by Dante King
“Sweet!”
Elenari grinned. “It will be hard work, but I have seen that you are strong and brave. I think you’ll take to it like a dragon to a thatched roof.”
I laughed at that.
“Then you’ll be given your squad,” Elenari said.
“My squad?” I asked.
“Regular soldiers who’ll fight alongside you,” the elf explained impatiently.
“So, this place is like a military academy?” I asked.
Elenari gave me a funny look. “Of course it is a military academy,” she said. “You will train to become the most formidable warrior the Mystocean Empire has in its arsenal…”
Holy shit, I thought, gazing out at the horizon and the mountains that sparkled like teeth along it. That sounds like a bit of me. That sounds like what I was made for.
“Then it’s the transfusion ceremony and proper missions,” Elenari finished.
“Sounds intense,” I said, winning the competition for the biggest understatement of the day.
“It is. But you’ll be a dragonmancer—the greatest honor in our Empire,” said Elenari. “And not just that, because of who and what you are, I have a feeling that you’re going to be one of the most famous faces in the land before long.”
I patted Noctis on the neck and grinned out at the world.
“This shit just keeps getting better and better,” I said.
Chapter Five
The thing about flying on a dragon for the first time is that time really does fly by. I wasn’t sure how long we had been traveling—might have been thirty minutes, could have been three hours—but, before I knew it, Elenari had swooped in close so that she could hail me again.
“Michael, we’re approaching the Drako Academy!” she called over the rush of the wind.
“Where?” I craned my head to search the landscape spread below us like a patterned rug of myriad greens, browns, grays, and yellows.
Elenari pointed to our two o’clock.
“The mountains?” I asked.
Elenari nodded and swept her hand right, telling me to scan across.
We had been flying toward the mountains steadily, deviating only so that I could practice my swoops and climbs and, on one overzealous occasion, a barrel-roll. I had been sorely tempted to attempt flying upside down over the top of Elenari—in a homage to Goose and Maverick—and then yell, “I was inverted!”
However, there were three reasons why I nipped this plan in the bud. The first was that I wasn’t sure if Noctis and I had formed a strong enough bond in the little time we had been dragon and rider. The second was that I couldn’t think of any worse way to finish the best day of my life than falling off my mount and spreading myself messily over the countryside below. The third was that the sexy she-elf, Elenari, seemed exceedingly pleased with herself for being the one to find the first male dragonmancer in ages. I didn’t want to disappoint her by messing up an aerial maneuver.
I ran my gaze east along the spectacular procession of peaks. A mountain range seen from the air is one of the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena you can lay your retinas on. The sheer scale and majesty of those purplish-gray ridges, for a moment, made me forget why I was looking at them.
From the air, and from left to right, the range went from skinny—as skinny as a fucking mountain range can be—to broadening out in the middle of the belt, before narrowing again into a long outthrust arm that snaked out into the green plains beyond. This sinuous arm ended in a last bulbous bastion of grouped peaks. All in all, the whole mountain chain looked like…
“The mountains,” I yelled, glancing over at Elenari, “they look like a goddamn massive dragon that’s laying down and sunbaking!”
Elenari’s pretty, angular face split into a smile that would have had dentists all across the world weeping with appreciation. “Yes,” she yelled back at me, seemingly delighted that I had noticed this, “that is why they’re known as the Dragon Rest Ranges!”
I looked back at the mountains that were drawing nearer and nearer with every one of Noctis’ powerful wing beats. My gaze fell back on what might be called the ‘head’ of the gargantuan sleeping dragon. The cluster of mountains there thrust up in a tight formation of peaks. Squinting against the glare of the sun on the mountain snow and the wind rushing into my face, I saw that there was a city built around the broad, massive slopes of the biggest central mountain of this cluster—a proper, walled medieval city!
“Awesome,” I murmured to myself, leaning over Noctis’ neck.
From what I could make out, the town proper spread around the feet and knees of the majestic central peak. As you moved further up the chief peak, the buildings became more tightly packed, bigger, more substantial, and grander. The edifices near the peak of the central spire looked constructed from marble or some other gleaming white stone. The central peak itself had a summit that seemed to have been snapped off by a giant hand, leaving a vast flattened platform or plateau.
On this plateau was a castle—an enormous keep of glittering white rock that looked as if it had been constructed from snow and ice and silver. It was ringed by a curtain wall that looked about as scalable as your average glacier. Within this curtain wall—cornered by round mural towers that glimmered like glass and quartz stalagmites—were large courtyards. We were still pretty high up, and I couldn’t make out all the details, but the courtyards sparkled as light glinted and winked off metal or glass.
“And that must be the fucking swanky part of town!” I said, my eyes running up the cherry on top of this marvelous and unbelievable cake.
The central keep was topped with a tower that was to towers what a Rolls Royce is to automobiles. It was the most incredible piece of craftsmanship that I had ever seen; sheer-sided, black and gold veined like marble, without a single visible window. It must have risen a good three-thousand feet, so that the top of it was almost on a level with where Elenari and I were flying. On the very top of this highest tower was another, smaller plateau that was splashed with green, as if there was a garden or park there.
