The Dragon Knight and the Light

by D. C. Clemens

  “Look at it this way—if things really are as bad in Jegeru that I don’t make it, you’ll know you made a terrible mistake waiting so long to gather your armies and take charge when Efios needed you the most. And you don’t want to be the emperor that didn’t support the first dragon knight in hundreds of years to call for aid, especially if it leads to your lands being overrun with thralls and giants.”

  “I’m well aware of the threat and consequences, dragon knight.”

  “Then I take it that means your minutes away from ordering the bulk of your armies to the Iunt.”

  “You and the Alslana princess may not enjoy my caution, but despite what each of you may believe, I am devoting a great deal of my men and resources to this cause. Let’s hope that the Chiszir put stock in your old title. If they do not, you may have much work to do after the Hoic-Dro are defeated. I’ve already removed two divisions from the Chiszir border and are on their way to reinforce the Iunt. Furthermore, a few nations have promised to lend me their support in supplies and men should it prove necessary, though what they’ve bequeathed is perhaps not as generous as either of us might like it to be.”

  “But I suppose it’s a start. Please keep me notified on the progress of the other nations. We can keep in touch through the Warriors Guild in Tawahori, which will also act as my base of operations for now. In the event you need Ghevont’s service, I will fly back here with him. We have to act now, my lord. I don’t want to wait more than two months to march our forces into Jegeru, so in a month from now I want to hear that we’ll be ready with an army that could overwhelm Jegeru twice over. It’s time to flex your influence here.”

  “It will not fall short of your expectations.”

  “That’s good, for they are high.” Looking back at my companions, I said, “Get on Aranath, it’s time to go.” I turned back to the emperor. “Thank you for looking after my friends. Kiku and Masai are still in your guest hall. They won’t be coming with me. I ask that you send them anywhere in your empire that Kiku wishes. I bid you farewell, Your Excellency. Uh, please clear your men away from the cliff. Thanks again.”

  I climbed back up on the dragon after everyone else had done so. Looking for an easy way to take to the air, Aranath turned and crawled his grand frame toward the cliff, where soldiers scrambled out of his way. He let himself drop over the edge, spreading his wings to their full magnitude a fish’s leap above the water. Some of the patrolling griffins followed us, but with a few hearty flaps, none of them could keep up with the dragon.

  I often glanced back to get Ujin’s reaction to the highest order of freedom. He sat behind the last seat, having to hold on to Ghevont to avoid slipping too much. His most predominant visage flaunted a mixture of skittish wonder. On the other hand, his partner looked perfectly at home as she jumped from person to person. Shifa even roamed the non-saddled segment of Aranath’s back with ease, her paws able to grip any little ridge and cleft to get a tight grip anywhere she went.

  A couple of hours into the flight, I sensed my connection with Aranath weakening, forcing me to use the dragon prana in the crystal, which shrunk by half after the corrosive power dissolved much of its surface. The corruption was good for casting the summoning spell, but using it to hold on to the link was like trying to stay on the back of a raging bull or bucking horse. I needed lots of time to master the intricacies of the unhinged prana.

  The crystal held enough prana to take a speedy dragon to the shore almost three hours away. We landed behind a hill overlooking a fishing village two miles off, this time Aranath kept his throat dormant to conceal his presence. With dawn still well below the horizon, the dragon’s dark scales foiled any chance onlookers of seeing a clean vision of Aranath.

  After I broke my summoning link, I asked Ujin, “Feelin’ all right?”

  “Uhh, yeah. A bit disoriented, but I got my legs under me.”

  “Question,” said Gerard. “Why didn’t we stay one more night at the palace?”

  “I wanted to get an estimate of how long I could summon Aranath for,” I answered. “Anyway, I thought it best to get away from a place we can’t entirely trust. Indeed, I don’t want to spend more than a couple of days in the same place. We’ll only be going to Tawahori to send messages and check for them.”

