wind blew his hair back, and his chest spread with elation at the incredible open expanse of the world around him. didn’tknow what neck. He hoped it worked for him the way it had Solari.
Vi turned on his shoulder to look up at it.-’d n’tgraspinge
He turned to Sythara. “Will you come with?”
Her purple snout snorted, and down the connection to VI and then him, he saw the image she sent; of another little baby dragon. It was the si and He smiled once more.waved to TOnce more, silence enveloped the room as everyone stared at Draven’s eyes in shock.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He did not bother to lower them. They had all seen it now. This was likely turning out to be the most memorable council meeting in Gloamer history.
Chief Nyxan looked horror stricken as he studied Draven, and when his eyes shifted to Vi, that inner rage flared again.
Umbrist Sidero leaped forward, pointing at him. “He is a possessed heretic! He must burn!”
Chief Nyxan scowled. “Yev been possessed, Draven. Even if we banish ye, it’s not certain the mother would leave since the baby isn’t dead. I must think of the hold’s safety from sunsick madmen like ye. I approve the proposal! Kill the baby, and put Draven in the Tower.”
Umbrist Sidero’s eyes widened with glee, a smile spreading across his face.
Others shouted from the crowd.
“We can roast it and eat it.”
“Then we’ll be able to leave again.”
Vi’s head jerked around. No. No. No.
Clamor rose anew, and fights broke out between the Faithful and the Veil Keepers.
Draven pulled his sword. “Ye’ll have to kill me before I’ll let ye take her.”
Vi was quaking with fear and confusion.
No!
No!
No!
The Chief waved to the Wardens. “If that is yer wish, then so be it.”
Vi’s distress started overtaking Draven’s mind again.
No!
No!
No!
He tried to wall off her emotions so he could keep his mind clear for the fight that was clearly coming.
Then the frozen ceiling of the Great Hall broke apart, and ice shattered with a thunderous crack.
Gleaming blue shards rained down upon the crowd.
Everyone yelped and threw up their arms to protect themselves.
Something vast and dark tore through the dome.
Screams flooded the hall as people fled for the protected corridors around the rim.
Draven threw up his own arms, thinking only that he needed to protect himself and Vi.
A strange sensation washed over his body.
It was like a million tiny needles tickling his skin in a wave. Giddy joy and boundless energy surged from his navel to his head and vibrated along the bond between him and Vi, leaving him dizzy.
Around him and Vi was a protective space. A bubble.
It looked like a soap bubble, with violet iridescence shimmering and shifting across its surface. But the falling ice did not puncture it.
Ice rained down all around them, but every shard bounced harmlessly away and struck the stone floor with a thousand tinkling sounds.
Draven stared in shock.
What was happening?
An icy chill ran through him, and he suddenly felt tired, as if he had been the one to create the bubble.
Magic?
Had he just cast magic granted to him through the bond with Vi?
Then the mother shadow crawler landed beside him in a spray of ice and shadow with a thunderous howl, her wings flaring wide. Her purple scales drank in the light, and her glowing purple eyes were filled with rage behind bared teeth.
The council scattered, yelling and waving. More Gloamers pressed against each other in their rush to escape through the hall doors, screaming in fear.
The Chief pulled his sword, barking orders at the Wardens.
The mother shadow crawler slithered her body around Draven and Vi.
Her eyes burned into him.
Tendrils from her head tickled his cheek as she pressed her face close to his, and the smell of sulfur choked him.
He clenched his eyes shut.
He was going to die.
And he deserved it from her. Not from the council, but from her he did.
He felt the scales of the mother slide past his arm, sending the hairs on the back of his neck upright.
He waited for her to bite his head off, hoping she would at least leave Vi alive.
But the bond with Vi remained calm now. She was no longer scared or worried. In fact, relief radiated down the bond to him.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked the mother dragon in the eye.
Her glowing purple gaze met his.
He could see her rage. Wait, no, he could sense her rage through his unwitting bond to her via Vi. He felt the cool fury radiating from her.
But he could also sense that she was not going to kill him, because of his bond with Vi.
