Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3)

by Travis Simmons

  “How on earth did you get any from the infirmary?” she wondered, accepting the leather satchel from Drex.

  “Maybe they didn’t know,” he said, a mischievous sparkle in his eye.

  She should feel guilty for accepting dragon blood when the infirmary could use it for so many things to help the wounded people who protected the city, but she couldn’t find the guilt through her swell of excitement.

  “Drex, I’m in your complete debt!” she said, slipping the satchel into her own bag.

  “I know,” he said, turning his back on her. The moonlight glinted off the mithril axe on his back and it made her wonder.

  “Drex,” she called. The dwarf turned toward her. “Is it possible to get a mithril tip for the end of a staff?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Drex said. “Do you have the staff? I can get it fitted in a couple days.”

  “No, going to get it now. Can I let you know when I need it?”

  “You know where to find me,” he said with a wave.

  That wasn’t precisely true. She knew that he lived somewhere in the Dwarven District, but finding him there would be the issue.

  She let him go, and turned her focus to the path once more. With the excitement of the staff, the dragon blood, and finally having a mithril weapon of her own, Leaghan didn’t feel as tired as she had before.

  The mountains that formed the cliff leading down into Darubai were referred to as Dragon Aerie, because that’s where the dragons chose to live, removed from the humans they saw as a threat. It was the only place Leaghan felt somewhat at home. Her home had been lush green grass, whispering trees, babbling rivers, raucous with the songs of birds, and the buzzing of bees. While Dragon Aerie wasn’t nearly as noisy, or as green as High Haven had been, it was still closer to the nature she felt than Darubai. For that matter, it was more home to her than even the Elven District.

  Leaghan couldn’t understand why the elves had decided to live in the imperial city when they could have made their homes high in the mountains, and still done the same thing they did for the town now. Though the elves had done an amazing job of turning the district green, it lacked the sweet smells of the forests. She thought all of the extra work was absurd when they could have lived in Dragon Aerie.

  The Fire Fruit Forest stood before her. The roots of the trees dug deep into the rich earth, the trunks and branches white as any bleached bone she’d ever seen. The leaves were as orange as if caught in permanent autumn, but the difference here were these trees were living. The spines of the leaves ran red, purple, blue and a plethora of other colors. She thought the color of the leave’s veins and stems might indicate what powers the fruit would guard against, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d need more training in wizardry to be able to feel the magics that ran through the trees.

  But there was no doubt this place was full of magic. Even not being able to distinguish between the types of magic that resided in the forest, she was able to feel it pressing against her skin. It felt as though all Leaghan needed to do was open her mind a little and the powers of the forest would carry her to another world filled with magic and romance. She took a deep breath of the pregnant air, and splayed her arms open, as if welcoming all the magic into herself. A slight wind played over her face, and she smiled. Despite all the studying—and fear that her magic would go rogue once more—she truly loved wizardry.

  The trees themselves easily stood thirty feet high, and already the flowers were giving way to large, orange fruit.

  Leaghan let her hands brush against white trunks as she strolled through the forest, her mind wandering back to happier times when she’d done the same thing in her homelands. The sound of the trees, whispering to one another in the night breeze lulled her into a sense of safety; a sense of welcome.

  More than anything, the Fire Fruit Forest teemed with life. Leaghan could almost feel a fae presence in the trees, as if at any moment fairies or pixies might dart from behind the fiery leaves and giggle around her head. She knew fairies didn’t live here, but they could. Maybe in time they would.

  In fact, if she thought about it for any length of time, Leaghan was sure this forest was more magical than any wood dwarves or elves had shared before. Likely it had to do with the powers the dragons had inadvertently imbued the trees with when they’d attacked. It made her wish she was a better wizard so she could categorize the trees for the dragon guard.

  She was almost certain the different colored veins in the leaves meant the fruit the tree bore would correlate with that color dragon, but she just couldn’t be sure without testing the theory. Certainly they could test it out on the guard, but what if she was wrong?

