“Ready for your big trip?” Josef asked.
“I feel like I’m going to puke.” Wylan shook her head, and clutched her left hand closer to her stomach.
“I have that effect on women,” Josef joked. “Nerves?”
“I don’t think that’s it,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “I think there’s more. But yeah, mostly nerves.”
“That’s the paranoia of the dragon guard talking,” Josef nudged her shoulder.
Wylan sighed and smiled. “Maybe.”
“Was it the fight? Put you on edge?”
“No,” Wylan shook her head. So he hadn’t seen the purple dragon attack her. She truly hoped it hadn’t been the attack that was making her twitchy. “Likely it’s just my paranoia.”
“Well, stop. I’m paranoid about this outing enough for the both of us.”
Wylan smiled. “Just be careful when I’m gone,” she said.
“I’m always careful,” Josef grinned at her. “Aariac is coming,” Josef said. “You’re going to be leaving soon.”
Wylan nodded.
“Hopefully it won’t be a long venture.”
“I hope not,” Wylan agreed. “Training took long enough, I kind of wanted at least a couple days off before my mission.”
“Well, you were supposed to have some time off. But, welcome to the guard where plans are changed at a moment’s notice.” Josef brushed back a lock of her black hair. His hand cradled the back of her head, and he tipped her mouth up to his for a quick kiss.
“Just think about what I asked,” Josef said, taking Wylan by the waist. She leaned into him, feeling the warmth of his body pressed against hers, the soft heat of his hands on the small of her waist was a comforting presence she knew she’d miss while on circuit with Aariac.
She scowled at the thought and was thankful he couldn’t see her face.
“I will,” Wylan told him. “I just have to figure this out.”
“Hey, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re the plague bearer or not, you know that.”
Wylan nodded against his chest. He’d been one of the few people she’d told, along with Aariac and their friend Marcella.
“But while you’re out there see what you can find. I will be here waiting for you when you get back.”
“Awww, you’re waiting for me?” Aariac asked. He slapped Josef on the butt and laughed when Josef jumped and yelped. Aariac was thin and tall. He had short dark hair, and the pointed ears of an elf. He was one of the few elven warriors who’d joined the dragon guard, and he’d been paired with Wylan. While they had trained together, they’d only known one another a few months. But they’d been through a lot, and grown a bond that only constant fighting together against dragons could form.
“You know I can’t deny what’s between us,” Josef said, mockingly letting his eyes trail over Aariac’s lithe figure. “I wish you’d stop fighting it so we can celebrate the fire between us.”
“But what would Wylan think?” Aariac asked. “You know she’s crazy about me. I could never do that to her.”
“She never has to know,” Josef said.
Aariac laughed a full-throated laugh and slapped Josef on the back. “Do you love birds need more time to talk, or can we get naked already?”
Wylan rolled her eyes. “If you take off a single thread of clothing, I’m burning you to a crisp.”
Aariac laughed and held his hands up in surrender.
“We are good here,” Josef said, sneaking one last kiss from Wylan. “Take care of her,” he said to Aariac and slapped the elf’s butt as he strolled by. Aariac let out a startled yip that earned him another roar of laughter from Josef.
“Do your thing, little lady?” Aariac rubbed his butt and winced.
Wylan blushed. Wyverns typically undressed before shifting because if they didn’t, it would ruin whatever clothes they were wearing. They’d carry the clothing with them so they had something to wear when they shifted back to human. Most of the wyverns were just as comfortable naked as they were clothed, but Wylan had come to her wyvern soul late in life. She hadn’t caught the plague until she was eighteen, and so there had already been some reservations against nudity learned.
No matter how many times she’d gotten naked in front of people in order to shift, she still wasn’t comfortable with it. She motioned for Aariac to turn around, and with a mock sigh he obeyed. She pulled off her tunic and trousers, placed them in a long sack with her boots and her sword, and then shifted into her wyvern form.
Lissandra rolled through her body like a wave of heat under her skin. Wylan could feel the sinuous undulation of her scales, like a feather caressing the underneath of her skin. Her flesh prickled as red scales flourished to the surface. She collapsed to the ground as her bones snapped, and she gasped in pain as her body forcefully rebuilt itself in the form of a wyvern.
Wyverns were different from dragons in a number of ways. Mostly because their bodies were smaller, and instead of four legs, they had two legs, and a set of arms that formed into their wings. She could feel the fire of her wyvern roar through her body, and she cried out from the pain of the shift. Fire spurt into the air, and that was all the notice Aariac needed to know the shift was complete.
“One of these days, we’re going to have to get you fit with a saddle,” Aariac said.
Wylan growled at him, and he laughed. She lowered herself down on the ground so that he could climb on her back. She was large for a wyvern, so having a non-wyvern partner wasn’t an issue for her. Aariac rode upon her back the way most people would ride on the back of a dragon.
Once he indicated that he was settled, Wylan gathered her belongings, and kicked off into the air.
With a wrinkled brow, Josef watched Wylan go. He chewed at the edge of his lip and wondered, what now? His problem was always putting too much into another person, so when they left he was alone to figure out what happened now. It wasn’t just with romantic relationships either. Even with Marcella, when she’d gone on her first circuit, he’d felt the same kind of emptiness. Josef liked routine, and now that routine was broken, and he didn’t know what to do with himself.
