Vulknor wore a smirk, clearly, he had thought he lucked out. I would prove him wrong.
An inkling of doubt cracked my determination.
As the son of Headmaster, he attended the best Finishing School in the entire country. He had trained with a sword like this. He knew how to use it. I forced away the nervousness that was chilling my blood. Dragon Guard soldiers were fearless, they took action.
I glanced in Ignimitra’s direction. I didn’t want her to see my fear.
“Fight!”
The words had barely left Sergeant Sadon’s lips when Vulknor lunged at me.
With a hop backwards, I evaded his first strike. He held his blade well.
He came at me again, this time I blocked it with my own blade. We continued like that for a few strikes—he would attack, I would defend. He was covering his weak spots well.
“Just what I’d expect from Vromiko scum. Running away instead of fighting,” he taunted, as I narrowly avoided a horizontal swipe that could have beheaded me.
I wasn’t from the lowest Order, but his insult stung. My father had been a Dragon Guard soldier, just like his. I was from good stock. Betheka told me that he had been up for Headmaster, just like Vulknor’s dad.
His dad.
Vulknor may have been protecting all his physical weak points, but with a father like Headmaster Archer, I was sure he had some emotional ones.
“Sorry, this isn’t much of a challenge,” I teased. “I expected more from the Headmaster’s son.”
As I expected, a blaze ignited in his eyes. His movements became quicker, but just that much more frantic.
Clank, clank, clank.
I blocked them all. With each swipe, Vulknor lost some of his composure. His calculated attacks became more desperate.
“Come on, Princess V,” I said between pants. “Is this the best you can do? Your father must hate how bad you are at this.”
I parried his strike, rolling my blade off his. He staggered, giving me just enough to launch a counterattack. Suddenly, I was the one on the offensive.
He struggled to keep up with my flurry of swipes. I only needed to knock him off his feet. His height meant that I had to swing my arms in a wider arc. If we weren’t in an open clearing, I would have been able to use the terrain to compensate.
An upward slash sent him reeling, knocking him off balance.
Vulknor smirked.
I had miscalculated.
His rebound attack was heading straight for my neck.
At that moment, a deafening screech pierced the air, sending shock waves through me. My stomach lurched, but I knew exactly what it was.
Ignimitra.
Vulknor had frozen, startled by the sound, breaking his focus from me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Solra and Irikai trying to subdue my dragon. This was my chance.
A quick flick of my wrist disarmed him. His sword fell to the ground.
“You cheated!” He screamed, taking a few menacing steps towards me.
“Do you think real battlefields are quiet?” I retorted, brandishing my sword. The adrenaline pumping through my veins made me feel invincible. “You lost!”
“Break it up!” Sergeant Sadon’s voice cut through our squabble.
He wore a small smile. It seemed unnatural.
“Good work. Make room for the next two.”
Silently, Vulknor and I did as we were told—staring daggers into each other in the process.
I WRAPPED MY ARMS AROUND Ignimitra’s shoulder. Without her, Vulknor would have beheaded me. She had saved me this time, but I needed to be better. We would add sword-fighting to our nightly practice roster.
“Thank you, angel,” I said.
She nuzzled her snout against my head.
I beamed, happy that I had managed some success.
THE GOOD MOOD FROM the sword-fighting class buoyed me for the rest of the day. The most exciting classes happened in the morning, while the boring civic stuff happened in the afternoon.
When our classes ended, we parted ways.
After explaining my plan to Ignimitra—including catching her up on what had happened in Betheka’s basement, I led her to her cave and left her some food, with the promise of returning later that night to practice our flying.
Getting a District Pass from Betheka was easier than I expected.
Luckily, she was one of the few people in the Artisan District who was authorized to give them. With the signed piece of paper in my hand, I was able to visit almost anywhere in the Administrative District.
The streets of the Administrative District were busy with activity.
The sun had begun to sink below the horizon, and many of the Dragon Guard soldiers were returning to base from their daily missions. Dragons cast their shadows on the silver streets I traversed as they flew low overhead.
More than once, a soldier stopped me to query what business I had in the District. Betheka’s pass was just enough for them to let me through, but not enough to dispel their skeptical looks. Some even went as far as to tease me—I got the feeling that cadets weren’t well liked up here. They reminded me of the Royal Militia soldier I had to pay almost every day back in my home village.
The library was the same building Irikai had described—three stories high with a multitude of windows, just across from the Orientation Station.
I was let in after showing the guards my pass.
The smell of dust and old paper greeted me. The room was brightly lit by a huge chandelier that hung from the double-height ceilings. There were more books than I could count. Some were placed on shelves that lined the gold-veined stone walls, others on bookcases so tall and dense they seemed like a forest of knowledge.
I didn’t know where to start.
The building seemed empty—even the counter at the front had been left unmanned. So, I did the only thing I could. I walked down each row, scanning the books to find it.
It was at the end of one of these rows, sandwiched between two large bookcases that I saw a familiar face devouring a book.