  “Here, eat this fruit, it will guard you against fire…whoops, maybe not,” she joked to herself. That would be her luck, too. She could see herself trying to give out wisdom our counsel and having it blow up in her face. The first wizard in a hundred years, and she would be laughed out of the city. Wizards would never be trusted again because of that one time a dumb wizard had given a soldier a fruit and told him it was fire resistant, and he’d gone up in flames as soon as he’d put it to the test.

  She turned her thoughts away from the fruit and to finding herself a staff. Marcone had been adamant that she chose a staff from wood that had already fallen from a tree or a shrub. She wasn’t, under any circumstance, to choose a branch she had to cut down. When she’d asked him why, he told her the magic of the staff was largely influenced by the means the wizard used to obtain it.

  A length of wood that had fallen from a tree meant that the power would be wrought with wisdom, with knowledge of age. A branch chosen from a living tree, in which the wizard had to hack it away from the tree would taint their magic, corrupt it with pain and with malicious intent. She was unsure if gathering a staff from a tree that had been destroyed in an attack would be the same thing, but she wasn’t the one attacking the tree, or tearing it apart. She liked to think she’d be giving the tree new life, a new purpose where it wouldn’t die, but live on and help in ways it never could have if it had been left to rot.

  She hoped that she would see some sign of dragons while she was in the forest, but so far she hadn’t. Leaghan had seen evidence of dragons from her room in the Wizard’s Keep, but that had been as shadows on the ground, or a glimmer of scales in the sun. Whenever she tried to catch a glimpse of the dragon that had cast the shadow or shimmer, she’d never found them.

  After she realized she’d spent far too much time looking for dragons instead of a staff, she promptly pulled her attention back to the task at hand. She had to stop before tripping over a length of fallen wood, and the moment she saw it, she knew this was her staff. Marcone had been right. Likely she didn’t even have to look; the power would have called to her. Maybe it had.

  The length of wood was torn free from a tree, but it had been done in such a way that one end was cut almost perfect for a staff. The opposite end, the part she considered the top, was a twisting mass of wood that looked like a hand holding tight to something it found precious. Of course, if the hand had more fingers than could be counted, the similarity would be accurate. She was only slightly dismayed to find that the twisted end was empty. Maybe she could talk to Marcone about placing something inside. Maybe something that would help her retain knowledge faster so she didn’t have to study as hard and would have more time to stroll the city by day.

  She lifted the staff, and found that the length of it was pin straight, and the tangle of wood at the top ended just a little above her head. The heft was light, but the staff felt rather strong and resilient.

  If she was hoping some surge of power would rush through her as she claimed the staff, Leaghan was disappointed. She had to remind herself that the staff didn’t hold any magic until she put the magic inside of it.

  Already bits of bark were cracking and sloughing from the length of the staff, and she was happy to see the wood beneath was just as white as the bark.

  She gave the staff a couple swings, and
found that it was lighter than any sword she’d ever held. Of course, she didn’t think wizards engaged in physical combat using their staff, but still, it was good to know she could wield it so, if she needed to. Maybe she could use it in weapons practice with Marcella the following day.

  Shoving down the thought that seeing a dragon would have made her night perfect, she counted her blessings of dragon blood, new staff, and the prospect of soon learning to cast magic, and headed for the keep.

  Much of the journey back was spent studying her staff, and smiling at the weapon as if it was a new friend that she’d never knew she’d lost.

  She pushed the door of the keep open, and when it slammed shut behind her, she was greeted with a rush of cold air, and her body soared through the air to crash heavily against the edge of the fireplace. Leaghan felt something inside snap, and pain flared through her muscles like liquid fire, seizing her small frame, a cry of pain frozen on her lips.