  “And it’s not like we can trust anyone that answers your call to meet at the Warriors Guild,” said Clarissa. “Any one of them could be an Advent spy or assassin.”

  “All right, Mercer,” said Odet. “What’s that training you have in mind?”

  “Ah, right. Well, it’s pretty straightforward. Your holy prana does well going up against dragon fire, but there’s nothing to purify in dragon fire or standard spells. However, if it went against its very opposite…”

  I pulled out a dragon stone and lit it. At first it looked like any other of my dragon flames dissolving the rock it sprouted from. Then I fed it corruption. Due to the dark of night, streaks of the fireball appeared to disappear. In reality, it was changing into a complexion only the vilest shadows were capable of emulating. In a moment, most of the flare had transformed into the eerie black color. However, from up close one could still distinguish the mildest of amber glows that came from the escaping embers shedding their corruption as they evaporated.

  “Cast your shield,” I said.

  Odet backed up a step and materialized her crystal power. I led the tainted dragon flame to her ward. I didn’t know exactly how they would react, so I ignored the temptation to smash the black fire against her shield for fear of a violent reaction. When flame contacted ward, it treated it in the same way it would have treated the thinnest, driest parchments. Odet was completely unprepared with how quickly the blackness consumed her shield.

  “I practiced a little with it after I gained control over myself. My corrupted fire is still too unstable to burn anything physical as well as unspoiled dragon fire, but it does seem to have a knack against wards and other magical energies. I assume your ward countering a corrupted attack will improve your purity by leaps and bounds.”

  “Aye, maybe so.” She cleared her throat. “Just to let you know, that was far from my best try.”

  “You’ll have to prove that, won’t you?”

  And thus we resurrected my favorite activity in the world—training with friends and in an area where no one would bother us. I knew I missed it, but actually going about it really spelled out just how much I relied on the avocation to bring me peace of mind. Training satisfied my minimal social need and my much greater need to get stronger so I could protect those same friends. And irrespective of the necessity of defending one’s self in a perilous realm, I believed even the onset of unbreakable peace throughout Orda would not prompt me to drop the exercise.

  I learned more about what it meant to possess a mostly corrupted soul over the following days. As I already surmised, manipulating my new black dragon flame with any competence promised to take a long time. Merely adjusting how much heat it produced was a challenge. It seemed to vary by thousands of degrees. One second it had trouble burning grass and the next felt as though it burned hotter than dragon fire. I had a much harder time achieving the latter, and it did not seem to matter how little or how much prana I poured into the endeavor.

  All the same, black fire looked damn impressive even when it wasn’t actively burning anything. That characteristic alone would probably intimidate the majority of people and creatures once they realized it was no illusion. And despite its unpredictable nature, it always did a fine job against wards. The only way Odet’s shield resisted the black flame for longer than a couple of seconds was when she contracted it to the size of a buckler and layered it to be three or four times thick as normal.

  Ghevont speculated that the black flame’s instability gave it the advantage when opposing magical energies. He believed the volatile fluctuations in heat and power had an easier time disrupting a ward’s defenses than an attack consistent in its severity. And while its potency seethed little better than a st
andard flame in most cases, its distinctive density made it an effective explosion maker, at least in the instances it didn’t fizzle out.

  The corruption granted me the prana capable of summoning a dragon, though I was still doing so very inefficiently. Until I gained modest experience in it, adding the corruption to my half-soul had done little to extend my capacity to endure a drawn-out fight. Adopting the corruption upped my strength and speed, but only for a short time. Well before my corruption ran out, my control over it wavered, forcing me to go back to my unblemished prana.

  Along with sensitive illusion spells, the least effective use of the corruption was to actually hold my link with Aranath, but I put some effort into it in the times I knew we would only be flying for a short while. Anything to get the experience I needed.

  As for the others, much of their training involved learning to broaden the effects of their spells. Ghevont, Gerard, and Clarissa were fine casters, but they were not yet masters that could face off against multiple targets without consuming a wasteful amount of prana. Their jaunt into Jegeru showed them that they needed to improve that facet of their training.