More than that, though, Wylan was hunted. The entire trip to Darubai with her in tow was like one long battle against the desert as it threw everything it had at them. He cleared his throat and tried to push the thought from his mind. His hands were already balling up in his trousers, and he forced them to relax. Even though his hands obeyed, the lurch in his stomach wouldn’t abate.
He knew how dangerous circuits could be, and there’d times when she’d come home with life-threatening wounds. If it hadn’t been for Millie and the healers under her charge, Wylan certainly wouldn’t have made it. Josef wanted her to quit, wanted her to take a post on the city guard, but she’d refused. He was beginning to think that she had a death wish, or at least an adventurer’s spirit.
His worry was only increased by the question he’d asked her. She said she wanted nothing more than a family and a sense of normal, like she had with her parents before they’d died. But when he’d asked her to marry him and start on their family…she froze up, he thought.
His neck hurt. Josef rolled his shoulders to ease the stiff muscles. With a sigh, he pushed the thought away where he hoped it stayed.
A great shadow fell over the mountain peak, casting Josef in a deep shadow. He knew it was a dragon without having to look up. But he did. It was a lone dragon, its scales shimmering scarlet in the light of the risen sun. It gave no call of battle, and it was the only one that flew. If it was an enemy dragon—what they’d come to call draconians—it would have given some kind of battle cry. It would have intimidated before it attacked, but it didn’t.
This was a friendly dragon out for a morning flight. It was rare to see the friendly dragons out and about above the city. It seemed—though they lived near the humans and protected them against the draconians—that they trusted the humans about as much as most humans trusted the dragons. That was to say, very lit
tle.
The red was small for a dragon, barely twice the size of a wyvern, which was to say he was twice the size of a horse. He curved right and glided among the rooftops of the city below. Within moments, the dragon had faded from Josef’s sight.
It was just as well, Josef had his own investigating to do. Just days before there’d been a green dragon that had been slain over the skies of Darubai. While that would have been a great thing if it was a draconian, this dragon was one of the friendly ones that called Dragon Aerie home.
Stranger still, the yellow drakes of the dragon guard hadn’t been able to find anything when studying the crime scene. They knew a great arrow had pierced the green dragon’s heart, and they knew the area where the arrow had come from, but what they couldn’t tell was who fired it, and why. Yellow wyverns—and dragons—had the ability to see things in the ether that no one else could see. They could commune with spirits, they could see the past and predict the future. So when they couldn’t find any trace of an energy signature at a crime scene, it meant some kind of magic was at play.
But the only wizard they knew of was Leaghan Windstar, and she had only come out of her wild magic stupor two months before. She wouldn’t have been able to perform the magics needed to hide anything in the ether from a yellow drake, let alone wield a bow large enough to fire an arrow capable of piercing a dragon’s heart. Sure, other elves could, but they were much stronger than the little wisp of a wizard.
Garrett, the clutch commander trusted Josef. Garrett used to be the old wing leader of the blue wyverns, and when he was promoted, he selected Josef to take his place. With that came years of trust they’d built working together. Garrett suspected someone on the council as having facilitated the attack, and the only person he trusted enough to know they hadn’t done this was Josef.
And so, Josef was the one he’d selected to conduct this secret mission of his. The other wing leaders thought it was a closed case. Garrett had played it off as local prejudice, some citizen having attacked the green dragon because of past attacks. It was a solid story. Until they’d come in contact with the dragon tamer, dragons had attacked Darubai relentlessly. It wasn’t until the dragon tamer, Kira Dragonkin, had come to live in Darubai that dragons had been mentally enslaved and forced into being friendly, that they had dragons on their side to help fight.
A huge, thundering boom sounded to his right, down in the city. Josef jerked his head around, his neck screaming liquid fire in protest, and watched in horror as a great cloud of smoke and debris shuttled up into the air directly above the Dwarven District. He gave no thoughts to his clothes or his well-being when he called to the wyvern soul. He felt it flood to the surface, like water battering a dam. Moments later, the transformation was upon him. The snapping of his bones as they broke and reformed into the lumbering dragon-like shape was a distant throb of pain to his mind. He leapt from the rock before the transformation had finished spreading open his arms, wings already formed between his side and his wyvern clawed hands. As he glided, sapphire scales shimmered to the surface of his body, refracting the light of the sun as if it gleamed upon water.
He caught an updraft of wind, and watched as wyverns stepped to apartment windows, or the ledges of patios and took to wing, gliding toward the scene of attack. When he first saw that it was a forge in the Dwarven District of the city, he thought it wasn’t an attack at all, but instead a forging accident. Though he’d never known a forge to explode like that, the dwarves were a rather curious race, tinkering with things that humans wouldn’t normally tinker with. When he saw the mess of blood that lay around the front door and the mass of red scales that fluttered like fallen leaves to the ground, he knew something worse had happened.