  A white incandescence bloomed in the air before her like a thick cloud of smoke. Out of it stepped a small boy. The oddity of the small boy didn’t end with his appearing out of thin air before her, or his apparent ability to throw her around with ease. His eyes were white, like clouds blotting out the darkness of a stormy night; he was bald, and his lips were dry and cracked. When he opened his mouth, the inside was black, as if he’d swallowed a bottle of ink moments before she’d entered the keep.

  “Stop your magic, now!” the boy raged.

  Windows rattled around the hall in a fitful breeze that sent the chairs and tables skittering over the flagstone floors in a shuddering screech of protest. Her blond hair twisted in a fitful cloud around her, but when she tried to stand, to protect herself, her side flared with pain once more, and she cried out, slumping back to the floor. The side of the fireplace bit into her back painfully.

  “I…I can’t,” Leaghan gasped. She thought she’d cracked something. Moving was difficult, but not impossible. She straightened, and her back protested. A sharp catch in her side hitched her breath in her throat. Her staff was laying close by, at least she hadn’t lost hold of it until the very las minute. But what good would it do to someone who could appear out of thin air?

  The boy stalked closer to her, his filmy eyes masking a flashing storm underneath. He radiated power, the kind of power she could feel building at the beginning of a storm, before the tempest raged over the desert. Whatever was inside of him, was about to crash against the shores of her body.

  As he neared her, she felt that same power, condensed, whisper over her mind. She felt the shields that held the wild magic at bay buckle. Her neck twitched as her panic rose. Could he snap the shields? Sweat broke out along her upper lip and her hands began to shake. She pushed further away from him, as if that would put distance between him and her shields.

  The boy smiled. “Do you think I mean to break your shields?”

  Leaghan didn’t say anything. Her chin quivered, and she blinked rapidly several times. Her hand reached for her staff.

  “That holds no power yet,” the boy told her. “But I do.” His power pressed harder against her shields, and she felt them moan with the strain. At any moment they would be broken, and the wild magic that had been caged inside her; the wild magic that took hold of her body and made her watch as it raised havoc with all around her would be free.

  “At any moment, I can snap those shields, and you will be no more. Leaghan Windstar will be nothing but a puppet for the magics; a puppet for me.”

  Leaghan shook her head, pulling her staff closer to her. It scraped across the floor.

  “But all you need to do, is stop your training. Stop learning the magic. Your shields will hold, and you will never be plagued by the wild magics again. You will never have to worry about them slipping free.”

  Leaghan had thought of it before. What would it be like not to have the magics? What would it be like to give this life up and never have to worry about the wild magic holding sway over her form? It had been a nice thought, before she’d started to learn about magic. Now there was too much to risk. If she didn’t learn, who would lead future wizards if there were any?

  But it was more than that, it was more than future generations or living a simple life. She remembered her night in the Fire Fruit Forest, and how she’d loved the feel of the magics playing over her flesh. She’d loved the feeling of being so wrapped up in the place and the time that she could sense another world living and breathing within the forest. If she gave up her magic, she gave that up. She didn’t want to give that up.

  Leaghan swung her staff at the boy’s legs. He wasn’t expecting it, and the moment the heavy, tangled end of her staff connected with his knees, his eyes went wide. He let out a startled yelp, and fell to the ground.

  Despite the scream in her back, Leaghan jumped to her feet, her staff planted at the boy’s throat.

  “I will not,” she snarled, pressing harder than she should have.

  The boy gasped beneath the press of wood, but he didn’t move or struggle. Instead he smiled.

  “You will.” Power struck her in the stomach, and she flew through the air once more. Her back slammed against the wall and she saw a blur of wood moments before the legs of a chair slammed against the wall, pinning her to the stone. She was held in place by the chair. The power left her, and she slumped against the legs, but she couldn’t slip out of the chair’s hold. The rungs were too close to her body, the legs so tight against her sides that she wondered how they hadn’t impaled her. The thought of how much power and awareness to detail must have gone into the boy’s magic made her shiver uncontrollably. She looked down from her perch, and there the boy stood.