  Gerard did a lot of landscape reforming by raising progressively longer, higher, and thicker walls all at once. Clarissa reached out farther into the atmosphere to gather more water and form it into a giant ball of compacted ice, then pushing around that heavy element like a boulder. For a more delicate twist on the training, she worked to carve an image into her ice. She claimed her multi-armed monstrosities were leaping dogs or birds with outstretched wings, but I never saw what she did. On top of that, she occasionally worked on enhancing her strength using the heart technique I told her about.

  The least proficient at these wide-ranging spell effects was Ghevont. He spent his life teaching himself to manipulate every property of prana available to him, but that led to not mastering any element or feature of the power. His most unique and potentially powerful spell were his lightning bolts, so I encouraged him to refine that particular aspect.

  In regards to Ujin, he did not expect to be all that useful in a fight. He instead insisted that Shifa would make for an excellent scout, especially if we needed to venture under Orda’s surface or a building. Her nose and ears would also supplement Clarissa’s eyes in the darkness. Nevertheless, I had Ghevont attempt to find out what kind of spells or fighting style best suited Ujin.

  Two days after leaving the capital, we visited Tawahori’s guild house to evaluate affairs there. Guild Master Miyake was quite glad to see me. Up in his office, Chun slapped my shoulder and took me to the window overlooking the courtyard. Up to forty warriors were warming up in the cool early morning down below.

  Pipe in his mouth, Chun said, “All new recruits! Never in my years here have I seen so many eager youths come to us in such a short time. We actually had to weed out a few. Imagine that! Having standards again! A few even come from respectable families. Mind you, many will not be ready for a Jegeru incursion, but at least we have some future replacements ready in case some of my people don’t return. All thanks to you, my boy.”

  “Glad I could help, but how many veteran guildsmen will be ready to face the Advent?”

  “I’ve called upon every guild my letters can reach. I even sent them in secret to match your furtive tone. Almost all of them readily replied with good news. Master Tobaka did not, but his guild has always been the least capable. Hmm, is there a kinder word in the shared tongue for ‘ineffectiveness’? For it’s not really his fault. In any case, a few members from other guilds have already arrived, and more should come in the following weeks. I’d expect for no less than a hundred veteran warriors to be at your beck and call. Thrice that if you insist on less experienced warriors to join the mission.”

  “It will be best to keep the inexperienced back here. If we fail, we’re going to need people to organize a counterattack or defensive positions. Another thing, I want to meet any strong guild warriors that can fly and speak the shared tongue. If possible, I’d like to create a squad that can keep up with my dragon and help safeguard my friends when we head into Jegeru. Know anyone?”

  “Hmm… Two off the top of my head. I must ask a few others whether they know the shared tongue. Shall I get them now?”

  “No, just keep them in mind for now. Learn everything you can about them. In a month I’ll return to see what you gathered on them, then I’ll do my own interviews. While there’s not a high chance any of them are Advent, the fact the cult has infiltrated anything they’ve set their mind to demands that I act prudently.”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  “Be sure to act prudently yourself, and not only about who you take in. I’m glad I can help the guild recruit more bodies, but it isn’t as though the dragon knights are back. It’s just me. If I end up dying in Jegeru, that’s it.”

  “Something I’ll consider. Still, I recommend you don’t die so quickly. Give the guild houses the world over a chance to benefit from your presence, eh?”

  “That’ll be one of my top priorities.”

  “Good, good. Before you take your leave, may I make a request?”

  “You may.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble, can your roaring dragon fly over us when you leave the city? It will provide a good morale boost to the people who came here because of you.”

  “What, showing my pretty face around here isn’t enough?”

  He chuckled. “Your self-proclaimed prettiness may flutter the heart of a woman here and there, but a dragon will get the most callous of men to follow you to the corrupted realm itself.”