“Avek?”
He stood so fast he bumped his head on a shelf. The book he had been reading spilled to the ground, along with the others that had been in his lap.
“Oh, uh—Kaos,” He exhaled. “It’s only you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing?” I asked slowly, looking at the books that had piled at his feet. They were in a strange language.
“Research for a recon mission,” He said quickly, snaking a hand through his dark blue hair. In this light, it was more like black, like his eyes that resembled bottomless pools. “Do you have clearance to be here?”
I fished the District Pass out of my pocket. He leaned over to look at it, squinting. He was so close that I caught a whiff of him—crisp, like the first scent of rain on dry forest earth.
“Do you know the library well?”
He nodded, “I do most of the research for my team, so I’m here almost every week.”
“Where can I find the yearbooks?”
He looked skeptical, then beckoned me to follow him.
We walked through the maze of bookshelves, ending up in front of one that was furthest from the door. Dust and cobwebs had gathered on its shelves.
“Know which one you’re looking for?” Avek asked as he glanced between the bookshelf and me.
I had figured out the year through the date of the picture my father had given Betheka and my recollection of a story my mother had always told me—she had met my father at his Dragon Guard graduation, four years before they had me.
Avek stretched up to get the book from a shelf way out of my reach. Luckily, I had found him.
“Here it is,” he smiled. But he didn’t move, only gazed at me with watchful eyes.
He was lingering. He wanted to know what this was about.
But I couldn’t summon the strength to speak to him now, not when I was this close to more information about my father.
The room
suddenly felt like there was no air inside, only heat. As if the roof had been peeled back and I was standing directly beneath the sun on a summer day. I flipped open the first page with shaky fingers, unsure of what I would find.
The Dragon Academy yearbook was a collection of the lives of the students of each graduating cohort. The very first page was a picture of all the students in my father’s group. I counted twenty-two people—all men. It was taken in front of the assembly hall.
I recognized my father, standing in the back row wearing a boyish grin. His hair was shorter than I had ever seen it, stopping just above his shoulders.
Absently, I traced his face with my finger.
It was a poor substitute for the real thing. All I felt was the cold tackiness of the page.
“Look, it’s the Headmaster,” Avek’s voice startled me out of my reverie.
When did he get so close? He was peering down over my shoulder at the book, so close that I could feel the heat of his body. My voice was lost in my throat, so I couldn’t tell him to move. I followed his finger.
On the other end of the row was a man who could have passed for Vulknor.
This man in the photo didn’t look like the man who I knew to be the Headmaster. His face was soft, and he wore the same playful smile my father did. His blond hair was long, caught atop his head in a ponytail.
My father and the Headmaster were cohort mates.
How could two people so different exist in the same space? Maybe they were enemies like Vulknor and I.
Doing my best to ignore Avek’s presence, I skipped through the rest of the pages of the book. Each subsequent page was a two-or-three page write up on each cadet. The first one was Vulcan Archer—the Headmaster. The book was in alphabetical order, so I skipped excitedly to K.
But after Rulf Hiltris came Zalvar Luuk. There was no Branton Kressin.
I skipped all the way to the end of the book, but there was no biography on my father.
My head felt hot.
“What’s wrong?” Avek asked.
I didn’t answer, ashamed. I must’ve looked pitiful—tears in my eyes, skipping through a random yearbook. I didn’t want to explain.
It was the third time around that I realized that there were the zig-zag edges of three pages right where my father’s biography should have been. It looked as though the pages had been torn out.
“Is there another copy of this there?” Maybe it was an accident. That gave me hope.
He nodded, giving me the other. This looked less worn than the other, perhaps my father’s pages had come loose by accident.
But my hope was short lived. This book was the same.
In total, Avek handed me six copies of the year book. And in every copy, the three pages where my father’s story should have been were missing.
“Will you tell me what’s going on?” Avek pressed.
We were sitting on the floor of the library, tucked away in a dim corner beside the shelf of empty promises. My stories—about my father, about me—were all I had left. But it felt safe, Avek felt safe.
“My father is supposed to be in that yearbook,” I whispered. “But in every one of them, the pages where his story should be are missing.”
Avek sucked in a deep breath but didn’t respond. We sat in silence for longer than I would’ve like. Had I misjudged him? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told him.
His hand on mine immediately dispelled my worries, replacing them with a slight buzz of electricity that pooled in my fingertips. They were warm, softer than I expected of a soldier. He gave me a small squeeze, then let go.
My hands grew cold.
“Remember when I told you not to ask questions?” His voice was low.
I nodded.
“This is what I meant,” Our gazes met. “The Dragon Academy has an ugly history, Kaos. Uglier than anyone wants to admit.”
His words were so heavy, it felt like I couldn’t understand them. But, I knew what I wanted, and nothing would change my mind.
“I want to find out more about my father’s time here,” I said. “He’s dead. It’s all I have left of him.”