From my dragon’s eye vantage, it was like I was playing the most epic and realistic game of Age of Empires ever. It was the PlayStation 12 with VR and on steroids.
I tried to guess at what buildings might be used for what purpose, but we were too high up to make out much of them. The only landmark that I could identify with any real surety was a large, covered market or bazaar at the base of the central mountain, which filled an area, maybe, the size of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
“I bet there’s not a single Footlocker or Burger King in there,” I said to Noctis, and smiled at the thought.
As we swept in ever closer and dipped below the level of this glimmering, wonderous piece of architecture, there were dragons. Dozens and dozens of dragons of different shapes, sizes, and colors swooped and cruised around the central, highest tower. They reminded me of the seabirds that called the California coast their home—except no goddamn grebe or cormorant had ever grown to the size of a minivan.
“Follow me!” Elenari yelled from my left. “We need to land in the lower bailey as custom and manners dictate!”
We began circling the tower, wheeling around that massive central steeple-peak in great even circles. The other dragons spared us cursory glances but looked mostly unconcerned with our approach.
As we drew in closer, I noticed something else about the tower—something that eclipsed even its sheer size and the fact that it was contravening all the usual laws of architecture and physics. The entire surface of the edifice was covered in shining runes; archaic-looking symbols that shone in and out of sight as we moved and descended around the tower. It looked as if they had been painted in something similar to oil, except that it was a weird iridescent crimson-silver color.
“What’s with all the artwork?” I asked Elenari.
“They are protection runes,” she told me. “Carved into the rock and then filled with the blood of dragons and magic. The blood congeals, trapping the magic. Ther
e is no better safeguard for a stronghold of this size than dragon blood infused with magic.”
“So, it works?” I asked.
“Of course it works,” Elenari answered me. “Nobody has breached even the outer curtain walls of the Drako Academy in millennia. We have here,” and she gestured to the great expanse of fortified city, “the second greatest concentration of military might in the Mystocean Empire. Only the capital, Wyverngarth, where the Empress Cyrene rules, is more highly protected than the Drako Academy.”
I could see the glittering shapes in the courtyards now. They were men and women—armored troops, to be precise—moving in fluid formation. Working their way through what looked like designated drill moves. It’d always been a bit of a head-scratcher for me, why soldiers practiced these moves. From everything that I had seen—and admittedly, my expertise in hand-to-hand medieval combat started at Braveheart and ended at The King—battles were messy affairs, and everyone basically just charged into them with the sole goal in mind of killing the bastard opposite them before they killed them.
Even so, I was happy to be proved wrong in the coming weeks. I figured a lot of my assumptions about how anything worked would change while attending the Drako Academy.
We were swooping in lower now. Low enough for me to see the shape of the rooftops in the lower town. They were fashioned with wooden tiles and steeply pitched, and I realized that it was probably so that the snow slid off.
I looked to my left as Elenari guided us toward a patch of grass that might just have been left vacant for parking your dragon. The drilling soldiers in one of the courtyards were near enough now for me to hear their cries as they swept their swords up, jabbed them forward, and swung them about in silver arcs.
Everything about what I was seeing was ridiculous, really, when I came to think of it. I mean, I’d gone from the grimy, materialistic bustle of downtown Los Angeles, to riding on the back of a motherfucking dragon in the space of time that it took to visit the laundromat and wash and dry my clothes. However, the sight of the armored companies arrayed out under the alpine sun was really something to behold. I mean, you didn’t get to see that sort of thing, even on the sets in the San Fernando Valley.
Up closer, as we flew past the bristling line-up of troopers going through their moves in the practice courtyards, I could see that they were all attired in overlapping scale armor. The scale-mail coats were burnished to a high sheen, were bronze-colored, and fell to the bottom of their thighs. They wore helmets with nose-guards that were shaped like dragon horns and their pauldrons were etched with the same mark that Elenari wore on hers.
I saw too, that they weren’t all just drilling with swords as I had initially thought. There were squads of pikemen, battalions of soldiers wielding bright axes and, at the far end of the courtyard, companies of archers firing longbows and crossbows at straw targets—some of which were levitating and moving.
That’s magic, my stunned brain told me. That, right there, is fucking magic, man.
I could only agree with myself.
Before we dropped below the parapets of the outer curtain walls and lost sight of the training warriors, I had one final revelation. The training soldiers were not solely men and women—not solely human, I mean.
There were elves, dwarves, half-orcs, and humans in evidence. There were also a number of other humanoids that I couldn’t identify, sparring alongside all the others. There were men and women who shared obvious, and not so obvious, characteristics with bears and eagles, lynxes and lizards, and other mountain creatures.
Briefly, I wondered whether any of those that were training were fellow dragonmancers. My eyes flicked from one promising soldier to the next, until I realized that all the male fighters couldn’t possibly be dragonmancers—as dragonmancers were all female, according to Elenari.
I turned back to the task at hand (e.g. landing a flying dragon) and shelved the overwhelming sense of awe I felt at everything. As the ground came up to meet us, my heart suddenly glowed and burned with intense anticipation.