  “I’ve ended many wizards, and if you don’t do as I say, I will end you!” the boy growled.

  In that moment, she knew who he was. The only wizard to—allegedly—kill all the wizards off, hundreds of years ago. The same wizard that sent the dragons far off into the mountains, forging a barrier of magic they couldn’t penetrate to reach the long desert again…until they’d done just that almost twenty years ago. This was the same wizard who was so renowned that everyone knew his name.

  “You’re him,” Leaghan said. “You’re Andraal.” She thought he’d be bigger and older.

  At the mention of his name, the boy’s eyes widened, and in a swirl of air, he faded to dust, and was gone.

  In his absence, the magic faded. Leaghan fell to the floor, her tailbone striking in such a way that she was momentarily paralyzed. Her back screamed and liquid heat held her in place, limbs tangled around the legs of the chair.

  “Leaghan?” Marcella called from the stairway. She could hear the patter of slippered feet thumping down the winding stairs. “What’s…” Marcella’s voice trailed off, her dark eyes wide when she saw how the furniture had been rearranged, and where Leaghan lay against the fireplace. “What happened?” the wyvern asked, seemingly coming to herself. She raced across the floor, her burgundy skirts and long white tunic whispering around her. She knelt in a cloud of skirts and tunic to help Leaghan—gasping in pain—to her feet.

  “We have a problem,” Leaghan gasped. “We need Marcone.”

  “You need a healer!” Marcella argued.

  “I won’t argue with that,” Leaghan said with a wince.

  :Aariac is hurt,: Lissandra said. The proclamation brought Wylan out of her slumber, and she instantly regretted it. Wylan hated to think what Lissandra thought of as hurt with the amount of pain she was in. She tried to move, but the dull, fiery throb in every fiber of her muscles made her gasp. Her joints were stiff, and she heard them pop and crack as she tried to work some movement back into them. The effort was slow, given the pain she felt, but soon the agony eased and she was able to notice where her and Aariac were.

  Or rather, she was able to see they were in trouble. They were in a dark room, the dull sound of wind whistled from a great distance away, and she couldn’t tell if the moan of the breeze came from somewhere further in the room, or if it wa
s coming from outside of the cell.

  To her right, there was an impression of light, and as her eyes acclimated she noticed the door was made of bars.

  “They got us,” Wylan said, her throat dry and her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and wished desperately for some water.

  “No, really?” Aariac asked.

  At least his sarcasm still works, Wylan thought.

  “How badly are you hurt?” she asked.

  “I think my leg is broken,” he grumbled. There was a rustle of movement and a sharp gasp of pain. “Yeah, definitely broken.”

  “Well, stop moving,” she said. “You’re only going to make it worse.”

  “Worse than what?” Aariac asked.

  “Have you seen them? How long have I been out?”

  “I woke up a while ago. I haven’t seen them, but I do see the occasional shadow pass by the doorway.”

  The light coming through the cell door was sunlight. At least she could see where she was, if she could get her body to obey her. She checked her arms and found there were some kind of stone shackles on them, but they weren’t linked together. Furthermore, she wasn’t chained to the wall either. What was the purpose of that?

  Who locks prisoners in shackles that aren’t chained together?

  Someone who didn’t understand who they had prisoner. How was it the drakes had lived through the dragon plague, and didn’t know anything about wyverns? Granted, drakes weren’t a smart race, but they’d been smart enough to learn to ride telliks and use their own magic. Smart enough to survive the plague. Smart enough to take prisoners and build prisons. Of course, even a snake could spit venom, so maybe the magic was natural to them. Everything else, however, was learned.

  She tried to remember anything she could about drakes, but there had been blessedly little about drakes in the guard training. They were a mysterious race, and what little had been taught was pretty much common knowledge to anyone who’d come up against them in the long desert. That’s to say, they were mean, they had magic, and they rode telliks.