Maybe Vi would die if he died. He knew so little about this new connection between himself and the little creature.
But he knew with bone ringing clarity that the mother was here to protect her baby, not him. Yet he was now included in that protection.
The Chief and Wardens advanced, swords drawn.
“Stop this!” Draven called. “She isn’t here to hurt anyone!”
Confused glances were exchanged.
It was true that the mother had not attacked anyone yet. Her head snapped from side to side, keeping all her enemies in view. But she made no aggressive moves toward them.
The Chief’s brows furrowed. “But she just broke in here to kill us.”
Draven pleaded, “Why won’t anyone listen to me? They are bonded to me. I can feel them and sense them. And I tell ye true, she’s only here to protect her baby.”
At that moment, the light of dawn at the end of their cycle rose above the lip of the shattered ceiling.
Golden beams spilled through the opening and around the hanging shards of ice, falling into the hall like moonbeams.
Many of the remaining Gloamers shrieked and pressed deeper into the shadow protected corridors surrounding the hall.
The light fell upon Draven.
Without his hood, the sunbeams bathed him.
He flinched, about to pull up his hood, then stopped.
The sunlight was not burning him. No fire or pain. Nothing. It merely warmed his skin.
All eyes turned in hushed silence to witness the miracle.
“He stands in the light,” someone whispered.
“A Dawn Bringer!”
Some fell to their knees.
Others fled, screaming.
He turned and stretched his arms into the light, shocked. This new magical bond with Vi must be protecting them all from the burning light because the shadow-crawler was not harmed either.
Could he walk in the light now?
The Chief stared, horror plain on his face. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, and he clearly didn’t know what to do.
But Umbrist Sidero lunged forward, finger pointed accusingly. “Kill the possessed freaks, now!”
The guards’ faces clouded with confusion as loyalty and fear warred with their faith. For centuries they had been preached to about the Dawn Bringers. If they sided with the Veil Keepers, they would likely attack at any second. If they sided with the Faithful, they would fall to their knees and pray.
And in that moment of doubt, Draven moved.
He jumped onto the shadow crawler’s back, right into the small indentation between her wings where Kael’s translations had said the dragon riders of old placed their saddles.
He clung to the tendrils around her neck, hoping he would not fall off.
She lifted her head into the air and howled, long and eerie.
Everyone shied back and more screams erupted.
The muscles in her body tensed and bunched, and she launched upward with a single powerful beat of her wings.
The world dropped away beneath them as she shot out through the broken ice dome.
Cold air tore at his face, and the wind roared in his ears as she flew into the pink sky of dawn.
The hold shrank below, its stone rings and shadowed corridors reduced to a tiny speck as they neared the icy plains beyond the hold.
Keeping his grip, he sat up and looked around. Fear gave way to wonder, and wonder to something like joy.
Then he laughed with hysterical glee.
He was flying.
He could not believe it.
He was flying on a dragon.
Vi mirrored his delight.
They climbed higher, the sky opening wide around them, endless and unforgiving and beautiful, the horizon bleeding from violet to pink and orange beneath the rising sun.
He could feel Vi’s thoughts brushing against his own, steady and curious and exhilarated.
Fly, Vi said.
“Fly!” he repeated, laughing again.
The wind tore at his hair, and his chest expanded into the wide world around him.
It was amazing.
Draven loosened his grip just enough to feel the balance and rhythm of the mother’s movement and the way her wings cut through the air like knives.
He’d never known freedom like this. He must make the Gloamers see and understand. They didn’t bknow what they were missing.
He ran a hand down the mother’s neck.
Sythara, he thought to her. It meant morning star.
Her head tilted slightly as she continued flying into the rising sun.
Sythara.
He felt her approval.
He said, “Sythara, mother of Vielle, the first newly bonded dragons of the Gloamers.”
Flying was a freedom he had never imagined. The entire world spread out below him as he saw farther than he ever had before.
The world was so much bigger than they’d ever been told.
He sent a picture of the Aether Arch to Sythara and Vi.
Sythara banked toward it, and he hung on with clenched fists, his stomach flipping as she dove.