  “Let’s hope the Advent don’t take me as far as that.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Three weeks and a day after leaving Daidu-Lu, I woke up in the middle of the night to see Odet and Gerard climbing a nearby grassy hill. The nearly full moon’s gentle blue light gave their figures a ghostly aura to them.

  To the one keeping watch, I asked, “What are they doing? Or do I want to know?”

  “It’s nothing like that,” answered Clarissa. “Odet said she feels like trying something.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I think she wants to try summoning Mytariss, though she didn’t exactly say that. I don’t think she wanted me prying.”

  “Or getting your hopes up.”

  “Probably. I actually don’t get why she hasn’t been able to yet. From everything I’ve heard, she’s far and away the best valkrean warrior her family has had in a couple of generations.”

  “But she’s not the firstborn. That may have something to do with it. Anyway, whatever the reason, I’m sure she’s close.”

  Clarissa appeared to ignore my words as she looked up at the moon in deep contemplation. Snapping her fingers, she said, “Or maybe she’s thinking too much like a warrior. Mytariss is supposed to be a defender, not an attacker, right? Maybe she has the wrong mindset.”

  “Aye, maybe. You should bring it up with her.”

  “Aye, maybe.”

  “Good, I’m going back to sleep.”

  And sleep I did. I figured if Odet summoned Mytariss, a bright flash would alert me of her success.

  Alas, it was only the gradual consolidation of sunlight that stirred me awake. A few hours later and I was about to start my training with Odet.

  “Is my corruption helping you?”

  With an annoyed undertone, she replied, “A little.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked, a hint of self-righteousness slipping through.

  “Encouraging more reckless acts from you is not my intent. Next you’ll want to see how nismerdon prana will mix with your soul.”

  “Ghevont may have already mentioned such a situation once or twice.” I stroked an invisible beard. “I’ll admit the idea has intrigued me.”

  Her shield formed right in front of me and smashed into my chest. As I stumbled backward, she said, “Don’t even jest about such a thing. Don’t get me wrong, I really am glad you came out of this san
e and stronger, but gods know I’m worried about what this means for your soul’s future. To say nothing of questioning your more imminent judgements.”

  “I know, and I am truly sorry about giving you such concerns. If it makes you feel any better, someday I’ll give you the chance to purify my soul, or at least have one of your sisters do so.”

  “I’d rather be the one to do it, but yes, it will make me feel better if you can get someone, anyone to purify you. Until then, there’s a chance you can die in Jegeru without such an opportunity presenting itself.”

  “I suggest thinking positively about how I’ll die.”

  “You’re telling me to think positively? No offense, but you’re not the greatest messenger for that suggestion.”

  “I’m such a positive person that I will indeed take no offense to that remark. That reminds me, have you spoken with Clarissa yet?”

  “What about?”

  “She had a theory about your mindset.”

  “Oh, that. It was good advice. The Advent have been forcing a more offensive outlook lately, something Mytariss won’t respond as readily to.”

  “Have you ever met her?”

  “Aye, twice. Mytariss blessed each of my sisters with a glint of holy prana when we were barely old enough to keep memories, so I saw her when she blessed me and Elisa. She made my father seem so small and inconsequential. Not until Aranath did I see any being come close to matching her presence.”

  “Does she talk?”

  “Um, yes and no. She doesn’t speak with her mouth. In fact, she doesn’t have one. It’s difficult to explain how she communicates. I know I was scared of the eidolon when I first saw her, but when she put her hand on me, I sensed something more than her inflexible, oddly supple touch comforting me. She ‘said’ something to me, something that reached my soul more than my ears.”

  “What did she ‘tell’ you?”

  “To recite Ylsuna’s prayer. It calmed me down while she gave me the spark of holy prana that allows me access to her shield. That’s actually what I was doing last night. Seeing the moon so bright inspired me to carve her rune key and recite the moon goddess’ prayer. I’m not quite ready to summon her, but I am close enough to try and get a feel for things.”