I saw in his eyes that he understood what it meant to lose someone.
He sighed. “You never know what you’ll find once you start digging.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fine. I’ll help you,” He grasped my hand again. “Because this could get us killed.”
As frightening as it was, his promise heartened me in a way I couldn’t explain.
Chapter 8
It had become our nightly ritual.
For a few hours each night, Ignimitra and I practiced together—flying and sword fighting. Sometimes, we only ever managed to get two or three hours of sleep.
But it was worth it, for we were progressing steadily. Ignimitra had more stamina in the air, she flew higher, faster and stronger. The dragon who plummeted to injury a couple weeks ago had been replaced by a dragonling confident in her abilities.
She had grown physically too.
Ignimitra was taller than our home back in the village, with a wingspan that could have sheltered the building I had found her in. Despite this, she was still among the smallest in our cohort—Titan was living up to his name.
Tonight, I decided that she was big enough for us to do things differently. Usually, we raced to our training ground.
This time, we would fly together.
When I pitched her the idea, she seemed ecstatic—she rolled about in her cave, shaking loose stones from the walls.
Ignimitra lowered herself to her haunches, watching me with big, amused eyes as I struggled to climb aboard her. Her scales were slippery, there were no spikes down her spine for me to hold on to.
Just yesterday, we’d learned that the ancient Pyralians rode dragons like this, without a saddle, using the “natural saddle”— a cavity just by their dragon’s shoulder bones. It was easier in theory.
In the midst of another attempt to mount her, I felt something wrap around my waist.
It was Ignimitra’s tail, thick and strong.
She lifted me onto her back.
“Why didn’t you do that at first?” I feigned indignation, much to her delight—she let out a low, playful growl.
I held on to her shoulder blades, at a bit of a loss. Most dragon breeds had spines that provided a little extra grip, or at least there were handles on the saddle. As if she knew what I was thinking, Ignimitra’s body responded to me in the most curious way.
The scales by her shoulder-blades shifted, enlarged and compressed upon themselves repeatedly until two “handles” had been formed.
I gripped them, amazed at how soft they were.
She had control of her scales!
I had seen Nurik do this, but Ignimitra’s version looked much cooler. She crawled towards the entrance of the cave, mindful of me.
“Okay, angel. On my count 1, 2—” I didn’t make it to three.
Ignimitra leapt into the air with a speed that made my stomach lurch. Panic gripped me; we were falling. But then her wings were slicing through the air like sharp daggers, and after a few powerful beats, we were flying!
The night’s air was fresh and cool on my face, dancing through the kinks in my loose hair, caressing my scalp. Beneath us, the Academy District passed by in a blur of twinkling lights, buildings and trees.
I was as light as a feather, my insides vibrating with each beat of her wings. I was free and alive in a way I’d never felt before. I wasn’t just riding a dragon; she was mine and together we were unstoppable.
I let out a hoot. Ignimitra looked back at me and crooned.
“You’re amazing, Ignimitra!” I shouted over the din of the wind in my ears.
She responded by banking sharply, giving me a surreal view of the ground below. We were nearly upside down—I’d never ever seen the world like this. I never wanted it to end.
But it did a few moments later, when she brought us down in the clearing where we practiced. When
I alighted, my legs were wobbly.
At that moment, I knew that I belonged in the air. For the first time, I understood why my father would disappear for hours on end for his nightly flights on Jairyn. That feeling would never get old, only better over time.
We always practiced in the clearing furthest from the dorms because I wasn’t sure if we were even allowed to be there outside of class hours.. So far, we had never encountered anyone else.
Until now.
Ignimitra had landed behind a thicket of trees. As we neared, I heard the sounds of fighting—sharp slicing sounds and grunts. A tendril of panic wound around my throat.
Should we leave? Avek’s words still hung over me. What if we saw something we weren’t supposed to?
Just then, Ignimitra bolted away from me, scampering through the tree cover and towards the sounds. Drat.
Following her, I saw the reason for her excitement.
Zelkor was in the clearing. They greeted each other with a playful romp.
Solra was at the other end of the clearing. The sounds had been her doing.
She looked different from the Solra I had come to know.
Her hair was a wild mess and even from this distance I could tell she was drenched in sweat. She was attacking a dead tree relentlessly with her cadet sword.
At once, I understood what was happening.
In our first sword fighting class, Solra’s spar hadn’t gone well. Her opponent had her on the ground within a few seconds. Things didn’t get much better after that. I remembered thinking it strange—of the three of us, Solra was the smartest. She could push herself the longest. She had all the answers and didn’t hesitate to let us know it.
But in a sword fight, she was out of her element like a fish out of water.
She was trying to get better.
I smirked. We were alike.
She was so caught up in her training that she didn’t seem to notice our presence.
I jogged over to her.
“Solra!” I called.
She froze, then turned around slowly. She averted her gaze, a flush of pink coloring her cheeks..
“K-Kaos, what are you doing here?”
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