As they descended, Draven saw movement behind shuttered windows at Stonehold. Many eyes were watching him.
Hopefully some of them would find a way past the fear and ignorance.
Sythara landed on the icy plain, claws scraping stone and ice. She folded her dark, purple wings tightly and stretched her long head toward the hold, glowing eyes searching for danger.
But none of the Gloamers could come out into the sun.
None but him.
He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. It was a completely new experience to stand in the light.
Then he looked again at his hold. His home. The home he now had to leave.
A tearing sensation ripped his soul in two.
He was happy and excited, yet devastated and afraid at the same time.
He didn’t know whether he’d made the right choices or done the right things. But there was no going back now.
Even if they wouldn’t let him return, it had still been his home, the place to which he had dedicated most of his life. And hew as losing it today.
Sadness creeped over him.
Their rejection today, and the fact that they wouldn’t listen to him and would have killed both him and Vi, that stung deeper than any wound he’d ever suffered. The paranoia and fear fostered by the Veil Keepers had taken a deeper root in the hold than anyone had realized.
Draven sighed and ran a hand down his face.
It was done.
He carefully slid from the dragon.
He stepped toward the Aether Arch, the same one the Radiance Striders had shown him. He hoped it worked for him the way it had for Solari.
Eagerness and anticipation wound through him like two slithering snakes, even amid the sadness of what he was leaving behind.
He was going to visit a new continent.
And if what Solari had said still held true, after that they would visit the Void Striders, who apparently lived deep beneath the earth far to the north.
Eventually, he would come back here.
Hopefully, with time and distance, the Gloamers would calm down. Maybe Kael would share some of those translations. Maybe the Chief would learn to move beyond his blind hatred of shadow crawlers.
Maybe.
He would return and try to lead some of them out of this dark age.
Because no matter what he became now, father to Vi, dragon rider, traveler, or something more, he’d been a Gloamer first and always would be.
So, maybe, someday, he could return and establish a new hold somewhere. Since he could stand in the light now thanks to his magical bond with Vi, he could settle lands they’d never been able to inhabit before. Maybe he would come back and found a dragon rider hold, just as the ancients had.
He was the first. But he wouldn’t be the last.
In the distance, he could see Gloamers watching from the windows of Stonehold, many holding the telescopes they used for hunting.
He smiled, the sun warm on his face, and touched the two points on the Aether Arch.
A strange tingling ran up his arm. The tattoo began to pulse with light, and electric energy transferred from his fingers into the portal.
The runes on the arch buzzed, hummed, and glowed blue. The center became the shimmering surface he had seen before, like a mirror.
He turned to Sythara. “Will ye be joining us?”
Her purple head waved up and down, her mane of dark tendrils twirling in the wind, and snorted. Down the bond through Vi she sent an image; a picture of another baby shadow-crawler.
And he knew from the image, from the sensations and feelings attached to the image, that it was Vi’s sister from the other egg.
He wasn’t bonded to this other baby. He sensed nothing from it. So his bond must extend only to Vi and her lineage, not her siblings.
Vi’s head tilted, and curiosity radiated from her about her sibling. But then she nestled into his neck. She wanted to stay with him.
And he knew Sythara couldn’t come, because she had to take care of the other baby.
He reached out slowly toward the mother. She sorted and he almost drew back. But then he pushed his hand forward, and she let him rub her nose.
He sensed down the bond a new image from the mother. It was one of warning, or a pressing need – for him to care for Vi.
He nodded. “I will protect her. I promise.”
Sythara snorted again, purple smoke trailing form her nostrils.
He looked once more back to his hold. His home. And at those watching him from the windows.
And then together, he and Vi walked into the portal.
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Author Notes
This is the end of this Novella. I hope you enjoyed learning how the Dragon Riders of Solnoc began. This is the prequel to a longer novel I plan to write, but that is in the future from this moment, when the new dragon riding hold is established. I may do another Novella, about the Radiance Striders, and the Void Striders. We’ll see. Time permitting. :)
Thank you for this story. I enjoyed it very much.
Great surprise ending! I loved the entire story. Looking forward to more exciting and interesting stores like this.