Now that I came to think about it, if there had been one era that I could have transported myself back in time to, it would have been that time during which people fought hand to hand. When there were pitched battles. When warriors were able to forge reputations and renown by the strength of their hands and the size of their balls—their bravery, I mean, not the physical dimensions of their testicles.
Shit yeah, this could be my chance. This could be a way for me to utilize my MMA combat training in a way that my instructors could never have imagined.
The thought, the knowledge, that I could be entering this seemingly militaristic world with at least the means to defend myself in unarmed combat acted as a balm to my mind. Just because I was an Earthling, a stranger here, didn’t mean that I was going to let myself be pushed around. If push came to shove, I meant to be the one shoving.
And there was always the great fantasy equalizer to count on, too: magic. And it seemed like I’d be able to wield a bunch of it with Noctis as my dragon companion.
Luckily, the whole landing process was something that Noctis had well in hand. On her Emerald Dragon, Gharmon, Elenari glided down onto the lawn ahead of me. Her green dragon turned and adjusted its wings, just as its feet were about to hit the grass, and they caught the air like the sails of a ship, breaking it in mid-flight so that its feet hit the earth with the impact of a galloping horse.
Noctis followed suit. I braced myself for a jarring landing, but the Onyx Dragon’s muscles and joints soaked up the impact like the best shock-absorbers. We trotted along for a few spaces, before Elenari guided Gharmon the Emerald Dragon off the runway and pulled it up at a hitching post.
Without realizing, or consciously thinking about what I was doing, I pressed my left thigh to Noctis’ flank and turned the dragon so that it followed Elenari’s mount. Once we were stopped, I slid down from my dragon and patted it on the flank. Only then, when my boots touched down on alien—but quite solid—soil did the true enormity of the fact that I had just flown on the back of a giant airborne creature hit me.
“Fucking hell,” I said softly, “did I just survive that shit?”
Noctis growled, as if the dragon too couldn’t believe that we’d made it without me falling off or maiming myself in some other way.
“What do we do with our dragons?” I asked Elenari.
“Retract them into your crystal,” the elf said succinctly. She cocked her head to one side and smiled and Gharmon, her dragon, disappeared. I noticed that an emerald set into the pommel of one of the daggers on her hip glowed briefly with a green fire.
I focused my attention on Noctis and willed the carthorse-sized creature back into the nice, cozy confines of the onyx crystal in my pocket. The dragon cocked its head at me as I bent my will upon it.
Then, it vanished. The crystal in my pocket glowed with a sudden warmth that quickly faded.
Elenari took me by the arm and towed my gawping ass toward a drawbridge that led into an open gate, flanked by two intimidating gate houses. The oak gate looked to have been aged to the hardness of solid iron, and carved with intricate symbols that would have put Da Vinci to shame.
“We’re ok to turn up to this place unannounced, are we?” I asked Elenari. I wasn’t able to see any guardsmen within the slotted windows of the gatehouse, but I could feel them. I could practically feel the tips of their arrowheads tickling the back of my neck as Elenari and I walked through that first set of gates and out into the lower bailey of the Drako Academy.
“Yes, we’re fine, Michael,” the elf said. She seemed to find my slight discomfort vaguely amusing. “They’re not going to slay us unnecessarily.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“No,” Elenari said. “If they were going to put us to the sword, we wouldn’t know about it. We’d be dead before we hit the floor. Until you undergo the transfusion ceremony, you are not yet a full dragonmancer. After that point, well, an arrow is more likely to tickle
you than penetrate your skin.”
I gave her a sideways look as we passed under the gateway, and I noticed the murderholes from which boiling oil could be so liberally applied to people entering without an RSVP.
“Oh, that’s a relief,” I said. “We should get that ceremony over with soon then.”
Elenari smiled, almost sympathetically. “I wouldn’t be so eager. It’s a harrowing experience that some potential dragonmancers don’t survive.”
Chapter Six
Elenari and I walked along a wide path that wended its way through a series of ornately pruned bushes of animals in various poses. There was a cat in mid leap, a bird with spread wings, a rearing bear, and a canine creature that seemed to be slinking along beside us.
“I thought dragons would be the overriding decorative theme,” I said.
“There were once mancers of other beasts,” Elenari said. “Those besides dragons. These bushes are an homage to their short-lived existence. Still, we do have dragons in the garden. Such as that one, there.”
She pointed ahead of us to where the path snaked through the vegetative sculptural maze and ended at another gate. This gate was topped by a bush, shaped into the form of a dragon. The dragon’s neck swept up and around until its snout was pointing, in quite an intimidating fashion, down at the pedestrians passing along the path.
“That’s a manicured bush,” I said, coming to a halt and staring up at the carefully groomed vegetation.
“Yes, it is,” Elenari conceded.
“I bet Kim Kardashian hasn’t got a bush that exquisitely styled,” I said.
“What do you mean?” the elf warrior asked. “Who is this Kim Kardashian?”
I shook my head. “Never mind,” I said as we passed under the arch and entered the middle bailey, which was the area that surrounded the main keep.
This middle bailey was as beautifully kept and maintained as Balboa Park or Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. It was a stunning conflagration of flowers and blooming hedges, ornate ponds, and subtle statues.