Already the yellow wing of the dragon guard was clearing people away but Josef was able to get close enough to at least see more of the damage. He was a constable, and though he wasn’t allowed on a scene before the yellows had their assessments completed, he was afforded a bit more leeway to investigate than the average citizen or wyvern. He spiraled through the air, down toward the scene. The forge was a large one, and unfortunately the same forge where they made the dragon sabers—weapons made of mithril that were able to pierce dragon scales and hide. It was one of the major benefits they had against the dragons.
While the common citizen knew the dwarves were at work making weapons to help guard against dragon attack, they didn’t know about the mithril that had been found in the surrounding mountains. Very few outside of the wyverns and the friendly dragons knew about the mithril. The dragons didn’t like mithril because it was the only ore that could slice through their scales as easily as a knife through pigskin.
The forge had been dwarf made, so it was stable and largely intact, minus space around the door and the windows. Josef couldn’t get more than five yards above the structure. Yellow wyverns were patrolling the area, clearing away any of the other wyverns—like Josef—who’d come to gawk at what happened.
It was just as well, there was nothing for him to do but wait to be summoned to the military council to be briefed on the attack. Still, coupled with the morning’s dragon attack and Wylan leaving, Josef had a hard time leaving the scene. It was already turning out to be a terrible morning. While an attack like this might have been more common in a larger city, or before the dragons had come back to the low lands, it was nearly unheard of now. Friendly dragons and humans alike turned all their focus to protection from draconians. Why would they turn to harming each other now?
Before he left the area, he checked the door and saw what he’d feared. The bottom half of a dragon protruded from doorway, its tail largely bare of scales. The scales that surrounded the area were red. Maybe the friendly dragon wasn’t out for a morning flight after all.
There was little he could do until he was able to get into the forge and investigate further. Josef shifted flight and headed toward the scene of the first attack. The yellow wyverns had used reasoning instead of their powers to figure out where the arrow had been shot from to take down the green dragon. They figured the flight of the green based on where he fell, and from the positioning of the arrow and the hole through its heart, they’d pinpointed the rooftop the arrow had been fired from.
Josef alighted on the top of the building the yellows had been investigating before. While he couldn’t see into the ether like they could, Josef looked with the eyes of an investigator for anything out of the ordinary. The first thing he noticed was the building itself. When the dragon plague had struck, it had killed many people. Those that didn’t die came out the other side changed in one of three ways. Either they changed to wyverns, or they remained humans. But if they remained human, that didn’t mean they were unscarred. Some of the humans came through the fever of the plague nearly as healthy as they’d gone in. The others that didn’t die or change to wyverns came out mentally broken.
The rooftop the arrow had been shot from was the rooftop those mental patients had lived under before a random dragon attack had burned almost all of them alive. After that, the mental patients were moved into their own district within the city.
He shivered at the thought and memory of all those people who’d lived in the building burning alive, some of them unaware of what was even happening to them.
For reasons of safety, the building had been boarded up and closed off to the public. Even standing on the rooftop was dangerous. People could still visit the building, and many people who’d had family die in the fire still came, years later, to leave gifts and mementos outside the doorway for their lost loved ones. Even if the building hadn’t been dangerous, everyone that Josef knew of thought the building was haunted, and wouldn’t go near it.
The only other way onto the roof was through the buildings to either side of the old mental ward. Both of the buildings were military owned, however, and civilians weren’t allowed inside.
Part of the reason Garrett suspects one of the wing leaders. He wracked his mind, trying to think of any of the wing leaders
who had a connection to the mental ward, but with everything that had happened that morning, his mind wasn’t his best weapon. He kept thinking about the mithril forge, and why the dragon had blown it up. Furthermore, he wondered how the dragon could have blown it up. The red dragon could breathe fire; it couldn’t become fire.
Could it?
He shook his head and brought himself back to the present.
The rooftop was scattered with sand and debris that had long turned to ash from the scorching sun, or blackened sludge by the natural breaking down of whatever it had once been. He picked his way over the roof, checking here and there to see if someone had been up there for footprints or scuff marks in the debris. He needed to make his way to the edge of the building, or closer to the edge, so he could see what the attacker might have seen when it was taking down the dragon. The problem was, traversing the distance was difficult.
The mental ward had been shut off from the public for a reason, and that was the very reason Josef remained in wyvern form. While he was larger and heavier in that form, he also had wings, which meant if the roof decided to cave in, he could react in a way that was much safer for him.
Despite the creaking of the boards beneath his feet, Josef was in luck. He didn’t have to get that close to the edge because from where he stood, with his enhanced sight, he could see traces of orange rinds near the edge of the building. They were curling and dried, turning to something akin to leather, but it was clearly the outer pealing of fire fruit. From the looks of it, several fire fruit had been consumed on the top of the roof. Some were further along in their drying than others. Someone had come here over the course of several days. Some of the rinds were so fresh that Josef would hazard a guess that the same person had been here as early as last night.
But the green dragon had been attacked several days ago. This being the only lead he had to go on, Josef imagined that whoever had killed the dragon from the rooftop was also the same person who had left the rinds. And if they were still coming here, then the only reason he could imagine for them coming to the rooftop was because they had some kind of connection to the mental ward.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 2